Because he knew the truth?
Proyas and Kay?tas had led their troupe of officers and messengers high on the southward slopes, where they could see the glittering bulk of the Ordeal carpet the knuckled tracts below, Men marching shoulder to shoulder, bound one to the other like knots on a rope by their training. “The Line!” the Imperial Drillmasters hollered endlessly. “The Square!” These were the only sacred things in battle, the only things worth absolute sacrifice. Hold the Line, Preserve the Square, and all the sundry things they prized beyond battle would be saved: wife or king, son or prophet.
Die for the Line, and you shall be Saved, for Gilga?l is as generous as He is ruthless.
Abandon it at damnation’s peril.
In each of their contests with the Horde, the Men of the Ordeal had kept faith with that training, even at Irs?lor, where, according to Saccarees, the foe had been forced to engulf their obstinate formations, digest them like morsels of bellicose meat. In all the planning sessions in all the years prior to this expedition, resolve had been the paramount question, the concern that dwarfed all others save supply. They had read and reread The Holy Sagas, poured through what fragments of ancient chronicle that survived, even studied the Mandate accounts of Seswatha’s Dreams, trying to understand how it was nation after Far Antique nation had succumbed to Mog-Pharau.
Resolve. Not cunning. Not arcane might. Apart from the whorish caprice of happenstance, luck, only resolve—discipline—had sorted those who had survived from those who had perished.
The very thing that had vanished before Proyas’s horrified eyes.
It had been like watching a painting made of wax cast into some fire: a great canvas of formations, phalanxes perfect save for the terrain beneath, sagging, weeping, then sloughing into oily disarray. Time and again he had gestured—for no human shout could be heard—for the horns to be sounded, for the advance to be halted. He was gesticulating like a madman ere Kay?tas had clasped his left forearm. And it stung, the degree to which he saw Kellhus in the Prince-Imperial’s admonishing look … The reminder that nothing blinds a man to the future more than outrage at what is past. The realization that he had become one of those requiring such reminders.
Now they found themselves picking their way across one of Mantigol’s many shoulders, their haste impeded by the mangled sheets of Sranc dead. Brine pinched the air, though the Sea remained a distant, if steep, tumble. The waist of the great column shivered and pulsed below them, advancing devoid of rank or formation, a vast bolus of peoples. The battleground extended before them, ramps hoofed with ravines, curving toward the horizon. Dead Sranc spackled all but the steepest inclines. Sorcerous lights dazzled the heights below the summits, glimpses of miniature figures hanging precarious above fields of light and thrashing shadows. Ahead of them, on the cracked stoop of Oloreg, the battle raged as if upon a tipped table, great surging masses, steaming with dust. Men, amorphous with lawless numbers, singular with bloodlust.
Greater beasts come to put an end to their lessers.
The pang that Proyas had confused for his heart climbed into his throat.
Kay?tas seized his shoulder, threw a long finger out toward the vista’s hazy extremes. The Exalt-General saw it, Dagliash, squatting like a dead spider upon Antareg’s headless shoulders. He saw the glitter of faraway sorcery, and a long plume of ash or dust blown like opiate smoke from the lips of the earth.
Kellhus, he realized.
He blinked away the fingers about his throat, the anguished bolt of his unmanning …
He was no stranger to this moment, Proyas, for he had encountered it on almost every field of battle. The moment which winds every general for racing to prevent it …
Helplessness. Events outrun every voice ere the end.
Debris showered the ancient fortress. The Company of the Raft stood agog outside the Ciworal, the great citadel of Dagliash, their necks craned to watch their Saviour. Kellhus hung upon emptiness high above, singing thoughts no mortal could fathom, his brow, cheeks and beard bleached for meaning, his arms out as if to catch a lover’s leap. Together they watched the bastion, ancient and black, crumble into a vortex of meticulous lights. They watched the debris ride arcs across the sky, fall like preposterous rain wherever their omnipotent Lord-and-Prophet so willed.