In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born

by Michael R. Hicks

  * * *

  Dara-Kol clenched her fists to help ward off the fear she felt take hold of her as the mounted cohort drew near. While magtheps were normally placid, docile animals, they were large and powerful, and in the hands of a trained rider could be extremely deadly. And in a massed charge such as this…

  “Perhaps it is time we prepare a welcome for our guests, do you think?”

  She turned to Kunan-Lohr. “Yes, my lord. Should I send runners to recall the warriors who are foraging?”

  He shook his head. “No. They are all veterans. They will know what to do.” Leaning closer, he told her, “And having some of our swords out of sight along the enemy’s flank and rear is never a bad thing.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She bobbed her head in understanding. Then she turned to the ranks of warriors behind them. “Pikes to the front!”

  Over two-hundred warriors stepped forward. Each held a pike made from nearby trees that grew straight as an arrow and were hard as steel. Roughly as big around as a warrior’s forearm and as long as three warriors stood tall, they had been cut down and sharpened with swords and axes. The warriors who carried them were among the largest and strongest in the army, and could handle the ungainly weapons easily. They set the pikes down on the ground, facing the approaching enemy, for theirs would not be the first weapons to strike.

  “Bales!” Dara-Kol’s bellow summoned another group of warriors, who rolled thick bales of dry steppe grass about thirty paces forward. The bales had been soaked in pitch, and warriors along the front rank held torches, waiting for the signal to light the barrier.

  “It will not stop them,” Kunan-Lohr had explained earlier to Dara-Kol, “but it will add an element of confusion in their attack, and will prevent them from bringing to bear more than a few tens of warriors at any one time.” He had given her a wicked smile. “Magtheps do not like fire.”

  Kunan-Lohr drew his sword, and the warriors behind him did the same. The sound of the glittering metal blades singing from their scabbards echoed from the sheer walls of the pass.

  The charging group of mounted warriors changed formation from the mass column more suited to the road to a line that was roughly the same breadth as Kunan-Lohr’s. The sound of the beasts’ feet striking the ground and the war cries that erupted from the throats of the warriors filled the air, just as did the cloud of dust that rose in the wake of their thundering passage.

  Dara-Kol felt the fire in her veins ignite, a passionate bloodlust that swept aside her fears. She could sense the same emotion in the charging warriors, and she threw back her head in a howl of challenge.

  All along the defensive line, the warriors did the same. Kunan-Lohr added his own deep roar. The sound was magnified by the rock walls around them, and Kunan-Lohr could sense a momentary spike of fear in the hearts of the attacking warriors.

  Just before the magtheps reached the barrier of pitch-soaked steppe grass, Kunan-Lohr nodded at Dara-Kol.

  “Fire!” While she was young, she had mastered the art of the command voice, and the word boomed above the tumult.

  Torches arced away from the defensive line to land in the bales just as the first riders leaped over the obstacle, their magtheps braying in protest.

  The bales exploded into flame. Magtheps and riders were caught in the maelstrom, and the war cries of both sides were drowned out by the screams of flaming beasts and warriors.

  In addition to the bales themselves, the road on either side of the barrier had been liberally coated with pitch, and was now burning with lethal fury. It stuck to the magtheps’ feet, and the beasts went berserk trying to escape the searing pain. Riders were thrown to the ground, where they, too, were shrouded in flame as they were trampled.

  But, as Kunan-Lohr had predicted, the queen’s warriors did not stop. More came pouring across the wall of fire, and some began to make it far enough to reach the defensive line.

  “Pikes!” At Kunan-Lohr’s command, the warriors armed with pikes knelt down and lifted the long, sharp points of the weapons toward the onrushing enemy warriors. They kept the tail end of the pike on the ground, and more warriors braced the end with their feet, as the surface of the road offered nowhere to plant them.

  The magtheps brayed and screeched as they ran forward, urged on as much by their desperation to escape the flames as the frenzied kicks their riders delivered to their ribs.

  Holding the pikes were all veterans of many campaigns who were not in the least intimidated by the charge. Each one carefully aimed his or her weapon, hands clenching the hard wooden poles, at the approaching magtheps.

  The riders slammed into Kunan-Lohr’s line. Magtheps squealed in agony as the pikes speared them through the chest or belly. Most of the riders were thrown forward, but few lived long enough to even hit the ground before their bodies were hacked to pieces by the swords of the defenders.

  But the opening of the battle was hardly one-sided. Riders with more experience in this type of attack deftly sidestepped the pikes, or dropped the pikemen with well-placed shrekkas before stampeding into the mass of Kunan-Lohr’s warriors. Holding the reins with one hand and their swords in the other, they guided the magtheps through leaps and twirls as they slashed at their opponents on the ground. The talons on the animals’ feet were longer than a warrior’s extended palm and fingers, and could tear through or puncture armor, as well as flesh. While the magthep was a herbivore, when frightened or enraged their mouths could be deadly, the flat grinding teeth quite capable of crunching bone.

  Dara-Kol guarded Kunan-Lohr’s left side, for he was a right-handed swordsman. A riderless magthep, its hide aflame, ran toward them from the maelstrom. While it had thrown its warrior, it was still deadly.

  Stepping to the side, Kunan-Lohr opened its throat with a quick cut of his blade. The beast charged on a few more steps before it collapsed.

  Two more beasts, with riders this time, charged forward. One of them leaped in the air, bringing up its feet and talons to strike.

  Dara-Kol darted out of the way of the deadly talons, which were coated with burning pitch, before jabbing the tip of her sword into the beast’s side, just behind the madly waving forelegs.

  As she pulled the blade free, she dodged the slashing sword strike of the warrior on the beast’s back.

  Turning to attack the rider, she was knocked to the ground by a massive impact. Rolling onto her back, she looked up to see the second magthep was in the air, its feet poised to tear her to ribbons.

  A glittering blade flashed twice, so quickly that she could barely see it. The beast was liberated of its feet and crashed to the ground beside her, bellowing in agony.

  Kunan-Lohr was there beside her, as if by magic. His sword flashed a third time, taking the head of the rider who was pinned under the hapless beast. Two paces away lay the other magthep and rider, the one she had stabbed, dead.

  “More of a challenge than ritual combat in the arena, is it not?” Kunan-Lohr gave her a fierce grin. His entire body appeared to have been painted in blood. Even his teeth were stained with it. He reached out his free hand to help her to her feet. “Come, child, there are more waiting to be killed!”

  * * *

  The battle went on for hours, until the sun had passed onward to the west and the struggling warriors and beasts were cast in the cool shadow of the great escarpment.

  The fiery barrier had long since burned out. Once the flames had finally guttered and died, the queen’s warriors mounted proper charges against Kunan-Lohr’s line. Masses of them, hundreds of riders at a time, smashed against his warriors over and over. Most of the pikes had been broken or were hopelessly stuck in their victims, and his warriors had to absorb the mounted charges with their swords and bodies.

  It was a desperate, bloody affair. While Kunan-Lohr believed from the outset that he would win this first engagement, he also realized the mounted warriors were merely to keep him entertained until the queen arrived with the main body of her forces.

  But his victory had
not been easily won. More than once the riders had driven deep wedges into his line, killing many of his own warriors before the riders were brought down. Once, a group had actually broken all the way through, and for a time his warriors had to fight back to back, as it were. That was when the groups of warriors who had been foraging broke from cover and attacked the enemy from the flanks and rear, inflicting severe casualties and forcing the riders to retreat and regroup.

  Finally, after one last charge by fewer than a hundred enemy warriors and one last orgy of killing, the battle was over. The road was awash with blood, the entrance to the pass a gruesome abattoir. The stench of blood and offal and flesh filled the air, as did the cries of wounded warriors and the pitiful mewling of dying magtheps.

  Kunan-Lohr and a handful of other senior warriors moved with slow deliberation among those who suffered. Those with minor injuries were bound up with strips of the black undergarment taken from the dead. As for the rest, those from whom life was slipping away, Kunan-Lohr himself administered the last rites. Then he consigned the soul of the warrior, his own and enemy alike, to the afterlife with a dagger through the heart. Most would have survived had there been healers to tend them. But the healers in the nearby villages refused to come, for they knew that Kunan-Lohr was an enemy of their queen and to give them succor was forbidden.

  Dara-Kol led a group that was slaughtering the injured beasts to put them out of their misery. If nothing else, Kunan-Lohr thought darkly, his warriors would eat well for a time. Magtheps were not typically used as meat animals, but none of his warriors would quibble over such trivialities. Other warriors corralled the surviving magtheps in a rope enclosure off to the side of the road where they could feed and be close at hand in case they were needed.

  The rest of his warriors had the unpleasant task of dealing with the dead. Kunan-Lohr had ordered the bodies stacked across the mouth of the pass. “Build a mountain of the dead over which the queen’s warriors must climb to reach us.” It was a grueling, unpleasant task, but body by body the wall grew. It would not affect the final outcome, he knew, but would buy them more time.

  After the last wounded magthep had been dispatched, Dara-Kol collapsed on its still-warm body, utterly exhausted. She barely noticed as Kunan-Lohr sat down beside her.

  “You fought well today, child.” He put a bloodstained hand on her shoulder.

  “Thank you, my lord.” Her voice was hoarse from shouting and screaming. She could barely hear herself speak, for her ears still rang from the din of battle.

  “I have one more task for you, which I fear will be most unpleasant for you to bear.”

  “My life and honor are yours, my lord.” She bowed her head and saluted, wondering at how she had become so covered in blood. As with all warriors, she had fought many times in the arena, and had also fought in some of the smaller battles of this war. But it had never been like this. She had never seen the gloss black of her armor so thoroughly covered in crimson.

  Kunan-Lohr was silent for a moment. Then he undid the scabbard of his sword from the belt around his waist. He slid the weapon a hand’s breadth out of its scabbard to admire the glittering blade. While it had been nicked and torn from the savage use to which he had put it this day, the living metal had already mended itself. He could take a strand of hair and let it fall upon the edge, and the hair would part in two.

  With a sigh, he slid the blade back into the scabbard before handing the weapon to Dara-Kol. “You are to take two warriors with you, whomever you should choose. I would give you more, but a larger party will only draw more attention in a land where we are now the enemies of all. Take as many magtheps and provisions as you need and ride south. The queen has not yet taken all the lands there, and there are other roads that will lead you west toward home. I wish you to find Ulana-Tath, and give her this sword. I intend it for my daughter, when she comes of age.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “Perhaps as a priestess, if that should come to pass, for I hope you will find my consort and daughter at the temple of the Desh-Ka.”

  He shook his head as Dara-Kol opened her mouth to speak. He could sense the disbelief, the anger, the hurt in her heart. “This is a hard thing to ask of a proud young warrior, I know. But this is my last wish before the queen’s blade falls, and I know that you are resourceful enough to see that it is done.” He looked at the devastation around them. “It is a far greater honor than dying at my side.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She took the sword as black mourning marks began to make their way down her cheeks from her eyes. “I shall not fail you.”

  “I know, child.” He stood, and she followed suit. “That is why I chose you. Tell Ulana-Tath…tell her that I shall await her in the Afterlife.” Extending his arms, he gripped hers. “May thy Way be long and glorious, Dara-Kol.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “He will strike today.”

  Anin-Khan had whispered those words to the other warriors in the dark of early morning before they began the final leg of the journey to the Desh-Ka temple. After hours of riding, the great plateau now rose above them, and he could clearly see the zigzag trail that led up its face in the bright golden glow of the late morning sun.

  The party rode in the same formation as they had before, with scouts out ahead and behind, and the young acolyte at the head of the main group.

  As before, Anin-Khan rode beside the nurse bearing Keel-Tath, with Ulana-Tath on her other side. His senses were tingling with alarm. What worried him was that it was not just his suspicions about the acolyte, that he would choose this day to unveil his true intentions. There was something else, as well.

  “You feel it, too?”

  He glanced over at Ulana-Tath, whose face betrayed the tension within her. The nurse also looked worried, and she had no inkling of the threat posed by the acolyte.

  “Yes, I am, mistress. I believe we should…”

  His words were stolen by a sharp cry from the warriors riding ahead. The road here was straight enough that they were within his sight. The two scouts had whirled around on their magtheps and were racing toward him when one was caught by a shrekka that sailed out of the thick woods along the road. She fell from her saddle, dead. Another shrekka flashed out toward the surviving scout, who batted it away with his sword. A cloud of shrekkas erupted from the trees, and he and his mount were cut to ribbons.

  “Honorless ones!” Anin-Khan bellowed his warning, although he need not have done so. The other warriors in the escort had already discerned the nature of the threat. They pulled up in a defensive circle around Ulana-Tath and the nurse as over twenty riders emerged from the brush and trees around them, swords drawn.

  He heard Ulana-Tath hiss in anger, and could feel her rage and that of the other warriors in his blood.

  Only Ria-Ka’luhr’s emotions remained calm, which worried him more than anything else.

  “We ride with the consort of Keel-A’ar’s master,” Anin-Khan announced, “and are bound for the Desh-Ka temple. By what right do you bar our passage?”

  The leader of the group, an older female warrior, bared her fangs in challenge. One of them, Anin-Khan could clearly see, had been snapped off at the root. She was dirty and unkempt, her exposed skin discolored and twisted with scar tissue from terrible burns. Her breastplate was in deplorable condition, the many dents hammered out by hand, probably with a rock. It was so old and in such poor condition that the metal had begun to oxidize, transforming the gloss black of the metal into a scabrous patchwork of rust. The leatherite armor that covered the rest of her body was old, abraded, and poorly fitting. Even her magthep was in poor condition, the undernourished animal’s ribs showing through its dull fur, and a stream of yellow mucus dripped from its nostrils

  The others in her party were little better. Some had newer armor and weapons that they had no doubt taken from their previous victims. In all they were a sorry lot, pitiable in Anin-Khan’s eyes.

  Only the fact that they outnumbered his warriors by two to one gave him any paus
e at all. Otherwise he would have simply brushed them aside or, failing their willingness to yield, slaughtered them.

  “Leave us now,” he told the elder warrior, “and you shall not come to harm. We have no quarrel with you.”

  “Spare me your compassion, captain of the guard of Keel-A’ar.” The leader of the honorless ones spoke in a rasp. Her throat bore a scar from a long-ago battle that had damaged her vocal cords.

  Anin-Khan grunted in surprise.

  “Yes, I know who you are.” She pointed her sword at Ulana-Tath. “And we recognize you, too, mistress.” With a twisted grin, she told them, “But you need not worry for your lives. Dismount from your animals, and we will spare you.” Then she turned to Ria-Ka’luhr. “Such will not be the case for you.”

  “You would dare threaten an acolyte of the Desh-Ka?” Ulana-Tath exclaimed, shocked. “If you had even the sense of a magthep, you would flee for your lives.”

  Ria-Ka’luhr, Anin-Khan noticed, said nothing, nor did his emotions betray anything other than placid calm.

  The leader of the honorless ones shook her head. “The Dark Queen long ago offered a great bounty for any who captured an acolyte and delivered him to her alive. We captured three who did not survive.” She gave Ria-Ka’luhr an appraising look. “Perhaps this one shall be different.”

  Anin-Khan watched as another two tens of honorless ones, on foot this time, stepped from the woods. They all carried swords and spears, which would be effective weapons against the magtheps.

  In the short time he took to reflect upon it in the moments that would follow, Anin-Khan realized that, had he not been staring right at the leader of the honorless ones, his life and honor would doubtless have come to naught. He would have failed in the greatest responsibility with which he had ever been entrusted.

  The leader of the honorless ones was staring at Ria-Ka’luhr, and in a single instant, Anin-Khan saw her eyes widen and her body tense. Her emotions betrayed not fear or anticipation, as might have been the case had she been the focus of an attack, but surprise and shock.