"Things have changed."

Eyes like blue beads closed then opened. "How so?"

The thing called Soma dared raise Mimara's face. "A sorcerer, a Gnostic sorcerer, hired the company several weeks ago... He hopes to find the Coffers."

A moment of palm-sized confusion.

"The Mandate? The Mandate has hired the Skin Eaters?"

"No... I'm not sure... He claims to be a Wizard, a sorcerer without a School. Even still, Chigra burns strong in him. Very strong."

The Synthese bent its tiny head down in momentary meditation. "So the old fool has found his way back to the benjuka plate... And he discovered you? Drusas Achamian?"

"No... There is a woman with him-one who has been taught how to recognize us. A pregnant woman..."

A sharp puppet nod. "The face you wear... I see." Shadows fluttered around the bird form, as if some greater eye blinked about the world. An intimation of rage and power. "Mimara."

The thing called Soma cringed and retreated. "Yes."

"She's pregnant. You are certain of this?"

"The stench is unmistakable."

Another moment of bird-hesitation, as if each thought had to be untangled... It was no small matter planting a soul so mighty into a skull the size of an eggshell.

"Then she cannot be harmed. All the prophecies must be respected, the false as much as the true."

"Yes, Old Father. I anticipated this, which is why I... refrained."

A sideways twitch of the head. "She leaves the safety of the others?"

"To piss and shit. I have spoken with her twice now. She will yield their secret in time."

"And the Schoolman has not intervened?"

"He does not know."

The small head flicked back. Laughter tinkled like glass. The Consult Synthese looked from the Heilor, its gaze ticking between points across the fields of papyrus out to the featureless reaches of the Cerish Sea. The wind combed its feathered tailings, blowing wide with the inaudible roar of absence and ruin.

The thing called Soma breathed deep the scent of ash become earth.

"Brave girl..." the Old Father cooed, still considering the crumbs of the age-long feast that was the Meorn Empire. "Continue tracking them, Tsuor. At the very least, they will take you home."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Istyuli Plains

...and they scoff at heroes, saying that Fate serves disaster to many, and feasts to few. They claim that willing is but a form of blindness, the conceit of beggars who think they wrest alms from the jaws of lions. The Whore alone, they say, decides who is brave and who is rash, who will be hero and who will be fool. And so they dwell in a world of victims.

-QUALLAS, ON THE INVITIC SAGES Ever do Men use secrets to sort and measure those they love, which is why they are less honest with their brothers and more guarded with their friends.

-CASIDAS, ANNALS OF CENEI LATE SPRING, 20 NEW IMPERIAL YEAR (4132 YEAR-OF-THE-TUSK), THE HIGH ISTYULI.

They had fled and they had gathered, like sawdust before the sweep of the carpenter's hand.

Sranc.

The clans that infested the Sakarpi Pale had fled long before the Great Ordeal trod their nourishing earth. They, unlike their wilder cousins to the north, had long, hard experience with the cunning ways of Men. They knew the folly of closing for battle absent overwhelming numbers, so they fled where other clans would have raced gibbering to their doom. They fled, bearing word of the dread Israzi'horul, the Shining Men, who marched with world-cracking strength behind them.

Their cousins to the north heeded them, as did their cousins in turn. Hundreds became thousands became tens of thousands. So the clans fell back, ever back, wincing from chance encounters with Mannish pickets, forming a rind that grew ever more raucous with numbers as it retreated across the empty leagues. And growing ever more hungry.

What began as the flight of a few scattered clans soon became a shrieking migration. The Parching Wind whipped high the dust of their discord, raised veils of arid filth to the arch of Heaven. The sun was blotted. The Sranc teemed as insects across the obscured flats and shallows, so many the land became desert waste in their wake, stamped and scratched into lifelessness.

And as their numbers swelled so did their fear of the Shining Men dwindle.

Shortly after the Breaking of the Ordeal, General Sibawul te Nurwul, intent to demonstrate the skill and daring of his Cepalorans, disobeyed the orders of Prince Kayutas and rode far ahead of his fellow Kidruhil pickets. He would be the first among Men to lay eyes on the storm brewing in the Istyuli wastes. There was no question of giving battle, for the inhuman multitudes blackened the circuit of all that could be seen. A full third of his riders fell that day, for the fleetest among the Sranc were quicker than the slowest among the Cepaloran riders. Sibawul and his Cepalorans raced fleeing toward their fellow pickets, drawing thousands in pursuit, and a running battle, the first since the Fall of Sakarpus, was fought as the Kidruhil companies scrambled to fend them. Several hundred cavalrymen were lost before the day's end-a needless waste.

When Sibawul was brought before Kayutas, the Prince-Imperial rebuked him in the harshest terms, saying that the Aspect-Emperor had known of the Hording all along, but realizing the ardour this knowledge would spark in the hearts of his men, he waited for the most opportune time to inform the Sacred Host.

"How do you, a master of men, punish those who disobey your commands?" Kayutas asked.

"Flogging," Sibawul fearlessly replied.

So was the first Lord of the Ordeal whipped for a martial transgression.

And so did the Zaudunyani learn that beyond the northern horizon, their foe roiled in numbers that encompassed the horizon-numbers far greater than their own. About the campfires, those who had argued a bloodless march to Golgotterath were silenced.

None could deny that a grievous toll was about to be paid.

- - King Nersei Proyas had seen the way hosts accumulate infirmities more times than he cared to remember. Supplies dwindled, spirits flagged, diseases multiplied, and so on, until armies that once appeared invincible came to resemble doddering old men. There was the war against the Tydonni Orthodox, of course, and the disastrous campaign across the Secharib Plains, where he had almost succumbed to the Fevers. But more and more, he found himself thinking of the First Holy War, the way it had marched into Fanim lands the mightiest host the Three Seas had even seen, only to be starved into cannibalism in a matter of months.

The Great Ordeal, he had come to realize, was no different. The cracks had opened, and Fate had set the wedges as surely as shipbuilders striking boards from felled trees. What was cracked could be hammered asunder. The Army of the Middle-North, especially, seemed to be marching under a pall of imminent disaster.

And yet, time and again, at least once every week, his Lord-and-God called him to his spare, leather-panelled bed chamber in the Umbilicus to sit and discuss... madness.

"It troubles you often, that day in Shimeh."

That day in Shimeh, when Kellhus had been acclaimed Aspect-Emperor. Proyas found himself clearing his throat and looking away. Twenty years had passed, twenty years of toil and strife, and yet the image of his old tutor standing derelict before his Holy Aspect-Emperor plagued him as insistently as ever. A memory like a childhood burn, not quite stinging but too puckered not to probe with idle fingertips.

"I loved Achamian."

How could a boy, especially one as curious and precocious as he had been, not love his first true teacher? Children can smell the difference between duty, which is merely a form of self-regard, and the temper of genuine concern. Achamian taught not to serve, but to teach, to arm an errant boy against a capricious world. He taught young master Proyas, and not the Conriyan King's second son.

"But it troubles you..." Kellhus said, "that a soul so wise and gentle would so condemn me."

"He was a man spurned," Proyas replied on a heavy breath. "No cuckold possesses a wise and gentle soul." He remembered Achamian coming to him-coming back from the presumption of death-when the First Holy War lay besieged in Caraskand. He remembered his own cowardice, how he spared himself the heartbreak of watching the sorcerer absorb tidings of the impossible...

News that Esmenet, his wife, had abandoned hope and turned to the Warrior-Prophet's bed.

"Even still, it troubles you."

The Exalt-General gazed at his Lord-and-God, pursed his lips against the difficulty of admission.

"Yes."

"So much so that you read his Compendium."

Proyas smiled. For years he had wondered when Kellhus would call him out on this small secret. "I read a summary of its charges against you."

"Did you believe those charges?"

"Of course not!"

The Holy Aspect-Emperor frowned as if troubled by the vehemence of his denial. He lowered his gaze to the fire twirling in the arcane octagon of his hearth.

"But why would that be, when they are true?"

The small Seeing-Flame wheezed into the silence.

The Exalt-General stared at his Lord-and-God in breathless bewilderment. The simplicity of his garb. The scriptural profile of his face, long featured, profound for the archaic cut of his beard and hair, wise for the clarity of his gaze. The lingering glow about his hands, as if unseen clouds were forever breaking above them.

"What... What are you saying?"

"That Men are children to me, precisely as Achamian claims."

"As you are father to us!"

Anasurimbor Kellhus regarded him with the utter absence of expression.

"What father murders so many of his sons?"

What was this melancholy? What was this doubt? After campaigning so long, surviving so much calamity, how could the man who gave meaning to it all ask such corrosive questions?

"A divine one," the Exalt-General declared.

- - The Sranc waxed ever more bold in measure with their hunger. Soon, not a day passed without word of some violent encounter. When they dared scout or patrol at all, the Kidruhil did so in force, stung by the loss of two entire companies, one of them captained by King Coithus Narnol's youngest son, Agabon. The Army of the Middle North began marching and camping on the ready. During the day they assembled into a vast, mile-long chevron, with the heavily armoured Thunyeri at the point, the Galeoth on the left flank, the Tydonni on the right, and all the baggage scattered behind and between. During the night, they arrayed their camps in tight, concentric circles, with a full quarter of their numbers assigned to defend the perimeter in rotating shifts. Drills were scheduled at irregular intervals to ensure that each man knew his place. Habitual laggards were publicly whipped. The last companies to the line were assigned to the latrines.

Despite their growing exhaustion, the Men of the Ordeal took to singing as they marched, Zaudunyani hymns for the most part, but folk songs from faraway homes as well. Some were ribald and merry, others melancholy, but one song in particular, the "Beggar's Lament," became especially popular. In some cases groups more than a thousand strong would cry out, bemoaning everything from the boils on their rumps to the pox on their members, only to be answered by thousands more complaining of even more outrageous afflictions. One man in particular, a Galeoth Agmundrman named Shoss, became famous for the hilarity of his lyrics.

And so the Army of the Middle-North marched into the Horde's shadow laughing.

No such humour could be found in Kayutas's evening councils. The Prince-Imperial always began by insisting he had no news of home, so preempting the inevitable parade of questions. His conferences with his Holy Father, he explained, were too rare and too brief to permit such questions-especially when the challenges they faced were so grievous.

The supply situation had become perilous, so much so that rationing had reduced the slaves who marched with the Ordeal to less than half the fare they needed to recoup their daily expenditures. Indeed, diseases of malnutrition were beginning to claim them in ever greater numbers; dozens were lost every day, either to death outright or to the straggling wastes behind them.

The presence of slaves, Kayutas reminded his commanders, was but one of many concessions his Holy Father had made to appease the caste-nobility-them. Soon, he would demand they sacrifice in return. The Prince-Imperial bid them to recall the First Holy War and the infamous Slaughter of the Camp-followers.

"When the time comes, each will kill his own," he said. "Each. Those who fail to do so will be executed in their slave's stead. Remember, my brothers: cruelty is only injustice in the absence of Necessity. Compassion. Generosity. These are fast becoming gluttonous sins."

He did not need to speak the obvious, that unless their foraging began providing game in far greater quantities, Necessity would be upon them in a matter of days. They did not even possess pasture enough for their ponies and beasts of burden, thanks to the drought and the scourging of the land.

As always, the discussion returned to the reason for their straits: the Horde. Kayutas polled his cavalry commanders, one by one, drawing martial wisdom from their observations: tactics to draw them out for easy slaughter, how the relative starvation of the creatures predicted their aggression, and the like.

There was no doubt, the Prince-Imperial informed his charges, that the Sranc were becoming more desperate and therefore more bold. He explained the way the snows accumulated in the high mountains, week after week, season after season, until the snow beneath could no longer hold the snow above.

"They will come crashing down upon us," he said. "And when they do, they will not be cowed so easily as they are now. They will come and they will come, until you cry out to the Gods for respite."

"How many are they?" King Hogrim asked. There was no missing the Imperial Mathematicians, as pale as sorcerers beneath their parasols, riding out with Anasurimbor Moenghus on their daily forays.

"More than us, my friend. Far more."

King Narnol, who still grieved the loss of his beloved son, chose this moment to voice a sentiment common among his peers: that the Breaking of the Great Ordeal had been ill advised. "We should stand together!" he protested. "Shoulder to shoulder with our brothers! Divided, they can engulf and overwhelm us one by one. But if the Great Ordeal confronts this Horde entire..."

"We cannot feed ourselves as it is," the Prince-Imperial answered. "We are gathering far more fare as four than we could as one, and still we hunger. To stand together is to starve together."

Though his reasoning was sound, Kayutas could see that Narnol, in the course of framing his argument, had sparked real fear in the hearts of his commanders.

"Trust in my Father," he pressed, "who has foreseen and planned for all of these dilemmas. Think of how fifty of your knights can rout a mob of thousands! The Sranc battle in crazed masses, bereft of design or coordination. You need not fear for your flanks, only stand your ground! Hack and hew!" He turned to gesture to his sister, Anasurimbor Serwa, the Grandmistress of the Swayali, whose beauty was ever a lodestone for idle eyes. "Most importantly, recall the Schools and the destruction they can rain down upon our foes! Have no fear, my brothers. We will cobble the horizon with their carcasses!"

And the Lords of the Ordeal filed from the council striking their chests and crying out in renewed resolution. So easy it was to kindle the lust for blood in the hearts of Men. Even those thrown more than a thousand miles from their home.

- - To look at skies bright and arid and to sense a darkness unseen.

The Men of the Ordeal marched, little more than shadows in the sheeted dust. Knowing what gathered in the distance, they gazed ever forward, pondering what they could not see. There is an exhaustion peculiar to hanging threats, a needing-to-confront that tires the soul the way overstuffed packs sap the limbs. They would look out across the blasted plate of the Istyuli, and they would wonder at the rumour of their enigmatic foe. The Horde. They would argue numbers, exchange speculations, discuss battles waged by long-dead men. It became a game for some, counting the hundreds of dust plumes that marked the Kidruhil and the various companies of knights that patrolled ahead of them. They would wager rations on which plume marked who, a practice that became so common that some companies found themselves returning to the shouts of uproarious thousands.

For the pickets themselves, it seemed they had come to the ends of the earth. The ground was all but gutted dust by this time, so the Horde always appeared as a peculiar dust storm that spanned the horizon, one tethered to the irregularities of the earth. Ochre clouds piled upon billowing foundations, a great curtain that climbed into a haze that stained the northern sky, obscuring the lower constellations at night. Streamers preceded it, tails of gauze hooked as though on nails, marking those clans that had fled the longest, starved the longest. On and on it extended, powder raised into sinuous mountains, beautiful for its slow-blooming complexities, wondrous for its mad scale. A sense of impunity had grown upon many of the riders, one of those thoughtless convictions that arise when something expected perpetually fails to arrive. They rode their trackless circuits, and the unseen hordes before them retreated, always retreated. This was simply the way.

Then some trick of the Gangan-naru would kick open a door across the distance, and the windy hush would suddenly tingle with sound of the Horde, a roar that was at once booming and thin. "Like shrieking children," one of the Kidruhil Captains would explain to General Kayutas. "For the life of me, they sound like shrieking children."

Or, more rarely, given the sheer number of companies pacing the Horde, one of the retreating streamers would reverse direction and begin racing toward one of the slender fingers of dust that marked the pursuing cavalry companies. Then the choreographed race would begin, with the company pursued turning back to the main host, drawing the reckless clan ever farther from the Horde and so delivering it to the lances of those companies flanking. The battles would be so one-sided as to scarce be battles at all. Ghostly riders pounding out of the smoke of powder-dry earth, riding down the shadows of screeching Sranc, some so starved as to be little more than dolls of knotted rope. Men with chalked faces would congratulate one another, exchange petty news, then ride on with whatever trophies they so prized.

Originally, they tallied the dead, thinking this a means of measuring the Sranc's defeat. And squads would always be sent back for the gratification of the host, their lances heavy with severed heads. The counting was abandoned after they reached some ten thousand-for who bothers to count inexhaustible things? The practice was forsaken when the trudging infantrymen began jeering at the lancers' approach. The hearts of men are like buoys: the more water you give them, the higher their expectations swim. All that would survive of the custom was the use of lance as a term for twelve Sranc-the average number of heads that could be carried on a standard Kidruhil shaft.

And so did a kind of unspoken accord arise between the Men of the Ordeal and the Sranc of the Horde, a truce whose falseness lay in the meagreness of the former's rations-the footmen of most nations had been reduced to gnawing amicut. Every morning, the number of slaves abandoned to die climbed a handful of souls. Camp would be broken, and the Army would begin crawling toward the northern horizon, leaving several dozen forlorn and broken souls sitting amid the detritus, waiting to be claimed by whatever it was that ailed them. Many just vanished, and the vassals of different lords began trading rumours of midnight murder. Some tales, like the story of Baron Hunrilka demanding his thanes dip their beards in the blood of their slaves, transcended bounds of kin and vassalage and were traded through the Ordeal as a whole.