They could see the Witches recede over the screeching tracts, like golden wildflowers for their billows. They could see Him sparking into existence upon the peaks, or at points above the sun-scaled coast. They could hear His dread exhortations …
Dagliash was engulfed in scribbling activity. Everywhere he looked he spied Sranc scaling the rotted mortices as quick and limber as adolescent boys. He watched the inhuman masses fan loping across the Ribbaral, saw Gwanw?’s salt effigy vanish into a fist of rutting fingers. He even glimpsed Bashrag lurching from the gutted pit where Ciworal had stood—the Well of Viri. The surge all but swallowed the unearthly golden glint of the receptacle.
The very ground was rotted, infested …
Please … How could I not believe you?
Saubon turned to see Bogyar leaning perilously out on the ledge, screaming inaudible outrage, hammering his chest—his face nearly as crimson as his beard. Spittle winked in the sunlight.
You knew my heart better than I.
Like an apple core tossed upon an ant nest, Dagliash crawled. Sranc filing, mobbing, thronging, closing upon Kurwachal from all squares of the compass. Black arrows already pelted them. Several of his men wrested blocks from the battlements to send clacking down upon those climbing the tower’s thighs …
The Holca made a show of rubbing a large stone against his mail-clad rump, then hurling it viciously at the skinnies flying atop the very wall Saubon had used to reach Kurwachal. Three were felled—and instantly, the whole company cheered as if at number-sticks. And the Exalt-General saw, with a profundity that fairly throttled him. Death. He understood. Death! He fathomed the enormity of the gift he had been given.
“Praise Him!” he cried laughing to Men who could not hear him—only believe. “Hail our Holy Aspect-Emperor!”
Death comes. Death always comes. But it is meted in so many ways …
Few as glorious as this.
And his Company, the Company of the Raft, saw with him. The impossible light of their Lord-and-Prophet leapt from look to look, heart to heart. They laughed and cheered, even though all the World bristled and screamed—even as the first of their number slumped to his knees, an arrow in his eye …
“Praise! Praise to Him!”
The Sranc came scratching up, throwing themselves over the parapets.
“Hail Anas?rimbor Kellhus!”
Death came swirling down.
Saubon hacked against the onslaught, shattered wagging cleavers, cracked black helms. For a brief time, it seemed easy, hewing and chopping the snarling faces as they crested the battlements. They seemed invulnerable upon their bastion, casting Sranc like screaming cats from the heights. The rain of black arrows killed as many if not more the obscenities. Thirty-eight souls remained to the Company. They arrayed themselves about the Altar’s circuit according to necessity, a line that was drawn thinner as increasing numbers of Sranc shinnied various quarters of the tower. Kurwachal was soon engulfed in crawling skirts of Sranc, and it became little more than an octagonal shaft jutting from the seething assemblage. The creatures surmounted the parapets from all directions. The defenders were forced to close their line into a besieged circle, each man separated by paces from his gasping brother. Saubon continued crying out the name of his Lord-and-Prophet, but whether to rally or beseech he did not know. None could hear him, not in the rotted throat of the Horde. The name had become something empty, a reflex borne of outrage and horror and all the other darknesses that came before. There was his Company, little more than shadows that stood battling shadows that crawled or leapt. The World had imploded otherwise, become a bladder sucked tight about the points of life and murder. The tip of his nimil broadsword plunged and plummeted, slicing fish-belly skin, puncturing cheeks, shattering teeth. Arrows tinked from his helm, clattered from his ancient Cun?roi hauberk. He kicked the decayed masonry before him, sent a section tipping out, locked gazes with one of the clinging obscenities. Eyes like black marbles in sockets of oil, an expression like silk crushed in a fist, a sneering, spitting frenzy, leaning out and out, into the scabrous distances, then dropping on a sheer, slipping, vanishing … Fate begrudged him any respite or momentary exultation. More obscenities clambered over the lip—like human-faced lice they teemed. His blade swooped and struck, notching pitted iron, loosing strings and sheets of violet from maiden-pale skin. Kellhus! he bellowed. Kellhus! Kellhus! Kellhus! But his breath became more and more difficult, something he had to yank burning from the bottom of his lungs. Clutching agony seized his left arm. He faltered. Mepiro grovelled on his belly nearby, a javelin staking his back. Something resounded through his bones—a blow to the head. The ground swung vertical, slapped his cheek for his presumption …
Kellhus!