[Nagash 03] - Nagash Immortal

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  As the crops failed, food prices soared. Even those who were healthy now faced the prospect of starvation. Cities began hoarding food, leading to riots and more bloodshed. Alcadizzar used all his power to try and maintain order amongst his vassal kings. For a while, he succeeded. Food was rationed, but everyone, from highest to lowest, was fed. As the plague spread to distant cities like Quatar and Ka-Sabar, the infected were removed as humanely as possible and isolated in tent cities outside the walls.

  And then Ubaid, the king’s youngest son, fell ill.

  Alcadizzar summoned a legion of chirurgeons to attend upon his son. Every wizard and oracle in the land was consulted in search of a cure. The king himself spent night and day at his son’s bedside, while he thrashed and bled, and screamed in pain. Once the disease was far advanced, not even the milk of the poppy could dull the young prince’s suffering. He begged his father to make the pain go away; later, in the grip of madness, he begged his father to end his life. When he died at last, almost a month later, he did so with a curse upon his lips.

  By then, the plague was everywhere. The great cities shut their gates to outsiders, and shut the infected up in their homes to try and hold the sickness at bay. Gripped with fear and half-maddened by grief, Alcadizzar sent Asar, his only surviving son, away from the city and into the Great Desert to live with the tribes, where it was hoped the plague couldn’t reach. The king’s heir travelled through a land fraught with violence and unrest, as gangs of bandits waylaid travellers in search of food. After many brushes with death, Asar and his retainers reached the safety of the Great Desert and camped for the night at an oasis known only to the tribes.

  The very next day, the prince fell ill. His retainers, many sick themselves, struggled to care for him, but his conditioned worsened. One night, in the grip of madness, the prince slipped from his tent and wandered out into the sands, never to be seen again.

  When the news reached Alcadizzar, he was devastated. Over the course of a year, he had watched the plague spread through his empire, and now it was dying before his eyes. Nothing he did slowed the spread of the disease in the slightest. Fresh, untainted water, locked away in cisterns, jars and wells, was now worth its weight in gold. Riots tore through Khemri every day, as the panicked citizens searched for some way to escape the sickness. They clamoured outside the gates of the palace, begging their great king to save them.

  As the second year of the plague wore on, the begging of the people turned to angry shouts, and then from shouts to bitter curses as the disease claimed more and more lives. The fact that the king himself seemed impervious to the disease only fuelled the bitterness of his citizens even further.

  The months passed and the supplies of food dwindled. Men turned into savages, murdering their neighbours for a crust of bread or a cup of stale wine. Alcadizzar opened the palace’s meagre food stores to his people, but his gesture of goodwill spawned a bloody riot that left hundreds of his citizens dead. They rampaged through the palace, stealing whatever they could, while the king and queen and a handful of royal guards barricaded themselves in the kings’ apartments and waited for the chaos to subside.

  One week later, Khalida contracted the plague.

  The sickness came upon her much more slowly than the rest. For a time, she tried to hide her suffering from her husband, but within a month her condition had grown too visible to ignore. Alcadizzar summoned his chirurgeons once more. He sat at her bedside and wiped the blood from her eyes, and listened as she groaned in her sleep. As her condition worsened, he went to the ancient temples and prayed in vain for the gods to save her life.

  Khalida lingered in pain for many months, wasting away upon her sickbed. When her suffering had grown so great that she no longer recognised her own husband, the chirurgeons offered to give her a cup of undiluted poppy to ease her into the next life. Alcadizzar took the cup himself. He lifted it to his wife’s lips and sat with her into the night, as her moans faded and her breathing grew ever more shallow. She passed into the realms of the dead shortly thereafter, heedless of the grief-stricken man at her side.

  Alcadizzar sent for the mortuary priests and helped them prepare his beloved for the tomb. The last of the horses had died months before, so the king and a pair of acolytes pulled the wagon carrying her body out into the city’s necropolis, where a modest crypt awaited. There was no grand pyramid for Nehekhara’s greatest king. Alcadizzar had resisted the idea of commissioning one, and Khalida, being born amid the desert tribes, scoffed at the notion of entombment. But in the end, Alcadizzar could not bring himself to lay her upon a wooden bier and set her alight, as was the practice among her people. The tomb at least held out hope that perhaps one day she might rise again.

  For a time, Alcadizzar contemplated taking the poisoned cup and joining his family in the afterlife. But then, a few days after Khalida had been laid to rest, an exhausted messenger rode into the city from distant Rasetra. How he had managed the long journey alone was a feat of courage and endurance unto itself, and he was already half-dead from the plague by the time he arrived. The message he bore was from King Heru. An army of the undead had emerged from the Cursed City to the east and was slaying everything in its path. Lybaras had already fallen, its few remaining citizens ruthlessly put to the sword. Rasetra would be next.

  The message was more than two months old. Alcadizzar knew that Heru had been dead long before his warning reached Khemri.

  From that moment on, the king put thoughts of the poisoned cup aside. Instead he brought forth his armour and his golden sword, and turned his eyes eastwards, searching for the approaching darkness.

  ——

  All Is Dust

  Khemri, the Living City, in the 110th year of Asaph the Beautiful

  (-1151 Imperial Reckoning)

  When the time had come, the last of the king’s household went into the great necropolis and sought out Alcadizzar in the tomb of his beloved wife.

  “The darkness is coming,” the faithful servant said. His name was Sefm, and in better days, he had been an attendant in the royal stables. His linen robes had been carefully cleaned and his skin anointed with fragrant oil, so that his spirit would present a pleasing appearance when he went to join his ancestors in the lands of the dead. A vizier’s circlet of gold sat uneasily upon his narrow brow, and he carried a shield and spear in his trembling hands.

  The king was clad in his armour of gold; his gleaming sword rested upon the stones at his feet. He knelt by the marble bier where Khalida’s body lay and held her cerement-wrapped hand in his. Hunger and grief had ravaged the king’s once powerful frame. Alcadizzar’s face was gaunt, eyes sunken and cheeks hollowed as though by a long and merciless fever. He had the look of a man who longed for the peace of the grave.

  While the servant waited, the king rose slowly to his feet. Gently, he laid his wife’s hand upon the bier, and then bent to press his lips against the wrappings that covered her cheek. Dry lips rasped faintly against the cerements.

  “Not much longer now,” he whispered to her. “Watch for me in the dusk.”

  Then the king took up his sword and headed out into the dying light of day.

  It was high summer and a chill wind was blowing from the east, carrying the dank scent of the grave. The sky from horizon to horizon roiled with thick, purple-black clouds, spreading implacably westwards towards Khemri. At that moment, the radiance of his golden armour made him seem somehow small in comparison to the vast darkness that was arrayed against him, but he stared up at the gathering clouds with a grim sense of anticipation. He had been waiting for this day ever since his beloved wife had gone.

  As the wind began to howl amid the crowded tombs, Alcadizzar made his way south, through the necropolis and across the low hills that separated the city of the dead from the great trade road. It was there that the sons of Khemri had chosen to make their stand against the coming night.

  There were perhaps a thousand men, all told, armed with everything from spears to farmers�
� scythes. A few carried shields, but no more; it was unlikely that their gaunt frames could have borne the weight of armour in any case. Most were sick to one degree or another and the rest were beyond caring. Not a one of them expected to live out the day.

  On the far side of the city, men and women with the strength to travel were still leaving the city, hoping to make it on foot all the way to Zandri, some two hundred leagues to the west. There had been rumours for weeks that ships were leaving with refugees, hoping to find safety in the far north. No one knew if the rumours were true, but a faint chance was better than no chance at all.

  It was for the same reason that men clutched spear and axe and stood facing the darkness to the east. Every minute they stood and fought was a gift to those who sought succour in the west. It was little enough, they knew, but better that than nothing at all.

  There were no cheers as the king and his servant arrived; no shaking of spears or clashing of shields. None of that mattered to Alcadizzar. It was enough that they had come to stand beside him, when all the others had fled. He stood before them, with the roiling darkness at his back, and lifted his sword to the sky.

  “Woe to us that we have lived to see this day,” he said. “Our strength is spent, and our hearts are broken. Nehekhara is no more.”

  The king’s voice carried clearly over the keening wind, and the men stirred from their reverie and listened. Some wept, knowing that the end had come.

  “We go now into the dusk, where our ancestors await,” Alcadizzar said. “Let it be written in the Book of Ages that when the world ended and darkness swallowed the land, the men of Khemri did not falter. No, they went into the night with spears in their hands, fighting to the last.”

  The wind rose, as though in reply, howling like the spirits of the damned. Alcadizzar felt the cold breath of the grave upon his neck. He turned, and saw a wall of shadow rushing towards him like a desert storm.

  “To the last!” he cried once more and then the light failed, and darkness swallowed the world.

  Within the veil of shadow, the howling of the wind was dulled to a muted roar. Alcadizzar could dimly hear the shouts of the men behind him. “Stand fast!” he cried, but he could not be sure if he was heard.

  One moment stretched into another, as the wind roared, and the cold sank like knives into his skin. Faint points of light emerged out of the gloom; unblinking eyes of grave-light, glowing from sockets of bone. Ragged figures took shape, clad in scraps of armour and rotting cloth. They marched forwards in their thousands, clutching spears and cruel, tarnished blades.

  The air above the undead seemed to shimmer. Moments later he heard the hiss of arrows flickering invisibly overhead. Men screamed in agony as they were struck; others cried out in terror and despair. Alcadizzar gripped his sword in both hands and shouted.

  “For Khemri!” he cried, his voice muted by the shadows. “For Nehekhara!” And then he charged, hurling himself into the arms of death.

  Alcadizzar’s sword made burning arcs in the darkness as he leapt at the army of the undead. He swept aside spear-points and hacked through armour and bone, severing arms and shattering ribcages. The skeletons he struck flared like banked coals for an instant and then collapsed lifelessly to the ground.

  Onwards he went, driving deeper into the horde, not knowing or caring if his men followed him or not. He swung his blade wildly, connecting with two or three skeletons with every swing, waiting for the inevitable spear that would find a seam in his armour or pierce his exposed throat. But no such blow ever came. Indeed, not a single blow struck him at all. The skeletons recoiled from him as if afraid to strike him.

  The king chased after them, slashing wildly. “Fight me, damn you!” he shouted at them. He hacked through a skeleton’s spear haft and severed its hand. “This is what you came for, isn’t it?”

  He was growing weary now. His strength had fled him long ago, when his first son had died. Still he drove himself forwards, practically throwing himself upon the enemy’s spears. “What’s the matter?” he cried, his voice breaking. “Here I am! Kill me!”

  But the enemy drew back from him, retreating away into the darkness as if in a dream. Alcadizzar screamed in despair, running after them, begging the spirits of the damned for release.

  Suddenly, a tall, skeletal figure in bronze armour loomed out of the darkness, a black, double-edged sword in his hand. Cold radiated from the liche’s body in waves, leeching all the heat from the king’s wasted body.

  Undaunted, Alcadizzar leapt at the liche, slashing at its torso. The undead monster blocked the stroke with ease, striking sparks from the flat of his iron blade. Shouting defiantly, Alcadizzar pressed his attack, chopping at the liche’s head and neck, but each blow was turned aside. With the last of his fading strength, the king lunged, thrusting the chisel point of his sword at the monster’s heart, but the liche was too fast for him. The iron blade swept down in a ringing parry that wrenched the glowing weapon from Alcadizzar’s hands.

  Stunned, the king fell forwards, right into the liche’s grasp. A cold, armoured hand closed about his throat. Distantly, he could hear the screams of his men as they were overwhelmed by the undead.

  The liche lifted Alcadizzar by the neck, until he could stare into the king’s face. A ghastly laugh hissed between the monster’s blackened teeth.

  Alcadizzar struggled in the liche’s grip. “What are you waiting for?” he snarled. “Go on! Kill me, and be damned!”

  “In time,” Arkhan agreed. “But not today, Alcadizzar of Khemri. My master wishes you to suffer a short while longer.”

  They stripped the king of his gleaming armour and cast his treasured sword into the sands. His hands were bound in chains of bronze and he was given into the keeping of a dozen wights, who locked him inside an enclosed palanquin made of polished bone. The last he saw of Khemri, its streets were teeming with corpses, and the living were being dragged from their homes and slain.

  The palanquin was borne on the shoulders of a dozen skeletons, which carried him east through a silent, empty land. Time lost all meaning within the sorcerous gloom; Alcadizzar drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to say for certain whether it had been weeks or months since he’d first been taken. From time to time the palanquin would stop; bony fingers would seize his jaw and pour a trickle of fiery liquid down his throat. He coughed and sputtered, but the skeletons did not relent until they’d gotten some of the potion down his throat. Whatever it was, it nourished him enough to keep his emaciated body alive.

  On and on they carried him, past the charnel house that had once been Quatar, and on into the Valley of Kings. Past silent Mahrak they went, and along the trade road to fallen Lahmia. They carried him through the Cursed City’s broken gate and down to the docks, where once upon a time an old woman had told him of his fate and he’d chosen to hide from it instead.

  The skeletons placed him on a ship of bone and took him north, up the narrow straits and into a dark and restless sea. In time, they beached upon a shore of broken stone and bore him across poisoned fields that reeked of burnt metal and bitter ash.

  The further they went, the more that Alcadizzar felt the weight of an invisible presence studying him from the darkness. He could feel a malevolent intelligence scrutinising him, an implacable, hateful will that was both utterly alien and disturbingly human at the same time.

  They passed through the gates of a vast fortress and into narrow lanes that led up the slopes of an ancient, desecrated mountain. Alcadizzar soon lost track of all the twists and turns that the skeletons took as they rose ever higher through the levels of the fortress. At one point they entered into an echoing, humid tunnel that led them deep into the heart of the mountain. Nagash’s awareness—for the malevolent presence could be nothing else—grew steadily more intense, until Alcadizzar’s nerves were raw with apprehension.

  At last, when he thought he could stand it no more, he heard the groan of hinges and the grating of a pair of massive doors, and soon the hollow soun
d of skeletal feet marching down a long and echoing hall. Finally, the rocking movements ceased and he was lowered with a jarring thump that reverberated through the vaulted space beyond.

  A key rattled in the palanquin’s lock. The sliding panel was drawn aside and bony hands dragged him from his months-long prison. Agony flared from his cramped joints, wrenching a bitter cry from his parched throat. Green light seared his eyes. He blinked, but no tears would come.

  Alcadizzar struggled in his captors’ grip nonetheless. Without warning, they released him; his legs, weakened by captivity, betrayed him. He fell to the smooth, cold flagstones with a groan, shaking uncontrollably as his cramped muscles twisted into knots.

  He lay there for an eternity, lost in suffering and shivering like a babe. And then a voice, jagged and rough like broken stone, sawed through his haze of pain.

  “Behold the usurper,” said Nagash, the Undying King.

  Nagash’s prisoner was a pathetic wreck of a man; a pallid, trembling skeleton clad in filthy linen wrappings. Metal grated on metal as the Undying King rose to his feet and descended the steps of the dais. Nagash reached out with a gauntleted hand and seized the mortal by the throat, lifting him from the floor as though he weighed no more than a bundle of twigs.

  “You are the man who seized my throne and united the great cities against me?” Nagash twisted the human this way and that, studying him like a piece of meat. “I had expected better.”

  With a disdainful hiss, he tossed the mortal aside. Alcadizzar collapsed to the floor with a strangled groan, his body curling back again into a foetal ball. The liche-king chuckled, savouring his foe’s pain.

  “Alcadizzar of Khemri, lord of a dead land,” he declared. “Does the title please you? It was yours, in truth, from the moment you chose to defy me.”