The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  Even as they cursed them, the Kianene could only marvel at their desperate fury. Twice young Athjeäri led daring sorties across the rutted plain, once seizing the sappers’ trenches and collapsing their tunnels, once charging over slovenly earthworks and sacking an isolated encampment. All the world could see they were doomed, and yet they fought as though they knew it not.

  But they knew—as only men stalked by famine could know.

  The hemoplexy, or the hollows, was running its course. Many, such as Chepheramunni, the King-Regent of High Ainon, lingered on death’s marches, while others, such as Zursodda, Palatine-Governor of Koraphea, or Cynnea, Earl of Agmundr, finally succumbed. The funeral pyres still burned, but more and more they took casualties, and not the sick, as their fuel. As the flames consumed the Earl of Agmundr, his famed longbowmen launched burning arrows over the walls, and the Kianene wondered at the madness of the idolaters. Cynnea would be among the last of the great Inrithi lords to perish in the grip of the Disease.

  But even as the plague waned, the threat of starvation waxed. Dread Famine, Bukris, the God who devoured men and vomited up skin and bones, walked the streets and halls of Caraskand.

  Throughout the city, men began hunting cats, dogs, and finally even rats for sustenance. Poorer caste-nobles had taken to opening veins in their mounts. The horses themselves quickly consumed what thatched roofs could be found. Many bands began holding lotteries to see who would butcher their horse. Those without horses scratched through the dirt, looking for tubers. They boiled grapevines and even thistles to quiet the nagging madness of their bellies. Leather—from saddles, jerkins, or elsewhere—was also boiled and consumed. When the horns sounded the harnesses of many would swing like skirts, having lost their straps and buckles to some steaming pot. Gaunt men roamed the streets, looking for anything to eat, their faces blank, their movements sluggish, as though they walked through sand. Rumours circulated of men feasting on the bloated corpses of the Kianene, or committing murder in the dead of night to quiet their mad hunger.

  In the wake of Famine, foul Disease returned, preying on the weak. Men, particularly among the caste-menials, began losing teeth to scurvy. Dysentery punished others with cramps and bloody diarrhea. In many quarters, one could find warriors wandering without their breeches, wallowing, as some are wont to do, in their degradation.

  During this time, the furor surrounding Kellhus, Prince of Atrithau, and the tensions between those who acclaimed him and those who condemned him, escalated. In Council, Conphas, Gothyelk, and even Gotian relentlessly denounced him, claiming he was a False Prophet, a cancer that must be excised from the Holy War. Who could doubt the God punished them? The Holy War, they insisted, could have only one Prophet, and his name was Inri Sejenus. Proyas, who’d once eloquently defended Kellhus, withdrew from all such debates, and refused to say anything. Only Saubon still spoke in his favour, though he did so half-heartedly, not wishing to alienate those whose approval he needed to secure his claim to Caraskand.

  Despite this, none dared move against the so-called Warrior-Prophet. His followers, the Zaudunyani, numbered in the tens of thousands, though they were less numerous among the upper castes. Many still remembered the Miracle of Water in the desert, how Kellhus had saved the Holy War, including those miscreants who now called him anathema. Strife and riot broke out, and for the first time Inrithi swords shed Inrithi blood. Knights repudiated their lords. Brothers forsook brothers. Countrymen turned upon one another. Only Gotian and Conphas, it seemed, were able to command the loyalty of their men.

  Nevertheless, when the horns sounded, the Inrithi forgot their differences. They roused themselves from the torpor of disease and sickness, and they battled with a fervour only those truly wracked by the God could know. And to the heathens who assailed them, it seemed dead men defended the walls. Safe about their fires, the Kianene whispered tales of wights and damned souls, of a Holy War that had already perished, but fought on, such was its hate.

  Caraskand, it seemed, named not a city, but misery’s own precinct. Her very walls—walls raised by Triamis the Great—seemed to groan.

  The luxury of the place reminded Serwë of her indolent days as a concubine in House Gaunum. Through the open colonnade on the far side of the room she could see Caraskand wander across the hills beneath the sky. She was reclined on a green couch, her arms drawn out of her gown’s shoulders so that it hung from the gorgeous sash about her waist. Her pink son squirmed against her naked chest, and she had just begun feeding when she heard the latch drawn. She had expected it to be one of the Kianene house slaves, so she gasped in surprise and delight when she felt the Warrior-Prophet’s hand about her bare neck. The other brushed her bare breast as he reached to draw a gentle finger along the infant’s chubby back.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, as she raised her lips through his beard to give him a kiss.

  “Much happens,” he said gently. “I wanted to know you were safe … Where’s Esmi?”

  It always seemed so strange to hear him ask such simple questions. It reminded her that the God was still a man. “Kellhus,” she asked pensively, “what’s your father’s name?”

  “Moënghus.”

  Serwë furrowed her brow. “I thought his name was … Aethel, or something like that.”

  “Aethelarius,” the Warrior-Prophet said. “In Atrithau, Kings take a great ancestor’s name when they ascend the throne. Moënghus is his true name.”

  “Then,” she said, running fingers over the fuzz of the infant’s pale scalp, “that’s what his name will be when he’s anointed: Moënghus.” This wasn’t an assertion. In the Warrior-Prophet’s presence all declarations became questions.

  Kellhus grinned. “That’s what we shall name our child.”

  “What kind of man is your father, my Prophet?”

  “A most mysterious one, Serwë.”

  Serwë laughed softly. “Does he know that he fathered the voice of the God?”

  Kellhus pursed his lips in mock concentration. “Perhaps.”

  Serwë, who’d grown accustomed to cryptic conversations such as this, smiled. She blinked at the tears in her eyes. With her child warm against her breast, and the breath of the Prophet warmer still across her neck, the World seemed a closed circle, as though woe had been exiled from joy at long last. No longer taxed by cruel and distant things, the hearth now answered to the heart.

  A sudden pang of guilt struck her. “I know that you grieve,” she said. “So many suffer …”

  He lowered his face. Said nothing.

  “But I’ve never been so happy,” she continued. “So whole … Is that a sin? To find rapture where others suffer?”

  “Not for you, Serwë. Not for you.”

  Serwë gasped and looked down at her suckling babe.

  “Moënghus is hungry,” she laughed.

  Glad to have concluded their long search, Rash and Wrigga paused along the crest of the wall. Dropping his shield, Rash sat with his back to the parapet, while Wrigga stood, leaning against the stonework, staring through an embrasure at the fires of the enemy across the Tertae Plain. Neither man paid heed to the shadowy figure crouched beneath the battlements farther down.

  “I saw the child,” Wrigga said, still staring into the dark.

  “Did you?” Rash asked with genuine interest. “Where?”

  “Before the lower gates of the Fama Palace. The Anointing was public … You didn’t know, did you?”

  “Because no one tells me anything!”

  Wrigga resumed his scrutiny of the night. “Surprisingly dark, I thought.”

  “What?”

  “The child. The child seemed so dark.”

  Rash snorted. “Birth hair … It’ll soon fall out. I swear my second daughter had sideburns!”

  Friendly laughter. “Someday, when all this is over, I’ll come and woo your hairy daughters.”

  “Please … Start with my hairy wife!”

  More laughter, choked by a sudden realization. “
Oh ho! So that’s how you got your nickname!”

  “Saucy bastard!” Rash cried. “No, my skin’s just—”

  “The child’s name,” a voice grated from the darkness. “What is it?”

  Both men started, turned to the towering spectre of the Scylvendi. They’d seen the man before—few Men of the Tusk hadn’t—but neither had ever found themselves so close to the barbarian. Even in moonlight, his aspect was unnerving. The wild black hair. The fuming brow above eyes like chips of ice. The powerful shoulders, faintly stooped, as though bent by the preternatural strength of his back. The lean, adolescent waist. And the arms, thatched by scars both ritual and incidental, strapped by unfatted muscle. He seemed a thing of stone, ancient and famished.

  “Wh-what’s this?” Rash stammered.

  “The name!” Cnaiür snarled. “What did they name it?”

  “Moënghus!” Wrigga blurted. “They anointed him by the name, Moënghus …”

  The air of menace suddenly vanished. The barbarian became curiously blank, motionless to the point where he seemed inanimate. His manic eyes looked through them, to places far and forbidding.

  A taut moment passed, then without a word, the Scylvendi turned and walked into the darkness.

  Sighing, the two men looked to each other for what seemed a long time, then just to be certain, they resumed their fabricated conversation.

  As they’d been instructed.

  Some other way, Father. There must be.

  No one came to the Citadel of the Dog, not even the most desperate of the rat eaters.

  Standing high upon the crest of a ruined wall, Kellhus gazed across the dark expanse of Caraskand with her thousand points of smouldering light. Beyond the walls, particularly across the plains to the north, he could see the innumerable fires of the Padirajah’s army.

  The path, Father … Where’s the path?

  No matter how many times he submitted to the rigours of the Probability Trance, all the lines were extinguished, either by disaster or by the weight of excessive permutations. The variables were too many, the possibilities too precipitous.

  Over the past weeks he’d exerted whatever influence he’d possessed, hoping to circumvent what now seemed more and more inevitable. Of the Great Names, only Saubon still openly supported him. Though Proyas had so far refused to join Conphas’s coalition of caste-nobles, the Conriyan Prince continued to rebuff Kellhus’s every overture. Among the lesser Men of the Tusk, the divisions between the Zaudunyani and the Orthodox, as they were now calling themselves, were deepening. And the threat of further, more determined attacks by the Consult made it impossible for him to move freely among them—as he must to secure those he already possessed and to conquer those he did not.

  Meanwhile, the Holy War died.

  You told me mine was the Shortest Path … He’d relived his brief encounter with the Cishaurim messenger a thousand times, analyzing, evaluating, weighing alternate interpretations—all for naught. Every step was darkness now, no matter what his father said. Every word was risk. In so many ways, it seemed, he was no different from these world-born men …

  What is the Thousandfold Thought?

  He heard the rattle of rock against rock, then a small cascade of gravel and grit. He peered through the shadows amassed about the ruin’s roots. The blasted walls formed a roofless labyrinth beyond the Nail of Heaven’s pale reach. A darker shadow clambered across heaped debris. He glimpsed a round face in starlight …

  He called down. “Esmenet? How did you find me?”

  Her grin was pure mischief, though Kellhus could see the concern beneath.

  She’s never loved another as she loves me. Not even Achamian.

  “Werjau told me,” she said, picking her way up and along the truncated wall.

  “Ah, yes,” Kellhus said, understanding immediately. “He fears women.” Esmenet wobbled for a moment, threw out her arms. She caught herself, but not before Kellhus found himself puzzled by a sudden shortness of breath. The fall would have been fatal.

  “No …” She concentrated for a moment, her tongue between her lips. Then she danced up the remaining length. “He fears me!” She threw herself into his arms, laughing. They held each other tight on the dark and windy heights, surrounded by a city and a world—by Caraskand and the Three Seas.

  She knows … She knows I struggle.

  “We all fear you,” Kellhus said, wondering at the clamminess of his skin.

  She comes to comfort.

  “You tell such delicious lies,” she murmured, raising her lips to his.

  They arrived shortly after dusk, the nine Nascenti, the senior disciples of the Warrior-Prophet. A grand teak-and-mahogany table, no higher than their knees, had been pulled onto the terrace of the merchant palace Kellhus had taken as their base and refuge in Caraskand. Standing unnoticed in the shadows of the garden, Esmenet watched them as they knelt or sat cross-legged upon the cushions set about the table. These days worry lined the faces of most everyone, but the nine of them seemed particularly upset. The Nascenti spent their time in the city, organizing the Zaudunyani, consecrating new Judges, and laying the foundation of the Ministrate. They knew better than most, she imagined, the straits of the Holy War.

  Raised about the northern face of the Heights of the Bull, the terrace overlooked a greater part of the city. The labyrinthine streets and byways of the Bowl, which formed the heart of Caraskand, ascended into the distance, hanging from the surrounding heights like a cloth draped between five stumps. The ruined shell of the Citadel reared to the east, the wandering lines of her blasted walls etched in moonlight. To the northwest, the Sapatishah’s Palace sprawled across the Kneeling Heights, which were low enough to afford glimpses of lamp-lit figures over rose marble walls. The night sky was rutted by black clouds, but the Nail of Heaven was clear, brilliant, sparkling from the dark depths of the firmament.

  A sudden hush fell across the Nascenti; as one they lowered their chins to their breast. Turning, Esmenet saw Kellhus stride from the golden interior of the adjacent apartments. He cast a fan of shadows before him as he walked past a row of flaming braziers. Two bare-chested Kianene boys flanked him, bearing censers that boiled with steely blue smoke. Serwë followed in his train, along with several men in hauberks and battle helms.

  Esmenet cursed herself for catching her breath. How could he make her heart pound so? Glancing down, she realized she’d folded her right hand over the tattoo marring the back of her left.

  Those days are over.

  She stepped from the garden and greeted him at the head of the table. He smiled, and holding the fingers of her left hand, seated her to his immediate right. His white silk robe swayed in the breeze that touched them all, and for some reason, the Twin Scimitars embroidered about its hems and cuffs did not seem incongruous in the least. Someone, Serwë likely, had knotted his hair into a Galeoth war braid. His beard, which he now wore plaited and square-cut like the Ainoni, gleamed bronze in the light of nearby braziers. As always, the long pommel of his sword jutted high over his left shoulder. Enshoiya, the Zaudunyani now called it: Certainty.

  His eyes twinkled beneath heavy brows. When he smiled, nets of wrinkles flexed about the corners of his eyes and mouth—a gift of the desert sun.

  “You,” he said, “are branches of me.” His voice was deep and manytimbred, and somehow seemed to speak from her breast. “Of all peoples only you know what comes before. Only you, the Thanes of the Warrior-Prophet, know what moves you.”

  While he briefed the Nascenti on those matters he and she had already discussed, Esmenet found herself thinking about Xinemus’s camp, about the differences between those gatherings and these. Mere months had passed, and yet it seemed she’d lived an entire life in the interim. She frowned at the strangeness of it: Xinemus holding court, calling out in mirth and mischief; Achamian squeezing her hand too tightly, as he sometimes did, searching for her eyes too often; and Kellhus with Serwë … still little more than a promise, though it seemed Esmenet had
loved him even then—secretly.

  For some strange reason, she was overcome by a sudden yen to see the Marshal’s wry Captain, Bloody Dench. She remembered her final glimpse of him, as he waited with Zenkappa for Xinemus to rejoin them, his short-cropped hair silver in the Shigeki sun. How black those days now seemed. How heartless and cruel.

  What had happened to Dinchases? And Xinemus …

  Had he found Achamian?

  She suffered a moment of gaping horror … Kellhus’s melodic voice retrieved her.

  “If anything should happen,” he was saying, “you shall hearken to Esmenet as you hearken to me …”

  For I’m his vessel.

  The words triggered an exchange of worried looks. Esmenet could read the sentiment well enough: what could the Master mean, placing a woman before his Holy Thanes? Even after all this time, they still struggled with the darkness of their origins. They had not utterly embraced him, as she had …

  Old bigotries die hard, she thought with more than a little resentment.

  “But Master,” Werjau, the boldest among them, said, “you speak as though you might be taken from us!”

  A heartbeat passed before she realized her mistake: what worried them was what his words implied, not the prospect of subordinating themselves to his Consort.

  Kellhus was silent for a long moment. He looked gravely from face to face. “War is upon us,” he said finally, “from both without and within.”

  Even though she and Kellhus had already discussed the danger he spoke of, chills pimpled her skin. Cries erupted around the table. Esmenet felt Serwë’s hands clasp about her own. She turned to reassure the girl, only to realize that Serwë had reached to reassure her. Just listen, the girl’s beautiful eyes said. The lunatic dimensions of Serwë’s belief had always baffled and troubled Esmenet. The girl’s conviction was more than monumental—it seemed continuous with the ground, it was so immovable.