…conquered peoples live and die with the knowledge that survival does not suffer honour.
They have chosen shame over the pyre, the slow flame for the quick.
Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Sakarpus
It was a thing of wonder.
While the citadels and strong places of Sakarpus still smoked, innumerable storks began clotting the southern horizon, not the field-sized flocks that the Men of the Ordeal were accustomed to, but high-flying mountains of them, darkening the sky, settling like salt in water across the surrounding hills. Even for men familiar with momentous sights, it was remarkable to behold: the whooshing descent, the starved elegance, the twitch and turn of avian scrutiny, multiplied over and over across every sky. Since storks meant many different things to the many different nations of the Great Ordeal, few could agree what the bird's arrival augured. The Aspect-Emperor said nothing, save issuing an edict to protect the birds from becoming either food or ornament. Apparently the Sakarpi held them holy: The men guarded them against foxes and wolves, while the womenfolk gathered their guano for a concoction called char soot, a long-burning fuel they used in lieu of wood.
The Judges were kept busy. Several hangings were required, and one Ainoni sergeant, who had been killing birds to make and sell pillows, was even publicly flayed. But eventually the Men of the Ordeal became accustomed to the squawking, white-backed hills, and ceased heckling the conquered men and women who tended to them. In the parlance of the camp, 'eating stork' became synonymous with any reckless and self-indulgent act. Soon it seemed obvious-even to those, like the Kianene, who thought storks were vermin-that these birds with their thin- necked conceit were in fact holy, and that the hills were a kind of natural temple.
Meanwhile, preparations for the ensuing march continued. In the Council of Names, the kings and generals of the Great Ordeal debated points of supply and strategy beneath the all-seeing eyes of their Aspect-Emperor. Even though flushed with pious excitement-a great number of them had spent years waiting for this very day-they harboured few illusions about the trials and perils that awaited them. Sakarpus stood at the very edge of the mannish world, the point where, as King Saubon of Enathpaneah would say, 'Men are more lamb than lion.' Sranc ruled the land beyond the northern horizon, scratching a vicious existence from the ruined cities of the long-dead High Norsirai. And that land, the Lords of the Ordeal knew, stretched for more than two thousand miles. Not since the wars of Far Antiquity had so many attempted such an arduous journey. 'Between this march and the Consult,' their Aspect-Emperor told them, 'the march will prove far deadlier.'
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 Hoosverыl, 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, Moлnghus and Kayыtas.
'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.'
Moлnghus growled with what may have been laughter, then muttered something in Sheyic to his taller brother. Kayыtas 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,' Kayыtas 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
