The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  The next thirty minutes passed in a flurry of movement as the allied army prepared for the coming battle. Companies of archers advanced twenty paces in front of the infantry and made ready to fire. Behind them the battleline stretched for a mile and a half across the valley, with the Temple Road running roughly down its centre. The infantry companies of Rasetra took up the army’s centre and left flank, while the warriors of Lybaras took up the right. The beleaguered light horsemen of the advance guard withdrew off to the north, further reinforcing the right flank. The army’s heavy cavalry waited a hundred yards behind the left flank: some two hundred Rasetran chariots, drawn by vicious, two-legged jungle lizards instead of horses. The warriors of Rasetra had been using the lizards in battle for more than a hundred years, but this was the first time they would be employed against another Nehekharan army. Rakh-amn-hotep kept them well back, hidden behind a low ridge just out of sight. His champion, Ekhreb, would lead them into battle.

  Behind the left flank, the Lybarans were still wrestling their catapults into position. They had brought eight of the massive war machines with the army, and their crews were hastily readying piles of stone to load into their broad wicker baskets.

  The full weight of Quatar’s Tomb Guard marched against the allied force. Quatar’s patron was Djaf, the god of death, and the city’s warriors were justly feared for their prowess on the field of battle. Their infantry wore white-painted leather armour and carried heavy wooden shields, and their massive swords were capable of splitting a man in two with a single blow. It was said that their Ushabti bore the faces of jackals, and could kill with the lightest touch of their blades.

  The Tomb Guard advanced on a wide front, with companies of archers interspersed among the heavy infantry. A large force of light horsemen and two great companies of chariots rode behind them. The light cavalry and one company of chariots swung to the north, threatening the allied right flank, while the remaining chariot company was held back in reserve, close to the Priest King Nemuhareb and his retinue.

  Rakh-amn-hotep studied the enemy army carefully. The Tomb Guard was easily the size of his combined force, and had more heavy cavalry. He turned to his trumpeter.

  “Signal the archers to fire when ready,” he said, and then turned to Nebunefer. “Do you imagine the King of Quatar will follow the old customs, or will he fight us to the death?”

  “It would depend on whether he has any of Nagash’s lieutenants among his retinue,” the old priest said, shrugging. “We should know soon enough once you spring your trap.”

  The King of Rasetra grunted to himself. “Assuming it works,” he muttered. Down on the field, the archers drew back their bows and began to fire. Showers of arrows darkened the sky and fell among the warriors of Quatar, who raised their shields to protect them from the deadly rain. Here and there a warrior fell with an arrow lodged in his chest or his neck, but the rest continued to press forward. The enemy archers returned fire while still on the move, and Rakh-amn-hotep was impressed at the steadiness and accuracy of their volleys. Bowmen from both sides fell as the archery duel began in earnest.

  To the right, the first of the catapults lofted its load of stones high into the air with a muffled bang. The projectiles spread out in flight, each as large as a man’s head, and fell among the advancing infantry. Shields splintered and men were dashed to the ground, but the advance continued. Rakh-amn-hotep turned to Hekhmenukep.

  “What of the other war machines?” he asked.

  The King of Lybaras responded with an enigmatic smile. “They will make their appearance known when they are ready.”

  Rakh-amn-hotep frowned. When they were ready? What kind of an answer was that? Concealing a flash of irritation, he gestured once more to his trumpeter.

  “Signal the left flank to advance,” he ordered.

  The horn rang out at once. On the left flank, the warriors of Rasetra marched forward, raising their shields and readying heavy, stone-headed maces. The archers in their path fired off one last volley before gathering their unspent arrows and retreating down the narrow lanes between the infantry companies. When the last bowmen had passed, the companies closed ranks and presented a solid front to the enemy. Within minutes their shields were studded with arrow shafts as the Quatari bowmen continued their fire.

  Moments later, the two forces on the left came together in a grinding crash of flesh, metal and stone. The echoing roar of battle resounded across the open ground, in counterpoint to the steady banging of the catapults off to the right. On that flank, the enemy light horsemen were trying to push around the edge of the allied lines, but so far the cavalry of the advance guard was keeping them at bay. The enemy infantry was staggering under the hail of heavy stones, but with great determination they continued to press forward. Behind them, the chariots made ready to add their power to the inevitable charge.

  Rakh-amn-hotep studied the course of the battle so far and was satisfied. The troops on the left were struggling against the Tomb Guard, and the Rasetran companies were already shrinking as a steady stream of wounded men staggered away from the fight and sought safety behind their battleline. The king looked for the Quatari reserves. The chariots were still in the rear, close to the enemy king.

  Long minutes passed. The companies in the centre met with a grinding roar, while the enemy advance on the right foundered under the ceaseless bombardment. On the left, the Rasetran companies were starting to waver. Still there was no sign of the remaining war machines. Rakh-amn-hotep shot a worried glance at Hekhmenukep, but held his tongue.

  Another minute passed, and the first companies on the left flank began to fall back. The Tomb Guard pushed forward, hacking relentlessly with their heavy blades. The carnage was terrible. Men fell with their skulls split or their arms hacked away, and rivers of blood stilled the clouds of dust around the struggling warriors.

  The retreat on the left began to gather speed. As one company fell back, the ones on either side hurriedly withdrew as well. Within moments, the whole flank was falling swiftly to the rear.

  Rakh-amn-hotep heard the faint wail of trumpets in the direction of the enemy centre. The reserve chariots were moving, bouncing quickly across the rocky ground towards the left flank. The enemy king sensed victory.

  “Order the left flank to begin a general withdrawal,” he ordered.

  Events on the ground, however, were moving with a speed of their own. The retreating companies were picking up speed, stumbling over themselves in their haste to escape the blades of the Tomb Guard. The enemy pressed forward hungrily, and more horns wailed as the Quatari chariots raced to join the impending slaughter.

  Rakh-amn-hotep turned to the trumpeter.

  “Send the signal!” he shouted.

  The complex notes rang out across the battlefield. At once, the retreating companies picked up the pace and curved backwards, like a gate swinging on a hinge, to clear the path for the Rasetran chariots. Rakh-amn-hotep heard a wild, moaning cry of jungle horns as his heavy cavalry swept over the ridge and bore down on the unsuspecting Tomb Guard.

  Then, a great commotion went up on the right flank. The King of Rasetra turned to see a pair of towering dust plumes rising up behind the enemy battleline, nearly in the midst of the advancing Quatari chariots. A faint, thready hiss carried over the tumult of battle, and huge shadows moved within the cloaking dust. Then there was a rending crash, and the king watched with amazement as a chariot and its horses were hurled like toys into the air.

  The Lybaran war machines had made their appearance at last.

  They crawled from huge pits in the soft earth on clanking legs of wood and bronze. Steam, heated by the blessings of Ptra, hissed in bronze pipes and drove segmented legs and huge, sweeping pincers. A tail the size of a battering ram curled over each machine, lashing out and smashing chariots to flinders with each blow. Fashioned in the shape of enormous tomb scorpions, the constructs fell upon the rear of the enemy companies with disconcerting speed and power. Within moments, chariots and i
nfantry alike were in full retreat.

  On the left, the charge of the Rasetran chariots had inflicted a similar shock. The Quatari infantry staggered under the sudden counterattack, and the chariots had broken through their lines. The Quatari chariots, meanwhile had fallen into disarray, their horses terrified by the huge, fanged lizards drawing the enemy cavalry. A wild melee was in progress, but the Quatari forces were caught between the Rasetran chariots and their infantry, which had begun to advance once more.

  The final blow came on the right flank. The enemy light horsemen panicked at the sight of the huge Lybaran war machines and quit the field. Seeing their opportunity, the horsemen of the advance guard swept around the Quatari flank and bore down on the enemy king and his retinue. Surrounded, cut off from retreat, Nemuhareb, Priest King of Quatar, offered his surrender.

  The way to Khemri had been opened.

  SIX

  Death and Life

  Khemri, the Living City, in the 44th year of Khsar the Faceless

  (-1968 Imperial Reckoning)

  In the waning hours of the day, Khetep, Priest King of Khemri, was brought forth from the House of Everlasting Life to begin his journey into the afterlife. The body of the king was wrapped in strips of the finest white linen, each one marked with the Glyphs of the River and the Earth in careful, precise script to sustain Khetep’s flesh against the passage of ages. The hands of the king were folded across his chest, and a long, golden chain called the ankh’ram was twined about his wrists. The chain would anchor Khetep’s spirit to his body so that he could find it again after centuries in the afterlife. His gold burial mask, shaped with care during the king’s life by the finest craftsmen in the Living City, shone warmly in the late afternoon light. Garlands of fragrant blossoms surrounded the king’s body, filling the air with their vibrant perfume.

  The palanquin was borne by eight priests clad in white robes and a cape made of fluttering linen strips that symbolised the resurrection of the flesh. Their faces were hidden behind serene golden masks, and their movements were slow and ritually precise. Thirteen white-robed acolytes followed the palanquin, their heads covered in white ash and their eyes painted black with kohl, chanting the Invocation of Going Forth Into the Dusk to the beat of hide-wrapped drums. Last of all strode the Grand Hierophant in all his funereal splendour, bearing in his left hand the great Staff of the Ages. Nagash wore the ritual white robe and cape, its fabric strips embroidered with sacred glyphs in golden thread, and a golden pectoral inscribed with the sun, the jackal and the owl. White ash covered the Grand Hierophant’s face, lending an otherworldly cast to his coldly handsome features.

  A silent multitude awaited the slow-moving cortege in the great plaza outside the temple. Thutep and the royal household waited upon the right side of the procession, their regal finery clashing with the rough smudges of ash that blackened their cheeks and forehead. A hundred servants waited behind the household, bearing the grave goods that would accompany Khetep into the afterlife.

  All those who had served the king in life stood to the left of the procession, and would continue to provide for him in death. Two score elderly servants and scribes, all of them bearing the respective tools of their trade in neat, cloth-wrapped bundles; more than a hundred slaves, their eyes hollow and their expressions bleak; and last of all, the stoic figures of the two dozen Ushabti that had survived their king’s last battle on the banks of the River Vitae. The Ushabti stood in a hollow square formation, clad in all their battle finery, their gleaming ritual swords held ready. Within the square stood the trio of barbarians that the Priest King of Zandri had given to honour the death of Khetep. The druchii were still bound in chains, their expressions dulled by the effects of drugged wine. The barbarians stood apart from one another, their heads unbowed and their dark eyes smouldering with hate.

  Moving to the measured beat of the drums, the cortege made its way across the plaza and into the city proper, followed by the mournful throng. They walked in echoing silence. The shops were all shuttered and the great bazaar had been emptied; even the distant docks, normally bustling with life, were empty. The people of the Living City had paid their respects to their king in the morning, as, by ancient law, they were forbidden to witness the final journey to his crypt. The gold coins scattered by the merchants earlier in the day still lay in the dusty street, untouched by beggar or thief.

  At the centre of the city the cortege turned east, making their way beyond the city walls through the Gate of Usirian into the fertile fields beyond. To the north, a flock of herons took wing from the reeds along the banks of the Vitae, paralleling the cortege for a short way and then sinking back out of sight. To the east, the land sloped gently upwards. In the distance, the largest of the tombs were already visible, crowding the horizon like the rooftops of a sprawling city. Above them all loomed the Great Pyramid, its sloping sides painted crimson by the light of the setting sun.

  The road was well-kept, formed of packed sand and stone, and tended to yearly by citizens as part of their compulsory service to the king. Within half an hour they came upon the first of the shrines: a tall, basalt statue of Usiris, just a few paces off the side of the road. Offerings of food and wine had been left at the statue’s feet by travellers on their way to or from the great necropolis. Further on, the procession passed shrines to Neru and Djaf, Ualatp the Carrion God and even the dreadful Sokth, God of Poisoners. Everyone had a reason to fear one god or another as they made their way into the great city of tombs.

  After an hour on the road, the cortege reached the rough edge of the necropolis. The procession crested a low hill, and the plain before them was crowded with small, square tombs, built of sandstone and crudely ornamented with sacred scripts or religious imagery. These were the vaults of the poor, those who spent their entire lives saving enough coin to purchase the ministrations of a mortuary priest. One tomb might hold thirty or forty bodies: an entire extended family, stacked one atop the other like mud bricks. The vaults grew in a chaotic sprawl across the uneven ground, often built by the families themselves, on whatever plot of clear, mostly level ground they could find. Some of the crude tombs had broken open over the years, allowing vermin and scavengers to eat away at the bodies inside. Huge, black vultures glided low across the tops of the tombs, or perched on the weathered roofs and eyed the procession with frank interest as the sarcophagus went by.

  The road ended, for all intents and purposes, and the cortege was forced to wind its way carefully through the maze of narrow lanes and blind alleys between the shabby crypts. It was not unheard of for citizens to become lost if they wandered too deeply into the necropolis, and those that could not find their way out by nightfall were sometimes never seen again. However, the priests knew every twist and turn of the great city, for, in many ways, the necropolis was as much their home as the House of Everlasting Life.

  The further in they went, the larger and finer the tombs became. They came upon grand structures of basalt or sandstone, inscribed with glyphs of protection and engravings of the gods in all their forms. Here were entombed the families of prosperous merchants or tradesmen, surrounded by shrines and statuary that both proclaimed their piety and forced their neighbours to keep a respectful distance. Even then, the crypts were crowded as closely together as possible, filling every square foot of available space.

  Finally, as the sun was casting long shadows among the jumbled stone crypts, the procession reached a great plain at the centre of the necropolis, where the great kings of old built their tombs. The black tomb of Settra rose at the centre of the plain: a massive, square structure of black marble as large as the palace in Khemri. The great king and his household were contained within, as well as slaves, soldiers, bodyguards, chariots and horses, all in readiness for the day when they would be called to walk upon the earth once more. The doors to the great tomb were made of stone plated in raw gold, and the massive walls were carved with thousands of potent glyphs and invocations against harm.

  Settra’s Tomb
took twenty years to build, and more than two thousand slaves perished before the labour was done. Every king that followed sought to outdo him, spending vast sums to create ever larger and more lavish crypts to proclaim their greatness to future generations. Thus it was that Khetep began building his tomb from the first day he became Priest King of Khemri. The Great Pyramid took twenty-five years to complete and cost the lives of close to a million slaves. No one but the king knew how much treasure had gone to build it. On the very day of its completion Khetep had ordered its chief architect strangled and entombed in a special chamber within.

  The structure dominated the western edge of the plain, rising more than four hundred feet into the air and dwarfing every tomb around it. There were eight separate levels within the pyramid and two more tunnelled into the earth below it: room enough for an entire dynasty and their households.

  A broad path of white stone led to the Great Pyramid’s entrance, which had been built to resemble the facade of Settra’s Court. At the top of the steps waited a score of mortuary priests, like silent ghosts lingering in the shadows of the great statues of Neru and Geheb, a dozen tall urns of wine resting on the stones before them.

  A dozen armed priests from the temple of Usirian stood vigil outside the tomb, their faces hidden behind gold owl-masks. As the procession came to a stop at the foot of the steps, the leader of the horex stepped forwards and called out in a loud voice, “Who comes here?”

  Nagash raised the Staff of Ages and answered, “The king has come. His time on earth has passed, and his spirit goes forth into the dusk. This is the house where he will take his rest.”

  The horex bowed deeply and stepped aside.

  “Let the king come in,” their leader intoned. “A place has been made for him.”

  Silently, the palanquin bearers made their way past the guardians and up the steps into the tomb, accompanied by the acolytes who would assist the priests in completing the interment.