Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  They’d been fighting for nearly thirty minutes. By now, he and the Nemesis were swallowing great gulps of dusty air. If he were still somehow lighter on his feet than his foe, he credited his enemy’s armor, which made the Nemesis impervious.

  …but tired.

  …and slow.

  The Nemesis ripped his sword out of the rubble and backhanded a swing within inches of Galen’s nose. The black blade cut a line in the fabric of his hood, tossing a plume of tattered leather into the air.

  If he’d been a millisecond faster, he’d have taken my head.

  Here. Have this.

  Darting, ducking, and weaving through three wild swings, Galen hammered his sword against the Scimitar disc stuck to the Nemesis’ shoulder. The obsidian-colored thing shattered, its pieces fluttering to the street.

  A wiser man would’ve used it, he wanted to say.

  But I know Menkaur’s will.

  He wants to know he’s killed me.

  The truth was—he’d not said a word to Eadunn. He never had, not during the fight, not during five-hundred years of being pursued. The legend among the Habiru had always been, ‘Two words with the Nemesis…two coins for the boatman.’ The fear had proven true for just about everyone.

  Galen didn’t believe in coins or in boatmen.

  Or even death.

  He kept his tongue locked away.

  I’ll save my words for the Pharaoh.

  He ducked under a spinning slash meant to separate the top of his skull from the bottom.

  He landed a flat kick to the Nemesis’s chest, driving him several yards back, where the Nemesis and his armor clattered to the street.

  A black cloud of bone-dust billowed into the air. Galen retreated a few steps and knelt beside the bigger half of the knight he’d killed thirty minutes ago. Sliding his hand into the dust, he pulled out the dark-lance. It lay right where it had fallen, cushioned by a bed of sand.

  He lifted the wand. The dark, slender cylinder, coated in ash, felt fragile in his grasp. He wondered how many people the knight had slaughtered with it.

  …before a broken piece of mirror had repaid the favor.

  Hate these things, he thought.

  But if I don’t kill Nem in the next few minutes, every Habiru in this whole fucking city will be on us.

  The Nemesis clambered back to his feet. And if it were possible to read a man’s expression behind a black, featureless mask, Galen imagined his enemy with a look of surprise.

  Didn’t expect that, did you, Eadunn?

  Thought this was some kind of honor dance?

  The greatest duel in history?

  No.

  He leveled the dark-lance at the Nemesis’ thighs. He took care to choose an angle, just in case Eadunn’s armor was reflective.

  Or if he pulls a mirror from his pocket.

  He pushed the tiny button on the wand’s base.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed again, and a hairline fissure split the wand’s side.

  You see? These damn things. Weak as the men who make them.

  With a smirk, he tossed the wand to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. If the Nemesis were happy to have survived the moment, he didn’t show it. Hulking, his sword stained with ashes, he watched the dark-lance wand fall and stalked straight for Galen.

  Galen sighed.

  Again they met. Again they fought. Feinting, weaving, and probing the air with their blades, they circled one another for several minutes. Their blades touched only rarely. Each move they made was meant to end the other’s life.

  It was then Galen sensed the Habiru.

  Woken by the duel, they’d gathered in the ruins on both sides of the street. They’d seen the rest of the Nemesis’ men fall, Galen knew, and they’d judged a few hundred of them could overtake the last two combatants.

  Quite a prize, me and Nemmy, he thought.

  Kill the Pharaoh’s enforcer. Win the Lord’s favor by delivering the Prey’s head.

  Shit. There’s a lot of them.

  The Nemesis advanced. Galen retreated. Confused, the Nemesis tilted his masked face as if to ask, ‘After all this, you don’t want to finish?’

  It wasn’t the Nemesis Galen feared.

  It was the fifty Habiru skulking up on his left, armed with metal pipes, shards of steel, and handmade bows.

  It was the hundred more massing on the street a hundred yards behind the Nemesis, a mob of cloaks, glass spears, and heavy stones.

  And it was the many hundred others lurking in the crumbled towers, their eyes dark in the morning gloom.

  He glimpsed men, women, and children. Like wild dogs, they were. He imagined they dreamed of killing the Nemesis and him for revenge and bounty, but reckoned they would just as likely want a few nice cloaks, two pairs of boots, and fresh meat to sizzle in their pans and pick from their teeth.

  Their lives were short and brutal, the Habiru. They’d no such thing as ambition coursing through their skulls. They knew only survival.

  …and death.

  Still smirking, Galen pointed with his sword.

  The Nemesis, a colossus of dark, dented steel, glanced over his shoulder.

  Look there, Nem.

  All this, and we might die together, thought Galen.

  He didn’t want to die. More than any man in the Kingdom of Earth, Galen needed to live. In his head, beating in his heart, pumping through his sword-arm, thoughts of killing hundreds of Habiru sprang to life. He imagined himself striding toward the ocean, the Nemesis’ head in one hand, his sword turned scarlet in the other. He meant to live forever. It didn’t matter how many others had to die.

  These thoughts had always lived inside him.

  Grand thoughts.

  Dark thoughts.

  Epic visions of himself surviving beyond all others.

  Perhaps it was no delusion. If any creature in the world stood a chance of carving its way through hundreds of wild-eyed scavengers, it would’ve been him.

  The Habiru closed in. He and the Nemesis stood twenty yards apart, swords still swaying. He looked to the streets at his back, where dozens of Habiru skulked out of the shadows. He glanced left and right, and saw them picking their way around rusted beams and mounds of ruined stone.

  Straight ahead, a hundred more were marching down the street.

  Where is Elly’s oath now?

  No one’s listening.

  He breathed the dry, heavy air. The dust settled inside his lungs, and the ocean’s smell tasted salty and poisonous. He’d been a fool to stay and fight the Nemesis, but he didn’t regret it. Not now. Not ever.

  Not many chances to kill your hunter.

  And this, even this…I might survive.

  He felt his muscles coil inside him. He ticked away a last few seconds in his head. At countdown’s end, he intended to run.

  Straight for the sea.

  Straight through the advancing Habiru mob.

  Three…

  Two…

  Wait…

  From the ocean’s direction, a black object grew larger in the sky. Its roar reached his ears, and the Habiru stopped in their tracks. Even the Nemesis, who looked ready to fight for a hundred years, turned to face the coming shadow.

  His ship, realized Galen.

  It’s coming.

  The giant black vessel soared above the ruined streets. It came in low, its engines thundering, its giant Scimitar discs shimmering in the dawn-light. Plumes of black dust scattered in its wake. Buildings creaked and walls collapsed into piles of gravel.

  Galen stared.

  Standing beneath such overwhelming darkness, his dream of survival faltered.

  Hello there, he thought.

  This should be...entertaining.

  The Nemesis’ ship, its shadow deepening, floated down and halted twenty feet above the ground. The Habiru scattered, vanishing like rats into their holes. The ship settled above Galen and the Nemesis, hovering not twenty feet overhead. Beneath it the two fighters stood
, black swords finally fallen silent, bodies near motionless in the artificial twilight.

  Galen counted down again.

  But for what, he didn’t know.

  The ship’s ramp extended, and a door slid open in its black steel underbelly.

  Whatever comes out of there, dies, he thought.

  For a half-breath, he hesitated. The Nemesis backed away toward the ramp.

  Galen knew he’d no time left.

  He sprinted for the ramp and met the Nemesis headlong. Their blades flashed in the shadows, and both met their mark. Galen’s stroke clipped off two of the Nemesis’ left-hand fingers, shearing through armor and bone as if they were paper. The Nemesis’ quick slash caught Galen just above his knee. Galen felt the dark steel cut away a ribbon of flesh before glancing off his femur.

  Heedless of their pain, both men swung again. Galen’s was quicker, but the Nemesis’ more powerful.

  Both swords met.

  Galen’s shattered.

  The weapon, powerful as it was, had been ready to break since first meeting the Nemesis’ sword.

  The Nemesis pivoted to swing again, but Galen timed it well. He leapt and snared the edge of the ramp’s bottom. He felt the wind of the Nemesis’ sword whistle past his feet, and knew he’d been lucky.

  Too close. He peered over the ramp and into the ship’s gloom. Better up here than down there.

  With all his might, he hauled himself onto the ramp. He crawled and staggered to his feet, facing the darkness inside the ship. The goliath war vessel was still hovering—the Nemesis couldn’t reach him.

  His armor’s too heavy.

  The engines’ roar faded to a rhythmic thrum, shaking everything inside Galen’s hurting body.

  He waited.

  He glanced down to the street, and saw the Nemesis standing alone.

  Any moment, he expected a dark-lance wand to tear his body apart.

  Or a quick pulse from a Scimitar disc to make ashes of his bones.

  A face appeared twenty feet deep inside the ship. With bleary eyes, he stared. He supposed he should have stripped his hidden dagger out of his cloak and killed everyone aboard the ship by now.

  But he didn’t.

  He looked at the eyes.

  Cloaked and hooded.

  Chin streaked with blood.

  Eyes wide and beautiful.

  Elly.

  14

  Somewhere inside the Nemesis’ ship, with walls and floors of dark steel surrounding him, Galen awoke.

  It hurts.

  God, it hurts.

  Nem must be in a thousand pieces by now.

  His pains were vast, and yet he suffered them gladly. Already he felt his body stitching itself together, healing the wound dealt by the Nemesis’ sword. The fibers in his leg curled and weaved, knitting themselves with agonizing precision.

  It had been years since he’d been wounded.

  Centuries since he’d been close to death.

  He’d forgotten long ago what real pain felt like.

  Instinctively, he touched the skin-port on the back of his neck. It remained intact, smooth against his flesh. At least one thing hadn’t gone wrong.

  For all that it matters.

  As he lay in the dark, drifting in and out of half-consciousness, many thoughts roiled in the ocean of his mind:

  I should be dead.

  Cut up into Habiru stew.

  I wonder if Nem’s fingers will grow back.

  Or his head…when they cut it off.

  How did he find me?

  This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.

  He stood. No matter his pain, he set his fingers against a cold steel wall and staggered deep into the ship. The labyrinthine corridors swallowed him. “Elly,” he called, his voice bounding into the darkness, echoing off walls hard and metal.

  No one answered.

  He should’ve rested. His pain vibrating in his bones, his flesh wanted to fall back apart. The bleeding had stopped, but his leg was many hours from being right again.

  Uncaring, he loosed a dagger from inside his cloak and shambled down another of the ship’s narrow corridors.

  He could tell the ship was moving.

  But not its direction.

  Or who was piloting it.

  His head felt thick, his senses stagnant. His vision made ghosts of every object, while the walls were nothing more than shadows. He clutched his dagger close to his chest. If anyone showed themselves, he meant to kill them.

  “Elly,” he called again. She’d appeared long enough to pull him into the ship’s hold and seal the ramp. The Nemesis and the Habiru had vanished. And then Elly had slipped away into the darkness, which seemed heavier inside the ship than anywhere else in the world.

  He wandered many steps down many corridors. His dagger hung from his fingers, heavier than his shattered sword had ever been. He stumbled upon a knight’s body in the gloom. The knight’s throat had been slashed. The cut was surgically clean, only a dark red line in the young man’s milk-white flesh.

  Just a boy.

  Killed by an expert hand.

  Elly?

  He walked still deeper into the ship. His eyes adjusted, and he counted many hallways and doors carved into the shadows. Everything in the Nemesis’ war vessel seemed made of hard, sharp angles. Everything was painted black.

  Like the Nemesis himself.

  At last he wandered to a chamber into which grey sunlight invaded. Beyond a vast curved window, the clouds swept away into nothing. The ship’s engines were still afire, and yet all was silent.

  He looked past the rows of black chairs and saw Elly sitting at the controls.

  “Galen...” She glanced over her shoulder at him. Her voice sounded distant, almost cold. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You should lie down.”

  His dagger tumbled from his fingers and clattered to the grated floor. He reached down to his knee, and though his wound was knitted shut, his cloak and pants were saturated with blood. Someone had bandaged him, but had done so in a hurry.

  Elly?

  He’d forgotten.

  He didn’t know how badly he’d been hurt.

  The Nemesis had nearly severed his leg.

  “Elly,” he said, “he cut me…did you see? I took his fingers, but I was tired. We fought for—”

  “Forever, it felt like.” She spun in her chair and faced him. With the clouds breaking beyond the window and the sky much darker than in the City of Bones, she looked nothing like the Elly he remembered. She was fierce, eyes wide and awake, her face streaked with blood and ashes.

  He stood in the cockpit doorway.

  And he stared.

  “How?” He blinked. “The ship. The dead knight. You did it…but how?”

  She stared right back at him. Her eyes were wide as moons, her mouth a hard, dark line. He imagined more than just Elia in her expression. He saw her mother, her grandmother, and countless faces from before.

  She deceived me, he knew.

  And saved me.

  “Tell me.” he demanded. “Explain yourself.”

  “I was taught.” She said. “The ship…there are things…things that were planned. We had to be ready. We—”

  “How did he know where to find me, Elly?” he interrupted. “And how did you kill the knight?”

  The fire smoldered in his leg. His body hurt, and his vision blurred again. He saw two of Elly, the same cold look in her many eyes, and he knew many things had been kept secret.

  “I should be angry with you.” She faced the controls, hammered a pair of buttons, and stood tall.

  “You…angry with me?” He managed a smirk. “I see through you, Elly. You called the Nemesis to me. I don’t know how, but you did.”

  She stared hard at him. For an instant her eyes smoldered with something approaching rage, and then like the sea after a storm became calm.

  She doesn’t deny it. She did summon him.

  “And you…you used me as bait,” she countered. “You kn
ew the knights would chase me.”

  “You lied to me.” He staggered two steps forward, propping himself up against one of the cockpit chairs. “You led him straight to me.”

  She crossed her arms. She denied nothing.

  “What happens now?” she said. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Inside, he shivered.

  What is this feeling?

  Fear? Doubt?

  How did it come to this?

  He looked to the floor at Elly’s feet. The ship’s pilot lay dead on the black steel grating, his throat slashed the same as the youngling knight. He’d died quickly, almost instantly.

  Some girl, this Elia.

  He closed his eyes. He understood, though it came to him slowly, lurching through his cobwebbed mind. Reaching through his tattered, tired thoughts, he brushed aside all else and arrived at the truth.

  She didn’t do this to kill me.

  She took a calculated risk to save me.

  She arranged this.

  The Nemesis’ arrival. The ship. Everything.

  He found her eyes again. His vision sharpened. He was at peace.

  “Where are we going?” He glanced to the window, beyond which the clouds swept away at a terrible speed.

  “Japas.”

  “You didn’t want to sail across the ocean,” he reasoned. “You knew we’d have a better chance of surviving if we stole Nem’s ship.”

  She nodded.

  “The Nemesis…he had only four knights and a pilot,” he continued. “He usually hunts with twenty or more men. But you knew. Somehow, you knew. Or else you wouldn’t have summoned him. I need you to explain.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t.”

  All that was Galen rebelled against her refusal. No one declines me, he thought. No one dares.

  And yet he said nothing.

  He pulled his hood over his eyes and retreated into the shadows.

  * * *

  How long had it been since he’d slept in a real bed?

  Had he been a child?

  He couldn’t recall.

  The packets of food on the Nemesis’ ship, sealed in foil, tasted like nothing he remembered eating in the last five centuries. He tasted meat—real meat. And greens far fresher than the kind he’d spent countless years picking from diseased soil and fields dusted with radiation.

  Elly had set the ship to auto-pilot. She’d intentionally slowed the engines so as not to reach Japas too soon. She seemed to understand he wanted to savor these moments.