The Thousandfold Thought Part 19

"But of course," he said, grinning. "The field was mine."

No one laughed.

Cnaiur leaned back, stared down into the palms of his great hands. "Leave us," he commanded. "Everyone."

At first no one moved-no one even breathed. Then Conphas cleared his throat. With an intrepid scowl he said, "Do it ... do as he says."

Sompas began to protest.

"Now!" the Exalt-General barked.

When they were gone, Cnaiur's eyes clicked onto the man's chiselled face. His own brow, even his nose, were ghosts on the fringes of his periphery...a reminder of what watched.

Cnaiur urs Skiotha ...

Conphas nodded as though he entirely understood. "I would have lost Kiyuth," he said, "had you been King-of-Tribes."

... most violent of all Men.

"That," Cnaiur said, "and more."

The man chuckled into his wine bowl. Arching his eyebrows, he said, "The Empire as well, I suppose."

Cnaiur studied him, suffused with a faint kind of wonder. The voice was the same, yet it seemed impossible that the boy before him could be the Imperial Exalt-General who had surveyed Kiyuth that morning so long ago. That man had been all-conquering. He had towered over the pastures, and the innumerable dead had all mouthed his name. The Great Ikurei Conphas.

And now here he was, the "Lion of Kiyuth." His neck as slender as any Cnaiur had broken.

The Exalt-General pushed back his plate, turned to him in a manner at once jocular and conspiratorial. "What is it that resides in the hearts of hated foes, hmm? Save the Anasurimbor, there's no man I despise more than you ..." He leaned back with a friendly shrug. "And yet I find this ... unlikely repose in your presence."

"Repose," Cnaiur snorted. "That is because the world is your trophy room. Your soul makes flattery of all things-even me. You make mirrors of all that you see."

The Exalt-General blinked, then cackled in laughter. "Let's not mince words, Scylvendi."

Cnaiur hammered his knife into the heavy table. Bowls, platters, and Conphas all jumped. "This," "This," he grated. "This! This is what the world is in truth!" he grated. "This! This is what the world is in truth!"

Conphas swallowed, somehow managed to maintain his facade of good humour. "And what might that be?"

The barbarian grinned. "Even now, it moves you."

Ikurei Conphas licked his lips. Fine features tightened about clenched teeth. Why did anger always look so bland on beautiful faces? "I can a.s.sure you," Conphas said evenly, "I fear no-"

Cnaiur struck, cuffed him so hard he toppled backward.

"You act as though you live this life a second time!" Cnaiur leapt into a crouch upon the table, sent plates and bowls spinning. Eyes as round as silver talents, Conphas scrambled backward through the cus.h.i.+ons. "As though you were a.s.sured of its outcome!"

Conphas had turned, was fighting his way clear of the depression. "Somp-Somp-!" Cnaiur vaulted across the table, hammered the back of his head. The Exalt-General went down. Cnaiur unfastened his belt, snapped it free. He yanked it about the sobbing man's neck, hoisted him to his knees. He wrenched him back to the table, threw him onto his chest. He smashed his face against its own reflection-once, twice ...

He looked up, saw the slaves cringing in the shadows, their arms upraised. One of them wept.

"I am a demon!" he cried. "A demon demon!"

Then he turned back to Conphas shuddering on the table beneath him.

Some things required literal explanation.

Sunrise. Light speared through the eastward columns, glazing them orange and rose. A faint breeze carried the scent of cedar and sand. It seemed he could hear all Joktha stir to the touch of morning.

Cnaiur swatted a wine bowl from the sheets. It clanged across tiles before being silenced by the carpets. He sat at the edge of the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose, then strode to the bronze washbasin set into the west wall. He stared at the geometric frescoes-ovals interlocking-while rinsing away the blood and soil smeared across his thighs. Then he walked naked onto his terrace, into the sunlight. Like a bead of oil dropped in water, Joktha spread outward as he approached the bal.u.s.trade, stark and silent in the early morning light. Sand-doves squabbled on the eaves. To the east, black against the silver-gold sea, a fleet of s.h.i.+ps lay anch.o.r.ed beyond the mouth of the harbour. Nansur Nansur s.h.i.+ps. s.h.i.+ps.

So, it would be today.

He dressed without his body-slaves, though he dispatched one with a summons for Troyatti. The Captain intercepted him on his way to the barracks' mess.

"Send men out to those transports," Cnaiur said. "We lower the harbour chain only when each and every one has been searched. Then I want you personally to gather Conphas and his Generals, bring them to the harbour-the Grand Quay. Take as many men as can be spared."

The taciturn Conriyan had listened dutifully, scratching the swazond across his right forearm as he did so. He crushed his beard to his chest with a nod.

"And Troyatti-no matter what happens, make sure you secure the Ikurei."

"Something worries you," the Captain said.

For a heartbeat Cnaiur found himself wondering whether they were friends, Troyatti and himself. Ever since riding with him in s.h.i.+gek, Troyatti and the others had called themselves the Hemscilvara, the Scylvendi's Men. He had taught them the ways of the People-they had seemed important then-and with the strange capacity of the young to wors.h.i.+p, they had followed, and had continued to follow even after Proyas had rea.s.signed them.

"This fleet ... it has arrived too soon-I think. There is a chance it was dispatched before before Conphas's expulsion." Conphas's expulsion."

Troyatti frowned. "Instead of retrieving Conphas, you think it brings him reinforcements?"

"Think of Kiyuth ... The Emperor only sent a fraction of the Imperial Army with Conphas. Why? To guard against my kinsmen, when they have been ruined? No. He saved his strength for a reason."

The Captain nodded, his eyes bright with sudden understanding.

"Secure Conphas, Troyatti. Spill as much blood as you have to."

After sending word to Sanumnis and Tirnemus, Cnaiur rode with several of the Hemscilvara to the so-called Grand Quay, which was essentially a stone and gravel berm built out into the water, set about with wooden docks like h.o.a.rdings upon curtain walls. Discarded oyster sh.e.l.ls cracked beneath his sandals as he strode out to its terminus. His men fanned out, press-ganging the Enathi squatters, fishermen mostly, who continually availed themselves of unused berths. Cnaiur's presence ensured the absence of incident. Drying nets were dragged away. Shanties were kicked down.

The air smelled of dank and rotting fish. Raising a hand against the sun, he watched a handful of boats row out toward the mouth of the harbour, drawing closer to the foremost Nansur carrack. They looked like overturned beetles, legs pitching water in time. Red-throated gulls drifted through the sky above, their screeches near and jarring. What had Tirnemus called them? Yes, gopas ...

He watched as more and more boats gained the fleet.

Sanumnis arrived shortly after in full battledress, accompanied by a Thunyeri chieftain named Skaiwarra, who had disembarked three days earlier with some 300-odd kinsmen-Men of the Tusk all. A combination of Eumarnan wine and diarrhea, Sanumnis explained, had delayed their departure. The chieftain was a stout, blond-braided man possessing the same pocked fierceness that characterized so many of his countrymen. He spoke no Sheyic whatsoever, but between his and Sanumnis's smattering of Tydonni, Cnaiur was able to bargain with him. It seemed Skaiwarra was a pirate of recent conversion, and as such had an abiding hatred of the Nansur and their pious fleets. He agreed to tarry yet one more day.

A messenger from Troyatti appeared during their exchange. Imyanax, Baxatas, and Areamanteras were even now being escorted to the harbour, the man said, but Conphas and Sompas were nowhere to be found. Apparently Conphas had been severely beaten the night before, and Sompas had taken him elsewhere in the city, searching for a physician.

Cnaiur matched Sanumnis's dark gaze. "Seal the gates," he said. "Man the walls ... If anything happens, the city is yours-as is the Warrior-Prophet's charge."

The Baron flinched from the intensity of his look, then nodded in resignation. Cnaiur turned back to the sunlight as he and Skaiwarra withdrew. The first of the boats was returning, rowing between the towers of the harbour's mouth, over the chain where it dipped in the water. The sun had climbed high enough for him to discern the crimson of the transport's sails, bundled against black-painted masts.

Tirnemus and his entourage arrived moments before Troyatti's men escorted the Nansur officers onto the berm. The man smelled of wine and fried pork. Cnaiur told him to muster his men along the docks. "If all is well," he said, "you will need to organize the embarkation."

"Is all well?" the Baron asked with open apprehension. They could all smell it now.

Cnaiur turned his back on the man, waved for his Hemscilvara to bring the captives to the end of the quay. Their arms were bound behind their backs, which meant they had resisted.

He glared at the Nansur Generals as they were prodded forward. "You had better pray these transports are empty ..."

"Dog!" old Baxatas spat. "What do you know of prayer?"

"More than your Exalt-General."

A moment of silence.

"We know what you did," Areamanteras said, not without some caution.

Scowling, Cnaiur approached the General, pausing only when he towered over him. "What did I do?" he asked, his voice strange. "There was blood when I awoke ... blood and s.h.i.+t."

Areamanteras fairly quailed in his shadow. He opened his mouth to answer, then tried to purse away trembling lips.

"f.u.c.king swine!" Baxatas cried to Cnaiur's immediate right. "Scylvendi pig!" Despite his fury, there was fear in his eyes as well.

The gopas dipped and screamed in the air above.

"Where is he?" Cnaiur asked. "Where is the Ikurei?"

None of the three said a word, and only Baxatas dared meet his gaze. At one point he seemed about to spit at him, but apparently thought better of it.

Cnaiur turned back to the nearest boat's approach. He looked down to the black water beyond the dock's edge, watched it slap about the pilings. He saw a branch reaching up from the murk, its forking tip waving just above the surface, like fingers ringed by foam.

The boatmen were shouting across the water. The transports were empty.

By mid-afternoon all the carracks and their escort of war galleys had been piloted into the harbour. Cnaiur kept the gates sealed, not willing to expose himself in any way until he had Conphas in his clutches. He had set Tirnemus and his men to join Troyatti in ransacking the city.

The Admiral of the Nansur fleet, a man called Tarempas, explained that the seasonal winds that so determined travel across the Three Seas had been unexpectedly favourable. He was far more worried about his return trip-or so he claimed. He was one of those restless, small-statured men who, given the way their eyes darted, seemed far more interested in their surroundings than their interlocutors. It was as though he continually sized everything up.

Some time afterward, the Columnaries in the main camp began rioting. They had caught word of the fleet's early arrival. When noon came without any official word, they organized a protest. Several times in the course of his travels across the city, Cnaiur had actually heard their commotion: raucous shouts followed by booming cheers. As much was to be expected from homesick men, he supposed, especially after nearly three weeks of internment.

Then word of their Exalt-General's disappearance leaked out.

With Sanumnis and Skaiwarra in tow, Cnaiur climbed the curtain walls overlooking the camp. Gaining the heights was like stepping from a calm grotto into the heart of battle, such was the clamour. A slum of hovels and tents extended from the wall's footings, filling a great swath of earth denuded by the milling of countless feet. The bare earth funnelled southward, drawn into a track running across abandoned fields to the Oras River, which wound blue and black behind hazy screens of trees. A vast mob had gathered along the westward regions of the camp, thousands of men in soiled red tunics, shaking fists at a thin line of Conriyan knights arrayed some hundred paces distant on the far side of a razed orchard. With the exception of their helms and masks, they looked for all the world like Kianene hors.e.m.e.n.

Sanumnis whistled in grim appreciation. "Should we cut them down?" he ventured.

"Your men would be swallowed whole. You would simply be arming them."

"Leave them, then?"

Cnaiur shrugged. "I see no siege towers ... Just keep them hemmed in, away from their officers. Give a mob a head and it becomes an army. If they start forming ranks-if they remember their discipline-summon me immediately."

The Baron nodded in what seemed grudging admiration.

Word arrived from Troyatti not long afterward. The Captain was in the city's crammed necropolis in the largely abandoned Kianene Quarter, where his men had apparently found some kind of tunnel. The certainty of it had coalesced long before Cnaiur found the man standing, s.h.i.+rtless, hands on hips, at the mouth of the half-ruined sepulchre.

Conphas was gone.

"It runs several hundred yards beyond the walls," the Conriyan said in grim explanation. "They had to excavate some to breach the surface ... Some." He grimaced as though to say, At least he got his hands dirty At least he got his hands dirty.

Cnaiur studied the man for a moment, pondered the absurdity of Inrithi scarring themselves in the manner of Scylvendi. It made him seem more a man somehow. He glanced across the necropolis, at the leaning obelisks, sagging ash-houses, and leering images-all Nansur or Ceneian. He felt none of the dread that had prevented the Fanim from reclaiming this ground. Shouts echoed from the nearby streets: the Hemscilvara calling to one another.

"Call off the search," Cnaiur said. He nodded to the entrance of the sepulchre. "Collapse it. Close the tunnel."

He turned to search the harbour, but the burnt-brick facade of a tenement obscured it. Conphas had orchestrated all this ... After so long with the Dunyain, he knew the smell of premeditation.

This would not be another Kiyuth.

Something ... something something ... ...

Without a further word to Troyatti, he galloped the short distance to the Donjon Palace. He strode through the ornate halls, shouting for the Scarlet Schoolman, Saurnemmi. He found the Initiate just as he stumbled from his chambers, eyes swollen from slumber.

"What Cants do you know?" he barked.

The insipid fool blinked in astonishment. "I-I-"

"Can you burn wood from a distance? s.h.i.+ps?"

"Yes-"

A lone Conriyan horn pealed from some hidden distance-the signal Sanumnis was to use to summon him. There was some kind of emergency along the walls.

"Get to the harbour!" Cnaiur snarled, already running. As he rounded the marble banister, he caught a final glimpse of Saurnemmi, standing awkward and dumbstruck, clutching the front of his silk nights.h.i.+rt.

He rode hard to the Tooth, where the horn seemed to issue. It rang out three more times, metallic and mournful. He shouldered his way through the knights milling in the open mall about the Tooth's inner gates. Shouting men waved to him from the barbican's summit.

"Quickly," Baron Sanumnis exclaimed as he crested the final stairs. "Come."

Leaning between the floriated battlements, Cnaiur saw that the Columnaries had abandoned their camp and were making their way north. He saw clots of them scattered across the distance, jumping irrigation ditches, filing through groves ...

"There," Sanumnis said, clutching his beard with one hand and pointing to the first broad bend in the River Oras with the other.

Peering between black-boughed sand willows, Cnaiur saw a band of armoured hors.e.m.e.n riding in loose formation. They bore a crimson banner with a Black Sun halved by a horse head ... Kidruhil.

"And there," Sanumnis said, this time pointing to the hills, past a series of green-mottled slopes. Though they marched in valley gloom, Cnaiur could see them clearly: ranks of infantrymen.