“The Kianene,” Cnaiür continued, “remained on the crest … They taunted the survivors, I think, by desecrating Sodhoras’s corpse—someone was disembowelled. Then they tried to reduce your kinfolk with archery. Those Inrithi who fought them on the crest must have unnerved them, because they were taking no chances. Their arrows must have possessed little effect, even at that short range. At some point they began shooting their horses—something the Kianene are typically loath to do. This is something to remember … Once Sodhoras’s men were unhorsed, the Kianene simply rode them down.”
War. The hairs rose on the nape of his neck …
“They stripped the bodies,” he added, “then rode off to the southwest.”
Cnaiür wiped his palms across his thighs. The fools believed him—that much was plain from their stunned silence. Before this place had been a rebuke and a dread omen, but now … Mystery made things titanic. Knowledge made small.
“Sweet Sejenus!” Gaidekki suddenly exclaimed. “He reads the dead like scripture!”
Proyas frowned at the man. “No blasphemy … Please, Lord Palatine.” He scratched his trim beard, his gaze wandering yet again over the dead. He seemed to be nodding. He fixed Cnaiür with a canny look.
“How many?”
“Fanim?” The Scylvendi shrugged. “Sixty, maybe seventy, lightly armoured horsemen. No more.”
“And Saubon? Does this mean he’s encircled?”
Cnaiür matched his gaze. “When one wars on foot against horse, one is always encircled.”
“So the bastard may still live,” Proyas said, his breathlessness betrayed by a faint quaver in his voice. The Holy War could survive the loss of one nation, but three? Saubon had gambled more than his own life on this rash gambit—far more—which was why Proyas, over Conphas’s protestations, had ordered his people to march. Perhaps four nations could prevail where three could not.
“For all we know,” Xinemus said, “the Galeoth bastard may be right. He could be fanning across Gedea as we speak, chasing Skauras’s skirmishers to the sea.”
“No,” Cnaiür said. “His peril is great … Skauras has assembled in Gedea. He awaits you with all his might.”
“And how could you know that?” Gaidekki cried.
“Because the Fanim who killed your kinsman took a great risk.”
Proyas nodded, his eyes at once narrow and apprehensive. “They attacked a larger and more heavily armed force … Which means they were following orders—strict orders—to prevent any communication between isolated contingents.”
Cnaiür lowered his head in deference—not to the man, but to the truth. At long last, Nersei Proyas was beginning to understand. Skauras had been watching, studying the Holy War since long before it had left Momemn’s walls. He knew its weaknesses … Knowledge. It all came down to knowledge.
Moënghus had taught him that.
“War is intellect,” the Scylvendi chieftain said. “So long as you and your people insist on waging it with your hearts, you are doomed.”
“Akirea im Val!” a thousand Galeoth throats boomed. “Akirea im Val pa Valsa!” Glory to the God. Glory to the God of Gods.
Startled from his reverie, Coithus Saubon looked down over the great, haphazard column that was his army, searching for some sign of Kussalt, his groom, who’d ridden out to meet the scouts. He gnawed at his callused knuckles, as he always did when he was anxious. Please, he thought. Please …
But there was no sign.
Pulling helm and coif from his head, he ran his fingers through his short, autumn-blond hair, squeezing out the sweat that kept nagging his eyes. He sat astride his horse, alone on a promontory overlooking a small but fast-running river not marked on any of his crude maps. Thankfully, the river was fordable, though not without difficulty. It had already claimed four wains and one life, as well as several precious hours; the valley was growing more and more congested as men and supplies gathered behind the ford. On the far side, warriors and followers alike shook water from their limbs, then fanned out, some following the banks to refill waterskins or, Saubon noted darkly, even to fish. Others trudged onward, their faces bovine with weariness, their packs swinging from pikes and spears.
To the south, the towering ridges that had everywhere obscured his view folded into the river vale, revealing the hazy contours of what was to come. There, beyond the failing hills, he could see it: a broad plain, blue with distance, reaching as far as the horizon. The Plains of Mengedda. The great Battleplain of legend.
His chest tightened. He thought of his older cousin, Tharschilka, whose bones mouldered with those of Calmemunis and the Vulgar Holy War among those distant grasses. He thought of Prince Kellhus …
I own this land … It belongs to me! It must!
They’d marched for an entire week, through the passes of the Southron Gates, then along a ruined Ceneian road which had inexplicably ended in a ravine. Here he and Gothyelk—the stubborn old bastard!—had quarrelled to the point of fisticuffs over which way they should continue. The jewel of Gedea, if it could be called such, was the city of Hinnereth to the southeast on the Meneanor Coast. Saubon wanted the city for himself, certainly, but the Holy War needed it to secure their flank as they continued south. For the great Hoga Gothyelk, however, Gedea was something to be crossed, not conquered. The fool spoke as though the lands between the Holy War and Shimeh were nothing more than strides on a sprinter’s track. They’d bellowed at each other deep into the night, with Gotian trying time and again to find some common ground, and Skaiyelt nodding off in his corner, pretending now and then to listen to his interpreter. In the end, they resolved to go their separate ways. Gotian, who like all Nansur caste-nobles had a thorough military education, elected to continue on to Hinnereth—he was no fool, at least. No one knew what Skaiyelt intended until the following day, when he struck southward with Gothyelk and his Tydonni.
Good riddance, Saubon had thought.
At the time, he’d still believed that Skauras had yielded Gedea.
“March,” the Prince of Atrithau had said that night in the mountains. “The Whore will be kind to you. Just make certain the Shrial Knights are punished.”
Never in his life had Saubon obsessed so long over so few words. They’d seemed straightforward enough at the time. But like those eerie, ancient Nonmen statues that looked benevolent or malicious, divine or demonic, depending upon where one stood, their meaning transformed with every passing day. Had Prince Kellhus in fact confirmed his beliefs? The Gods had given their assurances, certainly, and like the misers they were, they’d named their terms. But they’d said nothing about Skauras yielding Gedea. If anything, they had suggested the opposite …
Battle. They suggested battle. How else was he to punish the Shrial Knights?
“Akirea im Val! Akirea im Val!”
Saubon glanced down for an instant, then resumed probing the southern horizon—the Battleplain. Flat, dark, and blue, it looked more an ocean than a great table of earth, like something that could swallow nations whole.
Skauras hadn’t relinquished Gedea. He could feel it, like lead in his belly and bones. This realization, coming as it did hard on the heels of his feud with Gothyelk, had filled Saubon with terror—so much so that he’d refused to countenance it at first. He possessed the assurances of the Gods—the Gods! What did it matter whether he marched with Gothyelk and his Tydonni or no? The Whore would be kind to him. Gedea would be his!
So he told himself.
Then from nowhere, an inner voice had whispered, Perhaps Prince Kellhus is a fraud …
Such was the madness of things—the perversity!—that one thought, one slight twitch of the soul, could overturn so much. Where before he need only collect the future like a tax farmer, now he threw number-sticks against the great black—for the lives of thousands, no less! Perhaps, for the entire Holy War.
One thought … So frail was the balance between soul and world.
Dread overcame him, threatened him with despair. At night, he
wept in the secrecy of his tent. Was this not always the way? Hadn’t the Gods always taunted, frustrated, and humiliated him? First the fact of his birth—to be the first soul in the body of the seventh son! Then his father, who’d punished him beyond all reason, beat him for possessing his fire, his cunning! Then the wars against the Nansurium a few years previous … Mere miles! So close he could see the smear of Momemn’s smoke on the horizon! Only to be afflicted by Ikurei Conphas—to be bested by a stripling!
And now this …
Why? Why cheat him? Hadn’t he given? Hadn’t he observed their petty statutes, slaked their obscene thirst for blood?
Then yesterday, both Athjeäri and Wanhail, whom Saubon had charged with scouting and securing the country in advance of the main body, had sighted large parties of heathen horsemen.
“Many-coloured, with thin, flowing coats,” Wanhail, the Earl of Kurigald, had said at evening council. Despite their similar age and stature, Wanhail always struck Saubon as one of those men flung far from their natural station by the happenstance of birth: a tavern clown in the trappings of a caste-noble. “Worse than the Ainoni, even … Like a troop of fucking dancers!”
There was a chorus of laughter.
“But fast,” Athjeäri had added, his gaze fixed upon the fire. “Very fast.” When he looked to the others, his expression was stern, his long-lashed eyes sober. “When we gave chase, they outstripped us with ease …” He paused so the assembled earls and thanes could digest the significance of this. “And their archery! I’ve never seen the like. Somehow they can draw and release while they ride—fire backward at their pursuers!”
The assembled warlords were unimpressed: Inrithi caste-nobles, Norsirai or Ketyai, thought archery base and unmanly. Regarding the sightings themselves, the preponderance of opinion was that they meant little. “Of course they shadow us!” Wanhail argued. “The only surprise is that we haven’t seen the bung-bangers before now.” Even Gotian agreed, though with somewhat more decorum. “If Skauras wished to contest Gedea,” he said, “then he would have defended the passes, no?” Only Athjeäri dissented. Afterward, he pulled Saubon aside and fairly hissed, “Something’s amiss, Uncle.”
Something was amiss, though Saubon had said nothing at the time. He’d learned long ago the virtue of suspending judgement in the company of his commanders—especially in situations where his authority was uncertain. Even though he could count on many men, mostly relatives or veterans of his previous campaigns, he was really only the titular head of the Galeoth contingent—a fact brought home by the number of caste-nobles who continually gambolled through the hills, hunting or hawking. The deference owed by earls to a lackland prince was largely ceremonial; his every command, it seemed, had to run a gauntlet of pride and whimsy.
So he pretended to deliberate, concealed the certainty that weighed so heavy against him. Concealed the truth.
They were alone, some forty or fifty thousand Galeoth and under nine thousand Shrial Knights, not to mention the uncounted thousands who followed, stranded in hostile country, wandering into the clutches of a ruthless, cunning, and determined foe. Gothyelk and his Tydonni were lost. Proyas and Conphas remained camped about Asgilioch. They were vastly outnumbered, if the estimates of Skauras’s strength provided by Conphas could be trusted—and Gotian insisted they could. They had no real discipline, no real leader. And they had no sorcerers. No Scarlet Spires.
But he said the Whore would be kind … He said!
Saubon puzzled at the chorus of voices that continued to reverberate from below. “Akirea im Val!” Usually a patchwork of shouts, chants, and hymns characterized the march. Something had incited them. Once again, Saubon peered through the dust and massed men, searching for some sign of his groom. It had to be Kussalt …
Please …
There! Riding with a small party of horsemen. Saubon released a deep, shuddering breath, watched them pass through a screen of cheering men-at-arms—Agmundrmen by the look of their teardrop shields—before climbing the gravel incline to join him. His relief quickly evaporated. They bore lances, he realized. Lances capped with severed heads.
“Akirea im Val pa Valsa!”
Saubon clenched a fist, beat it against a mail-covered thigh. With thumb and forefinger, he pinched a glimpse of Prince Kellhus from his eyes.
No one knows you …
Lances! They bore lances … A traditional token, used by Galeoth knights to warn their commanders of imminent battle.
“From Athjeäri?” he called out as Kussalt’s horse gained the crest.
The old groom scowled, as though to say, Who else? Everything about the man was dull: his mail, his ancient, dented battlecap, even the Red Lion on Blue of his surcoat, which marked him as a member of the House Coithus. Dull and dangerous. Kussalt cared nothing for his appearance, and this made him appear all the more formidable. There was much violence in that grizzled face. The only man Saubon had ever met with eyes as implacable as Kussalt’s had been Prince Kellhus.
“What does he say?” Saubon cried.
The old groom tossed the lance before reining to a halt. Saubon snatched it—almost too late. He found himself face to face with a severed head planted on its tip. Dark skin blanched and bloodless. The braids of its goatee swaying. A Kianene noble, possessing the leathery look of dead things left overlong in the sun. Even still, it seemed to gaze at him, slack and heavy-lidded, like a man about to spill his seed.
His foe.
“War and apples,” Kussalt said. “He said, ‘War and apples.’” “Apples” was common slang for decapitated heads among the Galeoth. In days of yore, a tutor had once told Saubon, the Galeoth had stewed and stuffed them, like the Thunyeri.
The others rumbled to the summit, hailing him. Gotian with his second, Sarcellus. Anfirig, the Earl of Gesindal, with his groom. Several thanes—representatives of different households. And four or five beardless adolescents ready to courier messages. With the exception of Kussalt and Gotian, everyone carried a look somewhere between desperation and exasperation.
The ensuing argument was as bitter as any Saubon had endured since parting ways with Gothyelk. Apparently Athjeäri and Wanhail had been fighting running battles since early morning. Athjeäri in particular, Kussalt said, was convinced that Skauras assembled nearby, most likely on the Plains of Mengedda. “He thinks the Sapatishah is trying to slow us with his pickets, keep us from reaching the Battleplain until he’s prepared.” But Gotian disagreed, insisting that Skauras had prepared long ago, that he was actually trying to bait them. “He knows your people are rash, that the promise of battle will bring them running.” When Anfirig and the others began protesting, the Grandmaster screeched, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” over and over until everyone, including Saubon, fell silent.
“He wants to engage you as soon as possible on favourable ground! As soon as possible!”
“So?” Anfirig asked contemptously. Whether directly or indirectly, Gotian was always lecturing them on the cunning and ferocity of the Fanim. As a result, many of the Galeoth thought he feared the heathen—thought he was craven—when what he truly feared, Saubon knew, was the reckless humour of his Norsirai allies.
“So, perhaps he knows something we don’t! Something that necessitates closing with us quickly!”
The words struck Saubon breathless. “If Gedea is a broken country,” he said numbly, “then the Battleplain would be the quickest means of crossing it …” He glanced at Gotian, who nodded cautiously.
“What does—” Anfirig started.
“Think!” Saubon exclaimed. “Think, Anfi, think! Gothyelk! If Gothyelk wishes to cross Gedea as quickly as possible, what path would he take?”
The Earl of Gesindal was no fool, but then neither was he a prodigy. He lowered his greying, leonine head in concentration, then said, “You’re saying he’s close, that the Tydonni and Thunyeri have been marching parallel to us this entire time, making for the Battleplain, as we do …” When he looked up, his eyes were bright wit
h grudging admiration. As a close mead-friend of his oldest brother, Anfirig, Saubon knew, had always looked on him as the boy he’d so roundly teased in his youth.
“You’re saying the Sapatishah is trying to prevent us from joining Gothyelk!”
“Exactly,” Saubon replied. He glanced at Gotian once again, realized the Grandmaster had given him this insight. He wants me to lead. Trusts me.
But then the man didn’t know him. No one did. No one—
What are these thoughts!
Save the Ainoni, the Tydonni comprised the largest contingent of the Holy War—some seventy thousand hard-bitten men. Add to that Skaiyelt’s murderous twenty thousand, and they possessed nearly all the might of the Middle-North. The greatest Norsirai host since the fall of the Ancient North!
Ah, Skauras, my heathen friend …
Suddenly the severed head upon the lance no longer seemed a rebuke, a totem of their doom; it seemed a sign, the smoke that promised cleansing fire. With unaccountable certainty, Saubon realized that Skauras was afraid …
As well he should be.
His misapprehensions fell away, and the old exhilaration coursed like liquor through his veins, a sensation he had always attributed to Gilgaöl, One-Eyed War.
The Whore will be kind to you.
Saubon tossed the lance and its grisly trophy back to Kussalt, then began barking orders, dispatching multiple messengers to inform Athjeäri and Wanhail of the situation, charging Anfirig with the attempt to locate Gothyelk, bidding Gotian to send his knights throughout the column, urging restraint and discipline.
“Until we rejoin Gothyelk, we remain in the hills,” he declared. “If Skauras wishes to close with us, either let him fight on foot or break a thousand necks!”
Then suddenly, he found himself alone with Kussalt, his ears buzzing, his face flushed.
It was happening, he realized. It was beginning. After years and months, the womanish war of words was finally over, and the real war was beginning. The others, like Proyas, had yearned to untangle the “holy” in “Holy War” from the Emperor’s knots. Not Saubon. It was the “war” he was most interested in. This was what he told himself, anyway.