“The Daughter of the Sun,” Memnet groaned. The Grand Hierophant’s skin was flushed, and his eyes bright with fever. Akhmen-hotep could feel heat radiating from him in palpable waves.
“Neferem?” the priest king asked, surprised. “What of her? Does she still live?”
“He has enslaved her!” hissed the Grand Hierophant. “Nagash has bound her, body and soul!”
The news stunned Akhmen-hotep.
“That’s not possible. She’s the covenant made flesh. Her spirit binds the gods.”
“Do not ask me how,” the Grand Hierophant said. He sounded like a frightened child rather than a living embodiment of Ptra. He stretched a trembling hand to the north. “I can feel her, brother! You cannot imagine her pain. The things he has done to her… I cannot bear it!”
“Then we must do something!” the king declared.
“Our power cannot touch her,” Memnet cried, “nor can the blessings of the gods be arrayed against her. Look! Even the light of Neru fails in her presence!”
Horrified, Akhmen-hotep turned his gaze to the north. Memnet was right, the Consort’s potent ward had failed, and the undead were dosing in once more. The acolytes of the goddess had retreated to their high priestess, their faces pale with shock. Khalifra was weeping openly, her hands clenched to her belly as though stabbed.
The king’s body felt cold and leaden. With a shock, he realised that even Geheb’s gift of strength had failed him.
The gods had abandoned the men of Ka-Sabar.
Suseb’s massive sword crashed against Arkhan’s guard, hard enough to drive the vizier to his knees. The immortal struck the ground hard and rolled aside barely in time to avoid another blurring stroke aimed at his head. In desperation, Arkhan threw a backhanded slash at the champion’s ankle, but the scimitar turned awkwardly in his hand and glanced off Suseb’s calf. Arkhan realised, with a shock, that the champion’s blow had bent his prized blade.
Arkhan kept rolling, narrowly avoiding another cut that struck a glancing blow against his shoulder. The Lion was as swift and as strong as his namesake, his god-given gifts rivalling even those of the Ushabti. Thinking quickly, he flipped onto his back and threw out his left hand, spitting words of power. A single bolt of energy leapt from his fingers and struck the champion in the chest. Suseb let out a pained grunt, but his stride never wavered. The vizier’s power was almost spent.
“You cannot escape judgement so easily,” the Lion roared. “The time of your reckoning is at hand!”
Suseb reached the vizier in a single, swift step and brought down his terrible blade. Once again, Arkhan tried to parry the blow, but this time his weakened scimitar snapped with a discordant clang.
The immortal threw the broken blade aside and threw up his empty hand.
“I yield!” he cried, sliding his left hand behind his back to the dagger concealed in his belt. “Have mercy. Lion of Ka-Sabar! Nagash will pay any ransom you choose!”
Suseb’s face lit with righteous anger as he spoke. “You dare to plead for mercy, servant of the Usurper? If the gods see fit to spare you, let them stay my hand!”
The Lion drew back his blade. For the briefest instant, he seemed to stagger, as though the sword was suddenly heavier than before, and Arkhan saw his opportunity. His left hand snapped up in an underhand throw, and there was a heavy thunk, like a knife sinking deep into wood.
Suseb paused, his mouth hanging open. Slowly, his gaze fell to the hilt of the dagger jutting from his chest. Hurled with superhuman strength, the needle-sharp blade had driven deep into his body.
The champion took a half-step forwards, his face etched with strain as he tried to draw one more breath, but the dagger had pierced the Lion’s heart. Suseb’s great sword tumbled from his grasp, and the champion sank slowly to his knees.
Arkhan bared his jagged teeth in a slow, wicked grin. Slowly and deliberately, he rose to his feet and picked up Suseb’s blade. Then he bent down and whispered softly in the Lion’s ear.
“It seems the gods have spoken,” he said.
Cries of dismay went up from Suseb’s men as the vizier brought the heavy blade down on the Lion’s neck. Weak as Arkhan was, it took two clumsy blows to hack the champion’s head from his shoulders.
Akhmen-hotep heard the shouts of despair from the army’s left flank and knew that the battle was lost. The acolytes of Neru had fled, bearing away their high priestess as the marauding undead closed in. The king’s Ushabti had dismounted and encircled him with bared swords, awaiting his command.
Hashepra, high priest of Geheb, approached the king. The burly priest’s face was stricken, his tanned cheeks wet with tears, but his voice was as strong as ever.
“I have four companies of spearmen formed up and waiting for your orders, great one,” he declared. “What would you have us do?”
The priest king felt cast adrift in the unnatural darkness. The foundations of his world had been torn away in a single morning, leaving him bereft.
“Save yourselves,” he said numbly. “Order the trumpets to sound the retreat. Nagash has won the day.”
Hashepra recoiled in surprise, as though Akhmen-hotep had struck him. The priest started to protest, but there was no denying the disaster unfolding around them. Finally he nodded and went to pass the word to the trumpeter.
The Ushabti led the priest king back to his chariot and sped him away, in the direction of the oasis. Memnet had disappeared, evidently carried away by his own priests.
Akhmen-hotep caught sight of Sukhet’s corpse as the chariot passed by. The priest of Phakth lay upon his back, his face a mask of despair. The living embodiment of the god of justice had slit his own throat.
An hour later, Arkhan limped up the rocky slope in the direction of his master’s pavilion. The last surviving companies of the Bronze Host had fought their way out of the darkness and fallen to their knees in the bright sunlight of the oasis. Nagash’s undead minions halted at the shadow’s edge, unable to pursue any further. The vizier doubted there were more than a hundred living Khemri warriors scattered across the entire plain.
Nearly a dozen alabaster-skinned figures waited hungrily outside their master’s tent. They glared at Arkhan with barely concealed hatred as he brushed past his brethren and entered the master’s tent unannounced.
Nagash waited within, surrounded by his retinue of ghosts and attended upon by his queen and his slaves. Three immortals knelt at their master’s feet, gulping noisily from golden goblets held in their trembling hands.
Arkhan smelled the heady perfume of the life-giving elixir and fell to his knees. He crawled through the dust to Nagash’s feet, the ghosts circling him, touching his skin with fingers of ice and keening in his ears.
“I bring news of your victory, master,” he said hoarsely.
“Speak, then,” Nagash said coldly.
Arkhan ran his tongue over his cold lips. The thirst was terrible. Every vein in his body was shrivelled and aching. With an effort, he continued, “The Bronze Host is in flight, and Bhagar’s horsemen have been forced to quit the field.”
“Your cavalry pursues them even now,” Nagash said.
“Even so, master, even so,” the vizier replied, raising his eyes to the king. The queen stood to Nagash’s right and a little behind the necromancer. Arkhan avoided her unblinking, agonised stare. “We should recall our horsemen at once, before they become too spent,” he said. “The Bronze Host is in disarray, fleeing for their lives down the trade road to Ka-Sabar. At least half their number lies dead on the plain below. If we pursue them, we might destroy them utterly—”
The king shook his head.
“There will be no pursuit,” Nagash declared. “The army must return to Khemri at once. The Kings of Rasetra and Lybaras have risen against us as well, and even now their armies are marching through the Valley of Kings.”
Arkhan was taken aback by the news. For a moment, even his dreadful thirst was forgotten.
“What of our allies at Quatar?” he
asked.
“I have sent a message to Priest King Nemuhareb,” Nagash replied. “He is marching to block the western end of the valley, and is certain that he can turn back the rebels.”
The vizier studied his master’s face. “You are not convinced,” he said.
“We must confront this rebellion from a position of strength,” the necromancer replied. “This battle today was but the first of many. I foresee a long, bitter war to come. We must gather our allies and prepare for the storm.” A hungry glint shone in Nagash’s dark eyes. “We will deal with Ka-Sabar later. Before we are done, all Nehekhara will lie beneath our heel, and Settra’s great empire will be restored!”
“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Arkhan might once have said. Now, the vizier only smiled, and asked, “What would you have me do, master?”
“For now, drink. Then go and summon your errant horsemen. We depart for Khemri at dusk,” Nagash said, stretching forth his hand.
Ghazid, the king’s blue-eyed slave, shuffled from the darkness at the far side of the tent with a golden goblet in his wrinkled hands. The vessel brimmed with a thick, crimson liquid. Arkhan’s hands clenched spastically as it drew near.
The vizier tore the goblet from the mad slave’s hands and gulped greedily at its contents, all thoughts of war and conquest forgotten.
FIVE
A Storm out of the East
The Valley of Kings, in the 62nd year of Qu’aph the Cunning
(-1750 Imperial Reckoning)
Something was moving beyond the Gates of the Dawn.
It was almost noon. Rakh-amn-hotep, the first of his name, Priest King of Rasetra, rubbed a calloused hand over his shaven scalp and squinted in the fierce sunlight. The air shimmered in the confines of the Valley of Kings, flashing brightly against the drifting clouds of chalky dust stirred up by the movement of the allied army. The fine, glittering dust had become their worst enemy during the long, punishing march down the winding valley. It clung to the skin, clogged throats and eyes, and sawed at the axles of the chariots. From where the king stood, surrounded by his Ushabti atop a low hill just off the wide temple road, he could see great clouds of dust shrouding the narrow pass at the western end of the valley, concealing whatever dangers might be arrayed against them.
Something was out there. That much was certain. But what?
Rakh-amn-hotep hooked his blunt thumbs into the arm holes of his heavy scale shirt and tried to shift it into a more comfortable position. It had been a long time since he’d marched through the sands of central Nehekhara, and he could stand the heat, but his skin was afire from the thick layer of dust chafing beneath the weight of his armour. The priest king was a short, very stout man, with a wide barrel chest and a blunt, pugnacious face. The point of a lizardman’s spear had left a permanent dimple in his left cheek, creating the illusion of a smile. He was a savage, cunning man, cruel to his enemies and relentless when his anger was aroused, and the Priest King of Rasetra was frequently angry about something. His small city, situated near the edge of the steaming southern jungles, was constantly under threat from tribes of savage lizardmen. Not a year went by when the Rasetrans weren’t fending off raiding parties, or leading punitive expeditions into the wilds to burn villages and take hostages from the larger tribes.
Years of fighting against the tribesmen had left their mark on the priest king and his warriors. They wore longer, heavier kilts of thick cotton that stretched below their knees, overlaid with cured leather taken from the massive thunder lizards that crashed their way through the thick jungle growth. Their torsos were covered in thick shirts of scaly lizard hide, with overlapping, bony plates to turn aside tooth or claw. The strange armour lent Rasetrans a savage, exotic appearance, which contrasted dramatically with the simple, conventional attire of their allies.
The city of Lybaras, on the other hand, was not known for its prowess in war. Their patron was Tahoth, the god of knowledge and learning, and their wealth, such as it was, stemmed from their great academies and craftsmen rather than from fierce raids or conquest. Their nobles had little use for jewels or fine clothes, but rather, invested their fortunes in scrolls and strange tools, vessels of rare glass and arcane devices of bronze and wood.
From where the King of Rasetra stood, it was difficult to tell a Lybaran noble from a slave. Both favoured a simple, dun-coloured kilt and functional leather sandals, with a dark brown cape that hung below the waist. The only difference, Rakh-amn-hotep noted with a scowl, was the amount of glass baubles and metal trinkets the nobles carried wherever they went. Even their Ushabti were strange, their bodies bearing none of the physical blessings of the other gods, and their weapons a motley assortment of sticks, knives and coils of tightly braided rope. Only their eyes betrayed their divine nature. They were a piercing, almost luminous grey, as hard and incisive as sharpened stone. Nothing seemed to escape their notice, much less catch them unprepared.
Hekhmenukep, Priest King of Lybaras, stood amid a bustling throng of chattering viziers and nervous scribes just a few yards to Rakh-amn-hotep’s right. The king was peering intently through a long, wooden tube rimmed with polished brass, balanced on the bare shoulder of a waiting slave. Hekhmenukep was tall and lean to the point of being skeletal. His kilt hung listlessly down to the top of his bony knees, and the fall of his cape only accentuated the slope of his narrow shoulders. A fine gold chain lay around the king’s long neck, from which hung a strange assortment of glass discs edged in copper, silver and brass wire. He looked more like a mason than the ruler of a mighty city, Rakh-amn-hotep mused.
“Well?” the King of Rasetra demanded. “Do you see anything or not?”
The viziers surrounding Hekhmenukep shifted uneasily at Rakh-amn-hotep’s peremptory tone, but the king himself appeared unfazed.
“The sunlight turns the dust into a swirling curtain,” he said, squinting into his strange contraption. “There are flashes of light and the occasional shadow, but it’s difficult to discern what any of it means.” The priest king straightened. “Perhaps you would care to try?” he offered, gesturing at the tube.
Rakh-amn-hotep scowled at the strange object.
“I know little about Tahoth and his ways,” he granted. “I doubt he would bless me with any special sight.” The comment drew a laugh from Hekhmenukep.
“There is no need for special prayers in this case,” he said. “Merely look into the tube. The glass will aid the working of your eye.”
Rakh-amn-hotep was dubious, but the need for information spurred him to try. On the level ground west of the hill, the armies of Rasetra and Lybaras were hastily turning off the road and forming their battleline to the shrill wailing of trumpets. Somewhere up ahead, in that swirling mass of dust at the end of the valley, was the army’s advance guard of light horsemen. Half an hour ago, a rider from the advance guard had come galloping down the road with a message from his commander: enemy troops had been sighted at the Gates of the Dawn. There had been no word since. Had the light horsemen encountered a small detachment of troops and driven them off, or were they fighting for their lives against the entire army of Quatar?
He’d known from the beginning that the march down the valley would be a race against time. The Valley of Kings was an ominous place, fraught with old magics and restless spirits that haunted the tombs of the ancient Nehekharans. Nothing grew there, and the nearest water was almost a hundred leagues away. The high, sheer walls of the valley forced travellers to traverse it from one end to the other. The eastern end, known as the Gates of the Dusk, was guarded by the city of Mahrak and its army of warrior priests. The western end, known as the Gates of the Dawn, was guarded by the Tomb Guard of Quatar. Rakh-amn-hotep knew that if their campaign were to have any chance of success, they would have to reach the Gates of the Dawn before Quatar got word of their approach and moved to block the mouth of the valley. If the Tomb Guard controlled the Gates of the Dawn, the allied army would either have to risk a brutal, bloody assault or else turn around and ret
reat back the way they’d come. Since leaving Mahrak, the allied army had moved with surprising speed down the winding valley, thanks largely to the Lybarans’ strange, floating wagons. Suspended high above the valley floor by the hot desert wind, the wagons were able to carry the army’s supplies and keep pace with the troops instead of being slowed to a crawl by unruly teams of camels or oxen. The army had covered almost a hundred leagues in just the first five days, and Rakh-amn-hotep had dared to believe that his gamble would succeed.
How the gods laughed when men dared to hope, the priest king mused sourly. He strode over to Hekhmenukep’s odd invention and reluctantly peered into the end of the wooden tube.
At first, all he could see was a blurry circle of white. Frowning, he started to pull away from the tube, and suddenly the image cleared somewhat. Rakh-amn-hotep grew still, and noticed that he was seeing the swirling clouds across the valley almost as clearly as if they were just a few yards away. The priest king glanced back at Hekhmenukep.
“How is it that the gods share such power without requiring something in return?” he asked.
The King of Lybaras folded his thin arms and smiled. Like a tutor addressing a young student, he said, “Tahoth teaches us that the gifts of creation are hidden in the world around us,” he said. “If we are clever, we can uncover their mysteries and claim them for our own. In this way, we honour the gods.”
Rakh-amn-hotep tried to make sense of this, but gave up with a shrug. When they made camp that night he would make a sacrifice to Tahoth and consider the debt settled.
When he turned back, the King of Rasetra found that he’d lost the image once more. Frowning, he carefully drew back from the tube until once again the far end of the valley came into view.
Dust and more dust, the king observed irritably. Then he saw a glint of bronze wink from the murk, a reflection from a helmet, perhaps, or the tip of a blade. Then a vague shadow darkened the haze for a fleeting instant. Large and swift-moving, it was undoubtedly a man on horseback.
[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Page 8