The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  “Because you’re”—he swallowed—“more capable.”

  Cnaiür stiffened, felt a snarl twitch across his lips. He means more disposable!

  “I know you think that I lie,” Proyas said quickly. “But I don’t. If Xinemus were still … still …” He blinked, shook his head. “I would’ve asked him.”

  Cnaiür studied him closely. “You fear this may be a trap … That Saubon might be deceived.”

  Proyas chewed at the inside of his cheek, nodded. “An entire city for the life of one man? No hatred could be so great.”

  Cnaiür did not bother contradicting him.

  There was a hate that eclipsed the hater, a hunger that encompassed the very ground of appetite.

  Bent low, his broadsword before him, Cnaiür urs Skiötha stole across the heights of the wall toward the postern gate, thinking of Kellhus, Moënghus, and murder.

  Need me … I must find some way to make him need me!

  Yes … The madness was lifting.

  Cnaiür paused, pressed his armoured back against the wet stone. Saubon crowded close behind him, followed by some fifty other hand-picked men. Drawing long even breaths, Cnaiür tried to calm the anxiousness of his limbs. He glanced across the great weave of moonlit structures below. It was strange, seeing the city that had bitterly denied them so exposed, almost like lifting the skirts of a sleeping woman.

  A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder, and Cnaiür turned to see Saubon in the gloom, his hard, grinning face framed by his mail hood. Moonlight rimmed his battle helm. Though he respected the Galeoth Prince’s prowess on the field, Cnaiür neither liked nor trusted him. The man had, after all, kennelled with the Dûnyain’s other dogs.

  “She looks almost wanton …” Saubon whispered, nodding toward the city below. He looked back, his eyes bright. “Do you still doubt me?”

  “I never doubted you. Only your faith in this Kepfet.”

  The Galeoth Prince’s grin broadened. “Truth shines,” he said.

  Cnaiür squashed the urge to sneer. “So do pigs’ teeth.”

  He spat across the ancient stonework. There was no escaping the Dûnyain—not any more. It sometimes seemed the abomination spoke from every mouth, watched from all eyes. And it was only getting worse.

  Something … There must be something I can do!

  But what? Their pact to murder Moënghus was a farce. The Dûnyain honoured nothing for its own sake. For them only the ends mattered, and everything else, from warlike nations to shy glances, was a tool—something to be used. And Cnaiür possessed nothing of use—not any more. He’d squandered his every advantage. He couldn’t even offer his reputation among the Great Names, not after the degradation of Anwurat …

  No. There was nothing Kellhus needed from him. Nothing except …

  Cnaiür actually gasped aloud.

  Except my silence.

  In his periphery, he glimpsed Saubon turn to him in alarm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Cnaiür glanced at him contemptuously. “Nothing,” he said.

  The madness was lifting.

  Cursing in Galeoth, Saubon started past him, crawling beneath the pitted battlements. Cnaiür followed, his breath rasping over-loud in his ears. Rainwater had pooled through the joints between flagstones, reflecting moonlight. He splashed through them, his fingers aching with cold. The farther they crept along the parapet, the more the balance of vulnerability seemed to shift. Before Caraskand had seemed exposed, but now, as the towers of the postern gate loomed nearer, they seemed the vulnerable ones. Torches glittered along the tower’s crest.

  They paused before an iron-strapped door, looked to one another apprehensively, as though realizing this would be the definitive test of Kepfet and his unlikely hatred. Saubon looked almost terrified in the pallid light. Cnaiür scowled and yanked on the iron handle.

  It grated open.

  The Galeoth Prince hissed, laughed as though amused by his momentary doubt. Whispering “Die or conquer!” he slipped around the masonry into the black maw. Cnaiür glanced one last time at Caraskand’s moonlit expanse, then followed, his heart thundering.

  Moving in dark, deadly files, they spilled through the corridors and down the stairwells. As Proyas had bidden him, Cnaiür stayed close to Saubon, jostling behind him through narrow hallways. He knew the layout of the gate must be simple, but tension and urgency made it seem a maze.

  Saubon’s outstretched hand stopped him in the blackness, pulled him to the chapped wall. The Galeoth Prince had halted before a door. Threads of golden light traced its outline in the dark. Cnaiür’s skin prickled at the sound of muted shouts.

  “The God,” Saubon whispered, “has given me this place, Scylvendi. Caraskand will be mine!”

  Cnaiür peered at him in the darkness. “How do you know?”

  “I know!”

  The Dûnyain had told him. Cnaiür was certain of it.

  “You brought Kepfet to Kellhus … Didn’t you?”

  He let the Dûnyain read his face.

  Saubon grinned and snorted. Without answering, he turned his back to Cnaiür, rapped the door with the pommel of his sword.

  Wood scraped against stone—the sound of someone pushing back a chair. There was a muffled laugh, voices speaking Kianene. If the Norsirai sounded like grunting pigs, Cnaiür thought, the Kianene sounded like honking geese.

  Saubon swung his broadsword around, gripping it like a dagger and raising it high. For a mad instant, he resembled a boy preparing to spear fish in a stream. The door jerked open; a human face surfaced …

  Saubon snatched the man’s braided goatee, stabbed downward with his sword. The Kianene was dead before he clanked to the ground. Howling, the Galeoth Prince leapt into airy light beyond the door.

  Cnaiür tumbled after him with the others, found himself in a narrow, candle-lit room. A great wheeled spool loomed before him, wrought in ancient wood, wrapped by chains that dropped from chutes in the fluted ceiling. Beyond, he glimpsed several red-jacketed Kianene soldiers scrambling for their weapons. Two simply sat dumbstruck, one with bread in hand, at a rough-hewn table set in the far corner.

  Saubon hacked into their midst. One fell shrieking, clutching his face.

  Cnaiür leapt into the fray, crying out in Scylvendi. He hammered the sword from the slack, panicked hand of the heathen guardsman before him: a stoop-shouldered adolescent sporting no more than wisps of a goatee. Cnaiür crouched and hacked at the legs of a second guardsman rushing his flank. The man toppled, and Cnaiür whirled back to the boy, only to see him vanish through a far door. A Galeoth knight he didn’t recognize speared the man he’d felled.

  Nearby, Saubon hacked at two Kianene, brandishing his sword like a pipe, grunting obscenities with each swing. He’d lost his helm; blood matted his shaggy blond hair. Cnaiür charged to his side. With his first blow, he cracked the round, yellow and black shield of the nearest guardsman. The heathen skidded on blood, and as his arms reflexively opened, Cnaiür punched his sword through the man’s ring harness. His scream was a convulsive, gurgling thing. Glancing to his left, he saw Saubon shear off his foeman’s lower jaw. Hot blood sprayed across Cnaiür’s face. The heathen stumbled, flailed. Saubon silenced him with a blow that almost severed his head.

  “Raise the gate!” the Galeoth Prince roared. “Raise the gate!”

  Inrithi warriors, mostly ruddy-faced Galeoth, now packed the room. Several fell upon the wooden wheels. The sound of chains grating across stone drowned out their excited muttering.

  The air reeked of pierced entrails.

  Saubon’s captains and thanes had assembled about him. “Hortha! Fire the signal! Meärji, storm the second tower! You must take it, son! You must make your ancestors proud!” The radiant blue eyes found Cnaiür. Despite the blood threading his face, there was a majesty to his look, a paternal confidence that chilled Cnaiür’s heart. Coithus Saubon was already king, and he belonged to Kellhus.

  “Secure the murder room,” the Galeoth Prince said. “
Take as many men as you need …” His eyes swept across all those assembled. “Caraskand falls, my brothers! By the God, Caraskand falls!”

  Cheers resounded through the room, fading into hoarse shouts and the sound of boots making muck of the glossy pools of red across the floor. “Die or conquer!” men cried. “Die or conquer!”

  After crowding through a far hallway, Cnaiür barged through a likely door and found the murder room, though the gloom was so deep it took several moments for his eyes to adjust. Not far, a single point of candlelight sputtered in circles. He could hear the portcullis creaking up into the ancient machinery of the chamber. He could smell the humid cold of outside, feel air wash upward from his feet. He was standing upon a large grate, he realized, set over the passage between the two gates. Things and surfaces resolved from the gloom: wood stacked against the walls; rows of amphorae, no doubt filled with oil to pour through the grate; two ovens no higher than his knee, each stocked with kindling, furnished with bellows, and bearing iron pots for cooking the oil …

  Then he saw the Kianene boy he’d disarmed earlier, huddled against the far wall, his brown eyes as wide as silver talents. For a heartbeat, Cnaiür couldn’t look away. The sound of screams and shouts echoed through unseen corridors.

  “P-pouäda t’fada,” the adolescent sobbed. “Os-osmah … Pipiri osmah!”

  Cnaiür swallowed.

  From nowhere it seemed, a Galeoth thane—someone Cnaiür didn’t recognize—strode past him toward the boy, his sword raised. Just then, light glittered up from the passage below, and through the grate at his feet, Cnaiür saw a band of torch-bearing Galeoth rush toward the outer doors of the postern gate. He glanced up, saw the thane swing his sword downward as though clubbing an unwanted whelp. The boy had raised warding hands. The blade glanced from his wrist and struck along the bone of his forearm, slicing back a shank of meat the size of a fish. The boy screamed.

  The doors burst open beneath. Exultant cries pealed through the room, followed by cold air and shining torchlight. The first of the thousands Saubon had concealed on the broken slopes beneath the gate began rushing through the passageway beneath. The thane hacked at the adolescent, once, twice …

  The screams stopped.

  Squares of light raced across the thane’s blood-spattered form. The blue-eyed man gazed in wonder at the spectacle beneath. He glanced at Cnaiür, grinned, and pawed at his teary cheeks.

  “Truth shines!” he convulsively cried. “Truth shines!”

  His eyes shouted glory.

  Without thinking, Cnaiür dropped his sword and seized him, almost hoisted him from his feet. For a heartbeat, they grappled. Then Cnaiür smashed his forehead into the thane’s face. The man’s broadsword fell from senseless fingers. His head lolled backward. Cnaiür slammed his forehead down again, felt teeth snap. Shouts and clamour reverberated up through the iron grate. With each rushing torch lattices of shadow swept up and over them. Again, bone hammering against bone, face breaking beneath face. The bridge of the man’s nose collapsed, then his left cheek. Again and again, smashing his face into slurry.

  I am stronger!

  The twitching thing slouched to the ground, drained across the Men of the Tusk.

  Cnaiür stood, his chest heaving, blood streaming in rivulets across the iron scales of his harness. The very world seemed to move, so great was the rush of arms and men beneath him.

  Yes, the madness was lifting.

  Horns pealed across the great city. War horns.

  There was no rain in the morning, but a thin fog wearied the distances, drained Caraskand’s reaches of contrast and colour, rendering the far quarters ghostlike. Though overcast, one could feel the sun burning behind the clouds.

  The Fanim, both native Enathpaneans and Kianene, crowded onto roofs and strained to see what was happening. As they watched a growing pall of smoke rise from the eastern quarters of the city, women clasped crying children tight, ashen-faced men scored their forearms with fingernails, and old mothers wailed into the sky. Below them, Kianene horsemen beat their way through the tight streets, riding down their own people, struggling to answer the call of the Sapatishah’s drums and make their way to the towering fortress in the city’s northwest, the Citadel of the Dog. And then, after a time, the terrified watchers could actually see, in those distant streets where the angles allowed them, the Men of the Tusk—small, wicked shadows through the smoke. Iron-draped figures rushed through the streets, swords rose and fell, and tiny, hapless forms collapsed beneath them. Some of the onlookers were so terror-stricken they became sick. Some rushed down into the congested streets to join in the mad, hopeless attempt to escape. Others remained, and watched the approaching columns of smoke. They prayed to the Solitary God, tore at their beards and their clothes, and thought panicked thoughts about everything they were about to lose.

  Saubon had gathered his men and struck through the streets toward the mighty Gate of Horns. The massive barbican fell after fierce fighting, but the Galeoth had found themselves sorely pressed by those Fanim horsemen the Sapatishah’s officers had been able to muster. In the narrow streets, clots of men joined in dozens of small, pitched battles. Even with the constant string of reinforcements arriving from the postern gate, the Galeoth found themselves stubbornly giving ground.

  But the mighty Gate of Horns was finally thrown open, and Athjeäri with his Gaenrish knights pounded into the city on their stolen horses, followed by rank after rank of Conriyans, invincible and inhuman behind their godlike masks. In their wake, their Prince, the ailing Nersei Proyas, was borne into Caraskand on a litter.

  The Kianene were routed by this new onslaught, and their last chance to save their city was lost. Organized resistance crumbled and became confined to small pockets scattered throughout Caraskand. The Inrithi broke into roaming bands and began to pillage the city.

  Houses were ransacked. Entire families were put to the sharp knife. Black-skinned Nilnameshi slave girls were dragged sobbing from their hiding places by the hair, violated, and then put to the sword. Tapestries were torn from the walls, rolled, or tied into sacks into which plates, statuary, and other articles of gold and silver were swept. The Men of the Tusk rifled through ancient Caraskand, leaving behind them scattered clothes and broken chests, death and fire. In some places the scattered looters were slaughtered and chased away by armed bands of Kianene, or held at bay until some thane or baron rallied enough men to close with the heathen.

  The hard battles were fought across Caraskand’s great market squares and through the more magnificent of the buildings. Only the Great Names were able to hold enough men together to batter open the tall doors and then fight their way down the long, carpeted corridors. But in these places, the spoils were the greatest—cool cellars filled with Eumarnan and Jurisadi wines, golden reliquary behind fretted shrines, alabaster and jade statues of lions and desert wolves, intricate plaques of clear chalcedony. Their coarse shouts echoed beneath airy domes. They tracked blood and filth across broad, white-tiled floors. Men sheathed their weapons and fumbled with their breeches, strolling into the marmoreal recesses of some dead Grandee’s harem.

  The doors of the great tabernacles were battered down, and the Men of the Tusk waded among masses of kneeling Fanim, hacking and clubbing until the tiled floors were matted with the dead and dying. They smashed down the doors of the adjoining compounds, wandered into the dim, carpeted interiors. Soft shadows and strange scents greeted them. Light rained down through tiny windows of coloured glass. At first they were fearful. These were the dens of the Unholy, where the monstrous Cishaurim worked their abominations. They walked quietly, numbed by their dread. But eventually the drunkenness of the screaming streets would return to them. Someone would reach out and spill a book from an ivory lectern, and when nothing happened the aura of foreboding would dissolve, replaced by sudden, righteous fury. They would laugh, cry out the names of Inri Sejenus and the Gods as they plundered the inner sanctums of the False Prophet. They tortured Fanic priests fo
r their secrets. They set glorious, many-pillared tabernacles of Caraskand aflame.

  The Men of the Tusk cast the bodies from the rooftops. They rifled the pockets of the dead, tugging rings from grey fingers, or just sawing at the knuckles to save time. Shrieking children were torn from their mothers, tossed across rooms and caught on sword point. The mothers were beaten and raped while their gutted husbands wailed about their entrails. The Inrithi were like wild-eyed beasts, drunk with howling murder. Moved by the God’s own fury, they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sharp sword.

  The anger of the God burned bright against the people of Caraskand.

  Sunlight broke across the city, cold and brilliant against a dark horizon. Wings outstretched, the Old Name floated on hot western winds. Caraskand pitched and yawed beneath him, a vista of flat-roofed structures, encrusting hillsides, enveloping distances in mud-brick confusion, opening about broad agoras and monumental complexes.

  Fires burned in the east, screening the far quarters. He soared around mountainous plumes.

  He saw Caraskandi crowding the rooftop gardens of the merchant quarter, howling in disbelief. He saw packs of armed Inrithi ranging through abandoned streets, dispersing into buildings. He saw the first of the domed tabernacles burning. From so far, they looked like bowls upended over firepits. He saw horsemen charging across the great market squares, and phalanxes of footmen battling down broad avenues toward the hazy blue ramparts of the Citadel of the Dog.

  And he saw the man who called himself Dûnyain, fleeing across ramshackle rooftops, running like the wind, pursued by the jump and tumble of Gaörta and the others. He watched the man leap and pirouette onto a third floor, sprint, then vault beyond the far edge of the adjacent two-storey structure. He landed in a crouch amid a clot of Kianene footmen, then bounced away, taking four lives with him. The soldiers had scarcely drawn their swords when Gaörta and his brothers descended upon them.