CHAPTER TWO
ANSERCA
Duty measures the distance between the animal and the divine.
—EKYANNUS I, 44 EPISTLES
The days and weeks before battle are a strange thing. All the
contingents, the Conriyans, the Galeoth, the Nansur, the Thunyeri,
the Tydonni, the Ainoni, and the Scarlet Spires, marched to the
fortress of Asgilioch, to the Southron Gates and the heathen frontier.
And though many bent their thoughts to Skauras, the heathen
Sapatishah who would contest us, he was still woven of the same
cloth as a thousand other abstract concerns. One could still confuse
war with everyday living …
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the province of Anserca
For the first few days of the march, everything had been confusion, especially at sunset, when the Inrithi scattered across field and hillside to make camp. Unable to find Xinemus and too tired to care, Achamian had even pitched his tent among strangers a couple of nights. As the Conriyan host grew accustomed to itself as a host, however, collective habit, combined with the gravity of fealty and familiarity, ensured that the camp took more or less the same shape every evening. Soon Achamian found himself sharing food and banter, not only with Xinemus and his senior officers, Iryssas, Dinchases, and Zenkappa, but with Kellhus, Serwë, and Cnaiür as well. Proyas visited them twice—difficult evenings for Achamian—but usually the Crown Prince would summon Xinemus, Kellhus, and Cnaiür to the Royal Pavilion, either for temple or for evening councils with the other great lords of the Conriyan contingent.
As a result, Achamian often found himself stranded with Iryssas, Dinchases, and Zenkappa. They made for awkward company, especially with a timid beauty such as Serwë in their midst. But Achamian soon began to appreciate these nights—particularly after spending his days marching with Kellhus. There would be the shyness of men meeting in the absence of their traditional brokers, then the rush of affable discourse, as though surprised and delighted they spoke the same language. It reminded him of the relief he and his childhood friends had felt whenever their older brothers had been called to the boats or the beaches. The fellowship of overshadowed souls was something Achamian could understand. Since leaving Momemn, it seemed the only moments of peace he found were with these men, even though they thought him damned.
One night, Xinemus took Kellhus and Serwë to join Proyas in celebration of Venicata, an Inrithi holy day. Iryssas and the others departed soon after to join their men, and for the first time Achamian found himself alone with the Scylvendi, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, the Last of the Utemot.
Even after several nights of sharing the same fire, the Scylvendi barbarian unnerved him. Sometimes, glimpsing him in his periphery, Achamian would involuntarily catch his breath. Like Kellhus, Cnaiür was a wraith from his dreams, a figure from a far more treacherous ground. Add to this his many-scarred arms and the Chorae he kept stuffed beneath his iron-plated girdle …
But there were so many questions he needed to ask. Regarding Kellhus, mostly, but also regarding the Sranc clans to the north of his tribal lands. He even wanted to ask the man about Serwë—the way she doted on Kellhus yet followed Cnaiür to sleep had been noticed by all. On those nights the three retired early, Achamian could see the gossip in the looks exchanged by Iryssas and the others—though they had yet to share their speculations. When he’d asked Kellhus about her, the man had simply shrugged and said, “She’s his prize.”
For a time, Achamian and Cnaiür simply did their best to ignore each other. Shouts and cries echoed through the darkness, and shadowy clots of revellers filed along the unbounded edges of their firelight. Some stared—gawked even—but for the most part left them alone.
After scowling at a boisterous party of Conriyan knights, Achamian finally turned to Cnaiür and said, “I guess we’re the heathens, eh, Scylvendi?”
An uncomfortable silence followed while Cnaiür continued gnawing at the bone he held. Achamian sipped his wine, thought of excuses he might use to withdraw to his tent. What did one say to a Scylvendi?
“So you teach him,” Cnaiür suddenly said, spitting gristle into the fire. His eyes glittered from the shadow of his heavy brow, studying the flames.
“Yes,” Achamian replied.
“Has he told you why?”
Achamian shrugged. “He seeks knowledge of the Three Seas … Why do you ask?”
But the Scylvendi was already standing, wiping greasy fingers against his breeches, then stretching his giant, sinuous frame. Without a word he strode off into the darkness, leaving Achamian baffled. Short of speaking, the man hadn’t acknowledged him in any way.
Achamian resolved to mention the incident to Kellhus when he returned, but he quickly forgot the matter. Against the greater scheme of his fears, bad manners and enigmatic questions were of little consequence.
Achamian typically pitched his humble wedge tent beneath the weathered slopes of Xinemus’s pavilion. Without exception, he would spend hours lying awake, his thoughts either choked by recriminations regarding Kellhus or smothered by the deranged enormity of his circumstances. And when these things passed into numbness, he would fret over Esmenet or worry about the Holy War. Too soon, it seemed, it would wander into Fanim lands—into battle.
The nightmares were becoming more unbearable. Scarcely a night passed where he didn’t awaken long before the cockcrow horns, thrashing at his blankets or clawing his face, crying out to ancient comrades. Few Mandate Schoolmen enjoyed anything resembling peaceful slumber. Esmenet had once joked that he slept “like an old hound chasing rabbits.”
“Try an old rabbit,” he’d replied, “fleeing hounds.”
But sleep—or the absolute, oblivious heart of it anyway—began to elude him altogether, until it seemed he simply shuffled from one clamour to another. He would crawl from his tent into the predawn darkness, hugging himself to still the tremors, and he would simply stand as the blackness resolved into a cold, colourless version of the vista he’d seen the previous evening, watching the sun’s golden rim surface in the east, like a coal burning through painted paper. And it would seem he stood upon the very lip of the world, that if it tipped by the slightest measure, he would be cast into an endless black.
So alone, he would think. He would imagine Esmenet sleeping in their room in Sumna, one slender leg kicked from the covers, banded by threads of light as the same sun boiled through the cracks of her shutters. And he would pray that she was safe—pray to the Gods who’d damned them both.
One sun keeps us warm. One sun lets us see. One …
Then he would think of Anasûrimbor Kellhus—thoughts of anticipation and dread.
One evening, while listening to others argue about the Fanim, Achamian suddenly realized there was no reason to suffer his fears alone: he could tell Xinemus.
Achamian glanced across the fire at his old friend, who was arguing battles that had yet to be fought.
“Certainly Cnaiür knows the heathen!” the Marshal was protesting. “I never said otherwise. But until he sees us on the field, until he sees the might of Conriya, neither I—nor our Prince, I suspect—will take his word as scripture!”
Could he tell him?
The morning after the madness beneath the Emperor’s palace had also been the morning the Holy War began its march. Everything had been confusion. Even still, Xinemus had made Achamian his priority, fairly interrogating him on the details of the previous night. Achamian had started with the truth, or a hollowed out version of it anyway, saying that the Emperor had required independent verification of certain claims made by his Imperial Saik. But what followed was pure fantasy—some story about finding the ciphers to an ensorcelled map. Achamian could no longer remember.
At the time, the lies had simply … happened. The events of that night and the revelations that followed had been too immediate and far too catas
trophic in their implications. Even now, two weeks later, Achamian felt overmatched by their dread significance. Back then, he could only flounder. Stories, on the other hand, were something he could make sense of, something he could speak.
But how could he explain this to Xinemus? To the one man who believed. Who trusted.
Achamian watched and waited, glancing from face to illuminated face. He’d purposely unrolled his mat on the smoky side of the fire, hoping for a measure of solitude while he ate. Now it seemed that providence had placed him here, affording him a furtive glimpse of the whole.
There was Xinemus, of course, seated knees out and back upright like a Zeumi warlord, the hard set of his mouth betrayed by the laughter in his eyes and the crumbs in his square-cut beard. To his left, his cousin, Iryssas, rocked to and fro upon the trunk of a felled tree, so much like a big-pawed puppy in his exuberance, bullying as much as the patience of the others would allow. Sitting to his left, Dinchases, or “Bloody Dinch,” held out his wine bowl for the slaves to refill, the X-shaped scar on his forehead inked black by the shadows. Zenkappa, as usual, sat by his side, his ebony skin shining in the firelight. For some reason, his manner and tone never ceased to remind Achamian of a mischievous wink. Kellhus sat cross-legged nearby, wearing a plain white tunic, and looking for all the world like a portrait plundered from some temple—at once meditative and attentive, remote and absorbed. Serwë leaned against him, her eyes shining beneath drowsy lids, a blanket pulled across her thighs. As always, the flawlessness of her face arrested, and the curves of her figure tugged. Close to her, but back farther from the fire, Cnaiür crouched in the shadows, gazing at the flames and tearing mouthful after mouthful of bread. Even eating he looked ready to break necks.
Such a strange tribe. His tribe.
Could they feel it? he wondered. Could they feel the end coming?
He had to share what he knew. If not with the Mandate, then with someone. He had to share or he would go mad. If only Esmi had come with … No. That way lay more pain.
He set down his bowl, stood, and before he realized it, found himself sitting next to his old friend, Krijates Xinemus, the Marshal of Attrempus.
“Zin …”
“What is it, Akka?”
“I must speak with you,” he said in a hushed voice. “There’s … there’s …”
Kellhus seemed distracted. Even still, Achamian couldn’t shake the sense of being observed.
“That night,” he continued, “that last night beneath Momemn’s walls. Do you remember Ikurei Conphas coming for me, escorting me to the Emperor’s palace?”
“How could I forget. I was worried sick!”
Achamian hesitated, glimpsed images of an old man—the Emperor’s Prime Counsel—convulsing against chains. Glimpses of a face unclutching like hands and flexing outward, reaching … A face that grasped, that seized.
Xinemus studied him by firelight, frowned. “What’s wrong, Akka?”
“I’m a Schoolman, Zin, bound by oath and duty the same as y—”
“Lord Cousin!” Iryssas called over the flame. “You must listen to this! Tell him, Kellhus!”
“Please, Cousin,” Xinemus replied sharply. “Can’t you—”
“Pfah. Just listen to him! We’re trying to understand what this means.”
Xinemus began scolding the man, but it was already too late. Kellhus was speaking.
“It’s just a parable,” the Prince of Atrithau said. “Something I learned while among the Scylvendi … It goes like this: A slender young bull and his harem of cows are shocked to discover that their owner has purchased another bull, far deeper of chest, far thicker of horn, and far more violent of temper. Even still, when the owner’s sons drive the mighty newcomer to pasture, the young bull lowers his horns, begins snorting and stamping. ‘No!’ his cows cry. ‘Please, don’t risk your life for us!’ ‘Risk my life?’ the young bull exclaims. ‘I’m just making sure he knows I’m a bull!’”
A heartbeat of silence, then an explosion of laughter.
“A Scylvendi parable?” Xinemus cried out, laughing. “Are you—”
“This is my opinion!” Iryssas called through the uproar. “My interpretation! Listen! It means that our dignity—no, our honour—is worth more than anything, more than even our wives!”
“It means nothing,” Xinemus said, wiping tears from his eyes. “It’s a joke, nothing more.”
“It is a parable of courage,” Cnaiür grated, and everyone fell silent—shocked, Achamian supposed, that the taciturn barbarian had actually spoken. The man spat into the fire. “It is a fable that old men tell boys in order to shame them, to teach them that gestures are meaningless, that only death is real.”
Looks were exchanged about the fire. Only Zenkappa dared laugh aloud.
Achamian leaned forward. “What do you say, Kellhus? What do you think it means?”
Kellhus shrugged, apparently surprised he held the answer so many had missed. He matched Achamian’s gaze with friendly, yet utterly implacable, eyes. “It means that young bulls sometimes make good cows …”
More gales of laughter, but Achamian could manage no more than a smile. Why was he so angry? “No,” he called out. “What do you think it really means?”
Kellhus paused, clasped Serwë’s right hand and looked from face to shining face. Achamian glanced at Serwë, only to look away. She was watching him—intently.
“It means,” Kellhus said in a solemn and strangely touching voice, “that there are many kinds of courage, and many degrees of honour.” He had a way of speaking that seemed to hush all else, even the surrounding Holy War. “It means that these things—courage, honour, even love—are problems, not absolutes. Questions.”
Iryssas shook his head vigorously. He was one of those dull-witted men who continually confused ardour with insight. Watching him argue with Kellhus had become something of a sport.
“Courage, honour, love—these are problems? Then what are the solutions? Cowardice and depravity?”
“Iryssas …” Xinemus said half-heartedly. “Cousin.”
“No,” Kellhus replied. “Cowardice and depravity are problems as well. As for the solutions? You, Iryssas—you’re a solution. In fact, we’re all solutions. Every life lived sketches a different answer, a different way …”
“So are all solutions equal?” Achamian blurted. The bitterness of his tone startled him.
“A philosopher’s question,” Kellhus replied, and his smile swept away all awkwardness. “No. Of course not. Some lives are better lived than others—there can be no doubt. Why do you think we sing the lays we do? Why do you think we revere our scriptures? Or ponder the life of the Latter Prophet?”
Examples, Achamian realized. Examples of lives that enlightened, that solved … He knew this but couldn’t bring himself to say it. He was, after all, a sorcerer, an example of a life that solved nothing. Without a word, he rolled to his feet and strode into the darkness, not caring what the others thought. Suddenly, he needed darkness, solitude …
Shelter from Kellhus.
He was kneeling to duck into his tent when he realized that Xinemus had yet to hear his confession, that he was still alone with what he knew.
Probably for the best.
Skin-spies in their midst. Kellhus the Harbinger of the world’s end. Xinemus would just think him mad.
A woman’s voice brought him up short. “I see the way you look at him.”
Him—Kellhus. Achamian glanced over his shoulder, saw Serwë’s willowy silhouette framed by the fire.
“And how’s that?” he asked. She was angry—her tone had betrayed that much. Was she jealous? During the day, while he and Kellhus wandered the column, she walked with Xinemus’s slaves.
“You needn’t fear,” she said.
Achamian swallowed at the sour taste in his mouth. Earlier, Xinemus had passed perrapta around instead of wine—wretched drink.
“Fear what?”
“Loving him.”
Acham
ian licked his lips, cursed his racing heart.
“You dislike me, don’t you?”
Even in the gloom of long shadows, she seemed too beautiful to be real, like something that had stepped between the cracks of the world—something wild and white-skinned. For the first time, Achamian realized how much he desired her.
“Only …” She hesitated, studied the flattened grasses at her feet. She raised her face and for the briefest of instants looked at him with Esmenet’s eyes. “Only because you refuse to see,” she murmured.
See what? Achamian wanted to cry.
But she’d fled.
“Akka?” Kellhus called in the fading dark. “I heard someone weeping.”
“It’s nothing,” Achamian croaked, his face still buried in his hands. At some point—he was no longer sure when—he’d crawled from his tent and huddled over the embers of their dying fire. Now dawn was coming.
“Is it the Dreams?”
Achamian rubbed his face, heaved cool air into his lungs.
Tell him!
“Y-yes … The Dreams. That’s it, the Dreams.”
He could feel the man stare down at him, but lacked the heart to look up. He flinched when Kellhus placed a hand on his shoulder, but didn’t pull away.
“But it isn’t the Dreams, is it, Akka? It’s something else … Something more.”
Hot tears parsed his cheeks, matted his beard. He said nothing.
“You haven’t slept this night … You haven’t slept in many nights, have you?”
Achamian looked over the surrounding encampment, across the canvas-congested slopes and fields. Against a sky like cold iron, the pennants hung dead from their poles.
Then he looked to Kellhus. “I see his blood in your face, and it fills me with both hope and horror.”
The Prince of Atrithau frowned. “So this is about me … I feared as much.”
Achamian swallowed, and without truly deciding to, threw the number-sticks. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s not so simple.”