The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  The air thrummed with hooves and heathen shouts.

  “Run!” he barked at her. “Run!”

  Veils of dust swept over him.

  He turned, laughing.

  Drawing his broadsword, he ducked a sweeping scimitar, then jabbed his assailant in the armpit. He swept his sword about and shattered the blade of the next, splitting the man’s cheek. When the fool reached up, Cnaiür punched through his silvered corselet. Blood fountained like wine from a punctured skin. He caught the shield of the next, swinging his sword like a mace. The man toppled backward over his horse’s rump, somehow landed on his hands and knees. His helm bounced from his head, between stamping hooves. Flipping his grip, Cnaiür stabbed down through the back of his skull.

  He stood in his stirrups, swung the blood from his blade into the faces of the astonished Kianene.

  “Who?” he roared in his sacred tongue.

  He hacked at the riderless horses barring him from his foe. One went down thrashing. Another screamed and bucked into the knotted heathen ranks.

  “I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha,” he bellowed, “most violent of all men!”

  His heaving black stepped forward.

  “I bear your fathers and your brothers upon my arms!”

  Heathen eyes flashed white from the shadows of their silvered helms. Several cried out.

  “Who,” Cnaiür roared, so fiercely all his skin seemed throat, “will murder me?”

  A piercing, feminine cry. Cnaiür glanced back, saw the nameless woman swaying at the entrance of the nearest tent. She gripped the knife he’d thrown her, gestured with it for him to follow. For an instant, it seemed he’d always known her, that they’d been lovers for long years. He saw sunlight flash through the far side of the tent where she’d cut open the canvas. Then he glimpsed a shadow from above, heard something not quite …

  Several Kianene cried out—a different terror.

  Cnaiür thrust his left hand beneath his girdle, clutched tight his father’s Trinket.

  For an instant he met the woman’s wide uncomprehending eyes, and over her shoulder, those of her baby boy as well … Somehow he knew that now—that he was a son.

  He tried to cry out.

  They became shadows in a cataract of shimmering flame.

  One space.

  And the crossings were infinite.

  Kellhus had been five when he’d first set foot outside Ishuäl. Pragma Uän had gathered him and the others his age, bid them all hang onto a long rope. Then without explanation he led them down the terraces, out the Fallow Gate, and into the forest, stopping only when he reached a grove of mighty oaks. He allowed them to wander for a time—to sensitize themselves, Kellhus now knew. To the chattering of one hundred and seventeen birds. To the smells of moss along bark, of humus wheezing beneath little sandals. To the colours and the shapes: white bands of sunlight against copper gloom, black roots.

  But for all this roaring and remarkable newness, Kellhus could think of nothing save the Pragma. In fact, he fairly trembled with anticipation. Everyone had seen Pragma Uän with the older boys. Everyone knew he taught what the older boys called the ways of limb …

  Of battle.

  “What do you see?” the old man finally asked, looking to the canopy above them.

  There were many eager answers. Leaves. Branches. Sun.

  But Kellhus saw more. He noticed the dead limbs, the scrum of competing branch and twig. He saw slender trees, mere striplings, ailing in the shadow of giants.

  “Conflict,” he said.

  “And how is that, young Kellhus?”

  Terror and exultation—the passions of a child. “The tr-trees, Pragma,” he stammered. “They war for … for space.”

  “Indeed,” Pragma Uän replied, his manner devoid of anything save confirmation. “And this, children, is what I shall teach you. How to be a tree. How to war for space …”

  “But trees don’t move,” another said.

  “They move,” the Pragma replied, “but they are slow. A tree’s heart beats but once every spring, so it must war in all directions at once. It must branch and branch until it obscures the sky. But you, your hearts beat many, many times, you need only war in one direction at a time. This is how men seize space.”

  As old as he was, the Pragma seemed to pop to his feet. He brandished a stick.

  “Come,” he said, “all of you. Try to touch my knees.”

  And Kellhus rushed with the others through the dappled sunlight. He squealed with frustration and delight each time the stick thwacked or poked him back. He watched in wonder as the old man danced and swirled, sent children flopping onto their rumps or rolling like badgers through the leaves. Not one touched his legs. Not one so much as stepped into the circle described by his stick.

  Pragma Uän had been a triumphant tree. The absolute owner of one space.

  Wrapped in tattered brown cloth, bearing shields of lacquered camel hides, the Khirgwi beat their lurching camels forward, brandished their wild scimitars. The air screamed with their ululations.

  Kellhus raised his Dûnyain steel.

  They laughed and sneered. Desert dark faces, so certain …

  They came galloping toward the circle described by his sword.

  Cnaiür kicked at his saddle and the blasted hulk of his horse. He pushed himself from the ash, blinked stinging smoke from his eyes. Ringing. Aside from smoke and the stink of scorched meat, the whole world was ringing. He could hear nothing else.

  He found the burnt husks that had been the nameless woman and her child. He retrieved his knife, holding it gingerly by its charred grip.

  It burned and did not burn, in the strange way sorcerous heat seeped into the real.

  He began walking northward, passing among the sagging, curse-embroidered pavilions of the Ainoni. Pictogram banners fluttered in the wind. Behind him, Scarlet Schoolmen strode across the sky. Pillars of fire whooshed soundlessly. Lightning sheeted the distances. It seemed that men should shriek.

  And he thought, Serwë …

  People, elated, terrified, bewildered, crowded about him. Though their mouths opened and their tongues flapped against their teeth, Cnaiür heard only ringing. He pressed them aside with hollow arms, continued walking.

  Something ached in his left hand. He opened it, saw his father’s Chorae. Dull even in sunlight, cluttered with senseless script, a grimy iron eyeball. Twice it had saved him.

  He pressed it back beneath his girdle.

  Then he heard the crack of lightning. The ringing faded into a piercing whine—almost inaudible. He paused, closed his eyes. Screams and shouts, this one far, that one near, very near. They etched the distances, sweeping out to the horizon of his hearing, finally vanishing in the ambient roar of battle and sea …

  After a time he found Proyas’s elaborate pavilion occupying a small knoll. How weathered it now looked, he thought, and sadness welled through him. Everything seemed so tired.

  He found the old pavilion he’d shared with Kellhus nearby, creaking and flapping in the wind. A kettle sat next to the blackened pit. Smoke spiralled across the ground, raced between neighbouring tents.

  Cnaiür’s heart hammered. Had she gathered with the other followers to watch the battle from the southwestern edge of the encampment? Had the Kianene taken her? A beauty such as hers was sure to be taken, pregnant or not. She was a plaything of princes. An extraordinary gift!

  A prize!

  The sound of her voice made him jump. A shriek …

  For a moment he stood dumbfounded, unable to move. He heard a masculine voice, soft, cajoling, and yet somehow insanely cruel …

  The ground dipped at Cnaiür’s feet. He stumbled backward. One step. Two. His skin prickled to the point of stinging.

  The Dûnyain.

  “Please!” Serwë screamed. “Pleasssse!”

  The Dûnyain!

  How?

  Cnaiür crept forward. His ribs seemed rock. He couldn’t breathe! The knife trembled in his hand. He reached out,
used the dagger’s shaking tip to part the canvas flap.

  The interior was too dark to see at first. He glimpsed shadows, heard Serwë’s hitching sobs …

  Then he saw her, kneeling naked before a towering shadow. One eye swelled shut, blood pulsing from her scalp and nose, sheeting her neck and her breasts.

  What?

  Without thinking, Cnaiür slipped into the gloom of the pavilion. The air reeked of foul rutting. The Dûnyain whirled, as naked as Serwë, a bloody hand clamped about his engorged member.

  “The Scylvendi,” Kellhus drawled, his eyes blazing with lurid rapture.

  “I didn’t smell you.”

  Cnaiür struck at his heart. Somehow the bloody hand flickered up, grazed his wrist. The knife dug deep just below the Dûnyain’s collar bone.

  Kellhus staggered back, raised his face to the bellied canvas, and screamed what seemed a hundred screams, a hundred voices bound to one inhuman throat. And Cnaiür saw his face open, as though the joints of his mouth were legion and ran from his scalp to his neck. Through steepled features, he saw lidless eyes, gums without lips …

  The thing struck him, and he fell to one knee. He yanked his broadsword clear.

  But it had vanished through the flap, leaping like some kind of beast.

  With their horses dying beneath them, the scattered masses of Ainoni knights soon had no choice but to stand their ground. More and more, the Kianene rode howling into their midst, making targets of their white-painted faces in the sunny murk. Blood clotted luxurious square-cut beards. Pictogram standards were toppled and trampled. Dust transformed sweat into grime. Seriously wounded, Sepherathindor was carried from the forward ranks, where he “laughed with Sarothesser,” as all Ainoni caste-nobles strove to do when certain of death.

  Some, like Galgota, Palatine of Eshganax, charged down the slopes to escape, abandoning those kinsmen and clients who’d been unhorsed. Some, like cruel Zursodda, bled his people with reckless counter-attacks until scarcely a mounted man remained. But others, like hard-hearted Uranyanka, or fair Chinjosa, the Count-Palatine of Antanamera, simply awaited each heathen onslaught. They bellowed encouragement to their men, disputed every dusty step. Again and again the Kianene charged. Horses screamed. Lances cracked. Men yelled and wailed. Scimitars and longswords rang across the slopes. And each time the Fanim reeled back, astounded by these defeated men who refused to be defeated.

  To the northwest, the Khirgwi assaulted the Inrithi with relentless and sometimes deranged fury. Many actually leapt from their taller camels to tackle dumbstruck knights from their saddles. Kushigas, the Conriyan Palatine of Annand, was killed this way, as was Inskarra, the Thunyeri Earl of Skagwa. Proyas was encircled, as were thousands of Thunyeri behind their shield-walls. The Khirgwi swept about Anwurat and descended on the fortress’s Conriyan besiegers, putting them to rout. And they charged the rambling hillock where the Battlemaster had planted his Swazond Standard.

  The Grandees of Eumarna, meanwhile, stormed through the winding alleys and long avenues of the Inrithi encampment, setting tent and pavilion alight, cutting down priests, dragging screaming wives to the ground and violating them. At the sight of smoke pluming from the distant camp, many men in Skauras’s staff fell to their knees and wept, giving praise to the Solitary God. Several hailed the Sapatishah, kissing the ground near his feet.

  Then glittering lights filled the eastern sky. Cinganjehoi’s glorious horsemen had blundered upon the Scarlet Spires … And catastrophe.

  Those who survived the Schoolmen’s initial assault fled in their thousands, most along the broad beaches along the Meneanor, where they were caught by Grandmaster Gotian, Earl Cerjulla, and Earl Athjeäri, leading the Holy War’s reserves. Some nine thousand Inrithi knights descended upon them, hacking them to the sand, driving them back into the crashing surf. Very few escaped.

  The Imperial Kidruhil, meanwhile, broke the bristling collar about the knights of High Ainon. Imbeyan and the Grandees of Enathpaneah were driven back. For the first time there was pause in what would be called the Battle of the Slopes. The dust began to clear … When the situation on the pastures below became clear, shouts of exultation broke from the long and ragged lines of Ainoni knights. With the Kidruhil, they charged as one toward the heights.

  To the north, the ferocious momentum of the Khirgwi was first blunted by the miraculous stand of Prince Kellhus of Atrithau beneath the Swazond Standard, then stopped altogether by the flanking charges of the black-armoured Auglish and Ingraulish knights of Earl Goken and Earl Ganbrota.

  Then the drums of the Fanim fell silent. Far to the northwest, Prince Saubon and Earl Gothyelk had finally broken the Grandees of Shigek and Gedea, whom they chased along the banks of the Sempis. Though vastly outnumbered, Earl Finaöl and his Canutish knights charged the Padirajic Guardsmen protecting the sacred drums. Earl Finaöl himself was speared in the armpit, but his kinsmen won through, and cut down the fleeing drummers. Soon breathless Galeoth and Tydonni footmen were chasing women and slaves through the sprawling Kianene encampment.

  The great Fanim host disintegrated. Crown Prince Fanayal and his Coyauri fled due south, pursued by the Kidruhil along the never-ending beaches. Imbeyan surrendered the heights to the spattered Ainoni and attempted to withdraw through the hills. But Ikurei Conphas had anticipated him, and he was forced to flee with a handful of householders while his Grandees bled themselves charging the hard-bitten veterans of the Selial Column. Though General Bogras was killed by a stray Kianene arrow, the Nansur did not break, and the Enathpaneans were cut down to a man. The Khirgwi fled southwest, pursued by the iron men into the trackless desert.

  Hundreds of Inrithi would be lost for following the tribesmen too far.

  Cnaiür saw his charred knife on the mats.

  Clutching a bloodstained blanket, Serwë staggered after Kellhus, screaming like a lunatic. When Cnaiür restrained her, she began clawing at his eyes. He pushed her to the ground.

  “He neeeeds me,” she wailed. “He’s hurt!”

  “It wasn’t him,” Cnaiür murmured.

  “You killed him! You killed him!”

  “It wasn’t him!”

  “You’re sick! You’re mad!”

  Somehow the old rage swamped his disbelief. He grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her through the flaps. “I’m taking you! You’re my prize!”

  “You’re mad!” she shrieked. “He’s told me everything about you! Everything!”

  He struck her to the ground.

  “What has he said?”

  She wiped blood from her lip, and for the first time didn’t seem afraid. “Why you beat me. Why your thoughts never stray far from me, but return, always return to me in fury. He’s told me everything!”

  Something trembled through him. He raised his fist but his fingers would not clench.

  “What has he said?”

  “That I’m nothing but a sign, a token. That you strike not me, but yourself!”

  “I will strangle you! I will snap your neck like a cat’s! I will beat blood from your womb!”

  “Then do it!” she shrieked. “Do it, and be done with it!”

  “You are my prize! My prize! To do with as I please!”

  “No! No! I’m not your prize! I’m your shame! He told me this!”

  “Shame? What shame? What has he said?”

  “That you beat me for surrendering as you surrendered! For fucking him the way you fucked his father!”

  She still lay on the ground, legs askew. So beautiful. Even beaten and broken. How could anything human be so beautiful?

  “What has he said?” he asked blankly.

  He. The Dûnyain.

  She was sobbing now. Somehow the knife had appeared in her hands. She held it to her throat, and he could see the perfect curve of her neck reflected. He glimpsed the single swazond upon her forearm.

  She has killed!

  “You’re mad!” she wept. “I’ll kill myself! I’ll kill myself! I’m not your prize! I’m his! HIS!
”

  Serwë …

  Her fist hooked inward. The blade parted flesh.

  But somehow he’d captured her wrist. He wrenched the knife from her hand.

  He left her weeping outside the Dûnyain’s pavilion. He stared out over the trackless Meneanor as he wandered between the tents, through the growing crowds of jubilant Inrithi.

  So unnatural, he thought, the sea …

  When Conphas found Martemus, the sun was an orb smouldering in the cloudless skies of the west, gold across pale blue—colours stamped into every man’s heart. With a small cadre of bodyguards and officers, the Exalt-General had ridden to the hillock where the accursed Scylvendi had established his command. On the summit, he found the General sitting cross-legged beneath the Scylvendi’s leaning standard, surrounded by ever widening circles of Khirgwi dead. The man stared at the sunset as though he hoped to go blind. He had removed his helmet, and his short, silvered hair fluttered in the breeze. The man looked at once younger, Conphas thought, and yet more fatherly without his helmet.

  Conphas dismissed his entourage, then dismounted. Without a word he strode to the General, drew his longsword, then hacked at the Swazond Standard’s wooden pole. Once, twice … With a crack, the wind bore the obscene banner slowly down.

  Satisfied, Conphas stood over his wayward General, gazing out to the sunset as though to share in whatever nonsense Martemus thought he saw.

  “He’s not dead,” Martemus said.

  “Pity.”

  Martemus said nothing.

  “Do you remember,” Conphas asked, “that time we rode across the fields of dead Scylvendi after Kiyuth?”

  Martemus’s eyes flickered to him. He nodded.

  “Do you recall what I said to you?”

  “You said war was intellect.”

  “Are you a casualty of that war, Martemus?”