The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(15)
Mirshoa lapsed back into rumination, which was unfortunate, because the man could not reflect without speaking.
“It’s like my soul is naught but … but smoked glass …”
Wherever words should not go, that was where Mirshoa was sure to follow them. Be it the carnal nature of Inri Sejenus or the most effective purificatory rite for menses, his voice would barge and blunder, his eyes animate, growing wider even as those listening narrowed. Mirshoa was a hapless soul, a man numb to too many edges to avoid being cut. Ever since their childhood, Hatturidas had been his shepherd and his shield, “Taller by a thumb,” his mother would always say, “wiser by a century …”
“It’s like something … simmers, Hatti … Like I’m a pot on coals …”
“Skew the lid, then. Cease this bubbling!”
“Enough with your sarcasms! Tell me you feel it!”
The Shroud always hung on the horizon now, mountainous veils piling to where they became powder, obscuring every distance save the Sea.
“Feel what?”
“The meat … The meat making you … shrink in proportion to who you were the day before …”
“No …” Hatturidas said, wagging his bearded jaw. He hoisted his testicles in the exaggerated barracks way. “I grow larger, if anything.”
“You’re a fool!” Mirshoa cried. “I’ve marched across E?rwa with a mad wretch!”
Hatturidas could even hear them sometimes, a noxious croon rolling on the wind …
The countless mouths of the Horde, screaming.
He spared his cousin an indulgent glance, the look of one who has always been stronger.
“And so you will march back.”
The Men of the Three Seas did not so much eat as feast on the flesh of their vile and wicked enemy.
Following the reunification of the host at Swaran?l, the Great Ordeal followed the arthritic coastline of the Nele?st, the Misty Sea, advancing on a ponderous, northwestern arc. The Horde withdrew before the Shining Men as always, amorphous miles of howling Sranc, starving for the exhaustion of the earth beneath, keening for the promise of Mannish congress on the wind. But where the outriders had once chased, running down or driving away the more famished clans, and where the Schoolmen had simply massacred, hanging low above fields of screaming turmoil, they now hunted the beasts—worked a grisly harvest.
Cadres of sorcerers strode deep into the billowing clouds, intent not so much on destroying as herding, striking wedges, then driving what numbers they could toward the echelons of horsemen who followed. Some Sranc invariably fled south and east, only to find themselves dashing headlong into waves of galloping lancers. The skirmishes were as brief as they were brutal. Screeching creatures hacked and skewered in a shadowy world of violence and dust. Afterward, the horsemen—be they Imperial Kidruhil, caste-noble knights, or tribal plainsmen—would pile the dead into conical heaps, hundreds of them, until they dotted the blasted hillocks and pastures of the coast. There they would stand, cairns of fish-white carcasses, gathering flies and carrion birds, awaiting the shining tide that approached from the southwestern horizon. The clash of cymbals. The screech and bellow of signalling horns. The rumble of marching thousands.
The Host of the Believer-Kings.
According to scripture and tradition, no flesh was more polluted than that of the Sranc. Not pig. Not even dog or monkey. The Holy Sagas related the tale of Eng?s, an ancient Me?rnish Prince who saved his tribal household by fleeing into the high Osthwai and bidding them to consume their monstrous foe. The Sranc-Eaters, they were called, and they were damned as no soul could be short of sorcerers, witches, and whores. According to Sakarpi legend, the vale where they took refuge was mortally cursed. Those who sought it thinking they would find gold (for the wont of rumour is to attribute riches to the damned) were never seen again.
Despite this, despite the native revulsion and disgust, nary a word of protest was raised among the Ordealmen. Perhaps it was the measure of their faith. Perhaps it was simply the nature of Men to celebrate one day what they had abominated the day before, so long as their hungers were sated.
Perhaps meat was simply meat. Sustenance. Who questioned the air they breathed?
The flesh was dense, pungent to smell, in some ways sour and in others sweet. The sinews in particular were difficult to gnaw through. Some among the Inrithi took to chewing the gristle throughout the day. The entrails were heaped in odious piles, along with those pieces—feet, viscera, and genitalia, mostly—too difficult or unsavoury to eat. If fuel was plentiful enough, the heads would be burned in oblation.
The rank and file simply portioned the beasts and cooked them over open fires. With the carcasses so divided, it became impossible to distinguish the limbs from those of Men. Everywhere one travelled, whether through the timbered tents of the Galeoth, or the garish parasol cities of the Conriyans and Ainoni, one saw arms and legs sweating over grease-fuelled fires, blackened fingers hanging slack over light. But if the resemblance troubled any, they dared not speak it.
The caste-nobility, as a rule, demanded more in the way of preparation and variety. The carcasses were beheaded and hung from their heels on timber scaffolds to properly drain. These racks could be seen throughout the encamped Ordeal, rows of white and violet bodies hanging from their heels, graphic for their nakedness. Once drained, the beasts were butchered in the manner of cattle and sheep, then served in ways that disguised the troubling humanity of their forms.