The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  Though the charge had only stopped part of the enemy attack, it restored some of the army’s lost courage and halted the mindless spread of panic. Moments later Rakh-amn-hotep reached the centre of the army, riding past the frightened companies and galvanising them with his presence. He roared imprecations at the retreating warriors, halting them in their tracks through the sheer, indomitable force of his presence. Oblivious to the arrows hissing through the air around him, he sent the shattered companies marching to the rear of the column and formed a battleline to receive the advancing horde.

  The skeletons attacked in waves, clawing mindlessly at the shields and helms of the exhausted spearmen, but with the king at their back the companies stood their ground and they hurled back one assault after the next. Men in the rear ranks picked up rocks and hurled them at the shambling skeletons, smashing skulls and splitting ribcages.

  After weathering five separate attacks, Rakh-amn-hotep passed a command to his signallers, and the army began to advance. The companies pressed forwards, a step at a time, carving a path through the skeletal horrors and slowly working their way around the perimeter of the city towards the Gates of the Dawn.

  Arrows continued to rain down on the warriors from the walls of Quatar, but the range was great, and few found their mark. Rakh-amn-hotep rolled up and down the length of the advancing army, encouraging them to keep pushing forwards against the tide of bones.

  One hour passed, and then another. Weary beyond reason, the army fought on, passing south of Quatar and then forcing their way eastwards. The Rasetran king turned his attention to forming a rearguard from the mauled companies at the back of the column, standing with them and holding off what remained of the undead attackers while the rest of the host retreated safely beyond their reach.

  The fire of the archers dwindled steadily as their supply of arrows ran low, and less than two hundred skeletons remained on the sun-baked plain to challenge the retreating host. The ghastly mob made one last attempt against the rearguard, and this time the eastern warriors responded with such fury that not one of the grisly warriors survived.

  Alone and unchallenged upon the field, the rearguard raised their spears and offered praise to the gods and to Rakh-amn-hotep for their victory, but when the warriors turned to salute their king they found his chariot empty. Rakh-amn-hotep lay upon the ground just a few yards away, his chariot driver kneeling at his side. An arrow, one of the very last fired from the city walls, had taken the bold king in the throat.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The City of the Gods

  Quatar, the City of the Dead, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious

  (-1744 Imperial Reckoning)

  So long as he drank his master’s elixir, Arkhan the Black was immortal. Thus, pain applied in just the right way could be made to last a very, very long time.

  The vizier writhed and gurgled in a sticky pool of his own fluids, smothered by a wet, chitinous blanket of tomb beetles. His clothes and most of his skin had long since been eaten away, and the flesh beneath chewed to a pulp as the scarabs worked their way into the tender organs beneath. When he tried to keep screaming, the air whistled tunelessly through the gaping holes in his throat, and all that emerged from his gaping mouth was the rustling, tearing sound of hundreds of pairs of mandibles.

  Nagash sat straight-backed upon the throne of Quatar with the hide of its former ruler stirring at his back. His immortals, as well as the vassal Kings of Numas and Zandri, all waited upon the king as he meted out his displeasure on the vizier. Nagash’s undead champions watched Arkhan’s suffering with wary, subdued expressions. Never before had they been shown the agonies that one of their own kind could be made to endure, and, to a man, they all feared that they could be next. For the kings, however, the horror was even worse. Seheb and Nuneb had collapsed early on, their eyes wide and feverish with shock. Their Ushabti had little choice but to take the twin kings by the arms and hold them bodily upright until Nagash declared the audience to be at an end. Amn-nasir drank and drank from the goblet clutched in his trembling hand, but no amount of wine and crushed lotus could banish the scene unfolding at his feet.

  The beetles had been at work for more than an hour, and yellowed bones could be seen amid the tattered scraps of red meat still clinging to Arkhan’s frame. With a rustle and a swirl of the necromancer’s ghostly retinue, Nagash stretched forth his hand and the swarm of beetles fled the vizier’s ruined body in a chittering tide, racing across the marble floor and over the sandalled feet of the immortals.

  “You failed me,” the Undying King said. He rose to his feet and approached Arkhan’s ravaged form. “I delivered our enemies into your hands, and you let them slip away.”

  Arkhan’s body shivered and twitched. He turned his shredded face to his master. Blood and other fluids pooled in the empty eye sockets. His jaw worked clumsily, driven by just a few remaining shreds of muscle, but the only sound he could manage was a thin, tortured wheeze.

  The Undying King held out his hand, and Ghazid, his servant, appeared from the shadows behind the throne. The blind wretch carried a wide copper bowl brimming with a thick, steaming crimson fluid, and he walked with exaggerated care, as though fearful of spilling a single drop. A shiver went through the immortals as they smelled the elixir. One or two even forgot themselves and took a step or two towards the bowl, their blue lips drawn back in a rictus of thirst. Nagash stilled them with a single look.

  For several long minutes there was only the swish of the servant’s feet upon the stones and Arkhan’s jagged, whistling breaths.

  It had been barely seven hours since the ambush outside the city walls. The main body of Nagash’s host had arrived within two hours after sunset. As soon as the king realised he’d been deceived he’d driven his troops forwards with merciless zeal, but by then it was already too late. The armies of the east had withdrawn far up into the Valley of Kings, and the Lybarans had managed to collapse the Gates of the Dawn behind them. The king’s skeletal horde was digging its way through the rubble with the untiring energy of the living dead, but it would be hours, perhaps days, before a path could be cleared to allow the army through.

  The plain outside the City of the Dead was carpeted with the bodies of the fallen. Perhaps five thousand enemy troops had been killed in the battle, but many more had managed to escape. The Undying King had not been pleased by the news.

  Ghazid came to a halt beside his master. Nagash glanced down into the bowl’s depths, and placed his palm against the red, turgid surface.

  The necromancer’s gaze fell to the vizier’s ruined body. His ghostly servants reached out to Arkhan, winding ethereal tendrils around his arms and legs, and then picking him up off the floor. He hung upright before his master, dangling awkwardly like a smashed puppet. Blood ran from the chewed flesh in long, ropy strands.

  Nagash stepped forwards and pressed his bloody hand to Arkhan’s raw face. The immortal stiffened, bones and cartilage crackling wetly as the sorcerous mixture went to work restoring the vizier’s body. Limbs twisted and popped, pulled back into place by knitting muscle and tendons. Blood poured in a rush from split arteries and veins as Arkhan’s heart gained strength, pouring onto the marble, and then slowing steadily as the vessels closed and were covered by a pale film of skin.

  More cartilage popped in Arkhan’s throat. The vizier’s chest swelled with an agonised breath, and he let out a single, tortured scream.

  The Undying King took his hand away from Arkhan’s face. The red print of his palm and fingertips vanished in moments, like water soaked into parched earth. Arkhan shuddered convulsively, and then spoke. His words came haltingly as his lips grew back to cover his teeth.

  “We… did… all,” he stammered. “All that… could… be done.” Arkhan shuddered again. Newly formed eyes rolled in their sockets. “They… came in daylight.”

  “Better you had burned and done my bidding!” Nagash cried, and the braziers guttered as though caught in a desert wind.

  “Sl
ay me then!” Arkhan said. “Cast me to the flames if it please you, master.”

  Nagash gave his vizier a calculating stare.

  “In time, perhaps,” he said. “For now, you will continue to serve me. We march upon Mahrak as soon as a path to the valley has been cleared.”

  A stir went through the assembly, and Amn-nasir’s face rose from the depths of his goblet.

  “Mahrak?” he asked hoarsely, as though the name made little sense to him. Seheb let out a groan. Nuneb stiffened.

  “We cannot,” Seheb said, his lips trembling with fear. “We dare not march upon the City of the Gods! You go too far—”

  “No city in Nehekhara has need of two rulers,” Nagash said coldly, turning and fixing Seheb with a contemptuous stare. The necromancer pointed to Nuneb. “Bring him here.”

  At once, half a dozen immortals moved towards the twin kings. Their Ushabti moved to shield the kings, their hands darting to the swords slung across their backs.

  “No!” Seheb cried. The young king fell to his knees. “Forgive me, great one! I… I misspoke. I merely meant to say that we have thrown back the invaders. The west is secure, and our cities have been neglected for many years.” He cast about fearfully, looking to Amn-nasir for support and receiving only a hooded stare in return. “If you would complete the destruction of Rasetra and Lybaras, so be it, but what purpose would it serve to attack Mahrak?”

  “Who do you imagine we do battle with, you little fool?” Nagash snarled. “Do you think these petty kings would dare defy Khemri alone? No, Mahrak is the heart of this rebellion. The Hieratic Council fears me, for I have learned the truth about them and their feckless gods.” The necromancer raised his bloodstained hand and clenched it into a fist. “When Mahrak falls, the kings of the east will bow to me, and a new empire will be born.”

  Seheb stared up at the Undying King, his eyes bright with fear. The immortals were only a few steps away, waiting on Nagash’s command. Steeling himself, he pressed his forehead to the marble floor, as a slave would before his master.

  “As you command, great one, so shall it be,” he said. “Let Mahrak be brought to its knees before your might.”

  Nagash considered the twin kings for a moment more, and then waved the immortals away.

  “The last battle is almost at hand,” he said, as the pale figures returned to their places. “Serve me well, and you will prosper. Immortality itself will be yours.”

  Another wave of the necromancer’s hand, and his spirits released Arkhan. The vizier landed in a heap, still too weak to stand, but his skin was whole once more. Nagash studied the fallen vizier and nodded thoughtfully.

  “Great shall be the wonders of the coming age,” he said.

  The gods alone saved the armies of the east, or so its warriors believed.

  They had found the Gates of the Dawn abandoned, a thing unheard of since Settra’s time, hundreds of years past. Ekhreb and his riders took the fortifications without incident, and found its storehouses well stocked with food, water and supplies, enough to sustain the army on the long march to Mahrak. The companies each drew their own stores as they passed through the gates into the Valley of Kings, and were even able to steal a few hours’ rest while the Lybaran engineers searched for a way to bring the fortifications down.

  While they waited, the rumour spread that Rakh-amn-hotep, the Rasetran king, had been killed by an arrow, fighting alongside the rearguard outside Quatar. Hekhmenukep, the Priest King of Lybaras, still clung to life, but none knew for how long. The host’s surviving nobles began to talk of returning to their homes. For the space of a few hours that afternoon, the army once again teetered on the brink of destruction.

  Then the news spread through the ranks: Rakh-amn-hotep still lived! The enemy’s arrow had wounded him gravely, but by luck alone the shaft had missed the major arteries. The rearguard brought him into the fortifications, where the army’s priests took him under their care.

  Then, when the Lybaran engineers had done their work, trumpets blared from atop the fortifications, and the army was assembled in ranks on the western side of the wall. Amid a fanfare of horns, a column of chariots rode through the gates and passed slowly down the length of the column. Cheers went up from the weary Lybarans as they saw their king riding in the lead chariot. Hekhmenukep’s fever had broken over the course of the afternoon, and he had ordered his Ushabti to prepare his chariot so that the men could see that he was well. He managed little more than to stay upright as he rode all the way to the front of the army, but the gesture had the desired effect. Their morale restored, the army resumed their long retreat eastwards, towards Mahrak. Behind them, the ancient fortifications built by the first king of Quatar collapsed in a rumble of grinding stone and a rising pall of chalk-white dust.

  The destruction of the gates bought the army two full days. The allied host made good use of the time, racing all night and half the next day along the broad, dusty road that ran the length of the sacred valley. They camped in the shadows of the oldest tombs in Nehekhara, where the tribes laid their chiefs to rest before the creation of the great cities. There was great power invested in the ancient tombs, and the priests of the allied armies drew on that power with a willingness they’d never demonstrated in the march to the west. They summoned desert spirits and wove cunning illusions to trap and confound their pursuers, while mounted raiders laid bloody ambushes for any enemy horsemen that pressed too closely to the retreating column.

  Two days after the battle at Quatar the sky to the west turned dark as pitch, like the heart of a raging sandstorm, and the allied army knew that Nagash and his forces had entered the Valley of Kings. Cloaked in howling blackness, the immortals and the companies of the dead pursued the allied armies without pause. As the undead horde stumbled onto the traps laid by the priests the valley shook with peals of thunder and strange, unearthly roars, and lurid flashes of lightning lit the edges of the dust clouds as the armies marched at night.

  Slowly but surely, the gap between the two armies closed. The immortals learned to defeat the priests’ illusions, and their necromantic powers allowed them to banish or destroy the spirits sent against them. They ransacked the ancient tombs to find more bodies to replenish their ranks, leaving nothing but rubble and ruin in their wake. With each passing night, they drew closer to their quarry, until the army’s rearguard was locked in constant skirmishes with Numasi scouts and light infantry.

  The terrain in the Valley of Kings was, however, favourable to defensive fighting. Clusters of stone crypts prevented massed cavalry charges and provided defensible positions for infantry and archers. There was no room to outflank the allied rearguard, and the defenders could fall back from one line of improvised fortifications to the next. The undead attackers pressed hard against the rearguard, and losses mounted, but the stubborn defenders succeeded in keeping Nagash’s troops away from the main body of the retreating host.

  Two weeks later, with roiling dust clouds looming at their backs, the vanguard of the eastern armies reached the Gates of the Dusk, and the warriors of the east fell to their knees and thanked the gods for their deliverance.

  The Gates of the Dusk were older by far than their distant cousins to the west, some scholars even claiming that the great stone obelisks marking the entrance to the valley predated the Great Migration, though none would speculate on who could have raised such towering structures, or why. The massive stone pillars, eight in all, rose more than a hundred feet above the valley floor, and were arrayed side-by-side along the ancient road that wound along the base of the valley. During Settra’s time, low walls had been built from the sides of the valley up to the base of the obelisks, but construction was halted shortly thereafter when a terrible plague swept through the work parties. The architects took this to be a sign of the gods’ displeasure, and no further attempts were made to fortify the eastern end of the valley. A sprawling village of stone and mud-brick buildings that once supported the labourers still stood a quarter of a mile to the east
of the great gates. Over time, it had been taken over by the temples of Djaf and Usirian as a stopping place for pilgrims who sought to visit the tombs of their ancestors within the valley. The village bustled with activity as the armies of the east filled the narrow streets and looked for places to make camp.

  Rakh-amn-hotep had been carried into the centre of the village and placed in an abandoned manor that had once belonged to a Lybaran royal architect. He was brought aboard an improvised palanquin layered with cloaks and cushions, and his Ushabti carried him with the utmost care. Ekhreb and a squadron of horsemen kept onlookers and well-wishers at a distance as the king was brought into the manor.

  While his miraculous survival was well known among the rank and file of the army, and, indeed, served to inspire the warriors many times during the hard march down the valley, what was not commonly known was that the bronze arrowhead had lodged deep in the king’s spine. Rakh-amn-hotep could move his eyes and manage a weak grunt if asked a simple question, but that was all. For all intents and purposes he was a living man trapped in a lifeless body.

  The king’s servants made Rakh-amn-hotep as comfortable as they could in a secluded part of the house, while Ekhreb and the army’s captains gathered and began making plans to defend the Gates of the Dusk from Nagash’s horde. Rakh-amn-hotep lay in the dim light of half a dozen oil lamps and listened to the murmuring voices in the manor’s common room, while a dozen priests dressed his wound and washed his body in warm water and scented oils.

  It was almost dawn. The army was almost fully encamped at the gates, with only the last squadrons of the rearguard still arriving from the night’s skirmishes. Suddenly, the king heard a commotion in the street outside the manor, and surprised shouts at the manor door. Conversation in the common room abruptly ceased, and the priests attending the king shared worried glances as the commotion near the front of the old house increased.