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 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.
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 Meцrn 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.