The Warrior Prophet (72 page)
Read The Warrior Prophet Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
Meanwhile, the Khirgwi tribes gathered in the deep desert, thinking the Holy War, like a jackal, had found its place to die. The following night they attacked en masse, a wild rush of thousands spilling from the crests of dunes, confident they would ride down more corpses than men. Though surprised, the Men of the Tusk, their flesh revived, their faith renewed, encircled and slaughtered the desert tribesmen. Entire tribes, who’d bled much through the endless skirmishes across Khemema, were extinguished. The survivors withdrew to their hidden oasis homes.
The last of the food gave out. Waterskins were once again filled and heaped across strong backs. Songs were raised across the dark, desert landscape, many of them hymns to the Warrior-Prophet. The Holy War resumed its southward march, unconquered and defiant. Between Mengedda, Anwurat, and the desert, they had lost almost a third of their number, but still their great columns spanned the horizon.
They crossed deep wadis, cut by the infrequent winter rains, and climbed rolling dunes. They laughed once again at the shit-chasers scurrying with their dung across the sands. Day came, and they perched their canvas sheets against the punishing sun so they might sleep through the merciless heat.
As evening fell on the second day, and the encampment once again made ready to march, many noticed clouds across the western sky—the first clouds they’d seen, it seemed to them, since Gedea. They were smeared across the horizon, deep purple, and they folded around the setting sun so that it seemed the iris of an angry red eye. Without their omen-texts, the priests could only guess at the meaning.
The air still shimmered with heat, rolled like water over the sun-baked distances. And it was still—very still. A hush fell across the reaches of the Holy War. Men peered at the horizon, looked nervously at the wrathful eye, realizing the clouds belonged to the
ground
not the sky. And then they understood.
ground
not the sky. And then they understood.
Sandstorm.
With the sluggish elegance of a scarf coiling in the wind, pummelling clouds of dust rolled toward them from the west. Old Carathay could still hate. The Great Thirst could still punish.
Skin-serrating blasts. Gusts with a million stinging teeth. The Men of the Tusk howled to one another without being heard. They tried to look, perhaps glimpsed the shadowy figures of others through the brown haze, but were then blinded. They huddled in clots beneath the biting wind, felt the sand suck at them as it heaped around their limbs. Their makeshift shelters were torn away, thrashed like paper through mountainous gusts. A new calligraphy of dunes was scrawled about them. Forgotten waterskins were buried.
The sandstorm raged until dawn, and when the winds receded, the Men of the Tusk wandered like stunned children across a transformed land. They salvaged what they could of their remaining baggage, found several dead men buried beneath the sands. The Great and Lesser Names met in Council. They hadn’t enough shelter from the sun, they realized, to remain through the day. They must march—that much was clear. But where? Most argued that they should return to the well discovered by Prince Kellhus—as he was still called in the Councils, as much by his own insistence as by the loathing some had taken to the name “Warrior-Prophet.” At least they had enough water to make it that far.
But the dissenters, led by Ikurei Conphas, insisted the well was likely lost to the sands. They pointed to the surrounding dunes, so bright in the sun they sheared one’s eyes, and insisted the land around the wells was certain to have been just as disfigured if not more. If the Holy War used its remaining water to march
away
from Enathpaneah, and the wells couldn’t be found, then it was doomed. As it stood, Conphas claimed, once again relying upon his map, the Holy War was within two days march of water. If they marched now they would suffer, certainly, but they would survive.
away
from Enathpaneah, and the wells couldn’t be found, then it was doomed. As it stood, Conphas claimed, once again relying upon his map, the Holy War was within two days march of water. If they marched now they would suffer, certainly, but they would survive.
To the surprise of some, Prince Kellhus agreed. “Surely,” he said, “it’s better to wager suffering to avoid death than to wager death to avoid suffering.”
The Holy War marched toward Enathpaneah.
They passed beyond the sea of dunes and entered land like a burning plate, a flat stone expanse where the air fairly hissed with heat. Once again the water was strictly rationed. Men became dizzy with thirst, and some began casting away armour, weapons, and clothes, walking like naked madmen until they fell, their skin blackened by thirst and blistered by sun. The last of the horses died, and the footmen, ever resentful that their lords tended to their mounts more faithfully than to their men, would curse and kick gravel at the wooden corpses as they passed. Old Gothyelk collapsed and was strapped to a litter made by his sons, who shared their rations of water with him. Lord Ganyatti, the Conriyan Palatine of Ankirioth, whose bald head looked so much like a blistered thumb jutting from a torn glove, was bound like a sack to his horse.
When night had at last fallen, the Holy War continued its march south, once again stumbling along the backs of sandy dunes. The Men of the Tusk walked and walked, but the cool desert night provided little relief. None talked. They formed an endless procession of silent wraiths, passing across Carathay’s folds. Dusty, harrowed, hollow-eyed, and with drunken limbs, they walked. Like a pinch of mud dropped in water they crumbled, wandered from one another, until the Holy War became a cloud of disconnected figures, feet scraping across gravel and dust.
The morning sun was a shrill rebuke, for still the desert had not ended. The Holy War had become an army of ghosts. Dead and dying men lay scattered in their thousands behind it, and as the sun rose still more fell. Some simply lost the will, and fell seated in the dust, their thoughts and bodies buzzing with thirst and fatigue. Others pressed themselves until their wracked bodies betrayed them. They struggled feebly across the sand, waving their heads like worms, perhaps croaking for help, for succour.
But only death would come swirling down.
Tongues swelled in mouths. Parchment skin went black and tightened until it split about purple flesh, rendering the dying unrecognizable. Legs buckled, folded, refused one’s will as surely as if one’s spine had been broken. And the sun beat them, scorching chapped skin, cooking lips to hoary leather.
There was no weeping, no wails or astonished shouts. Brothers abandoned brothers and husbands abandoned wives. Each man had become a solitary circle of misery that walked and walked.
Gone was the promise of sweet Sempis water. Gone was the promise of Enathpaneah …
Gone was the voice of the Warrior-Prophet.
Only the trial remained, drawing out warm, thrumming hearts into an agonized line, desert thin—desert simple. Frail heartbeats stranded in the wastes, pounding with receding fury at seeping, water-starved blood.
Men died in the thousands, gasping, each breath more improbable than the last, at furnace air, sucking final moments of anguished, dreamlike life through throats of charred wood. Heat like a cool wind. Black fingers twitching through searing sands. Flat, waxy eyes raised to blinding sun.
Whining silence and endless loneliness.
Esmenet stumbled by his side, kicking sand and fiery gravel with feet she could no longer feel. Above her, the sun shrieked and shrieked, but she’d long ceased worrying how light could make sound.
He carried Serwë in his arms, and it seemed to Esmenet that she’d never witnessed anything so triumphant.
Then he stopped before a deep and dark vista.
She swayed and the wailing sun twirled above her, but somehow he was there, beside her, bracing her. She tried licking cracked lips, but her tongue was too swollen. She looked to him, and he grinned, impossibly hale …
He leaned back and cried out to the hazy roll and pitch of distant green, to the wandering crease of a flashing river. And his words resounded across the compass of the horizon.
“Father! We come, Father!”
Xinemus’s fierce scowl silenced him, and the three men retreated into a grotto of darkness where the wall pinched one of the compound’s structures. They dragged the warrior-slave’s corpse with them.
“I always thought these bastards were tough,” Bloody Dinch whispered, his eyes still wild from his kill.
“They are,” Xinemus replied softly. He scanned the gloomy courtyard below them—a puzzle-box of open spaces, bare walls, and elaborate facades. “The Scarlet Spires purchase their Javreh from the Sranc Pits. They are hard men, and you’d do well to remember it.”
Zenkappa smirked in the dark and added, “You got lucky, Dinch.”
“By the Prophet’s Balls!” Bloody Dinch hissed, “I—”
“Shhht!”
Xinemus spat. Both Dinch and Zenkappa were good men, fierce men, Xinemus knew, but they were bred to battle in open fields, not to slink through shadows as they did now. And it bruised Xinemus in some strange way that they seemed incapable of grasping the importance of what they attempted. Achamian’s life meant little to them, he realized. He was a sorcerer, an abomination. Achamian’s disappearance, the Marshal imagined, was a matter of no small relief to the two of them. There was no place for blasphemers in the company of pious men.
Xinemus spat. Both Dinch and Zenkappa were good men, fierce men, Xinemus knew, but they were bred to battle in open fields, not to slink through shadows as they did now. And it bruised Xinemus in some strange way that they seemed incapable of grasping the importance of what they attempted. Achamian’s life meant little to them, he realized. He was a sorcerer, an abomination. Achamian’s disappearance, the Marshal imagined, was a matter of no small relief to the two of them. There was no place for blasphemers in the company of pious men.
But if they failed to grasp the importance of their task, they were well aware of its lethality. To skulk like thieves among armed men was harrowing enough, but in the midst of the
Scarlet Spires
…
Scarlet Spires
…
Both were frightened, Xinemus realized—thus the forced humour and empty bravado.
Xinemus pointed to a nearby building across a narrow portion of the courtyard. The bottom floor consisted of a long row of colonnades framing the pitch-black of its hollow interior.
“Those abandoned stables,” he said. “With any luck, they’ll be connected to those barracks.”
“
Empty
barracks, I hope,” Dinch whispered, studying the dark confusion of buildings.
Empty
barracks, I hope,” Dinch whispered, studying the dark confusion of buildings.
“So they look.”
I’ll save you Achamian … Undo what I’ve done.
The Scarlet Spires had taken up residence in a vast, semi-fortified complex that looked as though it dated back to the age of Cenei—the sturdy palace of some long-dead Ceneian Governor, Xinemus supposed. They had watched the compound for over a fortnight, waited as the great trains of armed men, supplies, and slave-borne litters wound from the narrow gates into Iothiah’s labyrinthine streets to join the march across Khemema. Xinemus had no definite idea of the size of the Scarlet Spires’ contingent, but he reckoned it numbered in the thousands. This meant the compound itself must be immense, a warren of barracks, kitchens, storerooms, apartments, and official chambers. And this meant that when the bulk of the School travelled south, those few remaining would find it difficult to defend against intruders.
This was good … If in fact Achamian was actually imprisoned here.
The Scarlet Spires wouldn’t dare take Achamian with them; Xinemus was sure of that much. The road was no place to interrogate a Mandate sorcerer, especially when one marched with a prince such as Proyas. And the fact that the Scarlet Spires had actually left a
mission
here meant that the School had unfinished business to attend to in Iothiah. Xinemus had wagered that Achamian was that unfinished business.
mission
here meant that the School had unfinished business to attend to in Iothiah. Xinemus had wagered that Achamian was that unfinished business.
If he wasn’t here, then he was very likely dead.
He’s here! I feel it!
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