Then, when the Bronze Host was at its weakest, Nagash’s horsemen struck the deadliest blow of all. On the night of the thirty-second day they slipped easily past the unseeing sentries and left their handiwork to be discovered by the stunned warriors at the first light of dawn.
Ten jars of grain and fifteen jars of water were left in plain sight, distributed evenly around the ragged camp. The men fell upon them in a frenzy. When the jars were empty, they broke apart the thick vessels and licked the insides clean.
Then, with a little food in their bellies, the warriors of the Bronze Host sat down and thought about what the strange gift meant.
Akhmen-hotep awoke with a start. Overhead, the night sky was bright and clear, scattered with a sweep of glittering stars.
He hadn’t meant to sleep. The king sat up, blinking owlishly into the darkness. A handful of his Ushabti surrounded him, staring watchfully around the camp. The rest were walking the perimeter, alert for the enemy’s next move. If the skeletons meant to repeat the tactic of the night before, the king meant to stop it.
His bodyguards were under strict orders to drive off the skeletons and destroy any food or water they left behind. Akhmen-hotep knew that it was the only way to deal with the danger. The rations were deadlier than any spear or knife. With them, Nagash could tear the Bronze Host asunder.
Suddenly, three of the Ushabti rose to their feet, blades at the ready. A figure was approaching, picking his way carefully past knots of sleeping men. As he drew near, the king saw that it was Memnet. Waving for the devoted to relax, the king rose to meet his brother.
Akhmen-hotep saw that the Grand Hierophant was upset. His haggard face was pale, and his eyes were wide with fear.
“The time has come,” he whispered. “They are making their move even now!”
Fear, and worse, a terrible despair, swept through the king.
“Who?” he asked.
Memnet wrung his shaking hands, saying, “A score of lesser nobles and their men, a hundred warriors, perhaps more. The water and food were the last straw. They believe that if they treat with Nagash they will be allowed to return to Ka-Sabar in peace.”
Akhmen-hotep nodded grimly. If he summoned all of his bodyguards, he could cut the heart out of the conspiracy. A dozen Ushabti had little to fear from a hundred starving warriors.
“Where is Pakh-amn?” he asked.
“Here I am,” the Master of Horse answered.
Pakh-amn and a dozen noblemen were approaching the king and his guards with weapons in their hands. The young nobleman’s face was taut with anger.
“Your men have turned against you, great one,” he declared. “The consequences of your folly have caught up with you at last.”
Akhmen-hotep heard the sounds of fighting and the screams of dying warriors echo from across the camp. His bodyguards were under attack by the men they had been trying to protect.
“Did you think to cut my throat while I slept?” he snarled at Pakh-amn. “Or did you plan to give me as a gift to your new master in Khemri?” The accusation struck the young nobleman like a blow. He paused, his expression stricken. Seizing the opportunity, the king reached for his sword. “Kill them!” he commanded his Ushabti, and the five bodyguards charged forwards without hesitation, their ritual blades flashing.
Shouts of alarm and the clash of blades filled the air as Pakh-amn and the noblemen recoiled from the Ushabti’s fierce assault. Men fell like wheat before the blades of the devoted, cut down by blurring strokes that sliced effortlessly through their armour. Pakh-amn fought furiously, shouting curses as he turned aside one attack after another. A ritual blade landed a glancing blow against his sword-arm, and then another bit deep into his thigh. The nobleman staggered, but fought on, parrying furiously as blood poured over his knee and spattered onto the sands.
Within moments Pakh-amn’s warriors had been cut down. The Master of Horse lasted a few seconds more, but it was clear that the wound in his leg had cut the artery and his life was draining away. He stumbled, and an Ushabti’s sword cut deep into his chest. With a groan, Pakh-amn sank slowly to the ground.
Akhmen-hotep walked over to the fallen nobleman. His heart was heavy, but his face was a mask of rage.
“Go and aid your brothers,” he told the devoted. “Return to me as swiftly as you can.” With a snarl he kicked the sword from Pakh-amn’s hand. “I’ll deal with this one.”
The Ushabti raced silently into the darkness. Akhmen-hotep watched the pulse of blood streaming from Pakh-amn’s leg steadily weaken. The Master of Horse stood on the threshold between this world and the next.
“You damned fool,” Akhmen-hotep said. “I would have honoured you when we returned to Ka-Sabar. Why couldn’t you have settled for that? Why did you have to try to claim my throne as well?” A strange expression came over Pakh-amn’s bloodless face.
“You’ve gone…” the young nobleman whispered, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, “You’ve gone mad… great one. The gods have… abandoned you… at last. I came… to save you.”
The king’s angry expression faltered.
“You’re lying,” he said. “I know what you’ve planned. Memnet warned me.” He turned to his brother. “Tell him—”
The knife felt cold as it slid into his chest. The pain was breathtaking. Akhmen-hotep’s mouth opened in shock as he stared into his brother’s eyes.
Memnet, once the Grand Hierophant of Ptra, glared angrily at his brother.
“I tried to tell you,” he said. “I tried. Back at Bel Aliad, do you remember? The old ways are gone, brother. Nagash has become the master of death. He has overthrown the gods! If we are to prosper, we must worship him. Why couldn’t you see that?”
The king’s knees buckled. He fell, dragging Memnet’s knife from his trembling hands. Akhmen-hotep landed on his back, next to Pakh-amn’s body. The Master of Horse was staring skyward, the tracks of his tears drying at the corners of his dead eyes.
The Priest-King of Ka-Sabar turned his eyes to the stars, seeking the faces of his gods.
Arkhan the Black rode out of the desert with a hundred of his horsemen at his back. The fighting in the camp had ended. The Ushabti had wrought a fearsome vengeance for the death of their king before they too had succumbed. Bodies lay everywhere, providing bloody testament to the Bronze Host’s last battle. The vizier bared his black teeth in a gruesome smile.
Men prostrated themselves as the immortal and his retinue approached, cowering and trembling with terror. Some clawed at their faces and moaned like children, their sanity having fled at last. Of the four thousand warriors that had followed Akhmen-hotep on his ill-fated expedition, less than five hundred still survived.
The immortal guided his undead mount down a long, corpse-choked lane that ran all the way to the centre of the camp. Memnet the traitor awaited him there, standing over the body of his brother. Blood still stained the fallen priest’s hands.
Arkhan reined in his decaying horse before Memnet and gave the wretch a haughty stare.
“Kneel before the Undying King of Khemri,” he commanded.
Memnet flinched at Arkhan’s voice, but he raised his head in a gesture of defiance.
“I kneel only before my master,” the traitor said, “and you are not him, Arkhan the Black.”
The immortal chuckled. Suddenly, a harsh, rasping wind rose among the company of skeletons at his back. Memnet first took the sound to be a kind of laughter, and perhaps it was, but the sound came not from desiccated throats, but from the stirring of insects that poured from empty eye sockets and gaping mouths, or crawled from the depths of ragged wounds. The swarm took flight, swirling into a column of seething life that descended before Memnet and assumed the image of Nagash.
“Bow before your master,” rasped the voice of the necromancer.
Memnet fell to his knees with a cry of fear, saying, “I hear you, mighty one! I hear and obey! All has been done as you commanded,” he said, gesturing to the body of the king. “See?
Akhmen-hotep, your hated foe, is no more!” The head of the construct seemed to regard the dead king, and then turned to face Memnet once more.
“You have done well. Now rise, and claim your reward,” he said. Wringing his hands, Memnet struggled to his feet. Arkhan dismounted and stepped forwards with a sneer of contempt. Reluctantly he held out a vial of red liquid.
“Immortality is yours,” the king said. “Take it, and go forth to rule Ka-Sabar in my name.”
Memnet took the vial and gazed at its contents with a mixture of awe and revulsion. “As you command, Undying One,” he replied. “My men will require food and water to complete our march.” Arkhan threw back his head and laughed. Memnet cringed at the awful sound.
“We have given you all the food we had,” he said coldly. “Fear not. Your warriors will soon have no need for it.”
“Do you remember all I taught you?” the necromancer asked.
“I remember,” Memnet replied. “All the dreams… they are still locked in my head. I know the incantations, master, every line, every syllable.”
“Then drink the elixir, and power over the dead will be yours,” Nagash declared. “Drink. Your army awaits.”
Memnet stared at the vial for a moment longer, and then pulled off the stopper and drank the elixir in one swallow. A shudder wracked his wasted frame, and with a cry he fell to the ground, writhing and convulsing as the elixir burned through his veins.
Arkhan turned away from the spectacle with an expression of disgust. He looked westwards, where the rest of Memnet’s army was slowly approaching over the dunes. All the corpses of Bel Aliad, men, women and children, plus the city’s slaughtered mercenaries and the Bronze Host’s battlefield dead, shuffled silently across the sands. The desert sun had rendered them down to nothing more than scraps of leathery flesh and bleached bone, and they numbered in the thousands.
The image of Nagash wavered and broke apart, transforming once again into a column of rasping, whirling insect life. It sped across the sands, engulfing Arkhan’s form, and then like a desert cyclone it recoiled into the night sky, taking the immortal with it.
When Memnet’s senses finally returned he was alone except for the broken souls of his brother’s army and the raw, grinning faces of his own.
TWENTY-THREE
The White Gates
The Western Trade Road, near Quatar, the City
of the Dead, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1744 Imperial Reckoning)
Like a wounded giant, the allied army stumbled and lurched its way along the winding road back to Quatar, leaving a trail of flesh and blood with each ponderous step.
Rakh-amn-hotep kept the army in camp during the worst heat of the day and on the march at night, believing that the Usurper’s pursuing army couldn’t manage a major attack beneath Ptra’s blazing sun. There had been probing attacks by Numasi cavalry at dawn and dusk, but each time they were rebuffed with little loss. Nagash’s main force, as far as the Rasetran king could gather, was at least half a day’s march to their west, following them doggedly along the trade road.
Rakh-amn-hotep believed that Nagash was biding his time, like a jackal waits for its prey to weaken in the desert heat before closing in for the kill.
The defeat at the Fountains of Eternal Life haunted the Rasetran king, a man who had spent his entire adult life on the battlefield. He had plotted and planned the western march for more than two years, and in the end Rakh-amn-hotep had discovered that he wasn’t even fighting the same sort of battle that his enemy was. He had read all the accounts of the battle at Zedri and believed himself a better general than either Nagash or Akhmen-hotep, but he had still made the fatal error of fighting the Usurper as though he were a mortal king in command of a civilised army.
Nagash, however, was not swayed by furious assaults or swift cavalry movements. The thought of seeing thousands of his citizens, the lifeblood of his city, cut down on the battlefield was little more than an irritation to him. He could suffer blows that would have crushed a mortal king, only to rise once more.
Rakh-amn-hotep had begun to despair that they would ever be rid of Nagash.
More than three weeks after the battle outside the Fountains, the king could only think of keeping the army alive for one more day. The retreat had been a bitter, gruelling ordeal, without a doubt the hardest march of Rakh-amn-hotep’s long life. Surviving those first days after the battle had been the hardest. With the water casks empty, the king had ordered his Ushabti to comb the army for every drop of liquid they could find. They confiscated all the remaining wine carried by the army’s noblemen, and all the sacrificial libations brought by their multitude of priests.
The cavalrymen kept themselves alive by turning to the old bandit trick of drinking a cupful of their horses’ blood each day. Even so, the warriors and animals of the host weakened quickly, and many of the wounded succumbed within days. It was only by the constant efforts of the Lybaran priests that their king, Hekhmenukep, still clung to life.
With the Lybaran sky-boats destroyed by Nagash’s sorcery, the allied army paid the price of travelling without a proper baggage train. There were few wagons to draw upon, forcing Rakh-amn-hotep to send detachments of light cavalry on a long, dangerous march off to the north to try to draw water from the River Vitae, many leagues away. The cavalrymen were harassed by Numasi horsemen the entire way, but their courage and determination kept the army going long past the point of collapse.
Still, both armies had suffered greatly in men, animals and materiel. The Lybarans had seen every one of their war machines destroyed, for those that had survived the battle had exhausted their energies and couldn’t keep pace with the army’s swift retreat. Rather than allow the constructs to fall into the Usurper’s hands, the army’s engineers had breached the binding wards that kept the machines’ fire-spirits in place. The resulting eruptions blew the engines apart in thunderous blasts of wood, metal and steam. Some of the senior Lybaran engineers, men who had devoted much of their lives to creating these wondrous machines, gave themselves up to the fires.
The Rasetrans suffered as well, particularly their jungle auxiliaries. The rationing of water amounted to a virtual death sentence for the giant thunder lizards, whose bodies were already taxed near to breaking point by the dry climate. The last of the great beasts died within a week after the battle, and the numbers of lizardmen dwindled swiftly thereafter. During the long night marches the chill desert air carried the eerie, keening sounds of the barbarians’ death songs as they mourned the loss of their kin. The song died away a bit at a time, each and every night, until finally it was heard no more.
All that remained of the once-proud allied army was a bedraggled horde of wasted men and horses, and Rakh-amn-hotep had to concern himself with keeping his warriors from casting away their heavy weapons and armour to lighten their load on the march. He had already instituted severe punishments for warriors who were found to have abandoned their wargear, and still, each night the rearguard came upon bundles of leather armour and helmets, bronze swords and spears. The king would have begun ordering the offenders impaled if he’d had any wood to spare. He would be damned if he got the army back to Quatar only to find that they’d thrown away all the tools they would need to keep the city out of Nagash’s hands.
The army was close to the White City, thank the gods, and the Brittle Peaks dominated the eastern horizon, their jagged flanks a dull black against the deep blue vault of the heavens.
Rakh-amn-hotep’s chariot was heading westwards, back along the army’s long, sinuous line of march. The king spent most every night ranging back and forth along the length of the allied host, checking the state of the companies and reminding the nobles of their responsibilities. It was a routine born of long habit, forged in the jungle campaigns south of Rasetra, and it had served the king well in the past.
They were nearly at the centre of the slowly marching column, passing alongside what was left of the baggage train and the huge wag
ons of the Lybaran court. Priests paced alongside the creaking wagon that held Hekhmenukep, their heads bowed as they prayed for the king’s survival. As Rakh-amn-hotep’s chariot rumbled past, one of the holy men straightened and beckoned to the king, nearly stepping out into the chariot’s path.
Rakh-amn-hotep stifled a disapproving frown and touched the chariot driver on the shoulder, signalling him to stop. The weary horses needed little encouragement, their heads drooping as they snuffled about in the dust in search of something that might contain a few drops of moisture.
The Rasetran king squinted in the darkness at the approaching priest.
“Nebunefer?” he said, recognising the envoy from Mahrak. “Since when did you become a healer?”
“One doesn’t need the gift of healing to pray for the health of a great king,” the old priest said stiffly. His voice was rough and leathery, and his haggard face seemed even more careworn and stern after the privations of the long retreat, but the gleam in his dark eyes was as indomitable as ever.
The Rasetran king nodded grudgingly and kept his doubts to himself. Nebunefer had kept to the army’s contingent of priests since their departure from Quatar, but Rakh-amn-hotep had little doubt that the old schemer was still somehow in close contact with the members of the Hieratic Council back in Mahrak and his spies scattered across Nehekhara.
“How is Hekhmenukep doing?” he asked.
“His condition is grave,” the old priest replied. “His servants fear that an infection has settled into his lungs.” Nebunefer folded his arms and stared up at the king. “The king needs the services of a temple, and very soon, or I fear he will not survive.” Rakh-amn-hotep gestured to the east.
“Quatar is almost in sight,” he replied. “We should reach its gates early tomorrow night.” Nebunefer was unmoved.
[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Page 32