Part 20 (1/2)
”You've doomed us,” Sanumnis said in his periphery. His tone was strange. There was no accusation in his voice. Something worse.
Cnaiur turned to the man, saw immediately that Sanumnis understood their straits all too well. He knew that the Imperial transports had set ash.o.r.e in one of the natural harbours to the north of the city, and there disembarked who knew how many thousands-an entire army, no doubt. And he knew, moreover, that Conphas could not afford to let even one of them escape alive.
”You were supposed to kill him,” Sanumnis said. ”You were supposed to kill Conphas.”
Weeper! f.a.ggot weeper!
Cnaiur frowned. ”I am not an a.s.sa.s.sin,” he said.
Unaccountably, the Baron's eyes softened. Something almost ... kindred pa.s.sed between them.
”No,” the man said, ”I suppose you're not.”
Weeper!
As though prompted by some kind of premonition, Cnaiur turned and stared down the Pull, the broad thoroughfare that opened onto the Tooth, all the way to the harbour. Over the welter of rooftops he could see the farthest of the black clapboard transports. The nearer ones were only masts.
A flash of light, glimpsed through a slot between walls. Cnaiur blinked. The thunderclap followed moments after. All those lining the parapet turned in astonishment.
More lights, glimpsed over obscuring buildings. Sanumnis cursed in Conriyan.
Schoolmen. Conphas had hidden Schoolmen on his transports. Imperial Saik. Cnaiur's thoughts raced. He turned back to the formations advancing through the valley. Glanced at the setting sun. More cracks rumbled across the sky. ”Chorae bowmen,” he said to the Baron. ”You have, what, four Chorae bowmen?”
”The Diremti brothers and two besides. But they would be dead men ... The Imperial Saik! Sweet Sejenus!”
Cnaiur grasped both his shoulders. ”This treachery,” he said. ”The Ikurei must kill all who might testify against him. You know this.”
Sanumnis nodded, expressionless.
Cnaiur released his grip. ”Tell your Trinketmen to situate themselves in the buildings surrounding the harbour-to hide. Tell them they need kill only one-one of them-to pen the Saik in the harbour. With no infantry to prise their way, they'll be loath to advance. Sorcerers are fond of their skins.”
The man's eyes brightened in understanding. Cnaiur knew that Conphas had likely commanded the Schoolmen in the harbour to remain on their s.h.i.+ps, that their primary purpose was to render escape impossible. The Exalt-General was not so foolish as to risk his most powerful and delicate tools. No, Conphas meant meant to come through the Tooth. But there was no harm in letting Sanumnis and his men think they had forced this on him. to come through the Tooth. But there was no harm in letting Sanumnis and his men think they had forced this on him.
A brilliant flash deflected their attention to the harbour. No doubt Tirnemus and his men-those who yet survived-were fleeing into the city.
”It will be dark,” Cnaiur shouted over the resulting thunder. ”It will be dark before the Nansur can organize an a.s.sault on the Tooth. Aside from spotters, we must abandon the walls. We must withdraw into the city.”
Sanumnis frowned.
”The Saik can do nothing so long as we stand in the midst of their countrymen,” Cnaiur explained. ”That is cause to hope ...”
”Hope?”
”We must bleed him bleed him! We are not the only Men of the Tusk.”
The Baron suddenly bared clenched teeth-and Cnaiur saw it, the spark he had needed to strike. He glanced down the length of the parapet at the dozens of anxious faces that stared back at him. Others, mostly Thunyeri, watched from the Tooth's cobbled mall below. He looked to the harbour, saw curtains of smoke rolling orange and black in the setting sun.
He strode to the wall's inner brink, held out his arms in grand address. ”Listen to me. I will not lie to you. The Nansur can afford no quarter, because they can afford no Truth! We all die this night!”
He let these words ring into silence.
”I know nothing of your Afterlife. I know nothing of your G.o.ds or their greed for glory. But I do know this: In days to come, widows shall curse me as they weep! Fields shall go to seed! Sons and daughters shall be sold into slavery! Fathers shall die desolate, knowing their line is extinct! This night, I shall carve my mark into the Nansurium, and thousands shall cry out for want of my thousands shall cry out for want of my mercy!” mercy!”
And the spark became flame.
”Scylvendi!” they roared. ”Scylvendi!”
The mall behind the Tooth had been a market of some kind before the coming of the Holy War. An expanse of some twenty lengths extended from the base of the barbican to the mouth of the Pull. An ancient tenement of Ceneian construction fronted the Pull's north side, its base riddled with derelict shops and stalls. Cnaiur had concealed himself opposite, in one of the smaller buildings that ran along the south. If he peered, he could make out the glint of arms belonging to the shadowy myriad crowded within the tenement. A small window in the western wall afforded him a view across the gravel and dust of the mall, but since the moon rose to the west, the inner wall and barbican were little more than monoliths of impenetrable black.
Behind him, Troyatti whispered to the Hemscilvara, detailing the weaknesses in Nansur armour and tactics that Cnaiur had described to him, Sanumnis, Tirnemus, and Skaiwarra earlier. Outside, the shouts of Nansur officers echoed through the clear night air: Conphas making final preparations.
As Cnaiur had expected, the Saik had refused to leave their transports, which meant they owned the harbour and nothing else. While keeping a close eye on the arriving Columns-so far the Faratas, the Horial, and the famed Mossas had a.s.sembled-Cnaiur had dispersed teams of men throughout the buildings surrounding the Tooth, armed with what sledges and pickaxes they could muster. In a few short hours they had managed to knock out hundreds of walls, transforming, in effect, a broad tract of the western city into a labyrinth. Then, fumbling their way through the dark, they had taken up positions-and waited.
This was not, Cnaiur realized, what the Dunyain would do.
Either Kellhus would find a way-some elaborate or insidious track-that led to the domination of these circ.u.mstances, or he would flee. Was that not what had happened at Caraskand? Had he not walked a path of miracles to prevail? Not only had he united the warring factions within within the Holy War, he had given them the means to war without. the Holy War, he had given them the means to war without.
No such path existed here-at least none that Cnaiur could fathom.
So why not flee? Why cast his lot with doomed men? For honour? There was no such thing. For friends.h.i.+p? He was the enemy of all. Certainly there were truces, the coming together of coincidental interests, but nothing else, nothing meaningful meaningful.
Kellhus had taught him that.
He cackled aloud when the revelation struck, and for a moment the world itself wobbled. A sense of power power suffused him, so intense it seemed something suffused him, so intense it seemed something other other might snap from his frame, that throwing out his arms he could shear Joktha's walls from their foundations, cast them to the horizon. might snap from his frame, that throwing out his arms he could shear Joktha's walls from their foundations, cast them to the horizon. No reason No reason bound him. Nothing. No scruple, no instinct, no habit, no calculation, no bound him. Nothing. No scruple, no instinct, no habit, no calculation, no hate hate ... He stood beyond origin or outcome. He stood ... He stood beyond origin or outcome. He stood nowhere nowhere.
”The men wonder,” Troyatti said cautiously, ”what amuses you, Lord.”
Cnaiur grinned. ”That I once cared for my life.”
Even as he said this, he heard something, a surreal muttering like the susurrus of insects through the riddled world around them. Words coiled through the sounds, the way flames glowered through smoke, and it bent the soul somehow simply hearing them, as though meaning had become contortion ...
Brilliance. A concatenation of fires boiled over the parapets. Suddenly the barbican seemed a s.h.i.+eld held against a blinding light. One of the spotters toppled, thras.h.i.+ng flames all the way to the ground.
They were coming.
Within the barbican, lines of brilliance sketched the seams about the iron-banded doors. A thread of gold flared down their centre, and in a blink both were blown outward against the portcullis. Iron screeched. Stone cracked. Another burst. Like sound from a horn, light blasted from the underpa.s.s. The portcullis sailed into the old Ceneian tenement. A wave of smoke rolled outward and upward, across buildings and down the Pull.