The Judging Eye (30 page)

The sounds of the Great Ordeal
subsided, drew out and away until the young King could almost believe that only
his tent remained, solitary on a trampled plain. There was, it seemed, a moment
of
absolute
silence, a moment where every heartbeat hesitated, every
breath paused, and the numb immobility of death fell upon all things.

He asked it to take him. It was
as close as he had come to prayer since the day his father had died.

Then he heard something. It was
almost too broad to be distinguished from the quiet at first, as if wings,
spread too wide, simply became the sky. But slowly, contours resolved from the
background, a kind of porous roar, something without a singular origin, but
rather born of many. For the longest time, he could not place it, and for a
panicked moment he even imagined that it came from the city, the combined
screams and cries of his people, dying beneath the swords of their dark-skinned
conquerors.

Then in a rush he realized...

The storks.

The storks called from across
the nocturnal hills. They always did this, every spring. Legend said that each
of them sang to a different star, naming their sons and daughters, beseeching,
cajoling, guiding the gosling descent of innumerable stick-limbed souls...

Sorweel finally dozed, warm with
thoughts of his mother and his first childhood visit to the Viturnal Nesting.
He could remember her beauty, wane and pale. He could remember how cold her
hand had seemed about his own—as though fate had begun prying loose her grasp
on life even then. He could remember gazing in wonder at the storks, untold
thousands of them, making white terraces of the hillsides.

"Do you know why they
come here, Sorwa?"

"No, Mama..."

"Because our city is the
Refuge, the hinge of the Worldly Wheel. They come here as our forefathers once
came, Darling..."

Her smile. It had always seemed
the world's most obvious thing.

"They come so that their
children might be safe."

***

Later that night, he awoke in
jerking horror, like a guard caught napping on the night of a great battle.
Everything reeled in alarm and disorder. He sat up with a breath that was a
cry, and at the foot of his cot he saw his
father
sitting, his back
turned to him, weeping for his dead wife.

Sorweel's mother.

"It's okay, Da," he
rasped, swallowing against his own tears. "She watches... She watches over
us still."

At that, the apparition went
rigid, in the way of proud men grievously insulted, or of broken men mocked for
the loss that had overwhelmed them. Sorweel's throat clenched, became hot and
thin as a burning reed, to the point where he could not breathe...

The ghost of Harweel turned its
burnt head, revealing a face devoid of hope and eyes. Beetles dropped from the
joints of his blasted armour, clicked and scuttled in the dark.

The dead,
it grated
without sound,
cannot see.

***

Dawn was no more than a band of
grey in the east. Still the innumerable camps had been broken, the tents and
pavilions felled, the guy-ropes coiled and stacked, the great baggage-trains
loaded. Men caught steaming breath in their hands, stared across the
frost-barren distances. Beasts of burden stamped and complained in the gloom.

Drawing a team of twenty oxen,
the priests delivered the great wain to the highest point in the vicinity, a
knoll stumped with ancient foundation stones. The bed of the vehicle had been
constructed from timbers typically used in ship building, such was its size.
Each of the eight iron-bound wheels stood as tall as olive trees. Slaves
clambered across the frame, undoing the knots that fixed the circumfix-brocaded
tarp. They rolled the crimson-and-gold covering back, revealing a horizontally
suspended cylinder of iron as long as a skiff. Inscriptions adorned its every
surface—verses from the Tusk rendered in the many tongues of the Three
Seas—lending it an ancient and wrinkled look.

At the command of the
High-Priest, a towering eunuch raised the Prayer Hammer... struck. The Interval
sounded, a far-reaching, sonorous knell that somehow rose from the silence
without breaking it, hung upon the ears before fading in imperceptible degrees.

The assembled Men of the
Circumfix looked out to the horizon, waiting. For those across the higher
slopes, their numbers scarce seemed possible, so far did the formations reach
into the distance. The Nilnameshi phalanxes, with a file of iron-clad mastodons
running like a spine through their midst. The Thunyeri with their long-edged
axes. The Tydonni with their flaxen beards bound to their girdles. And on and
on. High Ainon, Conriya, Nansur, Shigek, Eumarna, Galeoth, Girgash; the hosts
of a dozen nations, arrayed about the gleaming standards of their kings,
waiting...

Some were already on their
knees.

Without warning, the Thunyeri
began cursing and waving arms, spitting hatred at the North. Their broken
shouts spread, resolved into a thundering chorus, one that soon boomed across
the entirety of the Ordeal, even though many knew not the words they recited.

Hur rutwas matal skeel!

Hur rutwas matal skeel!

Men held out their arms as if
they could, with their souls, reach out the thousands of miles to Golgotterath
and wrestle it to ground with wrath and ardour alone. Each saw the coming
tribulation in their soul's eye, and in their heart, their triumph was more
than assured, it was decreed...

Hur rutwas matal skeel!

Hur rutwas matal skeel!

The Interval tolled again,
resonating through the thousand-throated clamour, and the roar faded into
expectant silence. The
ghus
, the oceanic prayer horns, sounded just as
the eastern light etched the horizon in brilliant gold, like a cup tipped to
overflowing.

Gold paint gleamed. Circumfix
banners hung listless in the chill air. A presentiment passed through the
assembly, and the cries of defiance and adulation rose once again, the way wind
might coax a second rain from sodden trees. Their Aspect-Emperor—they could
feel him.

He walked across the vault of
heaven, standing bright in a sun that had yet to reach the masses below. Orange
and rose painted the eastern flanges of his white-silk robes. His golden hair
and braided beard shone. Starlight flashed from his high-hanging eyes. The Men
of the Three Seas howled and roared in adoration—a cacophony of tongues. They
reached out, lifted fingertips to touch his remote image.

"HOLD MY LIGHT," the
hanging figure called in thunder.

The rim of the sun boiled over
the horizon, and morning dawned over the Great Ordeal. Warmth kissed the cheeks
of those watching.

"FOR TODAY WE WALK THE WAYS
OF SHADOW..."

And they fell to their knees—warriors
and scribes, kings and slaves, priests and sorcerers, more than two hundred and
eighty thousand souls, the greatest gathering of human arms and glory the world
had ever seen. So many that it seemed that the floor of the world had dropped
with their kneeling. They raised their faces and cried out, for light had come
to them...

And the sun had followed.

"AMONG ALL PEOPLES, ONLY
YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THE YOKE OF APOCALYPSE. AMONG ALL PEOPLES,
ONLY YOU
..."

For the Sakarpi who watched from
their broken battlements, it was a thing of wonder and horror. Many felt a kind
of hanging consternation, similar to that which afflicts men who make
overbearing declarations. Everyone had assumed the Second Apocalypse and the
march to Golgotterath was simply a pretext, that the Great Ordeal was an army
of conquest, and the assault on Sakarpus another chapter of the Unification
Wars, about which they had heard so many atrocious rumours and tales. But
now...

Did they not witness proof of
the Aspect-Emperor's word?

No one dared mock. Not a single
jeer was raised against the ecstatic roar. They listened to their conqueror's
sky-spanning voice, and though the language defeated them, they thought they
understood what was said. They knew the scene before them would be celebrated
for a thousand years, that accounts of it would be recited in the manner of
The
Sagas
or even
The Chronicle of the Tusk
.

The day the Great Ordeal marched
beyond the frontiers of Men.

The proud and the embittered
celebrated, thinking that the Southron Kings marched to their doom. But that
evening, long after the last of the long-snaking columns had vanished over the
northern crests, thousands of Sakarpi went down into the streets to listen to
sermons of the white-and-green-clad Judges. They took the lengths of copper
wire that were offered to them, to twist into the shape of Circumfixes.

Afterwards, they clutched their
crude tokens the way children sometimes moon over baubles that have captured
their imagination. The Circumfix. A
living
symbol of a
living
god.
It seemed a wonder, all the stories, all the shining possibilities, the golden
clamour of a deeper, more forgiving reality. They walked together in whispering
clots, glared at those who upbraided them with as much pity as defensive
hostility. Pride, the Judges had told them, was ever the sin of fools.

That night they knelt for what
seemed the first time, gave voice to the great unanswered ache in their hearts.
They held their Circumfixes hot between moist palms,
and they prayed
.
And the chill that pimpled their skin seemed holy.

They
knew
what they had
seen, what they had felt.

For who could be such a fool as
to mistake Truth?

CHAPTER EIGHT

The River Rohil

The will to conceal and the
will to deceive are one and the same.

Verily, a secret is naught
but a deception that goes unspoken.

A lie that only the Gods can
hear.

—
Merempompas,
Epistemata

Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132
Year-of-the-Tusk), The Headwaters of the River Rohil

The plan was to follow the
tributaries of the River Rohil all the way into the Osthwai Mountains, then
cross the Ochain Passes into the trackless Meörn Wilderness, where pretty much
all the Scalpoi companies that frequented Marrow hunted their inhuman quarry.
It was, Kiampas assured Achamian, an old and oft-travelled route. "As
reliable as anything in this wicked trade," he had said. Things wouldn't
get interesting, he guessed, until they had "slogged past the
Fringe," the Fringe being the fluid and ever-receding border of what Sarl
called "skinny country"—land ranged by the Sranc.

The first two nights Achamian
made and broke his own camp and prepared his own meals. The third night, Sarl
invited him to dine at the Captain's fire, which aside from Lord Kosoter and
Sarl, included Kiampas and Incariol. Initially, Achamian had not known what to
expect, but then, after dining on a repast of venison and boiled sumac shoots,
he realized that he had known how it would be all along: Sarl discoursing on
and on about everything and anything, with Kiampas contributing cautious
asides, the Nonman adding cryptic and sometimes nonsensical observations, and
the Captain staring down the night with nary a word.

The invitation was not extended
the following night, and Achamian fumed, not because he had been excluded, but
because of the hollow-boned loneliness that accompanied the exclusion. Of all
the prospective perils that had plagued his soul's eye, heartsickness had been
the least of his worries. And yet here he was, four nights out, moping like the
outcast runt at temple. He did his resolute best to keep his eyes fixed on his
humble fire. But no matter how vehement his curses, he found his gaze ranging
to the talk and laughter emanating from the other camps. Obviously frequented
by other companies, the entire area had been cleared of deadfall and bracken,
so he could clearly see the rest of the Skin Eaters between the ancient elms,
their campfires pitched in the depressions between humps of packed earth,
interlocked rings of illumination, anemic and orange, tracing trunks and limbs
against the black of the greater forest.

Achamian had almost forgotten
what it was like, watching men about their fires. The arms folded against the
chill. The mouths smiling, laughing, tongue and teeth peeking in and out of the
firelight. The gazes hopping from face to face within the cage of camaraderie,
only to return to the furnace coals during the inevitable lulls. At first it
struck him as something fearful, an exposing of what humans do when they turn
their backs to the world, their interiority laid bare to the vaults of dark
infinity, cracked open like oysters, with no walls save a warlike nature. But
as the moments passed, he found the sight more and more affecting, to the point
of feeling old and maudlin. That in a place so vast and so dark creatures this
frail would dare gather about sparks called light. They seemed at once precious
and imperilled, like jewels mislaid across open ground, something sure to be
scooped up by jealous enormities.