Read The Darkness that Comes Before Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
The Darkness that Comes Before (27 page)
Swaying silently upon wooden saddles, innumerable horsemen paced through grasses chill and grey with morning dew. Nearly eight years had passed since the Battle of Zirkirta, eight years since Cnaiür had last witnessed such a gathering of the People. Great congregations trailed their chieftains, enveloping slopes and heights nearly a mile distant. Screened by thickets of raised lances, hundreds of horsehide standards jutted from the masses, marking tribes and federations from across the Steppe.
So many!
Did Ikurei Conphas grasp what he’d done? The Scylvendi were fractious by nature, and aside from their ritual border raids on the Nansurium, they spent the majority of their time murdering one another. This penchant for feud and internecine warfare was the Empire’s greatest bulwark against their race, greater even than the sky-gutting Hethantas. By invading the Steppe, Conphas had welded the People together, and so had delivered the Empire to its greatest peril in a generation.
What could prompt such a risk? For no apparent reason, Ikurei Xerius III had staked the Empire itself on his precocious nephew. What promises had Conphas made him? What circumstances had driven him?
All was not as it seemed; of this, Cnaiür was certain. And yet, as he stared across fields of armoured horsemen, he could not help repenting his earlier misgivings. Everywhere he looked, he saw grim, warlike riders, pelts nailed to their circular shields, their horses caparisoned in skirts stitched with plundered Nansur and Kianene coins. Countless thousands of Scylvendi, made terrible by cruel seasons and never-ending war, now united as in the days of legend. What hope could Conphas possibly have?
Nansur horns blared from beneath the mountains, startling man and horse alike. All eyes turned to the long ridge that obscured the valley. Cnaiür’s grey snorted and pranced, swishing the scalps that adorned his bridle.
“Soon,” he muttered, stilling his horse’s romping head with a firm hand. “Soon the madness will break.”
Cnaiür always remembered the hours before battle as unbearable, and because of this, he was always surprised whenever he actually endured them. There were moments when the enormity of what was about to happen seized him, left him stunned like one who’d just avoided a mortal fall. But such moments were fleeting. By and large the hours passed like any others, more anxious, perhaps, and punctuated by flashes of communal hate and awe, but otherwise as tedious as the rest. By and large he needed to remind himself of the insanity to come.
Cnaiür was the first of his tribesmen to gain the summit of the ridge. Smouldering between two incisor-shaped mountains, the rising sun blinded them, and several moments passed before Cnaiür could discern the far-away lines of the Imperial Army. Phalanxes of infantry formed a great segmented band across the open ground between the river and the fortified Nansur encampment. Mounted skirmishers ranged the broken slopes before them, poised to harass any Scylvendi attempting to cross the Kiyuth. As though greeting their ancient foe, the Nansur horns pealed once again, shivering through the raw morning air. A mighty shout rose from the ranks, followed by the hollow drum of swords pounding shields.
While the other tribes mustered along the ridge line, Cnaiür studied the Nansur, a hand raised against the sun. The fact that they occupied the middle ground rather than the east bank of the river did not surprise him, though he imagined Xunnurit and the others were now scrambling to alter their plans. He tried counting the ranks—the formations seemed extraordinarily deep—but had difficulty concentrating. The absurd magnitude of his circumstances weighed against him like something palpable. How could such things happen? How could whole nations—
He lowered his head, rubbed the back of his neck, rehearsing the litany of self-recriminations that always consummated such shameful thoughts. In his soul’s eye, he saw his father, Skiötha, his face blackening as he suffocated in the muck.
When he looked up, his thoughts were as vacant as his expression. Conphas. Ikurei Conphas was the focus of what was about to unfold, not Cnaiür urs Skiötha.
A voice startled him: Bannut, his dead father’s brother.
“Why are they deployed so close to their encampment?” The old warrior cleared his throat—a sound like a horse’s low-chested nicker. “You’d think they’d use the river to deny us our charge.”
Cnaiür resumed his appraisal of the Imperial Army. The giddiness of imminent bloodshed floated through his limbs. “Because Conphas needs a decisive battle. He wants us to draw our lines on his side of the river. Deny us room to manoeuvre and force an all-or-nothing confrontation.”
“Is he mad?”
Bannut was right. Conphas was mad if he thought his men could prevail in a pitched battle. In desperation, the Kianene had made a similar bid at Zirkirta eight years before; they had purchased only disaster. The People did not break.
A laugh surfaced through the mutter of his surrounding kinsmen. Cnaiür jerked his head around. At him? Did someone laugh at him?
“No,” he replied distantly, watching profiles over Bannut’s shoulders. “Ikurei Conphas is not mad.”
Bannut spat, a gesture meant, or so Cnaiür assumed, for the Nansur Exalt-General. “You speak as though you know him.”
Cnaiür glared directly at the old man, trying to decipher the disgust in his tone. He
did
know Conphas, in a manner. While raiding the Empire the previous autumn, he’d captured several Nansur soldiers, men who prated about the Exalt-General with an adoration that had captured Cnaiür’s interest. With hot coals and harsh questions, he’d learned much of Ikurei Conphas, of his brilliance in the Galeoth Wars, of his daring tactics and novel training regimens—enough to know he was different from any he’d ever met on the field. But this knowledge was wasted on old snakes such as Bannut, who had never forgiven him the murder of his father.
did
know Conphas, in a manner. While raiding the Empire the previous autumn, he’d captured several Nansur soldiers, men who prated about the Exalt-General with an adoration that had captured Cnaiür’s interest. With hot coals and harsh questions, he’d learned much of Ikurei Conphas, of his brilliance in the Galeoth Wars, of his daring tactics and novel training regimens—enough to know he was different from any he’d ever met on the field. But this knowledge was wasted on old snakes such as Bannut, who had never forgiven him the murder of his father.
“Ride to Xunnurit,” Cnaiür commanded, knowing full well the King-of-Tribes would have nothing to do with an Utemot messenger. “Find out what he intends.”
Bannut was not fooled. “I’ll take Yursalka with me,” he said hoarsely. “He married one of Xunnurit’s daughters, the deformed one, just last spring. Perhaps the King-of-Tribes will remember that generosity.” Bannut spat one last time, as though to cement his meaning, and spurred into the surrounding Utemot.
For a long time, Cnaiür sat desolate upon his horse, numbly watching bumblebees dart between the bobbing heads of purple clover just below him. The Nansur continued pounding their distant shields. The sun slowly gathered the valley in its hot clasp. Horses stamped in impatience.
More horns rang across the interval, and the Nansur ceased their clamour. The rumble of his muttering kinsmen waxed, and a kindling rage crowded the grief from his breast. Always they spoke to one another and never to him; it was as though he were a dead man in their midst. He thought of all those he’d killed the first few years after his father’s death, all those Utemot who’d sought to wrest the chieftain’s White Yaksh from the dishonour of his name. Seven cousins, one uncle, and two brothers. Stubborn hate brimmed within him, a hate that ensured he would not yield, no matter how many indignities they heaped upon him, no matter how many whispers or guarded looks. He would murder all and any, foe and kinsmen alike, before he would yield.
He fixed his gaze on the bristling landscape of Conphas’s army.
Will I kill you today, Exalt-General? I think so.
Sudden shouts drew his attention to the left. Across the congestion of arms and horsemen, he saw Xunnurit’s standard waving against the sky. Dyed horsetails whisked up and down, relaying the order for a slow advance. Far to the north, crowds of Scylvendi had already begun filing down the slopes. Crying out to his tribesmen, Cnaiür spurred his mount toward the river, trampling the clover and scattering the bees. The dew had burned off, and the grasses now rasped about his horse’s shins. The air smelled of warming earth.
The Scylvendi horde gradually enveloped the eastern valley. Pressing through the scrub of the floodplain, Cnaiür glimpsed Bannut and Yursalka racing toward him across open ground, their leather bowcases swinging from their hips, their shields bouncing on their horses’ rumps. They leapt some scrub, and Bannut was nearly unhorsed by a shallow ravine on the far side. Within moments they were reining their mounts parallel to Cnaiür.
For some reason, they seemed even more ill at ease than usual. After a conspiratorial glance at Bannut, Yursalka fixed Cnaiür with expressionless eyes. “We’re to take the southernmost of the fords, then position ourselves opposite the Nasueret Column, on the enemy’s left. If Conphas advances before we’ve reformed, we’re to withdraw to the south and harass his flanks.”
“Xunnurit himself told you this?”
Yursalka nodded carefully. Bannut glared, his old eyes bright with malicious self-satisfaction.
Rocking with his horse’s gait, Cnaiür peered over the Kiyuth, sifting through the crimson banners of the Imperial Army’s left. He found the standard of the Nasueret Column quickly: the Black Sun of Nansur halved by an eagle’s wing, with the Sheyic symbol for nine embroidered in gold below.
Bannut cleared his throat again. “The Ninth Column,” he said approvingly. “Our King-of-Tribes honours us.” Though traditionally stationed on the Empire’s Kianene frontier, the men of the Nasueret were rumoured to be among the Imperial Army’s finest.
“Either that or he murders us,” Cnaiür amended. Perhaps Xunnurit hoped hard consequences would follow from the hard words they’d traded the previous day.
They all want me dead.
Yursalka snorted something unintelligible, then spurred away, seeking, Cnaiür imagined, more honourable company. Bannut continued at Cnaiür’s side, saying nothing.
When the Kiyuth grew near enough for them to smell its glacial ancestry, several detachments broke from the Scylvendi line and ploughed across the river’s many fords. Cnaiür watched these cohorts apprehensively, knowing their immediate fortune would reveal much of Conphas’s intentions. The Nansur skirmishers on the river’s far side fell back before them, then broke and bolted, pelted by volleys of arrows. The Scylvendi pursued them toward the bulk of the Imperial Army, then hooked into a gallop parallel to the Nansur line, firing clouds of arrows from the backs of hard-running horses. More and more cohorts joined them, guiding their horses with only spur, cry, and knee. Soon, thousands were sweeping across the Imperial lines.
Cnaiür and his Utemot crossed the Kiyuth under cover of these marauders, trailing drapes of water as they climbed the far bank, then rode hard to their new position opposite the Nasueret. Cnaiür knew the river crossing and subsequent redeployment would be a critical time, and throughout he kept expecting to hear horns sound the Nansur advance. But the Exalt-General kept his columns leashed, allowing the Scylvendi to assemble in a vast crescent along the back of the river.
What was Conphas doing?
Across ground and grasses as uneven as a juvenile’s beard, the Imperial Army awaited them. Cnaiür gazed across row after row of shield-bearing figures, heavy with armour and insignia, wearing red leather skirts and iron-banded harnesses trimmed by mail. Innumerable and nameless, soon to die for their trespasses.
Horns brayed. Thousands of swords beat as one. And yet it seemed an uncanny silence had settled upon the field, a collective intake of breath.
A breeze funnelled through the valley, tugging at the smell of horses, sweaty leather, and unwashed men. The chafe and clank of scabbards against harnesses reminded Cnaiür of his own armour. His hands as light as air-filled bladders, he checked the straps of his white-enamelled battlecap, a trophy of his victory over Hasjinnet at Zirkirta, then the lacings of his iron-ringed brigandine. He swung from his waist in his saddle, both to limber his muscles and to ease the tension. He whispered a memorial to the Dead-God.
Horsehair signals were traded between the massed tribes, and Cnaiür barked commands to his kinsmen. The first wave of lancers formed abreast of him. Shields were strung from necks.
Sensing Bannut’s scrutiny, Cnaiür turned to him, found himself disquieted by his expression.
“You,” the old warrior said, “shall be measured this day, Cnaiür urs Skiötha. Measure is unceasing.”
Cnaiür gaped at the man, overcome by fury and astonishment. “This is not the place, Uncle, to revisit old wounds.”
“I can think of no better place.”
Concerns, suspicions, and premonitions beset him, but there was no time. The skirmishers were retiring. In the distance, lines of horsemen peeled away from the greater horde, pacing toward the phalanxes of the Imperial Army. The pilgrimage had ended; the worship was about to begin.
With a shout, he led the Utemot forward at a trot. Something akin to fear clutched him, a sense of falling, as though from a precipice. Within moments they found themselves within range of the Nansur bowmen. He cried out, and his lancers spurred to a gallop, bracing shields against shoulders and saddle horns. They crashed through a thicket of stunted sumacs. The first shafts whistled among them, tearing air like cloth, thudding into shield, ground, flesh. One clipped his shoulder, another punched a finger’s length through the laminated leather of his shield.
They thundered across a stretch of level turf, gathering fatal momentum. More arrows descended upon them, and they were fewer. Horse shrieks, the clatter of shafts, then only the raw rumble of a thousand hoofs across the turf. His head low, Cnaiür watched the infantrymen of the Nasueret Column brace themselves. Pikes were lowered, pikes longer than any he’d ever seen. His breath caught in hesitation. But he spurred his horse faster, couching his lance, howling the Utemot battle cry. His kinsmen answered, and the air shivered,
“War and worship!”
Clumped grasses and wildflowers hurtled beneath him. The wall of pikes and shields and soldiers rushed closer. His tribe rode with him, outstretched like two great arms.
“War and worship!”
Clumped grasses and wildflowers hurtled beneath him. The wall of pikes and shields and soldiers rushed closer. His tribe rode with him, outstretched like two great arms.
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