The Thousandfold Thought Part 20

"You've doomed us," Sanumnis said in his periphery. His tone was strange. There was no accusation in his voice. Something worse.

Cnaiur turned to the man, saw immediately that Sanumnis understood their straits all too well. He knew that the Imperial transports had set ash.o.r.e in one of the natural harbours to the north of the city, and there disembarked who knew how many thousands-an entire army, no doubt. And he knew, moreover, that Conphas could not afford to let even one of them escape alive.

"You were supposed to kill him," Sanumnis said. "You were supposed to kill Conphas."

Weeper! f.a.ggot weeper!

Cnaiur frowned. "I am not an a.s.sa.s.sin," he said.

Unaccountably, the Baron's eyes softened. Something almost ... kindred pa.s.sed between them.

"No," the man said, "I suppose you're not."

Weeper!

As though prompted by some kind of premonition, Cnaiur turned and stared down the Pull, the broad thoroughfare that opened onto the Tooth, all the way to the harbour. Over the welter of rooftops he could see the farthest of the black clapboard transports. The nearer ones were only masts.

A flash of light, glimpsed through a slot between walls. Cnaiur blinked. The thunderclap followed moments after. All those lining the parapet turned in astonishment.

More lights, glimpsed over obscuring buildings. Sanumnis cursed in Conriyan.

Schoolmen. Conphas had hidden Schoolmen on his transports. Imperial Saik. Cnaiur's thoughts raced. He turned back to the formations advancing through the valley. Glanced at the setting sun. More cracks rumbled across the sky. "Chorae bowmen," he said to the Baron. "You have, what, four Chorae bowmen?"

"The Diremti brothers and two besides. But they would be dead men ... The Imperial Saik! Sweet Sejenus!"

Cnaiur grasped both his shoulders. "This treachery," he said. "The Ikurei must kill all who might testify against him. You know this."

Sanumnis nodded, expressionless.

Cnaiur released his grip. "Tell your Trinketmen to situate themselves in the buildings surrounding the harbour-to hide. Tell them they need kill only one-one of them-to pen the Saik in the harbour. With no infantry to prise their way, they'll be loath to advance. Sorcerers are fond of their skins."

The man's eyes brightened in understanding. Cnaiur knew that Conphas had likely commanded the Schoolmen in the harbour to remain on their s.h.i.+ps, that their primary purpose was to render escape impossible. The Exalt-General was not so foolish as to risk his most powerful and delicate tools. No, Conphas meant meant to come through the Tooth. But there was no harm in letting Sanumnis and his men think they had forced this on him. to come through the Tooth. But there was no harm in letting Sanumnis and his men think they had forced this on him.

A brilliant flash deflected their attention to the harbour. No doubt Tirnemus and his men-those who yet survived-were fleeing into the city.

"It will be dark," Cnaiur shouted over the resulting thunder. "It will be dark before the Nansur can organize an a.s.sault on the Tooth. Aside from spotters, we must abandon the walls. We must withdraw into the city."

Sanumnis frowned.

"The Saik can do nothing so long as we stand in the midst of their countrymen," Cnaiur explained. "That is cause to hope ..."

"Hope?"

"We must bleed him bleed him! We are not the only Men of the Tusk."

The Baron suddenly bared clenched teeth-and Cnaiur saw it, the spark he had needed to strike. He glanced down the length of the parapet at the dozens of anxious faces that stared back at him. Others, mostly Thunyeri, watched from the Tooth's cobbled mall below. He looked to the harbour, saw curtains of smoke rolling orange and black in the setting sun.

He strode to the wall's inner brink, held out his arms in grand address. "Listen to me. I will not lie to you. The Nansur can afford no quarter, because they can afford no Truth! We all die this night!"

He let these words ring into silence.

"I know nothing of your Afterlife. I know nothing of your G.o.ds or their greed for glory. But I do know this: In days to come, widows shall curse me as they weep! Fields shall go to seed! Sons and daughters shall be sold into slavery! Fathers shall die desolate, knowing their line is extinct! This night, I shall carve my mark into the Nansurium, and thousands shall cry out for want of my thousands shall cry out for want of my mercy!" mercy!"

And the spark became flame.

"Scylvendi!" they roared. "Scylvendi!"

The mall behind the Tooth had been a market of some kind before the coming of the Holy War. An expanse of some twenty lengths extended from the base of the barbican to the mouth of the Pull. An ancient tenement of Ceneian construction fronted the Pull's north side, its base riddled with derelict shops and stalls. Cnaiur had concealed himself opposite, in one of the smaller buildings that ran along the south. If he peered, he could make out the glint of arms belonging to the shadowy myriad crowded within the tenement. A small window in the western wall afforded him a view across the gravel and dust of the mall, but since the moon rose to the west, the inner wall and barbican were little more than monoliths of impenetrable black.

Behind him, Troyatti whispered to the Hemscilvara, detailing the weaknesses in Nansur armour and tactics that Cnaiur had described to him, Sanumnis, Tirnemus, and Skaiwarra earlier. Outside, the shouts of Nansur officers echoed through the clear night air: Conphas making final preparations.

As Cnaiur had expected, the Saik had refused to leave their transports, which meant they owned the harbour and nothing else. While keeping a close eye on the arriving Columns-so far the Faratas, the Horial, and the famed Mossas had a.s.sembled-Cnaiur had dispersed teams of men throughout the buildings surrounding the Tooth, armed with what sledges and pickaxes they could muster. In a few short hours they had managed to knock out hundreds of walls, transforming, in effect, a broad tract of the western city into a labyrinth. Then, fumbling their way through the dark, they had taken up positions-and waited.

This was not, Cnaiur realized, what the Dunyain would do.

Either Kellhus would find a way-some elaborate or insidious track-that led to the domination of these circ.u.mstances, or he would flee. Was that not what had happened at Caraskand? Had he not walked a path of miracles to prevail? Not only had he united the warring factions within within the Holy War, he had given them the means to war without. the Holy War, he had given them the means to war without.

No such path existed here-at least none that Cnaiur could fathom.

So why not flee? Why cast his lot with doomed men? For honour? There was no such thing. For friends.h.i.+p? He was the enemy of all. Certainly there were truces, the coming together of coincidental interests, but nothing else, nothing meaningful meaningful.

Kellhus had taught him that.

He cackled aloud when the revelation struck, and for a moment the world itself wobbled. A sense of power power suffused him, so intense it seemed something suffused him, so intense it seemed something other other might snap from his frame, that throwing out his arms he could shear Joktha's walls from their foundations, cast them to the horizon. might snap from his frame, that throwing out his arms he could shear Joktha's walls from their foundations, cast them to the horizon. No reason No reason bound him. Nothing. No scruple, no instinct, no habit, no calculation, no bound him. Nothing. No scruple, no instinct, no habit, no calculation, no hate hate ... He stood beyond origin or outcome. He stood ... He stood beyond origin or outcome. He stood nowhere nowhere.

"The men wonder," Troyatti said cautiously, "what amuses you, Lord."

Cnaiur grinned. "That I once cared for my life."

Even as he said this, he heard something, a surreal muttering like the susurrus of insects through the riddled world around them. Words coiled through the sounds, the way flames glowered through smoke, and it bent the soul somehow simply hearing them, as though meaning had become contortion ...

Brilliance. A concatenation of fires boiled over the parapets. Suddenly the barbican seemed a s.h.i.+eld held against a blinding light. One of the spotters toppled, thras.h.i.+ng flames all the way to the ground.

They were coming.

Within the barbican, lines of brilliance sketched the seams about the iron-banded doors. A thread of gold flared down their centre, and in a blink both were blown outward against the portcullis. Iron screeched. Stone cracked. Another burst. Like sound from a horn, light blasted from the underpa.s.s. The portcullis sailed into the old Ceneian tenement. A wave of smoke rolled outward and upward, across buildings and down the Pull.

Cnaiur blinked spots from his eyes. Everything had gone dark. His warriors coughed, beat the air with their hands. They fell still when they heard the growing roar ... Shouting men. Thousands of them.

Cnaiur motioned for everyone to shrink back into the blackness.

It seemed to drone on for an extraordinary length of time, but the roar lost none of its ardour, and ever so gradually it became louder-and louder ... Columnaries, spears out, square-s.h.i.+elds tight, materialized from the black maw of the barbican. They ran screaming, rank after rank of them, setting up s.h.i.+eld-walls to either flank, hacking at the doors to the barbican and rus.h.i.+ng forward down the Pull. Cnaiur knew how they had been trained: strike hard and deep, cut upon your enemy's flank, sever him from his kinsmen. "The wise spear," their officers bawled, "finds the back!"

The heartbeats that followed were absurd. Like gleaming shadows, Nansur after Nansur flashed past the opening of their abandoned stall. Hundreds rushed down the Pull, their helms glossed in moonlight, their pale calves dancing in the gloom. Then a horn-the first-sounded in the blackness. Across the way, Cnaiur saw wild-haired Thunyeri dropping from the tenement's second-storey windows, hooting their unnerving war cry.

The ring of steel. The clap of s.h.i.+elds. Then all became roaring clamour.

Almost as one, the Nansur stopped and turned. Some even jumped to better glimpse the axes pitching to their left. A few canny souls turned apprehensively to black windows and entrances about them.

Then the second horn sounded, and Cnaiur leapt, screaming the war cry of his fathers. They crashed into the backs of the stunned infantrymen. He caught the first man in the jaw as he turned, the second in the armpit as he struggled to free his spear. Within seconds, hundreds had died. Then suddenly the Conriyans on the south found themselves facing the Thunyeri on the north.

A ragged cheer was raised, which Cnaiur silenced with his raving voice. "Off the streets! Off Off the streets!" the streets!"

The unholy muttering had started anew.

The battle that followed was unlike any Cnaiur had experienced. The pitch of night struck in the hues of sorcerous light. Catching unawares and being so caught. Hunted and hunting through a labyrinthine slum, then warring in open streets, hilt to hilt, spitting blood from one's teeth. In the dark, his life hung from a thread, and time and again only his strength and fury saved him. But in the light, whether by moon or, more likely, the burning of nearby structures, the Nansur flinched from him and attacked only with the haft of their spears.

Conphas wanted him.

Cnaiur had not the arms for the swazond he earned that night.

The last he saw of Skaiwarra, the chieftain-thane and a band of his wild-haired axemen had butchered a company of infantrymen and turned to face down a Kidruhil charge. Sanumnis actually died in his arms, coughing blood and spittle in the gloom. Troyatti, and many of the other Hemscilvara, fell in a rain of sorcerous naphtha that left Cnaiur himself untouched. He would never learn what happened to Tirnemus or Saurnemmi.

In the end, he and a handful of strangers-some three Conriyans, like eerie automatons with their war-masks drawn, and six Thunyeri, one with the shrunken heads of Sranc swinging from his flaxen braids-found themselves driven from the flaming wreck of a millery back onto a broad stair beneath the ruins of a Fanim tabernacle. They hacked and hammered at the rush of Columnaries until only Cnaiur and the nameless Thunyeri stood, chests heaving, shoulder to shoulder. The dead formed a skirt of tangled limbs across the steps below them; the dying rocked and kicked like drunks. All the world seemed slicked in blood. Officers bawled through the dark ranks arrayed below them. Framed by the burning millery, the Nansur charged them again. The Norsirai laughed and roared, hewing and crus.h.i.+ng with great swings of his battleaxe. A spear caught him in the neck and he stumbled into the thres.h.i.+ng of swords.

Cnaiur howled in exultation. They came at him with the b.u.t.ts and hafts of their spears, their faces screwed in terror and determination. Cnaiur leapt into their midst, scarred arms hacking. "Demon!" he roared. "Demon!" "Demon!"

Hands clutched for his arms and he shattered wrists, punctured faces. Forms tackled his torso and he snapped necks, crushed spines. He tossed lifeblood skyward, nailed beating hearts still. All the world had become rotted leather, and he the only iron. The only iron iron.

He was of the People.

Without warning, the Nansur relented, crowded back into the s.h.i.+elds of those behind, away from the advance of his dripping aspect. They stared in horror and astonishment. All the world seemed afire.

"For a thousand years!" he grated. "f.u.c.king your wives! Strangling your children! Striking down your fathers!" He brandished his broken sword. Blood spilled in loops from his elbow. "For a thousand years I have stalked you!"

He threw aside the blade, kicked a spear into his hand, then cast it at the soldier before him. It punched through his s.h.i.+eld, through his banded cuira.s.s, and erupted from the small of his back.

Cnaiur laughed. The roaring flames took up his voice, made it sorcerous with dread.

Cries and shouts. Some even dropped their weapons.

"Take him!" a voice was shrieking. "You are Nansur! Nansur! Nansur! Nansur!"

A familiar voice.

It exerted a collective force, a consciousness of shared blood.

Cnaiur lowered his chin, smiled ...

They came as one this time, an encompa.s.sing wave of blows and clutching hands. He hammered and wrenched, but they bore him down. Everything became eye-watering numbness. They seemed howling apes, dancing and punis.h.i.+ng, dancing and punis.h.i.+ng.

Afterward, they cleared a path for their all-conquering Exalt-General. Smoke towered into the firmament beyond the battered beauty of his face, shrouding stars. His eyes were the same, though they appeared unnerved-very unnerved. "No different," his broken lips spat. "No different than Xunnurit after all."

And as the darkness came swirling down, Cnaiur at last understood. The Dunyain had not sent him to be Conphas's a.s.sa.s.sin ...

He had sent him to be his victim.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

XERASH.

That hope is little more than the premonition of regret. This is the first lesson of history.

-CASIDAS, THE ANNALS OF CENEI

To merely recall the Apocalypse is to have survived it. This is what makes The Sagas, The Sagas, for all their cramped beauty, so monstrous. for all their cramped beauty, so monstrous.Despite their protestations, the poets who auth.o.r.ed them do not tremble, even less do they grieve. They celebrate.

-DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Xerash

At the bidding of the Warrior-Prophet, the disparate elements of the Holy War began to converge on Gerotha. Using the Herotic Way, Lord Soter and his Kishyati were the first to spy the city's black curtain walls. The imperious Ainoni Palatine rode directly to the gate that the Men of the Tusk would come to call the Twin Fists and demanded to parley with the Sapatishah-Governor. The Xeras.h.i.+ told him that it was only fear of atrocity that moved them to bar their gates. Lord Soter laughed at that, and without further word withdrew to the cultivated plains surrounding the city. He struck the first camp of the siege in the middle of a trampled sugar cane field.

The Warrior-Prophet, along with Proyas and Gotian, arrived early the following day. By evening the Gerothans had sent an emba.s.sy, as much simply to see see the False Prophet who had struck down the Padirajah as to barter with him. They had no heart for hard bargains. Apparently, the Sapatishah of Xerash, Utgarangi, and all the surviving Kianene had evacuated the city days previously. Hours later the emba.s.sy returned to the Twin Fists, convinced they had no choice but to surrender, and to do so without condition. the False Prophet who had struck down the Padirajah as to barter with him. They had no heart for hard bargains. Apparently, the Sapatishah of Xerash, Utgarangi, and all the surviving Kianene had evacuated the city days previously. Hours later the emba.s.sy returned to the Twin Fists, convinced they had no choice but to surrender, and to do so without condition.

After a long forced march, Gothyelk and the bulk of the Tydonni arrived during the night.

The following morning found the men of the Gerothan emba.s.sy strung from the battlements of the great gate, their entrails sagging to the foundations. According to defectors who managed to escape the city, there had been a coup that night, led by priests and officers loyal to their old Kianene overlords.

The Men of the Tusk began preparing their a.s.sault.

When the Warrior-Prophet rode to the Twin Fists to demand an explanation, he was greeted by an old veteran calling himself Captain Hebarata. With a vitriol only the old can summon, the man cursed the Warrior-Prophet as false and threatened the Solitary G.o.d's retribution as though it were merely another coin in his purse. Then, at the end of his tirade, someone fired a crossbow bolt ...