The road became less dangerous but no less easy once he had left the Golden Plain behind. Alcadizzar made his way to Lybaras, thinking that Rasetra’s ancient allies would lend him aid, but the prince found the City of Scholars in a sad and decrepit state. The famous collegiums were all but deserted and the Palace of the Scholar-Kings was closed even to its citizens. Alcadizzar lingered there for almost a month, waiting in vain for an audience with King Pashet, but the royal viziers refused to even listen to him. In the end, he left Lybaras as road-weary and penniless as he’d been when he’d arrived.
Finally, almost a full year and a half after his escape from the Temple of Blood, Alcadizzar passed through the formidable gates of Rasetra, the warlike city of his people. The prince was pleased to see that the city prospered under the rule of his younger brother, Asar. This time, he knew better than to approach the palace directly. He was sure that Lahmia had agents in the city and they were certain to be on the lookout for him. Instead, he made inquiries in the market, and that evening he found his way to the home of his uncle Khenti.
Though Khenti was an old man now, his strength gone and his vision fading, he recognised Alcadizzar at once. The prince was welcomed with tears of joy. Later, when he had told Khenti of what he’d seen inside the temple, his uncle wasted no time in arranging a secret meeting with Asar inside the palace.
Accompanied by Khenti, Alcadizzar was ushered into the king’s privy council chamber, where he met his younger brother for the very first time. Though Asar did not possess his brother’s extraordinary physique and magnetic charisma, the kinship between the two could not be denied. Asar welcomed his brother warmly, and over goblets of strong southern wine Alcadizzar told Asar his horrifying tale.
This had been the moment that the prince had been waiting months for. Sitting in the filth of Lahmia’s back-alleys, he’d envisioned his brother’s face lighting up with righteous rage as he learned of Neferata’s crimes. Swift messengers would be sent across the length and breadth of the land, spreading the news and summoning their armies to war. Alcadizzar would return to the City of Dawn as a conqueror, at the head of a vast army made up of warriors from every city in Nehekhara.
But Alcadizzar was to be disappointed. The King of Rasetra listened to the prince’s tale, his expression thoughtful. When Alcadizzar was finished, Asar took a long sip of wine, and then gave his brother a frank stare.
“Where is your proof?” the king asked him.
Nawat altered their course as the sun sank behind the hills to the west, aiming the bandit gang towards the distant trade road. If the old raider’s instincts were correct—and Alcadizzar had to admit, Nawat was rarely wrong—then the caravan would be attacked just at sunset, while they were busy making camp. Timing was critical; if they arrived too early, they risked walking into the middle of a battle. Too late, and they would need torches to pick their way through the caravan’s remains, which meant they would likely miss what few valuables remained.
Alcadizzar shifted impatiently in the saddle, his hand falling to the hilt of the sword at his hip. It had been the sword of his uncle Khenti, a heavy, bronze khopesh that had spilled the blood of countless lizardmen in its time. Asar had tried to provide him with a fine gelding from the royal stables and a suit of bronze scale to aid him on his mission, but Alcadizzar knew such things would attract unwelcome attention on the Golden Plain. Instead, he’d gone to Rasetra’s horse market and purchased a sturdy Numasi mare, and then plied a desert trader with gold to part with one of his personal possessions.
The rakh-hajib, or raider’s robe, was a heavy cotton outer garment reinforced with bronze discs sewn into the inner lining to cover the wearer’s vitals. It wasn’t as good as proper armour, but it was proof against arrows, spears and knives. Best of all, it was discreet; he could not risk appearing too well equipped, or the bandits on the plain would think he was a spy for Lahmia’s City Guard. Mistrust and paranoia were the only constants on the trade road leading to the City of the Dawn.
The same could be said for Nehekhara in general, Alcadizzar had learned. That night at the palace, Asar had laid out the political situation among the great cities. Though there was a great deal of resentment and discontent towards Lahmia, the centuries-old policies of King Lamashizzar and later, Queen Neferata had been so effective at playing the other cities against one another that none of them were strong enough to challenge the Lahmians directly. Even Rasetra, which had clawed its way back from the brink of ruin after the war against Nagash and had rebuilt its powerful army, still lacked the resources for a protracted war against the Lahmians. And though many of the great cities now possessed iron weapons and armour that were the equal of Lahmia’s, none of them had a counter for the fearsome dragon powder that Lamashizzar’s army had used to destroy the Usurper’s army almost five hundred years ago. Not even the Lybaran scholar-priests had succeeded in unravelling the secrets of the mysterious eastern powder, and no one knew how much of it the City of the Dawn possessed. As Alcadizzar knew firsthand, the Lahmians guarded their secrets jealously.
Of course, a coalition of armies would almost certainly triumph against the Lahmians, but there was too much ambition and too little trust among the other cities to make such an alliance possible. Of the great cities, only three were strong enough to present themselves as possible rivals to Lahmia’s power—Rasetra in the east, plus Zandri and Ka-Sabar in the west—but none were willing to take the first step and risk standing alone in the face of Lahmian reprisal. It would take something truly portentous and terrible to persuade the rival kings to put aside their ambitions and come together in a common cause against Lahmia. Alcadizzar’s discovery was just such a revelation—but only if it could be proven beyond a doubt. Without proof, the other kings were just as likely to suspect that it was nothing more than a Rasetran ploy to trick them into a ruinous war.
Asar had made it clear that he believed every word of the prince’s story and vowed to send agents to uncover proof of Neferata’s crimes—but Alcadizzar knew that such efforts were doomed from the start. No stranger to the city would stand a chance of penetrating the palace compound and slipping undetected into the temple—and none of the temple’s high priestesses could be persuaded to betray their mistress’ secrets. That left only one possible alternative. If the great cities needed proof of Lahmia’s hidden evil, then Alcadizzar would have to obtain it himself.
He had remained as his uncle’s guest for many months, formulating his plans, then slipped quietly from the city amid the guards of a merchant caravan bound for Lybaras. Six months later he found himself, once again, friendless and alone, upon the lawless expanse of the Golden Plain.
Alcadizzar had thought that slipping back into Lahmia would have been a simple matter. It had been years since his escape; for all that the rest of the world knew, he might as well have been dead. But Neferata still hadn’t given up looking for him; if anything, her search had turned far darker and more terrible than before. The city docks and the poorer districts lay under a constant pall of dread. The streets were all but deserted after dark, because people were disappearing almost every night and were never seen again. Informers were everywhere, searching for men who matched his description. The City Guard had tried to detain him at the west gate; when no amount of gold would dissuade them, he’d been forced to draw his sword and fight his way out. Mounted riders had scoured the trade road for weeks afterwards, searching for him. He’d only managed to escape by fleeing deep into the abandoned farmland, where the bandits held sway.
He’d known from his early days inside the city that there were two kinds of bandits on the Golden Plain. There were desperate, pitiful folk like Nawat’s band of cutthroats, and then there were the descendants of the desert tribes who had migrated there in the years after the war against the Usurper. Nagash’s armies had shattered the once-proud tribes, and the loss of their patron god Khsar had forced them to abandon the burning sands that had sheltered them for centuries. In those days, Lahmia had been the riche
st of all the great cities, and caravans journeyed there from as far away as Zandri to partake in the exotic goods of the distant east. Where there was wealth, there was banditry, and the desert tribes were superlative caravan raiders. They struck like lightning out of the scrub forests that now grew wild across the plain, taking what they pleased and vanishing before the City Guard could respond. There were also many former desert dwellers living inside Lahmia as well, eking out a miserable existence in the city slums. The Lahmians regarded them with suspicion and thinly veiled hostility, suspecting them of spying for the raiders out on the plain.
Alcadizzar saw at once that the desert tribesmen had the potential of becoming powerful allies against the Lahmians, but they were a clannish and secretive bunch at the best of times. He had spent a year on the plain trying to earn their trust, but to no avail. When Nawat had agreed to accept him into his gang, Alcadizzar had joined up in the hopes that the old raider might still have some friends within the tribes, but if he did, Nawat refused to speak of them.
The prince suppressed an irritated sigh. Another dead end, he thought, watching the gang slink across a wide, stony field that had once grown corn and wheat for nearby Lahmia. He was better off on his own, he reckoned. Perhaps it would be easier to move about inside the city now. It had been another full year—surely Neferata was growing tired of the search.
Just then came the distant, skirling cry of a horn, off to the north. Nawat sat straight in his saddle, listening then nodded in satisfaction. “It’s begun,” he said to the gang. “They’re a little early. We should pick up the pace a bit.”
The old raider nudged his horse into a faster walk and the bandits limped along in his wake as best they could. Alcadizzar touched his heels to his mount and she responded at once, breaking into an easy, ground-eating trot. He searched the darkening sky above the road where he knew the caravan to be. After a few moments, he frowned. “No signal arrow,” he said, half to himself.
Nawat turned to the prince. “What’s that?”
Alcadizzar gestured in the direction of the road. They were less than a mile away now, their movements concealed by a line of low, wooded hills. “The caravan hasn’t called for help.”
The old raider straightened in the saddle. Every caravan within easy riding distance of the Lahmian watch-forts kept a bow and a pitch-soaked arrow close to hand, in case of attack. A fire arrow shot skywards would have a troop of Lahmian cavalry riding to their aid within minutes. Nawat rubbed his chin. “Maybe the arrow failed to light,” he mused. “It’s been known to happen.”
“You think so?” the prince asked, sounding dubious.
Nawat shrugged. “What else?”
They rode onwards in tense silence for a bit longer, drawing closer to the base of the hills. A horn sounded again—two short notes, then a long one, repeated in quick succession. Alcadizzar stiffened. He knew that sequence all too well. Moments later, another horn answered, perhaps a league to the west.
“Those are cavalry signals,” Alcadizzar told Nawat. “The caravan had a troop of horsemen trailing them.”
“Where the dust trail from the wagons would hide their presence.” Nawat muttered a curse and spat into the dust. “When did the khutuf get so clever?”
Alcadizzar could hear other sounds coming from the far side of the hill now: the faint clatter of blades and the shrill, woman-like shriek of a dying horse. The caravan had been nothing but bait, drawing the raiders into a deadly ambush. The prince thought quickly, considering his options. He reached down and loosened his sword in its sheath.
Nawat cursed again and turned his horse about. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he snarled to his gang. “Back to camp, and quickly. If the Lahmians catch us—”
Suddenly, the old raider’s mount shied sideways as Alcadizzar spurred his horse to a gallop and charged up the wooded hillside.
“Ubaid!” Nawat called after him. “What in the seven hells are you doing?”
The long-legged Numasi mare lunged up the slope in graceful bounds. Alcadizzar gave the horse its head, letting it find its own way amid the gnarled, spiky trees. The sounds of battle grew louder as he reached the hill’s summit and plunged down the other side. He drew the heavy, bronze sword with a graceful sweep of his arm and tried to catch glimpses of the battle unfolding along the road below.
Alcadizzar could see seven or eight wagons—wide-bodied, wooden affairs with four wheels and high, wicker sides. Half a dozen archers stood in each one, drawing back yard-long reed arrows and loosing them at the swift-moving horsemen circling in the open ground north of the road. The desert raiders were armed with quivers of bronze-tipped javelins and short, recurved bows made of polished horn; they drew and fired on the move, sending broad-headed arrows thudding into the wagons’ flanks. But instead of plunging through the painted wicker they stuck fast, or the shafts broke from the impact. No doubt the wicker was a screen, concealing a wall of wooden shields that protected the archers to just above the waist.
The bodies of riders and horses alike littered the ground before the wagons and the gaps between them. A favoured tactic of the desert raiders was to race in among the wagons and strike down their drivers with a few well-placed javelins. The Lahmians had waited until the raiders were virtually in their midst before springing their trap, cutting down the first wave of raiders at point-blank range. The rest had drawn up short in the killing ground north of the road, where they offered more targets for the swift-firing bowmen.
The caravan guards—Lahmian soldiers clad in the motley gear of hired blades—had withdrawn behind the wagons as soon as the attack had begun, and now they were making short work of the wounded raiders who’d had their mounts shot out from under them during the first charge. Alcadizzar caught sight of a dozen of these soldiers surrounding a large knot of dead horses and their riders. As he watched, a lean, robed figure darted up from behind one of the fallen mounts and flung a javelin at one of the Lahmians. The soldier screamed and fell, clutching at the shaft protruding from his chest. Arrows hissed through the air, but the raider had already ducked back down out of sight and the shafts passed harmlessly overhead.
A shout went up from the raiders north of the road. Alcadizzar watched in surprise as a dozen of them broke from the group and charged the line of wagons. Horse-bows twanged; one of the Lahmian archers pitched over backwards with an arrow in his eye. The raiders closed the distance swiftly, their mounts fairly gliding over the stony field. They plunged fearlessly into a storm of arrow fire. Horses screamed and plunged to the ground; their riders leapt free, only to be shot in turn. Only two of the brave riders made it past the wagons, hurling javelins at their tormentors as they raced by. Alcadizzar watched them rein in for a moment on the other side of the line, their heads turning this way and that as though searching for something. One of the riders fell a second later with an arrow in his throat; the second man caught sight of the mound of dead horses that the Lahmians had surrounded, and spurred his horse towards them with a cry of challenge. Three arrows struck the man in quick succession, piercing him in the leg and chest. Still, he struggled onwards, driving his mount forwards, until another pair of arrows struck him in the side and sent him plunging to the ground. The raider’s horse came to a stop, its flanks heaving—but then a whistle caused its ears to perk up. At once, it started to trot towards where the stranded raider was hiding, but was brought down by a well-placed Lahmian arrow.
Now Alcadizzar understood why the desert raiders hadn’t simply withdrawn as soon as the ambush had been sprung. Their chieftain had been brought down in the first charge and was now trapped by the Lahmians among the bodies of his retainers. Honour demanded that they rescue him, or die in the attempt.
The Lahmian soldiers pushed forwards, tightening the noose around the desert chieftain. To the west, Alcadizzar could hear the faint thunder of hooves. The cavalry would arrive in moments and then the raiders would have no choice but to withdraw; the chieftain’s fate would be sealed.
The
re was no time to think. Alcadizzar raced down the slope, angling his course towards the downed chieftain. With the latest rescue attempt having failed, the Lahmian archers had turned their attention northwards once again. He might succeed where the gallant raiders had failed.
The prince broke from the concealing woods at a full gallop, his horse kicking up a cloud of dust as she raced across the level ground towards the encircling soldiers. The Lahmians didn’t see him at first. Alcadizzar crossed the intervening distance in the space of a few heartbeats. By the time one of the soldiers on the far side of the circle caught sight of him and shouted a warning, it was already too late.
Alcadizzar plunged into the circle of warriors, his bronze sword flashing. Blood spattered in a wide arc as he split one soldier’s helmet and carved into the skull beneath. The prince jerked his blade free with a bloodthirsty shout and struck another man in the shoulder, the sword cutting through the warrior’s leather armour and shattering his collarbone. Screams rent the air; Alcadizzar spurred his mount forwards, leaping over the bodies of horses and men. He caught sight of the chieftain, hunched down next to his dead stallion, a sword and dagger clenched in his bloody hands.
The prince leaned down, extending his left arm. The desert chieftain’s face was hidden behind a chequered headscarf, but his dark eyes glinted fiercely as he gripped Alcadizzar’s forearm and swung easily onto the back of his horse. There were shouts all around them as the Lahmians surged forwards; with a cry, Alcadizzar spurred his mount once again—not northwards, into the teeth of the enemy bowmen, or southwards, towards the wooded hill but west, down the length of the caravan and in the direction of the oncoming Lahmian cavalry.
[Nagash 03] - Nagash Immortal Page 21
