They had not so much marched from the banks of the River Sursa as stretched themselves across Agongorea, for not a moment passed without another ghastly soul slumping to the ground, sometimes inert, sometimes curling upon final breaths. Lord Sibaw?l te Nurwul lurched upon their forward edge, though his stride never slowed and his gaze never sagged from the line of the horizon, the fell image of the Horns. What had happened at Wreoleth still smouldered within him somehow, so that he seemed to char as much as decompose, cook about some infernal, interior fire. In their thousands they followed in his footsteps, trusting the constancy of his image, warring with the misery of their undoing, a wet and wheezing avalanche of leprous humanity. A Leper’s Ordeal.
Not a soul knew what they did, let alone why they did it.
Indeed, this was their revelation.
Not a penitent among them questioned the apparition, or even cared to regard it when it appeared on the northern horizon. Those who thought were those who died. Sibaw?l Vaka did not so much as glance across a sodden shoulder. He, like all those who followed him, had found a line that ran diagonal to the lines pursued by the living. So he laboured as before toward the golden Horns, not so much oblivious to the twining Horde descending upon them as utterly indifferent.
The Great Ordeal resolved as a vast, marauding mass on the north, dark and seething, winking as though powdered with diamonds. No shouts, no howls carried on the wind, only the susurrus of thousands trotting across the tomb floor that was Agongorea. The Scalded pilgrims shambled onward heedless, drawn as filings toward the golden terror. The interval dwindled, and those at the fore of the unpoisoned masses broke into a sprint, their countless faces pained amalgams of joy and exertion. Suddenly Men were running, fields of them whooping for exultation, cackling for the festival madness, for the promise of vicious transgression.
Few among the Scalded so much as turned to regard their charging kin and countrymen.
And so did the pure fall upon the defiled. The surging boundaries of the Great Ordeal tumbled through the spare fringe of the leprous train. Wails and shrieks joined the triumph that rifled the starving sky, a chorus that grew in volume and density as the Holy Host of Hosts consumed more and more of the wretched column. The last remaining horsemen had hooked about the westward barrens to corral those Lepers attempting to flee, but the rotted mobs simply stood insensate as the bestial multitudes engulfed them. The air rang human and shrill.
Some few of the rotted drew weapons on the hale, and if they were fortunate, they managed to die for being dangerous.
Otherwise, the night would be unending …
When darkness finally wedded abomination on the Field Appalling.
If Nersei Proyas, Believer-King of Conriya, Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal, rode at the fore, he did not lead. It was just him perched upon a gallop, the parallax grinding the dead earth into immobility with distance. Agongorea clutched the whole of what could be seen, save the Horns pricking the horizon. The Great Ordeal loomed unseen behind him, a dread rumble that fell like hair about his neck and shoulders.
The first figures shocked him, so abhorrent was their appearance, so indifferent was their gait, slouching to Golgotterath, falling forward, catching themselves step by wretched step.
The Scalded.
Hairless wraiths, stripped, each flayed to the degree they were diseased, plagued by flies, scribbling shadows. Proyas hurtled as something armoured and merciless among them, riding for the head of the wretched mob. He laughed for piteous looks that accompanied his passage.
He found Sibaw?l te Nurwul standing alone upon a knoll that reared like a capping wave, scarcely recognizable save for his antique cuirass and fur-rimmed boots. The man faced west, his gaze fixed on the twin golden nails that pinned the horizon.
Proyas leapt from his horse, savoured the sudden immovability of the earth beneath his feet. His groin ached, buzzed in a manner that set his whole being afire. The rotting Chieftain-Prince turned to him, a vision so horrific he polluted all breath for simply breathing. He was hairless, save for errant blond wires. Ulcers did not so much adorn as clothe him, a raiment of septic flesh, here mottled and woolen, there slicked with effluent, shining like greased silk. His ears were missing, leaving only muddy holes. But for some reason, his eyes and the skin about them had been spared, so that he seemed to wear himself as a mask, the edges red with inflammation, curled like burnt papyrus, running high upon his cheeks across the bridge of his nose, and pinned to blond brows.
Words should have been exchanged.
Proyas strode into him fists balled, hammered the putrid horror to his knees. The arch of him thrashed for violent bliss. He clasped the Chieftain-Prince’s pestilent cheeks, licked the ulcerations across his forehead.
The taste of soil and salt and bitter. The sum of his sweetness lay in his infection.
Sibaw?l Vaka’s gaze drifted back toward the Horns of Golgotterath.
Proyas stared at his fingertips, his soul roiling in horror and glee. His hands were shaking. His heart bobbled about his breast. His breath was nowhere to be found …
He had not even begun his feast!
He joined in the man’s westward vigil, peering at what had been their common destination ere this day had come, the fabled Horns, points of burnished gold, scorching the surrounding barrens for their brilliance. For so long they had seemed illusory, a trick on the horizon, golden and malicious. There was no denying their mountainous reality now.
And it seemed that together they understood, the King and the Leper, for what sparks of meaning that were struck from the stone of grief and the iron of ardour were the most profound of all. The Horns were watching. He punched the polluted Chieftain-Prince once again, forced his eyes east, so that he might see the Great Ordeal devour his fell parade of corpses. Together, they watched floods of limber shadows streaming about and between the ailing forms. Together, they heard the screaming grow into a tidal din.
As brothers, they watched brother revelling in the blood of brother.
“We … walk … together …” the Scalded Lord of the Ordeal rasped. “The … Shortest … Path.”
Proyas stared at him, eyes weeping … mouth watering.
“We … pace … the beam … of Hell … togeth—”
The Exalt-General struck the Chieftain-Prince of Cepalor to ground once again, convulsed about the bliss that exploded from his loins.
He sucked drool …
Pulled his knife.
What Hell hath cooked, he would eat.
Honour … Honour was …?
And grace … What was grace?
The mortification of what obstructed, what flinched, what bled and heaved and murdered, what quivered and throbbed, what dripped and cut and abraded.
What was grace if not the suffocation of what screamed?
And honour … What was it, if not the sacrifice that best served the gluttony of your masters?
Perhaps it is you I should fear then …
The Greater Proyas dwelt in the bloom of blind abandon … and he saw that he was free … that nothing in Creation could be more beautiful than ravaging the soul with the body.
“So am I made whole,” he whispered to the twitching form. He huffed and grunted for the gush of fluids about his delirious centre.
“So I … overcome … my division.”
Even our weeping is broken.
Even our misery.
We lay siege to what is nearest.
Sap our own walls.
Eat our own hopes.
We chew our dignity to gristle.
And chew.
Until we become creatures that move, merely.
The counterfeit sons of rumoured fathers.
Souls needled into skin, across nakedness.
Murals where there should be Men.