Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  A knight approached. The tall, gaunt-faced man shambled up and peeled away his mask, as was mandatory in the Nemesis’ presence. His face bare, the knight looked into the dirt.

  “Lord, there’re many who’ve run,” said the knight. “We’re huntin’ ‘em even now. But they who lived on the edges of town, they’ve got a lead on us. We’ll need permission to use the ship. To…scrape up the last bits.”

  “No,” he rumbled. “Leave them.”

  “Lord?” The knight looked surprised.

  In his heart, to let a few survivors go felt like mercy.

  But he couldn’t tell the knight.

  No weakness. None, for Father will know.

  “Let them run to Saeed.” He boomed behind his mask. “Who better to tell what happened here than those who saw it first? Saeed will see their faces, and he will know my Lord Father will suffer no rebellion.”

  The knight looked disappointed. The Nemesis remembered recruiting him—a half-starved mongrel plucked from a low village by the Nile. He’d been imprisoned by the locals for breaking the Pharaoh’s law. The other villagers, hoping to curry favor with the Pharaoh, had branded the man with hot stones and buried him to his neck in sand.

  He used machines.

  He knew about Scimitars.

  He thinks he’s in line for a hundred virgins and a feast never-ending.

  Father will have him killed tomorrow.

  He dismissed the knight. The others were still out there, still scouring the hovels and ruins at Umbali’s far corners, but he knew it had ended. The hills, flats, and farmlands of Umbali had been spied with Pharaoh’s satellites. The village had been annihilated.

  Alone again, he pulled off his mask. The sharp colors and midday heat hit him, and his armor felt suddenly heavy. He looked at his gauntleted hands and saw blood. He ran a metal finger along his chest, and drew a dark red line. He tore away a swath of his black cape, and found it blacker still.

  Death.

  It’s all over me.

  His ship, which the pilot had landed on the ocean shore, lay a mile and a half to the west. Replacing his mask, he marched for it, thumping hard across the grass, crossing a narrow streamlet, and striding past dozens of dead lying still on the ground.

  It struck him strange, the condition of the land.

  The sand is clean. White and gold.

  The grass grows tall.

  And the trees…so many trees.

  He realized then the effort Umbali’s people had poured into remaking their island. They’d spent centuries cleansing the sands, breeding the right trees to survive the subtle poisons in the rain, doting over every shrub and blade of grass to ensure its survival.

  All without machines.

  His heart pumped blacker still. His boots left deep holes in the dirt, and his ragged cape shivered in the hot breeze. He crossed a last waterway, threading over a handmade bridge. By the time he reached his warship, he felt sick.

  Ready to hurl his sword into the ocean.

  Ready to kill someone other than the innocent.

  Before he reached the ship’s ramp, a knight clattered down. The youngest of the crew was the only one the Nemesis had left behind to guard the ship.

  “Lord,” the knight stammered, “it’s from your father’s citadel. It’s urgent.”

  What now, Father?

  Did someone forge a tool on the far side of the world?

  Did a man use a knife to trim fruit from a tree?

  Did a child write his name in the sand?

  He glared at the young knight. The boy couldn’t see the darkness in his eyes.

  “What is it?” he rumbled.

  “It’s the Prey, Lord,” said the young knight. “One of your sentries…he’s spotted a man in a black cloak carrying one of our swords. The man travels with a girl. He’s—”

  The Nemesis reached out and snared the young knight’s upper arm. He squeezed hard, too hard, making the boy wince even through his armor.

  “Did you say, a girl?”

  “Y—yes,” the knight stammered.

  “Where?”

  “The City—the City of Bones, Lord.”

  He released the young knight. When the boy scuttled away, the Nemesis stood alone on the ship’s ramp, half in sunlight, half-shrouded in darkness.

  He forgot about Umbali.

  He forgot his men, his father, even Thessia.

  In his mind, he saw the end of his trials. His promised life, free of death, free of hunting the living.

  …if he could finish one final task.

  He walked to the bottom of the ship’s ramp. Save for the pilot, the young knight, and three other soldiers who’d returned after the day’s destruction, the rest of his host remained in Umbali, scouring for survivors.

  He imagined it would take hours to round them up.

  Not the kind of time we have.

  He thundered up the ramp, hammered his fist on the button to close it behind him, and walked the long corridor to the cockpit.

  The pilot looked stunned to see him. The four knights stood and averted their gazes. They hadn’t expected him.

  “Go. Now,” he said to the pilot. “City of Bones. The others…leave them.”

  If he’d been anyone else, they’d have questioned him.

  ‘Why now?’ they’d have asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait?’

  But they knew.

  His voice echoed through the ship.

  And they knew.

  * * *

  The Nemesis’ ship, two-hundred fifty feet of angular black steel, set down in the sand just as the sun’s first light cracked the horizon.

  The rear door hissed open, and the ramp self-extended.

  He was first onto the sand, first to see the sunlight glint off the ship’s razor-like wings. The ocean, still dark, roared against the beach behind him. Limitless, the City of Bones stretched out before his eyes.

  The youngest of his knights hurried down the ramp and stood beside him. The young knight was too eager, the Nemesis thought. Hunting the Prey was nothing like chasing down unarmed Umbali peasants.

  He’ll be dead before long.

  A shame.

  “Lord,” began the young knight, “pilot says Quadrant Two. Sentry says the Prey and the woman hid in an underground tunnel two hours before dawn.”

  From behind, he heard more footsteps. The pilot, sole survivor of the Nemesis’ purge after the failure in the mountains, stood uneasily in the presence of three knights.

  “Lord, we tried to view him with the Pharaoh’s eye.” The pilot’s voice cracked. “But it seems…there’s been a malfunction. We can’t see anything in the city. If the Prey has moved in the last two hours—”

  Malfunction, he thought.

  Interesting.

  “The Prey won’t move,” he said. “Not in the light. Not here. Bring me the carto-graph.”

  He heard them moving within the ship, the nervous clatter of their boots. The young knight standing beside him, so confident a moment ago, looked pale in the new day’s light.

  He knew why.

  We’ve circled half the planet in a matter of hours.

  And we’re chasing the most dangerous quarry in the world.

  Blind…into the shadows.

  They brought him the rarest of all devices. The carto-graph, a green disc no larger than his palm, was a relic of ancient days. Five-hundred years ago, the Pharaoh’s scientists had created only a handful, and had then destroyed the blueprints so the thing could never be replicated.

  He flicked a tiny button on the disc’s bottom, and a three-dimensional map of the City of Bones winked into existence. The map was tiny and made of green light-motes, rising just inches from the disc’s surface.

  Its details were exquisite.

  With his armored forefinger and thumb, he pinched the air above the portion of the city known as Quadrant Two. Ages ago, Quadrant Two had been the city’s transportation hub. Trains, electric cars, and underground highways ha
d all come together in the heart of a vast metropolitan web.

  Beneath his fingers, the green light-motes scattered and reformed, and in seconds the map reconfigured itself to show only the labyrinthine corridors of Quadrant Two.

  …as it had looked five centuries prior.

  He looked to the three knights standing on the ramp.

  “You three will come with me.

  “And you.” He turned his mask upon the youngest knight. “You will remain here. If the Habiru come, use your dark-lance. This beach is yours now.”

  In moments, he and three knights were striding away from the ship and into the city’s outer limit. His men had their swords out and their masks down, marching shoulder to shoulder through a sea of glass sand, lumps of grey plastic, and powdered human bones.

  A vast cemetery, it seemed.

  Each building a tomb, every street a lane between headstones.

  The sun broke over the tops of the ruined metropolis, but lent no cheer to the endless decay. The Nemesis, his vision amplified behind his mask, saw scavengers creeping out of view far ahead. Even here in this desolate place, people knew to fear him.

  The world had lost all knowledge of science, medicine, and the wonderful technologies of history.

  But the wretched know me.

  And will forever.

  Slowly, they moved into the city. The ocean’s roar fell away, and the deathly silence drifted atop all things. This place was not like Umbali. No birds beyond the crows lived in the City of Bones, and few things green dared to grow. Here and there, stunted weeds erupted from gaps in the sand, but elsewhere the fine grit of rotten streets and crumbled stone made a black bed in which nothing alive desired to sleep.

  At a crossroads, some two miles deep, he and his men halted. Six streets came together just ahead, and around them the rib cages of a hundred towers lay in tangled heaps.

  He raised his left fist.

  He’d seen something move through the wreckage. The shadow of a shadow. So quick it could’ve only been an animal.

  …or something else.

  “Lord, why do we stop?” asked one of his knights. “We’re still miles from Quadrant Two.”

  He squeezed his fist tighter, and the knight went silent. ‘The Prey won’t move. Not in the light. Not here,’ he remembered what he’d said.

  But now he wasn’t so sure.

  His men caught on. Swords swaying, they gazed into the ruins, watching for any sign of movement.

  Could it have been a child he’d seen? Lost and running for home?

  A Habiru scout rushing to warn its tribe?

  No, the Nemesis thought.

  No one else in the world moves like that.

  “Lord, look.” One of his men pointed back the way they’d come.

  The Nemesis pivoted on his armored heels and gazed down the long, vacant corridor between buildings. In the sand, with clouds of black dust rising behind her, a slender woman ran. Her cloak spread out behind her, her black braid bouncing with her strides.

  “You and you.” He jabbed his finger at two of the three knights. “After her. I want her alive. No dark-lances.”

  In a flash of dark metal, the two knights sprinted after the fleeing woman. The early sunlight danced momentarily on their shoulders, but soon the dusty street swallowed them, and they became no more than shades tearing through the gloom.

  The Nemesis watched them go.

  And too late realized his error.

  Their boots falling hard on the ash-buried street, the two knights never saw the Prey. An oiled viper hidden in dawn’s shadows, he erupted from the dark ruins and fell upon the Nemesis’ men. It happened so quickly—the Nemesis had no time to shout a warning.

  In a cloak blacker than any, with a blade stripped from the knight he’d felled at Cedartown, the Prey took both men by surprise. Their armor didn’t matter. He hit them twice each, and even at two-hundred yards away the Nemesis saw ropes of their blood leap into the air.

  Both men were dead before they hit the ground.

  The dust began to clear.

  The Nemesis stared down the street. The woman was almost out of sight, but the Prey—

  He’s not fleeing. He’s looking at me.

  He thinks now is his chance.

  “Lord, is that him?” His sole remaining knight pointed his sword at the Prey. “Shall I attack? Should I use my dark-lance?”

  The Nemesis considered his position. For five-hundred years, the Pharaoh had demanded the Prey be killed, but not by Scimitar discs, nor by any means that might destroy his body. Menkaur wanted the Prey to be identifiable after death, to know beyond the shadow of all doubt his enemy was dead, and that no other had perished in his place.

  Dark-lances would allow that, thought the Nemesis. Kill the body. Save the head.

  “Do it,” he said to his man. “Carve his legs from his body. Do not strike his head. Cripple him, and then cut out his heart.”

  The knight nodded. The brute was one of the most dangerous he’d plucked from the village by the Nile. He’d killed hundreds in Umbali, and among those many dozens with his sword.

  The knight sheathed his sword and loosed a slender black cylinder from his belt. Moments later, he stalked down the street. He moved methodically, the mark of someone comfortable with murder. His footfalls left no plumes of ash. He was cautious, wise not to obscure his vision, and patient.

  I’ve chosen well, thought the Nemesis.

  Alone again, he lifted his mask and breathed the dead air.

  His destiny was near.

  He closed his eyes and saw it rise up, a tangible thing, no longer a mirage. His freedom was almost at hand. No more hunting. No more circling the globe in his flying murder-machine. He imagined cups of fresh water, goblets of wine, soft beds, calm nights, and Thessia waiting for him always.

  These things are promised, he remembered.

  They could be mine tonight.

  The Prey, against all wisdom, stood in the street’s center.

  He saw us arrive, the Nemesis thought. He knows we’ve few men.

  But he’s a fool to show himself now.

  No sword matches the power of a dark-lance wand.

  The knight marched within a hundred yards of the Prey. Then fifty. Then twenty-five. The Nemesis came up slowly behind them, keeping his distance. He slid his mask back atop his face, but never once blinked.

  He needed to witness the moment his father’s oaths became true.

  The knight leveled the dark-lance at the Prey. One flick of the terrible weapon’s switch, and an invisible line of heat would unravel the Prey’s limbs from his body. The knight only needed to be close enough.

  He heard the knight say something. The words echoed in the street, bouncing through one hollow tower to the next.

  The Prey said nothing.

  In the dry, still air, the Nemesis heard the dark-lance wand click. It was the only sound in the world, the only noise the City of Bones would allow.

  And then, a scream.

  The Nemesis saw a tiny shard of something move in the Prey’s hand. It couldn’t have been larger than a few inches across, and yet it flashed brilliantly, more than bright enough to make the Nemesis turn his cheek.

  The dark-lances’s one weakness?

  It was a light-based weapon, meaning any refraction changed its trajectory.

  And any mirror could reflect its power.

  How the Prey had timed it or guessed the exact angle the deadly radiation would take, no one could ever know. A scream tore the silence apart, and the Nemesis knew it belonged to the knight. The invisible line had bounced back. The knight’s agony lasted one second, and then the armored man collapsed to the ground in pieces.

  His left arm and upper chest tumbled one way.

  …while the rest of him toppled another.

  His face hidden by his hood, the Prey tossed the glowing-hot piece of mirror to the street. The Nemesis heard it break, and silence reigned once more.

  It was as his
father had always told him.

  ‘It will come to you and to him,’ the Pharaoh had said many hundred times. ‘When the moment is right, make sure it is you who still stands.’

  He loosed his sword from its perch atop his shoulder. The Prey did likewise. The sunlight glimmered across the ashes between them, and the dust from the dead knight’s fall floated away into the dawn.

  “Galen,” he shouted, “put down your sword. He will accept your surrender. Better that than to be stuffed aboard my ship in a coffin.”

  The Prey showed no reaction.

  His sword tight in his armored fingers, the Nemesis marched down the dusty street and faced his enemy for the first true time. He wished he could’ve removed his mask. He had things to say, judgments to unleash, and he wanted nothing more than to do it while looking upon the Prey unclouded by technology.

  Galen allowed him no time.

  A cloud of dust spread into the air. The Prey attacked, and the morning held its breath. Their swords crashed against one another, singing a song that awoke hundreds of souls hiding in the City of Bones.

  Sparks rained on the street.

  Spinning cloaks caught the dust of a million dead and made a black storm in which Nemesis and Prey danced.

  The Nemesis was strong. His armor was the finest in the world. His black blade was forged of a nameless alloy, sharper and more powerful than all the swords of civilizations before him.

  But… The Nemesis’ sword struck only air.

  He’s fast.

  Too fast.

  13

  When Galen whirled and struck Eadunn’s mask for the second time, he became the first living man to see the Nemesis in a moment of weakness.

  He’d dented the Nemesis’ perfect armor.

  Battered his chest and slashed dark lines across his faceless mask.

  Staggered him.

  But he couldn’t deliver the killing blow.

  His isn’t like his knights’ armor, Galen knew.

  No seams. No gaps. No soft spots.

  I’ll spend all morning murdering him.

  Fine.

  The Nemesis brought his giant sword down in a killing arc. The blow would’ve split any other man down the middle. But Galen knew it was coming. He stepped aside and lashed out again, scoring another line in the Nemesis’ shoulder plate.