Winded, Saubon spat blood and gasped, "Bruised only . . ."

Mere yards away, Shrial Knights and Coyauri jostled and hacked at one another. Swords rang, danced flashing across sun and sky. So beautiful. So impossibly remote, like a spectacle woven in cloth . . .

Saubon turned wordlessly to his groom. The old warrior looked haggard, beaten.

"You stemmed the breach," Kussalt said, his eyes strange with wonder, perhaps even pride.

Saubon blinked at the blood trickling into his left eye. An inexplicable cruelty overcame him. "You're old and slow . . . Give me your horse!"

Kussalt's look soured. Old lips tightened.

"This is no place to be thin-skinned, you old fool. Now give me your fucking horse! Now give me your fucking horse!"

Kussalt jerked, as though something had popped within him, then slumped forward, staggering Saubon with his weight.

He fell backward with his groom, crashed on his rump.

"Kussalt!"

He dragged the man onto his thighs. An arrow shaft jutted from the small of Kussalt's back.

The groom gurgled, coughed dark, old-man's blood. His rolling eyes found Saubon's, and the old warrior laughed, coughed more blood. Saubon's skin pimpled with dread. How many times had he heard the man laugh? Three or four, over the course of his entire lifetime?

No-no-no-no . . .

"Kussalt!"

"I would have you know . . ." the old man wheezed, "how much I hated you . . ."

A convulsion, then he spat snotty blood. A long gasp, then he went utterly still.

Like more earth.

Saubon looked around the strange pocket of calm that held them. Everywhere, through the trampled grasses, dead eyes watched. And he understood.

Cursed.

The Coyauri had reeled away, fleeing through the guttered ravine. But instead of cheering, men screamed. Somewhere, lights flashed, so bright they threw shadows in the midday sun.

He never hated me . . .

How could he? Kussalt was the only one who . . .

Funny joke. Ha-ha, you old fool . . .

Someone was standing over him, shouting.

So tired. Had he ever been so tired?

"Cishaurim!" someone was screaming. "Cishaurim!"

Ah, the lights . . .

A slapping blow, torn links scoring his cheek. Where had his helm gone?

"Saubon! Saubon!" Incheiri Gotian was screaming. "The Cishaurim!"

Saubon pulled his fingers from his cheek. Saw blood.

Fucking ingrate. Fucking shit-skinned pick.

Make sure they're punished! Punish them! Punish!

Fucking picks.

"Charge them," the Galeoth Prince said mildly. He hugged his dead groom tight against his thighs and stomach. What a joker. What a joker.

"You must charge the Cishaurim."

They walked to elude the companies of crossbowmen they knew the Inrithi kept behind their lines, armed with the Tears of God. Not one among their number could be risked, not with the Scarlet Spires girding for war-not for any reason. They were Cishaurim, Indara's Waterbearers and their breath was more precious than the breath of thousands. They were oases among men.

Drawing their palms over grass, goldenrod, and white alyssum, they walked toward the common line, fourteen of them, their yellow silk cassocks whipped by wind and fiery convections, the five snakes about each of their throats outstretched, like the spokes of a candelabra, searching every direction. The desperate Northmen fired volley after volley of arrows, but the shafts burst into puffs of flame. The Cishaurim continued walking, sweeping their gouged eyes along the bristling Inrithi lines. Wherever they turned, blue blinding light exploded among the Men of the Tusk, blistering skin, welding iron to flesh, charring hearts . . .

Many Northmen held their position, dropping prone beneath their shields as they'd been taught. But many others were already fleeing-Usgalders, Agmundrmen, and Gaenrish, Numainerish and Plaidolmen-senseless to the rallying cries of their officers and lords. The Inrithi centre floundered, began to evaporate. Battle had become massacre.

Amid the tumult, Crown Prince Fanayal and his Coyauri fled the ravine, the Shrial Knights pursuing them through billowing dust and smoke-or so it seemed to all who watched. At first, the Fanim could scarce credit their eyes. Many cried out, not in fear or dismay, but in wonder at the deranged ferocity of the idolaters. When Fanayal wheeled away, Incheiri Gotian, some four thousand Shrial Knights massed behind him, continued galloping forward, crying-weeping-"The God wills it!" They scattered across the Battleplain, unbloodied save for the morning's first disastrous charge, hurtling through the grasses, crouched low out of terror, crying out their fury, their defiance. They charged the fourteen Cishaurim, drove their mounts into the hellish lights that unspooled from their brows. And they died burning, like moths assailing coals in a fire's heart.

Filaments of blue incandescence, fanning out, glittering with unearthly beauty, burning limbs to cinders, bursting torsos, immolating men in their saddles. Amid the shrieks and wails, the rumble of hooves, the thunder of men howling "The God wills it!" Gotian was pitched breakneck from the charred remnants of his horse. Biaxi Scoulas, his leg burnt to a stump, toppled and was trampled to pulp by those pounding after him. The knight immediately before Cutias Sarcellus exploded, and sent a knife whistling through his windpipe. The First Knight-Commander collapsed, slapped face-first onto the ground. Death came swirling down.

Brains boiled in skulls. Teeth snapped. Hundreds fell in the first thirty seconds. Hundreds more in the second. Scorching light materialized everywhere, like the cracks that dizzy glass. And still the Shrial Knights whipped their horses forward, leaping the smouldering ruin of their brothers, racing one another to their doom, thousands of them, howling, howling. The scrub and grasses ignited. Oily smoke bloomed skyward, drawn toward the Cishaurim by the wind.

Then a lone rider, a young adept, swept up to one of the sorcerer-priests-and took his head. When the nearest turned his sockets to regard him, only the boy's horse erupted in flame. The young knight tumbled and continued running, his cries shrill, his dead father's Chorae bound to the palm of his hand.

Only then did the Cishaurim realize their mistake-their arrogance. For several heartbeats they hesitated . . .

And a tide of burnt and bloody knights broke from the rolling smoke, among them Grandmaster Gotian, hauling the Gold Tusk on White, his Order's sacred standard. In that final rush, hundreds more fell burning. But some didn't, and the Cishaurim rent the earth, desperately trying to bring those with Chorae down. But it was too late-the raving knights were upon them. One tried to flee by stepping into the sky, only to be felled by a crossbow bolt bearing a Tear of God. The others were cut down where they stood.

They were Cishaurim, Indara's Waterbearers, and their death was more precious than the death of thousands.

For an impossible moment, all was silent. The Shrial Knights, those few hundred who survived, began limping and staggering back to the battered ranks of their Inrithi brothers. Incheiri Gotian was among the last to reach safety, bearing a burnt youth slumped across his shoulders.

Skauras, knowing the Cishaurim had accomplished their task despite their deaths, roared at his Grandees to attack, but the shock of what they had witnessed weighed too heavily upon them. The Fanim withdrew, milling in confusion, while opposite a great swath of scorched earth and smoking dead, the Earls and Thanes of the Middle-North desperately reassembled the centre of the common line. By the time the Grandees of Shigek and Gedea renewed their assault, the iron men were again in position, their ranks thinned, their hearts hardened.

And they began singing anew their ancient paean, which now struck them as more prophecy than song:

A-warring we have come A-reaving we shall work.

And when the day is done, In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!

As the afternoon waxed, many more joined the fallen. Earl Wanhail of Kurigald was thrown from his horse in a countercharge, and broke his back. Skaiyelt's youngest brother, Prince Narradha, was felled by an arrow in the eye. Among the living, some collapsed of heat exhaustion. Some went mad with grief, and had to be dragged, frothing, to the priests in the camp. But those who stood couldn't be broken. The iron men had rekindled their song, and the song had rekindled their violent fervour. The pounding of Fanim drums dimmed, then was drowned out altogether. Thousands of voices and one song. Thousands of years and one song.

And when the day is done, In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!

As the sun lowered in the western skies, the Fanim flinched more and more from the Inrithi line, charged with ever-greater trepidation. For they saw demons in the eyes of their idolatrous enemy.

Skauras had already sounded the retreat when the banners of Proyas and his silver-masked Conriyans came snapping down the western hills. Without signal, the Galeoth, Tydonni, and Thunyeri ranks surged forward and ran booming across the Battleplain. Exhausted, heartbroken, the Fanim panicked; withdrawal degenerated into rout. The knights of Conriya swept into their midst, and the great Kianene host of Skauras ab Nalajan, Sapatishah-Governor of Shigek, was massacred. Meanwhile, the Earls and Thanes of the Middle-North descended with what horse they had remaining on the vast Fanim encampment. Succumbing to licentious fury, the harrowed Northmen raped the women, murdered the slaves, and plundered the sumptuous pavilions of innumerable Grandees.

By sunset, the Vulgar Holy War had been avenged.

Over the following weeks, the Men of the Tusk would find thousands of bloated horses on the road to Hinnereth. They had been ridden to death, so mad were the heathen to escape the iron men of the Holy War.

Hunched on his saddle, Saubon watched files of weary men and women trudge across the moonlit grasses, no doubt eager to at last overtake Proyas and his knights. The Conriyan Prince, Saubon realized, must have pressed hard, perilously hard, to have so far outstripped his baggage and followers. He required no mirror to know how he looked: the horrified expressions of those walking from the darkness were reflection enough. Blood soaked his tattered surcoat. Gore clotted the links of his mail harness.

He waited until the man was almost immediately below before calling out to him . . .

"Your friend. Where is he?"

The sorcerer, Achamian, shrank from his mounted form, clutching his woman. Small wonder, looming out of the dark like a bloodied apparition.

"You mean Kellhus?" the square-bearded Schoolman asked.

Saubon glowered. "Remember your place, dog. He's a prince."

"You mean, Prince Prince Kellhus, then?" Kellhus, then?"

Unaccountably chastised, Saubon paused, licked his swollen lips. "Yes . . ."

The sorcerer shrugged. "I don't know. Proyas drove us like cattle to catch you. Everything's confused . . . Besides, princes don't loiter with the likes of us in the wake of battle."

Saubon glared at the mealy-mouthed fool, wondering whether he should strike him for his impertinence. But the memory of seeing his own corpse on the field gave him pause. He shuddered, clutched his elbows. That wasn't me! That wasn't me!

"Perhaps . . . Perhaps you can help me, then."

The sorcerer scowled in a bemused manner Saubon found offensive. "I'm at your disposal, my Prince."

"This ground . . . What is it about this ground?"

The sorcerer shrugged again. "This is the Battleplain . . . This is where the No-God died."

"I know the legends."

"I'm sure you do . . . Do you know what topoi are?"

Saubon grimaced. "No."

The attractive woman at his side yawned, rubbed her eyes. Without warning, a wave of fatigue crashed over the Galeoth Prince. He swayed in his saddle.

"You know the way you can see far from heights," the sorcerer was saying, "like towers or mountain summits?"

"I'm not a fool. Don't deal with me as one."

Pained smile. "Topoi are like heights, places where one can see far . . . But where heights are built with mounds of stone and earth, topoi are built with mounds of trauma and suffering. They are heights that let us see farther than this world . . . some say into the Outside. That's why this ground troubles you-you stand perilously high . . . This is the Battleplain. What you feel isn't so different from vertigo."

Saubon nodded, feeling his throat tighten. He understood, and for no apparent reason, that understanding roused an immeasurable relief. Two ferocious sobs wracked him. "Exhaustion," he croaked, wiping angrily at his eyes.

The sorcerer watched him, now with more regret than reproach. The woman stared at her feet.

Unable to look at the man, Saubon vaguely nodded in his direction, then made to ride off. The Schoolman's voice, however, brought him up short.

"Even among topoi," he called, "this place is . . . special." There was something different in his tone, a reluctance, perhaps, which struck Saubon like a winter gust across sweaty skin.

"How so?" he managed, looking into the dark night.

"Do you remember the line from The Sagas The Sagas, 'Em yutiri Tir mauna, kirn raussaraim . . .'"

Saubon blinked away tears, said nothing.

"'The soul that encounters Him,'" the Schoolman continued, "'passes no further.'"

"And just fucking what," the Galeoth Prince said, shocked by the savagery of his own voice, "is that supposed to fucking mean?"

The sorcerer looked out across the dark plains. "That in some way, He's out there somewhere . . . Mog-Pharau." When he turned back to Saubon, there was real fear in his eyes.

"The dead do not escape the Battleplain, my Prince . . . This place is cursed. The No-God died here."