The Third God (77 page)

He turned to Fern. ‘The battle will soon be upon us. We need some beasts to ride.’

Grimly, his friend nodded. Carnelian saw in Fern’s face that he was still determined to fight.

‘Let’s do it.’

Pulling his cowl over his head, Carnelian clambered up onto the road, a rough mosaic of blocks and fractured stone probably cannibalized from the demolished leftway. Glancing round to make sure Fern was close, he made his way along the edge of the road, all the while keeping a wary eye on the massive lumbering dragons, until he saw a squadron of auxiliaries approaching. When he stepped out in front of them, they came straight at him. He raised his arms aggressively. As they slowed he thought they were responding to him, but then he saw they were gazing past him. The object of their scrutiny was Fern. Though spattered with filth, encrusted to knees and elbows, the paleness of his commanders’ leathers was still unmistakable. One of the auxiliaries cried out a challenge, his face distorting with anger and confusion. Perhaps the man could see that, in spite of his costume, Fern was not a Master. Carnelian sensed that the man was about to order his squadron to resume their march and he strode towards him. The man regarded Carnelian with some uncertainty.

‘Give us two of your aquar,’ he said, in a ringing tone of command.

The man hesitated. Carnelian realized that all the man was seeing was a tall figure in a filthy cloak. He became aware that the auxiliaries were impeding the flow of traffic along the road. Voices were rising in angry consternation. He drew back his cowl to expose his face and continued to advance towards the auxiliary. The man grew sickly pale as if his face was seeking to mirror the whiteness of Carnelian’s own. Faces everywhere were averting their gaze with such violence that this communicated to their aquar, whose plumes raised in alarm. Carnelian had nearly reached the man who was bent forward in his saddle-chair moaning, when he felt a vast shadow looming up and saw the great horned head of a dragon above him. The monster’s reek oppressed the air. Suddenly a screaming roar tore the air, making Carnelian’s teeth rattle. Its commander was sounding his trumpets to clear the road, or perhaps he had seen the Master below. Carnelian did not care. He clasped the auxiliary’s thigh. ‘Down!’

The man was not so lost in terror that he dared disobey. His hand pulled the reins and the aquar sank to the road.

‘All of you down!’ Carnelian bellowed.

As the whole squadron sank, he grasped the auxiliary’s arm and pulled him out of his chair. Looking round, he saw Fern. ‘Take this one.’

Fern jerked a nod. Carnelian went down the line and pulled another auxiliary from his saddle-chair. Taking the man’s lance, Carnelian clambered into his place, feeling the warmth still in the leather as he adjusted himself into a cramped sitting position. He recalled how to control an aquar with reins and made her rise. Fern was already mounted. Again the air was rent by trumpet blasts. Carnelian glanced up, but could not see past the head of the dragon to its tower. He pulled his cowl once more over his head and then sent his aquar loping along the road, glanced round to make sure Fern was following and had soon insinuated them into the traffic up ahead.

Carnelian and Fern became lost in the march. The smell of fear accentuated the malty musk of beasts and men. Its light in every eye ran like hairline cracks through that monumental procession of military power. Both could sense it lurking behind the grim expressions on every face. Shuddered by the constant thunder of dragon footfalls, their own hearts were quick, uncertain. Watching more and more of the monsters heaving onto the road, and trapped in the narrow canyons walled by their flexing hide, neither could imagine how such might could be withstood.

At last they neared a junction. Ahead dragons were turning left into a road running away to the east, but to the right a massive earthbridge crossed the ditch back into the Masters’ camp, from which there was coming a strange and relentless grinding. As they came abreast of this bridge, they saw, beyond the cordon of Ichorian bridge guards, that the Iron House was in motion. Two massive dragons pulled it that were the colour of dried blood. Carnelian sought out the standard high above the chariot, but it was side-on. His gaze fell to the chariot wheel, its rim taller than the sybling Ichorians that clustered beside it. Ponderously that verdigrised circle turned, impaled by red spokes that emanated from a dark hub. A map, then, of the Commonwealth: Osrakum at the centre, the barbarian lands at the rim taking turns to bear her crushing weight.

Carnelian was allowed to see no more, for, at that moment, his aquar made the turn into the east and he and Fern began moving along the road towards the edge of the camp. They made slow progress. As before, dragons drifted slowly onto the road from the left, seeming to be afloat upon the torrent of riders eddying around their feet. To the right a vast field overbrimming with aquar was pouring more squadrons onto the road. Over their heads Carnelian could see the dragons that had been moored within that quadrant of the camp drifting away towards its southern edge in a stately armada.

The outer ditch approached. Then Carnelian and Fern were crossing it upon another earthbridge. Riding into open ground made them feel as if they were being released from the neck of a bottle. The dragons were sailing in columns south-eastward, up to their haunches in billows of dust. Auxiliaries were coalescing into rhomboids already vague in the haze their aquar were stirring up. Looking south, Carnelian lost hold of that human scale and even the dragons appeared small. For the red plain stretched away to a boiling cliff of dust, churned up by the approaching sartlar, that rose towards the frowning clouds. Black with rain, these seemed the Sky Lord’s wrathful brow. A subtle light played behind that might have been the God seeing in His mind the coming flame. In his bones, Carnelian felt the sky’s growling was warming to thunderous rage.

Harsh trumpets sounding caused him to turn back towards the camp. Through tearing red miasmas, a dense press of dragon towers was pouring out through the southern gate. Above them hung an apparition that chilled Carnelian’s marrow: the infernal face of the Iron House standard, black and leering, sprouting four horns like scorpion stings. It was only a representation of the Twins, whose other face had given him comfort.

‘We’re getting left behind,’ cried Fern, pointing with his lance to where the auxiliary squadrons were moving towards the blinking eye of the sun. As they caught up with them, the sun climbed behind the clouds, instantly plunging the world into a lurid twilight.

THE MIRROR BREAKS

Even a hairline crack can shatter a mountain.

(a Quyan proverb)

CARNELIAN GAZED AT THE CLIFF OF DUST THAT COUNTLESS SARTLAR
feet were driving towards him and the rest of Molochite’s host. The half-light was giving it a darker, bloodier hue. In its rolling depths growled nearing thunder. Sometimes faint lightning, like a twinge of toothache, made him remember his dreams and, for some reason, his voyage to the Three Lands. He gazed up into the leaden heavens dreading the weight of rain above them. Fern was watching the sartlar approach. Before them both stretched more than a dozen ranks of heads and banners, of backs of saddle-chairs, of lances that combed the gale the mountainous wave was hurling at them. Carnelian opened his cowl to sample the air, almost expecting the tang of the sea, the iron of blood, but there was nothing save the smell of aquar, of men and their sweat and, perhaps, the dry musk of the land.

Left was the vast sweep of auxiliary squadrons bristling all the way towards the pale thread of the Great Eastern Road. Right, a dragon loomed that was the nearest bastion in the wall of monsters that ran unbroken into the west as far as Carnelian could see. Their flame-pipes gave them the appearance of some vast hornwall. Chimneys lit, this whole first line was streaming banners of black smoke back over the second: another rampart that would stand should the first fail, and Molochite’s ancient tactic to counter Osidian’s hollow crescent. Not that such a precaution seemed necessary. Regarding such a concentration of raw power, it seemed ridiculous to imagine that Osidian could triumph. A bleakness at the thought of his defeat alerted Carnelian to what he had not known he felt: that he still yearned for Osidian’s victory. Willing his gaze to penetrate the gloom behind Molochite’s second line, he was sure he could see the demonic face hanging leering above the Iron House. It was a perfect representation of the mind that moved that vast host. Adjusting his position in the saddle-chair made him aware his torn muscles were beginning to seize up. His joints ached where they had almost come apart. His skin shivered, remembering the brutal touch of the cross. He relived his pain, his shame, but also the naked children and Molochite’s bitter malice. Was it strange, then, that he did not wish that monster to triumph?

Resuming his survey over the heads of the auxiliaries, he watched again the sartlar advance rearing its wall of curling dust. Though it looked solid, it was not. This was no wave of blood that would drown Molochite’s power, merely a mirage behind which lay nothing more terrible than a multitude of starved, poorly armed brutes. Would their flesh resist Molochite’s fire? Would their bones withstand the trampling thunder of his dragons? Carnelian chuckled mirthlessly. Still he could not let go hope of Osidian’s victory. Scanning the dust wall, he searched for any sign of him. A light flickered, there towards the far end of Osidian’s right flank. It flared again. A tiny flicker too close to the ground to be lightning. Dragonfire, then. Carnelian’s heart leapt as he had a thought. Could it be a feint to draw Molochite’s strength from his centre, weakening it perhaps enough to land a fatal blow? He looked back towards the Iron House and watched it for a signal. Nothing. The two lines might have been granite walls upon whose ramparts fires smoked.

Suddenly the air was rent by a ragged, shrill chorus pumped out by many brass throats. The blasts reverberated beneath the heavens. Again the fanfare sounded, so harsh it seemed as if it might pare flesh from bones. Their commander, in the front rank, jabbed his lance as if he sought to spear the clouds. The men behind him answered him with a roar that seemed mild in comparison with the trumpets. Carnelian and Fern could feel the excitement around them heating. The battlecries rushed away along the line, turning distantly to a hiss that set the lances vibrating like a wind through ferns. Fern bared his teeth and nodded.

Then Carnelian became aware the front ranks of their squadron were sliding forward in a packed mass of flesh and hide, of bronze and wood. He did not even need to signal his aquar. Her head dropped and she sprang forward. He was thrown from side to side. Faster and faster until the rocking smoothed and she was leaning into her run as her feet reached forward, clutched the ground with their claws, then whipped back. Carnelian adjusted his position, wound his wrist into the reins and clutched his lance in both hands. Its grip was greasy, but firm. Around him other riders were hazy jiggling shadows. Only glimpses of Fern’s pale leathers allowed him to know his friend was close.

Peering ahead Carnelian could see little through the dust their aquar were scratching up from the ground. He lowered his head against the pelting sand, deafened by the furious drum and rush of their charge. From up ahead came muffled, crashing sounds. His aquar rocked him as she slowed, her head rising a little with her plumes. Then the ground became rough, uneven. He was jerked this way and that as her footfalls landed on things that collapsed suddenly like eggs beneath her weight. One of her legs snagging threw him forward. As she yanked her foot free he was punched back into his saddle-chair. Her head was high now, crowned with startled plumes, and she had slowed to a jerky stride. A shudder. Another as her footing slipped and she fought for balance. Carnelian clung to the saddle-chair, his lance lying flat across his knees, and he peered down to see the field of rocks or whatever it was they were fighting through. At any moment she might lose her footing and he would be thrown.

The ground seemed for a moment to be meshed in the roots and stems of dark ferns. Then he saw a thick hand, limbs contorted into loops and hooks. Boulders resolved into heads furred with hair. Some staved in, crushed and leaking moist pulp. Bestial faces torn and bloating, lips drawn back revealing black peg-encrusted maws. A stench rose up of shit and blood as his aquar stumbled forward through that quagmire of mangled flesh.

Seeing the dust thinning, he pulled her up. Around him other riders were struggling through the carnage, fanning out. Less than ten ranks ahead they met the edge of a sea. He gaped at that milling ocean of heads. Cries and screams were coming from where the auxiliaries met the sartlar in a frothing boundary. Arms rose and fell wielding blades of gleaming, dripping bronze. He felt a horror greater even than his disgust of the slaughter. Clearly, the beastmen were unarmed. Then there was a small but sudden change in the scene. A man and rider toppled, and disappeared. At a different point along the boundary, another vanished. An aquar that had been screeching fell abruptly silent. His scalp began to crawl. He glanced round and saw Fern’s pallid shape hunched in a saddle-chair some distance away.