She let me into her bed, Esmenet thought. For love of him.
“Who assails us?” Gayamakri was crying.
“Conphas,” Werjau spat. “Who else? He’s been working against us since Shigek …”
“Then we must strike!” white-haired Kasaumki shouted. “The Holy War must be cleansed before the siege can be broken! Cleansed!”
“Errant madness!” Hilderuth barked. “We must negotiate … You must go to them, Master.”
Kellhus silenced them with little more than a look.
It frightened her, sometimes, the way he effortlessly commanded these men. But then it could be no other way. Where others blundered from moment to moment, scarcely understanding their own wants, hurts, or hopes, let alone those of others, Kellhus caught each instant—each soul—like a fly. His world, Esmenet had realized, was one without surfaces, one where everything—from word and expression to war and nation—was smoky glass, something to be peered through …
He was the Warrior-Prophet … Truth. And Truth commanded all things.
She quashed a sudden urge to hug herself in joy and astonishment. She was here—here!—at the right hand of the most glorious soul to have walked the world. To kiss Truth. To take Truth between her thighs, to feel him press deep into her womb. It was more than a boon, more than a gift …
“She smiles,” Werjau exclaimed. “How can she smile at a time such as this?”
Esmenet glanced at the burly Galeoth, flushing in embarrassment.
“Because,” Kellhus said indulgently, “she sees what you cannot, Werjau.”
But Esmenet wasn’t so sure … She simply daydreamed, didn’t she? Werjau had simply caught her mooning over Kellhus like an addled juvenile …
But then, why did the ground thrum so? And the stars … What did she see?
Something … Something without compare.
Her skin tingled. The Thanes of the Warrior-Prophet watched her, and she looked through their faces, glimpsed their yearning hearts. To think! So many deluded souls, living illusory lives in unreal worlds! So many! It both boggled her and broke her heart.
And at the same time, it was her triumph.
Something absolute.
Her heart fluttered, pinioned by Kellhus’s shining gaze. She felt at once smoke and naked flesh—something seen through and something desired.
There’s more than me … More than this—yes!
“Tell us, Esmi,” Kellhus hissed through Serwë’s mouth. “Tell us what you see!”
There’s more than them.
“We must take the knife to them,” she said, speaking as she knew her Master would have her speak. “We must show them the demons in their midst.”
So much more!
The Warrior-Prophet smiled with her own lips.
“We must kill them,” her voice said.
The thing called Sarcellus hurried through the dark streets toward the hill where the Exalt-General and his Columns had quartered. The letter Conphas had sent was simple: Come quickly. Danger stalks us. The man had neglected to sign the letter, but then he didn’t need to. His meticulous handwriting was unmistakable.
Sarcellus turned down a narrow street that smelled of unwashed Men and animal grease. More derelict Inrithi, he realized. As the Holy War starved, more and more Men of the Tusk had turned to an animal existence, hunting rats, eating things that should not be eaten, and begging …
The starving wretches came to their feet as he walked between them. They congregated about him, holding out filthy palms, tugging at his sleeves. “Mercy …” they moaned and muttered. “Merceeee.” Sarcellus thrust them back, made his way forward. He struck several of the more insistent. Not that he begrudged them, for they’d often proved useful when the hunger grew too great. No one missed beggars.
Besides, they were apt reminders of what Men were in truth.
Pale hands reached from looted silks. Piteous cries seethed through the gloom. Then, in the gravelly voice of a drunkard, a rag-draped man before him said, “Truth shines.”
“Excuse me?” Sarcellus snapped, coming to a halt.
He seized the speaker by the shoulders, jerked his head up. Though bitten, the man’s face hadn’t been battered into submission—far from it. His eyes looked hard as iron. This, Sarcellus realized, was a man who battered.
“Truth,” the man said, “does not die.”
“What’s this?” Sarcellus asked, releasing the warrior. “Robbery?”
The iron-eyed man shook his head.
“Ah,” Sarcellus said, suddenly understanding. “You belong to him … What is it you call yourselves?”
“Zaudunyani.” The man smiled, and for a moment, it seemed the most terrifying smile Sarcellus had ever witnessed: pale lips pressed into a thin, passionless line.
Then Sarcellus remembered the purpose of his fashioning. How could he forget what he was? His phallus hardened against his breeches …
“Slaves of the Warrior-Prophet,” he said, sneering. “Tell me, do you know what I am?”
“Dead,” someone said from behind.
Sarcellus laughed, sweeping his gaze over the necks he would break. Oh, rapture! How he would shoot hot across his thigh! He was certain of it!
Yes! With so many! This time …
But his humour vanished when his look returned to the man with the iron eyes. The face beneath his face twitched into a vestigial frown … They’re not af—
Something rained down from above … Suddenly he found himself drenched. Oil! They’d doused him in oil! He looked from side to side, blowing fluid from his lips, shaking it from his fingertips. His would-be assassins, he saw, had been doused as well.
“Fools!” he exclaimed. “Burn me, and you burn too!”
At the last instant, Sarcellus heard the bowstring twang, the flaming arrow zip through the air. He jerked to the side. The shaft struck the iron-eyed man. Flame leapt up his soiled robes, twined about his cowl.
But rather than fall, the man lunged, his eyes fixed upon Sarcellus, his arms closing in an embrace. The shaft snapped between them. Burning breast met burning breast.
Flame consumed them both. The thing called Sarcellus howled, shrieked with its entire face. It stared in horror at the iron eyes, now wreathed in blazing fire …
“Truth …” the man whispered.
Ikurei Conphas. How like a child he looked, his naked form half-twisted in sheets, his face tipped gently back, as though he peered into some distant sky in his dreams. General Martemus stood in the shadows, gazing down at the sleeping form of his Exalt-General, silently rehearsing the command that had brought him here—knife in hand.
“Tonight, Martemus, I will reach out my hand …”
It was unlike any he’d ever been given.
Martemus had spent most of his life following commands, and though he’d unstintingly tried to execute each and every one, even those that proved disastrous, their origins had always haunted him. No matter how tormented or august the channels, the commands he followed had always come from somewhere, from someplace within a beaten and debauched world: peevish officers, spiteful apparati, vainglorious generals … As a result, he had often thought that thought, so catastrophic for a man who’d been bred to serve: I am greater than what I obey.
But the command he followed this night …
“Tonight, Martemus …”
It came from nowhere within the circle of this world.
“I will take a life.”
To answer such a command, he’d decided, was more than merely akin to worship—it was worship made flesh. All meaningful things, it now seemed to him, were but forms of prayer.
Lessons of the Warrior-Prophet.
Martemus raised the silvery blade to a shaft of moonlight, and for a shining moment it seemed to fit Conphas’s throat. In his soul’s eye, he saw the Imperial Heir dead, beautiful lips perched open in the memory of a final breath, glassy eyes staring far, far into the Outside. He saw blood pooled in folded linen sheets, like water between
the petals of a lotus. The General glanced about the luxurious bedchamber, at the dim frescoes prancing along the walls, at the dark carpets swimming across the floor. Would it seem a simpler place, he wondered, when they found his corpse in blooded sheets?
Commands. Through them a voice could become an army, a breath could become blood.
Think of how long you’ve wanted this!
Dread and exhilaration.
You’re a practical man. Strike and be done with it!
Conphas groaned, shifted like a naked virgin beneath the sheets. His eyes fluttered open. Stared at him in dull incomprehension. Flickered to the accusatory knife.
“Martemus?” the young man gasped.
“Truth,” the General grated, striking downward.
But there was a flash, and though his arm continued arcing downward, his hand tumbled outward, the knife slipping from nerveless fingers. Dumbstruck, he raised his arm, stared in horror at the stump of his wrist. Blood spilled along the back of his forearm, dribbled like piss from his elbow.
He whirled to the shadows, saw the glistening demon, its skin puckered by hell-fire, its face impossibly extended, clawing the air like a crab …
“Fucking Dûnyain,” it growled.
Something passed through Martemus’s neck. Something sharp …
Martemus’s head bounced from the side of the mattress into the shadows, a living expression still flexing across its face. Too horrified to cry out, Conphas scrambled through the tangled sheets, away from the figure that had killed his General. The form backed into the blackness of a far corner, but for an instant Conphas glimpsed something naked and nightmarish—something impossible.
“Who?” he cried.
“Silence!” a familiar voice hissed. “It’s me!”
“Sarcellus?”
The horror slackened somewhat. But the bewilderment remained …
Martemus dead?
“This is a nightmare!” Conphas exclaimed. “I still sleep!”
“You don’t sleep, I assure you. Though you came close to never awakening …”
“What happens?” Conphas cried. Despite hollow legs, he strode around the far mahogany post of his bed, stood naked over the crumpled form of his General. The man still wore his field uniform. “Martemus?”
“Belonged to him,” the voice from the dark corner said.
“Prince Kellhus,” Conphas said in dawning recognition. Suddenly he understood all that he needed to know: a battle had just been fought—and won. He grinned in relief—and wondrous admiration. The man had used Martemus! Martemus!
And here I thought I’d won the battle for his soul!
“I need a lantern,” he snapped, recovering his imperious mien. What was that smell?
“Strike no light!” the disembodied voice cried. “They attacked me tonight as well.”
Conphas scowled. Saviour or not, Sarcellus had no business barking commands at his betters.
“As you can see,” he said graciously, so as not to imply ingratitude, “my most trusted General is dead. I will have light.” He turned to call for his guards …
“Don’t be a fool! We must act fast, otherwise the Holy War is doomed!”
Conphas paused, looked to the corner concealing the Shrial Knight, his head tilted in morbid curiosity. “They burned you, didn’t they?” He took two steps toward the shadows. “You smell of pork.”
There was a rattle, like that of a bolting beast, and something slick barrelled across the bedchamber, disappeared out the balcony …
Roaring for his guards, Conphas raced after him, waving past the gossamer sheers. Though he saw nothing in the Caraskand night, he noticed the spray of Martemus’s blood across his arms. He heard his guards explode into the room behind him, grinned at their shouts of dismay.
“General Martemus,” he called, stepping out of the chill air into their astonished presence, “was a traitor. Bring his body to the engines. See that it’s cast to the heathens, where it belongs. Then send for General Sompas.”
The truce had ended.
“And the General’s head,” his towering Captain, Triaxeras, asked in an unsteady voice, “do you wish that cast to the heathens as well?”
“No,” Ikurei Conphas said, slipping into a robe held out by one of his haeturi. He laughed at the absurdity of the man’s head, which lay like a cabbage near the foot of his bed. It was odd how he could feel so little after all they’d suffered together.
“The General never leaves my side, Triah. You know that.”
Fustaras was a zealous soldier. As a Proadjunct in the third maniple of the Selial Column, he was what others in the Imperial Army called a “Threesie,” someone who’d signed a third indenture—a third fourteen-year term—rather than taking his Imperial Pension. Though often the bane of junior officers, Threesies like Fustaras were prized by their generals, so much so they were often issued more shares than their titular superiors. Everyone knew Threesies formed the stubborn heart of any Column. They were the men who saw things through.
Which was why, Fustaras supposed, General Sompas had chosen him and several of his fellows for this mission. “When children go astray,” the man had said, “they must be beaten.”
Dressed, like most Men of the Tusk, in looted Kianene robes, Fustaras and his band prowled the street commonly known as the Galleries—so named, Fustaras supposed, because of the innumerable, tenement-lined alleyways that wound about it. Located in the southeast quarter of the Bowl, it was a notorious gathering place for the Zaudunyani—the cursed heretics. Many would crowd the tenement rooftops and call out prayers to the nearby Heights of the Bull, where that obscene fraud, Prince Kellhus of Atrithau, continued to cower. Others would listen to deranged enthusiasts—they called them Judges—preach from the mouth of various alleyways.
Following his instructions to the letter, Fustaras halted and accosted a Judge where the heretics were most concentrated. “Tell me, friend,” he asked in an amiable manner. “What do they say of Truth?”
The emaciated man turned, his pate gleaming pink through a froth of wild, white hair. Without hesitation, he replied, “That it shines.”
As though reaching for coppers to toss to beggars, Fustaras clasped the ash club hanging beneath his cloak. “Are you sure?” he asked, his demeanour at once casual and dangerous. He hefted the polished haft. “Perhaps it bleeds.”
The man’s sparkling gaze darted from Fustaras’s eyes to the club, then back. “That too,” he said in the rigid manner of someone resolved to master their quailing heart. He pitched his voice so those nearby could hear. “If not, then why the Holy War?”
This particular heretic, Fustaras decided, was too clever by a half. He hoisted the club high, then struck. The man fell to one knee. Blood trickled across his right temple and cheek; he raised two glistening fingers to Fustaras, as though to say, See …
Fustaras struck him again. The Judge fell to the cracked cobble.
Shouts echoed through the street, and Fustaras glimpsed half-starved men running from all directions. Clubs bared, his troop closed in formation about him. Even so, he found himself reconsidering the merits of the General’s plan … There were so many. How could there be so many?
Then he remembered he was a Threesie.
He wiped the flecks of blood from his face with a stained sleeve. “To all those who heed the so-called Warrior-Prophet,” he cried. “Know that we, the Orthodox, will doom you as you have doomed—”
Something exploded against his jaw. He pitched backward, clutching his face, stumbled over the inert form of the Judge. He rolled across the hard ground, felt blood pulse over his fingertips. A rock … Someone had thrown a rock!
His ears ringing, clamour roaring about him, he pressed himself to one knee, then found his feet. Clutching his jaw, he stood, looked around … and saw his men being cut down. Terror bolted through him.
But the general said—
A wild-eyed Thunyeri with three shrivelled Sranc heads jangling between his thighs rea
ched out and seized him by the throat. For an instant, the man looked scarcely human, he was so tall and so thin.
“Reära thuning praussa!” the flaxen-haired barbarian roared, swinging him about. Fustaras glimpsed armed shadows behind, felt his cry gagged into a cough by the thumb crushing his windpipe. “Fraas kaumrut!”
There was an instant where he could actually feel the cold of the iron spear tip against the small of his back. A sensation, like sucking deep icy air. Howling faces. The hot rush of blood.
A wheezing, huffing animal ruled its black heart, mewling in pain and fury.
The thing called Sarcellus shuffled through the ruined precincts of some nameless tabernacle. For three days it had skulked through the dark places of the city, unable to close its face for pain. Now, kicking through a clutch of blackened human skulls, it thought of the snow that whistled across the Plains of Agongorea, of white expanses bruised black by pitch. It could remember leaping through the cool cool drifts, soothed rather than bitten by the icy winds. It could remember blood jetting across pristine white, fading into lines of rose.
But the snow was so very far—as far as Holy Golgotterath!—and the fire, it flared as near as his blistered skin. The fire still burned!
Curse-him-curse-him-curse-him-curse-him! Let me gnaw his tongue! Fuck his wounds!
“Do you suffer, Gaörta?”
It jerked like a cat, peered through the cramped digits of its outer face.
As still and glossy black as a statue of diorite, the Synthese regarded him from the summit of several heaped and charred bodies. Its face looked white and wet and inscrutable in the gloom, like something carved from a potato.
The shell of the Old Father … Aurang, Great General of the World-Breaker, ancient Prince of the Inchoroi.
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