[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  The immortals stared furiously off to the north, wondering where the Zandri army was. Nearly a dozen messengers had been sent demanding their support, but none of the riders had returned.

  In the swirling chaos of battle, the immortals failed to notice that the army’s catapults had fallen silent, nor could they see the smoke rising from their tents in the sorcerous gloom.

  While the warriors of Zandri were overrunning Nagash’s encampment, Lamashizzar’s troops formed up and advanced southwards, closing in on the necromancer’s forces from the north. The warriors had furled their brilliant yellow banners and smudged their faces with ash, concealing them somewhat under the pall of shadow covering the city. They had reached to within a hundred yards of the enemy’s struggling right flank just as Nagash’s first mob of reinforcements came stumbling through Mahrak’s shattered gate.

  Observing his army’s progress from the back of a coal-black mare, Lamashizzar ordered his companies of dragon-men forwards.

  Nagash hurled Mahrak’s dead headlong at the advancing enemy troops, seeking to bog down their advance under the weight of thousands of shambling bodies. The wasted corpses of men, women and children stumbled through the gate and threw themselves upon the eastern spears, while the Undying King marshalled his skeletal companies inside the city and sent them back out through the gate in good order.

  The king came last, leading his Tomb Guard. His immortals took heart at the sight of the Undying King, and redoubled the efforts of the companies on the centre and left. The battle had been raging for more than two hours, and the eastern troops were weakening steadily. Nagash gathered his reserves on the right and prepared for a counter-assault. Controlling such a huge force and maintaining the mantle of shadows overhead was fast draining his magical reserves, leaving him little in the way of power to devote to destructive spells. That would come later, once he’d hurled back the enemy assault and regained the offensive.

  Then the king noticed the black-armoured troops advancing slowly from the north, nearly perpendicular to Mahrak’s western wall.

  The damned Lahmians! Either they had put the men of Zandri to flight, or else Amn-nasir’s men had turned traitor like the cowardly Numasi. Regardless, the necromancer knew that they had to be dealt with immediately, or else they would leave his army with no room left to manoeuvre. They would be trapped against the walls of the city and ground to pieces by forces advancing on three sides.

  Nagash shifted the army’s reserve companies to the north, anchored in the centre by his elite Tomb Guard. With another set of unspoken commands he returned control of the main army to his immortals, and then headed north in the wake of his bodyguards. The Undying King drew on the last of his dwindling reserves and began to chant a fearsome incantation.

  At Lamashizzar’s command, four companies of dragon-men rushed out in front of the set ranks of the spear companies and formed into tightly packed blocks, four ranks deep. The front rank of each company dropped to one knee, allowing the rank behind to rest their dragon-staves on the shoulders of the men in front.

  Five companies of skeletal warriors advanced upon the dragon-men in a thunderous rattle of wood, metal and bone. It was a fearsome sight to behold, but the dragon-men were the elite of the Lahmian army, hand-picked for their intelligence and strength of will. Few people had the nerve to handle the deadly and unpredictable dragon powder made by the alchemists of the far east.

  The skeletons approached in tight formation, advancing implacably upon the Lahmian lines. As they approached, the dragon-men drew lengths of smouldering cotton rope from bottles at their waists. They blew steadily upon the wicks to keep the burning ends lit as the distance to the enemy dwindled. Two of the four companies aimed the mouths of their dragon-staves at the centre of the enemy line. The white shields of the troops in the middle made for excellent targets in the faint light.

  At fifty yards, Lamashizzar ordered the dragon-men into action. Each warrior touched his burning wick to a tiny hole drilled in the side of his stave. Two thousand dragons spat tongues of fire, and sent balls of lead the size of sling stones crashing through the enemy ranks in a wash of brimstone and an ear-splitting crescendo of man-made thunder.

  The sound was appalling. Nagash had never heard the like. It was followed by a terrible, rending clatter as a hail of invisible projectiles tore through the dense formations of his troops. Shields splintered, and limbs and torsos exploded in a shower of fragments. The terrible hail ripped through the companies from front to back, buzzing malevolently through the air like river hornets. A fearsome impact struck the king in the left shoulder, punching like a fist through cloth, muscle and bone. The words of his incantation were swept away in a furious tide of searing pain. Nagash staggered, his right hand rising to his shoulder and coming away slick with viscous blood. A hole the size of his thumb had been punched through his robe and vestments, and the cloth surrounding it was soaking with gore.

  For a moment the necromancer’s view was obscured by a pall of stinking black smoke. When it cleared, he was stunned to see the extent of the damage wrought by the Lahmian attack. His Tomb Guard had suffered the worst, nearly three-quarters of the heavy company having been blown apart. Nearly a third of his remaining companies had also been destroyed. The survivors were still moving doggedly forwards, but the enemy companies were moving, shifting so that their front two ranks traded places with those behind them, and more of the terrible staves were being brought to bear on his warriors.

  Trumpets sounded in the north-east. Nagash could hear a rumble of hooves, and knew that the Lahmians had committed their cavalry. The black-armoured horsemen charged past their spear companies on the Lahmian right flank and slashed through the risen corpses of Mahrak, scattering the last of Nagash’s reinforcements and sealing his army’s doom.

  Ahead of the king his skeletons had almost reached the front ranks of the Lahmian fire-throwers, but the enemy had readied their second volley. Furious, Nagash struggled to force the pain aside and summon forth his power, but even as he did so, he knew that he would be too late.

  Overhead, the mantle of shadow was weakening, admitting thin shafts of bright, golden sunlight. Shouts of terror and dismay went up from the king’s immortals. Nagash, the Undying King of Khemri, roared out a bitter curse as the world before him erupted in blooms of hungry flame.

  EPILOGUE

  The Casket of Souls

  Khemri, the Living City, in the 63rd year of Djaf the Terrible

  (-1740 Imperial reckoning)

  Two months after the Battle of Mahrak, the Army of Seven Kings arrived at the outskirts of Khemri. There were no armies to contest their approach, nor cheering throngs with vessels of sacred water to welcome their liberators. The fields outside the great city were barren, and its gates open and untended. Vultures perched on the battlements, and jackals stole furtively down the sand-choked streets. It was a desolate, haunted place, marked by centuries of terror and steeped in innocent blood. The army’s scouts, hardened veterans one and all, refused to enter the city at all except when the sun was high and bright overhead.

  It had been a long and arduous pursuit from the charnel fields outside the City of the Gods. At Mahrak, the dragon-men of the Lahmian army had shattered Nagash’s reserves and sent a terrible shock through the rest of the Usurper’s host. As the allied armies began to tighten their grip around the undead horde, the pall of shadow hanging over the city began to unravel. Shafts of lambent sunlight pierced the gloom, heartening the allied warriors and filling their enemies with dread. The rumour spread among the eastern armies that Nagash had been slain, and a great shout of triumph went up from their ranks as they forced the Usurper’s skeletal horrors back against the walls of the ravaged city.

  When the sun burst through the failing shadows the surviving immortals in the Usurper’s army knew that all was lost. Their only hope of survival was to break through the ever-tightening encirclement and try to get away. The immortals gathered their remaining cavalry, and with a wail o
f war-horns they threw themselves at the allied warriors stretched across the western edge of the plain. These were the spearmen and cavalry of the allied armies’ right flank, who had seen the hardest fighting of the day and were on the verge of exhaustion.

  The sudden enemy charge caught the warriors by surprise, and despite a bitter fight the immortals managed to punch through their lines and break out to the west. They fled through the chaos and flames of their encampment and raced for the Gates of the Dusk, hoping to lose themselves in the Valley of Kings before the mantle of darkness came completely apart.

  The immortals sacrificed entire companies of infantry to hold their pursuers at bay. Fewer than ten thousand undead infantry and horsemen reached the Valley of Kings, leaving the bones of more than a hundred thousand warriors littering the fields to the east. By the end of the day the terrible army of the Usurper had been all but completely destroyed.

  There were no thoughts of giving chase at first, for merely lifting the siege of Mahrak had been daunting enough. Their victory had been greater and more total than they had believed possible. Men were sent south to gather supplies for the long trek eastwards, and in the meantime, the kings turned their attention to the devastated city and its citizens.

  They soon discovered that Mahrak was a city only in name. Its homes and marketplaces were empty, and fires burned out of control in many of its temples. Late in the evening after the battle had ended, the city’s few survivors emerged from the Palace of the Gods and wept for their salvation. Half of the once-mighty Hieratic Council, plus a few hundred distraught priests and starving citizens were all that remained. A great many of the priests died on that first night, unable to bear the knowledge that their gods were lost to them forever.

  Out on the charnel plain, companies of soldiers combed the battlefield in search of survivors. The bodies of the dead immortals were taken into the city and hurled into a roaring bonfire lit in the plaza outside the Palace of the Gods. The body of the Usurper could not be found, nor that of his vizier, Arkhan the Black.

  So, the allied armies set off in pursuit of the last remnant of the Usurper’s host. They chased the fleeing army down the Valley of Kings, encountering stubborn resistance from enemy rearguard troops and suffering constant ambushes from parties of skeletal horsemen. The bulk of the Usurper’s surviving companies fought a bitter holding action at the Gates of the Dawn, but the allied troops forced their way through the ruins after three days of hard fighting. Outside the gates of Quatar the pursuers came upon the Usurper’s terrible battle standard, woven from the living skin of King Nemuhareb. Someone had planted it so that it faced towards the city’s deserted streets. Why it had been abandoned like that, none could say.

  Some prisoners were taken on the trade roads west of Quatar, mostly terrified merchants carrying ingots of bronze from Ka-Sabar to Khemri. From them, the allied kings learned of the treachery of Memnet, the former Hierophant of Ka-Sabar, and of his nightmarish rule over the City of Bronze. They also learned that Raamket, one of the Usurper’s chief lieutenants, still held the Living City with a small garrison of immortals and undead warriors. The host continued on, preparing for one final battle outside the walls of Khemri, only to discover a city of ghosts and silent, echoing streets.

  Raamket and his garrison were nowhere to be found. The great palace of Settra was empty. There were signs that it had been looted more than once, and after the last attempt someone had tried to set it on fire. The allied scouts suspected that Raamket and his warriors had fled more than a week before, perhaps to Zandri, or to Numas, or even down the Spice Road towards Bel Aliad. None could say for certain. When the garrison left, the city’s few remaining inhabitants had fled also, leaving the city to the scavengers.

  On the second day after reaching Khemri, allied patrols were ambushed by skeletal warriors inside the city’s necropolis. For the rest of the day, allied infantry forced their way into the city of the dead, fighting a bloody cat-and-mouse game with undead horrors lurking among the crypts.

  Soon it became apparent that the Usurper’s last remaining troops had established a ring of defences around the Black Pyramid. It took two more days of difficult fighting before the last of the undead warriors were destroyed, and the kings turned their attention to the pyramid and the secrets it contained.

  Shouts and bestial snarls echoed up from the darkness. A warrior, his face gleaming with sweat beneath his conical helmet, turned away from the featureless entrance of the pyramid and shouted, “They’re bringing out another one!”

  The seven kings rose from their chairs beneath the shade of a great pavilion tent erected a dozen yards from the entrance to the pyramid and stepped once more into the blazing sunlight. A thousand warriors filled the great marble-flagged plaza outside Nagash’s pyramid. They had been standing watch outside the entrance since dawn, observing the heavily armed hunting parties and teams of engineers that had come and gone from the crypt over the course of the day. They straightened their tired shoulders and readied their weapons once more as the pyramid surrendered another of its monsters.

  The immortal shrieked in pain as he was driven out into the sunlight. He was tall and powerfully built, with a bare chest and gaping jaws dripping ribbons of dark blood. The hunting party had bound the undead noble’s arms behind his back with loops of heavy rope, and then driven the points of two stout spears into his back, just beneath the shoulder blades. With two men on each spear they drove the monster into the plaza, towards a bloodstained patch of paving stones near the centre. The decapitated bodies of twelve other immortals were laid out side-by-side nearby, their pale skin blackening in the heat of the day.

  At the place of execution, the hunters bore down on their spears and forced the howling immortal to his knees. The kings approached, trailed by their bodyguards and champions. Hekhmenukep and Rakh-amn-hotep walked side-by-side, accompanied by Khansu, the Hierophant of Mahrak and de facto master of the ravaged city. The kings of the west, Seheb and Nuneb of Numas and Amn-nasir of Zandri, walked some distance apart from the eastern kings, each man lost in his thoughts. Lamashizzar, Priest King of Lahmia, kept entirely to himself, sipping wine from a golden cup and speaking softly to a number of veiled attendants. When they were close enough to clearly see the immortal’s face, they came to a stop.

  Rakh-amn-hotep studied the monster’s features for several moments, and then shook his head.

  “I don’t know him,” he said. He turned to Amn-nasir. “Who is he?”

  The King of Zandri frowned. His body was more gaunt and wasted than ever, and his left eye twitched feebly.

  Rumour had it that he was trying to wean himself off the black lotus, but the struggle was taking a fearful toll.

  “Tekhmet, I think,” Amn-nasir croaked. “He was one of the captains at Mahrak. A minor lord and an ally of Raamket. No one of importance.”

  “Traitor!” the immortal hissed, spitting gobbets of blood onto the stones. “The master will have his revenge upon you! You and the cowards of Numas! All of you will suffer an eternity of pain!”

  Rakh-amn-hotep nodded curtly to Ekhreb. The champion stepped forwards, a huge, bloodstained khopesh resting against his shoulder. At the sight of the blade the immortal began to writhe and howl in fear, pushing back against the spears until the points burst through his chest. Ekhreb reached the immortal in four measured strides, and without ceremony he swung his heavy sword in a flashing arc. Tekhmet’s head bounced twice along the stones, and came to rest near Amn-nasir’s feet.

  The men of the hunting party pulled their weapons from Tekhmet’s body and bowed to the rulers, their chests heaving with strain.

  “That is the last of them, great ones,” their leader said. “We’ve emptied all the crypts at the base of the pyramid. Many looked like they had been abandoned some time ago.”

  Rakh-amn-hotep nodded, and said, “This was boldly done. Rest assured, you and your men will be well-rewarded for what you’ve done today.” The men of the hunting parties had all been
volunteers, willing to brave the depths of Nagash’s pyramid in search of the king and his servants. Over the course of the day more than half of them had met grisly ends in the confines of the brooding crypt.

  Khansu studied the bodies stretched out on the paving stones.

  “Thirteen,” the hierophant said. “That still leaves more than a dozen of the fiends unaccounted for, including Raamket and that devil Arkhan, to say nothing of Nagash.”

  Rakh-amn-hotep saw Amn-nasir stir uncomfortably, and realised that the King of Zandri was staring at Lamashizzar. The Rasetran king scowled at the Lahmian.

  “Were you going to say something?” he asked.

  Lamashizzar shrugged. “The rest of the immortals have no doubt gone into hiding elsewhere. Perhaps to Ka-Sabar, or even to Zandri or Numas. Didn’t those merchants we caught on the trade road mention that Arkhan had a citadel somewhere north of Bel Aliad?” The young king shook his head. “This war is far from over, my friends. Mark my words: we’ll be hunting the last of Nagash’s immortals for many decades to come.”

  Hekhmenukep folded his arms thoughtfully, and said, “But if that’s true, then it’s clear that Nagash is no longer in control. He must be dead, or at least gravely injured.”

  “He was with the Tomb Guard outside Mahrak’s gates,” Lamashizzar said. “I would swear to it. The Usurper was struck down by my dragon-men, along with his bodyguards. Either his immortals recovered his body and brought it back with them, or it’s buried beneath heaps of bones outside the City of the Gods.”

  “Nagash wasn’t left behind at Mahrak,” Rakh-amn-hotep said doggedly. “I had a thousand men searching at the foot of the walls. No. He’s here somewhere. Tekhmet and the other immortals returned here for a reason.”