[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  The living warriors of Nagash’s host saw the hissing cloud sweeping down upon them and knew what it portended. They leapt, fearfully, to their feet, reaching for their weapons or the reins of frightened horses. Trumpets blared in alarm, and the warriors of the Living City responded as swiftly as their exhausted bodies would allow. Within minutes, ragged bands of heavy cavalry were racing headlong into the storm, while spear companies formed up amid the decaying bodies of their kinsmen and prepared to receive the enemy charge.

  Of all the gods, Khsar the Faceless was the least inclined towards humankind, and honoured the great covenant grudgingly at best. His gifts were often two-edged, and his worshippers called upon him only when they must. The raging storm called up by the Hierophant ben Izzedein lashed at both friend and foe, concealing the battle between the raiders and the cavalry in a hissing, knife-edged maelstrom. Riders literally crashed together out of the murk, striking at one another with a handful of frenzied blows, before pulling apart and disappearing once again. The screams of the dying were torn apart by the hungry wind, and the bodies of the dead were reduced to scoured bones within moments.

  The desert raiders of Bhagar were in their element, however. With their faces hidden by their head scarves in a sign of devotion to their god, they read the shifting pattern of the winds and knew how to peer through the haze to find their foes. They rode with supernatural skill, as though their steeds could read their very thoughts. The desert horses were a breed apart, thought to be the only gift Khsar ever truly gave to his people, and they were prized above rubies by their masters. Time and again the raiders clashed with their foes, and more often than not they left a horseman of Khemri reeling in the saddle or bleeding out his life upon the ground.

  Riderless horses stumbled out of the storm, galloping for the relative safety of the Usurper’s camp. The spear companies watched the storm draw steadily closer and clenched their weapons fearfully. Their champions snarled orders to tighten the ranks, forming a solid wall of shields and spears in the face of the raging wind.

  The sandstorm swept over the warriors in a hissing, blinding wave, stabbing at their eyes and clawing at every inch of exposed skin. The front ranks recoiled, as though from the impact of an enemy charge, but the rear ranks ducked their heads behind their shields and pushed back, keeping the line intact. Javelins flew out of the murk and fell among the ranks, sticking in shields or sinking through leather and into the flesh beneath. Men screamed and fell, their cries both painful and joyous, as though death was not so much an end as a release from the horrors they had endured.

  Riders appeared like ghosts out of the storm, rearing their mounts before the shield wall and slashing down with scimitar and axe. They hacked off spearheads and dented helms, and, here and there, they bit into unprotected arms or necks. More men fell, but before their fellows could react, the riders had turned about and disappeared once more into the whirlwind.

  Still, the line held, forming an arc of bronze between the storm and the silent pavilions along the road behind them. Warriors shouted encouragement to the men in front of them and leapt forward to fill the gaps left by their dead comrades. Their courage was desperate and unrelenting, each man knowing what would happen to their families at home if they failed to keep the raiders at bay.

  They were so determined to stand in the face of the whirlwind that they failed to notice the silent band of raiders sweeping over the foothills to the east and charging into the opposite side of the camp. Only a handful of heavy horsemen stood in their path, and they quickly fell, riddled by arrows from the raiders’ powerful horse bows. The raiders swept over the corpse-strewn ground and raced for the undefended tents just a few hundred yards away.

  Shouts of alarm and strident trumpet calls rose from the centre of the camp. Slaves staggered from the tents into the bright sunlight, brandishing knives and wooden clubs in defence of their masters. The men of Bhagar cut them down like reeds, or pinned them to the earth with their barbed javelins, but the slaves’ sacrifice delayed the attackers for a few, precious seconds. As the last of them fell, the air seethed with the hissing of countless wings, and the raiders cried out in dismay as a swirling pillar of scarabs spread above the cluster of tents and blocked the noonday sun.

  Arkhan hurled the heavy lid of the sarcophagus aside and leapt to his feet, his brain aching from his master’s blistering command. The sounds of battle were very close, and the vizier understood at once what had happened. Snatching Suseb’s blade from the hands of a kneeling servant, the immortal dashed out into the unnatural darkness.

  Two javelins struck him at once, punching into his chest from both the left and the right. The vizier staggered under the twin blows, but stretched out his left hand and hissed a dreadful incantation. A storm of magical bolts sped from his fingertips and slashed through the mass of horsemen before him, pitching men and horses shrieking to the ground.

  A desert raider swept in from the right, slashing at Arkhan with his scimitar. The vizier spun on his heel, swinging his massive bronze khopesh and cutting off the horse’s forelegs. The screaming, thrashing animal crashed to the ground and pitched the rider from the saddle. The raider landed nimbly and whirled to face Arkhan, but the last thing he saw was the immortal’s flashing blade as it crashed into his skull.

  Javelins and arrows buzzed through the air, and the shouts of horsemen filled the air. The raiders were among the tents, striking at anyone they could find, and the screams of men and horses echoed through the darkness as the immortals rose from their sleep and joined the swirling battle. Snarling a savage curse, the vizier leapt at the enemy. Fuelled by the fire of Nagash’s unholy elixir, Arkhan plunged into the reeling crowd of desert raiders before him. Men fell dead from their saddles or found themselves pinned beneath the thrashing bodies of their mounts as the vizier cut a bloody path through their midst.

  Then came a rising chorus of wailing, angry cries, and an eerie green glow suffused the darkness to Arkhan’s left. The ghostly chorus swelled to a maddening crescendo, quickly joined by the frenzied screams of living men. A shock went through the crowd of raiders surrounding the vizier, and then suddenly they were gone, galloping madly in the direction of the desert. Arkhan whirled, searching for the cause of their sudden retreat, and saw Nagash, surrounded by almost a score of writhing, screaming men. The necromancer’s hands were raised to the sky, and his eyes blazed with baleful light as he unleashed his retinue of ghosts upon his foes. As the vizier watched, the spirits wound around the shrieking men like snakes, pouring through their open mouths and into the corners of their eyes in search of their living souls. They left behind shrivelled, smoking husks, contorted in poses of agonising death.

  The sudden, unnatural darkness and the wrath of the awakened necromancer set the desert raiders to flight. The sandstorm was already receding as the worshippers of Khsar fled back to the safety of the dunes. Arkhan raised his stolen sword and jeered at the fleeing raiders. Then he nearly staggered beneath his master’s wordless, furious summons.

  The vizier made his way swiftly across the battlefield and fell to his knees before the king. His mind raced, trying to puzzle out Nagash’s sudden fury.

  “What is your bidding, master?” he asked, pressing his forehead to the ground.

  “Quatar has fallen,” Nagash declared. “Nemuhareb and his entire army have been overthrown.” The ghosts surrounding the necromancer echoed his rage, hissing like a clutch of angry vipers. “The rebel kings have placed him under arrest and seized control of the city.”

  The vizier was stunned by the news. Seizing the city? Such a thing was unheard of. Battles between kings were settled on the field of battle, and the loser paid a ransom or other reparations to the victor. Sometimes territory or other rights were forfeited, but unseating a king and taking his city was unprecedented.

  “These rebels have no respect for the law,” Arkhan replied carefully, running his tongue over his jagged teeth. It also went without saying that the enemy was within a few weeks
’ marching distance of Khemri, far closer than Nagash’s own battered army.

  “They think to weaken me by depriving me of Quatar,” Nagash said, “but instead they have delivered themselves into my hands. The Kings of Numas and Zandri will not stand for the seizure of the White Palace, and will gladly join their armies with mine to drive the rebels back across the Valley of Kings.” The necromancer clenched his fist and smiled hungrily. “Then we will march on Lybaras and Rasetra in turn and bring them to heel. This will be the first step in building a new Nehekharan empire.”

  Arkhan gazed across the battlefield at the remnants of Khemri’s conscript army. Nearly all of the Living City’s resources had gone into Nagash’s grand design for the last hundred years. This pitiful force of infantry and cavalrymen was the most that could be mustered to challenge Ka-Sabar, and that army was a horror-stricken remnant of what it had been. The vizier knew all too well how heavily Numas and Zandri had been called upon to provide tribute to fund construction of the living god’s mighty pyramid. Their armies would be in little better condition than Khemri’s, and while Nagash’s terrible power could bestir the bodies of fallen warriors, Arkhan could see that the exertions of the campaign had drained even the king’s prodigious reserves of strength. With Rasetra and Lybaras in control of the White Palace, they were in a precarious position indeed.

  “Numas and Zandri will need time to raise their armies,” Arkhan said, “and time is something we do not have in abundance. Our foes are in position to reach Khemri even now, while these desert wolves dog our every step—”

  The priest king cut him off with a cruel chuckle.

  “Do you doubt me, vizier?” he asked.

  “No, great one!” Arkhan replied quickly. “Never! You are the living god, master of life and death!”

  “Indeed,” Nagash replied. “I have defied death and laid the gods low. I am the master of this land, and all that it contains.” The necromancer stretched out his hand, pointing a pale finger at Arkhan’s head. “You look about you and see calamity, our small army in tatters, surrounded by our foes, but that is because your mind is weak, Arkhan the Black. You let the world bend you to its whims. That is the thinking of a mere mortal,” he spat. “I do not heed the voice of this world, Arkhan. Instead, I command it. I shape it to my will.”

  Nagash’s cold, handsome face was alight with passion. The cloak of spirits surrounding him writhed and wailed in despair, and Arkhan could feel the power of the grave radiating from the king like a cold desert wind.

  The vizier pressed his face to the dust once more.

  “I hear you, master,” he said fearfully. “Victory will be yours, if you will it.”

  “Yes,” Nagash hissed. “So it will. Now rise, vizier,” he said, abruptly turning away and striding in the direction of his pavilion. “Our foes have made their move. Now we shall counter it.”

  Arkhan fell into step behind the king. Every now and then his boot would fall upon one of the desert raiders that Nagash had slain, their bodies crunching like burnt wood beneath his feet.

  “Summon your horsemen,” the king said. “You will ride at once to Bhagar and visit my wrath upon the home of the desert princes.”

  The vizier nodded, fighting to keep his face from betraying his trepidation. After the bloody battle at Zedri and the constant skirmishes since, he was left with just under three thousand cavalrymen, living and dead.

  “It will be a long ride through enemy territory,” he replied, dreading the idea of crossing harsh desert terrain that his foes knew all too well. He and the other immortals would have to bury themselves deep in the sand to escape the sun’s merciless glare.

  “You will conquer Bhagar in five days’ time,” Nagash declared. Arkhan’s good eye widened.

  “But we would have to ride day and night,” he said, before he could catch himself.

  The necromancer paid no heed to the vizier’s impertinence, saying, “You will take two of the Sheku’met along with you. Use only one at a time, to preserve their strength.”

  Arkhan looked up at the swirling, chittering shadow overhead. The Jars of Night were a potent tool, but the great scarabs had to be fed a steady diet of flesh to maintain their sorcerous bond. There had been no lack of food on the battlefield of Zedri, and since then Nagash had set the scarabs to feast upon the bodies of his undead warriors. Arkhan had watched soldiers covered in a writhing carpet of beetles, still marching stolidly down the trade road as the scarabs burrowed deep into their putrefying organs and flensed the skin from their skulls.

  “It will be done, master,” the vizier replied. There was nothing else to say. “What of you and the rest of the army?”

  “The Master of Skulls will take charge of the living warriors and return the army to Khemri,” Nagash said as they reached the great pavilion. Slaves prostrated themselves at the king’s approach, and a pair of moaning spirits flew from the king’s side to peel back the tent’s heavy linen entry flap. The tortured figure of Neferem stood just inside, and when the king beckoned, the queen shuffled painfully to his side.

  “I shall return to Khemri at once,” Nagash said, “and summon the Kings of Numas and Zandri to a council of war.” The king turned to Arkhan. “Remember, you must seize Bhagar in five days’ time: no more, no less. When the moon rises on the fifth day, this is what you must do.”

  The vizier listened to the king’s instructions without expression. He fixed his gaze on the necromancer’s glowing eyes and tried to push the image of Neferem from his mind.

  “As you wish,” he said, when Nagash was finished. “Bhagar’s fate is sealed.”

  The king fixed his vizier with a soul-searching stare, and seemed content to find none. “Remember, Arkhan the Black, go and bend the world to my liking, and you will continue to enjoy my favour.”

  Then the living god raised his hand to the sky and shouted a string of rasping syllables with his ruined voice. At once, the swarm above him thrummed and spun like a gyre balanced on the necromancer’s palm. The leading edges of the great shadow shrank inwards as a torrent of flashing, buzzing scarabs descended in a swirling column around Nagash and his queen. The two figures grew indistinct, and then disappeared altogether.

  Arkhan felt the desert air rush past his shoulders, drawn from all directions towards the seething funnel before him. Then, in an instant, the pillar of glittering chitin leapt skywards like the cracking lash of a taskmaster’s whip, drawing a column of roiling dust in its wake.

  Nagash and the Daughter of the Sun were gone.

  The vizier studied the empty space where the king had been, and a bleak look passed across his scarred face. Around him, slaves rose quickly to their feet and went to work striking the tents they had raised only a few hours before. Overhead, the living shadow began to constrict further as the insects, freed from Nagash’s will, began to settle to the earth in search of food. The steady approach of sunlight shook Arkhan from his reverie. Slowly at first, and then with growing speed, he began issuing orders.

  Within two hours the vizier and his horsemen were heading west, into the unforgiving desert. A restless cloud of hungry scarabs swirled over the centre of the column, shielding Arkhan and his immortal lieutenants from Ptra’s searing light.

  By mid afternoon, the army was on the march again, shuffling wearily north along the old trade road.

  The companies of the dead, no longer animated by the will of their master, were left to fester in the hot desert sun. More than one weary soul looked back at the still figures and envied their fate.

  * * * * *

  A ribbon of seething, chittering shadow passed low over the Living City shortly after dusk. It raced over the top of the southern wall, past the huddled sentries crouching atop the battlements, and down the neglected streets of the Potter’s Quarter. The rooftops of the crumbling, mud-brick homes were deserted, despite the heat of the long day, and not even dogs prowled among the piles of refuse strewn down the narrow lanes. The Merchant Quarter was likewise silent and shu
ttered tight. The squares of the Grand Bazaar were empty, its stalls dilapidated and its flagstones covered with sand. Only the noble districts further north showed any signs of life, where the city watch patrolled the streets in large, well-armed groups past barricaded courtyards and high walls topped with shards of broken pottery and glass. Even the sprawling complex of Settra’s Palace was dark and empty of life. The only light to be seen anywhere on the horizon was off to the east, beyond the city walls, where serpentine flickers of indigo-coloured lightning crawled along the sides of a massive, black pyramid that rose from the centre of Khemri’s great necropolis.

  The hissing swarm of scarabs wound like a serpent towards the great palace, shedding streamers of smoking insect husks as it went. Finally, it plunged like an arrow into the great plaza outside Settra’s Court and poured a flood of wriggling, dying beetles onto the silent square. Their life energies spent on the gruelling northward flight, the last of the scarabs clattered lifelessly to the ground around Nagash and his queen.

  Even as the king came to earth, hundreds of slaves were hurrying down the steps from the court and abasing themselves before their master. In their wake came a pallid immortal clad in a crimson-dyed kilt and red leather sandals. The warrior’s torso was wrapped in strips of banded leather armour, and wide leather bracers covered his forearms. A cape of flayed human skin fluttered in his wake as he strode swiftly up to Nagash and sank to his knees in supplication.

  The priest king acknowledged the immortal with a nod.

  “Rise, Raamket,” he commanded. “How has the city fared in my absence?”

  “Order has been restored, great one,” the immortal said at once. Raamket had broad, blunt features, like a rough-hewn statue, with heavy brows and a bulbous, oft-broken nose. His dark eyes held little imagination or wit, but were cold and steady as stone. “There have been no further riots since the army went south.”