The ruins of Domathuz witnessed a different series of events. For reasons unknown, Temus Enhor? refused to lead his Imperial Saik against the Oblitus, electing instead to tarry above the breach and cleanse the flanking walls—the task assigned Obw? G?swuran and his Mysunsai. The first Sons of Kyraneas to broach Golgotterath were Prince Cinganjehoi and his heavy-mailed Eumarnans. Unlike the Conriyans to the north, they found themselves pinned beneath a hail of missiles from the First Riser of the Oblitus and suffered grievously. Chaos ensued, with those at the rear forcing more and more of their kinsmen to brave the killing grounds below the Oblitus. Temus Enhor? only realized his error after Cinganjehoi ordered his Men to fire on the aging Saik Grandmaster from below. An inadvertent consequence of this was that the Sons of Kyraneas, bent on seeking cover, would be the first to seize the orphaned wall between Domathuz and the Evil Gate, where the javelin-bearing Nansur Columnaries, in particular, were able to inflict horrible losses on the Ursranc defending the First Riser.
They would also be the first to reach the imposing rump of Gwergiruh, where the Middlenorthmen found themselves stalled, locked in pitched melee with their bestial foe. Anas?rimbor Serwa and the Swayali had passed over the monstrous Gatehouse, thinking they pursued the defenders into the Oblitus. But the Unholy Consult, knowing the unreliability of their slaves, had gone so far as to chain some thousand Ursranc throughout Gwergiruh’s honeycombed interior. King V?kyelt and his bellicose Thunyeri had clambered into what they had assumed was a vacant hulk, only to find themselves in the hacking thick of battle. As with the breach at Domathuz, the eagerness of those in the rear proved lethal. The roaring Thunyeri were pressed into the black cleavers of their foe—many died for simple want of room to swing axe or sword. The adventitious arrival of General Biaxi Tarpellas and his Columnaries from the south put a quick end to this tragic waste. The Ursranc, crazed for terror, all but threw themselves upon the Nansur spears. V?kyelt, Believer-King of Thunyerus, and Tarpellas, Patridomos of House Biaxi, would embrace in the fell shadow of ?bil itself, which, seized and strapped by evil sorceries, remained shut despite being overthrown.
The Men of the Circumfix thronged in their thousands across the First Riser and into the Canal, kicking over leprous shelters, stamping out flames. Tens of thousands more massed and clamoured about the breaches at Domathuz, Corrunc, and the overthrown Gatehouse of ?bil Maw. Only the Chorae archers who had initiated the stupendous assault lingered upon ?gorrior. The ramparts cleared, they scoured the skirts of the ruin, as well as the ground where the Holy Aspect-Emperor had parlayed with Mekeritrig, searching for exposed Chorae. Luthymae, the Collegians charged with managing and recovering the Chorae Hoard, paced the desolate plain across the entire range of Ursranc archery, pointing out those they sensed or sighted. Any bowman recovering a Holy Tear of God would immediately set to affixing it, using prepared shafts and kits. Soon a great number could be seen, one knee down in the dust, their hands working furiously.
They would be the only ones to escape unscathed.
The Exalt-Magus, Anas?rimbor Serwa, hung above the fray, her billows like an intricate lily suspended in sun and water. She did not hesitate.
“Ware the First Riser!” she cried on a sorcerous boom.
Fairly every soul in the Great Ordeal ceased what they had been doing.
Three Triunes of her Gnostic Sisters hung about her, billows agleam and undulating. Dozens of like formations extended like wings to either side. The Oblitus reared imposing before her, step by monumental step, a god-stair climbing to the base of something greater than gods. But for all the threat of its stacked ramparts, it was the First Riser some thirty cubits beneath her feet that commanded her attention. Something … No …
Nothing. She sensed nothingness … Moving nothingness.
And yet only ash and entrails remained of the skinnies who had stood upon the parapets …
“Assemble!” she cried. “Assemble against it!”
Her voice dropped like cudgels upon every soul visible. Those along the remaining sections of curtain wall had already set their shields against the rising Oblitus. Confusion ruled all others, however. Eager to join what had seemed easy slaughter, the Men of the Ordeal had fallen into disorder, pressing heedless into the Canal, the slum-choked interval between the cyclopean outer walls and the bottommost terrace of the Oblitus. They formed a vast, elongated bolus, a motley of nations, steaming for the smoke of stamped out fires, bristling with arms and bereft of purpose. She watched with cool wonder as they spontaneously formed into impromptu ranks, shield locked to shield, all facing the blank wall of the First Riser.
She scanned the air above the Host, searching for some sign of her father.
He would know.
At a thought, she dropped, alighted upon the first terrace, her billows drawn out behind her, across the burned and twisted carcasses. She closed her eyes, focussed on the tickles of oblivion floating like bubbles beneath her. Chorae, without any doubt, moving as if bound to things lumbering and alive …
She caught her breath.
“Bashrag!” she cried, her voice fractured into something inhuman by a conspiracy of masonry. “Concealed in the Ris—!”
Monstrous impacts. A series of them, erupting along the entire length of the Canal, here thudding, there cracking, shattering. Dust and grit exploded from mortices. Men cried out, raised arms to protect their eyes. Skirts of masonry exploded outward. Whole sections of wall sloughed away, disgorging horrors …
Dozens of orifices had been smashed across the sheer walls. Bashrag fell from them as vomit, leapt into the pallid ranks of Men, bull-bellowing, swinging pole-axes as thick as war-galley oars. They towered above their scrambling victims, obscene amalgams, motions hooked to their deformities, but no less deadly for it. Shields and arms exploded. Helms were stoved, rib-cages crushed. Armoured knights were thrown, sent like cartwheels above the massacre. The din was as instant as it was deafening. Serwa leapt back into the air, rejoined her witch sisters. The cunning of the attack was not lost upon her. Fairly all the Swayali gazed dumbstruck at the screaming turmoil below, the vision of Bashrag wading like monstrous adults into roiling mobs of children, reaping them as wheat, murdering them. And there was nothing to be done, no way to strike without killing their own. She saw the standard of Tarpellas fall. She saw the bearer and honour guard hammered to pulp against stone. Despite her D?nyain blood, Anas?rimbor Serwa hesitated …
Where was Father?
The mere thought of him spurred the recovery of her senses. She whirled about to face the Oblitus, which had entirely fallen from the Host’s attention. She need not see to know the activity that brewed upon them. The Consult had not so much lost their legendary walls, she realized, as they had given them …
“Retreat!” she cried on a crack of thunder. “To ?gorrior, Sisters!”
Like variations in the sound of a waterfall …
This was the most the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas could hear of the assault from within the chambered interior of the Umbilicus: a near featureless roar, a yawl woven across different registers of mass violence. A faraway cataract, booming with death instead of water.
Death and more death. Always death, these past twenty years. Even the lives she had delivered had simply added to the heap of murderers.
Only Mimara … the dazzling little girl who had so adored the smell of apples. Only she had been Esmenet’s one true gift to life.
So now it was her turn to die.