The Warrior Prophet (88 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

The Fanim horsemen descended so quickly that most of the Holy War’s siege camps had to be abandoned, along with the war engines and the food supplies amassed within them. Retreating knights set several of the camps ablaze to prevent them from falling into the heathen’s hands. Hundreds of those too sick to flee the camps were left to be massacred. Those bands of Inrithi knights who dared contest the Padirajah’s advance were quickly thrown back or overrun, encompassed by waves of ululating horsemen. By mid-morning the Great Names frantically recalled those remaining outside Caraskand and bent themselves to defending the vast circuit of the city’s walls.
Celebration had turned to terror and disbelief. They were imprisoned in a city that had already been besieged for weeks. The Great Names ordered hasty surveys of the remaining food stores. They despaired after learning that Imbeyan had burned the city’s granaries when he realized he’d lost Caraskand. And of course, the vast storerooms of the city’s final redoubt, the Citadel of the Dog, had been destroyed by the Scarlet Spires. The broken fortress burned still, a beacon on Caraskand’s easternmost hill.
Seated upon a lavish settee, surrounded by his counsellors and his many children, Kascamandri ab Tepherokar watched from the terrace of a hillside villa as the great horns of his army inexorably closed about Caraskand. Propped against his whale-like belly, his lovely girls peppered him with questions about what happened. For months he’d followed the Holy War from the fleshpot sanctuaries of the Korasha, the exalted White-Sun Palace in Nenciphon. He’d trusted the sagacity and warlike temper of his subordinates. And he’d scorned the idolatrous Inrithi, thinking them barbarous and hapless in the ways of war.
No longer.
To redress his negligence, he’d raised a host worthy of his jihadic fathers: the survivors of Anwurat, some sixty thousand strong, under the peerless Cinganjehoi, who had set aside his enmity to his Padirajah; the Grandees of Chianadyni, the Kianene homeland, with some forty thousand horsemen under Kascamandri’s own ruthless and brilliant son, Fanayal; and Kascamandri’s old tributary, King Pilasakanda of Girgash, whose vassal Hetmen marched with thirty thousand black-skinned Fanim and one hundred mastodons from pagan Nilnamesh. These last, in particular, caused the Padirajah to take pride, for the lumbering beasts made his daughters gape and giggle.
As evening fell, the Padirajah ordered an assault on Caraskand’s walls, hoping to use the disarray of the idolaters to his advantage. Ladders made by Inrithi carpenters were drawn up, as well as the single siege tower they’d captured intact, and there was fierce fighting along the walls around the Ivory Gates. The mastodons were yoked to a mighty iron-headed ram made by the Men of the Tusk, and soon drumming thunder and elephant screams could be heard above the roar of battling men. But the iron men refused to yield the heights, and the Kianene and Girgashi suffered horrendous losses—including some fourteen mastodons, burned alive by flaming pitch. Kascamandri’s youngest daughter, beautiful Sirol, wept.
When the sun finally set, the Men of the Tusk greeted the darkness with both relief and horror. For they were saved and they were doomed.
 
The deep, staccato thunder of drums.
With Cnaiür standing behind him, Proyas leaned against a limestone battlement on the summit of the Gate of Horns, peering through an embrasure at the muddy plains below. Kianene teemed across the landscape, dragging Inrithi wares and shelters to immense bonfires, pitching bright pavilions, reinforcing palisades and earthworks. Bands of silver-helmed horsemen patrolled the ridge lines, galloped through orchards or across fields between byres.
The Inrithi had chosen the same plains to launch their assaults: the burned hulk of a siege tower stood no more than a stone’s throw from where Proyas had positioned himself. He squeezed shut his burning eyes.
This can’t be happening! Not this!
First the euphoria—the rapture!—of Caraskand’s fall. Then the Padirajah, who’d for so long been little more than a rumour of terrible power to the south, had materialized in the hills above the city. At first Proyas could only think that someone had made a catastrophic mistake, that everything would resolve itself once the chaos of the city’s ransacking passed. Those silk-cowled divisions couldn’t be Kianene horsemen … The heathen had been mortally wounded at Anwurat—undone! The Holy War had taken mighty Caraskand, the great gate of Xerash and Amoteu, and now stood poised to march into the Sacred Lands! They were
so close
…
So close that Shimeh, he was certain, could see Caraskand’s smoke on the horizon.
But the horsemen
had
been Kianene. Riding beneath the White Padirajic Lion, they streamed about the great circuit of the city’s walls, burning the impoverished Inrithi camps, slaughtering the sick, and riding down those foolish enough to resist their advance. Kascamandri had come; both the God—and hope—had forsaken them.
“How many do you estimate?” Proyas asked the Scylvendi, who stood, his scarred arms folded across his scale harness.
“Does it matter?” the barbarian replied.
Unnerved by the man’s turquoise gaze, Proyas turned back to the smoke-grey vista. Yesterday, while the dimensions of the disaster slowly unfolded, he’d found himself asking why over and over again. Like a wronged child, his thoughts had stamped about the fact of his piety. Who among the Great Names had toiled as he’d toiled? Who’d burned more sacrifices, intoned more prayers? But now he no longer dared ask these questions.
Thoughts of Achamian and Xinemus had seen to that.
“It is you,”
the Marshal of Attrempus had said,
“who surrender everything …”
But in the God’s name! For the God’s glory!
“Of course it matters,” Proyas hissed. He knew the Scylvendi would bristle at his tone, but he neither worried nor cared. “We must find some way out!”
“Exactly,” Cnaiür said, apparently unperturbed. “We must find some way out … No matter how large the Padirajah’s host.”
Scowling, Proyas turned back to the embrasure. He was in no mood to be corrected.
“What of Conphas?” he asked. “Is there any chance he lies about the food?”
The barbarian shrugged his massive shoulders. “The Nansur are good counters.”
“And they’re good liars as well!” Proyas exclaimed. Why couldn’t the man just answer his questions? “Do you think Conphas tells the truth?”
Cnaiür spat across the ancient stonework. “We’ll have to wait … See if he stays fat while we grow thin.”
Curse the man!
How could he bait him at such a time, in such straits?
“You are besieged,” the Scylvendi warrior continued, “within the very city you have spent weeks starving. Even if Conphas does hoard food, it would not be of consequence. You have only one alternative, and one alternative only. The Scarlet Spires must be roused, now, before the Padirajah can assemble his Cishaurim. The Holy War must take to the field.”
“You think I disagree?” Proyas cried. “I’ve already petitioned Eleäzaras—and do you know what he says? He says, ‘The Scarlet Spires have already suffered too many needless losses …’ Needless losses! What? Some dozen or so dead at Anwurat—if that! A handful more in the desert—not bad compared to a hundred thousand
faithful
souls lost! And what? Five or so struck by Chorae yesterday—heaven forfend! Killed while destroying the only remaining stores of food in Caraskand … All wars should be so bloodless!”
Proyas paused, realized he was panting. He felt crazed and confused, as though he suffered some residue of the fevers. The great, age-worn stones of the barbican seemed to wheel about him. If only, he thought madly, Triamis had built these walls with bread!
The Scylvendi watched him without passion. “Then you are doomed,” he said.
Proyas raised his hands to his face, scratched his cheeks.
It can’t be! Something … I’m missing something!
“We’re cursed,” he murmured. “They’re right … The God does punish us!”
“What are you saying?”
“That maybe Conphas and the others are right about him!”
The brutal face hardened into a scowl. “Him?”
“Kellhus,” Proyas exclaimed. He clutched trembling hands, ground one palm against the other.
I falter … I fail!
Proyas had read many accounts of other men floundering in times of crisis, and absurdly, he realized that this—this!—was
his
moment of weakness. But contrary to his expectation, there was no strength to be drawn from this knowledge. If anything, knowing he faltered threatened to hasten his collapse. He was too sick … Too tired.
“They rail against him,” he explained, his voice raw. “First Conphas, but now even Gothyelk and Gotian.” Proyas released a shuddering breath. “They claim he’s a False Prophet.”
“This is no rumour? They’ve told you this themselves?”
Proyas nodded. “With my support, they think they can openly move against him.”
“You would risk a war
within
these walls? Inrithi against Inrithi?”
Proyas swallowed, struggled to shore up his gaze. “If that’s what the God demands of me.”
“And how does one know what your God demands?”
Proyas stared at the Scylvendi in horror.
“I just …” A pang welled against the back of his throat. Hot tears flooded across his cheek. He inwardly cursed, opened his mouth again, sobbed instead of spoke …
Please God!
It had been too long. The burden had been too great. Everything! Every day, every word a battle! And the sacrifices—they had cut too deep. The desert, even the hemoplexy, had been nothing. But Achamian—ah, that was something! And Xinemus, whom he’d abandoned. The two men he respected most in the world, given up in the name of Holy War … And still it wasn’t enough!
Nothing … Never good enough!
“Tell me, Cnaiür,” he croaked. A strange tooth-baring smile seized his face, and he sobbed again. He covered his eyes and cheeks with his hands, crumpled against the parapet. “Please!” he cried to the stone. “Cnaiür … You must tell me what to do!”
Now it was the Scylvendi who looked horrified.
“Go to Kellhus,” the barbarian said. “But I warn you”—he raised a mighty, battle-scarred fist—“secure your heart. Seal it tight!” He lowered his chin and glared, the way a wolf might …
“Go, Proyas. Go ask the man yourself.”
 
Like something carved out of living rock, the bed rose from a black dais set in the chamber’s heart. The veils, which usually trailed between the bed’s five stone posts, had been pinned to the emerald and gold canopy. Lying with one leg kicked free of the sheets, Kellhus stroked Esmenet’s cheek, saw past her flushed skin, beyond her beating heart, following the telltale markers all the way to her womb.
Our blood, Father
… In a world of maladroit and bovine souls, nothing could be more precious.
The House of Anasûrimbor.
The Dûnyain not only saw deep, they saw far. Even if the Holy War survived Caraskand, even if Shimeh was reconquered, the wars were only beginning … Achamian had taught him that much.
And in the end, only sons could conquer death.

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