Darksoul. Anna StephensЧитать онлайн книгу.

       THE BLESSED ONE

       Fourth moon, morning, day twenty-two of the siege

       Mireces encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands

      There was a crackle to the air, and the fine hairs on the nape of Lanta’s neck and along her forearms stood erect. The gods were so close now, ever-present, like the scent of a lover on skin. She didn’t need to be in a sacred space to hear Them now; Their voices were everywhere and Their commands were simple: take the city, slaughter the inhabitants, burn the temples. Kill or convert, but leave no one alive who held the Dancer and the Fox God in their hearts.

      Commands that filled Lanta with joy and holy fire. There would be thousands for sacrifice once the city fell, thousands whose blood would wet earth dedicated to the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood.

      ‘Your will, Red Ones. All this to your glory, all this in your names. Rilporin will fall and your children will rise in its place. Gilgoras will be yours.’ Lanta knelt in the grass of a spring morning, surrounded by the stink of thousands of warriors waiting their turn to fight and die.

      No cave-temple rock walls lit with fire watched her prayers, no cold stone dug into her knees, witness to her ritual pain. Lanta knelt in the light of the world and the gods were there with her, in a country from which They’d been forced a millennium before. A shiver ran across her skin. They were under the same sun as her, no longer separated by an impenetrable veil but merely its tattered remnants. Gilgoras trembled beneath Their presence and Their vengeance would be terrible and beautiful in its glory.

      She waited, but the Dark Lady did not summon her. Lanta’s disappointment was keen but she could understand the gods’ delight in being back in Gilgoras, free to roam Rilpor, Listre and Krike and visit those pockets of true believers that Lanta was convinced must still exist. The gods would speak when They needed to. They came when They chose, not when Lanta wished it. A lesson hard learned many years before. Until then, the children of the Dark Path knew what they had to do.

      The Blessed One finished praying and eased herself to her feet, the sun warm on her scalp and the breeze gentle across her cheek. The gods may not have spoken, but still They hovered close, Their bloody wings outstretched across the army, shrouding it in divine right. Victory was promised, and Lanta would pay any price to ensure it was so. Pay it gladly, gleefully, secure in her righteousness.

      She gazed at the city, and then around the vast expanse of the Wheat Lands. They called this place the bread basket of Rilpor, and this year those crops that hadn’t been trampled into the mud would feed Mireces bellies. More wheat than she’d ever seen. More crops, more grass, more flat farming land than Lanta had believed existed stretched around them and the city nestled in the embrace of Rilpor’s mighty rivers. All theirs soon enough.

      ‘As the gods will.’ Lanta sighed and looked back at the city again, grey walls looming over the plain like a storm front, scarred and battered and still imperious, intact and mocking their efforts. She brushed grass and flakes of dirt from her skirt. Of all she had expected of the holy war, the possibility that the siege would be boring hadn’t occurred to her. But the days had stretched, one into another, with no significant gains and more than a few losses.

      Lanta’s thoughts strayed to Eagle Height and the women and children waiting in the snow and rock of the mountains. The snowmelt would be flooding down the narrow channels carved into the rock now, taking the unwary, driving carcasses, branches and stones before it, leaving the land behind cleansed. The slaves would be planting their own poor crops now, carrots and turnips in the hard ground, coaxing them to life with goat manure and prayers. Pask would sacrifice a man for their victory, and a woman that the crops would not fail, that there would be no late storms.

      Eagle Height – home. She sighed, staring around the camp filled with the chatter of Mireces. It would be good to summon the women, children and priests after they had secured victory, to send them into the towns and villages like a sacred flood, driving all before them who would not live beneath their rule. Rilpor would become Mireces, and Rilporians would become their slaves. Once the city fell and the Flower-Whore and Her bastard Trickster son were dead, there was nothing they could not do.

      Once the city fell. Lanta’s smile was grim. So much work still to do, even once all Rilpor was theirs.

      ‘What did you learn?’

      The words startled her and Lanta returned to her surroundings. She faced Gilda and sneered. ‘Many things,’ she said, ‘things you would not understand, lost in your petty delusion that life is anything other than brutal and full of pain. You fail to see how, in accepting those things to honour our gods, that we become stronger.’

      Gilda folded her hands over her stomach and gazed into the sky for a while. ‘You’re right,’ she said eventually, her eyes twinkling as they met Lanta’s, ‘there’s little I understand about your religion, about why you would choose a life of fear and an eternity of pain over a world of life and light and beauty and an afterlife of joy and oneness. Because life is hard, aye, but it isn’t brutal. Brutal’s what we do to each other. Hard is what the seasons do to us. But I meant, did you learn anything about the siege? Been going a while now, hasn’t it?’

      ‘I would not tell you if I did,’ Lanta snapped. ‘That is between the king, Rivil, myself and the gods.’

      Gilda’s mouth quirked. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly, ‘you said “if I did”. So you didn’t, then. Learn anything. Gods not chatty today?’

      Lanta’s fists clenched. ‘Don’t push me, old woman,’ she snapped, gathering up the chain attached to Gilda’s slave collar and jerking her forward. ‘There’s little reason for me to keep you around any more. Your sacrifice may speed along the siege and bring our victory that much sooner.’

      Gilda grabbed her chain and tugged in turn, pulling Lanta a step closer to her. Lanta’s free hand dropped to her knife. ‘Then why don’t you?’ Gilda hissed. ‘Instead of the endless threats? Why don’t you just do it? I tire of your company, and frankly this camp stinks of shit. Do you people have no idea how to dig a latrine pit?’

      Lanta pulled her knife. ‘Do you want those to be your last words?’ she snarled, pressing the knife to Gilda’s stomach.

      Gilda laughed, loud and genuine. ‘Latrine pit,’ she repeated and broke into fresh giggles. ‘Why not? It’ll be something to tell my family when I see them in the Light.’

      Lanta dug the tip of the knife in hard and Gilda’s amusement vanished like tears in a lake. ‘When you’re sacrificed, old woman, it won’t be the Light you go to, oh no. Sacrifice sends you somewhere very different. Sends you to the Afterworld, to the Red Gods and all Their faithful children. And when they learn what you are there, they’ll spend eternity tearing you to pieces. And you’ll feel it. You’ll feel everything. You’ll die a thousand times a day, every day, forever.’

      There