He fixed his gaze on the bristling landscape of Conphas’s army.
Will I kill you today, Exalt-General? I think so.
Sudden shouts drew his attention to the left. Across the congestion of arms and horsemen, he saw Xunnurit’s standard waving against the sky. Dyed horsetails whisked up and down, relaying the order for a slow advance. Far to the north, crowds of Scylvendi had already begun filing down the slopes. Crying out to his tribesmen, Cnaiür spurred his mount toward the river, trampling the clover and scattering the bees. The dew had burned off, and the grasses now rasped about his horse’s shins. The air smelled of warming earth.
The Scylvendi horde gradually enveloped the eastern valley. Pressing through the scrub of the floodplain, Cnaiür glimpsed Bannut and Yursalka racing toward him across open ground, their leather bowcases swinging from their hips, their shields bouncing on their horses’ rumps. They leapt some scrub, and Bannut was nearly unhorsed by a shallow ravine on the far side. Within moments they were reining their mounts parallel to Cnaiür.
For some reason, they seemed even more ill at ease than usual. After a conspiratorial glance at Bannut, Yursalka fixed Cnaiür with expressionless eyes. “We’re to take the southernmost of the fords, then position ourselves opposite the Nasueret Column, on the enemy’s left. If Conphas advances before we’ve reformed, we’re to withdraw to the south and harass his flanks.”
“Xunnurit himself told you this?”
Yursalka nodded carefully. Bannut glared, his old eyes bright with malicious self-satisfaction.
Rocking with his horse’s gait, Cnaiür peered over the Kiyuth, sifting through the crimson banners of the Imperial Army’s left. He found the standard of the Nasueret Column quickly: the Black Sun of Nansur halved by an eagle’s wing, with the Sheyic symbol for nine embroidered in gold below.
Bannut cleared his throat again. “The Ninth Column,” he said approvingly. “Our King-of-Tribes honours us.” Though traditionally stationed on the Empire’s Kianene frontier, the men of the Nasueret were rumoured to be among the Imperial Army’s finest.
“Either that or he murders us,” Cnaiür amended. Perhaps Xunnurit hoped hard consequences would follow from the hard words they’d traded the previous day.
They all want me dead.
Yursalka snorted something unintelligible, then spurred away, seeking, Cnaiür imagined, more honourable company. Bannut continued at Cnaiür’s side, saying nothing.
When the Kiyuth grew near enough for them to smell its glacial ancestry, several detachments broke from the Scylvendi line and ploughed across the river’s many fords. Cnaiür watched these cohorts apprehensively, knowing their immediate fortune would reveal much of Conphas’s intentions. The Nansur skirmishers on the river’s far side fell back before them, then broke and bolted, pelted by volleys of arrows. The Scylvendi pursued them toward the bulk of the Imperial Army, then hooked into a gallop parallel to the Nansur line, firing clouds of arrows from the backs of hard-running horses. More and more cohorts joined them, guiding their horses with only spur, cry, and knee. Soon, thousands were sweeping across the Imperial lines.
Cnaiür and his Utemot crossed the Kiyuth under cover of these marauders, trailing drapes of water as they climbed the far bank, then rode hard to their new position opposite the Nasueret. Cnaiür knew the river crossing and subsequent redeployment would be a critical time, and throughout he kept expecting to hear horns sound the Nansur advance. But the Exalt-General kept his columns leashed, allowing the Scylvendi to assemble in a vast crescent along the back of the river.
What was Conphas doing?
Across ground and grasses as uneven as a juvenile’s beard, the Imperial Army awaited them. Cnaiür gazed across row after row of shield-bearing figures, heavy with armour and insignia, wearing red leather skirts and iron-banded harnesses trimmed by mail. Innumerable and nameless, soon to die for their trespasses.
Horns brayed. Thousands of swords beat as one. And yet it seemed an uncanny silence had settled upon the field, a collective intake of breath.
A breeze funnelled through the valley, tugging at the smell of horses, sweaty leather, and unwashed men. The chafe and clank of scabbards against harnesses reminded Cnaiür of his own armour. His hands as light as air-filled bladders, he checked the straps of his white-enamelled battlecap, a trophy of his victory over Hasjinnet at Zirkirta, then the lacings of his iron-ringed brigandine. He swung from his waist in his saddle, both to limber his muscles and to ease the tension. He whispered a memorial to the Dead-God.
Horsehair signals were traded between the massed tribes, and Cnaiür barked commands to his kinsmen. The first wave of lancers formed abreast of him. Shields were strung from necks.
Sensing Bannut’s scrutiny, Cnaiür turned to him, found himself disquieted by his expression.
“You,” the old warrior said, “shall be measured this day, Cnaiür urs Skiötha. Measure is unceasing.”
Cnaiür gaped at the man, overcome by fury and astonishment. “This is not the place, Uncle, to revisit old wounds.”
“I can think of no better place.”
Concerns, suspicions, and premonitions beset him, but there was no time. The skirmishers were retiring. In the distance, lines of horsemen peeled away from the greater horde, pacing toward the phalanxes of the Imperial Army. The pilgrimage had ended; the worship was about to begin.
With a shout, he led the Utemot forward at a trot. Something akin to fear clutched him, a sense of falling, as though from a precipice. Within moments they found themselves within range of the Nansur bowmen. He cried out, and his lancers spurred to a gallop, bracing shields against shoulders and saddle horns. They crashed through a thicket of stunted sumacs. The first shafts whistled among them, tearing air like cloth, thudding into shield, ground, flesh. One clipped his shoulder, another punched a finger’s length through the laminated leather of his shield.
They thundered across a stretch of level turf, gathering fatal momentum. More arrows descended upon them, and they were fewer. Horse shrieks, the clatter of shafts, then only the raw rumble of a thousand hoofs across the turf. His head low, Cnaiür watched the infantrymen of the Nasueret Column brace themselves. Pikes were lowered, pikes longer than any he’d ever seen. His breath caught in hesitation. But he spurred his horse faster, couching his lance, howling the Utemot battle cry. His kinsmen answered, and the air shivered, “War and worship!” Clumped grasses and wildflowers hurtled beneath him. The wall of pikes and shields and soldiers rushed closer. His tribe rode with him, outstretched like two great arms.
Taken in the chest, his horse toppled, gouged the steppe grass. He crashed against turf and shins, wrenched his shoulder and neck. For an instant he was tangled in locked limbs. He winced beneath a great crushing shadow, but nothing came and he pushed free, tossing away his shield, drawing his sword, struggling to make sense of the confusion around him. Close enough to touch, a riderless horse stamped in wild circles, kicking into the Nansur. It was hacked to death by men packed so tight they seemed hammered together by nails.
The Nansur ranks were largely unbroken, and they fought with stubborn professionalism. The Utemot suddenly seemed wild and thin before them, impoverished in their undyed leather and looted armour. To either side his kinsmen were being cut down. He saw Okkiür, his cousin, pulled from his horse by hooks and cudgelled on the ground. He glimpsed his nephew Maluti thrash beneath falling swords, still shrieking the Utemot battle cry. Had so many already fallen?
He glanced at the expanse behind them, expecting to find the second wave of Utemot lancers. Save for a lone horse limping toward the river, the ground was empty. He saw his tribesmen in the distance, milling in their original positions, watching when they should have been riding. What was happening?
Treachery?
Treachery! He looked about for Bannut, found him curled in the grasses nearby, fumbling with his stomach as though he cradled a toy. A Nansur stumbled from the surrounding melee, drew his shortsword back to thrust into Bannut’s throat.
Cnaiür scooped a weighted javelin from the ground and flung it. The soldier saw him, foolishly drew up his shield. The javelin punched through the top corner, dragged the shield down with its weight. Cnaiür leapt toward him, seized the javelin, then violently heaved shield and man forward. The infantryman lurched to his hands and knees, scrambled beneath Cnaiür’s raised broadsword, then slumped to the ground, headless.
Cnaiür grabbed Bannut by the harness and dragged him from the fracas. The old warrior cackled, blood bubbling between his lips. “Xunnurit remembered well the favour Yursalka did him!” he cried.
Cnaiür stared at him in horror. “What have you done?”
“Killed you! Killed the kin-slayer! The weeping faggot who’d be our chieftain!”
Horns blared through the uproar. Between heartbeats, Cnaiür saw his father in Bannut’s grizzled face. But Skiötha had not died like this.
“I watched you that night!” Bannut wheezed, his voice growing more pinched with agony. “I saw the truth of what”—his body cramped and shook about a wracking cough—“what happened those thirty years past. I told all that truth! Now the Utemot will be delivered from the oppression of your disgrace!”
“You know nothing!” Cnaiür cried.
“I know all! I saw the way you looked at him. I know he was your lover!”
Lover?
Bannut’s eyes were beginning to glass over, as though he looked into something bottomless. “Yours is the name of our shame,” he gasped. “By the Dead-God I would see it blotted out!”
Cnaiür’s blood felt like gravel. He turned away to blink back tears.
Weeper.
Through a screen of straining, hacking figures, he glimpsed Sakkeruth, a childhood friend, topple from his rearing mount. He remembered spearing fish with him beneath broad summer skies. Remembered . . .
No.
Faggot. Is this what they thought?
“No!” he snarled, turning back to Bannut. The old iron rage had at last found him. “I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men.” He speared the turf with his sword and seized the astonished man about the throat. “None have murdered so many! None bear as many holy scars! I’m the measure of disgrace and honour. Your measure!” His uncle gagged, flailed at him with blood-oily palms. Then he went slack. Strangled. The way the girl children of slaves were strangled.
Retrieving his broadsword, Cnaiür stumbled from his uncle’s corpse, looked about vacantly. The carcasses of horses and men embroidered the ground before him. Reduced to clots of unhorsed warriors, his Utemot recoiled from the bristling wall of infantrymen. Several howled to their distant kinsmen, realizing they’d been stranded. A shameless handful broke and ran. Others gathered about Cnaiür.
Imperial officers bawled over the din. The Nansur ranks advanced. With his left hand outstretched before him, Cnaiür fell into stance, raising his broadsword high, until the sun flashed along its smeared length. The infantrymen picked their way over the fallen, their shields emblazoned with Black Suns, their faces masks of grim jubilation. Cnaiür saw one spear Bannut’s body. More hollering broke out among the officers, hoarse over the braying of distant horns. Abruptly, the forward three ranks charged.
Cnaiür fell to a crouch, hacked at the greaved shin of the first man to rush him. The fool went down. He kicked his shield upwards, punched his blade through the bands of his armour just beneath the armpit. Exultation. He jerked his broadsword free, swept around and hacked at another, breaking his collarbone through his harness. Cnaiür cried out and raised his scarred arms, mighty tokens of his bloody past.
“Who?” he roared in their womanish tongue. “Who among you shall take the knife to my arms?”
A third fell, vomiting blood, but the rest closed on him in numbers, led by a stone-eyed officer who bellowed, “Die!” with every stroke of his sword. Cnaiür obliged him, shearing away part of his jaw with his lower teeth. Undeterred, the others crowded him with spears and shields, pressing him backward. Another officer rushed him, a young noble with the motif of House Biaxi across his shield. Cnaiür could see the terror in his eyes, the realization that the hulking Scylvendi before him was something more than human. Cnaiür swatted the shortsword from his feminine hands, savagely kicked him, struck. The boy fell backward, shrieking, slapping at the blood that jetted from his groin as though it were fire.
They jostled before him, now as eager to avoid as to close with him. “Where are your mighty warriors?” Cnaiür screamed. “Show me your mighty warriors!” His limbs fevered by all-conquering hatred, he cut them down, weak and strong alike, fighting like one mad with heartbreak, hacking shields until arms were broken, pounding figures until they stumbled and spouted plumes of blood.
The advancing ranks engulfed them, but still Cnaiür and his Utemot killed and killed, until the turf beneath their feet became bloody muck, treacherous with corpses. The Nansur relented, scrambled back several paces, gaping at the Utemot chieftain. Sheathing his broadsword, Cnaiür vaulted the bodies heaped before him. He caught a wounded straggler by the throat, crushed his windpipe. Roaring, he heaved the thrashing man above his head.
“I am the reaver!” he cried. “The measure of all men!” He sent the body crashing at their feet. “Is there no cock among you?” He spat, then laughed at their astonished silence. “All cunts, then.” He shook the blood from his mane, raised his broadsword anew.
Panicked shouts erupted among the Nansur. Several threw themselves against the men packed behind, mad to escape his deranged aspect. Then rumbling hoofs breached the din of the greater battle, and all heads turned. More Utemot horsemen exploded into their midst, impaling some Nansur on long lances, trampling others. There was a brief moment of pitched melee, and Cnaiür hammered down two more, his sword now blunted to an edged iron pipe. Then the men of the Nasueret Column were fleeing, casting away weapons and shields as they ran.
Cnaiür and his kinsmen found themselves alone, chests heaving, blood streaming from unstaunched wounds. “Ayaaah!” they cried as cohort after wild cohort galloped by them. “War and worship!”
But Cnaiür ignored them, sprinting instead to the top of a low knoll. The valley opened before him, churning with dust, smoke, and countless thousands of warring men. For a moment the enormity of the spectacle struck him breathless. Far to the north, he saw divisions of Scylvendi horsemen, dark through skirts of dust, wheel and charge what looked to be a stranded Nansur column. Following the horsehide standard of the Munuäti, companies of horsemen streamed east between the isolated column and the centre, riding down fleeing men. At first he thought they raced toward the Nansur encampment, but a glance told him this was not so. The camp already burned, and Cnaiür could see Nansur slaves, priests, and craftsmen dangle and drop from the palisades. Someone had already raised the standard of the Pulit, the southernmost of the Scylvendi tribes, on the forward timber gate. So quickly . . .
He scrutinized the madness of the centre. Someone had set the intervening grasses aflame, and through the smoke he saw Xunnurit’s Akkunihor pressed against the glittering black waters of the Kiyuth, assailed on all sides by the Eothic Guard and elements of a column he could not identify. Dead horses and men littered the great swath of land between his position and Xunnurit’s desperate stand. Where were the Kuöti? The Alkussi? Cnaiür turned west, to the far side of the river—the wrong side—and saw a pitched battle along the wrinkled crest of the valley. He identified the Kidruhil, the elite Imperial Heavy Cavalry, overwhelming a shattered cohort of Scylvendi. He saw Nymbricani horsemen, the Emperor’s Norsirai auxiliaries, disappear over a ridge farther north and the perfect phalanxes of what looked like two intact columns marching in their wake, one of them bearing Nasueret standards—
But how could that be? His Utemot had just annihilated the Nasueret. Hadn’t they? And hadn’t the Kidruhil been positioned on the Nansur’s extreme right flank, the position of honour among the Ketyai? The position facing the Pulit . . .
He could hear his men call to him, but he ignored t
hem. What was Conphas doing?
A hand clasped his shoulder. It was Balait, his second wife’s eldest brother, someone he’d always respected. The man’s corselet had been severed and now hung from one shoulder. He still wore his spiked battlecap, but blood coursed down his left temple, drawing a line through the spatter.
“Come, Cnaiür,” he gasped. “Othkut has brought us horses. The field is confused; we must reassemble to strike.”
“Something’s wrong, Bala,” Cnaiür replied.
“But the Nansur are doomed . . . Their camp already burns.”
“Yet they own the centre.”
“All the better! The flanks are ours, and what remains of their army has been drawn onto open ground. Even now, Oknai One-Eye leads his Munuäti to relieve Xunnurit! We shall close about them as a fist!”
“No,” Cnaiür said blankly, watching the Kidruhil battle their way over the crest behind them. “Something’s wrong! Conphas gave us the flanks so that he could seize the centre . . .” That would explain how the Pulit had taken the encampment so quickly. Conphas had withdrawn his Kidruhil at the battle’s onset to throw them against the Scylvendi centre. And he’d given his Columns false standards in order to deceive them into thinking he’d deployed his main strength across his flanks. The Exalt-General wanted the centre.
“Maybe,” Balait offered, “he thought taking the King-of-Tribes would throw us into disarray.”
“No. He’s not so foolish as that . . . Look. He’s thrown all his horse into the centre . . . as though he chases something.” Cnaiür worked his jaw, peering across the vista, his eyes sifting through scene after far-away scene of violence. The sharp threshing of swords. The murderous heave and hammer of war’s bloody work. And beneath its beauty something unfathomable, as though the field itself had become a living sign, a pictogram like those the outlanders used to freeze breath onto stone and parchment.
The Darkness That Comes Before Page 18