by Mike Lee
The Khemri horsemen spread out across the rolling, sandy terrain as they reached the bottom of the dunes, the immortals leading the way, followed by the grim, silent corpses of men that had belonged to their squadrons. The living cavalrymen fell behind, unnerved by the dead comrades riding in their midst. Far ahead, the proud desert horses of their enemies tossed their heads and pawed at the sand as the scent of rotting flesh reached them.
Still, the desert raiders waited, taking no action as their foes drew nearer. Arkhan peered through the gloom with his one eye, trying to locate ben Alcazzar and his retinue. What was the prince’s standard? The vizier couldn’t recall.
Three hundred yards… two hundred and fifty. Maddened shouts and wailing cries went up from the immortals, and the horses quickened their pace to a canter. A shadow passed over the desert raiders as the leading edge of the scarab cloud swept over them. Arkhan watched them become forbidding silhouettes, standing starkly against the lush greenery of the caravan oasis at their back.
Then, a figure at the rear of the desert horsemen raised a shining scimitar to the heavens. It caught the last of the sunlight, flashing with Ptra’s angry fire, and then Arkhan heard a faint shout that cut through the mounting thunder of hoof beats.
A hot wind hissed through the oncoming cavalry. Arkhan felt its rasping touch slide across his cheeks. Then the hissing rose to a full-throated roar, and the world disappeared in a raging maelstrom of sand.
Arkhan raised a hand to his face with a bitter curse. Horses and men screamed in surprise and fright. The sandstorm lashed at exposed skin with a million invisible knives, clothing and even leather fraying beneath its unrelenting touch. The vizier’s ensorcelled mount reared and tossed its head in pain. Arkhan pulled savagely at the reins and fought to keep his seat.
The onslaught lasted only a few seconds. It crashed through the Khemri force with all the power of a cavalry charge, and when the wall of sand had swept past, the heavy cavalry was scattered and disoriented, their forward momentum lost. The next sound they heard was the deadly hum of arrows and the spine-chilling wail of the desert raiders as they charged in behind Khsar’s savage wind.
Shahid ben Alcazzar was called the Red Fox for a reason. Though nearly spent, the horsemen of Bhagar were far from helpless.
A hail of arrows and throwing javelins raked the stunned Khemri force. Men and animals fell to the ground, dead or thrashing in their death throes. Then the charge of the desert raiders struck home, and bronze clashed against bronze in a swirling, furious melee.
The ferocity of the Bhagar attack might have broken the Khemri force at the outset, had the riders all been living flesh and blood, but the immortals and their dead warriors were impervious to fear and contemptuous of javelins and arrows. The living cavalrymen reeled from the attack, but the dead raised their weapons and fought on.
A trio of panicked cavalrymen raced past Arkhan’s plunging mount. With a snarl, the vizier cut them down with a volley of sorcerous bolts, and then spat Nagash’s dread incantation and returned their corpses to the battle. The horses’ smoking bodies clambered awkwardly upright, and the blackened husks of their riders climbed back into their saddles. The cavalrymen turned their melted faces to the vizier for a moment, and then, as one, they wheeled about and charged into the fray.
With a shout, a desert raider broke free from a pair of Khemri horsemen and bore down on Arkhan, his dark eyes blazing with hate. The vizier brought his horse around and called upon the power of Nagash’s elixir. His blood burned, and the attacking rider seemed to move in slow, languid motion. Arkhan swatted aside the rider’s blade and then slashed open his chest as the warrior lumbered past, once more uttering the arcane incantation that would bind the dead to his bidding. The raider’s blood-soaked corpse had barely struck the ground before it was moving once more, rising clumsily onto its feet and staggering off in search of its former kinsmen.
Across the battlefield, the dead rose from the ground and threw themselves at the living. The men of Bhagar cried out in terror as the bloody corpses clung to their legs, snatched at reins or struck at them with knife and fist. The raiders slashed at the undead with swords and axes, severing arms and caving in skulls, but for every corpse that fell, another waited to take its place, and the men of Bhagar had precious little strength left after their long, wild ride across the desert.
Still the battle raged, with neither side willing to give ground. The forces were intermingled, and there was no telling who had the upper hand. Arkhan looked around for his trumpeter, and found the boy on the ground a short distance away with an arrow through his eye. With a snarl, the vizier realised that he scarcely needed the horn any more. The dead would do his bidding according to his will, and there were more of them joining his side with every passing minute.
Suddenly, Arkhan heard a whistling roar off to his right, and a plume of dust and sand rose like a fist into the sky. Men and horses were caught up in it and flung through the air like toys. The vizier bared his jagged teeth. That had to be the city’s Hierophant of Khsar, and ben Alcazzar would no doubt be somewhere close by. Spurring his horse with a shout, Arkhan headed towards the slowly collapsing pillar of earth with the surviving members of his retinue in close pursuit.
Once again, he called upon the power of the elixir in his blood, and Arkhan waded through a sea of turgid bodies and drifting blades. He cut down everything in his path, be it enemy or friend. Every man he slew rose in his wake and rejoined the battle, their expressions still fixed in the agonising moment of death.
After what seemed like an eternity of slaughter, Arkhan came upon a knot of desert horsemen surrounded by a rising tide of slashing, snapping corpses. The vizier recognised ben Alcazzar at once, with his black leather armour and flowing head scarf. The prince rode a fiery white warhorse whose flanks were near pink with gore, and his scimitar was red and notched nearly to the hilt. He was surrounded by a dozen of his kinsmen, who slashed and stabbed at the encircling horde with grim, silent determination. The warriors had learned that a corpse without a head would not rise again, and they plied their blades like executioners, striking down one slow-moving undead warrior after another. The mindless corpses were already being forced to climb over the mounded heaps of their fellows in order to reach their prey Arkhan noted with surprise that two of the headless bodies near the prince had the alabaster skin of immortals.
Next to ben Alcazzar sat a brown-robed man on a dusty steed, wielding a curled wooden staff instead of a blade. As the vizier watched, the man pointed his staff at a cluster of nearby riders and bellowed an entreaty to Khsar. At once, the sand beneath the riders exploded upwards with a roar like a storm wind, hurling their broken bodies more than thirty feet into the air.
Cursing, Arkhan cast around for something he could throw. He caught sight of the body of a warhorse nearby with a javelin jutting from its side, and rode over to grab it. The barbed shaft did not come free easily, even with the vizier’s more-than-human strength, but finally he held the bloodstained weapon in his hands.
There was another blast of air just a few dozen paces to Arkhan’s right, sweeping up half of the vizier’s retinue and crushing the life out of them. With a savage shout, Arkhan turned in the saddle and hurled the javelin at the hierophant with all of his might.
The priest saw the weapon streak towards him at nearly the last moment and raised his staff in a desperate attempt to block Arkhan’s throw. Had the javelin been cast by a mortal hand, the priest might have succeeded; as it was, the hierophant simply wasn’t fast enough to keep the weapon’s bronze head from punching into his chest and hurling him from his saddle.
Shahid ben Alcazzar saw the priest fall, and followed the path of the javelin back to Arkhan, some ten yards away. The vizier met the prince’s dark eyes, smiled, and then spoke the Incantation of Summoning.
A moment later the prince’s horse reared in fright, and ben Alcazzar staggered as the corpse of the priest tried to pull him from the saddle. The two figures struggle
d for a moment. Then, with a savage cry, ben Alcazzar drew back his sword and buried it in his older brother’s skull.
As the priest’s body fell limply to the ground, the prince glanced wildly around, and saw only a sea of grasping, bloody hands and slack, lifeless faces. Some of those who reached hungrily for him were once his friends or his cousins. Finally, ben Alcazzar turned back to Arkhan and shouted, “Enough! Stop this tide of horrors, and I will yield!” The prince reached up and tore away his head scarf, revealing the anguish etched deep into his handsome face.
Arkhan raised his hand, and with a single thought his undead warriors retreated a step and grew still. Across the battlefield, the clamour of battle abruptly tapered off. The vizier edged his horse forwards until he was just a few yards from the prince. He smiled.
“What will you give so that your people may survive?” he asked.
“Take whatever you want,” ben Alcazzar said thickly. Tears stained his tanned cheeks. “There is gold enough in Bhagar to make you a king, Arkhan the Black. I’ll pay any price you name.”
Arkhan’s dark eyes glittered.
“Done,” he said, and the fate of Bhagar was sealed.
The kings arrived in Khemri at roughly the same time, early on the evening of the fifth day after Nagash’s return. The twin Priest Kings of Numas, Seheb and Nuneb, travelled south through the fertile river lands north of the Vitae with a mounted retinue of Ushabti, viziers, scribes and slaves. They crossed the great river by ferry, arriving at the empty city docks just as the royal barges of Zandri were poling their way to shore. The viziers of the two royal parties eyed one another with diplomatic reserve, and then hissed sharp orders to their slaves to begin disembarking as quickly as possible.
Within minutes, the square began filling with horses, chariots, palanquins and scores of frantic slaves as each procession sought to gain the advantage of precedence over the other. Zandri’s chief vizier took the tactical step of ordering the king’s wardrobe to be left aboard his barge, saving nearly half an hour of unloading. Not to be outdone, the chief vizier for the horse lords noted the surreptitious manoeuvre and sent a message across the river that only the chariots of the twin kings should be brought across, consigning the rest of the retinue to walk the rest of the way to the palace. Gold was pressed into the palms of the ferrymen to redouble their efforts, and bargemen were pulled from their duties and pressed into service unloading the royal household. Slaves lost their footing and fell into the river, and no one could spare a moment to aid them.
In the end, despite heroic efforts and great sacrifice on both sides, the kings reached the docks at very nearly the same time. The viziers had fought to a draw, bowing curtly to one another across the open square.
It was only then that the functionaries noticed the unease of the royal bodyguards, and realised how silent and dark the Living City had become. They looked around the deserted wharves, lit only by Neru’s silver glow, and wondered at all the rumours they had heard about Khemri’s ageless king.
No sooner had the royal personages set foot on the docks than a single, pale figure appeared at the southern edge of the square. Raamket, approached the three kings, his cloak of flayed skin spreading like ghastly wings around his shoulders.
“Nagash the Living God welcomes you,” he said, bowing deeply. “It is my honour to escort you into his presence.”
Before the shocked kings could offer a reply, the vizier beckoned to the twin Kings of Numas, and then turned and set off at a brisk stride towards the palace. The order of precedence had been set, and a hissed command from the vizier set the royal chariots rattling forwards across the paving stones, leaving Amn-nasir and his scowling retainers to follow as best they could.
The procession made its way down the empty streets of the noble district, wondering at the walled compounds and bronze-studded gates. At the palace, the great gates stood open, but no guards stood watch at the entrance. Likewise, the great plaza outside Settra’s Court was deserted, save for swooping bats and scuttling lizards hunting among the drifts of sand. There were no trumpets to announce their arrival, nor white-robed acolytes to bless them with salt and the joyous clash of cymbals. Unnerved, the twin Kings of Numas stepped from their chariots and joined Raamket at the steps to Settra’s Court to await Amn-nasir’s arrival, leaving their viziers to mutter fearfully and oversee the unpacking of gifts to present to Khemri’s king. The twin kings’ keen-eyed Ushabti, clad in white kilts and leather armour ornamented with medallions of turquoise and gold, surrounded their royal charges and glared forbiddingly into the deep shadows surrounding the square.
Fifteen minutes later, the Zandri delegation wound its way into the plaza, and Amn-nasir joined his royal peers with as much affronted dignity as he could manage. The Priest King of Zandri was stocky and walked with the rolling gait of a lifelong sailor. At the venerable age of a hundred and twenty, his years at sea were long behind him, but his frame was still lean and strong. By contrast, the twin horse lords were tall and fey, with darting eyes and sharp, angular features. Bands of hammered gold decorated their slim arms, and their black hair was bound in identical horsetail queues. The rulers of both cities owed their wealth to trade: slaves from the wild north in the case of Zandri, and herds of fine horses raised on the plains around Numas. Together, they represented the richest cities in all of Nehekhara, and they remained so because they allied themselves with the Priest King of Khemri.
Raamket wasted no time on ceremony. As soon as Amn-nasir joined them, the vizier bowed silently and led the way past the tall pillars and into Settra’s Court. The statues of Asaph and Geheb were lost in shadow, their feet covered by piles of charred and broken stone.
Beyond, the great hall was as dark as a tomb. The only light came from the Priest King of Khemri, sitting upon the ancient wooden throne and surrounded by the restless glimmer of his ghostly retinue.
Raamket stepped swiftly into the hall, his sandals whispering softly across the marble floor. The three kings stared at one another uncertainly, all thought of precedence forgotten, until by silent agreement they entered the court together with their bodyguards close behind. Their footsteps echoed in the vast space, and the Ushabti nervously fingered their weapons as they felt unseen eyes watching them from the darkness along the length of the hall.
At the foot of the dais, Raamket fell to his knees before his master. The swirling nimbus of glowing spirits regarded the three kings with empty eyes and faint, fearful moans. Their funereal glow silhouetted the lower legs of the great statue of Ptra behind the wooden throne, revealing jagged scars and pockmarks blasted into the gold-plated sandstone. To Nagash’s right, the ghostly luminescence outlined the edge of the queen’s lesser throne. From time to time, the ebb and flow of the unearthly light would play across the bony tip of a shoulder clad in spotless samite, or the edge of a resplendent golden headdress.
Nagash slouched upon Settra’s ornate throne, resting his head on the palm of his hand in contemplation. He studied the three kings coldly, his eyes like flecks of polished obsidian. “Greetings, kings of the north and west,” the necromancer rasped. “The Living City welcomes you.”
The regal twins of Numas paled at the sound of Nagash’s rained voice, and could not manage a reply Amn-nasir, older and made of sterner stuff, mastered his deep unease and said, “Your summons came as a great surprise. We thought you were far to the south, answering the challenge of Ka-Sabar.”
“Circumstances to the east compelled my return,” Nagash replied. “No doubt you have learned of the battle at the Gates of the Dawn.” Amn-nasir shot a sidelong glance at the twin Kings of Numas.
“There are rumours,” he admitted. “It is said that the Tomb Guard has been overthrown, and the Priest Kings of Rasetra and Lybaras have seized the White Palace.”
“It is no rumour,” Nagash declared. “Hekhmenukep and Rakh-amn-hotep, that treacherous son of Khemri, have broken the ancient code of warfare laid down by Settra and deposed Quatar’s rightful ruler. Now they
are poised to march upon the Living City.” The Priest King of Khemri straightened slowly upon the ancient throne and stared intently at his guests. “This is no mere feud between kings. These reckless men have invited chaos upon all of Nehekhara, and we must give answer to them!”
“But… what would you have us say?” Nuneb stammered. “Your warriors are many days away, are they not?”
“And we have neither the gold nor the time to raise an army,” Seheb added.
“It is the same with Zandri,” Amn-nasir said. “As you know very well, great one.”
“Once a crocodile tastes human flesh, it wants nothing else,” Nagash growled. “These outlaw kings have taken Quatar, and intend to seize Khemri next. Do you imagine they will stop there? If we do not stand together against them they will surely conquer us one by one.”
“What of Lahmia?” Seheb asked. The young king’s gaze flicked nervously to the hunched silhouette upon Neferem’s throne. “Where does Lamashizzar stand?”
“Or Mahrak?” Nuneb said. “Surely the Hieratic Council will repudiate what Rasetta and Lybaras have done.”
“The Hieratic Council,” Nagash said with a bubbling sneer. “Hekhmenukep and Rakh-amn-hotep are their pawns. They intend to destroy me, and because you are my allies, they will supplant you as well!”
“Is this because of what you did to Khemri’s temples?” Amn-nasir asked. “Or does it have to do with the darkness that fell across Nehekhara several weeks past? The one that slew so many young priests and acolytes?”
“It is because the Hierophants of Mahrak see me as a threat to their corrupt rule,” Nagash said, his eyes narrowed angrily at the Priest King of Zandri.
“Because you are a living god?” Amn-nasir asked archly.
A flicker of triumph shone in the necromancer’s dark eyes, and he replied, “Because I have conquered death itself.”