The Judging Eye (4 page)

Few Three Seas Men had ever seen
grassland steppes, let alone the vast and broad-backed Istyuli. Beneath grey
skies, with tracts still scabbed with snow, it seemed a trackless and desolate
place, a precursor to Agongorea, about which they had heard so much in endless
recitations of
The Sagas
. Those raised on the coasts were reminded of
the sea, of horizons as flat as a rule, with nothing but limits for the eye to
fasten upon. Those bred along desert margins were reminded of home.

It was raining when the
multitudes climbed into the broad scuffs of land that lifted the Lonely City
above the plain. At last, the two Exalt-Generals clasped arms and set about
planning the assault. They scowled and joked and shared reminiscences, from the
legendary First Holy War to the final days of the Unification. So many cities.
So many campaigns.

So many proud peoples broken.

***

The Emissary arrived in the
pre-dawn cold, demanding to see Varalt Harweel II, the King of Sakarpus.

Unable to sleep for fear of the
morrow, Sorweel was already awake when his menial came to rouse him. He
regularly attended all important audiences—his father insisted on it as part of
his princely education. But until recently, "important" had meant
something quite different. Skirmishes with the Sranc. Insults and apologies
from Atrithau. Threats from disgruntled nobles. Sorweel could not count the
times he had sat at the stone bench in the shadow of his father's throne swinging
his bare feet in what seemed mortal boredom.

Now, only a year shy of his
first Elking, he planted his boots and stared at the man who would destroy them
all: King Nersei Proyas of Conriya, Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal. Gone
were the courtiers, the functionaries, the partisans of this or that petty
interest. Vogga Hall stood vacant and dim, though for some reason, the
cavernous aisles and galleries failed to make the outlander look small. From
across the terra cotta reliefs that sheathed the walls and columns, Sorweel's
ancestors seemed to watch with graven apprehension. The air smelled of cold
tallow.

"Thremu dus
kapkurum,"
the outlander began,
"hedi mere'otas cha—"
The
translator, some mangy herdsman from the Saglands by the look of him, quickly
rendered his words into Sakarpic.

"Our captives have told us
what you say of him."

Him. The Aspect-Emperor. Sorweel
silently cursed his skin for pimpling.

"Ah, yes," King
Harweel replied, "our blasphemy..." Even though the ornate arms of
the Horn-and-Amber Throne concealed his father's face, Sorweel knew well the
wry expression that accompanied this tone.

"Blasphemy..." the
Exalt-General said. "
He
would not say that."

"And what would
he
say?"

"That you fear, as all men
fear, to lose your power and privilege."

Sorweel's father laughed in an
offhand manner that made the boy proud. If only he could muster such careless
courage.

"So," Harweel said
merrily, "I have placed my people between your Aspect-Emperor and my
throne, is that it? Not that I have placed my throne between your
Aspect-Emperor and my people..."

The Exalt-General nodded with
the same deliberate grace that accompanied his untranslated speech, but whether
in affirmation or appreciation, Sorweel could not tell. His hair was silver, as
was his plaited beard. His eyes were dark and quick. His finery and regalia
made even his father's royal vestments seem like crude homespun. But it was his
bearing and imperturbable gaze that made him so impressive. There was a
melancholy to him, a sadness that lent him an unsettling gravity.

"No man," Proyas said,
"can stand between a God and the people."

Sorweel suppressed a shudder. It
was unnerving the way they
all
referred to him as such, Three Seas Men.
And with such thoughtless conviction.

"My priests call him a
demon."

"Hada mem porota—"

"They say what they need to
keep their power safe," the translator said with obvious discomfort.
"They are, truly, the only ones who stand to lose from the quarrel between
us."

For Sorweel's entire life, it
seemed, the Aspect-Emperor had been an uneasy rumour from the South. Some of
his earliest memories were of his father dandling him on his knee while he
questioned Nansur and Galeoth traders from the World-beyond-the-Plains. With
looks at once ingratiating and guarded, they would always demur, protest they
had ears only for trade and eyes only for profit, when what they really meant
was that they had tongues only for gold. In many ways, Sorweel owed his understanding
of the world to Twelve-Pelt caravaners and their struggle to render the South
into Sakarpic. The Unification Wars. The Thousand Temples. All the innumerable
nations of the Three Seas. And the coming of the False Prophet who preached the
end of all things.

"He will come for us,"
his father would tell him.

"But how can you know,
Da?"

"He is a Ciphrang, a Hunger
from the Outside, come to this world in the guise of man."

"Then how can we hope to
resist him?"

"With our swords and our
shields," his father had boasted, using the mock voice he always used to
make light of terrifying things. "And when those fail us, with spit and
curses."

But the spit and the curses,
Sorweel would learn, always came first, accompanied by bold gestures and grand
demonstrations. War was an extension of argument, and swords were simply words
honed to a blood-letting edge. Only the Sranc began with blood. For Men, it was
always the conclusion.

Perhaps this explained the
Emissary's melancholy and his father's frustration. Perhaps they already
knew
the outcome of this embassy. All doom required certain poses, the mouthing
of certain words—so said the priests.

Sorweel gripped the edge of his
bench, sat as still as his quailing body would allow. The Aspect-Emperor
had
come
—even still he could scarce believe it. An itch, a name, a principle, a
foreboding, something so far across the horizon that it had to seem both
childish and menacing, like the wights Sorweel's nurse would invoke whenever he
had vexed her. Something that could be dismissed until encircled by shadows.

Now, somewhere out in the
darkness that surrounded their hearts and their walls, somewhere out there,
he
waited, a Hunger clothed in glorious manhood, propped by the arms of grovelling
nations. A Demon, come to cut their throats, defile their women, enslave their
children. A Ciphrang, come to lay waste to all they knew and loved.

"Have you not read
The
Sagas
?" his father was asking the Emissary, his voice incredulous.
"The bones of our fathers survived the might of the Great
Ruiner—Mog-Pharau! I assure you, they haven't grown too brittle to survive
you!"

The Exalt-General smiled, or at
least tried to. "Ah, yes... Virtue does not burn."

"What do you mean?"

"A saying in my country.
When a man dies, the pyre takes everything save what his children can use to
adorn their ancestor scrolls. All men flatter themselves through their
forebears."

Harweel snorted not so much at
the wisdom, it seemed, as the relevance. "And yet the North is waste and
Sakarpus still stands!"

Proyas's smile was pained, his
look one of dull pity. "You forget," he said with the air of
disclosing a prickly truth, "
my Lord has been here before.
He broke
bread with the men who raised these very halls, back when this was but a
province of a greater empire, a backwater frontier. Fortune saved these walls,
not fortitude. And Fortune, as you so well know, is a
whore
."

Even though his father often
paused to order his thoughts, something about the ensuing silence chilled
Sorweel to the bowel. He knew his father, knew that the past weeks had taken
their toll. His rallying words were the same, and his booming laugh was nothing
if not more frequent. But something had changed nonetheless. A slouch in his
shoulders. A shadow in his gaze.

"The Great Ordeal stands at
your gate," the Exalt-General pressed. "The Schools are assembled.
The hosts of a hundred tribes and nations beat sword against shield. Doom
encircles you, brother. You
know
you cannot prevail, even with the Chorae
Hoard. I know this because your knuckles are as scarred as my own, because your
eyes are as bruised by war's horror."

Another ashen silence. Sorweel
found himself leaning forward, trying to peer around the Horn-and-Amber Throne.
What was his father doing?

"Come..." the
Exalt-General said, his voice one of genuine entreaty. "Harweel, I beg of
you, take my hand. Men can no longer afford to shed the blood of Men."

Sorweel stood, stared aghast at
his father's blank visage. King Harweel was not an old man, but his face seemed
slack and rutted about his hanging blond moustaches, his neck bent by the
weight of his gold-andiron crown. Sorweel could feel the impulse, errant and
unbidden, the overwhelming urge to cover for his father's shameful indecision,
to lash out, to... to...

But Harweel had recovered both
his wits and his voice.

"Then decamp," he said
in dead tones. "March to your death in Golgotterath or return to your
hot-blooded wives. Sakarpus will not yield."

As though deferring to some
unknown rule of discourse, Proyas lowered his face. He glanced at the
bewildered Prince before returning his gaze to the King of Sakarpus.
"There is the surrender that leads to slavery," he said. "And
there is the surrender that sets one free. Soon, very soon, your people shall
know that difference."

"So says the slave!"
Harweel cried.

The Emissary did not require the
translator's sputtering interpretation—the tone transcended languages.
Something in his look dismayed Sorweel even more than the forced bluster of his
father's response.
I am weary of blood,
his eyes seemed to say.
Too
long have I haggled with the doomed.

He stood, nodding to his
entourage to indicate that more than enough breath had been spent.

***

Sorweel had expected his father
to draw him aside afterwards, to explain not only the situation, but the
peculiarities of his demeanor. Though he knew well enough what had happened—the
King and the Exalt-General had exchanged one final round of fatuous words to
sanctify the inevitable conclusion—his sense of shame forced a kind of
confusion upon him. Not only had his father been frightened, he had been
openly
so—and before the most dire enemy his people had ever faced. There had to
be some kind of explanation. Harweel II wasn't simply King, he was also his
father
,
the wisest, bravest man Sorweel had ever known. There was a reason his Boonsmen
looked upon him with such reverence, why the Horselords were so loath to invite
his displeasure. How could
he
of all Men be afraid? His father... His
father! Was there something he wasn't telling him?

But no answer was forthcoming.
Soldered to the bench, Sorweel could only stare at him, his dismay scarcely
concealed, as Harweel barked orders to be relayed to his various officers—his
tone brusque in the way of men trying to speak their way past tears. Not long
afterwards, just as dawn broke behind impenetrable woollen clouds, Sorweel
found himself tramping through mud and across cobble, hustled forward by his
father's hard-eyed companions, his High Boonsmen. The narrow streets were
swollen with supplies gathered from the surrounding country as well as refugees
from the Saglands and elsewhere. He saw men butchering cattle, scraping viscera
with honed shoulder blades. He saw mothers walking dumbfounded, their arms too
short to herd their rag-bundled children. Feeling useless and depressed,
Sorweel wondered about his own Boonsmen, though they would not be called such
until his first Elking next spring. He had pleaded with his father the previous
week that they be allowed to fight together, but to no avail.

The watches lurched one into the
next. The rain, which had fallen lightly and sporadically enough to be taken
for water blown from the trees, began in earnest, swallowing the distances in
sheets of relentless grey. It slipped through his mail, soaking him first to
the leathers, then to the felt. He began shivering uncontrollably—until his
rage at the thought of others seeing him shake burned him to the quick. Though
his iron helm kept his scalp dry, his face became more and more numb. His
fingers seemed to ache and sting in equal measure. Just when he thought he
couldn't be more miserable, his father finally called for him, leading him into
an emptied barracks so they might warm their hands side by side before the last
remnants of a hearth fire.

The barracks was one of the
ancient ones, with the heavy lintels and low chapped ceilings, and the stables
built in, so that the men could sleep with their horses—a relic of the days
when Sakarpi warriors worshipped their steeds. The candles had guttered so that
only the dying hearth provided illumination, the kind of orange light that
seemed to pick out details at whim. The battered curve of an iron pot. The
cracked back of a chair. The face of a troubled king. Sorweel did not know what
to say, so he simply stood, gazing at the luminous detail of coals burning into
snowy ash.