Beneath Ceaseless Skies #117 Page 3

  “Carcan Raes,” I replied, the ritualized response so ingrained I didn’t even have to think.

  Blood remembers.

  * * *

  I emerged from my pavilion just after dawn, clad in plate, with Ksara and Tariq flanking me. I carried my father’s ram-horned helm beneath my arm, and the camp fell silent as my retinue and I swept past. Everyone knew what the trappings of my father’s war meant, and why I’d avoided them.

  We were long past that kind of delicacy now.

  The guards standing watch at the entrance to Galloway’s pavilion blanched as they saw me bearing down on them. “My lord,” the one wearing a sergeant’s badge on his cap ventured, “I can’t—you can’t—”

  “Sergeant,” I said, coming to a halt. “Inform His Eminence that Prince Antonin Carcania desires to speak with him.”

  The two guardsmen took in the ranks of Downlanders who’d come to see what the fuss was about and exchanged glances. I could see the sergeant searching his conscience, trying to decide if it was worth his life to bar a not-yet-hostile Carcania from his master’s tent. It wasn’t, apparently, as he nodded and ducked inside.

  “His Eminence will see you,” he said after a moment, holding the tent flap open.

  “Anton,” Galloway began, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You have me at—” He cut himself off as I slammed my father’s helm onto the table in front of him.

  “You had a visitor here last night,” I told Galloway in a deceptively calm voice. “You needn’t deny it. Tariq intercepted him on his way out of camp. He communicated an offer to you from His Holiness, and you accepted it.” As I spoke, I stepped forward, forcing Galloway to crane his neck to look up at me. “I’m here to help you understand the gravity of your error. Tariq, the chalice.”

  “What are you doing?” Galloway asked, his voice trembling as Tariq placed a cup on the table beside my father’s helm.

  “Were you ever curious how my father managed to mobilize nearly a quarter of the Downlands for his war?” I asked Galloway as Ksara poured several drams of pear brandy into the cup.

  “He showed your people illusions of blood and slaughter,” Galloway quavered as I nicked my thumb with a knife and squeezed a drop of blood into the brandy, “and persuaded them that they were visions of the Arutanian Crusade.”

  “Wrong on both counts,” I told him, swirling the brandy to disperse my blood through it. “First, I was the one who showed people visions.” I offered Galloway the chalice. “And second, they weren’t illusions. Have a drink, and see for yourself.”

  Galloway hesitated, then accepted the chalice and took a tiny sip. I plucked it from his fingers as his eyes lost focus and handed it to Tariq, who emptied it outside the tent flap.

  The guard sergeant glanced at me nervously as Galloway began to keen and shake. “Never fear,” I said. “This is normal. So is weeping. And vomiting, after.” The carpet we stood on was so richly embroidered as to have been the life’s work of several weavers, and I added, “You might want to get a bucket.”

  After a hurried consultation, the junior guardsman ran for a clean chamberpot. He brought it just in time for Galloway to heave the contents of his stomach into it.

  “God almighty,” he whispered, leaning on the table as the pot was taken away. “No wonder you fought like demons.”

  “You understand, of course,” I said, “that you’re no longer in command. Your guard will take orders from Tariq.”

  “And you expect them to follow you?” Galloway asked.

  “Of course,” I said, glancing at the sergeant who’d let me in. “They’re practical men, and my strategy hasn’t changed. I’m going to crush Immaculate. Then I’m going to march straight into Orval and anoint you as pope.”

  “You’re mad,” Galloway said. “Immaculate has three times as many men. You can’t beat him, Anton.”

  I put my hand on my father’s helm and gave Galloway a measuring look. “Not conventionally,” I agreed. “But pitched battles were never my forte.”

  “How, then?”

  “Did you ever wonder how I meant to dispose of my father and his bodyguard before I captured you?”

  Galloway just looked baffled.

  “There are giants in the earth,” I reminded him.

  Galloway barked out a harsh little laugh. “That again? You can’t be serious. Giants don’t exist.”

  “Just like blood memory?” I asked, as Ksara’s shadow writhed and flexed its wings. “Just like the greatest of the Prodigals never chained themselves to the Inferno to resist God’s summons? Just like there are no seals binding Heaven to the world?”

  Galloway shuddered and made the sign of the sun-disc, doing his best not to look at Ksara or her shadow.

  “Don’t look so glum,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “You still get to be pope. If anyone else had tried to sell my people to Immaculate, I would have killed them already.”

  * * *

  Five days later, I stood on a hill overlooking the broad and grassy expanse of Field of Thorns. Immaculate had been all too eager to take the bait and return to the site of my father’s defeat. I could almost hear him exhorting his men about history repeating itself.

  “What are you thinking?” Ksara asked as I let out a low chuckle.

  “Oh, nothing. Just that Immaculate doesn’t know history as well as he thinks.”

  The Field of Thorns had been drenched in Downlander blood, and though memories of my father’s defeat tugged at every fiber of my being, I pushed them aside. My own memories of that day were sufficient; I didn’t need to witness the deaths of my father and his bodyguard up close.

  It had been hard enough to watch while it was happening, with my cheek and temple still purpling from an encounter with my father’s gauntlet.

  I looked up as Galloway came up beside me, flanked by a pair of my guards. His halberdiers were on the field below us, in the van of our forces; a place of honor, or so they’d been told.

  They were veterans, though. They knew better.

  Immaculate’s forces were still milling about, trying to assume formation. If I’d meant this to be a conventional battle, I would have struck while they were still disorganized, in order to maximize panic and confusion. The Kunst cavalry would have been perfect for the job—but Duke Albrecht continued to send his regrets, and this battle wouldn’t be won conventionally anyway.

  “Tariq should be harrying them,” Galloway said quietly. “Trying to rout the rabble. It wouldn’t work, not with the handful of horsemen we have, but it would be something.”

  “Tariq and his men have better things to do,” I said, turning away from the field. “As do we. Bring the prisoner.”

  Galloway’s lips pressed into a bloodless line as Immaculate’s courier was deposited at my feet with his hands bound behind his back. “Heretic,” the courier snarled before I cut him off, paralyzing his vocal chords with a hissed syllable.

  “Will you shrive the condemned, Your Eminence?” I asked as the man gasped and sputtered. “It would be a mercy.”

  Galloway nodded curtly and began the absolution rite. Once the courier had had his brow anointed with the three drops of oil, Galloway stepped back and I nodded to my guards, who seized the courier’s arms.

  Spies were usually killed by hanging. Sadly, we didn’t have time to observe the proper forms.

  I balled my hand into a fist and stopped his heart.

  “What was the point of that?” Galloway asked, unable to keep his voice from trembling as my guards laid the dead man on the ground. “A reminder that you can kill me at any moment?”

  “Hardly,” I said, drawing my dagger and pricking the pad of my thumb. As blood welled up, I knelt and drew a line of gore across the dead man’s forehead.

  The courier’s body spasmed and thrashed, then jerked upward into the air, like a puppet lifted on invisible strings. Blood seeped from his pores and tear ducts, forming a film on his skin and spreading into the air around him like a membrane. More bloo
d issued from his mouth, misting and thinning as it emerged, and as the corpse rose higher, it seemed to shrivel, as if the dead man’s flesh and bones were being milked for all they contained.

  “The Sanguine Banner,” Galloway bit out as we watched the dead man’s tortured ascent, “is an abomination. An obscenity.”

  “My father used live prisoners,” I reminded him. “Besides. It’s necessary.”

  With Galloway gone silent beside me, I urged the Banner westward, feeling the wind blowing through the veil of gore and nerves I’d made from Immaculate’s spy. As I did so, trumpets sounded on the far side of the field, and Immaculate’s commanders chivvied their undisciplined mob into motion.

  “So,” Galloway asked as Tariq’s men formed up and moved to meet Immaculate’s vanguard. “We stand at the brink of disaster, and you still haven’t explained your strategy.”

  “And you’re doubting I have one?” I asked, focusing on keeping the Sanguine Banner above my troops.

  “If I’m going to be a party to deviltry, I’d like some warning of what it will be.”

  “Some warning, is it?” I asked, watching a cavalry troop sweep out from the Orvali lines. “Very well. Do you recall how the first Carcania ended the Arutanian Crusade?”

  “There was an eclipse,” Galloway replied. “Guy of Demora was thrown from his horse, and his army was cut apart as they fled.”

  “There was an eclipse,” I agreed. “But not a natural one; every astronomer of standing agrees on that. And Guy’s army had good reason to rout, as you’ll soon see.”

  As Galloway sputtered, Tariq’s riders sprang from our lines to harry the Orvali cavalry. Arrows flew, and men and horses fell, some screaming, but it wasn’t enough to break their formation.

  “Here they come,” Ksara murmured as a mass of steel-clad knights and destriers thundered towards our vanguard, who’d braced their weapons to form a hedge of iron.

  The moment of impact was a hammer-blow even I could feel. As men and horses died, spitted on pikes or crushed underfoot, I felt a terrible pressure gathering on my skin as the Sanguine Banner absorbed each death and turned it to my purpose.

  The pressure spiked, then abated as a thunderclap split the air. A moment later, tongues of gold and crimson flame congealed in the sky, licking at the bellies of the clouds.

  “My God, Anton,” Galloway bleated. “What have you done?”

  “Broken one of the seals binding the world to God,” I said. “But don’t fret. There are six remaining.”

  The firmament trembled, then the second seal shattered with a soul-rending crack beneath the pressure of hundreds of deaths. As it broke, the fires clawing at the clouds gave way to a carmine horizon.

  “Well. Five now,” I told Galloway. “Still, my point stands.”

  “It pleases you to jest while we stare damnation in the face?”

  “It does, actually,” I replied as Tariq moved to pincer the Orvali knights. “I would rather jest than scream.”

  “Stop!” Galloway pleaded as threads of gore flooded the vault of heaven. “For the love of all that’s holy, Anton!”

  “It’s too late, Your Eminence,” I said gently. “It became too late when Duke Albrecht decided not to aid us. This is our only path to victory.”

  As I spoke, Tariq took the Orvali vanguard from both sides, and the third seal trembled and broke. Streams of shadow bled from the clouds overhead, deflating them and making them writhe like serpents as the sun’s light grew bloody.

  “Would you give over the world to the Adversary?” Galloway asked, pleading.

  “Patience, Your Eminence.” I ventured a glance in Ksara’s direction and wished I hadn’t; her eyes blazed like molten iron, and half a dozen inky wings spread from her back, slicing the air as they stirred. “Everything proceeds as it must.”

  Despite the awful light, the battle went on, with Tariq pulling his riders back to cover his flank. Immaculate’s troops were pressing forward, and as my forces withdrew, I could feel the next seal weaken. I flinched as a rain of arrows tore into the Orvali lines and the next seal split asunder, but the sound of its breaking was dim and muted.

  I drew a breath as the sounds of battle dimmed, and the clouds and every banner and pennon on the field fell still. The air was heavy and close, even though Ksara’s wings were in constant motion. Distantly, as if the sound was crossing an unimaginable gulf, I heard the sound of chains creaking.

  “God preserve us,” Galloway said, his voice sounding thin and weak in the leaden air. After a heartbeat, he dropped to his knees and began to pray.

  The Orvali reserves wavered and dissolved as men panicked, fighting each other to be the first to leave the field. But my forces were still outnumbered, and as pressure built on my skin and more and more soldiers breathed their last, I knew we were losing.

  “Sound the retreat,” I told Ksara, who gestured at the heralds, and a moment later, three thin and mournful blasts rang out, just as the fifth seal shuddered and dissolved into splinters.

  A horrid sigh rose from the battlefield as a legion of specters seemed to lift themselves from the ground. I caught a glimpse of a ram-helmed figure amidst the milling ghosts, and as I did, my memories of the Field of Thorns reached up and swallowed me whole.

  I lay on the ground in my father’s tent, clutching my bleeding cheek. Father stood over me, the torchlight making the proud flesh running along his jaw look slick and glossy.

  “It is not your place to question,” he declaimed, stabbing the air with an armored finger. ”Your place is to obey.”

  To obey. Bile seared my nose and throat, and blood and fury tinted my vision. Was this the man I’d raised an army for? The man I’d spent years trying to please, who greeted setbacks with frigid silence and every triumph with a surly grunt?

  “You will regret that,” I whispered, but Father had already turned his back to me. What could I do? He was Carcania, master of the Downlands, while I was his disappointment of a son, more a scholar than a warrior.

  “Get out,” my father said—and I was on a hill overlooking the Field of Thorns, watching the Orvali ranks crumble before our assault. Father led the vanguard, and every now and again I could make out his ram-horned helm amidst the melee.

  Just as the Orvali troops seemed ready to break, Galloway’s men emerged from the woods to the east, riding horses they must have led through the trees. Ksara and I exchanged glances, but said nothing, while Tariq was so intent on the battle that he didn’t notice Galloway until he’d encircled my father.

  “Chains of the Prodigals,” Tariq cursed as he finally saw what was unfolding beneath us. ”Where did they come from?”

  “They must have come through the wood,” I said, trying to sound surprised. ”Clever.”

  “Your orders, my prince?” Ksara asked.

  “Retreat,” I replied as my father and his men died. ”We would gain nothing by throwing away our lives.”

  I composed my features into a mask of regret as I turned from the field. Only Ksara knew I’d orchestrated the day’s events; that I’d captured Galloway and offered him my father’s head on a platter.

  “Carcan Raes, you heartless bastard,” I whispered as my troops wheeled and marched away. Remembering the pages of my grandfather’s grimoire being torn out and fed to the fire.

  I fell back into the present on my hands and knees, with Ksara kneeling at my side. “My love,” she said, her voice spawning a chorus of unnatural echoes. “Are you well?”

  “Never better,” I breathed, wiping a string of saliva from my lips. The ram-helmed figure was facing me now, and though it was too far away to tell, I thought my father recognized me.

  I considered saying something as Ksara helped me to my feet, but decided against it. Instead, emptying myself of doubt, I pulled the ghosts of the Field of Thorns into the Sanguine Banner by their thousands, tearing them wailing from the earth.

  I could feel a vast, inchoate pressure gathering above me, as if the Divine had finally stirr
ed himself to action. Before the sun could burn away the veil of shadows and blood that had been thrown across it, I gathered every last shade I could reach and clutched them close, furling the Sanguine Banner around them like a fist.

  “Let the sun be effaced,” I whispered, and though my words seemed to die as they passed my lips, I felt my power swell with each syllable. As I finished, I hurled the Sanguine Banner and its payload of ghosts at the sky like a spear.

  The veil of blood and shadows drawn across the heavens converged on the sun’s disc, clotting and covering it with darkness. Within instants, only a thin corona of light leaked past the scab I had carved into the sky. Past the Eclipse.

  “God is blind,” Ksara sighed, her voice accompanied by the distant clash of chains and thousands of wings beating the air. When she met my gaze, her eyes were seething pits of flame.

  “How long before the last seal breaks?” I asked, turning to the battlefield, where Tariq’s forces had reached the foot of our hill.

  My answer was an awful wrenching sound and the scream of metal being twisted beyond recognition.

  “Not long, beloved,” Ksara said. She paused, then said, “Enlighten me. How do you mean to best Immaculate before the Adversary severs the world from God’s light?”

  “The way I’ve always said I would,” I told her, sparing a glance for Galloway, who’d abandoned prayer to curl into a fetal ball. “There are giants in the earth. Remember?”

  And as the sound of chains being strained to their utmost and thousands of wings hammering the air grew louder, I said in a language older than the Inferno, “Awaken, Antaeus.”

  * * *

  Across the continent, beneath the blind eye of the sun, the earth roiled.

  A bell tower collapsed in Merane. A rockslide in Turos flattened a village. A tidal wave drowned fishing boats and smashed coastal towns to splinters, while the dome of the Great Cathedral in Orval collapsed, crushing hundreds, and the city’s wall was breached in a dozen places. Not far away, the town of Evult vanished from the world in the blink of a titan’s eye.

  And at the foot of the hill on which I stood, the earth parted like a pair of eyelids, and the flower of the continent’s manhood was consumed.