Both Moenghus and Serwa complained but did not seem quite so unsettled as him. At least he spared himself the humiliation of vomiting while they watched.
They all agreed to sleep.
And so began the Horde's second assault upon the Great Ordeal. As the whip communicates the strength of the arm from the grip to the nail, so too did the rush of those trapped against the River Irshi spread across the entirety of the Horde, from those hooked about Umrapathur's flanks to those massed near the Neleost coast. In the stark light of day they ran, numberless, maddened with hungers both vicious and foul, a shrieking plague.
From his vantage at Irsulor, Umrapathur was among the first to realize that something was amiss. For so long, the Horde's roar, wringed of its resonance by distance, had sounded like an endless death rattle. When the sound faltered, he and thousands of others had raised a ragged cheer, knowing that the Schoolmen had begun reaping their arcane harvest. But the sound that climbed into its place-more shrill, like the fluting of winter winds-did not stop climbing. Higher and higher it roared, until men began batting their ears. And Sasal Umrapathur III, the first Believer-King of Nilnamesh, looked out to the dust fencing the horizon and knew he had been deceived.
He cried out warnings and instructions. Horns brayed out against the building thunder.
Out on the broken plain, only the most foolhardy of the Grandees led their knights out against the Sranc as planned. Far and away most realized, like Charapatha, that something was amiss, but many tarried overlong in indecision and so were quickly overrun. The rest found themselves riding a great and desperate race.
Ensconced in their deep formations, the infantrymen watched with breathless horror as more than fifteen thousand riders, fleet skirmishers and ponderous knights, rode scattered across the waste, throwing shields and cutting loose saddle-packs, slapping blood from the rumps of their screaming ponies. Mountains of billowing dust roiled behind them-as if the world's very limits came crashing in pursuit.
They watched company after company, strung out in panicked flight, engulfed in raving doom. They glimpsed shadows through the low ribbons of dust, skinny and vicious and innumerable. The skirmishers, like King Urmakthi and his fleet Girgashi, reached the ruined city in good order. Others, the heavily armoured knights of Nilnamesh especially, were pulled under en masse. The more quick-witted commanders abandoned the flight and arrayed their men in defensive formations that lingered battling, pockets of frantic order engulfed in gibbering chaos, knights shouting and hacking, quilled in arrows, their positions dissolving like bright salt in putrid waters. Massar ab Kascamandri, the youngest brother of the outlaw Fanayal and famed for severing his earlobe to demonstrate his determination to join the Ordeal rather than remain as a figurehead in Nenciphon, was felled by an iron-tipped javelin less than a hundred paces from Irsulor's embankments. Prince Charapatha and his armourless knights, meanwhile, found themselves deflected westward time and again in his attempts to reach their besieged King. His Captains had to restrain the Prince, such was the violence of his grief.
King Umrapathur watched the world and sky vanish behind the Horde's veil. The air boomed with screeching until he could no longer hear his own plaintive commands.
The Horde closed upon Irsulor, and they were naught but an isle in a shrieking sea.
During this time, the Schoolmen continued walking the skies to the north, raking and scorching the obscured earth. To a man they knew Carindusu had erred, perhaps disastrously, but they had devised no means of communicating any alternative strategy-they could scarce see one another as it was. Eventually, the more decisive among them abandoned their northward course, and others followed, forming broken cohorts whose passage back was marked with fire and light. Some became lost in the dust and would never find their way to Irsulor. Some, a few fools, continued northward oblivious and did not turn back until they passed beyond the northern rim of the dust clouds.
None would return in time to counter the Consult.
Sheets of ochre were drawn across the sun, and shadow fell across the formations crowded upon the dead city. The Sranc threw themselves up the embankments and against the bristling ranks of Men, who stood locked, shield to shield, shoulder to shoulder, as they had during the first battle. The Horde caught about Irsulor as upon a jutting nail.
The Sons of Nilnamesh held the north and west, thrusting sword and spear between their cunning shields of wicker, nearly invulnerable in their gowns of plated iron. The vast bulk of them fought beneath the ancient standards of Eshdutta, Harataka, Midaru, Invoira, and Sombatti, the so-called Five Hosts of Nilnu, the tribal confederacies that had warred for the whole of Nilnamesh since time immemorial. Not since the days of Anzumarapata II had so many Sons of Nilnu marched beyond the paddied plains of their home. Gone were the antique rivalries, the mortal hatred that had so often set them against each other. Gone were the differences. And it seemed a thing of mad and tragic folly that Men might raise arms against Men, when creatures so vile so infested the world.
The Hetmen of Girgash held the east, fierce mountain warriors come from their high fastnesses in the Hinayati along with their softer cousins from Ajowai and the Vales. His horse abandoned, King Urmakthi stood at the fore of his countrymen, his Standard raised in lieu of his voice. The Grandees of Kian held the south, the desert-vicious men of Chianadyni, as well as their taller brothers from Nenciphon and Mongilea, all of them decked in the chained splendour of their fathers' fallen empire. Such was the clamour that they knew nothing of Prince Massar's fall-and so honoured him with their courage.
Crying out with soundless fury the Men of the South thrust and hacked at the gibbering masses. Even on the slopes the inhuman ferocity of the assault forced those deep in the ranks to brace their shields against the backs of those before them, transforming phalanxes into singular structures of flesh, ligament, and bone. Missiles blackened the already shrouded sky, shafts that rattled without harm across the armoured men, save those unfortunate few. The Ketyai archers answered with great volleys of their own, laying low whole swathes of their foe. But with every draw they exposed themselves to the endless black rain, and their losses were grievous.
Sorweel's eyes snapped open, the screeches of the Viturnal Nesting ringing in his ears. He actually swatted the empty air immediately before him, so vivid was the image of a sun-burnished stork standing upon his chest.
He sat up, blinking. They had leapt upon the treeless prow of a hill, so he could see immediately that he was alone. He could also see the surrounding sunlit miles, the creased terrain rendered as soft as ocean swells for the woollen canopies that clothed it. A land like an old woman.
He had fallen asleep on the shags of grass that edged the crude axe-blade of stone that capped the promontory. The shade had shifted while he slept so that he could feel the sun's burn upon his cheeks and hands. His hauberk, especially, radiated heat.
He peered into the adjacent gloom of the forest, blinking, searching for any sign of the Imperial siblings. A pang groped his breast when he realized their gear was missing as well.
Had they abandoned him?
He stood, shaking the fluff from his apparel and the grogginess from his limbs. Then he wandered into the wooded regions, following the uncertain line of the summit, hoping to find his keepers…
Hardened by the First Battle of the Horde, the Men of the South exacted a dreadful toll. When they looked out, they saw innumerable faces, white and cat-screaming, Sranc and more Sranc, wagging raucous arms, heaving across the basins below. When they looked back they saw the ranks of Men braced across the piled embankments, heights fenced in bright-painted shields and bristling with spears, standards torn ragged by javelins and freighted with snagged arrows. And they remembered the words of their Holy Prophet, that they would see sights awesome and horrific, that they would suffer unimaginable trials-that they would save the World.