Only then did the Cishaurim realize their mistake—their arrogance. For several heartbeats they hesitated …
And a tide of burnt and bloody knights broke from the rolling smoke, among them Grandmaster Gotian, hauling the Gold Tusk on White, his Order’s sacred standard. In that final rush, hundreds more fell burning. But some didn’t, and the Cishaurim rent the earth, desperately trying to bring those with Chorae down. But it was too late—the raving knights were upon them. One tried to flee by stepping into the sky, only to be felled by a crossbow bolt bearing a Tear of God. The others were cut down where they stood.
They were Cishaurim, Indara’s Waterbearers, and their death was more precious than the death of thousands.
For an impossible moment, all was silent. The Shrial Knights, those few hundred who survived, began limping and staggering back to the battered ranks of their Inrithi brothers. Incheiri Gotian was among the last to reach safety, bearing a burnt youth slumped across his shoulders.
Skauras, knowing the Cishaurim had accomplished their task despite their deaths, roared at his Grandees to attack, but the shock of what they had witnessed weighed too heavily upon them. The Fanim withdrew, milling in confusion, while opposite a great swath of scorched earth and smoking dead, the Earls and Thanes of the Middle-North desperately reassembled the centre of the common line. By the time the Grandees of Shigek and Gedea renewed their assault, the iron men were again in position, their ranks thinned, their hearts hardened.
And they began singing anew their ancient paean, which now struck them as more prophecy than song:A warring we have come
A reaving we shall work.
And when the day is done,
In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!
As the afternoon waxed, many more joined the fallen. Earl Wanhail of Kurigald was thrown from his horse in a counter-charge, and broke his back. Skaiyelt’s youngest brother, Prince Narradha, was felled by an arrow in the eye. Among the living, some collapsed of heat exhaustion. Some went mad with grief, and had to be dragged, frothing, to the priests in the camp. But those who stood couldn’t be broken. The iron men had rekindled their song, and the song had rekindled their violent fervour. The pounding of Fanim drums dimmed, then was drowned out altogether. Thousands of voices and one song. Thousands of years and one song.
And when the day is done,
In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!
As the sun lowered in the western skies, the Fanim flinched more and more from the Inrithi line, charged with ever greater trepidation. For they saw demons in the eyes of their idolatrous enemy.
Skaurus had already sounded the retreat when the banners of Proyas and his silver-masked Conriyans came snapping down the western hills. Without signal, the Galeoth, Tydonni, and Thunyeri ranks surged forward and ran booming across the Battleplain. Exhausted, heartbroken, the Fanim panicked; withdrawal degenerated into rout. The knights of Conriya swept into their midst, and the great Kianene host of Skaurus ab Nalajan, Sapatishah-Governor of Shigek, was massacred. Meanwhile, the Earls and Thanes of the Middle-North descended with what horse they had remaining on the vast Fanim encampment. Succumbing to licentious fury, the harrowed Northmen raped the women, murdered the slaves, and plundered the sumptuous pavilions of innumerable Grandees.
By sunset, the Vulgar Holy War had been avenged.
Over the following weeks, the Men of the Tusk would find thousands of bloated horses on the road to Hinnereth. They had been ridden to death, so mad were the heathen to escape the iron men of the Holy War.
Hunched on his saddle, Saubon watched files of weary men and women trudge across the moonlit grasses, no doubt eager to at last overtake Proyas and his knights. The Conriyan Prince, Saubon realized, must have pressed hard, perilously hard, to have so far outstripped his baggage and followers. He required no mirror to know how he looked: the horrified expressions of those walking from the darkness were reflection enough. Blood soaked his tattered surcoat. Gore clotted the links of his mail harness.
He waited until the man was almost immediately below before calling out to him …
“Your friend. Where is he?”
The sorcerer, Achamian, shrank from his mounted form, clutching his woman. Small wonder, looming out of the dark like a bloodied apparition.
“You mean Kellhus?” the square-bearded Schoolman asked.
Saubon glowered. “Remember your place, dog. He’s a prince.”
“You mean, Prince Kellhus, then?”
Unaccountably chastised, Saubon paused, licked his swollen lips. “Yes …”
The sorcerer shrugged. “I don’t know. Proyas drove us like cattle to catch you. Everything’s confused … Besides, princes don’t loiter with the likes of us in the wake of battle.”
Saubon glared at the mealy-mouthed fool, wondering whether he should strike him for his impertinence. But the memory of seeing his own corpse on the field gave him pause. He shuddered, clutched his elbows. That wasn’t me!
“Perhaps … Perhaps you can help me, then.”
The sorcerer scowled in a bemused manner Saubon found offensive. “I’m at your disposal, my Prince.”
“This ground … What is it about this ground?”
The sorcerer shrugged again. “This is the Battleplain … This is where the No-God died.”
“I know the legends.”
“I’m sure you do … Do you know what topoi are?”
Saubon grimaced. “No.”
The attractive woman at his side yawned, rubbed her eyes. Without warning, a wave of fatigue crashed over the Galeoth Prince. He swayed in his saddle.
“You know the way you can see far from heights,” the sorcerer was saying, “like towers or mountain summits?”
“I’m not a fool. Don’t deal with me as one.”
Pained smile. “Topoi are like heights, places where one can see far … But where heights are built with mounds of stone and earth, topoi are built with mounds of trauma and suffering. They are heights that let us see farther than this world … some say into the Outside. That’s why this ground troubles you—you stand perilously high … This is the Battleplain. What you feel isn’t so different from vertigo.”
Saubon nodded, feeling his throat tighten. He understood, and for no apparent reason, that understanding roused an immeasurable relief. Two ferocious sobs wracked him. “Exhaustion,” he croaked, wiping angrily at his eyes.
The sorcerer watched him, now with more regret than reproach. The woman stared at her feet.
Unable to look at the man, Saubon vaguely nodded in his direction, then made to ride off. The Schoolman’s voice, however, brought him up short.
“Even among topoi,” he called, “this place is … special.” There was something different in his tone, a reluctance, perhaps, which struck Saubon like a winter gust across sweaty skin.
“How so?” he managed, looking into the dark night.
“Do you remember the line from The Sagas, ‘Em yutiri Tir mauna, kim raussa raim’ …”
Saubon blinked away tears, said nothing.
“‘The soul that encounters Him,’” the Schoolman continued, “‘passes no further.’”
“And just fucking what,” the Galeoth Prince said, shocked by the savagery of his own voice, “is that supposed to fucking mean?”
The sorcerer looked out across the dark plains. “That in some way, He’s out there somewhere … Mog-Pharau.” When he turned back to Saubon, there was real fear in his eyes.
“The dead do not escape the Battleplain, my Prince … This place is cursed. The No-God died here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MENGEDDA
Sleep, when deep enough, is indistinguishable from vigilance.
—SORAINAS, THE BOOK OF CIRCLES AND SPIRALS
Early Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Plains of Mengedda
Broad black wings outstretched, the Synthese drifted on the early morning wind, just savouring the curious familiarity of it all. The eastern skyline gradually brightened, then suddenly the
sun cracked the horizon, lancing between the hills, over the corpse-strewn expanse of the Battleplain, and out into the infinite black, where it would, eventually, trace a thread incomprehensibly long …
Perhaps all the way home.
Who could blame it for indulging in nostalgia? To be here again after millennia, at the place where it had almost happened, where Men and Nonmen had almost flickered out forever. Almost. Alas …
Soon enough. Soon enough.
It lowered its small human head and studied the patterns the innumerable dead had sketched across the plains, marvelling at the resemblances to certain sigils once prized by its species—back when they could actually be called such. Genera. Species. Race.
Inchoroi, the vermin had called them.
For a time it wondered at the sense of depth generated by the thousands of slow-circling vultures below, each sinking to the feast. Then it caught the scent it had been searching for … that otherworldly fetor—so distinctive!—encoded in case of just such a contingency.
So Sarcellus was dead. Unfortunate.
At least the Holy War had prevailed—over the Cishaurim, no less!
Golgotterath would approve.
Smiling, or perhaps scowling, with tiny human lips, the Old Name swooped down to join the vultures in their ancient celebration.
The distances writhed, twisted with maggot-white forms draped in human skins—with Sranc, shrieking Sranc, thousands upon thousands of them, clawing black blood from their skin, gouging themselves blind. Blind! The whirlwind roared through their masses, tossing untold thousands into orbit about its churning black base.
Mog-Pharau walked.
The Great King of Kyraneas clutched Seswatha about the shoulders, but the sorcerer could not hear his cry. Instead he heard the voice, uttered through a hundred thousand Sranc throats, flaring like bright-burning coals packed into his skull … The voice of the No-God.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
See? What could he …
I MUST KNOW WHAT YOU SEE
The Great King turned from him, reached for the Heron Spear.
TELL ME
Secrets … Secrets! Not even the No-God could build walls against what was forgotten! Seswatha glimpsed the unholy Carapace shining in the whirlwind’s heart, a nimil sarcophagus sheathed in choric script, hanging …
WHAT AM—
Achamian woke with a howl, his hands cramped into claws before him, shaking.
But there was a tender voice, shushing, cooing reassurances. Soft hands caressed his face, stroked sweaty hair from his eyes, daubed tears from his cheek.
Esmi.
He lay in her arms for a long while, periodically shuddering, straining to keep his eyes open, to see what was here—now.
“I’ve been thinking of Kellhus,” she said after his breathing had settled.
“Did you dream of him?” Achamian half-heartedly teased. He tried to clear his voice of phlegm.
Esmenet laughed. “No, you fool. I sa—”
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
A shrieking chorus, sharp and brief. He shook his head. “Sorry?” he said, laughing uneasily. “What did you say? I must have sleep in my eyes and ears …”
“I said, just thinking.”
“About what?”
Somehow, he could feel her cock her head, the way she always did when struggling to articulate something that eluded her. “About the way he speaks … Haven’t you—”
I CANNOT SEE
“No,” he wheezed. “Never noticed.” He coughed violently.
“That,” she said, “is what you get sitting on the smoky side of the fire.” One of her traditional admonitions.
“Old meat is better smoked.” His traditional reply. He squeezed sweat from his eyes.
“Anyway, Kellhus …” she continued, lowering her voice. Canvas was thin, and the camp crowded. “With everyone whispering about him because of the battle and what he said to Prince Saubon, it struck me—”
TELL ME
“—before falling asleep that almost everything he says is either, well … either near or far …”
Achamian swallowed, managed to say, “How do you mean?” He needed to piss.
Esmenet laughed. “I’m not sure … Remember how I told you how he asked me what it was like to be a harlot—you know, to lie with strange men? When he talks that way, he seems near, uncomfortably near, until you realize how utterly honest and unassuming he is … At the time, I thought he was just another rutting dog—”
WHAT AM I?
“The point, Esmi …”
There was an annoyed pause. “Other times, he seems breathtakingly far when he talks, like he stands on some remote mountain and can see everything, or almost everything …” She paused again, and from the length of it, Achamian knew he had bruised her feelings. He could feel her shrug. “The rest of us just talk in the middle somewhere, while he … And now this, seeing what happened yesterday before it happened. With each day—”
I CANNOT SEE
“—he seems to talk a little nearer and a little farther. It makes me—Akka? You’re trembling! Shaking!”
He gasped for breath. “I-I can’t stay here, Esmi.”
“What do you mean?”
“This place!” he cried. “I can’t stay here!”
“Shhh. It’ll be all right. I heard soldiers talking last night about moving come today. Away from the dead—from the chance of vapours and—”
TELL ME
Achamian cried out, struggled to retrieve his wits.
“Shhh, Akka, shhh …”
“Did they say where?” he gasped.
Esmenet had kicked free her blankets to kneel naked over him, palms on his chest. She looked worried. Very worried. “They said something about ruins, I think.”
“Ev-even worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“This place is shaking me to pieces, Esmi. Echoes. Echoes. R-remember what I s-said to Saubon last night? The N-No-God … His … his echo is too strong here. Too strong! And the ruins, that would be the city of Mengedda. Where it happened … Where the No-God was struck down. I know this sounds mad, but I think this place—I think this place recognizes me … M-me or Seswatha within me.”
“So what should we—”
TELL
“Leave … Camp in the eastern hills overlooking the Battleplain. We can wait for the others there.”
Her expression darkened with other worries. “Are you sure, Akka?”
“We’ll be safe … We just need to be far for a while.”
With the accumulation of power, Achamian had once said, comes mystery. An old Nilnameshi proverb. When Kellhus had asked what the proverb meant, the Schoolman had said it referred to the paradox of power, that the more security one exacted from the world, the more insecure one became. At the time, Kellhus had thought the proverb yet another of Achamian’s vacant generalizations, one that exploited the world-born propensity to confuse obscurity with profundity. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Five days had passed since the battle. The last of the sun had boiled away among the western hills. The Great Names—including Conphas and Chepheramunni—had gathered with their retinues in an overgrown amphitheatre that had been excavated in ancient times from the side of a low hill. An enormous bonfire burned in its centre, transforming the stage into a hearth. The Great Names sat and conferred around the amphitheatre’s lowest tier, while their advisers and caste-noble countrymen bickered and jested on the tiers above. Their ceremonial dress, much of it looted, glinted and shimmered in the firelight. Their faces shone pale orange. Before them, bare-chested slaves marched from the darkness to the stage, where they cast furniture, clothing, scrolls, and other worthless items from the Kianene camp onto the bonfire. A strange, iron-blue smoke whipped skyward from the flames. Its smell was offensive—reminiscent of the manural unguents used by the Yatwerian priestesses—but there was nothing else to burn on the Battleplain.
At long last, the Holy War was entire. Earlier in the
afternoon, the Nansur and Ainoni hosts had filed across the plains and joined the vast encampment beneath the ruins of Mengedda—a once great city, Achamian had told Kellhus, destroyed during the early Age of Bronze. For the first time since faraway Momemn, a full Council of the Great and Lesser Names had been called. Even though his rank and notoriety had earned him a place among those sitting above the Great Names, Kellhus had elected to sit with the knights, men-at-arms, and followers massed on the heaped mounds of earth and rubble opposite the amphitheatre, where he could cultivate his reputation for humility and easily survey the expressions of all those he must conquer.
For the most part, their faces exhibited startling contrasts. Some bore marks—bandages, puckered wounds, and yellowing bruises—of the recent battle, while others bore no marks at all, particularly among the newly arrived Nansur and Ainoni. Some were flushed with celebratory cheer, for the back of the heathen had been broken. While others were ashen with horror and sleeplessness …
Victory on the Battleplain, it seemed, had carried its own uncanny toll.
Ever since setting their pallets and mats across the Plains of Mengedda, various men and women of the Holy War had complained of suffering brutal nightmares. Each night, they claimed, they found themselves in desperate straits on the Battleplain, striving against and falling before foes they’d never before seen: archaic Nansur, true desert Kianene, Ceneian infantrymen, ancient Shigeki chariots, bronze-armoured Kyraneans, stirrupless Scylvendi, Sranc, Bashrags, and even, some had insisted, Wracu—dragons.
When the encampment was moved clear of the carrion winds to the ruins of Mengedda, the nightmares had only intensified. Some began claiming they’d dreamed of the recent battle against the Kianene, that they were burned anew by the Cishaurim, or that they fell to the battle-maddened Thunyeri. It was as though the ground had hoarded the final moments of the doomed, and counted and recounted them each night on the ledger of the living. Many tried to stop sleeping altogether, especially after a Tydonni thane was found dead one morning in his pallet. Some, like Achamian, had actually fled.