He asked it to take him. It was as close as he had come to prayer since the day his father had died.
Then he heard something. It was almost too broad to be distinguished from the quiet at first, as if wings, spread too wide, simply became the sky. But slowly, contours resolved from the background, a kind of porous roar, something without a singular origin, but rather born of many. For the longest time, he could not place it, and for a panicked moment he even imagined that it came from the city, the combined screams and cries of his people, dying beneath the swords of their dark-skinned conquerors.
Then in a rush he realized…
The storks.
The storks called from across the nocturnal hills. They always did this, every spring. Legend said that each of them sang to a different star, naming their sons and daughters, beseeching, cajoling, guiding the gosling descent of innumerable stick-limbed souls…
Sorweel finally dozed, warm with thoughts of his mother and his first childhood visit to the Viturnal Nesting. He could remember her beauty, wane and pale. He could remember how cold her hand had seemed about his own-as though fate had begun prying loose her grasp on life even then. He could remember gazing in wonder at the storks, untold thousands of them, making white terraces of the hillsides.
"Do you know why they come here, Sorwa?"
"No, Mama…"
"Because our city is the Refuge, the hinge of the Worldly Wheel. They come here as our forefathers once came, Darling…"
Her smile. It had always seemed the world's most obvious thing.
"They come so that their children might be safe."
Later that night, he awoke in jerking horror, like a guard caught napping on the night of a great battle. Everything reeled in alarm and disorder. He sat up with a breath that was a cry, and at the foot of his cot he saw his father sitting, his back turned to him, weeping for his dead wife.
Sorweel's mother.
"It's okay, Da," he rasped, swallowing against his own tears. "She watches… She watches over us still."
At that, the apparition went rigid, in the way of proud men grievously insulted, or of broken men mocked for the loss that had overwhelmed them. Sorweel's throat clenched, became hot and thin as a burning reed, to the point where he could not breathe…
The ghost of Harweel turned its burnt head, revealing a face devoid of hope and eyes. Beetles dropped from the joints of his blasted armour, clicked and scuttled in the dark.
The dead, it grated without sound, cannot see.
Dawn was no more than a band of grey in the east. Still the innumerable camps had been broken, the tents and pavilions felled, the guy-ropes coiled and stacked, the great baggage-trains loaded. Men caught steaming breath in their hands, stared across the frost-barren distances. Beasts of burden stamped and complained in the gloom.
Drawing a team of twenty oxen, the priests delivered the great wain to the highest point in the vicinity, a knoll stumped with ancient foundation stones. The bed of the vehicle had been constructed from timbers typically used in ship building, such was its size. Each of the eight iron-bound wheels stood as tall as olive trees. Slaves clambered across the frame, undoing the knots that fixed the circumfix-brocaded tarp. They rolled the crimson-and-gold covering back, revealing a horizontally suspended cylinder of iron as long as a skiff. Inscriptions adorned its every surface-verses from the Tusk rendered in the many tongues of the Three Seas-lending it an ancient and wrinkled look.
At the command of the High-Priest, a towering eunuch raised the Prayer Hammer… struck. The Interval sounded, a far-reaching, sonorous knell that somehow rose from the silence without breaking it, hung upon the ears before fading in imperceptible degrees.
The assembled Men of the Circumfix looked out to the horizon, waiting. For those across the higher slopes, their numbers scarce seemed possible, so far did the formations reach into the distance. The Nilnameshi phalanxes, with a file of iron-clad mastodons running like a spine through their midst. The Thunyeri with their long-edged axes. The Tydonni with their flaxen beards bound to their girdles. And on and on. High Ainon, Conriya, Nansur, Shigek, Eumarna, Galeoth, Girgash; the hosts of a dozen nations, arrayed about the gleaming standards of their kings, waiting…
Some were already on their knees.
Without warning, the Thunyeri began cursing and waving arms, spitting hatred at the North. Their broken shouts spread, resolved into a thundering chorus, one that soon boomed across the entirety of the Ordeal, even though many knew not the words they recited.
Hur rutwas matal skeel!
Hur rutwas matal skeel!
Men held out their arms as if they could, with their souls, reach out the thousands of miles to Golgotterath and wrestle it to ground with wrath and ardour alone. Each saw the coming tribulation in their soul's eye, and in their heart, their triumph was more than assured, it was decreed…
Hur rutwas matal skeel!
Hur rutwas matal skeel!
The Interval tolled again, resonating through the thousand-throated clamour, and the roar faded into expectant silence. The ghus, the oceanic prayer horns, sounded just as the eastern light etched the horizon in brilliant gold, like a cup tipped to overflowing.
Gold paint gleamed. Circumfix banners hung listless in the chill air. A presentiment passed through the assembly, and the cries of defiance and adulation rose once again, the way wind might coax a second rain from sodden trees. Their Aspect-Emperor-they could feel him.
He walked across the vault of heaven, standing bright in a sun that had yet to reach the masses below. Orange and rose painted the eastern flanges of his white-silk robes. His golden hair and braided beard shone. Starlight flashed from his high-hanging eyes. The Men of the Three Seas howled and roared in adoration-a cacophony of tongues. They reached out, lifted fingertips to touch his remote image.
"Hold my light," the hanging figure called in thunder.
The rim of the sun boiled over the horizon, and morning dawned over the Great Ordeal. Warmth kissed the cheeks of those watching.
"For today we walk the ways of shadow…"
And they fell to their knees-warriors and scribes, kings and slaves, priests and sorcerers, more than two hundred and eighty thousand souls, the greatest gathering of human arms and glory the world had ever seen. So many that it seemed that the floor of the world had dropped with their kneeling. They raised their faces and cried out, for light had come to them…
And the sun had followed.
"Among all peoples, only you have taken up the yoke of apocalypse. Among all peoples, only you…"
For the Sakarpi who watched from their broken battlements, it was a thing of wonder and horror. Many felt a kind of hanging consternation, similar to that which afflicts men who make overbearing declarations. Everyone had assumed the Second Apocalypse and the march to Golgotterath was simply a pretext, that the Great Ordeal was an army of conquest, and the assault on Sakarpus another chapter of the Unification Wars, about which they had heard so many atrocious rumours and tales. But now…
Did they not witness proof of the Aspect-Emperor's word?
No one dared mock. Not a single jeer was raised against the ecstatic roar. They listened to their conqueror's sky-spanning voice, and though the language defeated them, they thought they understood what was said. They knew the scene before them would be celebrated for a thousand years, that accounts of it would be recited in the manner of The Sagas or even The Chronicle of the Tusk.
The day the Great Ordeal marched beyond the frontiers of Men.
The proud and the embittered celebrated, thinking that the Southron Kings marched to their doom. But that evening, long after the last of the long-snaking columns had vanished over the northern crests, thousands of Sakarpi went down into the streets to listen to sermons of the white-and-green-clad Judges. They took the lengths of copper wire that were offered to them, to twist into the shape of Circumfixes.
Afterwards, they clutched their crude tokens the way children sometimes moon over baubles
that have captured their imagination. The Circumfix. A living symbol of a living god. It seemed a wonder, all the stories, all the shining possibilities, the golden clamour of a deeper, more forgiving reality. They walked together in whispering clots, glared at those who upbraided them with as much pity as defensive hostility. Pride, the Judges had told them, was ever the sin of fools.
That night they knelt for what seemed the first time, gave voice to the great unanswered ache in their hearts. They held their Circumfixes hot between moist palms, and they prayed. And the chill that pimpled their skin seemed holy.
They knew what they had seen, what they had felt.
For who could be such a fool as to mistake Truth?
CHAPTER EIGHT
The River Rohil
The will to conceal and the will to deceive are one and the same.
Verily, a secret is naught but a deception that goes unspoken.
A lie that only the Gods can hear.
— Merempompas, Epistemata
Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), The Headwaters of the River Rohil
The plan was to follow the tributaries of the River Rohil all the way into the Osthwai Mountains, then cross the Ochain Passes into the trackless Meцrn Wilderness, where pretty much all the Scalpoi companies that frequented Marrow hunted their inhuman quarry. It was, Kiampas assured Achamian, an old and oft-travelled route. "As reliable as anything in this wicked trade," he had said. Things wouldn't get interesting, he guessed, until they had "slogged past the Fringe," the Fringe being the fluid and ever-receding border of what Sarl called "skinny country"-land ranged by the Sranc.
The first two nights Achamian made and broke his own camp and prepared his own meals. The third night, Sarl invited him to dine at the Captain's fire, which aside from Lord Kosoter and Sarl, included Kiampas and Incariol. Initially, Achamian had not known what to expect, but then, after dining on a repast of venison and boiled sumac shoots, he realized that he had known how it would be all along: Sarl discoursing on and on about everything and anything, with Kiampas contributing cautious asides, the Nonman adding cryptic and sometimes nonsensical observations, and the Captain staring down the night with nary a word.
The invitation was not extended the following night, and Achamian fumed, not because he had been excluded, but because of the hollow-boned loneliness that accompanied the exclusion. Of all the prospective perils that had plagued his soul's eye, heartsickness had been the least of his worries. And yet here he was, four nights out, moping like the outcast runt at temple. He did his resolute best to keep his eyes fixed on his humble fire. But no matter how vehement his curses, he found his gaze ranging to the talk and laughter emanating from the other camps. Obviously frequented by other companies, the entire area had been cleared of deadfall and bracken, so he could clearly see the rest of the Skin Eaters between the ancient elms, their campfires pitched in the depressions between humps of packed earth, interlocked rings of illumination, anemic and orange, tracing trunks and limbs against the black of the greater forest.
Achamian had almost forgotten what it was like, watching men about their fires. The arms folded against the chill. The mouths smiling, laughing, tongue and teeth peeking in and out of the firelight. The gazes hopping from face to face within the cage of camaraderie, only to return to the furnace coals during the inevitable lulls. At first it struck him as something fearful, an exposing of what humans do when they turn their backs to the world, their interiority laid bare to the vaults of dark infinity, cracked open like oysters, with no walls save a warlike nature. But as the moments passed, he found the sight more and more affecting, to the point of feeling old and maudlin. That in a place so vast and so dark creatures this frail would dare gather about sparks called light. They seemed at once precious and imperilled, like jewels mislaid across open ground, something sure to be scooped up by jealous enormities.
His scrutiny did not go unnoticed. The first time he noticed the man watching him, Achamian simply looked away. But when he glanced back moments afterwards, the man was still staring-intently. Achamian recognized him as the Ketyai who had arrived at the company's initial muster in Marrow fussing over the hems of his white Nilnameshi gowns. What might have been a hard moment passed between them, then the man was standing, talking, and nodding in his direction. As one, most of the others in his eclectic group followed his eyes, some craning their necks, some leaning to see past their fellows-a series of hooded, cursory looks. Achamian had seen them all innumerable times on the trail, wondered about their stories, but he had shared no words with any of them. He imagined it wouldn't much matter even if he had. Like mead-hall tables, campfires seemed to make foreigners of everyone.
The Nilnameshi strode from the others to come crouch by Achamian's humble little flame. He smiled and shrugged, introduced himself as Somandutta. He was relatively young, clean-shaven, as was the custom for Nilnameshi caste-nobles, with amiable eyes and a full-lipped mouth-the kind of man who inspired husbands to be more gracious to their wives. He seemed to blink continually, but it was a habit that only seemed ludicrous the first time you noticed it, then became quite natural after.
"You're not one of them," he said, nodding with raised brows toward the Captain's fire. "And you certainly aren't one of the Herd." He tipped his head to his right, in the direction of three neighbouring firepits, each of them crammed with younger flame-yellowed faces, most sporting long Galeoth moustaches. "That means you must be one of the Bitten."
"The Bitten?"
"Yes," he said, smiling broadly. "One of us."
"One of you."
The generous face regarded him for a moment, as though trying to decide how to interpret his tone. Then he shrugged, smiled like somebody remembering a sensible deathbed promise. "Come," he simply said. "Your beard has the punch of smoke."
Even though he had no clue what the Nilnameshi meant, Achamian found himself following the man. The "punch of smoke," as it turned out, referred to hashish. A pipe was handed to him the instant he stepped up to the fire, and the next thing Achamian knew he was sitting cross-legged at the puffing centre of their attention. Out of nervousness perhaps, he drew deep.
The smoke burned like molten lead. They roared with laughter as he hacked himself purple.
"See!" He heard Somandutta cry. "It wasn't just me!"
"Wizard!" someone growled and cheered. Others took it up-"Wiz-Wiza-Wizard!" — and Achamian found himself smiling and choking and nodding in bleary-eyed acknowledgment. He even waved.
"You get used to it. You get used to it," someone assured him while rubbing the small of his back. "Only the good mud for the slog, my old friend. It has to take us far!"
"See!" Somandutta repeated as though the world's last sane man. "It's not me!"
The hashish was already soaking through Achamian's senses by the time Somandutta, or Soma as the others called him, went around the circle with introductions. Achamian had met such groups before, strangers hammered into families by the privations of the road. Once they lowered their hackles, he knew, they would find in him cause to celebrate their fraternity. Every family was eager to prove itself exceptional in some way.
There was Galian, perhaps the eldest member of Bitten. In his youth he had been a soldier in the old Nansur Army; he had even fought in the famed Battle of Kiyuth, where Ikurei Conphas, the last of the Nansur Emperors, had overcome the nomadic Scylvendi. The giant that Soma had earlier called Ox was Oxwora, a renegade son of the famed Yalgrota, one of the heroes of the First Holy War. There was Xonghis, a Jekki hillman who had been a former Imperial Tracker. He, Soma explained, was the Captain's "peach," by which he meant his most prized possession. "If he gets a chill," the Nilnameshi caste-noble said, "you must surrender your cloak and rub his feet!" The other giant of the group was Pokwas, or Pox as he was called. According to Somandutta, he was a disgraced Zeьmi Sword-Dancer, come to eke out a living among the unwashed barbarians of the Three Seas. "It's always Zeьm this or Zeьm that with him," the Nil
nameshi explained with mock disgust. "Zeьm invented children. Zeьm invented wind…" There was Sutadra, or Soot, whom Achamian had already identified as Kianene because of his goatee and long moustaches. Apparently Soot refused to speak of his past, which meant, Soma said with exaggerated menace, he was a fugitive of some description. "Likely a Fanim heretic." And lastly, there was Moraubon, a rangy Galeoth who had once been a Shrial Priest, "until he discovered that peaches don't grow on prayers." Apparently the question of whether he was "half skinny" was a matter of ongoing debate.
"He hunts," Pox explained, his grin as broad as his black face, "with both bows strung."
Collectively, the seven of them were the only remaining members of the original company first assembled by Lord Kosoter some ten years previous. They called themselves the Bitten because they had been "gnawed" for so many long slogs. As it so happened, each and every one of them had been literally bitten by Sranc as well-and sported the scars to prove it. Pox even stood and dropped his leggings to reveal a puckered crescent across his left cheek, among other things.
"Sweet Sejenus," Galian exclaimed. "That solves the mystery of Soma's missing beard!"
Raucous laughter.
"Was that where it was hiding?" Achamian asked as innocently as a crafty old man could manage.
The Bitten fell dead silent. For a moment all he could hear was the talk and laughter from the other campfires echoing through the sieve of the surrounding forest. He had taken that step, so fateful in the company of close-knit strangers, between watching and participating.
"Where what was hiding?" Xonghis asked.
"The skinny that bit him."
Somandutta was the first to howl. Then all the Bitten joined in, rocking on their mats, trading looks like sips of priceless wine, or simply rolling their eyes heavenward, shining beneath the eternal arches of the night.
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