Moments later the slave’s lifeless body toppled onto the ground. Nagash wiped the dagger clean using the slave’s hair, and then held a trembling hand over the bowl. His eyes lit with avarice.
“I can feel it,” he whispered. “The power is there, in the blood!” He held out his hands. “Give it to me! Quickly!”
Khefru offered up the bowl, and without hesitation Nagash brought it to his lips. It was hot and bitter, dribbling over his chin and staining his robes, but the taste set his nerves on fire. The slave’s vigour flooded into him, filling the king with strength unlike any he’d known before. Greedily, he took deeper and deeper draughts, until the blood ran in thick streams down his chest.
Nagash let the empty bowl tumble from his fingers. Power radiated from his skin like heat from a forge.
“More,” he hissed. “More!” The look he turned upon Khefru sent the young priest stumbling from the tent in terror.
Burning with stolen vitality, Nagash threw back his head and uttered a terrible, triumphant laugh. Then he began to weave the incantations that would seal Zandri’s doom.
TWENTY-TWO
Spirits of the Howling Wastes
The Great Desert, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1744 Imperial Reckoning)
The skeletal horsemen attacked the army’s makeshift camp many times over the course of their first night in the desert, and did so every night thereafter.
They would ride out of the darkness, dry hoofbeats near-silent on the shifting sands, and fire a volley or two of arrows into the press of men before whirling around and vanishing back into the night. Warriors would jerk awake at the screams of wounded men and scramble to their feet, believing that the undead hordes of Bel Aliad had caught up with them at last. Reeling with exhaustion, shivering with fear, they would clutch their weapons in white-knuckled hands and search frantically for the source of the attack, but by then the enemy was long gone. Cold and frustrated, the men of the Bronze Host eventually wrapped themselves back in their short cloaks and tried to calm down enough to sleep once more. Then, an hour or two later, the horsemen would attack once again.
Sometimes the riders fired at random into the camp. Other times they sought out specific targets. They shot at any priest they could see, especially the handful of Neru’s acolytes who had survived the attack outside Bel Aliad. The ward they laid around the camp kept the undead riders at a distance, but the magical invocation had to be maintained in a constant, nightly vigil. Akhmen-hotep was forced to send a heavily armoured escort with the acolytes to shield them from enemy arrows as they walked the perimeter beneath the gleaming moon.
It was a hazardous duty, and one or more of the acolytes’ bodyguards were wounded each night, but without the protective ward the army was vulnerable to more than just Nagash’s horsemen. The Great Desert was home to a multitude of hungry and malevolent spirits that preyed upon the living, and their howls could be heard among the dunes when the moon’s light was dim.
Each dawn, the army would find itself a little diminished from the day before. Wounded men died in the night, overcome by their wounds or sickened by the chill air. Khalifra’s fever worsened as an infection set in around the barbed arrow in her shoulder. She lingered, raving, for four more days, but despite Memnet’s constant ministrations the high priestess finally succumbed. Her body was prepared as best as her acolytes could manage and wrapped in scavenged linen for the long journey home.
The bodies of the common warriors were removed from the camp by a special detail overseen by Hashepra, the Hierophant of Geheb. Out of sight of their comrades, the men methodically dismembered the corpses and removed their organs, so that Nagash could not add them to his blasphemous ranks. Hashepra commended their spirits to Djaf and Usirian, and their mutilated bodies were buried beneath the sands.
There was little water and even less food to keep the army going. Within three days they had to begin butchering the wounded horses and ration the meat carefully so that every warrior had at least something to eat. Nothing was wasted. Even the blood was collected carefully in Geheb’s great sacrificial bowls and given to the men a swallow at a time. The constant night attacks nevertheless took their toll, sapping the men’s strength and slowing their pace.
It was eight days before the Bronze Host reached the first of the Bhagarite supply caches. The surviving desert raiders had turned sullen and belligerent since the retreat from Bel Aliad. They were furious with the king for taking their swords and leaving them to the mercy of the city’s undead citizens, and yet paradoxically resentful that they had not yet been allowed to die and join their kin, as they’d expected. The warriors of the host regarded them with naked hostility, blaming the Bhagarites more than Nagash for their present misery. After one of the guides was set upon by a gang of warrior-aspirants and nearly beaten to death, the king was forced to use his Ushabti to guard the Bhagarites from his warriors.
After more than a week in the desert, hungry and fleeing from an implacable army of the dead, Akhmen-hotep’s men were becoming their own worst enemies.
“How much?” the king asked, sitting in the cool shade cast by the gully wall. His voice was a dry, rasping croak, and his lips were cracked by thirst. Like the rest of the army, he drank only three cups of water per day, and the last drink had been more than four hours ago.
The army had reached the third of the Bhagarite supply caches: a series of hidden caves among the narrow defiles of a range of sheer sandstone cliffs that rose like weathered monuments from the desert sands. When they’d arrived the warriors had scrambled like lizards into the shade of the twisting gullies, heedless of the serpents and scorpions that no doubt sheltered beneath the rubble at the base of the cliffs. Many of the warriors had cast aside their heavy bronze armour days ago, next went the shields, and even their polished helmets. Some didn’t even carry weapons any longer, having divested themselves of every bit of unnecessary weight that they could manage. They were ragged, filthy and dull-eyed, little more than animals preoccupied with survival in a hostile land. Only the king’s Ushabti maintained their weapons and harness, still true to their sacred oaths of service to their god and their king. The leonine devoted seemed untouched by the privations of the brutal retreat, sustained in body if not in spirit by the gifts of mighty Geheb. They were the king’s strong right hand, and perhaps the only thing that held the army together after all that it had suffered.
Hashepra sighed, wiping dirt from his hands, and glanced over his shoulder at the low cave gaping on the far side of the gully wall.
“There’s a spring inside, thank the gods, but only eight jars of grain,” he said.
Akhmen-hotep fought to hide his disappointment. Beside him, Memnet shifted silently on his haunches. The Grand Hierophant had lost a great deal of weight over the course of the campaign. His once-round face was sunken-cheeked, and his wide girth had shrunk so quickly that the skin hung from his waist like a half-empty sack. Though he could have claimed a greater share of the food as his proper due, the high priest had taken even less than the king. If anything, the nightmarish journey across the sands seemed to have made the Grand Hierophant stronger and more assured than ever before, and Akhmen-hotep had found himself depending heavily on his brother as the situation worsened.
“The caches are getting smaller,” the king said wearily. Hashepra nodded.
“Honestly, I don’t think the Bhagarites expected to live long enough to worry about a return trip,” he said. “I expect we exhausted the major caches on the way to Bel Aliad. All that’s left are bandit hideouts like this one.”
Akhmen-hotep ran a wrinkled hand over his face, wincing as he brushed the sores on his forehead and cheeks.
“Eight jars won’t last us more than a couple of days. How far to the next cache?”
The Hierophant of Geheb grimaced, and said, “Three days, more or less, but the Bhagarites say it lies north of here, not east.”
“And the closest one further eastward?”
; “A week at least, they said.”
The king shook his head.
“We’ll have to kill more of the horses. How many are left?” he asked. Hashepra paused, trying to think. Memnet raised his head and cleared his throat with a hoarse cough.
“Twelve,” he said.
“Twelve horses, out of a thousand,” Akhmen-hotep murmured, musing bitterly on so much lost wealth. The retreat had been more ruinous than any battlefield defeat. The king couldn’t imagine how his city would recover.
“The Bhagarites still have twenty,” Memnet replied. “We could start with them instead.”
“The horsemen would sooner give up their right arms,” the king said, “and the horses are the only thing we have that ensures their cooperation.”
Hashepra sank down onto his haunches beside the king.
“The men won’t see it that way,” he said quietly. “They already grumble that the Bhagarite horses are being fed while the army goes hungry. Soon you might be forced to put a guard upon them as well.”
Akhmen-hotep glanced worriedly at the priest, and asked, “Have things got as bad as that?” Hashepra shrugged his powerful shoulders.
“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “My acolytes have heard some talk here and there. The men are hungry and afraid. They don’t trust the Bhagarites, and they resent your protection of them.”
“But that’s madness,” the king hissed. “I don’t like it any better than anyone else, but without the Bhagarites we won’t make it out of the desert alive.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with logic, great one,” Hashepra said, shaking his head. “The men are barely rational at this point.”
“No.” Memnet interjected. “It’s not the men who are the problem. It’s Pakh-amn. He’s turning them against you, brother, and you’re letting him do it.”
Akhmen-hotep scowled at the ground between his feet. He hadn’t seen very much of the Master of Horse since their first night in the desert. The young nobleman kept to the back of the army, claiming that he maintained a rearguard in case Nagash attacked the column in force, but it had been weeks, and such a threat had yet to materialise.
Hashepra eyed Memnet dubiously, and said, “Pakh-amn is an arrogant rogue, perhaps, but no traitor. He’s served the king ably since we left Ka-Sabar.”
“Has he? I wonder,” the Grand Hierophant said. “He enjoys the admiration of the warriors, without being forced to make the difficult decisions to keep the army alive. Has he made any effort at all to curtail the men’s resentments?”
Hashepra had no answer to the priest’s question. Akhmen-hotep set his jaw stubbornly. “A mutiny wouldn’t improve our odds of survival,” he protested.
“Pakh-amn doesn’t want an army; he wants a throne,” Memnet said. “He wouldn’t care if he walked out of the desert alone, so long as Ka-Sabar was his.”
“Enough!” the king snapped, cutting off his brother with a curt wave of his hand. “I’ve heard this all before. If Pakh-amn means to move against me, let him come. In the meantime, let’s clean out this cache and move on. We’re wasting precious time.”
The king climbed unsteadily to his feet. As one, his Ushabti rose gracefully from the shadows and followed along in Akhmen-hotep’s wake as he made his way back to the army’s remaining chariots. Hashepra watched the king go, his expression thoughtful.
“There is something sinister at work here,” he mused. “The acolytes of Neru have found places where their nightly wards have been tampered with. Someone is stealing out of the camp late at night, but so far the sentries have been unable to catch who it is.”
Memnet glanced up at Hashepra, his expression intent.
“Have you told the king?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the hierophant said. “I have no interest in starting a witch hunt. The army’s morale is fragile enough as it is. My acolytes and I are investigating the matter quietly. Tell me, do you have any evidence of Pakh-amn’s intentions?”
“No,” Memnet said, shaking his head. “The Master of Horse is too clever for that. All we can do is watch for signs that he is about to make his move. I fear that we will have little warning, which is why I have begged my brother to take action before it is too late.”
Hashepra nodded.
“Well, now at least I have a direction to look in,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’ll keep a close eye on Pakh-amn and see what the man is up to. Perhaps I can uncover enough evidence to expose him.”
“I will pray to the gods for your success, holy one,” Memnet said, nodding, but the Grand Hierophant did not sound too hopeful.
Three days later, Hashepra was dead. His acolytes found him in the early hours of the morning, wrapped tightly in his cloak. When they unwound the tattered fabric they discovered a giant black scorpion nestled in the hollow between the hierophant’s shoulder and neck. He had not been the first man to perish in such a way since the retreat began, for Sokth’s children were fond of taking refuge among the living and tormenting them with their terrible stings. The venom of the black scorpion turned the body as rigid as stone, and Hashepra had died in agonising silence, unable to make a single sound as the poison worked its way to his heart.
The news of Hashepra’s death filled the rest of the army with superstitious dread, and men took to giving offerings to Sokth from their already meagre rations, in the hope that the God of Poisoners would spare them. Akhmen-hotep tried to prevent the practice, arguing that fear was a poison all its own, but the men would not listen, and thus grew weaker still.
In the end, the king was forced to slaughter four more of the precious horses and ration the meat and blood carefully to get the army to the next bandit cache, only to find that the caves had been emptied a long time before. The anger and despair among the men had been palpable, and resentment against the Bhagarites nearly led to a riot. Only the king’s Ushabti managed to keep the desert guides alive. That night, however, two of their horses were killed and butchered, evincing wails of horror and bitter curses from the desert horsemen when the bones were discovered the following morning. The perpetrators of the deed remained a mystery.
On the night of their fifteenth day in the desert, the acolytes of Neru and their exhausted bodyguards were slain in a brutal ambush just before dawn. The men, well-practised in watching for signs of mounted attackers, were caught unawares when a dozen skeletal archers rose from the sands on the other side of the camp’s protective ward and fired into their midst. The heavy infantry were the first to die, shot through the throat or pierced in the back at nearly point-blank range. Then the ambushers turned their bows on the fleeing acolytes. By the time reinforcements arrived the skeletons had disappeared, and the army had lost what little protection it had against the hungry night.
From that point forward, Akhmen-hotep was forced to keep half the army awake while the other half snatched a few hours’ sleep, rotating the groups every four hours. Attacks from the skeletal horsemen continued, and casualties mounted. Warriors who were caught sleeping on watch forfeited their food ration for the next day, which was tantamount to a death sentence. With so few chariots remaining, men who could no longer march had to be left behind.
Slowly but surely, the spirits of the desert closed in. Nightmares plagued the sleeping men, and strange figures stalked the edges of the camp beneath the moonlight. Men sometimes rose from sleep and tried to walk off into the sands, swearing they heard the voices of their wives or children. Those who succeeded were never seen again.
The Bhagarites led the army to one empty cache after another, and bore the king’s recriminations with looks of sullen contempt. The number of horses dwindled, until by the twenty-fourth day the last of the chariot pullers was dead. According to the guides, the next cache was more than five days away. The Bhagarites would no longer say for certain how many more days it would take for them to reach the far side of the desert.
Days passed, and the rations dwindled. Groups of men began lurking around the picket line where the last B
hagarite horses were kept, despite the warning glares of the Ushabti who had been set to guard them. Desperate as they were, none of the warriors dared to try their luck against the devoted, but the same could not be said of the Bhagarites.
On the thirtieth night of the retreat, while strange, savage creatures paced and howled in the darkness beyond the edge of the camp, the desert raiders commended themselves to Khsar and slipped away from the handful of Ushabti that still guarded them. Though the devoted were more than capable of fending off the advances of their starving kinsmen, their powers were not equal to the guile and stealth of the Bhagarites, who were horse thieves of nearly supernatural skill. The raiders had reached the pickets and climbed bareback onto their mounts before the devoted knew what was happening.
Shouts of alarm rang out across the camp as the desert riders spurred their beloved horses past the surprised bodyguards out into the sands. A few of the men tried to chase after the riders, but none got very far. Khsar’s divine animals were still as swift as the desert wind, and fled like smoke from the warriors’ outstretched hands. Their riders, free at last, threw back their heads and stretched their arms up to the sky, feeling the pounding of the hooves and the whisper of the wind against their skin one last time.
Without food or water, the last men of Bhagar and their beloved horses rode into the trackless desert, commending themselves into the embrace of their faceless god.
After the men of Bhagar were gone, there was nothing left but to march eastwards and pray to the gods for deliverance.
The army dwindled swiftly, like grains of sand spilling from a broken glass. Men died in the night, taken by madness or hunger, or simply fell to the ground during the march and refused to get up again. The hostility of the warriors subsided, along with all other emotions. They had been emptied of thought and feeling by the desert, and now waited only to die.
[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Page 31