First battle of the Holy War. Bakker has his own unique (and awesome) way of writing battle scenes - reminiscent of Tolkien in some respects.
A warring we have come
A reaving we shall work
And when the day is done,
In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!
It was a song as old as the Ancient North, a song from The Sagas. And as the Inrithi gave it voice once again, they felt the glory of their past flood through them, brace them. A thousand voices and one song. A thousand years and one song! Never had they felt so rooted, so certain. The words struck many with the force of revelation. Tears streamed down sunburned cheeks. Passions ignited, swept through the ranks, until men roared inarticulately and brandished their swords against the sky. They were thousands and they were one.
In our eyes the Gods shall lurk!
Should something be read into this? Many become one - have one voice - through time.
The Inrithi charge, and seem to break the Fanim. They are deceived by Fanim tactics and are in danger of being broken themselves until rallied by Saubon. The Fanim throw themselves at the Inrithi line.
Then, as though stepping out of the blinding sun, the Cishaurim revealed themselves
Saubon sees his own face on a dead man - and holds his own hand. Kussalt arrives, tells Saubon he (Saubon) has stemmed the breach in the lines.
Saubon blinked at the blood trickling into his left eye. An inexplicable cruelty overcame him. "You're old and slow... Give me your horse!"
Kussalt's look soured. Old lips tightened.
"This is no place to be thin-skinned, you old fool. Now give me your fucking horse!
Kussalt jerked, as though something had popped within him, then slumped forward, staggering Saubon with his weight.
"I would have you know..." the old man wheezed, "how much I hated you..."
Nobody seems to want Saubon.
He decides that it is time to punish the Shrial Knights, and orders them to charge the Cishaurim.
No-one is expecting that - many Knights die in the charge - including 'Sarcellus', but the Cishaurim are destroyed. Battle continues for the rest of the day - the Inrithe remain unbroken.
As the sun lowered in the western skies, the Fanim flinched more and more from the Inrithi line, charged with ever greater trepidation. For they saw demons in the eyes of their idolatrous enemy.
Actual demons? We can 'see into the outside' from Mengedda.
Then as Skauras sounds the retreat, Proyas arrives. The entire Inrithi host charges and the Fanim rout and are massacred.
Saubon seeks out Kellhus, but finds Achamian. Akka tells him about the Battleplain.
"Topoi are like heights, places where one can see far... But where heights are built with mounds of trauma and suffering. They are heights that let us see farther than this world... some say into the Outside. That's why this ground troubles you - you stand perilously high... This is the Battleplain. What you feel isn't so different from vertigo.
"Even amongst topoi", he called, "this place is... special." ...
"The soul that encounters Him, " the Schoolman continues, "passes no further"...
"The dead do not escape the Battleplain, my Prince... This place is cursed. The No-God died here."
Foreshadowing of Golgotterath, which is
the topos.
Shades of Tolkien - Battleplain (a direct translation of Dagorlad at the Gates of Mordor), and the Dead Marshes.