The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  Swinging his great two-handed mace, Uranyanka, Palatine of humid Moserothu, upended heathen after heathen. Sepherathindor, Count-Palatine of Hinnant, led his painted knights on a rampage, hewing men like wood. Prince Garsahadutha and his Sansori stalwarts continued charging forward, searching for the holy standards of their kinsmen. The Kianene horsemen broke and fled before them, and the Ainoni bellowed in exultation.

  The wind began to clear the haze.

  Then Garsahadutha, several hundred paces ahead of his peers, stumbled into Crown Prince Fanayal and his Coyauri. Skewered through the eye socket, the Sansori Prince crashed from his saddle, and death came swirling down. Within moments, all six hundred and forty-three knights of Sansor had been either unhorsed or killed. Unable to see more than several paces, many of the Ainoni knights below simply charged the sound of battle—vanished into the saffron fog. Others milled about their barons and palatines, waiting for the wind.

  Horse archers appeared on their flanks and to their rear.

  Serwë huddled, wracked by sobs, struggling to cover herself with her blanket.

  “What have I done?” she bawled. “What have I done to displease you?”

  A haloed hand struck her, and she slammed against the carpets.

  “I love you!” she shrieked. “Kellhuuuus!”

  The Warrior-Prophet laughed.

  “Tell me, sweet, sweet Serwë, what have I planned for the Holy War?”

  The Swazond Standard leaned in a gust, the bolts of white billowing and snapping like sails. Martemus had already resolved to kick the abomination to the ground—afterward … Everyone had abandoned the hillock, save himself, Prince Kellhus, and Conphas’s three assassins.

  Though more dust than ever plumed along the southern hills, Martemus could see what had to be Ainoni infantry fleeing the pale clouds. He’d long since lost sight of the Scylvendi across the broken pasture. To the west of the looming disaster, he could see the Columns of his countrymen reforming. Soon, Martemus knew, Conphas would have them marching double-time toward the marshes. The Nansur were old hands when it came to surviving Fanim catastrophes.

  Prince Kellhus sat with his back to the four of them, his feet sole to sole and his palms flat upon his knees. Beyond him, men climbed and toppled from fortress walls, lines of knights galloped across dusty pastures, northmen axed hapless Shigeki to the ground …

  The Prophet seemed to be … listening.

  No. Bearing witness.

  Not him, Martemus thought. I cannot do this.

  The first of the assassins approached.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ANWUR AT

  Where the holy take men for fools, the mad take the world.

  —PROTATHIS, THE GOAT’S HEART

  Late Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shigek

  A dried riverbed creased the heart of the plain, and for a time Cnaiür raced through it, climbing out only when the course began winding like an old man’s veins. He jerked his black to a stamping halt on the bank. The coastal hills piled above him, their heights and seaward reaches still skirted in chalklike dust. To the west, the remaining Ainoni phalanxes were withdrawing down the slopes. To the east, innumerable thousands sprinted across the broken pasture. Not far, on a small knoll, he saw a clot of infantrymen dressed in long black leather kilts stitched with iron rings, but without helms or weapons. Some sat, others stood, stripping off their armour. Save those who wept, all watched the shrouded hills with a look of stunned horror.

  Where were the Ainoni knights?

  To the extreme east, where the turquoise and aquamarine band of the Meneanor disappeared behind the dun foundations of the hills, he saw a great cataract of Kianene horsemen spill across the strand. He need not see their devices to know: Cinganjehoi and the Grandees of Eumarna, pounding across uncontested ground …

  Where were the reserves? Gotian and his Shrial Knights, Gaidekki, Werijen Greatheart, Athjeäri, and the others?

  Cnaiür felt a sharp pang in his throat. He clenched his teeth.

  It’s happening again …

  Kiyuth.

  Only this time he was Xunnurit. He was the arrogant mule!

  He pinched sweat from his eyes, watched the Fanim gallop behind a screen of distant scrub and stunted trees—an endless tide …

  The encampment. They ride for the encampment …

  With a yell he spurred his horse to the east.

  Serwë.

  Masses of warring men animated the horizon, crashing into stubborn ranks, churning in melee. The air didn’t so much thunder as hiss with the sound of distant battle, like a sea heard through a conch shell, Martemus thought—an angry sea. Winded, he watched the first of Conphas’s assassins stride up behind Prince Kellhus, raise his short-sword …

  There was an impossible moment—a sharp intake of breath.

  The Prophet simply turned and caught the descending blade between his thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said, then swept around, knocking the man to the turf with an unbelievable kick. Somehow the assassin’s sword found its way into his left hand. Still crouched, the Prophet drove it down through the assassin’s throat, nailing him to the turf.

  A mere heartbeat had passed.

  The second Nansur assassin rushed forward, striking. Another kick from a crouch, and the man’s head snapped backward, his blade flew from senseless fingers. He slumped to the earth like a cast-off robe—obviously dead.

  The Zeumi sword-dancer lowered his great tulwar and laughed.

  “A civilized man,” he said, his voice deep.

  Without warning, he sent the tulwar whooshing through the air around him. Sunlight flashed as though from the silvered spokes of a chariot wheel.

  Now standing, the Prophet drew his strange, long-pommelled sword from his shoulder sheath. Holding it in his right hand, he lowered its tip to the ground before his booted feet. He flicked a clot of dirt into the sword-dancer’s eyes. The sword-dancer stumbled back, cursing. The Prophet lunged, buried his sword point deep into the assassin’s palate. He guided the towering corpse to the earth.

  He stood alone against a vista of strife and woe, his beard and hair boiling in the wind. He turned to Martemus, stepped over the sword-dancer’s body …

  Illuminated by the morning sun. A striding vision. A walking aspect …

  Something too terrible. Too bright.

  The General stumbled backward, struggled to draw his sword.

  “Martemus,” the vision said. It reached out and clasped the wrist of his frantic sword arm.

  “Prophet,” Martemus gasped.

  The vision smiled, saying: “Skauras knows the Scylvendi leads us. He’s seen the Swazond Standard …”

  General Martemus stared, uncomprehending.

  The Warrior-Prophet turned, nodded toward the sweeping landscape.

  No recognizable lines remained. Martemus saw Proyas and his Conriyan knights first, stranded about the mud-brick warren of the distant village. Erupting from the shadow of the orchards, several thousand Kianene horsemen swept about their flank, led by the triangular standard of Cuäxaji, the Sapatishah of Khemema. The Conriyans were doomed, Martemus thought, but otherwise he didn’t understand what the Warrior-Prophet meant … Then he glanced toward Anwurat.

  “Khirgwi,” the General murmured. Thousands of them, mounted on tall loping camels, plowing into the hastily drawn ranks of Conriyan infantry, spilling around their flanks, racing toward the hillock, toward the Swazond Standard …

  Toward them.

  Their unnerving, ululating war cries permeated the din.

  “We must flee!” he cried.

  “No,” the Warrior-Prophet said. “The Swazond Standard cannot fall.”

  “But it will!” Martemus exclaimed. “It already has!”

  The Warrior-Prophet smiled, and his eyes glittered with something fierce and unconquerable. “Conviction, General Martemus …” He gripped his shoulder with a haloed hand.

  “War is conviction.”

  Confusion and terror ru
led the hearts of the Ainoni knights. Disoriented in the dust, they hailed one another, trying to determine some course of action. Cohorts of fleet archers swept about them, shooting their caparisoned horses out from beneath him. Knights cursed and hunched behind arrow-studded shields. Every time Uranyanka, Sepherathindor, and the others charged, the Kianene scattered, outdistanced them while sending more knights crashing into the sun-baked turf. Many of the Ainoni lost their way and were stranded, harassed from all sides. Kusjeter, the Count-Palatine of Gekas, blundered onto the summit of the slopes and found himself trapped between the spiked earthworks that had defeated the initial Ainoni charges and the ruthless lances of the Coyauri below. Time and again he fought off the elite Kianene cavalrymen, only to be unhorsed and taken for dead by his own men. His knights panicked, and he was trampled in their flight. Death came swirling down …

  Meanwhile the Sapatishah of Eumarna, Cinganjehoi, charged across the pastures below. Most of his Grandees fanned northward, eager to visit ruin on the Inrithi encampment. The Tiger himself struck westward, riding hard with his household through fields of bolting Ainoni infantrymen. He stormed the command of General Setpanares, overrunning it. The General himself was killed, but Chepheramunni, the King-Regent of High Ainon, managed a miraculous escape.

  Far to the northwest, the command of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, Battlemaster of the Holy War, dissolved in confusion and accusations of treachery. The masses of Shigeki conscripts composing Skauras’s centre had utterly folded before the combined might of the Nansur, Thunyeri, and the flanking charge of Proyas and his Conriyan knights. Believing the Holy War victorious, the Inrithi had dashed forward in pursuit, abandoning their formations. The battle line broke into disordered masses separated by glaring expanses of open pasture. Many actually fell to their knees on the parched turf, crying out thanks to the God. Very few heard the horns signalling a general retreat, largely because very few horns carried the call. Most trumpeters had refused to believe the command was real.

  Not once did the thundering drums of the heathen falter.

  The Grandees of Khemema and tens of thousands of camel-mounted Khirgwi, ferocious tribesmen from the southern deserts, materialized out of the masses of fleeing Shigeki and charged headlong into the scattered Men of the Tusk. Cut off from his infantry, Proyas withdrew to the mud-brick alleys of a nearby village, crying out to both the God and his men. Falling into shield-wall circles across the pastures, the Thunyeri fought with stubborn astonishment, shocked to encounter an enemy whose fury matched their own. Prince Skaiyelt desperately called for his Earls and their knights, but they were frustrated by the embankments.

  One great battle had become dozens of lesser ones—more desperate and far more dreadful. Everywhere the Great Names looked, cohorts of Fanim rode hard across the open pasture. Where the heathen outnumbered, they charged and overwhelmed. Where they could not grapple, they circled and harried with deadly archery.

  Overcome by dismay, many knights charged alone, only to be unhorsed by arrows and trampled into the dust.

  Cnaiür rode hard, cursing himself for losing his way among the endless alleys and avenues of the camp. He reined to a halt in an enclosure of heavy-framed Galeoth tents, searched the northern distances for the distinctive peaks of the round tents favoured by the Conriyans. From nowhere it seemed, three woman dashed northward across the enclosure, then vanished past the tents on the far side. A moment later, another followed, black-haired, screaming something unintelligible in some Ketyai tongue. He looked to the south, saw dozens of plumes of black smoke. The wind faltered for a moment, and the surrounding canvas fell silent.

  Cnaiür glimpsed a blue surcoat abandoned next to a smoking firepit. Someone had been stitching a red tusk across its breast …

  He heard screams—thousands of them.

  Where was she?

  He knew what was happening, and more importantly, he knew how it would happen. The first fires had been set as a signal to those Inrithi in the field—to convince them they were truly overthrown. Otherwise the encampment would be closely inventoried before it was destroyed. Even now, Kianene would be encircling the camp, loath to lose any plunder, especially the kind that wriggled and screamed. If he didn’t find Serwë soon …

  He spurred off to the northeast.

  Yanking his black tight around a pavilion panelled with embroidered animal totems, he broke along a winding corridor, saw three Kianene sitting upon their caparisoned mounts. They turned at the sound of his approach, but at once looked away, as though mistaking him for one of their own. They seemed to be arguing. Drawing his broadsword, Cnaiür spurred to a gallop. He killed two on his first pass. Though their orange-coated comrade had called out at the last instant, they hadn’t so much as looked at him. Cnaiür reined to a halt, wheeled to make a second pass, but the remaining Fanim fled. Cnaiür ignored him and struck due east, at last recognizing—or so he thought—where he stood in the encampment.

  A skin-pimpling shriek, no more than a hundred paces away, brought him to a momentary trot. Standing in his stirrups, he caught fleeting glimpses of figures dashing between crowded shelters. More screams rifled the air, breathless and very near. Suddenly a horde of camp-followers burst sprinting from between the panoply of surrounding tents and pavilions. Wives, whores, slaves, scribes, and priests, either crying or blank-faced, simply rushing where everyone else seemed to rush. Some screamed at the sight of him and scrambled either to the left or the right. Others ignored him, either realizing he wasn’t Fanim or knowing he could only strike so many. After a moment their numbers thinned. The young and the hale became the old and the infirm. Cnaiür glimpsed Cumor, the aging high priest of Gilgaöl, urged forward by his adepts. He saw dozens of frantic mothers hauling terrified children. Some distance away, a group of twenty or so bandaged warriors—Galeoth by the look of them—had abandoned their flight and now prepared to make a stand. They started singing …

  Cnaiür heard a growing chorus of harsh and triumphant cries, the snort and rumble of horses …

  He reined to a halt, drew his broadsword.

  Then he saw them, jostling and barrelling among the tents, looking for a moment like a host wading through crashing surf. The Kianene of Eumarna …

  Cnaiür looked down, startled. A young woman, her leg slicked in blood, an infant strapped to her back, clutched his knee, beseeching him in some unknown tongue. He raised his boot to kick her, then unaccountably lowered it. He leaned forward and hoisted her before him onto his saddle. She fairly shrieked tears. He wheeled his black around and spurred after the fleeing camp-followers.

  He heard an arrow buzz by his ear.

  His golden hair fanned in the wind. His white samite robe billowed.

  “Keep down!” the Prophet commanded.

  But Martemus could only stand dumbfounded. The fields beneath seethed with dust and shadowy files of Khirgwi. Before them, the Warrior-Prophet jerked first one shoulder back, then the other. He ducked his head, swayed back from the waist, crouched, then bounced upright. It was a curious dance, at once random and premeditated, leisurely and breathtakingly quick … It wasn’t until one struck Martemus in the thigh that he realized the Prophet danced about the path of arrows.

  The General fell to the ground, clutching his leg. The whole world howled, clamoured.

  Through tears of pain he glimpsed the Swazond Standard against the sun’s flashing glare.

  Sweet Sejenus. I’m going to die.

  “Run!” he cried. “You must run!”

  His black snorted spittle, gasped, and screamed. Tent after tent whisked by, canvas stained and striped, leather painted, tusks and more tusks. The nameless woman in his arms trembled, tried vainly to look at her baby. The Kianene thundered ever closer, galloping in files down the narrow alleys, fanning across the rare openings. He could hear them trade shouts, cry out tactics. “Skafadi!” they cried. “Jara til Skafadi!” Soon many were pounding along parallel alleyways. Twice he had to crush the woman and her child against the neck of his
horse as arrows hissed about them.

  He spurred more blood from his black’s flanks. He heard screams, realized he’d overtaken the mass of fleeing camp-followers. Suddenly everywhere he looked he saw frantic, hobbling men, wailing mothers, and ashen-faced children. He jerked his mount to the left, knowing the Kianene followed him. He was the famed Skafadi Captain who rode with the idolaters. Every captive he’d interrogated had heard of him. He broke into one of the immense squares the Nansur used for drills, and his black leapt forward with renewed fury. He drew his bow, notched a shaft, and killed the nearest Kianene pounding through the dust behind him. His second shaft found the neck of the horse following, and an entire cluster of Fanim toppled in a plume of dust.

  “Zirkirtaaaaa!” he howled.

  The woman shrieked in terror. He glanced forward, saw dozens of Fanim horsemen streaming into the western entrance of the field.

  Fucking Kianene.

  He brought his ailing black about and spurred toward the northern entrance, thanking the Nansur and their slavish devotion to the compass. The sky rang with distant screams and raw-throated shouts of “Ût-ût-ûtût!” The nameless woman wept in terror.

  Nansur barrack tents hedged the north like a row of filed teeth. The gap between them bounced nearer, nearer. The woman alternately looked forward, then yanked her head backward to the Kianene—as did, absurdly, her black-haired infant. Strange, Cnaiür thought, the way infants knew when to be calm. Suddenly Fanim horsemen erupted through the northern entrance as well. He swerved to the right, galloped along the airy white tents, searching for a way to barge between. When he saw none, he raced for the corner. More and more Kianene thundered through the eastern entrance, fanning across the field. Those behind pounded nearer. Several more arrows whisked through the air about them. He wheeled his black about, knocked the woman face first onto the dusty turf. The babe finally started screeching. He tossed her a knife—to cut through canvas …