R. Bakker: The Judging eye

"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.

"Moments of weakness come upon all Men," Harweel said without looking at his son.

The young Prince stared harder into the glowing cracks.

"You must see this," his father continued, "so that when your time comes you will not despair."

Sorweel was speaking before he even realized he had opened his mouth. "But I do, Father! I do desp-!"

The tenderness in his father's eyes was enough to make him choke. It knocked his gaze down as surely as a slap.

"There are many fools, Sorwa, men who conceive hearts in simple terms, absolute terms. They are insensible to the war within, so they scoff at it, they puff out their chests and they pretend. When fear and despair overcome them, as they must overcome us all, they have not the wind to think… and so they break."

The heat enclosed the young Prince, thinning the moisture that slicked his skin. Already his palms and knuckles were dry. He dared look up at his father, whose bravery, he realized, burned not like a bonfire, but like a hearth, warming all who stood near its wisdom.

"Are you such a fool, Sorwa?"

The fact that the question was searching, genuine, and not meant as a reprimand cut Sorweel to the quick.

"No, Father."

There was so much he wanted to say, to confess. So much fear, so much doubt, and remorse above all. How could he have doubted his father? Instead of lending his shoulder, he had become one more burden-and on this day of days! He had recoiled, stricken by thoughts of bitter condemnation, when he should have reached out-when he should have said, "The Aspect-Emperor. He comes. Hold tight my hand, Father."

"Please…" he said, staring into that beloved face, but before he could utter another word the door flew open, and three of the greater Horselords called out.

Forgive me…

Even upon the walls, the famed and hallowed walls of Sakarpus, the heat of the barracks stayed with him, as though he had somehow carried away a coal in his heart.

Standing with his father's High Boonsmen upon the northern tower of the Herder's Gate, Sorweel stared out across the miserable distances. The rain continued to spiral down, falling from fog skies. Though the plains ringed the horizon with lines as flat as any sea, the land about the city was pitched and folded, like a cloak cast upon a vast floor, forming a great stone pedestal for Sakarpus and her wandering walls. Several times, Sorweel leaned forward to peer between the embrasures, only to push himself back, dizzied by the sheer drop: a plane of pocked brick that dropped to sloping foundations that hung over grass-and-thistle-choked cliffs. It seemed impossible that any might assail them. Who could overcome such towers? Such walls?

When he stared down their length, with the iron-horned crenelations and lines of bovine skulls set into the masonry, a mixture of pride and awe swelled through him. The Lords of the Plains, draped in the ancient armour of their fathers, crowded by the longshields of their clans. The batteries of archers hunched over their bows, struggling to keep the strings dry. Everywhere he looked, he saw his father's people-his people-manning the heights, their faces grim with determination and expectant fury.

And out there, across the grass slopes, only void, the grey of distances lost through sheet after sheet of gossamer rain. The Aspect-Emperor and his Great Ordeal.

Sorweel rehearsed the prayers his father had taught to him, the Demanding, meant to loosen the sword of Gilgaцl's favour, the Plea to Fate, meant to soften the hard look of the Whore. It seemed he could hear others among the High Boonsmen whispering prayers of their own, summoning the favour they would need to wrest their doom from the Aspect-Emperor's grasping hand.

He's a demon, Sorweel thought, drawing strength from the remembered tenor of his father's voice. A Hunger from the Outside. He will not prevail…

He cannot.

Just then, a single horn pealed from the rain-shrouded horizon, long drawn and low, of a tone with the call of bull mastodons. For several heartbeats, it seemed to hang suspended over the city, solitary, foreboding. It trailed into silence, one heartbeat, two, until it seemed its signification had ended. Then it was joined by a chorus of others, some shrill and piercing, some as deep as the previous night's thunder. Suddenly the whole world seemed to shiver, its innards awakened by the cold cacophony. Sorweel could see men trade apprehensive looks. Mumbled curses and prayers formed a kind of counterpoint, like bracken about a monument. Blare and rumble, a sound that made a ceiling of the sky-that made water sharp. Then the horns were gone, leaving only the hoarse cries of the lords and officers along the wall, shouting out encouragement to their men.