by Mike Lee
As he drew near the edge of the camp, Akhmen-hotep began to encounter groups of panicked men running the other way. Their kilts were stained with dust and soot, and their faces were pale with fright. The men were blind to the presence of the king in their midst, rushing past him like a flock of startled birds, intent on nothing more than running east as quickly as they could.
Five minutes later the king found himself at the edge of the sprawling camp. He came upon a scene of chaos and confusion. A nobleman on horseback was shouting orders and trying to control his plunging mount at the same time, while a small group of warriors was pulling open the crude enclosure holding the barbarian prisoners they’d taken in battle. A second enclosure, built to contain the imprisoned members of Bel Aliad’s City Companies, had already been opened, and the prisoners were milling around the moonlit plain in confusion.
Akhmen-hotep ran up to the shouting horseman, realising at the last moment that it was Pakh-amn.
“What is going on?” he shouted up at the Master of Horse.
Pakh-amn twisted in the saddle and stared wide-eyed at the sudden appearance of the king. “They’re coming!” he said hoarsely.
“What?” the king asked. He looked around, trying to make sense of the scene. “Who is coming?” The young nobleman eyed the throng of milling prisoners and cursed under his breath. He leaned down until his face was just inches from the king’s.
“Who do you think?” he hissed. “The people of Bel Aliad have risen in their multitudes, great one. They set upon us as we were leaving the city and killed a third of my men. The rest of us ran the entire way back to camp, but even so, we haven’t much time. The dead are rising from the battlefield, too, and are heading this way even as we speak.”
Akhmen-hotep felt his blood turn to ice as he heard the news. “But there were no sorcerers in the city,” he protested numbly. “Suhedir al-Khazem swore an oath on it.”
“Go and see the carnage at the city gates if you don’t believe me,” Pakh-amn snarled. “Old men with their stomachs torn open, mothers with slit throats and trampled children. They came at us out of the side streets and alleys and tore my men apart with their bare hands!”
The king’s shock melted beneath the young noble’s acid tone. He glowered up at the Master of Horse, and replied, “Even so, we have the wards. The priests of Neru—”
“Are dead or dying,” Pakh-amn shot back. “They were ambushed a short while ago as they walked their circuit. We heard hoof beats off to the north, probably light horsemen armed with bows. Neru’s holy wards have no power over a flight of arrows.”
The king gritted his teeth at the news, remembering the trio of wounded acolytes he’d seen earlier. He considered the unfolding situation quickly, and his heart sank at the realisation that he’d been caught in the jaws of a trap. The battle they’d fought earlier in the day had only been a prelude, meant to wear his men out and swell the numbers of the enemy’s forces even further. The king drew a deep breath.
“It’s good that you thought to free the prisoners,” he said heavily.
Pakh-amn bared his teeth. “If the gods are good, the fiends will go for them first and give us time to get out of here,” he hissed. The nobleman’s cold-blooded tactic took the king aback.
“We’ll form up the host here,” he said, “between Bel Aliad and the camp. Perhaps we can find some spare weapons and arm the City Companies—”
Forgetting himself completely, Pakh-amn glowered at the king.
“Are you mad?” he snapped. “Even had we the time to form up the army, the men are exhausted and the horses are blown, and the dead won’t bother forming into companies and marching to battle. They’ll lap around our flanks and swarm like ants over the camp.”
“Then what would you have me do, Master of Horse?” Akhmen-hotep growled threateningly.
Pakh-amn blinked at the king’s tone, perhaps realising how far he’d overstepped his bounds.
“We must flee,” he answered, his voice more subdued, “right now, while there’s still time. Gather the Bhagarites and see if they can lose us among the sands.”
The king’s lip curled in distaste, but there was some sense in the young noble’s words. If he offered battle he risked playing further into his enemy’s hands. The thought of such an ignominious flight went ill with the king, but they’d done what they’d come to do. They’d fulfilled their obligation to their allies. Now, their only obligation was to themselves and their city.
To the king’s left, a group of barbarians began to shout, pointing off to the west and babbling in their guttural tongue. Akhmen-hotep stepped away from Pakh-amn’s horse and peered westward.
At first, it seemed as if the broken plain was slowly undulating, like sluggish waves along the surface of a river, but as the king’s eyes adjusted to the shadows he could make out round, drooping heads and slumped shoulders, dark and tattered beneath Neru’s silver light. A shambling mob of figures limped and lurched its way silently towards the camp. Some brandished axes or spears, while others reached for their distant prey with bare and bloodied hands. The leading edge of the horde was less than a mile away, advancing at a slow, relentless pace. Akhmen-hotep felt their mindless hunger like a cold blade pressed against his skin.
The men of the City Companies saw the undead creatures too. Some of the men called out tentatively to the approaching figures, thinking that their kin had come to pay the ransom for their release.
In a few more minutes the slaughter would begin, and panic would spread like a desert wind through the camp. If they were to have any chance to escape at all, the king knew that they would have to act quickly. Sick at heart, the king turned back to Pakh-amn.
“Go and rouse your horsemen,” he told the young nobleman. “You’ll have to be our rearguard as we try to withdraw.”
Pakh-amn stared at the king for a long moment, his dark eyes hidden by shadow. Finally he gave a curt nod and kicked his horse into a gallop. The king watched the Master of Horse disappear deeper into the camp, and then began issuing orders to his bodyguards.
“Rouse the company commanders at once,” he told them. “Tell them to muster their troops and gather everything they can carry. We move out in fifteen minutes.”
The Ushabti bowed quickly and raced off into the darkness. Akhmen-hotep looked around and saw that the mercenaries were already gone, fleeing pell-mell off to the south. The warriors of Bel Aliad were heading westwards in a ragged mob, calling out to figures that they vaguely recognised among the approaching horde.
Burning with shame, Akhmen-hotep said a short prayer to Usirian, that their souls might find their way safely into the afterlife. Then he turned and raced for the centre of the camp.
The walking dead of Bel Aliad were methodical in their work. They stumbled after their screaming kinsmen, dragging them to the ground and stabbing them with spears or tearing them open with tooth and claw. The warriors of the City Companies fled in every direction, but they were weary from a long day of battle and terrified beyond reason at the sight of the bloodstained monsters that had once been their wives and children. Some tried to fight, taking up rocks or pieces of wood and striking in vain at the tide of relentless corpses. Others tried to hide amid the broken ground, cowering behind boulders or burying themselves in drifts of sand, until clumsy, grasping fingers closed around their throats. Still others begged for mercy, appealing to those among the horde whom they knew by name. In every case, the result was the same. The men died, slowly and terribly, and then, within minutes, they rose anew and joined in the hunt.
When the men of the City Companies were no more, the undead army combed the darkness for the pale-skinned northmen. The hulking barbarians swore wild oaths and called upon their rough-hewn gods as they fought, smashing skulls and breaking bones even as cold, dry teeth closed upon their throats. For all their struggles, the horde claimed them as well.
The last to die were the city’s proud rulers. They stumbled from the empty camp of the Bronze Host and foun
d their people waiting for them on the broken plain. Silently, reverently, the dead of Bel Aliad surrounded the princes and tore them limb from limb. Suhedir al-Khazem was eaten alive by his three daughters, watching in mute, insensate horror as they dug their fingers into his abdomen and tore his entrails free.
All the while the Bronze Host of Ka-Sabar was fleeing further and further into the desert, carrying only what the weary soldiers could sling upon their backs. They moved in silence, casting fearful glances back at their abandoned tents and wondering when the first packs of shambling corpses would find their trail, and the long hunt would begin.
Sitting atop his rotting horse on a sand dune to the north, Arkhan the Black watched the army retreat into the merciless desert, and smiled. For a moment, just before the city’s dead reached the enemy camp, he’d feared that Akhmen-hotep would offer battle instead of retreating. That would have complicated his master’s plans. Fortunately, the doomed king had chosen to enter the trap instead.
The immortal waited with deathless patience until the last of the enemy warriors had vanished across the rolling hills of sand. Then he nudged his dead mount forwards with a creak of old leather and a rattle of bones. At once, his squadron of skeletal horsemen followed, their harnesses rattling hollowly in the waning moonlight.
EIGHTEEN
Sealed in Stone
Khemri, the Living City, in the 45th year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1959 Imperial Reckoning)
The wails of drugged and terrified victims created a shrill counterpoint to the furious chants echoing in the great throne room deep within the Great Pyramid. Nagash stood within a carefully marked ritual circle, not far from where the barbarian witch Drutheira had met a gruesome end not twenty-four hours before. Khefru had worked frantically to clear away the bodies, and then find an unmarked part of the floor where he could inscribe the ritual circle. Only the remnants of Asaph’s shattered head, and the grisly remains beneath, still remained as proof of the magical duel waged on the previous night.
The braziers were burning brightly, and clouds of incense hung above the gathered nobles. All forty of Nagash’s allies were in attendance, in two groups of twenty. While a score of the noblemen stood around the perimeter of the circle and joined in the invocations, the rest kept a close watch on the waiting sacrifices. Many of the victims were slaves, bought in the market near the docks that very day. Others were drunkards or gamblers, who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when one of Nagash’s men passed by. Their senses were dulled by wine or black lotus root, or numbed by the mild narcotic mixed with the burning incense, but even so they could not help but be aware of the terrible fate that awaited them.
Nagash led each ritual, his powerful voice rising to a crescendo as the victim caught within his grip began to burn. He drank deeply of their souls and wove the energy into the greater incantation that he’d begun hours earlier, feeding the curse that continued to plague the noble-born of Khemri. Beneath his ritual robes his torso was bandaged from his shoulders to his waist, and his cheeks were burned from the touch of the druchii’s sorcery. His arms, particularly the one that Drutheira had cut, ached down to the very bone. It was all he could do to move them, much less grip each squirming slave and tear free his soul. What sustained him was the memory of his victory over his erstwhile tutors, and the knowledge that the throne he’d coveted for so long was nearly within his grasp. Another week, perhaps two, enough time for the plague to claim the last of the city’s high nobility and provoke the angry citizens to riot, and he would be ready to make his move.
The victim within his hands went limp, his screams dwindling to a breathless whimper as his body burst into a hissing plume of green flame. Nagash felt the sorcerous fire lick up his arms and threw back his head in exultation as the young man’s lifeforce passed through him. Not for the first time, he felt the heady, fleeting rush of youth and wondered if there might be some way to make that vigour his own.
Nagash scarcely felt the slave’s body crumble to ash in his hands. He added the stolen life-force to the fabric of the curse and brought the Incantation of Reaping to a conclusion. The necromancer swayed slightly, drunk from the taste of so much power. By his count they had sacrificed half of the night’s bounty so far.
“You are dismissed,” he told the men standing around the circle. “Go and send the others to me.” Then he beckoned to Khefru, who waited in the shadows near the dais. “Wine,” he commanded.
The servant approached with a small jug and a goblet made of beaten gold. Nagash snatched the jug from Khefru’s hand and raised it to his lips. He drank deep, slaking his burning thirst.
“Better,” he said huskily, handing the jug back to his servant. The vessel fell through Khefru’s slack fingers and smashed upon the stones, mingling wine with the piled ash of the sacrifices.
“Clumsy fool!” Nagash snarled. “Sop it up at once. Drink it down if you have to! If your act of carelessness breaches the ritual inscriptions…” The necromancer paused, suddenly noticing the look of dumb horror on the young priest’s face. Nagash cuffed his servant on the ear. “Have you not heard a single thing I’ve said to you?” Khefru’s sallow face had turned pale. He pointed a trembling finger at the knot of wailing victims.
“That girl there,” he said. “The young one, with the gold circlet around her arm.”
Nagash scowled irritably at the huddled mass of wretches. After a moment, he caught sight of the one to whom the priest referred. She was very young, supple and strong, with a slightly exotic cast to her eyes. He reckoned a girl like her must have been worth her weight in silver on the block.
“What of her, damn you?” he asked.
“She’s no slave,” Khefru said, his voice thick with dread. “Can’t you see? She’s Lahmian. I’ve seen her before. She’s one of the queen’s personal servants!” The news gave Nagash pause.
“Surely not,” he said, studying the girl more closely. “Perhaps she was taken in a raid, part of some caravan bound for Lybaras, or possibly even Mahrak.”
“No!” Khefru moaned. “I’ve seen her at the palace! What slave would be put on the block with a gold circlet still around her arm?” Forgetting himself, the priest gripped Nagash’s left arm. “I warned you about this, time and again! Someone, perhaps Shepsu-hur, perhaps Arkhan, got lazy and careless, and took the first person that caught his fancy, and now we’re undone! The queen won’t rest until she’s learned who took her maid!”
Nagash shook off Khefru’s panicked grip. He beckoned impatiently to the second group of nobles, which, interestingly, contained both Shepsu-hur and Arkhan.
“Quickly!” he snapped. “Bring her first, the young one, with the gold circlet on her arm. Now!” Khefru’s eyes widened in horror.
“You can’t mean to kill her?” he asked. The necromancer’s hands clenched into fists.
“Do you imagine we can send her back to the palace, after all she’s seen?” he hissed. “Gather what’s left of your courage, you simpleton. We’ve almost reached the end. In another week, two at most, none of this will matter any more.”
To Nagash’s surprise, Khefru refused to yield. “You can’t do this!” he said. “I won’t—”
Before he could say any more, a fierce shout rang across the throne room from the south side of the chamber, followed by cries of surprise and fear from among Nagash’s minions.
The crowd along the south side of the chamber seemed to recoil from a fierce, golden radiance that shone between a pair of columns at the midpoint of the room. Nagash saw Arkhan, who was leading the second group of noblemen and dragging the young maid by the arm, glance to his right and turn pale with shock. Weeping in relief, the maid tore loose from Arkhan’s grip and ran towards the light.
Nagash turned on his heel and dashed up to the dais, climbing the cracked stone steps until he could see over the panicked, milling mob. At once, he found himself staring into the angry eyes of his brother, Thutep.
The young kin
g was dressed as though for war, armoured in a bronze breastplate and woven leather bands that covered his arms and legs. He carried a gleaming khopesh in his right hand, and the golden headdress of Settra rested upon his brow. Thutep was surrounded by a dozen of his Ushabti, and it was from them that the golden light of Ptra shone like a lamp, chasing back the room’s dreadful shadows. The devoted were armed and armoured, too, and their handsome faces were set into masks of righteous rage. Within the protective circle of the bodyguards, a few paces behind the king, stood the regal figure of Hapshur, the High Priestess of Neru. The priestess clutched her slender staff of office and gazed angrily at the tumult that surrounded her. On Thutep’s left side, the queen’s young maid knelt at the king’s feet, her forehead pressed to the flagstones.
When Thutep saw his brother, his handsome face twisted into a mask of grief-stricken rage.
“Ghazid tried to warn me about you,” he said to Nagash, his powerful voice cutting through the clamour like a knife. “He said you were a threat, not just to me, but to Khemri. And gods, now I see that he was right all along!”
Nagash smiled coldly at the king. “That was your trouble all along, brother. You were always too sentimental, too afraid to hurt those around you. You wanted to be loved,” he sneered, “but for a king to rule, he must be feared.”
The necromancer spread his arms wide, encompassing the entire chamber. “No one in all of Nehekhara fears you, brother. Least of all me.”
“Heretic!” Hapshur cried, brandishing her staff at Nagash. “You are an abomination before the gods, and a traitor to your priesthood! The hour of your reckoning is at hand!”
Thutep pointed his curved sword at Nagash, and said, “There is no escape, brother. Companies of the City Watch surround the pyramid, and we know where all the exits lie. In the name of Ptra, the Great Father, you and your followers are under arrest. When the sun rises tomorrow you will be put on trial for your crimes in the temple square at Khemri, and the servants of the gods will pass judgement upon you.”