And here with go with chapter 6!
But he was not a child. He was the many-blooded chieftain of the Utemot, a seasoned Scylvendi warrior of more than forty-five summers. He owned eight wives, twenty-three slaves, and more than three hundred cattle. He had fathered thirty-seven sons, nineteen of the pure blood. His arms were ribbed with the swazond, ritual trophy scars, of more than two hundred dead foes. He was Cnaiür, breaker-of-horses-and-men.
The inimitable Cnaiür urs Skiötha defines himself. Much like in Xerius' case, this is a character who is overall very insecure, but chooses to address it in a very different way (justified due to their respective cultures, of course). As we would go on to understand as first-time readers, it doesn't matter how much Cnaiür has proven himself as a warrior, how many men he has murdered over the years, how many wives and sons and slaves and cattle he has. To the other Scylvendi, he will always be Cnaiür the kinslayer, Cnaiür the "faggot weeper". The Scylvendi culture really is toxic masculinity at its finest.
There's much to unpack from this quote alone. (I'm not even going to try to go through the
inconsistencies with Cnaiür's age again.) With the mention of the sons, we learn right away that Scylvendi place a significant importance in "pure blood" (this will come up again a few times in the story). Also, it's kind of strange that he only has eight wives but close to 40 children. That does round up to about 5 children per wife, which is not implausible in the least, but for some reason I just had the feeling he'd have more wives. (Though it could be that only 8 of them are living at this time, I don't think Cnaiür's wives would have long life expectancies, sadly.) It also occurs to me that we only hear about that one daughter of his, Sanathi, in comparison with the 38 sons (these ones plus Moënghus). Daughters don't really count in Scylvendi culture, or does Cnaiür have a disproportionately large amount of sons versus daughters? Probably the former. (Yes, I know I'm thinking too much about this, but that's what I do.)
Cnaiür had met Xunnurit only five days earlier, shortly after arriving with his Utemot warriors. Their dislike had been mutual and immediate, like that of suitors for the same beauty. Xunnurit's contempt, Cnaiür had no doubt, was rooted in the scandalous rumours of his father's death long ago. The grounds of his own animosity, however, eluded him. Perhaps he'd simply matched disdain with disdain. Perhaps it was the silk trim of Xunnurit's fleece tunic or the ingrown vanity of his smile. Hatred needed no reasons, if only because they were so many and so easily had.
Cnaiür is an old hand at hatred, I think it's not hyperbole to say that in this series, no one can hate as he does. (Though really, he doesn't hate anyone else as much as he hates himself, even if he can't bring himself to realize that.)
Also, it has been ~30 years since Skiötha's murder, do these Scylvendi (especially the ones like Xunnurit, who had never even
met Cnaiür prior to this point) have no more recent scandalous events to gossip about? It's all vaguely ridiculous if you think about it for a while.
Cnaiür debated whether to discredit the man or to discredit his scheme. "No," he replied, opting for wisdom instead of slander, "I would have us wait. We have Ikurei Conphas"-he raised a thick-fingered hand and clenched it into a fist-"trapped. His horses need rich fodder, ours do not. His men are accustomed to roofs, to pillows, to wine, and to the comforts of lax women, while ours sleep in their saddles and need only their horses' blood for sustenance. Mark me, as the days pass, the fawn will begin sprinting through their hearts and the jackal through their bellies. They will fear and they will hunger. Their fortifications of earth and timber will smack more of captivity than safety. And soon, desperation will drive them to a ground of our choosing!"
Here we get some more information about Cnaiür's personality. He is far more intelligent than his peers, and actually tries to give out sensible advice and formulate a good plan rather than to start his argument by attacking Xunnurit outright. Unfortunately for him (and everyone else), no one really cares much for what he has to say.
It wasn't so much the man's cunning that shocked Cnaiür as the realization that he'd underestimated him.
Also somewhat like Xerius, Xunnurit is smarter than he seems. Still doesn't mean that he has the good sense to move past the rumours and the indignation and think more carefully about Cnaiür's plans, sadly.
He graced Xunnurit with a macabre smile, the one that so often reduced his wives to tears.
Fascinating character, yes. Good person, not so much. I pity Anissi and the other unnamed wives, I really do. The Steppe might not be the
absolute worst place to be a woman in Eärwa, but it is at least one of the very worst.
(There isn't any good place to be a woman in Eärwa, not really, there are only degrees of bad.)Neglected herds meant wolves, pestilence, even famine.
Another mention of wolves! Still not seeing a pattern, but no matter, I'll keep looking out for them even if it amounts to nothing of interest in the end.
The thought dizzied Cnaiür with its implications. Suddenly, everything he had witnessed and heard since joining the horde possessed different meaning: the buggery of their Scylvendi captives, the mocking embassies, even the positioning of their privies-all calculated to gall the People into attacking.
Cnaiür realizes Conphas knows
exactly what he's doing. Xerius did mention in the previous chapter that Conphas had extensively studied the Scylvendi culture in preparation for this battle, after all.
Cnaiür could smell it then, the good-humoured camaraderie that amounted to little more than a conspiracy to mock one and the same man. His lips twisted into a grimace. Always the same, no matter what his claim to arms or intellect. They'd measured him many years ago-and had found him wanting.
But measure is unceasing . . .
See, even after 30 years, these men
still can't let it go. Even the ones from other tribes, who weren't affected in any way by Skiötha's murder (unlike, say, Cnaiür's uncle, who has more legitimate reasons, but we'll get to him in a bit).
Even though I don't even drink, I kind of wish there was an official TSA drinking game once I really start noticing how many phrases and passages show up over and over again. "Measure is unceasing", "death came swirling down", etc.
(TVTropes pages often have drinking game sections, but the TSA one doesn't. What a shame.)"Listen! You must listen! Conphas has gambled on this very council-on our arrogance, on our . . . customary thoughts. He's done everything in his power to provoke us! Don't you see? We decide his genius on the field. Only we can make him a fool. And by doing the one thing that terrifies him, the one thing he's done everything to prevent. We must wait! Wait for him to come to us!"
Cnaiür makes yet another valiant effort at trying to convince all these men that despise him that they are falling into Conphas' trap, but they still don't listen. At least he does get vindicated by history somehow later on, as we learn in TUC.
He could feel it stir within him, his second soul, the one that blotted the sun and painted the earth with blood. Their laughter faltered before his menace. His glare struck even the smirks from their faces.
Just another moment of pure, unadulterated Cnaiür hatred? Or is this some Gilgaöl/Ajokli foreshadowing?
Cnaiür always remembered the hours before battle as unbearable, and because of this, he was always surprised whenever he actually endured them.
I really like this sentence because I feel it can apply so well to real life situations (completely unrelated to actual battles, I mean). Anticipation anxiety can be a pain.
He did know Conphas, in a manner. While raiding the Empire the previous autumn, he'd captured several Nansur soldiers, men who prated about the Exalt-General with an adoration that had captured Cnaiür's interest. With hot coals and harsh questions, he'd learned much of Ikurei Conphas, of his brilliance in the Galeoth Wars, of his daring tactics and novel training regimens-enough to know he was different from any he'd ever met on the field. But this knowledge was wasted on old snakes such as Bannut, who had never forgiven him the murder of his father.
Ah, the beginning of the Cnaiür/Conphas rivalry and parallels.
We learn about the Galeoth Wars here before we even meet Saubon (or any Galeoth character, for that matter). Of course, as we know, he'll get back at Conphas eventually.
Bannut is another interesting character, even though he's only around for this chapter. This is also a man who is no stranger to long-simmering hatred.
He though of all those he'd killed the first few years after his father's death, all those Utemot who'd sought to wrest the chieftain's White Yaksh from the dishonour of his name. Seven cousins, one uncle, and two brothers. Stubborn hate brimmed within him, a hate that ensured he would not yield, no matter how many indignities they heaped upon him, no matter how many whispers or guarded looks. He would murder all and any, foe and kinsman alike, before he would yield.
The kinslaying certainly didn't stop with his father. And see what I was getting at with Bannut? All these other relatives defied Cnaiür outright and were killed for their trouble. Bannut likely knew the same would happen to him if he tried to challenge his nephew. So he chose to play the long game instead, tolerating Cnaiür as chieftain for
decades until a good opportunity to have him killed presented itself.
Minor, random aside - Cnaiür is grouping "foe" and "kinsman" there as two separate categories, but there does seem to be considerable overlap, don't you think?
They all want me dead.
Yes, yes they do, Cnaiür, though unfortunately for them, you're not easy to kill.
He whispered a memorial to the Dead-God.
Is this the first mention of Lokung in the series? I think it is...
"You," the old warrior said, "shall be measured this day, Cnaiür urs Skiötha. Measure is unceasing."
"Measure is unceasing", again, time to drink if there was an actual drinking game!
Bannut is another character I definitely grew to appreciate more in this reread. His cold, calculating hatred is just as unceasing as measure (and his nephew's own legendary hatred).
"Xunnurit remembered well the favour Yursalka did him!" he cried.
Cnaiür stared at him in horror. "What have you done?"
"Killed you! Killed the kin-slayer! The weeping faggot who'd be our chieftain!"
He keeps gloating and taunting his nephew even as he's dying. If this man had only lived a few more years, I'm sure he could have reached Ciphrang-level as well.
Also - Yursalka's favour was simply marrying Xunnurit's daughter? Nothing else is ever mentioned, but it doesn't really seem like enough as a favour. Though she was "the deformed one", maybe Yursalka was the only one willing to marry her when nobody else would? (Poor girl.)
"I watched you that night!" Bannut wheezed, his voice growing more pinched with agony. "I saw the truth of what"-his body cramped and shook about a wracking cough-"what happened those thirty years past. I told all that truth! Now the Utemot will be delivered from the oppression of your disgrace!"
"You know nothing!" Cnaiür cried.
"I know all! I saw the way you looked at him. I know he was your lover!"
Lover?
Bannut's eyes were beginning to glass over, as though he looked into something bottomless. "Yours is the name of our shame," he gasped. "By the Dead-God I would see it blotted out!"
Cnaiür's blood felt like gravel. He turned away to blink back tears.
Weeper.
This is amazing, Bannut keeps going at it and letting Cnaiür know
exactly what and how he knew about him and Moënghus (and was the one to tell everyone else, apparently), true classic villain monologue style.
I can't help but be reminded of Kussalt's dying declaration of hate to Saubon in TWP, though Bannut's is far more epic.
Did Moënghus know Bannut had seen him and Cnaiür together, I wonder? Did he plan for it to happen? Wouldn't put it past him...
"Who?" he roared in their womanish tongue. "Who among you shall take the knife to my arms?"
A true TSA classic, this moment.
It was Balait, his second wife's eldest brother, someone he'd always respected.
Glad to see that there was at least
one person that got along with Cnaiür. So, of course he dies 3 pages later.
Conphas had withdrawn his Kidruhil at the battle's onset to throw them against the Scylvendi centre. And he'd given his Columns false standards in order to deceive them into thinking he'd depolyed his main strength across his flanks. The Exalt-General wanted the centre.
Too late, Cnaiür once again figures out Conphas' plan...
"A School, Bala! Conphas has brought a School!"
...because as it turns out, they are well and truly doomed.
Yet another classic PON moment.
So like my father, he thought, then darkness came swirling down.
And here it is, the moment something comes swirling down. Not death this time, though. (Is this the first time this expression is used, or did I miss one or more in the previous chapters?)
There's also a parallel here to one of Esmenet's later POV chapters, in which she thinks "So like my daughter", if I remember correctly. Might just be coincidence, though.
A rough hand clasped Cnaiür's shoulder, peeled him from the muck. Eyes half-open to the setting sun. Limbs tensed in semblance of rigor. Soil-choked mouth drawn back in the sardonic grin. No breath.
I must say, Cnaiür does an impressively good job of playing dead here. How did he manage to hold his breath for so long? Those soldiers were around him for quite a while...
Mine. My prize.
That expression also makes its first appearance in this chapter. It starts with a Chorae, it all goes downhill from here. (Is this the Chorae he eventually uses on Moënghus in TTT? Pretty sure it is...)
For an absurd moment, he felt the queer exultation of one who'd prophesied his own destruction. He'd told Xunnurit, the eight-fingered fool. They'd thought him an old woman, a spinner of preposterous fears. Where was their laughter now?
He doesn't even get a moment of bitter acknowledgement he was right all along (well, not until much, much later), because everyone is dead. Sad.
Cnaiür had fought too many borderland skirmishes not to respect them as warriors, but in the end he despised the Nansur the way all Scylvendi despised them: as a mongrel race, a kind of human vermin, to be hunted to extinction if possible.
Another reminder that the Scylvendi
really despise people of other ethnicities, especially everyone in the Nansur Empire.
It kind of makes me wonder if half-Norsirai Moënghus the Younger will have problems because of this given his situation at the end of TUC. But then again, he has much bigger problems to worry about.
Men who made sport with men.
Of course that this is the very worst thing about the Nansur to the extremely repressed and self-loathing Cnaiür.
Then he sobbed. Wept.
Weeper . . .
Bannut cackling, spitting up milky blood.
"I saw the way you looked at him! I know you were lovers!"
"No!" Cnaiür cried, but his hatred failed him.
Uncle Bannut's dying words will keep coming back to haunt him.
This has to be one of the very few times - if not the only time - that Cnaiür's hatred actually fails him.
"I'm afraid it would be irresponsible for me to disclose more, Martemus. Soon, perhaps, but not now. My triumph here, as magnificent, as divine as it is, will be sackcloth and ashes compared with what follows. Soon, all the Three Seas wil celebrate my name . . . Well, you're more soldier than officer. You understand that oftentimes commanders require their subordinates' ignorance as much as their knowledge."
Conphas has plans within plans, and all his going his way so far. We also start to get an inkling that much like his uncle, he thinks of himself as divine. Not because of any underlying insecurity in his case, though.
"Alas, Martemus, if I were to tell you all I know, you'd still suffer the same deficit. Answers are like opium: the more you imbibe, the more you need. Which is why the sober man finds solace in mystery."
"Intellect, Martemus. War is intellect."
Conphas also has some of the best quotes.
With his father's shameful death, he'd fled and crawled into the name of his people, the Scylvendi, who were the wrath of Lokung, more vengeance than bone or flesh.
Lokung is first mentioned by name instead of being referred to as the Dead-God as earlier. Cnaiür does seem to embody the "wrath of Lokung" very well, and will do so even more in the future.
Cnaiür sits in the gloom of the Chieftain's great yaksh as it stood twenty-nine years ago.
I'm kind of thrown out of the flashback by noticing the timing of Skiötha's death has shifted from 30 to 29 years before. Actually, it should even maybe be 31 years before, seeing as it is 4110 and the glossary has his death taking place in 4079. I'm choosing to ignore it for now by assuming it hasn't been 31 full years yet and/or they are rounding the number up/down to 30.
The White Yaksh has seen many such scenes, but this time, one of the slaves, a Norsirai man, abandons the shadows and steps into firelight. He lifts his face and addresses the astonished tribesmen in perfect Scylvendi-as though he himself were of the land.
"I would make you a wager, Chieftain of the Utemot."
Cnaiür's father is dumbstruck, both by such insolence and by such a transformation. A man hitherto broken has become as august as any King. Only Cnaiür is not surprised.
We learn about the circumstances of Skiötha's death via Cnaiür's flashback.
Moënghus has already learned their language after what, a few months? The Dûnyain's language skills are just
so ridiculous (as previously discussed in another thread).
"But I would wager my life with you, Skiötha."
A slave speaking a name. How it overturns the ancient ways, upends the fundamental order!
Skiötha gropes this absurdity and finally laughs. Laughter makes small. Fury would acknowledge the depth of this contest, would make one a contestant. And yet the slave knows this.
So the slave continues: "I have watched you, Skiötha, and I have wondered at the measure of your strength. Many here so wonder . . . Did you know this?"
(...)
Then Skiötha, fearing to look into the faces of his kinsmen, says, "I have been measured, slave."
(...)
"But measure," the slave replies, "is not something accomplished and then forgotten, Skiötha. Old measure is merely grounds for the new. Measure is unceasing."
Moënghus plays Skiötha perfectly. Like Conphas, he dares interfere with the sacred and static Scylvendi tradition, and uses that to manipulate them.
And yes, all together now: "measure is unceasing".
And the Norsirai slave's pale face turning to him, the blue eyes bright, more encompassing than any sky. Summoning eyes! Eyes that yoke, that speak:
Do you remember your part?
Cnaiür has been given a script for this moment.
From among the seated man, he says, "Are you afraid, Father?" Mad words! Treacherous and mad!
A stinging look from his father. Cnaiür lowers his eyes. Skiötha turns to the slave and asks with contrived indifference, "What, then, is your wager?"
And Cnaiür is gripped by the terror that he might die.
Fear that the slave, Anasûrimbor Moënghus, might die!
Not his father-Moënghus . . .
Afterward, when his father lay dead, he had wept before the eyes of his tribe. Wept with relief.
At last, Moënghus, the one who had called himself Dûnyain, was free.
Cnaiür was also manipulated to be an accomplice to the character whose name is finally given as Anasûrimbor Moënghus, Kellhus' mysterious father (and memetic master manipulator).
Another parallel here. Young Cnaiür openly weeps after Moënghus kills Skiötha. Just like Moënghus the Younger does in front of all the Scylvendi when Cnaiür goes off to face the Whirlwind at the end of TUC.
This comment is, unsurprisingly for me, way too long already, so this is it for this chapter.