But as his eyes sorted the darkness of his room from the afterimages, and his ears dredged the roar of the falls from the death-throe thunder, it seemed he could hear the madwoman… Mimara.
'You have become a prophet…' Was that not what she had said?
'A prophet of the past.'
The next day Sarl collected Achamian and brought him to what must have been one of the Cocked Leg's largest rooms. Though he moved with the same spry impatience, the old cutthroat seemed surprisingly quiet. Whether this was due to the previous night's drink or discussion, Achamian could not readily tell.
Another man awaited them in addition to Kosoter and Cleric: a middle-aged Nansur named Kiampas. If Sarl was the Captain's mouth, then Kiampas, Achamian realized, was his hand. Clean-shaven and elegantly featured, he looked somewhat younger than the fifty or so years Achamian eventually credited to him. He was definitely more soldier than warrior. He had a wry, methodical air that suggested melancholy as much as competence. Because of this, Achamian found himself almost instantly trusting both his instincts and his acumen. As a former Imperial Officer, Kiampas was a devotee of plans and the resources required to bring them to fruition. Such men usually left the issue of overarching goals to their superiors, but after listening to Achamian explain the mission to come, his manner betrayed obvious doubt if not out-and-out dismay.
'So just when did you hope to reach these ruins?' His speech had a well-practised insistence-a first-things- first air-that spoke of many long campaigns.
'The Wards protecting the Coffers are peculiar,' Achamian lied, 'geared to the heavenly spheres. We must reach Sauglish before the autumn solstice.'
All eyes raked him, searching, it seemed, for the telltale glow of deceit in the blank coals of his face.
'Sweet Sejenus!' Kiampas cried in disbelief. 'The end of summer?'
'It's imperative.'
'Impossible. It can't be done!'
'Yes,' the Captain grated, 'it can.'
Kiampas paled, seemed to glance down in unconscious apology. Though he was cut of different cloth entirely, Achamian wasn't surprised to see him sharing Sarl's reaction to the chest-tightening rarity of their Captain's voice.
'Well then,' the Nansur continued, apparently searching for his equilibrium in the matter at hand. 'The choice of routes is straightforward then. We should travel through Galeoth, up through-'
'That cannot be done,' Achamian interrupted.
The studied lack of expression on Kiampas's face would be Achamian's first glimpse of the man's escalating disdain.
'And what route do you suggest?'
'Along the back of the Osthwai.'
'The back of the…' The man possessed a sneering side, but then, so did most ironic souls. 'Are you fucking mad? Do you realize-'
'I cannot travel anywhere in the New Empire,' Achamian said, genuinely penitent. Of all the Skin Eaters he had met thus far, Kiampas was the only one he was prepared to trust, if only at a procedural level. 'Ask Lord Kosoter. He knows who I am.'
Apparently the lack of contradiction in the Captain's glare was confirmation enough.
'So you wish to avoid the Aspect-Emperor,' Kiampas continued. Achamian did not like the way his eyes drifted to the Captain as he said this.
'What of it?'
His impertinent smile was rendered all the more injurious by the dignity of his features. 'Rumour has it Sakarpus has fallen, that the Great Ordeal even now marches northward.'
He was saying they would have to cross the New Empire no matter what. Achamian bowed his face to the jnanic degree that acknowledged a point taken. He knew how absurd he must look, an old, wild-haired hermit dressed in a beggar's tunic, aping the etiquette of a faraway caste-nobility. Even still, this was a courtesy he had yet to extend to any of the others; he wanted Kiampas to know that he respected both him and his misgivings.
Something told him he would need allies in the weeks and months to come.
'Look,' Achamian replied. 'Were it not for the Great Ordeal, an expedition such as this would be madness. This is perhaps the one time, the only time, that something like this can be attempted! But just because the Aspect-Emperor clears our way, doesn't mean we must cross his path. He shall be far ahead of us, mark me.'
Kiampas was having none of it. 'The Captain tells me you're a fellow Veteran, that you belonged to the First Holy War. That means you know full well the sluggish and capricious ways of great hosts on the march.'
'Sauglish lies out of their way,' Achamian said evenly. 'The chances of encountering any Men of the Circumfix are exceedingly slim.'
Kiampas nodded with slow skepticism, then leaned back, as if retreating from some disagreeable scent.
The smell of futility, perhaps.
After that second meeting, the watches of the day and the days of the week passed quickly. Lord Kosoter commanded a muster of the full company the following morning. The Skin Eaters assembled among the posts of old Marrow, far enough from the mists for their jerkins to harden in the sun. They were a motley group, some sixty or so strong, sporting all manner of armour and weaponry. Some were fastidious, obviously intent on reclaiming as much civilization as they could during their brief tenure in Marrow. One was even decked in the crisp white gowns of a Nilnameshi caste-noble and seemed almost comically concerned with the mud staining his crimson-threaded hems. Others were savage-slovenly, bearing the stamp of their inhuman quarry, to the point of almost resembling Sranc in the case of some. A great many seemed to have adopted the Thunyeri custom of wearing shrunken heads as adornment, either about their girdles or sewn into the lacquered faces of their shields. Otherwise, the only thing they seemed to share in common was a kind of deep spiritual fatigue and, of course, an abiding, almost reverential fear of their Captain.
When they had settled into ranks, Sarl described, in terms grandiloquent enough to flirt with mockery, the nature of the expedition their Captain was in the course of planning. Lord Kosoter stood off to the side, his eyes scavenging the horizon. Cleric accompanied him, somewhat taller and just as broad, his face hidden in his cowl. The cataracts boomed in the distance, a great murky hiss that reminded Achamian of the way the Inrithi hosts had roared in response to Kellhus some twenty years previous. Birdsong braided the nearby forest verge.
Sarl explained the extraordinary perils that would face them, how they would be travelling ten times the distance of a standard 'slog,' as he called it, and how they could expect to live in the 'pit' for more than a year. He paused after mentioning this last as though to let its significance resonate. Achamian reminded himself that the wilderness was not so much a place to these men, as an art with its own well of customs and lore. He imagined that scalpers traded stories of companies gone missing returning after so many months in the 'pit.' Those words, 'more than a year,' he realized, likely carried dismaying implications.
But again and again, the old, wire-limbed man came back to the Coffers. 'Coffers,' spoken like the title of some great king. 'Coffers,' murmured like the name of some collective aspiration. 'Coffers,' spat as though to say, 'How long shall we be denied our due?' 'Coffers,' hollered over and over like the name of some lost child. 'Coffers,' invoked as though it were something lost and holy, another Shimeh crying out for reconquest…
But more real than any of these things in that it could be divided into equal shares.
A lie carved at the joints.
Sarl explained all, his face reddening, then reddening again, his head bobbing to the more strident turns of speech, his body given to illustrative antics, standing at attention, trotting in place, pacing while the voice pondered. And all was disciplined silence throughout, something which, given the crazed composition of the Skin Eaters, Achamian would have thought a miracle had he not shared bowls with their Captain.
'You have until tomorrow morning to decide,' Sarl announced in wide-armed conclusion. 'Tomorrow to decide whether to risk all to become a prince! or cradle your pulse and die a slave. Afterwards, departures will be considered desertion-desertion! — and Cleric, here, will be set to the hunt. You know the rule of the slog, boys. The knee that buckles pulls ten men down. The knee that buckles pulls ten men down!'
Watching them break ranks and fall to talking among themselves, Achamian found himself comparing them to the hard-bitten men of the First Holy War, the warriors whose zeal and cruelty had allowed Kellhus to conquer all the Three Seas. The Skin Eaters, he decided, were a far different breed than the Men of the Tusk. They were not
