The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  Then came a rising chorus of wailing, angry cries, and an eerie green glow suffused the darkness to Arkhan’s left. The ghostly chorus swelled to a maddening crescendo, quickly joined by the frenzied screams of living men. A shock went through the crowd of raiders surrounding the vizier, and then suddenly they were gone, galloping madly in the direction of the desert. Arkhan whirled, searching for the cause of their sudden retreat, and saw Nagash, surrounded by almost a score of writhing, screaming men. The necromancer’s hands were raised to the sky, and his eyes blazed with baleful light as he unleashed his retinue of ghosts upon his foes. As the vizier watched, the spirits wound around the shrieking men like snakes, pouring through their open mouths and into the corners of their eyes in search of their living souls. They left behind shrivelled, smoking husks, contorted in poses of agonising death.

  The sudden, unnatural darkness and the wrath of the awakened necromancer set the desert raiders to flight. The sandstorm was already receding as the worshippers of Khsar fled back to the safety of the dunes. Arkhan raised his stolen sword and jeered at the fleeing raiders. Then he nearly staggered beneath his master’s wordless, furious summons.

  The vizier made his way swiftly across the battlefield and fell to his knees before the king. His mind raced, trying to puzzle out Nagash’s sudden fury.

  “What is your bidding, master?” he asked, pressing his forehead to the ground.

  “Quatar has fallen,” Nagash declared. “Nemuhareb and his entire army have been overthrown.” The ghosts surrounding the necromancer echoed his rage, hissing like a clutch of angry vipers. “The rebel kings have placed him under arrest and seized control of the city.”

  The vizier was stunned by the news. Seizing the city? Such a thing was unheard of. Battles between kings were settled on the field of battle, and the loser paid a ransom or other reparations to the victor. Sometimes territory or other rights were forfeited, but unseating a king and taking his city was unprecedented.

  “These rebels have no respect for the law,” Arkhan replied carefully, running his tongue over his jagged teeth. It also went without saying that the enemy was within a few weeks’ marching distance of Khemri, far closer than Nagash’s own battered army.

  “They think to weaken me by depriving me of Quatar,” Nagash said, “but instead they have delivered themselves into my hands. The Kings of Numas and Zandri will not stand for the seizure of the White Palace, and will gladly join their armies with mine to drive the rebels back across the Valley of Kings.” The necromancer clenched his fist and smiled hungrily. “Then we will march on Lybaras and Rasetra in turn and bring them to heel. This will be the first step in building a new Nehekharan empire.”

  Arkhan gazed across the battlefield at the remnants of Khemri’s conscript army. Nearly all of the Living City’s resources had gone into Nagash’s grand design for the last hundred years. This pitiful force of infantry and cavalrymen was the most that could be mustered to challenge Ka-Sabar, and that army was a horror-stricken remnant of what it had been. The vizier knew all too well how heavily Numas and Zandri had been called upon to provide tribute to fund construction of the living god’s mighty pyramid. Their armies would be in little better condition than Khemri’s, and while Nagash’s terrible power could bestir the bodies of fallen warriors, Arkhan could see that the exertions of the campaign had drained even the king’s prodigious reserves of strength. With Rasetra and Lybaras in control of the White Palace, they were in a precarious position indeed.

  “Numas and Zandri will need time to raise their armies,” Arkhan said, “and time is something we do not have in abundance. Our foes are in position to reach Khemri even now, while these desert wolves dog our every step—”

  The priest king cut him off with a cruel chuckle.

  “Do you doubt me, vizier?” he asked.

  “No, great one!” Arkhan replied quickly. “Never! You are the living god, master of life and death!”

  “Indeed,” Nagash replied. “I have defied death and laid the gods low. I am the master of this land, and all that it contains.” The necromancer stretched out his hand, pointing a pale finger at Arkhan’s head. “You look about you and see calamity, our small army in tatters, surrounded by our foes, but that is because your mind is weak, Arkhan the Black. You let the world bend you to its whims. That is the thinking of a mere mortal,” he spat. “I do not heed the voice of this world, Arkhan. Instead, I command it. I shape it to my will.”

  Nagash’s cold, handsome face was alight with passion. The cloak of spirits surrounding him writhed and wailed in despair, and Arkhan could feel the power of the grave radiating from the king like a cold desert wind.

  The vizier pressed his face to the dust once more.

  “I hear you, master,” he said fearfully. “Victory will be yours, if you will it.”

  “Yes,” Nagash hissed. “So it will. Now rise, vizier,” he said, abruptly turning away and striding in the direction of his pavilion. “Our foes have made their move. Now we shall counter it.”

  Arkhan fell into step behind the king. Every now and then his boot would fall upon one of the desert raiders that Nagash had slain, their bodies crunching like burnt wood beneath his feet.

  “Summon your horsemen,” the king said. “You will ride at once to Bhagar and visit my wrath upon the home of the desert princes.”

  The vizier nodded, fighting to keep his face from betraying his trepidation. After the bloody battle at Zedri and the constant skirmishes since, he was left with just under three thousand cavalrymen, living and dead.

  “It will be a long ride through enemy territory,” he replied, dreading the idea of crossing harsh desert terrain that his foes knew all too well. He and the other immortals would have to bury themselves deep in the sand to escape the sun’s merciless glare.

  “You will conquer Bhagar in five days’ time,” Nagash declared. Arkhan’s good eye widened.

  “But we would have to ride day and night,” he said, before he could catch himself.

  The necromancer paid no heed to the vizier’s impertinence, saying, “You will take two of the Sheku’met along with you. Use only one at a time, to preserve their strength.”

  Arkhan looked up at the swirling, chittering shadow overhead. The Jars of Night were a potent tool, but the great scarabs had to be fed a steady diet of flesh to maintain their sorcerous bond. There had been no lack of food on the battlefield of Zedri, and since then Nagash had set the scarabs to feast upon the bodies of his undead warriors. Arkhan had watched soldiers covered in a writhing carpet of beetles, still marching stolidly down the trade road as the scarabs burrowed deep into their putrefying organs and flensed the skin from their skulls.

  “It will be done, master,” the vizier replied. There was nothing else to say. “What of you and the rest of the army?”

  “The Master of Skulls will take charge of the living warriors and return the army to Khemri,” Nagash said as they reached the great pavilion. Slaves prostrated themselves at the king’s approach, and a pair of moaning spirits flew from the king’s side to peel back the tent’s heavy linen entry flap. The tortured figure of Neferem stood just inside, and when the king beckoned, the queen shuffled painfully to his side.

  “I shall return to Khemri at once,” Nagash said, “and summon the Kings of Numas and Zandri to a council of war.” The king turned to Arkhan. “Remember, you must seize Bhagar in five days’ time: no more, no less. When the moon rises on the fifth day, this is what you must do.”

  The vizier listened to the king’s instructions without expression. He fixed his gaze on the necromancer’s glowing eyes and tried to push the image of Neferem from his mind.

  “As you wish,” he said, when Nagash was finished. “Bhagar’s fate is sealed.”

  The king fixed his vizier with a soul-searching stare, and seemed content to find none. “Remember, Arkhan the Black, go and bend the world to my liking, and you will continue to enjoy my favour.”

  Then the living god raised his hand to
the sky and shouted a string of rasping syllables with his ruined voice. At once, the swarm above him thrummed and spun like a gyre balanced on the necromancer’s palm. The leading edges of the great shadow shrank inwards as a torrent of flashing, buzzing scarabs descended in a swirling column around Nagash and his queen. The two figures grew indistinct, and then disappeared altogether.

  Arkhan felt the desert air rush past his shoulders, drawn from all directions towards the seething funnel before him. Then, in an instant, the pillar of glittering chitin leapt skywards like the cracking lash of a taskmaster’s whip, drawing a column of roiling dust in its wake.

  Nagash and the Daughter of the Sun were gone.

  The vizier studied the empty space where the king had been, and a bleak look passed across his scarred face. Around him, slaves rose quickly to their feet and went to work striking the tents they had raised only a few hours before. Overhead, the living shadow began to constrict further as the insects, freed from Nagash’s will, began to settle to the earth in search of food. The steady approach of sunlight shook Arkhan from his reverie. Slowly at first, and then with growing speed, he began issuing orders.

  Within two hours the vizier and his horsemen were heading west, into the unforgiving desert. A restless cloud of hungry scarabs swirled over the centre of the column, shielding Arkhan and his immortal lieutenants from Ptra’s searing light.

  By mid afternoon, the army was on the march again, shuffling wearily north along the old trade road.

  The companies of the dead, no longer animated by the will of their master, were left to fester in the hot desert sun. More than one weary soul looked back at the still figures and envied their fate.

  A ribbon of seething, chittering shadow passed low over the Living City shortly after dusk. It raced over the top of the southern wall, past the huddled sentries crouching atop the battlements, and down the neglected streets of the Potter’s Quarter. The rooftops of the crumbling, mud-brick homes were deserted, despite the heat of the long day, and not even dogs prowled among the piles of refuse strewn down the narrow lanes. The Merchant Quarter was likewise silent and shuttered tight. The squares of the Grand Bazaar were empty, its stalls dilapidated and its flagstones covered with sand. Only the noble districts further north showed any signs of life, where the city watch patrolled the streets in large, well-armed groups past barricaded courtyards and high walls topped with shards of broken pottery and glass. Even the sprawling complex of Settra’s Palace was dark and empty of life. The only light to be seen anywhere on the horizon was off to the east, beyond the city walls, where serpentine flickers of indigo-coloured lightning crawled along the sides of a massive, black pyramid that rose from the centre of Khemri’s great necropolis.

  The hissing swarm of scarabs wound like a serpent towards the great palace, shedding streamers of smoking insect husks as it went. Finally, it plunged like an arrow into the great plaza outside Settra’s Court and poured a flood of wriggling, dying beetles onto the silent square. Their life energies spent on the gruelling northward flight, the last of the scarabs clattered lifelessly to the ground around Nagash and his queen.

  Even as the king came to earth, hundreds of slaves were hurrying down the steps from the court and abasing themselves before their master. In their wake came a pallid immortal clad in a crimson-dyed kilt and red leather sandals. The warrior’s torso was wrapped in strips of banded leather armour, and wide leather bracers covered his forearms. A cape of flayed human skin fluttered in his wake as he strode swiftly up to Nagash and sank to his knees in supplication.

  The priest king acknowledged the immortal with a nod.

  “Rise, Raamket,” he commanded. “How has the city fared in my absence?”

  “Order has been restored, great one,” the immortal said at once. Raamket had broad, blunt features, like a rough-hewn statue, with heavy brows and a bulbous, oft-broken nose. His dark eyes held little imagination or wit, but were cold and steady as stone. “There have been no further riots since the army went south.”

  “And the ringleaders?”

  “Some have been captured,” Raamket said. “Others took their lives before we could seize them. The rest have fled the city.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Nagash asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  Raamket shrugged, and said, “Because we have not found them, master. The city has been searched thoroughly, from one end to the other.” A faint smile crossed the immortal’s stolid face. “I personally questioned many of the city’s merchants. They swore that many of the priests fled east, towards Quatar.”

  Nagash considered the news. “Relax our patrols,” he ordered, “and then offer a double ration of grain for anyone that offers information on dissenters still hidden in the city. If there are any rebels left they will grow bold once they learn that the White Palace has fallen.”

  Raamket’s dark eyes glittered at the sudden news.

  “The east has risen against us?” he asked. The savage immortal sounded pleased at the prospect.

  “Lybaras and Rasetra have chosen to defy me,” the king answered darkly, “and I suspect they are not alone.”

  Nagash set off quickly towards the steps to Settra’s Court, leaving the servants to surround the queen and escort her into the palace. Raamket fell into step behind his master. “How shall we deal with these traitors?” the warrior asked.

  “Send messengers to Numas and Zandri,” Nagash commanded. “Summon the kings to attend upon me at Settra’s Court in four days’ time to attend a council of war. Quatar will be retaken, and then the east will drown in a sea of blood.”

  Raamket smiled, revealing white teeth filed to needle-sharp points, and said, “It will be done, master.”

  EIGHT

  Red Rain

  The desert city of Bhagar, in the 62nd year of Qu’aph the Cunning

  (-1750 Imperial Reckoning)

  On the morning of the fifth day, Arkhan’s horsemen crested the dunes east of Bhagar and found Shahid ben Alcazzar and his horsemen awaiting them just beyond the green expanse of the city’s caravanserai.

  The vizier reined in his rune-marked warhorse at the top of the furthest dune and spat a stream of incredulous curses into the shadow-bound sky. He had pushed his warriors relentlessly, pausing only at dawn and dusk to open the Jars of Night and then seal them up again. He killed horses and men by the score along the way, returning their corpses to the ranks when their exhausted bodies could withstand no more. Still others were sacrificed to the ravening scarabs. Their bones now gleamed white in the preternatural gloom, knit together by black sorcery alone. All so that he could outpace ben Alcazzar’s horsemen and strike at their home before they could mount a proper defence, and yet they had still managed to outpace him!

  When he’d run out of curses to hurl at the uncaring heavens, Arkhan sat back in his saddle and took quick stock of his situation. His horsemen, almost two thousand in all, were spread in a rough arc along the line of dunes to his left and right. Five hundred yards distant, the desert raiders waited in a ragged line, grouped around the fluttering banners of their chieftains. Arkhan’s advance guard, consisting of little more than two hundred horsemen, formed a thin screen in the middle ground between the two forces.

  “Signal Shepsu-hur to fall back,” the vizier ordered, gesturing angrily to his trumpeter. Nodding wearily, the musician brought the horn to his lips and blew a complex series of notes. Within moments, the advance guard was withdrawing across the rolling terrain. Arkhan noted that the desert raiders made no attempt to pursue.

  Shepsu-hur left his horsemen at the bottom of the dune and spurred his struggling mount up the sandy slope to make his report. The immortal was wrapped in bindings of linen and leather from neck to toe, covering nearly every inch of his exposed skin. Only his ruined face was left uncovered, revealing the terrible injuries he’d received in the battle at the palace only a few weeks before. No amount of Nagash’s sorcerous elixir had been enough to seal up the gaping wounds in the noblem
an’s cheeks and forehead, or restore his shrivelled lips and the ragged stub of his nose. Charred bone showed through the tear in the immortal’s square chin as he spoke.

  “The horsemen arrived less than an hour ahead of us,” the maimed immortal rasped. “Some of them withdrew into the city when we arrived.”

  “No doubt telling their kin to flee into the desert,” Arkhan said. He knew that some of the citizens would escape; it could not be avoided. The people of Bhagar were devout followers of Khsar, and they knew the ways of the desert well. Most, however, were trapped. If they tried to run, his men would ride them down. “How many riders?” he asked.

  Leather wrappings creaked as the immortal shrugged.

  “Perhaps three thousand,” he said, “but their horses are blown. They pushed themselves past the point of exhaustion getting here ahead of us.”

  “Then this won’t last long,” the vizier said, nodding grimly.

  Drawing his huge khopesh, Arkhan called to his trumpeter. “Sound the charge!” he commanded. “We will press on to the city, regardless of the cost!”

  Trumpet notes sang their clarion call along the dunes, and the mass of horsemen started to move down the sandy slope. Shepsu-hur wheeled his mount and raced ahead to catch up with his squadron. Arkhan kneed his warhorse forwards at a trot, his attendants closing ranks around him.

  Bhagar was a prosperous city, but a small one. Its princes had nothing to fear from bandits, and it had never been so wealthy as to attract the attention of the larger cities to the north and the east. As a result, its leaders had never seen the need to spend vast sums building a wall around the city. Now, its horsemen tried to form a living barrier against the vizier’s warriors, but Arkhan could see how the proud raiders slumped in their saddles, and the heads of their magnificent horses hung low to the ground. Better for Shahid ben Alcazzar to have preserved his men, Arkhan thought. He might not have saved his city, but at least he might have lived to avenge it another day. Now the proud desert prince would die along with them.