Of all these characteristics, it was this latter, mischievousness, that struck Cnaiür the most. Apparently Skauras liked to drug his unwitting guest’s wine with a variety of Ainoni and Nilnameshi narcotics—even with chanv on occasion. “All those who drink with me,” Conphas once quoted him as claiming, “drink with themselves as well.” When Cnaiür had first heard this story, he’d thought it simply more proof of the way luxury drowned manly sense. But now he wasn’t so sure. The point of the narcotics, Cnaiür realized, was to make his guests
other
to themselves, strangers with whom they could tip bowls.
Which meant the wily Sapatishah not only liked to trick and deceive, he liked to show, to
prove
…
For Skauras, the imminent battle would be more than a contest, it would be a demonstration. The man had underestimated the Inrithi at Mengedda, seeing only his strengths and his opponent’s weaknesses, much as Xunnurit had underestimated Conphas at Kiyuth. He wouldn’t try to overpower the Men of the Tusk; he was not a man to repeat his mistakes. Rather, he would try to outwit them, to show them fools …
So what would the wily old warrior do?
Cnaiür shared his apprehensions with Proyas.
“You must be sure,” he told the Prince, “that the Scarlet Spires remains with the host at all points.”
Proyas had pressed a hand to his forehead. “Eleäzaras will resist,” he said wearily. “He’s already said he will follow only
after
the Holy War has crossed. Apparently his spies have told him the Cishaurim remain in Shimeh …”
Cnaiür scowled and spat. “Then we have the advantage!”
“The Scarlet Spires, I fear, conserve themselves for the Cishaurim.”
“They must accompany us,” Cnaiür insisted, “even if they remain hidden. There must be something you can offer.”
The Prince smiled mirthlessly. “Or someone,” he said with uncommon grief.
At least once daily, Cnaiür rode to the river to view the preparations. The floodplains surrounding Iothiah had been denuded of trees, as had the banks of the Sempis, where thousands of barebacked Inrithi toiled over felled trunks, hacking, pounding, binding. He could ride for miles, breathing deep the smell of sweat, pitch, and hewn wood, before glimpsing the end of them. Hundreds hailed him as he passed, saluting him with cries of “Scylvendi!”—as though his ancestry had become his fame and title.
Cnaiür need only peer across the Sempis to know that Skauras awaited them on the far bank. As tiny as mites in the distance, Fanim horsemen continuously patrolled the shoreline—entire divisions of them. Sometimes he heard their thousand-throated jeers across the water, sometimes the throb of their drums.
As a precaution, squadrons of Imperial war galleys were stationed in the river.
The Holy War began embarking long before dawn. Hundreds of crude barges and thousands of rafts were first poled then paddled into the Sempis. By the time the morning sun enamelled the waters much of the vast flotilla was underway, packed with anxious men and horses.
Cnaiür crossed with Proyas and his immediate entourage. Xinemus was absent, which Cnaiür thought strange, until he realized that the Marshal had his own men to watch over. But of course Kellhus was in attendance, and the Prince stood at his side for some time. They traded avid words, and periodically Proyas laughed with an uneasiness that tickled to hear.
Cnaiür had watched the Dûnyain’s influence grow. He’d watched as he gradually bridled all those about Xinemus’s fire, working their hearts the way saddle makers worked leather, tanning, gouging, shaping. He’d watched as he lured more and more Men of the Tusk with the grain of his deceit. He’d watched him yoke thousands—
thousands!
—with simple words and bottomless looks. He’d watched him minister to Serwë …
He’d watched until he could bear watching no more.
Cnaiür had always known Kellhus’s capabilities, had always known the Holy War would yield to him. But knowing and witnessing were two different things. He cared nothing for the Inrithi. And yet, watching Kellhus’s lies spread like cancer across an old woman’s skin, he found himself
fearing
for them—fearing, even as he scorned them! How they fell over themselves, fawning, wheedling, grovelling. How they degraded themselves, youthful fools and inveterate warriors alike. Imploring looks and beseeching expressions. Oh, Kellhus … Oh,
Kellhus
… Staggering drunks! Unmanly ingrates! How
easily
they surrendered.
And none more so than Serwë. To watch her succumb, again and again. To see his hand drift deep between Dûnyain thighs …
Fickle, treacherous, whorish bitch! How many times must he strike her? How many times must he take her? How many times must he stare, dumbfounded by her beauty?
Cnaiür sat cross-legged on the prow, watching the far embankment, probing the shadows beneath the trees. He could see clots of horsemen, what seemed thousands of them, tracking their slow drift down river.
The air was dank. Nervous voices rang across the waters: Inrithi calling to each other between crafts, jokes mostly. Cnaiür saw far too many bare asses.
“Look at the assholes!” some wit cried out, watching the Kianene crowding the opposite bank.
“I resent that!” someone bawled from a nearby raft.
“What are you? Heathen?”
“Nay, I’m an
asshole!
”
For a time, it seemed the Sempis itself thundered with laughter.
But the mood turned when one fool stumbled into the river. Cnaiür actually saw it happen. The man hit the water face first, and thanks to his armour, simply continued dropping until obscured by the reflections of his horrified comrades. Jeers and catcalls thundered from the southern shore. Proyas cursed, and soundly upbraided all those floating within earshot.
Afterward, the Prince left Kellhus and jostled his way to Cnaiür on the prow, his eyes shining in that peculiar way—the way they always shone after he spoke with Kellhus. The way, in fact, everyone’s eyes shone, as though they just had awakened from a nightmare and found their families intact.
But there was more to his manner, a too-forward camaraderie that spoke of dread.
“You avoid Kellhus like the plague, you know that?”
Cnaiür snorted.
Proyas watched him, his smile fading. “Such things are difficult,” he said. His eyes darted from Cnaiür to the heathen streaming and massing along the southern shore.
“What things are difficult?” Cnaiür asked.
Proyas grimaced, scratched the back of his head. “Kellhus told me …”
“Told you what?”
“About Serwë.”
Cnaiür nodded, spat into the water rolling beneath the prow. Of course the Dûnyain had told him. What better way to explain their estrangement? What better way to explain the estrangement between any men? A woman.
Serwë … His prize. His proof.
The perfect explanation. Simple. Plausible. Certain to discourage further questions …
The Dûnyain explanation.
A moment of silence passed, awkward with misgivings and small misapprehensions.
“Tell me, Cnaiür,” Proyas finally said. “What do the Scylvendi believe? What are their Laws?”
“What do I believe?”
“Yes … Of course.”
“I believe your ancestors killed my God. I believe your race bears the blood-guilt of that crime.”
His voice didn’t quaver. His expression didn’t break. But as always, he could hear the infernal chorus.
“So you worship vengeance …”
“I worship vengeance.”
“And that’s why the Scylvendi call themselves the People of War.”
“Yes. To war is to avenge.”
The proper answer. So why the throng of questions?
“To take back what has been taken,” Proyas said, his eyes at once troubled and bright. “Like our Holy War for Shimeh.”
“No,” Cnaiür replied. “To murder the taker.”
Proyas shot him an alarmed look, then glanced away. With an air of admission that Cnaiür found effeminate, he said, “I like you much better, Scylvendi, when I forget who you are.”
But Cnaiür had turned away, searching the southern banks for sight of more men who would kill him, if they could. What Proyas remembered or forgot mattered nothing to him. He was what he was.
I am of the People!
In a long drifting column, the Inrithi flotilla entered the first of the Delta channels. Cnaiür couldn’t help but wonder what Skauras would think when his watchers reported they’d lost sight of the Holy War. Had he anticipated this? Or had he simply feared it? Even now the Emperor’s warships would be taking positions along the southernmost navigable channels. The Sapatishah would know soon enough where the Holy War intended to land.
As it happened, they were harassed only by mosquitoes. The morning, then the afternoon, took on the strange character of lulls before imminent battle. It was always the same. For some reason, the air would become leaden, the moments would drop like stones, and a restless boredom unlike any other would weigh and weigh, making necks stiff and heads ache. Every man, no matter how terrified on the morn, would find himself
yearning
for the battle, as though the violence of its promise burdened far more than the violence of its consummation.
Night passed in discomfort and the delirium of almost sleep.
They reached the salt marshes around noon the following day: a deep-green sea of reeds reaching to either horizon. Suddenly the torpor lifted, and Cnaiür felt a sudden frenzy akin to that of the charge. He waded with the others through the morass, dragging the barge as far forward as possible, hacking with his sword at the towering papyrus. Soon he found himself one of thousands stamping forward, levelling the reeds into a vast swampy plain. Eventually inroads were cut to the hard ground of the South Bank. With Proyas, Kellhus, Ingiaban, and a party of knights, Cnaiür slogged forward to see what awaited them. As always the Dûnyain’s presence made his heart itch, like the threat of a blow from unseen quarters.
To the east they glimpsed the distant breakers of the Meneanor. Before them, to the south, the land climbed in stony heaps, becoming a mass of iron-coloured hills. To the west they saw a broad swath of pasture, creased like a brooding man’s forehead, darkened by distant orchards. On a lone hill, barely distinguishable for the haze, they could see the squat ramparts of Anwurat. Small bands of horsemen trotted across the intervening distance, but nothing more.
Skauras had yielded the South Bank. As Cnaiür had predicted.
Proyas fairly howled in celebration.
“What fools!” Ingiaban cried. “What fools!”
Ignoring the torrent of acclamation, Cnaiür glanced at Kellhus, wasn’t surprised to see him watching, studying. Cnaiür spat and looked away, knowing full well what the Dûnyain had seen.
It was too easy.
The Holy War spent the entire afternoon stumping out from the swamp. Most pitched their tents in the failing light of dusk. Cnaiür heard the Inrithi sing, scoffed as he always scoffed. He watched them kneel in prayer, congregate around their priests and idols. He listened to them laugh and cavort, and he wondered that their merriment could sound genuine rather than forced, as it should on the eve before battle. War for them wasn’t holy. War for them was a means, not an end. A track to their destination.
Shimeh.
But the darkness snuffed their celebratory mood. To the south and to the west the entire horizon twinkled with lights, like embers kicked across folds of blue wool. Camp fires, innumerable thousands of them, tended by the leather-hearted warriors of Kian. The beat of drums rolled down the hillsides.
At the Council of Great and Lesser Names, the Men of the Tusk, dazzled by the bloodless success of their landing, acclaimed Cnaiür their King-of-Tribes—what they called their Battlemaster. Followed by his generals and lesser officers, Ikurei Conphas stormed from the Council in a fury. Cnaiür wordlessly accepted, too conflicted to feel either pride or embarrassment. Slaves were given the task of stitching his own battlefield standard, something the Inrithi held sacred.
Afterward, Cnaiür found Proyas standing alone in the darkness, staring at the countless heathen fires.
“So many,” the Prince said softly. “Eh, Battlemaster?”
Proyas hitched his lips into a smile, but Cnaiür could see him wring his hands in the moonlight. The barbarian was struck by how young the man looked, how frail … For the first time, it seemed, Cnaiür understood the catastrophic dimensions of what would soon happen. Nations, faiths, and races.
Where did this young man, this boy, belong in all of this? How would he fare?
He could be my son.
“I shall overcome them,” Cnaiür said.
But afterward, as he walked toward his solitary camp on the windy shores of the Meneanor, he fumed over these words. Who was he to give assurances to an Inrithi prince? What did it matter to him who died and who lived? What did it matter so long as he was party to the killing?