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containing the outstretched figure of an upside-down
man—Anasûrimbor Kellhus himself, the rumours said. The sign tattooed into the
flesh of the missionaries Sorweel's father had ordered burned.
     
    There was a breathlessness to
their approach, which Sorweel attributed to the fact that it was at last beginning ,
that all the worrying and bickering and preparing and skirmishing of the
previous months was finally coming to a head. In the towers' wake, the
immaculate ranks of the Great Ordeal resolved into gleaming solidity, row after
marching row of them, reaching out across field and pasture, their far flanks
lost in the rainy haze.
     
    Once again the horns unnerved
the sky.
     
    Sorweel stood numb, one of ten
thousand faces, concentrated with rancour, dread, disbelief, even ardour,
watching as ten times that number—more!—marched through the dreary downpour,
bearing the exotic arms of distant peoples, following the devices of a dozen
different nations. Strangers come from sweaty shores, from lands unheard of,
who knew not their language, cared nothing for their ways or their riches...
     
    The Southron Kings, come to save
the world.
     
    How many times had Sorweel
dreamed of them? How many times had he imagined them reclining half-nude in
their grand marble galleries, listening bored to polyglot petitioners? Or
riding divans through spice-dusted streets, heavy-lidded eyes scanning the
mercantile bustle, searching for girls to add to their dark-skinned harems? How
many times, his heart balled in child anger, had he told his father he was
running away to the Three Seas?
     
    To the land where Men yet warred
against Men.
     
    He had learned quickly to
conceal his fascination, however. Among the officials of his father's court,
the South was the object of contempt and derision—typically. It was a fallen
place, where vigour had succumbed to complexity, to the turmoil of a thousand
thousand vyings. It was a place where subtlety had become a disease and where
luxury had washed away the bourne between what was womanish and what was manly.
     
    But they were wrong—so
heartbreakingly wrong. If the defeats of the previous weeks had not taught them
such, then surely they understood now.
     
    The South had come to teach them.
     
    Sorweel cast about looking for
his father. But like a miracle, King Harweel was already beside him, standing
tall in his long skirts of mail. He gripped his son's shoulder, leaned
reassuringly. When he grinned, jewels of water fell from his moustaches.
     
    The tapping drone of rain. The
peal of outland horns.
     
    "Fear not," he said.
"Neither he nor his Schoolmen will dare our Chorae. We will fight as Men
fight." He looked to his High Boonsmen, who had all turned to watch their
King give heart to his son.
     
    "Do you hear me?" he
cried out to them. "For two thousand years, our walls have stood unbroken.
For two thousand years, the line of our fathers has reached unbroken! We are
their culmination. We are the Men of Sakarpus, the Lonely City. We are survivors
of the Worldfall, Keepers of the Chorae Hoard, a solitary light against the
pitch of Sranc and endl—!"
     
    The sound of swooping wings
interrupted him. Eyes darted heavenward. Several men even cried out. Sorweel
instinctively raised a hand to his mail-armoured stomach, pressed the
sorcery-killing Chorae about his waist so that it pinched cold into his navel.
     
    It was a stork, as white and as
long as a tusk, flying when it should have sheltered from the rain. Men shrank
in horror from the battlement it landed upon, crowded back into one another. It
turned the knife of its head toward them, its long bill pressed low to its
neck.
     
    The King's hand fell from his
son's shoulder.
     
    The stork regarded them with
porcelain patience. Its black eyes were sentient and unfathomable.
     
    Raindrops tinkled across iron,
pattered against leather.
     
    "What does it want?"
some voice cried.
     
    King Harweel pushed himself to
the fore of his men.