The Warrior Prophet (53 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

I am of the People!
Cnaiür urs Skiötha, the most violent of all men.
Later that night, he squatted before the churning surf and washed his broadsword in the sea, thinking of how he’d once crouched on the misty shores of the faraway Jorua Sea with his father, doing much the same. He listened to the thunder of distant breakers, to the hiss of water washing through sand and gravel. He looked across the Meneanor’s shining reaches and pondered its tracklessness. A different kind of steppe.
What was it his father had said of the sea?
Afterward, as he sat sharpening his blade for the morrow’s worship, Kellhus stepped soundlessly from the blackness. The wind twisted his hair into flaxen tails.
Cnaiür grinned wolfishly. For some reason he wasn’t surprised.
“What brings you here, Dûnyain?”
Kellhus studied his face by firelight, and for the first time Cnaiür didn’t care.
I know you lie.
“Do you think the Holy War will prevail?” Kellhus asked.
“The great prophet,” Cnaiür snorted. “Have others come to you with that same question?”
“They have,” Kellhus replied.
Cnaiür spat into the fire. “How fares my prize?”
“Serwë is well … Why do you avoid my question?”
Cnaiür sneered, turned back to his blade. “Why do you ask questions when you know the answer?”
Kellhus said nothing, but stood like something otherworldly against the darkness. The wind whipped smoke about him. The sea thundered and hissed.
“You think something has broken within me,” Cnaiür continued, drawing out his whetstone to the stars. “But you are wrong … You think I have become more erratic, more unpredictable, and therefore more a threat to your mission …”
He turned from his broadsword and matched the Dûnyain’s bottomless gaze.
“But you are wrong.”
Kellhus nodded, and Cnaiür cared not at all.
“When this battle comes,” the Dûnyain said, “you must instruct me … You must teach me War.”
“I would sooner cut my throat.”
A gust assailed his fire, blowing sparks over the strand. It felt good, like a woman’s fingers through his hair.
“I’ll give you Serwë,” Kellhus said.
The sword fell with a clang to Cnaiür’s feet. For an instant, it seemed he gagged on ice.
“Why,” he spat contemptuously, “would I want your pregnant whore?”
“She’s your prize,” Kellhus said. “She bears your child.”
Why did he long for her so? She was a vain, shallow-witted waif—nothing more! Cnaiür had seen the way Kellhus used her, the way he dressed her. He’d heard the words he bid her speak. No tool was too small for a Dûnyain, no word too plain, no blink too brief. He’d utilized the chisel of her beauty, the hammer of her peach … Cnaiür had seen this!
So how could he contemplate …
All I have is war!
The Meneanor crashed and surged across the beaches. The wind smelled of brine. Cnaiür stared at the Dûnyain for what seemed a thousand heartbeats. Then at last he nodded, even though he knew he relinquished the last remnant of his hold on the abomination. After this he would have nothing but the word of a Dûnyain …
He would have nothing.
But when he closed his eyes he saw her, felt her soft and supple, crushed beneath his frame. She was his prize! His proof!
Tomorrow, after worship …
He would take what compensation he could.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
ANWURAT
 
It is the difference in knowledge that commands respect. This is why the true test of every student lies in the humiliation of his master.
—GOTAGGA,
THE PRIMA ARCANATA
 
 
The children here play with bones instead of sticks, and whenever I
see them, I cannot but wonder whether the humeri they brandish are
faithful or heathen.
Heathen, I should think, for the bones seem bent.
—ANONYMOUS, LETTER FROM ANWURAT
 
Late Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shigek
 
Reviewing the latest intelligence reports, Ikurei Conphas let Martemus stand unacknowledged for several moments. The canvas walls of his command pavilion had been rolled up and bound to facilitate traffic. Officers, messengers, secretaries, and scribes shuttled back and forth between the lamp-illumined interior and the surrounding darkness of the Nansur encampment. Men called out and muttered in deliberation, their faces almost uniformly blank, their eyes slack with the wary expectancy of battle. They were Nansur, and no people had lost more sons to the Fanim.
Such a battle! And he—he! the Lion of Kiyuth!—would be little more than a subaltern …
No matter, it would be salt for the honey, as the Ainoni were fond of saying. The bitterness that made vengeance sweet.
“When dawn breaks and the Scylvendi dog leads us into battle,” Conphas said, still studying the documents fanned across the table before him, “I’ve decided that you, Martemus, will be my representative.”
“Do you have any specific instructions?” the General asked stiffly.
Conphas looked up, appraised the hard-jawed man for several condescending moments. Why had he allowed him to keep his blue general’s cloak? He should have sold the fool to the slavers.
“You think I give you this charge because I trust you to the degree I distrust the Scylvendi … But you’re wrong. As much as I despise the savage, as much as I intend to see him dead, I do in fact trust him in matters of war …” And well he should, Conphas mused. As strange as it seemed, the barbarian had been his student for quite some time. Since the Battle of Kiyuth, if not longer …
No wonder they called Fate a whore.
“But you, Martemus,” Conphas continued. “You I scarcely trust at all.”
“Then why give me such an assignment?”
No protestations of innocence, no hurt looks or clenched fists … Only stoic curiosity. For all his failings, Conphas realized, Martemus remained a remarkable man. It would be such a waste.
“Because you’ve unfinished business.” Conphas handed several sheets to his secretary, then looked down as though to study the next sheaf of parchment. “I’ve just been told the Prince of Atrithau accompanies the Scylvendi.” He graced the General with a dazzling smile.
Martemus said nothing for a stone-faced moment.
“But I told you … He’s … he’s …”
“Please,” Conphas snapped. “How long has it been since you’ve drawn your sword, hmm? If I doubt your loyalty, I laugh at your prowess … No. You’ll only observe.”
“Then who—”
But Conphas had already waved the three men forward: the assassins dispatched by his uncle. The two, who were obviously Nansur, weren’t all that imposing, perhaps—but the third, the black-skinned Zeumi, drew nervous glances from even the most distracted of Conphas’s officers. He towered a full head above the surrounding mob, bull-chested and yellow-eyed. He wore the red-striped tunic and iron-scale harness of an imperial auxiliary, though a great tulwar hung across his back.
A Zeumi sword-dancer. The Emperor had been generous indeed.
“These men,” Conphas said, staring hard at the General, “will do the work …” He leaned forward, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard. “But
you,
Martemus, you’ll be the one who brings me Anasûrimbor Kellhus’s head.”
Was that horror he saw in the man’s eyes? Or was it hope?
Conphas fell back into his chair. “You can use your cloak as a sack.”
 
The long howl of Inrithi horns pierced the predawn gloom, and the Men of the Tusk arose certain of their triumph. They stood on the South Bank. They had met their enemy before and had crushed him. They would enter battle with all of their assembled might. And most importantly, the God
himself
walked among them—they could see Him in thousands of bright eyes. Spears and lances had become, it seemed to them, markers of the Tusk.
The air was rifled by the commanding cries of thanes, barons, and their majordomos. Men hastened into their gear. Horsemen streamed between the tents. Armoured men knelt in circles, praying. Wine was passed, bread hastily broken and devoured. Bands of men drifted to their places in the line, some singing, some watchful. Small groups of wives and prostitutes waved hands and coloured scarfs at passing troops of mounted warriors. Priests intoned the most profound benedictions.
By the time the sun gilded the Meneanor, the Inrithi had assembled in rank after glorious rank across the fields. Several hundred paces away an immense arc of silvered armour, brilliant coats, and stamping horses awaited them. From the southern heights to the dark Sempis, the Fanim encompassed the horizon. Great divisions of horsemen trotted across the northern pastures. Arms flashed from the walls and turrets of Anwurat. Deep formations of spearmen darkened the shallow embankments to the south. More horsemen massed across the southern hilltops, following the heights to the sea. Every distance, it seemed, bristled with heathen.
The Inrithi line seethed with the habits and hatreds of its constituent nations. The unruly Galeoth, hurling insults and jeering reminders of earlier slaughter. The magnificent knights of Conriya, hollering curses through silvered war masks. The glaring Thunyeri, swearing oaths of blood to their shield-brothers. The disciplined Nansur, standing immobile, keen to the calls of their officers. The Shrial Knights, eyeing the skies, their lips tight with fervent prayer. The haughty Ainoni, anxious and impassive behind the white cosmetics of war. The black-armoured ranks of Tydonni, taking sullen measure of the mongrels they were about to kill.
A hundred hundred banners fluttered in the morning wind.
 
What was this trade he had made? War for a woman …
With Kellhus at his side, Cnaiür led a small army of officers, observers, and field messengers up turf and gravel ramps to the summit of a small hillock dominating the central pastures. Proyas had provided him slaves, and they hastened to prepare his command, unloading trestles from the wains, pitching canopies, and laying mats upon the ground. They raised his ad hoc standard: two bolts of white silk, each banded with lateral stripes of red and flanked by horsetails that swished in the sea-borne breeze.
The Inrithi were already calling it the “Swazond Standard.” The mark of their Battlemaster.
Cnaiür rode to the summit’s edge and stared in wonder.
Beneath him, sweeping out in either direction, the Holy War darkened the woollen distances: great squares and mobs of infantrymen, files and lines of burnished knights. Facing them, the heathen ranks scrawled along the hills and opposing fields, twinkling in the morning sun. Just small enough to obscure with two fingers, the fortress of Anwurat reared in the near distance, its walls and parapets adorned with long saffron banners.

Other books

Return to Marker Ranch by Claire McEwen
The World Was Going Our Way by Christopher Andrew
Postcards from the Dead by Laura Childs
The Arrival by CM Doporto
Meeting Danger (Danger #1) by Allyson Simonian, Caila Jaynes
Enchantress by Constance O'Banyon