The blond child paused to regard him, smeared blood across his cheek for wiping his nose.
“An-Anas—!” Migagurit sputtered through blood. “Anasûrimbor!”
He could feel the fall pulling at him. He knew that blood drained about his head and shoulders, glazing the nub of the boulder … greasing his way …
The boy leapt upon his chest, where he crouched like a monkey, peering into his eyes. The plummet pulled upon the tonguewalker’s bulk, threatened to peel him from his every point of earthly contact.
“Where do Scylvendi go?” the boy asked with insouciant curiosity. The Nail of Heaven conjured a silver nimbus about his head.
Migagurit croaked and blubbered. With belief, came terror.
The boy nodded. “Somewhere scary …” he said musing.
“Like everyone else, then.”
The man tried to cry out, but the boy had crushed all breath remaining. The fall continued clawing at him.
“Leave him,” a feminine voice called from somewhere above.
A rib popped in the meat of him, so violently did the boy leap in reaction.
Outrageous agony, but mealy with the promise of respite. Migagurit somehow drew his head up from his paralytic misery. He saw the boy, knife brandished, his stance wide and wary, standing before a figure garbed all in black. A once-beautiful woman growing long in her years …
The Empress?
The drop clutched at him, fumbled for some purchase …
“You’re not my mother,” the boy declared.
A cross smile.
“I can be whatever you need me to be.”
The woman reached out her hand … a man’s hand.
The plummet firmed its grip, then yanked the Son of hard-hearted Shanyorta over the edge.
The Men of the Ordeal traded tales and rumours, as all soldiers are prone. Fire was forbidden everyone save the Great, so they congregated in the pallid illumination of the Nail, each absorbed in some point of maintenance as they spoke—be it sharpening an edge, binding a seam, or rubbing some tarnished sheen. They sat in intimate proximity, their voices hushed out of some nameless reverence for the moment. And as was so often the case, the fact of telling proved far more significant than the facts told. The wits sought only to contribute, never to disrupt. Those who stammered found their voices unstopped, bold and clear. Those who loathed communal scrutiny found themselves speaking feckless, their hearts bare. And even when a man faltered, he received only encouragement, the wry hectoring of elder brothers, a hand upon the shoulder, or the scalp, mussing hair. For in the many trials of their affliction, they discovered abundance, and so destitute, denied everything but the least hope of redemption, they found occasion to give.
Ordealmen of all nations spoke of their wives and their children at some point. Reminiscence stole across the camp in stages, the reverence of Men recalling sunlit mornings, their eyes lost in recollection, hearing the trill of feminine voices, glimpsing faces floating bright and joyous about all that was needed. They laughed at the excesses of the wee ones, the temper and tenderness of their wives. Gales of lustrous laughter blew through the sagging dark, sparking here and there across the encampment. Men held out their hands to empty space, recalling the heft and wriggle of young sons, or the trembling compliance of lovers. They confessed a longing that made many listeners weep. They made heart-cracking resolutions, swore public oaths of damnation.
And so, one by one, did they commit their eternal souls to the morrow—to the destruction of foul Golgotterath.
They pondered the nocturnal burnish on the rim of the Horns, the void recapitulated in mountainous reflection. They groused about their night terrors, for Shigogli troubled the sleep of all.
Not one soul dared mention their hunger.
And so it was they regained their fellowship that night, the memory that was camaraderie, a forgiving look, a teasing grin. They had become far more than mere companions in strife and carnage. Sin had conjoined them in a manner more profound than faith: they need only commute the judgment they had passed upon themselves to recover one another.
To become brothers once again.
They were sinners … responsible for horrid, degenerate acts, obscenities they could scarce credit, let alone fathom. Guilt had become their yoke, shame their lash. Crime had become their communion, sin and damnation. And like all Men wrecked by criminal burdens, they had seized upon the way offered, the track that would redeem, not their souls, but all they had taken. They would make a gift of their courage, their lives, their fury—they would render their final heartbeat, yield their ultimate breath. They would give, not for the sake of some arcane exchange, but for the sake of giving …
For the love of their brothers.
And if this impulse was mad, they did not see it. Nor did they ponder the deranged condition that had brought it to fruition. To dwell in brotherhood was to set aside all questions, all yearnings trivial and profane. To dwell in brotherhood was to stand for a time outside the cares of time—to discover the Eternal, not in the heroism of faith, but in the sleep of trust.
They passed flasks of precious water. Mere breathing had become the breaking of bread. They sang hymns together, botched jokes and recited prayers. The encampment sprawled on and on beneath the stars, the debris of Men spilling from the pubis of the Occlusion out across the sunken abdomen of Shigogli. Golgotterath’s bastions hunched in the crisp shadow of the Horns, bereft of light or any sign whatsoever. They turned their backs on this monochrome World, spurning it as a task for the morrow, and they remained intent upon one another, upon the light of the generosity they had kindled in lieu of any campfire. And each had occasion to reflect on the souls about them, to gaze upon their comrades and see a beauty that eclipsed their own, souls at once precarious and invincible. Each had the opportunity to say, This man … I throw my sticks for him. And it moved them to wonder. For brotherhood was not the discovery of oneself in the breast of another, but of someone better.
Night waxed. They embraced, and those who were canny murmured gentle assurances, realizing the mad ferocity to come. Some were bellicose, others grandiose, but all were forgiven their excesses—their gorgeous humanity. The Men of the Ordeal discovered a different kind of awe, communing in the shadow of Golgotterath, one that did not so much humble as make whole. They filed to their shelters through murk, warmed against the chill. They slipped into troubled slumber, knowing that for one night in their fearsome journey, at least, they had been blessed.
Galeoth thanes, Shigeki surgeons, Ainoni warrior slaves, Nansur columnaries, Khirgwi marauders … it did not matter. For a span of watches, they knew Grace …
And in the shadow of Apocalypse, that was gift enough.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Golgotterath
We, the sons of past sorrow,
We, the heirs of ancient trow,
We shall raise glory to the morrow,
And deliver fury to the now …
—“Hymn of the Pyre-King,” Shimeh Songs
Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Golgotterath.
A chevron of geese drawn long and ragged fled across the bluing skies.
Daybreak. The sun blackened the scarped bulwarks of the Occlusion, burnished the gleaming enormity of the Horns. Gold lanced down the cracked heights, graced the encampment with the memory of its many-coloured splendour …
The highest of the high-hoisted Circumfixes flashed white.
The Interval tolled for the final time, a bright-humming resonance that hovered in the stationary air. The mazed thoroughfares of the encampment remained vacant for its duration. Spears and lances leaned in the sand. Lords and officers could be heard bawling out lonely commands from unseen quarters, but nothing more. Then the Men of the Ordeal issued forth, sluiced in their myriads into the tangled ways and byways. Silence became booming intercourse. Absence became teeming industry.
The Witches and Schoolmen formed up within the grounds of
their respective enclaves, organized themselves into triunes. Given the colours of their billows, they seemed flowers to the pickets stationed across the heights of the Occlusion. Even the most aged and decrepit shimmered with vital glory. The mundane soldiery secured what sustenance they could, then joined the mass exodus to the encampment’s perimeter, where their kin and countrymen assembled beneath the stern regard of their commanders. The near distances bristled for the transport of arms, dazzled for the play of sunlight across polished miscellany. Everywhere, pockets of Men knelt in communal prayer. Hymns floated and filtered throughout the bustling tracts, songs of memory and distraction, praise and outrage. What Judges survived assisted the priests with Whelmings.
Despite all the grievous insults and injuries the Whore had meted, the Great Ordeal remained a martial wonder. Scarcely one-third of those who had embarked from Sakarpus had survived. A full quarter of their number had been lost at Irsûlor. Another quarter had perished at Dagliash, if not in the Scalding, then in its nightmarish consequence. The vagaries of disease, murder, and attrition had consumed the rest. And yet, fairly one hundred thousand souls assembled across the blasted tracts of Shigogli, half again as many Men as Anasûrimbor Celmomas had mustered in Far Antiquity, and at least three times the number of Cu’jara Cinmoi’s Ishroi.
The Host of Hosts formed up across the smoking leagues. For the sentinels across the Akeokinoi, it seemed time itself had been inverted, watching miraculous order congeal from the streams and clouds of Southron Men. Phalanx upon shining phalanx assembled across the waste, the flanks bowed about the sepulchral presence of Golgotterath in the distance. Signs and devices drawn from across the Three Seas adorned the formations. A thousand variants of the Circumfix hung slack in the morning chill.
The Host’s ponies had either been eaten, or lingered beyond the Occlusion starving, too weak to bear a child let alone an armoured knight. Only the Lords of the Ordeal remained mounted. Decked in those warlike accoutrements they had been able to salvage, they paced their formations, inspected and harangued their charges. Answering shouts boomed out over the desolation.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor had divided the Ordeal into three Trials, as he called them, each charged with its own violent objective. The Men of the Middle-North under King Coithus Narnol formed the centre, charged with assaulting Gwergiruh, the cyclopean gatehouse guarding the famed Ûbil Maw—the Black Mouth of Golgotterath. The Sons of Shir under the cruel King Nurbanû Soter formed the right flank, charged with taking the Tower of Corrunc north of Ûbil. And the Sons of Kyraneas under Prince Inrilil ab Cinganjehoi formed the left flank, charged with taking Domathuz, Corrunc’s monstrous sister to the south of the Gate.
The great shadow of the Occlusion shrunk from the gold-fanged parapets, and began its slow retreat to the lee of the scarps, not so much dark as ochre and saffron for the foul brilliance of the Horns. The clamour of assembly gradually faded into the hiss of the morning sun. Soon only the shouts of a few unruly souls could be heard. The Holy Aspect-Emperor himself could not be seen, but his banner stood high and visible to all at their fore, a black Circumfix once intact, but now an empty circle, having lost the image of their divine Prophet to the rigours of the sky. The gazes of all returned to it, and the hearts of all were comforted, for it was scourged as they were scourged, all their differences worn into a singular principle, one aptly signified by the perfection of the threadbare circle.
A lull settled across the Holy Host of Hosts. In one booming, gaseous voice, the Men of the Ordeal recited the Temple Prayer.
Sweet God of Gods, who dwell among us,
Hallowed by thy Many Names …
The chorus rumbled out across Shigogli, and the Men heard what their ancient forebears had once heard—as the Nonmen had heard before them: the way the Horns reflected shredded echoes, and so mocked all collective declaration. The voices of some faltered for puzzlement, but those who were strong continued, and by example incited their brothers to declaim even louder.
May your bread,
Silence our daily hunger.
Judge us not according to our trespasses,
But according to our temptations …
It was a prayer they had learned before they were born, words so well worn as to become invisible, and therefore immovable, stamped into them before they were themselves. So they were rooted as to the infinite as they recited it, and for all its vertiginous immensity the Ark seemed naught but a mummer’s conceit, a trick of perspective and foil.
Trumpets peeled across the desolation, fading into the onerous, oceanic groan of the ghus. As one, the armed and armoured fields began advancing, dark and brilliant against the powder of the Shigogli. The very floor of the World seemed to move, such was its extent. For those still breathing on the ruined circuit of the Akeokinoi, the Men seemed to dissolve into the obscurity of their own dust. The Great Ordeal became a host of shadowy apparitions, an assembly of wraiths, with only the rare wink of reflected sunlight to attest to their frail reality …
Thus did the Believer-Kings of the Three Seas advance westward, toward the pale, water-colour curtain of the Yimaleti Mountains beyond the Occlusion—and the grim and golden spectre of Golgotterath beneath.
So did the End of the World begin.
Im’vilaral, the Nonmen of Viri had called them so very many indignities ago, the “Horizon-that-has-teeth.” The High Norsirai purloined this name the way they had so many others, beat it until it became a thing of comfort on their tongues—if not their hearts. So Im’vilaral became “Yimaleti,” the name for the range of mountains that barricaded, for sheer immensity, the north against mortal reckoning.
To own a thing was to know it. All the World’s unplumbed pockets made the hearts of Men anxious, but few could claim to command the terror belonging to the Yimaleti Mountains, for they became, far more than Golgotterath, the true womb of the Sranc. The Nonmen had sought to cleanse them in the gouged aftermath of the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars. For years it was the lot of the most heroic Quya and Ishroi to climb into the scarps and hunt the miscreant progeny of their foe. But as years past and names vanished what had once been deemed a courageous undertaking came to seem reckless. And as so often happens, bravery found itself broken upon the boney knee of futility, and the strategy was abandoned.
The High Norsirai would seek to clear the monstrosities from the shoulders of the Yimaleti in their turn. For a time, no mercenaries in the World were so feared or so prized as the famed Emiorali, or the “Bronzemen,” so-called for their great gowns of bronze armour. Their Aorsi cousins from the plains, however, had another epithet, Kauwûttarim, or “Broken Strong”—a name originally given to those driven mad by battle. As quick as they were to invoke them as brothers in outland company, they eschewed the Emiorali otherwise, remained aloof in the brittle manner of weaker, yet far more numerous Men. Though the Bronzemen were notorious for stingy dealings, taciturn manner, and melancholic fury, the truth was that their kin begrudged their fame and feared their strength. “What is to stop them?” the suspicious asked about the failing way-hearths, when the faces of all grow crimson and the soul turns to things bloody and dark. “Men such as these … Why live the hard life? Why feed their sons to the scarps and gorges, when they need only pluck what is ours?” Thus did they render inevitable what they feigned to prevent, such is the madness of Men.
In the Codicil Councils of Shiarau, the wisest among the Aorsi had assumed that the Sranc population would eventually collapse, so great was the toll the Emiorali had exacted defending their Hooded Redoubts. Perhaps the creatures did dwindle for a time, but the fealty of the Emiorali to Shiarau dwindled quicker. The Bronzemen eventually grew impatient, even disgusted, with the fat ways and absurd condescension of their southern cousins. They became the stock of sedition, a people known for rampaging bandits and usurping generals. In 1808 Year-of-the-Tusk, High-King Anasûrimbor Nanor-Ukkerja VI finally decided the Sranc and Bashrag were the lesser evil: all ninety-nine of the Hooded Redoubts were abandoned, and the
Yimaleti were ceded entirely to the Foe.
None knew why these mountains proved such fertile breeding grounds. They stood twice the height of the subdued Demua, as monstrous, as wricked and ragged as the Great Kayarsus itself, and pitted with numerous, largely barren vales. The most ancient Nonmen records spoke of an infinite wasteland of ice and snow beyond the Yimaleti; a continuation of what Men called the Vastwhite to the east. The Bashrag hunted game, but the Sranc sucked their meat from the very earth, and could not sustain themselves on land too long frozen. The Vastwhite was proof enough of this. Some Far Antique scholars claimed the secret lay with the western Ocean, citing mariners who had explored the seaward sockets of the western Yimaleti, daring souls who described innumerable, deep-barrelled fjords warmed by the Ocean and so overrun with Sranc that the very landscape itself shivered as with maggots. Pitarwum, they called them, Beast-cradles.
One of these scholars, a King-Temple Historian known to posterity only as Wraelinu, proposed that these Pitarwum anchored cycles of exploding population, which in turn drove endless migratory invasions across the northern back of the Yimaleti. This was why, he claimed, the Sranc in the eastern extremes of the range were invariably so much more emaciated than those spied in the west. And this was why the Yimaleti Sranc differed from their southern kin, shorter of stature, slower across open ground, but more powerful of limb, more ferocious than vicious; the Pitarwum, he argued, bred them the way herdsmen bred cattle. There they remained until exhaustion drove them forth into the mountains, which belonged, in sooth, to the Bashrag. It was this cycle that had proven so ruinous …