The Judging Eye Read Online Free PDF Page B

his father doing?
     
    "Come..." the
Exalt-General said, his voice one of genuine entreaty. "Harweel, I beg of
you, take my hand. Men can no longer afford to shed the blood of Men."
     
    Sorweel stood, stared aghast at
his father's blank visage. King Harweel was not an old man, but his face seemed
slack and rutted about his hanging blond moustaches, his neck bent by the
weight of his gold-andiron crown. Sorweel could feel the impulse, errant and
unbidden, the overwhelming urge to cover for his father's shameful indecision,
to lash out, to... to...
     
    But Harweel had recovered both
his wits and his voice.
     
    "Then decamp," he said
in dead tones. "March to your death in Golgotterath or return to your
hot-blooded wives. Sakarpus will not yield."
     
    As though deferring to some
unknown rule of discourse, Proyas lowered his face. He glanced at the
bewildered Prince before returning his gaze to the King of Sakarpus.
"There is the surrender that leads to slavery," he said. "And
there is the surrender that sets one free. Soon, very soon, your people shall
know that difference."
     
    "So says the slave!"
Harweel cried.
     
    The Emissary did not require the
translator's sputtering interpretation—the tone transcended languages.
Something in his look dismayed Sorweel even more than the forced bluster of his
father's response. I am weary of blood, his eyes seemed to say. Too
long have I haggled with the doomed.
     
    He stood, nodding to his
entourage to indicate that more than enough breath had been spent.
     
    ***
     
    Sorweel had expected his father
to draw him aside afterwards, to explain not only the situation, but the
peculiarities of his demeanor. Though he knew well enough what had happened—the
King and the Exalt-General had exchanged one final round of fatuous words to
sanctify the inevitable conclusion—his sense of shame forced a kind of
confusion upon him. Not only had his father been frightened, he had been openly so—and before the most dire enemy his people had ever faced. There had to
be some kind of explanation. Harweel II wasn't simply King, he was also his father ,
the wisest, bravest man Sorweel had ever known. There was a reason his Boonsmen
looked upon him with such reverence, why the Horselords were so loath to invite
his displeasure. How could he of all Men be afraid? His father... His
father! Was there something he wasn't telling him?
     
    But no answer was forthcoming.
Soldered to the bench, Sorweel could only stare at him, his dismay scarcely
concealed, as Harweel barked orders to be relayed to his various officers—his
tone brusque in the way of men trying to speak their way past tears. Not long
afterwards, just as dawn broke behind impenetrable woollen clouds, Sorweel
found himself tramping through mud and across cobble, hustled forward by his
father's hard-eyed companions, his High Boonsmen. The narrow streets were
swollen with supplies gathered from the surrounding country as well as refugees
from the Saglands and elsewhere. He saw men butchering cattle, scraping viscera
with honed shoulder blades. He saw mothers walking dumbfounded, their arms too
short to herd their rag-bundled children. Feeling useless and depressed,
Sorweel wondered about his own Boonsmen, though they would not be called such
until his first Elking next spring. He had pleaded with his father the previous
week that they be allowed to fight together, but to no avail.
     
    The watches lurched one into the
next. The rain, which had fallen lightly and sporadically enough to be taken
for water blown from the trees, began in earnest, swallowing the distances in
sheets of relentless grey. It slipped through his mail, soaking him first to
the leathers, then to the felt. He began shivering uncontrollably—until his
rage at the thought of others seeing him shake burned him to the quick. Though
his iron helm kept his scalp dry, his face became more and more numb. His
fingers seemed to ache and sting in equal measure. Just when he thought