[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Read online

  There was some kind of activity behind the centre of the enemy host. It looked like a mass of slaves, carrying a number of dark shapes, palanquins, perhaps, and arranging them in groups at the crest of the ridge. The sight of them sent an unaccountable chill down the priest king’s spine.

  Suseb sensed the king’s disquiet.

  “Your strategy has worked to perfection, great one,” he said. “The enemy is exhausted, and their ranks have been thinned by their headlong march. See how far the people of the Living City have fallen! We have nearly twice as many companies at our command.” The champion pointed to the army’s flanks. “Let us order our left and right wings forward. When the battle is joined we can encircle the Usurper’s army and grind them to dust.”

  Akhmen-hotep nodded thoughtfully. He had counted upon this when he’d raised the banner of war against distant Khemri and called upon the other priest kings to unite against the Usurper. Nagash would not tolerate defiance. He’d shown that at Zandri, more than two hundred years ago. So, Akhmen-hotep had made no secret of his advance on the Living City, knowing that Nagash would hasten to meet him before his spark of rebellion could ignite the rest of Nehekhara. Here, then, was the fiend, hundreds of leagues from home, having pushed his army past all human endurance in a fit of tyrannical fury.

  Nagash had played directly into his hands. It was like a gift from the gods, and yet, Akhmen-hotep could not shake a powerful sense of foreboding as he watched his foes array for battle.

  “Have there been any reports from our scouts?” the king asked. Suseb paused.

  “None, great one,” he admitted, and then shrugged. “Likely, the Usurper’s patrols chased them into the desert during the night, and they are still making their way back to us. No doubt we will hear from them soon.” The priest king’s lips drew into a grim line.

  “And no news of Bhagar, yet?” he asked.

  Suseb shook his head. Bhagar was the closest Nehekharan city, still little more than a merchant town, perched at the edge of the Great Desert. Its princes had pledged their small army to Akhmen-hotep’s cause, but there had been no sign of their forces since the Bronze Host had begun its slow march. The champion shrugged.

  “Who can say?” he said. “They might have been delayed by sandstorms, or perhaps Nagash sent a punitive expedition against them as well. It matters little. We don’t need their help against a rabble such as this.”

  Suseb folded his powerful arms and glared disdainfully at the Usurper’s approaching warriors. “This won’t be a battle, great one. We will slaughter them like lambs.”

  “Perhaps,” the priest king said. “But you have heard the stories from Khemri as well as I. If half of what the traders say is true, the Living City has become a dark and terrible place, indeed. Who knows what awful powers the Usurper is consorting with?” Suseb chuckled.

  “Look around, great one,” he said, indicating the growing assembly of priests with a sweep of his hand. “The gods are with us! Let Nagash consort with his daemons; the power of the Blessed Land burns in our veins!”

  Akhmen-hotep listened and took heart from Suseb’s words. He could feel the power of Geheb burning in his limbs, waiting to be unleashed upon the foe. With such blessings at their command, who could stand against them?

  “Wise words, my friend,” he said, gripping Suseb’s arm. “The gods have delivered the foe into our hands. It is time for us to strike the killing blow. Go, and take command of the chariots. When I give the signal, grind the enemy beneath your wheels.”

  Suseb bowed his head respectfully, but his handsome face was lit with a joyful grin at the prospect of battle. The Lion leapt gracefully from the chariot, and immediately one of the Ushabti and a tall, keen-eyed archer took his place in the king’s chariot.

  Alone with his thoughts, Akhmen-hotep resumed his study of the approaching enemy force. He was a skilled and experienced general; the sight of the enemy’s silent, shambling ranks should have filled him with eager joy. Once again, he tried to shake a creeping sense of dread.

  The priest king beckoned to one of his runners, and said, “Inform the Master of the Bow to begin firing as soon as the enemy comes into range.”

  The boy nodded, repeating the order word-for-word, and ran off towards the battleline.

  Akhmen-hotep turned his face to the fierce light of the sun and waited for the battle to be joined.

  The warriors of Khemri poured down off the ridge like water spilling from a cup, spreading in a dark arc across the white plain and flowing inexorably towards the Bronze Host. Hollow-eyed nobles paced along behind their ragged companies, cymbals clashing and drums pounding, setting a funereal pace. Squadrons of bedraggled horsemen followed behind the footmen, slipping like ghostly shadows in and out of the dusty haze kicked up by the infantry’s marching feet.

  Horns wailed along the length of the opposing battleline, barely a hundred and fifty yards distant. The archers of Ka-Sabar stood twenty yards ahead of the regular infantry: three thousand men, arrayed in three companies, with a dozen arrows per man driven into the sand by their feet. At the signal, the archers plucked the first of their arrows from the sand and fitted it to their powerful composite bows. Bronze arrowheads glinted angrily as they were aimed into the cloudless sky. The archers paused for a single heartbeat, muscles bunched along their arms and shoulders, and then a single, piercing note from the signal-horn rang out and the bowmen loosed as one. Bowstrings hummed, and three thousand reed arrows, sped by prayers to Phakth, god of the sky, fell hissing among the enemy ranks.

  The warriors of Khemri crouched low and raised their rectangular shields. Arrowheads punched through laminated wood with an angry rattle. Men screamed and fell, shot through the arm or leg, or collapsed lifeless to the broken ground. The infantry slowed momentarily beneath the awful rain, but continued to press grimly forwards. Within moments of the first volley, a second was arcing skyward, and then a third. Still the enemy pressed forwards, their companies withering slowly under the steady rain of fire.

  Then came the thunder of hooves, and several squadrons of light horsemen charged out of the haze towards the line of archers. The cavalrymen wielded compact horn-bows of their own, and the Khemri warriors unleashed a ragged volley as they bore down on the bowmen. Arrows sped back and forth across the killing ground. Horses and men went down in a spray of dirt and rock, but the bowmen of the Bronze Host shrugged off the enemy fire. Protected by the invocations of their holy priests, most of the Khemri arrows broke or glanced harmlessly from their bare skin.

  Still the horsemen bore down on the thin line of archers, heedless of the appalling losses inflicted by the bowmen. Bronze scimitars flashed in the riders’ hands as they closed in. At thirty yards the archers fired a last volley into the front ranks of the horsemen, and then turned and raced for the safety of their battleline.

  An eager cheer went up from the front ranks of the Bronze Host as they made ready for the enemy charge. The Khemri horsemen lashed at the flanks of their mounts, but the weary horses could not catch up to the fleeing bowmen. Frustrated, they reined in less than a dozen yards from the shouting infantry, and then wheeled about and withdrew, leaving several hundred of their fallen brethren littering the battlefield.

  The sacrifices of the cavalry, however, bought time and distance for the Usurper’s infantry, who were almost upon their foes. With a final clash of cymbals and a rattle of hide drums the silent companies surged forwards, brandishing stone axes and short-handled maces above their arrow-studded shields. The two armies came together with a hollow crash of flesh, wood and metal, punctuated by fierce shouts and the screams of the dying.

  The warriors of the Bronze Host moved back not a single step from the force of the enemy’s charge. Filled with the vigour of Geheb, their patron god, they splintered shields and shattered bones, dashing their foes to the ground. Decades of pent up anger against the tyrant of Khemri found its voice in a hungry, wordless roar that reverberated from the warriors of Ka-Sabar. Akhmen-hotep and the cha
nting priests felt the echoes reverberate across their skin and were awed by the sound.

  Dust was thickening around the churning mass of warriors, making it difficult to see. Akhmen-hotep scowled, studying the rearmost ranks of his footmen. They were pressing forwards, eager to join in the killing, which he took to be a good sign. The priest king sought out the priests of Phakth. He saw them a short distance away, shrouded in plumes of fragrant incense.

  “Glory to the god of the sky, who sped our arrows in flight!” he shouted. “Will great Phakth stretch forth his hand and wipe the dust from our eyes?”

  Sukhet, High Priest of Phakth, stood in the centre of the chanting priests, his shaven head bowed in prayer. He opened one eye and arched a thin eyebrow at the priest king.

  “The dust belongs to Geheb. If you would have it lie still, importune him instead of the Hawk of the Air,” the priest said in his nasal voice. The priest king scowled at Sukhet, but did not press further. Instead, he turned to his trumpeter.

  “Sound the general advance,” he commanded.

  Horns wailed, echoing up and down the line. The champions of the infantry companies raised their blood-streaked swords and shouted orders to their men. Shouting, the warriors took one step forward, and then another. Bronze-tipped spears jabbed and thrust, streaming blood, and the exhausted warriors of the Living City gave ground.

  Step by step, the warriors of Ka-Sabar drove the enemy back the way they had come. They climbed over the bloodied corpses of the fallen until blood stained the wrappings of their sandals up to their ankles. Meanwhile, the companies at the far ends of the battleline began to curve inwards, trying to surround the retreating enemy. The Khemri light cavalry harassed the flanks of the spearmen with arrow fire, but did little to slow the inexorable advance.

  Akhmen-hotep gestured to his charioteer, who took up the double reins and lashed the team of horses into motion. The chariot rolled forward with a clatter of bronze-rimmed wheels, keeping pace with the advancing army.

  A runner appeared from the right flank, his face flushed with excitement.

  “Suseb asks permission to attack!” he cried in a piping voice. The priest king considered this for a moment, cursing the dusty haze. Finally he shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he answered. “Tell the Lion to bide his time a little longer.”

  So, the advance continued. The Bronze Host moved inexorably across the plain, drawing slowly but steadily closer to the ridge line. Akhmen-hotep’s chariot bounced and lurched over the corpses left behind by the fighting. The priests of the city were far behind him, hidden by the dust of the advance, while the churning haze continued to mask the fighting to the fore. He could hear the rattling of chariot wheels off to his left and right, and the nervous whicker of horses as the cavalry kept pace with the footmen. The priest king listened intently to the timbre of battle, waiting for the first signs that the enemy companies were broken and in full retreat.

  Despite the steady, remorseless slaughter, the warriors of the Living City refused to break. The closer they drew to the silent, black pavilions lining the ridge, the harder they fought. They pressed against the shields of the enemy spearmen, as though the death looming before them was preferable to what waited at their backs.

  Within an hour, the fighting was nearly at the foot of the low ridge line. From the rocky summit, the battle resembled nothing so much as the swirling edge of a sandstorm, lit from within by hard glints of flashing bronze.

  Figures waited silently on the slope, watching the approaching storm. Companies of heavy horsemen waited among the dark linen tents, their banners hanging listlessly in the hot, still air. Smaller bands of heavy infantry, clad in leather armour and bearing bronze-rimmed shields, knelt stoically before the great pavilions, awaiting the call to battle.

  A group of priests stood together at the centre of the line, outside the largest of the tents. Tall and regal, they wore the black robes of Khemri’s mortuary cult, circlets set with sapphires and rubies adorning their shaved heads, and their narrow beards bound with strips of hammered gold. Their dusky skin was pale, and their hawk-like faces were gaunt, but dark power hung over them like an invisible shroud, causing the morning air to shimmer around them like a mirage.

  These terrible men waited upon a stooped, elderly slave that crouched at their feet and watched the progress of the battle on the plain below. Blind and nearly toothless, the slave’s blue eyes were clouded with milky cataracts, and his brown skin was dried and wrinkled like aged parchment. His bald head was cocked to one side, balanced precariously on his scrawny neck. A thin line of drool hung from his trembling lips.

  Slowly, the wrinkled head straightened. A ripple went through the assembled priests, and they shuffled forward, their faces expectant. The slave’s mouth worked.

  “It is time. Open the jars,” he said, in a voice ravaged with pain and the weight of too many years.

  Silently, the priests bowed to the blind slave and went inside the tent. A pair of sarcophagi stood within, carved from glossy black and green marble, fit for the bodies of a mighty king and his queen. Baleful glyphs of power were etched upon their surfaces, and the air surrounding the coffins was as cold and dank as a tomb. The priests averted their eyes from the dreadful figure carved upon the king’s sarcophagus, kneeling instead before eight heavy jars nestled at its feet.

  The priests picked up the dusty jars in their hands and carried them out into the open air. Each of the clay vessels vibrated invisibly in their grasp, sending a deep, unsettling hum reverberating through their bones.

  Slowly, fearfully, the priests set the jars down on the uneven ground. Each vessel was sealed shut with a thick band of dark wax, engraved with rows of intricate glyphs. When all of the jars were in place, the men drew their irheps, the curved ceremonial daggers used to remove the organs of the dead for interment. Steeling their nerves, the priests cut away the wax seals. At once, the buzzing grew louder and more insistent, like the drone of countless angry wasps. The heavy clay lids rattled violently atop the jars.

  Nearby, horses shied violently away from the unsealed vessels. With trembling hands, the priests reached forwards and pulled the lids away.

  Akhmen-hotep raised his hand to signal his trumpeter. Now was the time to send the chariots and horsemen forwards to break the enemy line once and for all.

  All at once, the swirling haze of dust was swept away. The priest king felt a cold wind rushing over the skin of his upraised arm, goose bumps prickling his bare flesh.

  The pall of dust flowed up the rocky slope of the ridge in a single, indrawn rush. For a dizzying instant, Akhmen-hotep could see the battlefield in every detail. He saw the struggling companies of enemy foot-sloggers, reduced to ragged bands of tormented warriors forced back almost to the very foot of the ridge line. Beyond them, the priest king saw the rocky slope, leading upwards to a long line of black linen tents, and squadrons of rearing, plunging horsemen.

  Then he saw the priests and their tall, heavy jars. The dust formed whirling cyclones over the open vessels, and then Akhmen-hotep watched them darken, turning from a pale tan to deep brown, and then to a slick, glossy black.

  A seething, whirring drone radiated down the rocky slope and washed over the combatants, sinking through armour and flesh, and vibrating along their bones. Horses bucked and screamed, their eyes white with terror. Men dropped their spears and clapped their hands over their ears to try to shut out the awful noise.

  The priest king watched in growing terror as the ebon pillars stretched upwards and poured out a pall of roiling darkness that spread like ink across the sky.

  TWO

  Second Sons

  Khemri, the Living City, in the 44th year of Khsar the Faceless

  (-1968 Imperial Reckoning)

  On the seventh day after his death, the body of the Priest King Khetep was taken from the temple of Djaf, in the southern quarter of the Living City, and borne within an ebon palanquin to the House of Everlasting Life. The palanquin was carried
not by slaves, but upon the shoulders of Khetep’s great Ushabti, and the king’s mighty champions marched with their heads hung low and their once-radiant skin stained with ash and dust.

  Throngs of mourners crowded the streets of the Living City to pay homage to Khetep as the palanquin passed by. Men and children fell to their knees and pressed their faces to the dust, and mothers wept and tore at their hair, calling to Djaf, god of the dead, to return their monarch to the land of the living. Water drawn from the River Vitae, the great Giver of Life, was cast upon the sides of the palanquin amid tearful prayers. Potters brought out the cups and bowls that had been fired on the day of Khetep’s death and dashed them to pieces on the street in the wake of the priest king’s passage. In the merchant’s quarter, wealthy traders tossed gold coins into the dust before the cortege, where the polished metal caught the light of Ptra’s holy fire and blazed beneath the Ushabti’s marching feet.

  By comparison, the streets of the noble districts surrounding the palace to the north were silent and still. Many of the households were in mourning, or preparing the exorbitant ransoms expected to redeem their lost kin after the disastrous defeat outside Zandri a week before. The atmosphere of sadness and dread settled over the procession like a shroud, weighing heavily on the shoulders of the devoted. Khetep had ruled over Khemri for more than twenty-five years, and through a mix of diplomacy and military prowess he’d forced the cities of Nehekhara to put aside their feuds and live together in peace. Nehekhara had enjoyed an age of prosperity not seen since the great Settra, five hundred years before.

  All that had been swept away in the space of a single afternoon on the banks of the Vitae. Khetep’s great army had been broken by the warriors of Zandri, and the Ushabti had failed in their sacred duty to protect the king. The news had spread across the Blessed Land like a dust storm, sweeping all before it, and the future was uncertain.