The Judging Eye (27 page)

For more than a decade, a
greater part of the New Empire's resources had been bent toward the arduous
trek to Golgotterath. Even before Sakarpus had fallen, the Imperial Engineers
had begun building a second city below the ancient first: barracks, smithies,
lazarets, and dozens of sod-walled storehouses. Still others staked the course
of the broad stone road that would, in a matter of weeks, connect the ancient
city to faraway Oswenta. Even now, an endless train of supplies wound in from
the southern horizon, bearing arms, wares, rations, and more rations.
Infantrymen, no matter their rank, were limited to strict portions of
amicut
,
the campaign fare of the wild Scylvendi peoples to the southwest. The
caste-nobility could count on somewhat heartier provisions but were reduced to
riding shaggy-maned ponies that required no grain to preserve their strength.
Vast herds of sheep and cattle, bred solely to accompany the march, were also
beaten across the horizon, so many that some Men of the Ordeal began calling
themselves ka Koumiroi, or the Herdsmen—a name that would later become holy.

But even with all these
preparations, there was simply no way the Great Ordeal could bear the food
required to reach Golgotterath. The ponderous herds, the great packs borne by
the infantrymen, and the mile-long mule trains would only take them so far. At
some point, the columns would have to fan out and fend for themselves. The
Lords of the Ordeal knew they could depend on game for their men and wild
fodder for their horses: thousands of the now legendary Imperial Trackers had
given their lives mapping the lands ahead. But foraging armies moved far more
slowly than supplied ones, and if winter struck before the Ordeal could
overcome Golgotterath, the result would be catastrophic. A second problem, and
the point that was endlessly argued in the Councils, was that no one knew how
many of the countless Sranc clans the Enemy would be able to rally. Despite the
Imperial Bounty, despite collecting enough scalps to clothe entire nations, the
number of Sranc remained beyond reckoning. But without the dread will of the
No-God, the creatures were governed only by their terror, hatred, and hunger.
Not even the Aspect-Emperor could say how many the Consult might recruit or
enslave to oppose them. If the answer was many, then the day the Ordeal divided
to begin foraging could very well be the day of its doom.

It was
this
that made
Sakarpus so crucial, and not, as so many assumed, her famed Chorae Hoard. This
was why Men of the Ordeal were killed so that birds might live. Where the hard
rod of Imperial authority had been used to batter other nations into
submission, only the soft hand of Imperial favour could be used here, where the
people called themselves the Hoosverûl, or the Unconquered. The Lords of the
Ordeal could ill-afford even a single week of riot and rebellion, let alone
grinding months. Sakarpus was the nail from which their future would hang.
After the public Councils, when the Aspect-Emperor retired to confer privately
with his two Exalt-Generals, King Saubon of Enathpaneah and King Proyas of
Conriya, Sakarpus and the temper of her people were often discussed.

This was how the fateful
decision was made to place the young King of Sakarpus, Sorweel, in the care of
the Aspect-Emperor's two eldest sons, Moënghus and Kayûtas.

"When he becomes a brother
to them," his Arcane Holiness explained to his old friends, "he will
be as a son to me."

***

The knock came mere moments
after Sorweel's attendants had finished dressing him, a single rap, hard enough
to rattle the hinges. The young King turned to see the door swing wide. Two men
walked in without so much as an imploring look, the one fair and "royal
boned," as the Sakarpi said of tall gracile men, the other dark and
powerfully built. Both were dressed in the martial finery of the New Imperium,
with long white vests hanging over
hauberks
of nimil-chain.
Cloth-of-gold tusks glimmered in the dull morning light.

"Tomorrow," the fair
one said in flawless Sakarpic, "you will report to me..." He strolled
to the one open panel along the suite's shuttered balcony, glanced out over the
conquered city before turning on his heel. The dawning light caught his hair,
transformed it into a luminous halo. "You ride with us...
apparently."

The other plucked a string of
fat from the tray that bore the remains of Sorweel's breakfast, dropped it into
his mouth. He scrutinized Sorweel with murderous blue eyes as he chewed,
absently wiped the pads of his fingers along his kilt.

Sorweel knew who they were—there
was no mistaking the lethal strength of the one or the unblinking calm of the
other. He probably could have guessed their names even before their father had
sacked his city. But he resented their manner and tone and so replied with the
cold outrage of a lord insulted by his lessers. "You don't look like
horses."

Moënghus growled with what may
have been laughter, then muttered something in Sheyic to his taller brother.
Kayûtas snorted and grinned. They both watched Sorweel as though he were an
exotic pet, a novelty from some absurd corner of the world.

Perhaps he was.

An uncomfortable silence
followed, one that seemed to swell with every passing heartbeat.

"My elder brother,"
Kayûtas said eventually, as though recovering from a momentary lapse in
etiquette, "says that's because we're wearing our breeches."

"What?" Sorweel asked,
flushing in confusion and embarrassment.

"Why we don't look like
horses."

Despite himself, Sorweel
smiled—and so lost this first battle. He could feel it, humming through the two
brothers' laughter, a satisfaction scarcely concerned with humour.

They're hunters
, he told
himself,
sent to run down my heart.

***

He felt it most at night, when
the ranging concerns of the day shrunk to the clutch of limbs beneath cold
blankets and the mourning could seize his face without fear of discovery.
Small. Alone. A stranger in his father's home.
I am a king of widows and
orphans
, he would think, as the faces of his father's dead Boonsmen floated
before his soul's eye. It all came crowding back, the sights and sounds, the
horror, the jerk and tumble of violent futility. Children weeping in the
doorways, beloved buildings cupped in shining flame, the bodies of Horselords
twisted in the streets.

I am a captive in my own
land.

But as desolate as these
sleepless watches were, Sorweel found a kind of reprieve in them. Here, huddled
beneath the heavy weave, there was certainty, an assurance that his sorrow and
hatred were not a kind of misplaced inevitability. Here, he could see his
father clearly, he could hear his long low voice, as surely as he could those
nights when he pretended to sleep, and his father had come to sit at the foot
of his bed, to speak of his dead wife.

"I miss her, Sorwa. More
than I dare let you know.

But his days were... more
confusing.

Sorweel did as he was told. He
presided over the farce that was his court. He attended the ceremonies, spoke
the holy words that would see his people "safe," bore the witless
accusation in the eyes of priest and petitioner alike. He walked and gestured
with the listless grace of those who moved through a fog of betrayal.

He learned that he lacked the
ability to do and to believe contradictory things. Where a nobler soul would
have found consistency in his acts, he seemed to find it in his
beliefs
.
He simply believed what he needed to believe in order to act as his conquerors
wished him to act. While he muddled through the schedule his foreign
secretaries arranged for him, while he sat in their perfumed presence, it
really seemed that things
were
as the Aspect-Emperor claimed, that the
world turned beneath the shadow of the Second Apocalypse, and that all Men must
act of one accord to preserve the future, no matter how much it might offend
their pride.

"All Kings answer to holy
writ,"
the godlike man had told him.
"And so long as that writ
is otherworldly, they willingly acknowledge as much. But when it comes to them
as I come to them, wearing the flesh of their fellow man, they confuse the
sanctity of obeying the Law with the shame of submitting to a rival."
A
warm laugh, like a dear uncle admitting a harmless folly.
"All men
think themselves closer to the God than others. And so they rebel, raise arms
against the very thing they claim to serve...

"
Against
me."

The young King still lacked the
words to describe what it was like, kneeling in the Aspect-Emperor's presence.
He could only think that knees were somehow not enough, that he should fall to
his belly like the ancient supplicants engraved on the walls of Vogga Hall. And
his voice! Melodious. By turns gentle, bemused, penetrating, and profound. The
Anasûrimbor need only speak, and it would seem obvious that Sorweel's father
simply had succumbed to his conceit, that Harweel, like so many men before him,
had confused his pride for his duty.

"This is all a tragic
mistake..."

Only afterwards, as his handlers
led him through the general clamour of the encampment, would his father's words
return to him.
"He is a Ciphrang, a Hunger from the Outside, come in
the guise of man..."
And suddenly he believed the precise opposite of
what he had believed a mere watch before. He would curse himself for being a
kitten-headed fool, for breaking the only faith that remained to him. Despite
the pain, despite the way it limned his face with the threat of sobs, he would
recite his father's final outburst:
"He needs this city! He needs our
people! That means he needs you, Sorwa!"

You.

And all would be confusion. For
Sorweel understood that if his father had spoken true, then
everyone
about
him—the Ainoni with their white cosmetics and plaited beards, the Schoolmen
with their silk-print coats and airs of omniscience, the Galeoth with their
long flaxen hair knotted above their right ear, all the thousands who sought
redemption through the Great Ordeal—had gathered for naught, had conquered for
naught, and now prepared to war against the Great Ruiner's successors, all for
naught. It seemed that delusion, like the span of arches, could only reach so
far before collapsing into truth. It seemed impossible that
so many
could
be so thoroughly deceived.

King Proyas had told him the
stories about the Aspect-Emperor, about the miracles he had witnessed with his
own eyes, about the valour and sacrifice that had "cleansed" the
Three Seas. How could Harweel's claim gainsay such rampant devotion? How could
his son not fear, in the bullying presence of such conquerors, that the matter
only seemed undecided because he secretly held his finger on the scale?

During the day, every word,
every look seemed to argue his father's foolhardy conceit. Only at night, lying
in the solitary dark, could Sorweel take refuge in the simpler movements of the
heart. He could let his lips tremble, his eyes fill with tears like hot salted
tea. He could even sit at the end of his bed as his father had sat, and pretend
he spoke to someone sleeping.

"I dreamed of her again,
Sorwa..."

At night, the young King could
simply close his eyes and refuse. This was the secret comfort of orphans: the
ability to believe according to want and not world—whatever it took to numb the
ache of things lost.

I miss her too, Da...

Almost as much as I miss you.

***

They sent a slave for him the
following morning, an old, dark-skinned man almost comically bundled against
the spring chill. Sorweel saw the dismayed looks traded between his
Householders—slaves were anathema in Sakarpus—but he affected no anger or
outrage. Even though no porters could be found, the outlander insisted, in the
exasperated hand-waving way of demands made across linguistic divides, that he
come immediately. Sorweel consented without argument, secretly relieved he
wouldn't have to lead a procession out of the city—that he could pretend this
was a mere outing rather than the abdication it seemed.

More than walls had been
overthrown with the coming of the Aspect-Emperor.

The slave said nothing as they
rode through the city. Sorweel followed with his eyes fixed directly forward,
more to avoid the questioning gazes of his countrymen than to study anything in
particular—save maybe the blasted heights of the Herder's Gate as they rose and
fell out of view. He thought of the naive faith his people had put in their
ancient fortifications—after all, who was the Aspect-Emperor compared to
Mog-Pharau?

He thought of his father's blood
cooked into the stone.

The Inrithi encampment lay a
short distance beyond the pocked and blackened walls, its tented precincts
sprawling across miles of field and pasture. It seemed at once mundane and
legendary: a migratory city of wood, twine, and cloth, where the stink of
latrines hedged every breath, as well as a vast assemblage, a vehicle great
enough to carry the dread weight of history. The Men of the Ordeal trudged to
and fro, supped at firepits, rolled armour in barrels of gravel, tended to gear
and horses, or simply sat about the entrances to their tents, deep in
eyes-to-the-horizon conversation. They paid scant attention to Sorweel and his
guide as they wended through the avenues and byways of the camp.