The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  Lamashizzar listened to the news and his eyes widened with surprise. His triumphant smile faltered. Behind him, Nagash’s grip on the throne relaxed. His eyes glittered like a viper’s.

  “Your offer of assistance is noted,” the Undying King said to Lamashizzar, “but will not be required.”

  The Lahmian king turned back to Nagash and bowed.

  “Then I shall take my leave of you,” Lamashizzar answered smoothly. “Perhaps later we may speak again.”

  Nagash smiled. The spirits surrounding him whirled about in fear.

  “Oh, most assuredly,” he said. “We shall speak again very soon.”

  Lamashizzar spun on his heel and beat a dignified retreat with his retainers close behind him. Their rich gifts lay where they left them, forming crooked lines all the way back to the tent’s entrance. Nagash watched the Lahmians go, savouring their dismay.

  When the last courtier had fled, the necromancer beckoned with a clawed hand.

  “Bring me this emissary,” he commanded.

  Minutes later, the tent flap swept aside again, and a pair of immortals escorted a wrinkled old man into the chamber. They held the emissary by his arms as they led him down the aisle towards the throne so that his sandalled feet scarcely touched the ground. To Arkhan, the frail, withered mortal looked like nothing more than a dust-covered beggar, but Nagash took one look at the emissary and rose swiftly to his feet.

  The immortals reached the throne and forced the emissary to his knees before the Undying King. Nagash looked down on the old man, his face lit with triumph.

  “This is an unexpected gift,” he said. “I thought to find you cowering in some temple deep within the city, or hiding behind those fools who make up your so-called council. Did they send you to me as some kind of peace offering, Nebunefer? A gift to persuade me to stay my wrath?”

  Nebunefer put a hand on his bent knee and slowly, painfully, levered himself to his feet. Once more, the immortals reached for him, but this time the old priest met them with a stern glare. Waves of heat radiated from his skin, which glowed like metal drawn from the forge. The two undead champions recoiled, hissing warily.

  The old priest turned his attention back to Nagash.

  “I have come to negotiate on behalf of the people of Mahrak,” he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

  Nagash’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “The citizens have defied the council and wish to surrender?” he asked. Nebunefer sneered at the Undying King.

  “You pompous ass,” he rasped. “I’m here to negotiate the terms of your surrender.”

  Heads turned. The immortals gaped at the old priest’s bravado. Then, one by one, they began to laugh, until the darkened chamber shook with the racket. Nagash silenced them with an unspoken command.

  “Your precious city teeters on the brink of destruction, and you come here to mock me?” the necromancer hissed.

  “You think this is a jest?” the old priest snapped. “Think again. Your siege has been an utter failure. In four years you haven’t got within ten yards of the city walls. There are hundreds of thousands of bones strewn between here and Mahrak’s gates. Truth be told, we’ve lost count of the number of assaults we’ve defeated.” Nebunefer folded his arms. “The city will not fall to the likes of you, Nagash. The gods will not allow it.”

  “The gods,” Nagash sneered. “Those disembodied charlatans. Their time is done. The empire to come, my empire, will be eternal.”

  Nebunefer let out a wheezing laugh, and said, “Settra thought the same thing, and now the beetles are burrowing into his guts. You won’t be any different, Nagash. You’re just another petty tyrant who will rise and fall like all the rest, and when you die the gods will await you in the place of judgement. No doubt they’re looking forward to seeing you.”

  “No god may stand in judgement over me!” Nagash roared. “I have burned their temples and slain their priests! Soon their precious city will be mine, and then their names will be forgotten for all time!”

  Nebunefer shook his head.

  “You are a fool,” he said, “an arrogant, deluded fool who thinks himself the equal of the gods. Yet you aren’t clever enough to understand one simple fact: so long as the covenant exists, the gods cannot be overthrown. They are bound to us, just as we are bound to them, and nothing you can do will ever change that. Can’t you see? Your pathetic crusade against the gods was doomed from the beginning!”

  The old priest was goading the necromancer. Arkhan saw that at once, but could not understand the point to it. Nagash, however, was blind to this. How often had he dreamt of getting his hands on Nebunefer after the treachery that night in the royal palace? Now he had the old priest in his clutches, and Nebunefer had stoked the king’s hatred to the boiling point.

  Nagash’s hands clenched. He took a step towards the priest, and then froze. His eyes widened, and his expression turned to one of dawning triumph.

  “Of course,” he whispered. “The answer was right in front of me all along.”

  The Undying King let out a savage cry of joy and lunged forwards, seizing the old priest by the throat.

  Nebunefer’s eyes widened. He grabbed Nagash’s wrists, trying to pry himself from the necromancer’s grip, but he was no match for the king’s unnatural strength. Nagash lifted the priest off the ground and shook him like a rag doll.

  “I could not see it!” Nagash said, laughing like a devil. “I had the power of the gods in my clutches and never realised it! Mahrak is doomed, Nebunefer, and you will die knowing that you made its destruction possible!”

  Nebunefer continued to struggle, tearing at Nagash’s wrists with his failing strength. Pure hatred glittered in the old priest’s eyes. Then, there was a brittle crack, like the snapping of a rotted branch, and Nebunefer’s head rolled back at an unnatural angle.

  Nagash tossed the dead priest’s body aside.

  “Bring me the queen!” he roared. “The fall of the old gods is at hand!”

  At that moment the tent flap was pulled aside once again. A messenger staggered inside, stained with dust and half-dead with fatigue.

  “The armies of Rasetra and Lybaras are coming!” he gasped. “They will be here within the hour!”

  Surprised hisses rose from the immortals. Nagash, the Undying King, merely smiled. “They will be too late,” he said.

  Little more than a league to the south-east, the allied armies swept across the rolling plains like a storm wind, bearing down on the Numasi encampment. Eight thousand cavalrymen made up the host’s vanguard, led by Ekhreb, with the rest of the army advancing close behind. Huge plumes of dust were kicked skywards by their advance, but stealth had been cast aside in favour of pure speed. If the gods were with them, the Numasi would not have time to form a proper defence.

  Ekhreb felt the wind upon his face as the horses raced across the plain, and felt a surge of savage joy. The weight of all the bitter defeats seemed to fall from his shoulders at long last as they closed for one final battle with the enemy. Here, at last, the advantage was theirs. The battle would belong to them.

  Riding in the midst of the allied horsemen, Ekhreb guided his powerful horse up a high, sandy dune and plunged down the other side. Beyond sat another broad plain, perhaps half a mile across, ending in another tall set of dunes. Dark clouds swirled past the distant slopes, and the tops of Mahrak’s temples dotted the northern horizon.

  In between, arrayed across the plain, were squadrons of Numasi horsemen: twelve thousand cavalry, drawn up and arrayed for battle around the standards of their twin kings.

  At the sight of the allied vanguard the Numasi drew their swords. Sunlight glinted on a thicket of polished bronze. In an instant, Ekhreb’s joy turned to ash. Somehow they had been discovered. Rakh-amn-hotep’s gamble had failed.

  In the centre of the enemy battleline, the twin kings raised their hands. War-horns bellowed out a single note, and the Numasi began their advance.

  Horns wailed across the vast camp of t
he besiegers, calling the undead host to war. Immortals scattered from the tent of the Undying King, almost too fast for the eye to follow. They leapt onto their skeletal horses and sped off in a dozen directions, already composing the intricate series of orders that would reposition tens of thousands of troops to deal with the sudden arrival of the enemy.

  There had been no word from the Numasi kings to the south, but fragmentary reports indicated that the cavalry had already assembled and advanced to meet the foe. Nagash’s captains chose a line of low ridges a few hundred yards behind the Numasi encampment to place their initial battleline; companies of spearmen were hastily shifted south-east and formed up along the forward slope of the ridge line, while messengers were sent racing northwards to summon Zandri’s archers for immediate action. Within minutes, the bulk of Nagash’s army, fully a hundred thousand undead infantry and horsemen, was on the move, angling south-east to present a wall of bone and metal before the advancing eastern forces. Farther behind the battleline, siege engineers plied the lash against the backs of their slaves as they struggled to orient their massive catapults towards the attacking enemy.

  Amid the chaos, eight huge companies of skeletal warriors, the army’s entire reserve force of forty thousand troops, stirred beneath Nagash’s furious will and began to march towards the shadow line. The Undying King stalked behind them, surrounded by his Tomb Guard and a large retinue of slaves. A score of the terrified servants carried the stone sarcophagus of Nagash’s queen upon their bare shoulders.

  Arkhan the Black trailed behind the grim procession, fiercely wishing for his armour and sword. He was tempted to race back to his threadbare tent and garb himself for battle despite Nagash’s spiteful orders; better to be tortured again than to have his head cut off by a chance encounter with an enemy horseman.

  Not that he had any idea what he might do if he were armed and armoured. Who would he fight? Part of him entertained the thought that he could still win back the Undying King’s favour if he acquitted himself well in battle, but to what end? A return to slavery, begging at his master’s hem for droplets of his terrible elixir?

  Power crackled invisibly through the air. Horns wailed, and the earth shook beneath the tread of tens of thousands of marching feet. To Arkhan, it felt as though the world’s foundations were shifting beneath him. Moving as though in a dream, the vizier was pulled along in his master’s wake.

  The army’s reserve companies clattered to a halt mere inches from the shadow line, the warriors’ rotting faces lit in shifting tides of light and darkness wrought by the warring sorceries. To the west, distant but growing ever nearer, came the heavy tread of giants.

  Nagash appeared in the midst of the skeletal companies, his robes flapping in the charnel wind rising behind the undead army. In his left hand he held the mighty Staff of the Ages, wreathed with the tormented spirits of the king’s ghostly retinue.

  The necromancer stepped to the edge of the shadow line and felt the power of the city’s wards seething across his skin. As the queen’s sarcophagus was set upon the ground behind him, he turned and stretched forth his right hand. The spirits surrounding the staff flowed across the stone coffin and pulled aside the lid, and then drew out Neferem’s withered body. She hung in their grasp like a broken doll, trailing scraps of filthy linen and tattered skin. Ghazid, standing close by the coffin, turned his blind face to the queen’s drifting form and wailed in misery.

  Nagash drew his queen to him. The shadow line roiled in response to Neferem’s presence.

  “You are the key,” he said, looking down upon the queen’s tormented face. “You are the covenant made flesh. Go, and open the gates of the city.”

  The necromancer set Neferem on her feet. She swayed unsteadily, her shrivelled face turning this way and that, like a lost child. A tortured moan escaped her lips. Then, with a rough shove, Nagash drove her across the shadow line.

  At once, a fierce wind sprang up around the queen, and the air crackled loudly with building tension. His face set in a hateful mask, Nagash followed a few steps behind Neferem. Moments later, his warriors followed suit, penetrating the wards in their thousands.

  Arkhan bared his ruined teeth at the sudden surge of energies that rose from the sands around Nagash and his warriors. Even the slaves felt it, and they cried out and covered their faces, expecting to feel the merciless wrath of the gods at any moment. Ghazid let out another despairing wail and lurched forwards, his hands raised to the heavens.

  The wind’s fury rose with each step that Neferem took, scattering drifts of bleached bones and drawing plumes of sand and dirt into the air. Waves of heat began to rise from the ground, even as the building clouds covered the face of the sun.

  Undaunted, Nagash drove Neferem and his troops forwards. He could sense the strain building on the city’s wards as their carefully worded incantations were forced to deal with a paradox. The wards were made to protect the faithful from those who threatened the City of the Gods. By virtue of Nagash’s bond, the undead queen was both.

  Dark clouds seethed angrily overhead, and the stink of brimstone permeated the air. Flashes of orange light blazed within the clouds, and the first streaks of fire began to fall on the advancing companies. Fierce thunderclaps smote the sky with each falling stone, as though the wards were starting to crack beneath the strain.

  Blazing stones carved fiery paths through the advancing companies. One burning projectile fell like an arrow directly at Neferem and Nagash, but even as it plummeted earthwards the rock began to break apart, until it exploded harmlessly a dozen yards from its intended target. A wave of fierce heat washed over the queen, curling her dried robes and parchment-like skin. Nagash raised his staff skywards and roared in triumph.

  With every step, the roaring wind and blazing heat grew stronger. The churning motion of the clouds increased, and the hail of fire dwindled. The insides of the clouds were rent by successive concussions that shook the air over the advancing troops. Arcs of violet lightning lashed at the plain like a taskmaster’s scourge.

  They were nearly halfway to the city walls when the sphinxes appeared. They emerged like wraiths from the whirling dust, roaring and snapping their jaws fearfully at the terrible image of the queen. The scouring dust had shredded her priceless robes and torn away the queen’s golden headdress, and her skin began to unravel like rotting thread. Still she pressed on, lashed by the storm and by Nagash’s furious will. Her cries were lost in the roaring of the desert spirits and the fury of the wind. Tossing their fearsome heads, the sphinxes withdrew before her like whipped dogs.

  The heat had grown intense, like standing at the very mouth of a great furnace. Nagash saw his robes begin to smoulder, and staggered to a halt. His troops came to a stop behind him, but Neferem he drove ever forwards, pressing relentlessly against the ancient wards. Behind the necromancer, the shadow line was contracting, its border fraying beneath the onslaught. Unholy darkness flowed like ink in its wake.

  There was a peal of thunder, and for an instant Neferem was wreathed in a halo of savage lightning. Her body burst into flames, but Nagash’s will drove her still onwards. Her arms drooped as fire ate through the tendons and leathery muscle, and her lustrous hair burned away in a sudden shower of sparks.

  A figure lurched past the Undying King and staggered into the searing heat. Ghazid, faithful to the last, followed in his queen’s wake. His skin blackened in moments and his robes caught fire, but the former vizier did not falter.

  The sphinxes howled and writhed in torment as the magical wards began to shatter under the strain. The building heat grew so intense that the air itself seemed to glow. Neferem was visible only as a skeletal silhouette, wreathed in orange and violet fire.

  From more than half a mile away, Arkhan felt the tension in the air like dull knives raking at his skin. The slaves around him fell dead, blood streaming from their ears and eyes.

  Then, without warning, the pressure vanished, bursting like a bubble, and a deafening silence fell acros
s the field of bones. Neferem was gone, her body turned to ash. Ghazid’s blackened corpse lay just a few yards away, one outstretched hand still reaching for his beloved queen.

  Drifts of dirt and sand fell in rattling curtains across the plain. With a last, dwindling roar, the sphinxes turned to ribbons of smoke and were scattered by the ebbing wind, and darkness fell upon Mahrak, the City of the Gods.

  Out on the plain of bones, Nagash raised his hands to the sky and roared in triumph.

  “The age of the gods is at an end!” he cried. “From this day forwards, the people of Nehekhara will worship their Undying King!”

  Nagash swept down his ancient staff and his skeletal warriors swept forwards. Among them marched three towering giants, who raised their massive clubs and advanced upon the city gate. Within minutes, the slaughter of Mahrak’s citizens would begin.

  A blare of trumpets sounded to the south-east, and Arkhan realised that the armies of the east had arrived, just in time to watch Mahrak’s fall.

  Suddenly the vizier staggered beneath the savage lash of his master’s will. From across the charnel plain, Nagash commanded the immortal, Seek out Amn-nasir and command him to attack the Lahmians at once.

  The vizier struggled to reply, but the necromancer had already turned his thoughts elsewhere. Arkhan found himself on his knees, surrounded by the bodies of dead slaves. Their tormented faces stared up at him, their expressions of fear and pain no doubt mirroring his own.

  Arkhan the Black staggered to his feet and set off in search of the King of Zandri.

  The final destruction of the Daughter of the Sun reverberated across the City of the Gods and then spread outwards, across the warring armies and on to the far corners of Nehekhara. Every priest and acolyte, every bold Ushabti, felt it like a blade of ice, sinking without warning deep into his heart. When it withdrew they felt the power of the gods flow out of them like their life’s blood, a wound that no healing hand could stanch. Helpless, horrified, they knew that the covenant had been broken, and they felt the gods receding from them forever.