The Darkness that Comes Before (26 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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Why would they disgrace me like this?
But he was not a child. He was the many-blooded chieftain of the Utemot, a seasoned Scylvendi warrior of more than forty-five summers. He owned eight wives, twenty-three slaves, and more than three hundred cattle. He had fathered thirty-seven sons, nineteen of the pure blood. His arms were ribbed with the swazond, ritual trophy scars, of more than two hundred dead foes. He was Cnaiür, breaker-of-horses-and-men.
I could kill any of them—pound them to bloody ruin!—and yet they affront me like this? What have I done?
But like any murderer, he knew the answer. The outrage lay not in the fact of his dishonour but in their presumption to know.
Flaring between snow-capped peaks, the sun bathed the assembled chieftains in pale morning gold. They looked like warriors from different nations and ages, despite the spiked Kianene battlecaps worn by the veterans of the Battle of Zirkirta. Some sported antique scale corselets, others mail hauberks and cuirasses of varying manufacture—the spoils of long-dead Inrithi princes and nobles. Only their scarred arms, stone faces, and long black hair marked them as the People—as Scylvendi.
Xunnurit, their King-of-Tribes by election, sat in their midst, his left arm braced imperiously on his thigh, his right raised to the distance. As though at his direction, the rider next to him raised the indented crescent of his bow. Cnaiür glimpsed a birch arrow sailing across the sky, saw it vanish in the grasses partway to the river. They measured distances, he realized, which could only mean they planned their assault.
Without me.
Could they have simply forgotten?
Cursing, Cnaiür urged his mount toward them. He kept his face turned to the east, sparing himself the indignity of their smirking looks. The River Kiyuth wound across the valley floor, black save where frosted by shallow rapids. Even from this distance, he could see the Nansur army teeming along its banks, chopping down the remaining poplars, dragging them away with teams of horses. Fortified by earthworks and a palisade, the imperial encampment lay a mile or so beyond, a great oblong of innumerable tents and wains beneath the mountain the memorialists called Sakthuta, the “Two Bulls.”
Three days ago he’d been astonished and appalled by this sight. For the Nansur to trespass was outrage enough, but to sink posts and raise walls as well?
Now, however, it filled him only with foreboding.
Baring his teeth, he barrelled into the midst of his brother chieftains.
“Xunnurit!” he bellowed. “Why wasn’t I summoned?”
The King-of-Tribes cursed and yanked his roan about to face him. The morning breeze dimpled the fox-fur trim of his Kianene battlecap. Regarding Cnaiür with undisguised contempt, he said, “You were summoned like the rest, Utemot.”
Cnaiür had met Xunnurit only five days earlier, shortly after arriving with his Utemot warriors. Their dislike had been mutual and immediate, like that of suitors for the same beauty. Xunnurit’s contempt, Cnaiür had no doubt, was rooted in the scandalous rumours of his father’s death long ago. The grounds of his own animosity, however, eluded him. Perhaps he’d simply matched disdain with disdain. Perhaps it was the silk trim of Xunnurit’s fleece tunic or the ingrown vanity of his smile. Hatred needed no reasons, if only because they were so many and so easily had.
“We shouldn’t attack,” Cnaiür said bluntly. “This is juvenile foolishness.”
Disapproval hung like musk in the morning air. The other chieftains scrutinized him, their faces guarded. Despite the rumours they had doubtless heard, Cnaiür’s flayed arms demanded a grudging deference. Not a man among them, Cnaiür knew, had murdered half as many as he.
Xunnurit leaned forward and spat across the grasses—a gesture of disrespect. “Foolishness? The Nansur shit, piss, and poke asses on our hallowed land, Utemot. What would you have me do? Parlay? Capitulate and send Conphas tribute?”
Cnaiür debated whether to discredit the man or to discredit his scheme. “No,” he replied, opting for wisdom instead of slander, “I would have us wait. We have Ikurei Conphas”—he raised a thick-fingered hand and clenched it into a fist—“trapped. His horses need rich fodder, ours do not. His men are accustomed to roofs, to pillows, to wine, and to the comforts of lax women, while ours sleep in their saddles and need only their horse’s blood for sustenance. Mark me, as the days pass, the fawn will begin sprinting through their hearts and the jackal through their bellies. They will fear and they will hunger. Their fortifications of earth and timber will smack more of captivity than safety. And soon, desperation will drive them to a ground of our choosing!”
A low-throated rumble passed through the assembled chieftains, and Cnaiür glanced from face to weathered face. Some were young and eager to shed blood, but most possessed the sturdy wisdom of many campaigns—older faces, such as his own. They were men who had survived the many impatiences of youth and yet remained in the prime of their strength; they could see the wisdom of his words.
But Xunnurit looked unimpressed. “Always the tactician, eh, Utemot? Tell me, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, if you entered your yaksh and found men assaulting your wives, what tactics would you adopt? Would you wait in ambush outside, where you’d be most certain of success? Would you wait until
after
they’d desecrated both hearth and womb?”
Cnaiür sneered, noticing for the first time the two missing fingers on Xunnurit’s left hand. Could the fool even draw a bow? “The foot of the Hethantas is a far different thing than my yaksh, Xunnurit.”
“Is it? Is this what the memorialists tell us?”
It wasn’t so much the man’s cunning that shocked Cnaiür as the realization that he’d underestimated him.
Xunnurit’s eyes flashed with triumph. “No. The memorialists say that battle is our hearth, earth our womb, and sky our yaksh. We’ve been violated, as surely as if Conphas had quickened our wives or cracked our hearthstone. Violated. Desecrated. Humiliated. We’re beyond measuring tactical advantages, Utemot.”
“And what of our victory over the Fanim at Zirkirta?” Cnaiür asked. Most of the men present had been at Zirkirta eight years before, where he himself had struck down Hasjinnet, the Kianene general.
“What of it?”
“How long did the tribes fall back before the Kianene? How long did we bleed them before we broke their back?” He graced Xunnurit with a macabre smile, the one that so often reduced his wives to tears. The King-of-Tribes stiffened.
“But that—”
“Is a different thing, Xunnurit? How can a battle be like a yaksh and yet not be like another battle? At Zirkirta, we practised patience. We waited, and by doing so, we utterly destroyed a powerful foe.”
“But it’s not simply a matter of waiting, Cnaiür,” a third voice called out. It was Oknai One-Eye, the chieftain of the powerful Munuäti tribes from the interior. “The question is one of
how long
we must wait. Soon the droughts begin, and those of us from the Steppe’s heart must drive our herds to summer pasture.”
Numerous shouts followed the remark, as though this were the first sensible thing said.
“Indeed,” Xunnurit added, rallied by this unsought support. “Conphas has come heavily laden, with a baggage train larger than his army. How long would you have us wait for the fawn and jackal to gnaw at their hearts and bellies? One month? Two? Even six?” He turned to the others and was rewarded by a swell of guttural assent.
Cnaiür ran a hand over his scalp, sorted through the hostile faces surrounding him. He understood their worries because they were also his. An overlong absence possessed many perils. Neglected herds meant wolves, pestilence, even famine. If one added to this the threat of slave revolts, wayward wives, and for tribes on the Steppe’s northern frontier such as his own, Sranc, then the incentive for a hasty return became irresistible.
He turned to Xunnurit, realizing the decision to attack was not something the man had foisted on the others. Even though they knew that haste was the curse of wisdom, they wanted to bring this war to a quick conclusion, far more so than they had at Zirkirta. But why?
All eyes were on him. “Well?” Xunnurit asked.
Had Ikurei Conphas intended this? It would be easy enough, he supposed, to learn the different demands the seasons placed on the People. Had Conphas deliberately chosen the weeks before the summer drought?
The thought dizzied Cnaiür with its implications. Suddenly, everything he had witnessed and heard since joining the horde possessed different meaning: the buggery of their Scylvendi captives, the mocking embassies, even the positioning of their privies—all calculated to gall the People into attacking.
“Why?” Cnaiür abruptly asked. “Why would Conphas bring so many supplies?”
Xunnurit snorted. “Because this is the Steppe. There’s no forage.”
“No. Because he expects a war of
patience
.”
“Exactly!” Xunnurit exclaimed. “He intends to wait until hunger forces the tribes to disband. Which is why we must attack immediately!”
“Disband?” Cnaiür cried, dismayed that his insight could be so easily perverted. “No! He intends to wait until hunger or pride forces the tribes to
attack
.”
The audacity of the claim provoked shouts from the onlookers. Xunnurit laughed in the rueful manner of one who’d mistaken naïveté for wisdom. “You Utemot dwell far from the Empire,” he said, as though indulging a fool, “so perhaps ignorance of imperial politics is to be expected. How could you know that the stature of Ikurei Conphas grows while that of his uncle, the Emperor, falters? You speak as though Ikurei Conphas were sent here to conquer, when he’s been sent here to die!”
“Do you jest?” Cnaiür cried in exasperation. “Have you looked at his host? Their elite cavalry, their Norsirai auxiliaries, well nigh every column in the Imperial Army, even the Emperor’s own Eothic Guard! They’ve stripped the Empire to assemble this expedition. Treaties must have been struck, fortunes of gold promised and spent. This is an army of
conquest,
not a funeral procession for—”
“Ask the memorialists!” Xunnurit snapped. “Other emperors have sacrificed as much, if not more. Xerius would have to fool Conphas, would he not?”
“Pfah! And you say the Utemot know nothing of the Empire! The Nansurium is a place besieged. She could ill afford to lose a fraction of such an army!”
Xunnurit leaned farther forward in his saddle, raised his fist in a threatening manner. His brows pinched over glaring eyes. His nostrils flared. “Then what better reason to smash it now! Afterward, we shall sweep to the Great Sea like our fathers of yore! We shall pull down their temples, impregnate their daughters, cut down their sons!”
To Cnaiür’s alarm, shouts of agreement rifled the morning air. He silenced them with a killing look. “Are you all dog-eyed drunks? What better reason to let the Nansur languish! What do you think Conphas would do if he were in our midst? What—”
“Pick my sword from his ass!” someone cried out, prompting an explosion of hearty laughter.
Cnaiür could smell it then, the good-humoured camaraderie that amounted to little more than a conspiracy to mock one and the same man. His lips twisted into a grimace. Always the same, no matter what his claim to arms or intellect. They’d measured him many years ago—and had found him wanting.
But measure is unceasing . . .
“No!” Cnaiür roared. “He’d laugh at you as you laugh at me! He’d say a dog must be known to be broken, and I know these dogs! Better than they know themselves!” A plaintive cast had crept into his tone and expression; he struggled to squelch it. “Listen. You must listen! Conphas has gambled on this very council—on our arrogance, on our . . . customary thoughts. He’s done everything in his power to provoke us! Don’t you see?
We
decide his genius on the field. Only we can make him a fool. And by doing the one thing that terrifies him, the one thing he’s done everything to prevent. We must wait! Wait for him to come to us!”
Xunnurit had watched him intently, his eyes bright with gloating amusement. Now he smiled derisively. “Men call you Man-killing Cnaiür, speak of your prowess on the field, of your endless hunger for holy slaughter. But now”—he shook his head in a scolding manner—“where’s that hunger gone, Utemot? Should we now call you Time-killing Cnaiür?”
More heart-gouging laughter, deep-throated and coarse, at once honest in the way of a simple people and yet bruised by an unsavoury glee, the sound of lesser men revelling in the degradation of one greater. Cnaiür’s ears buzzed. Earth and sky shrank, until the whole world became laughing, yellow-toothed faces. He could feel it stir within him, his second soul, the one that blotted the sun and painted the earth with blood. Their laughter faltered before his menace. His glare struck even the smirks from their faces.
“Tomorrow,” Xunnurit declared, nervously yanking his roan toward the distant Nansur encampment, “we shall sacrifice an entire nation to the Dead-God. Tomorrow we put an empire to the knife!”

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