But no God was ever so generous or so reliable as Dagliash. For centuries she would be the very bastion of Men, a lone beacon raised against the nightmarish gloom of Golgotterath. The ancient Norsirai called her by many names: the Obstinate, the Unconquerable—even “the Lilac” for the violet that perpetually stained her walls. The shores below mount Antareg were beached in splintered bones instead of sand, such were the numbers cast down the cliffs. Time and time again the Consult threw their inhuman legions at the fortress. Time and time again they were thrown back reeling. As Viri dwindled in human memory, Dagliash became the very emblem of Mannish ferocity and resolve, a name traded in rice paddies and mountain vales, in temple processions and booming harbours throughout E?rwa.
And so word of her overthrow reverberated as far as the courts of Mehtsonc, Iothiah, and Shir. Swart Kings cried for silence and bent their ear. And somehow they knew, those hard and archaic Men, knew what they should not know given the way conceit trivializes faraway foes. Somehow they understood that the long-besieged Gate, not of A?rsi, but of humanity itself, had finally fallen. And though they as yet knew nothing of the No-God, their skin pimpled for brushing its absolute shadow.
The Exalt-General salivated for the smell of burning lamb.
Kellhus beached the Raft on lichen-pitted stone, and with a lurch, Saubon’s householders leapt from the timber platform incredulous, disbelieving … much as Saubon did himself. The Witches had assaulted the fortifications in a manner too methodical to be described as furious, and yet all the more furious for it. After spreading wide, they had rushed the eroded stoneworks, closed the interval with fifty cubit strides, laving the ramparts with blistering arcs and amputating lines. Nothing had survived to slow them, so they had simply stepped over the smoking walls and bastions to prosecute their scintillant extermination within.
Now Saubon stood gawking up with his fellows at the scorched walls soaring about them. A bare hand seized his plated shoulder and he saw his Lord-and-Prophet grinning as he pressed by, walking out among the smoking carcasses that matted the courtyard. Dagliash had fallen in mere heartbeats, thanks to the Swayali, but the clamour of the Horde grew more swollen with each heartbeat following.
Saubon waved his war-party to take positions flanking the Holy Aspect-Emperor. They were here, Saubon knew, but for a single purpose: to protect their Lord-and-Prophet and the Nuns from Chorae. The Knights of the Desert Lion numbered some forty-eight in all, some hulking, others reed thin, and a few (like his unlikely Scylvendi scout, Skunxa) comically rotund. Saubon had spent more than fifteen years assembling them, plucking only the most ferocious souls from those serving him through the Unification Wars. Soldiers of the rank need only see his entourage to know that merit, as opposed to bloodline, could raise them. Give a life to the right sort of man, Saubon had learned, and that man would wager that life no matter what the throw.
They had set ground in the Ribbaral, an area that had once housed the fortress’s famed workshops, but had been reduced to mounds of debris and gravel. The ruins of the Ciworal, the great redoubt of Dagliash, soared dark above the glowing form of the Aspect-Emperor. As with the outermost ramparts, the cyclopean works lay hunched as though beneath sheets, summits and heights sucked round by the ages. Saubon kicked over one of the inhuman defenders—the Ursranc so oft mentioned in the Holy Sagas. The thing seemed identical to any other Sranc, save its stature and the uniform nature of its weapon and armour. He peered at the Twin Horns branded into the thing’s cheek—the mark of its wicked masters. He wondered what the scarred tissue would taste like, braised over a low fire …
He shook the thought away, kicked his Amoti Swordbearer, Mepiro, for crouching to scoop grease he might lick from his fingers. He waved the rest of his Household forward, and despite his earlier misapprehensions, found himself grinning an almost forgotten grin, savouring the anxious tingle of old. It had been too long since he had commanded from the thick of peril rather than the hazy limit. Death was a beast he had known well in his youth, a wolfish possibility that had taken innumerable forms, exploiting every moment of weakness, every hasty oversight, striking down soul after unfortunate soul, but somehow always coming to heel for him …
Yes … This was where he belonged. This was his Temple.