by Mike Lee
“When I saw you at the assembly today, alongside your son, I realised that what I had done to you was wrong,” Nagash said. He indicated the bedroom with a wave of his arm. “It isn’t right to keep you locked up here, like a caged bird. I cannot possess you in such a way. Your will is strong, nearly as strong as mine, and you have already said that you would sooner die than submit to me. Every year that passes only draws you further from my grasp, until one day you will shed your mortal flesh and join your husband in the afterlife.”
A wary look came over Neferem’s face. Her body relaxed very slightly.
“What you say is true,” she replied. “If you thought to break my will by reuniting me with Sukhet this afternoon, it did just the opposite.”
“Oh, I know,” the king said. “Your will is very strong, nearly as strong as mine. I see that now. And so, I’m here to set you free.”
The Daughter of the Sun gave Nagash a bewildered look.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean you have a choice,” the king said with a smile. “Here and now, I swear an oath before the gods not to harm Sukhet from this moment forward. I will not use him to compel you ever again.” He took a slow step forwards. “You are free to choose your own fate. Either remain here as you are and rule alongside me, or drink this, and life as you know it will end.”
Nagash raised his right hand. In it he held a small golden cup, half-full with dark liquid. The elixir was still warm, fresh from Sukhet’s young heart. The queen considered the cup. Her face became very still and calm.
“You swear that Sukhet will be safe?”
“From this moment forward he may do as he wishes,” Nagash said. “I swear it, by all the gods.”
The Daughter of the Sun nodded, and came to a swift decision. “Give me the cup, then,” she said.
“Are you certain?” Nagash asked. “Once you have drunk from the cup, there will be no turning back.” Neferem raised her chin and gave Nagash a haughty look.
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” she replied. “Let the darkness come. I weary of this sad and terrible life.” The necromancer smiled.
“As you wish, queen,” he said, and handed the cup to her. “Drink deep, loyal wife. The effect will be swift and painless.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The Road of Bones
Quatar, The City of the Dead, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1744 Imperial Reckoning)
The army of the east had marched through the night and on into the sunrise, hastening their steps towards the City of the Dead.
The first companies crested the high dunes at the western edge of the Plain of Usirian just before midday, and when they saw the white city shimmering in the searing light they raised their hands to the sky and thanked the Great Father for their deliverance. They lurched and stumbled down the sandy slope, breaking ranks as they succumbed to the promise of cool water, fresh food and a pallet in the shade where they could sleep without fear. The noblemen in command of the companies made a half-hearted effort to restore discipline, but their throats were caked in dust and after weeks of strict rations they were hungrier than they had ever been in their lives. When the subsequent formations reached the edge of the plain and saw the headlong rush for the city they joined in, until by the time Rakh-amn-hotep reached the dunes with the army’s centre he saw a veritable flood of tanned bodies pouring across the rocky ground towards Quatar’s stained walls.
The king reined in his chariot with a stream of bitter curses. The leading edge of the mob was more than a mile away. There was no stopping them, but Rakh-amn-hotep vowed that he would have their commanders whipped before the day was out. His presence at the dune crest kept the rest of the army in line. He could see temptation in the eyes of the men, but one look at the king’s furious expression was enough to remind them of their training, and their discipline held as they continued on to Quatar.
Rakh-amn-hotep waited there as the rest of the host filed past, baking in the still, dusty air as he watched for the leading elements of the army’s rearguard. The long, terrible retreat would not be done until the last man of the last company passed through the city gates.
The king’s chariot driver wiped his gleaming brow and pulled a thin leather flask from his belt. He offered it first to the king, but Rakh-amn-hotep stoically declined.
“Drink your fill,” he told the man. “I can wait.”
When the creak and rumble of chariot wheels reached the king’s ears several minutes later it took Rakh-amn-hotep by surprise. He found himself blinking dazedly to the west.
“So soon?” he murmured. “By the gods, is this all we have left?”
The army’s remaining chariots and its squadrons of heavy horsemen rode past the king in good order, tired but proud of their hard duty covering the army’s retreat. The Rasetran chariots were pulled by horses, taken from the supply train when their swift jungle lizards had perished in the heat. The charioteers raised their weapons in weary salute to the king.
Ekhreb, the king’s champion, appeared with the last of the rearguard squadrons, riding in the saddle of a dust-stained mare.
“What did you do with your chariot, you damned fool?” the king asked.
“Traded it to a bandit princess for a cup of cool water,” the champion replied in a deadpan voice.
“She didn’t try to entice you with her other charms?”
“She may have tried. I was too busy drinking.”
The king managed a weary chuckle, and asked, “What did happen to your chariot?” Ekhreb sighed.
“We hit one too many rocks cutting back and forth across the road. The left wheel was cracked through. Fortunately, the cavalry has plenty of spare horses.”
“Any signs of pursuit?” the king asked, but the champion shook his head.
“Not since dawn,” he said. “We were probed by some Numasi horsemen just before the moons set, but they withdrew off to the west just before daybreak.” Rakh-amn-hotep nodded thoughtfully.
“They assumed we’d make camp at daybreak, like normal,” he said. “Now they’re more than half a day’s march behind us. That’s the first good news we’ve had in weeks.”
“And not a moment too soon,” Ekhreb agreed. He gestured at the distant mob streaming across the plain. “The men are at their breaking point.”
“Only half of them,” the king replied testily. “It’s a disgrace, but the officers are to blame. After we’ve had a day’s rest I intend to sort things out, believe me.”
“And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the city of Quatar,” the champion said with a rueful grin. He watched the running figures for a moment, and then his brow furrowed in bemusement.
Rakh-amn-hotep was just about to order his chariot forwards again when he caught the look on his champion’s face.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Ekhreb said. “Does the city look strange to you?”
At the far end of the Plain of Usirian the city of Quatar shimmered like a desert mirage. Its white walls, once stained with the red rain of Nagash’s terrible plague, had been bleached by years of relentless sunlight, and they shimmered with heat like clay fresh from the kiln. The City of the Dead gleamed like a new sepulchre, and the men of the allied army rushed towards it with open arms and hoarse shouts of joy.
None of the exhausted warriors noticed that Quatar’s gates were still shut, at a time when there ought to have been a meagre but steady flow of traffic into and out of the city. Nor did they wonder at the lack of smoke hanging over the rooftops. The hearths and clay ovens had all gone cold during the night.
The warriors made it to the cool shadow of the city walls and fell to their knees, gasping, and in some cases weeping in relief. Red-faced noblemen shouted up at the battlements, calling for a guard to throw open the gates. After a moment, the rest of the men took up the shout, calling loudly enough to wake the dead.
In the darkness of
the city’s eastern gatehouse half a dozen pallid figures were startled awake by the clamour. They cursed in surprise at the sound of hundreds of shouting voices, and in their fear and confusion they commanded their warriors to awaken.
All along the broad walkway running atop the western wall, thousands of skeletal warriors began to stir. Bleached skulls rose from the stone walkway, turning this way and that in search of their foes. Bones clattered and scraped as they reached for bows and arrows or bundles of bronze-headed javelins. There were no shouted commands, nor the strident call of war-horns. Silent and purposeful, the undead warriors climbed to their feet and took aim at the helpless men below.
The first hissing flight of arrows went almost unnoticed by the warriors on the plain. Men toppled over dead with scarcely a sound, or collapsed in shock as the pain of their wounds took hold. The groans of the dying were drowned by the cheers and desperate pleas of their comrades for several seconds more, until a ragged volley of javelins darkened the sky overhead and fell in a deadly rain among the reeling mob. Shouts of relief turned to frightened screams as scores of men were wounded or slain. Warriors shouted in panic and confusion. Some waved their arms wildly at the gaunt silhouettes atop the wall, believing that the city’s defenders were firing on them by mistake. Officers shouted conflicting orders, some acting on instinct and trying to form the men into companies, while others screamed for a full retreat and fled back towards the rest of the army. The men caught in between, dazed with exhaustion and hunger, were cut down where they stood.
When the first arrows started to fly, Rakh-amn-hotep could not believe his eyes. He rubbed his hand across his face and squinted into the harsh light, convinced that he’d been mistaken. Then he heard the faint sound of screams and the strident call of horns from the centre of the army and the awful truth struck home.
“Gods above,” the king said softly, his voice numb with despair. “Nagash has taken Quatar. How in the name of all that is holy…”
Ekhreb cursed, reaching for his sword.
“What do we do, great one?” he asked.
The world seemed to spin around the king. He swayed on his feet, clutching the side of the chariot to steady himself.
“Do?” he echoed, his voice filled with dismay. “What can we do? That monster is always one step ahead of us! It’s as though he knows our every thought—”
“If that were true his men would be right on our heels, herding us to slaughter,” the champion snapped, his tone so sharp that it struck the king like a blow. “Get a hold of yourself. Nagash is no all-seeing god. He’s taken Quatar, but we’re not encircled yet. We still have room to manoeuvre, but the men need direction. What are your orders?”
Rakh-amn-hotep recoiled from the champion’s stern tone, but Ekhreb’s words had their desired effect. Anger replaced shock and despair, and the king began to think.
“All right,” the king growled. “Let’s get ourselves out of this mess.” He stared at the distant city and shook his head bitterly. “We can’t retake the city, not in the shape we’re in.” Once more, despair threatened to overwhelm him, but the Rakh-amn-hotep pushed the feelings aside. “We’ll have to continue the retreat.”
The champion nodded. “South, down the trade road to Ka-Sabar, or north, towards the River Vitae?” he asked.
“Neither,” Rakh-amn-hotep growled. “If we go north, Nagash can trap us against the river and destroy us. And Ka-Sabar lies too far to the south. Without supplies we’d lose more than half the army on the march.” With a bleak look on his face, he pointed further eastwards, beyond the City of the Dead. “No, we’ll have to circle around Quatar and risk the Valley of Kings. It’s more defensible, and Mahrak lies at the far end. We know we can find safe haven there.”
The king did not point out that such a retreat would spell the doom of the great crusade against the Usurper. Nagash would pursue them eastwards, and from this day forward the armies of the east would be fighting, not for the sake of Nehekhara, but for the survival of their people. The alliance would very likely end, as each king sought to make his own peace with Khemri.
Rakh-amn-hotep looked out across the Plain of Usirian and felt the tides of the war turning, flowing inexorably from his grasp.
“Form up your horsemen and chariots,” he told Ekhreb, and pointed off to the south-east. “You’ll lead the advance around the southern edge of the city in case the enemy tries to block our path to the valley. If no one challenges you, ride on to the Gates of the Dawn and seize the fortifications. There are cisterns and storehouses within the walls. We’ll take all we can carry and see if the Lybarans can find a way to collapse the gates behind us. That might buy us another day or two.”
Ekhreb accepted Rakh-amn-hotep’s orders with a curt nod. After all he had seen during the battle at the fountains and the grim retreat afterwards, the thought of destroying the ancient Gates made no impression on him at all.
“What about you?” he asked the king. The Rasetran nodded at the chaos spreading across the plain.
“I’m going down there to rally those damned fools and get them moving,” he said. He held out his hand. “Get going, old friend,” he told his champion. “I’ll see you in the valley beyond the Gates of the Dawn. By then I’ll have figured out a proper punishment for giving me the sharp side of your tongue.” Ekhreb gathered up his reins.
“You could relieve me of command and send me home,” he offered. “It would be a terrible disappointment, but I imagine I could live with it.”
“Couldn’t we all,” the king retorted, and the two warriors parted ways, racing to pull their army back from the brink of destruction once again.
Arkhan awoke in darkness, feeling the stirring of his skeletal warriors like the buzzing of wasps within his brain.
He was sitting upon the Ivory Throne of Quatar, his pale face and hands stained black with drying blood from the entertainments of the night before. A handful of immortals slept upon the blood-spattered floor around the throne, surrounded by the detritus of their revels. Most of the vizier’s undead brethren had scattered across the city with the coming of the dawn, seeking their own solitary havens to wait out the light of day. It appeared that he was not the only immortal growing ever more solitary and mistrustful as the years went by.
The vizier experienced a moment of disorientation, like a man wakened suddenly from a dream. He could sense a portion of his makeshift army in action off to the west, probably the bowmen he’d situated along the city wall. Though the undead were extensions of his will, his ability to sense their activities was vague at best despite his growing skill. At the moment the connection was more tenuous still, and with a start he realised that it was midday, and the hateful sun was almost directly overhead.
The other immortals were beginning to stir, peering warily into the darkness of the throne room. Raamket rose swiftly to his feet, swathed in a fresh kilt and a knee-length coat of soft flesh. Nagash had been very specific as to the fate of Nemuhareb, the Priest King of Quatar, but less so with the rest of the king’s family. The immortal had stripped away the skin of Nemuhareb’s children with care.
“What is happening?” Raamket hissed. Clothed in human skin and dappled with dried gore, the noble’s voice was thin and fearful as a child’s.
“The enemy is here,” Arkhan snarled, leaping from the throne. Behind him came a rustle of flesh and the faint drip of blood as the wind of his passing stirred what was left of the Lord of Tombs. At the command of the Undying King, Nemuhareb had been skinned alive, and his hide, with its nerves carefully and magically preserved, had been stretched across a standard pole and painted with necromantic runes using the king’s heart blood. When Nagash’s army eventually marched from Quatar they would carry the flayed skin and tormented soul of Nemuhareb before them as a warning to those who would defy the will of Khemri.
“The damned eastern kings force-marched their armies the rest of the way to Quatar instead of waiting one more day as Nagash expected,” Arkhan continued, his anger
growing by the moment. He cursed himself for a fool.
After weeks of hounding Akhmen-hotep and the Bronze Host across the Great Desert he’d allowed himself to indulge in too much celebration after his easy conquest of Quatar. Now, instead of Nagash’s army pinning their foes against the city walls and slaughtering them, Arkhan was faced with stopping the eastern armies with the scrapings taken from the city necropolis. The archers and javelin throwers on the walls were the best-armed troops he had, and his immortals were imprisoned inside their own havens for as long as the sun burned overhead.
The vizier’s blood-smeared hands clenched into impotent fists. Furious, he sent a single, burning command to his undead army.
At this point there was nothing left for Arkhan to do but kill as many of the easterners as he could.
The eastern end of the Plain of Usirian had been transformed into a killing ground. Hundreds of dead and dying men littered the rocky field beneath the walls of Quatar, and still the arrows arced through the blazing sky. The survivors of the allied armies’ ill-fated lead companies were in full flight, trampling one another in their haste to escape the rain of death. As they ran, bony hands burst from the loose soil and clutched at their ankles. Men fell screaming as the earth heaved and countless skeletons burst from the ground among the panicked troops and set upon them with jagged teeth and claw-like fingers.
Those few that survived the jaws of Arkhan’s fearsome trap retreated back to the main body of the eastern host and sent tremors of terror and despair through the ranks. Men wavered, already pushed to the limits of their resolve by the hardships of the long retreat. Officers shouted encouragement and uttered blistering oaths to try to keep their warriors in line, but for a few, desperate moments the allied army teetered on the brink of collapse.
Then, just as all seemed lost, the sound of war-horns carried through the din and the earth rumbled like a drum under the beat of thousands of hooves as the army’s weary cavalry swept down the column’s right flank and charged once more into the fray. They smashed through part of the shambling horde of skeletons, smashing their bodies to pieces and grinding them under their hooves before swinging to the south and circling around the enemy-held city.