Hammer and Bolter: Issue Twenty-Six

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Remember the parable of the asp and the falcon, cousin. The falcon carried the asp over the river, but when they were in the air, the asp struck. As they fell, the falcon cried out, ‘But why? Now we will both die!’ to which the asp replied, ‘It is my nature.’ When your opponent smiles in triumph, spit into his teeth. When he laughs loud, laugh louder,’ Neferata said, reclining on her cushion. Khalida sprawled beside her, sword across her knees and sweat dripping down her face. ‘Spite is your greatest weapon, besides your mind, because in spite, all things are possible. Kings can be made to grovel for spite. Peasants may be raised to lofty heights and the strongest warrior gutted, all for spite.’ Neferata smiled and tapped two fingers against Khalida’s sword. ‘Spite, my little hawk, is whimsy sharpened to a killing point and with it you will be unpredictable.’

  ‘I don’t know if I have that much hate in me,’ Khalida said.

  ‘Deep wells fill slowly,’ Neferata said, stroking her hair.

  Ushtep’s herald backed away as she approached. The bony grimace looked nervous, despite its lack of flesh. Khalida tensed and sprang. Her khopesh licked out and cut the head from the standard, dropping Ushtep’s banner into the dust. Ushtep snarled a dusty curse and leapt from his chariot with inhuman agility. He swatted his herald aside and came at her, all pretence to formality banished in the face of her disrespect.

  Normally, the ritual leading up to the combat would have taken hours, as both parties recited their lineage and titles and their armies assembled in the proper formation to watch as their commanders met in single combat. But Khalida had long since grown tired of ritual and formality, and she wanted the farce over and done with. She had more important matters to attend to.

  Khalida interposed her khopesh, blocking Ushtep’s blow easily. Their blades locked and the staff twirled in her hand, beating down on his hastily interposed shield. She jerked him off-balance with a sway of her hips and pivoted, driving a heel into his knee. He wore no armour over his legs, and the ancient bone cracked. Ushtep staggered. Khalida spun around him, catching him in the back of the skull with her staff, sending him stumbling forward. Before he could regain his balance, she was on him. Her khopesh chopped down through his shield arm, sawing through bone and ornamental armlets alike.

  Ushtep groaned in frustration as his arm was dragged to the ground by the weight of the shield. He wobbled back, withered face twisted in a rictus snarl. He swung his blade awkwardly. The khopesh was an unwieldy weapon, especially when your centre of gravity had been badly thrown off. She blocked his blow and sent her blade spinning, taking his with it. Both sank solidly in the soft ground of the shore. She grabbed her staff in her hands and jabbed him, breaking his collarbone and cracking ribs. Wildly, he clutched at her. She stepped back and knocked his legs out from under him with bone-splintering force. He fell face-down, his falcon helm tumbling from his head.

  Neferata clapped her hands once, sharply. Khalida lowered her practice blade and stepped back. Her opponent remained where he was, face-down on the ground, as the Queen of Lahmia approached. Khalida didn’t resist as her cousin took the blade from her hands and strutted towards the fallen man. Neferata put one sandaled foot on the back of the warrior’s head and gestured with the blade. ‘Why do you back away? You had him beaten.’

  ‘It was not honourable,’ Khalida said defensively. ‘It is not meet for a warrior to–’

  ‘You are not a warrior, little hawk. You are a queen. For your enemies, there can be no mercy without abject surrender. There is no honour in being a ruler. There is only strength.’ Neferata pressed down with her foot, shoving the unresisting man’s face into the dirt. ‘Remember that.’

  ‘I remember,’ Khalida whispered. Almost gently, she put her foot on the back of Ushtep’s neck. ‘Yield, Prince of Rasetra, or I will grind your bones to powder and fling them into the Sour Sea, so that you might wile away our eternal twilight in the bellies of the fish.’

  Ushtep hissed and his remaining hand tore at the ground in a futile frenzy. Then, abruptly, he went still. ‘I… yield,’ he croaked.

  ‘Louder,’ Khalida said, setting the butt of her staff against his skull.

  ‘I yield, curse you!’ Ushtep howled.

  Khalida stepped back and Ushtep’s herald and charioteer hurried to help him up. ‘Return then, Prince of Rasetra, from whence you came,’ she said with overt formality. ‘I shall take this to remember you by.’ She snatched an ornately crafted and engraved golden blade from his belt and he did not protest, merely glaring at her. She turned, having little interest in watching Ushtep’s retreat. It would have little of the pomp of his arrival, that much was certain.

  ‘You humiliated him,’ Djubti said, as she approached. His tone wasn’t quite one of disapproval, but it was close. Behind her, she heard the dull crump of drums signalling the retreat of Ushtep’s army. She glanced over her shoulder. They moved more slowly going than they had coming, shuffling in defeat, heads bowed and steps uncertain.

  ‘And what if I did?’ Khalida said. She cocked her head. ‘He insulted me.’

  Djubti said, ‘By forgetting your titles?’

  ‘No, by daring to demand I turn over my responsibilities to him,’ Khalida said. If she had possessed saliva, she would have spat. ‘As if such a puling wretch as that would be able to stand against the Arch Necromancer when he returns…’

  ‘If he returns,’ Djubti said sharply.

  Khalida looked at him. ‘The dead do not dream, Djubti. When he returns, he must be fought and with every ounce of fury we whom he ripped from our tombs can muster. Ushtep’s fury pales to mine. He was not worthy.’

  ‘It is not for you to decide–’ Djubti began.

  ‘No. It is a decision for the gods, and they have obviously made it,’ Khalida said. The liche priest’s words stung, more than she cared to admit. That he had said them before did not lessen that sting.

  He was correct, of course. That was the bit that stuck. It was the nagging hook of doubt that caused her to hesitate. Djubti was right. There were other things that needed doing. The Great Land was at war, and had been since Nagash had shifted the dust of ages from their eyes and set them all stumbling into the harsh light of day. Thousands of kings and queens, generation upon generation of rulers had awoken at once and been set loose into a land that was as dead as they. In those first few months, wars had raged in every city, from Numas to Ka-Sabar, king against king, legions of bone and memory clashing in parody of long-forgotten conflicts. Old grudges were renewed and new grudges nurtured, even after the coming of Settra, first and greatest.

  Khalida had fought her share of battles, but the opponent she most desired to test herself against was not to hand. She had no need to prove her superiority against the tomb-dust kings of Lybaras who had preceded her.

  ‘You do not speak for the gods, Khalida,’ Djubti said.

  ‘I see you too have forgotten my titles,’ Khalida said.

  ‘Why do we stay here, my lady?’ he said.

  ‘Someone must, Djubti,’ Khalida said. She thrust her staff towards Cripple Peak. ‘Someone must stand before the gates of Nagashizzar and hold them closed. So Settra has decreed. Could a cretin like Ushtep do that?’

  ‘Your certainty of his return has become an obsession,’ Djubti said.

  ‘And so,’ she said. ‘If it has, it is not unfounded. His name is whispered in the living streets of Araby and beyond.’

  ‘How do you know what is whispered among the living?’ Djubti said softly.

  Khalida hesitated, suddenly remembering that she had not chosen Djubti to serve her. He had been chosen, certainly, but not by her. Settra’s servants moved among the Awakened Kings, passing along the edicts of the King of Kings; they could battle one another, but none could raise arms against Settra the Imperishable; the liche priests saw to that. ‘I have agents among them. Men-merchants, nomads, treasure-hunters some of them-who watch for signs of Nagash–’

  ‘Such is forbidden!’ Djubti thundered, all trace of h
umour gone. ‘The Living and the Dead do not mix, save in war, Khalida. That was Settra’s Twelfth Edict in the Third Year of Awakening!’

  ‘Then the edict was wrongly issued,’ Khalida rasped. A sigh swept through her legion, like a rustle of fronds in the evening breeze. To question the King of Kings was not unheard of. Lesser kings had done so. They were dust now, ground beneath the wheels of Settra’s war-chariot. ‘Nagash stirs, old liche,’ Khalida continued, thumping the ground with her staff. ‘I can feel him in my bones. We all can, if we but have the wit to listen. His black soul scratches at the deep places of our minds like a rodent in a granary. Nagash calls and those of his blood have heeded him. That is what the living say.’

  ‘Those of his–’ Djubti began. His face wrinkled. ‘Neferata,’ he said, flatly.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Khalida said, lifting her chin.

  ‘Was Sartosa not enough? Or the scouring of Bel-Aliad?’ Djubti said, leaning heavily on his staff. ‘Has your obsession blinded you to common sense?’

  ‘Has yours?’ Khalida countered. Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and left him staring after her. She moved through the fleshless ranks of her legion, ignoring the awkward obeisance of the long-dead soldiers of Lybaras. Once upon a time she would have revelled in it, but now it struck her only as hollow mockery. Nagash had trapped them in a parody of life, in chains of unchanging tradition, and for Khalida that was a crueller torment than even the dull ache of un-life.

  And, as ever, when that torment became too much, she retreated into memory. All those awakened by Nagash’s spell so many long years past did so, even mighty Settra. It was an open, shared secret, a painful cord that bound all of the Awakened together, commoner, noble and king alike. Memories swept around them and within them like vapour, inundating fleshless skulls and teasing out old habits. There were kings who held banquets of petrified food and dust, even as others engaged in meaningless courtship rituals or conspiracies. None of it mattered, but tradition held the dead far more tightly than it had the living.

  ‘Tradition can be a cage,’ Neferata said, tossing aside the scroll. ‘It binds us tight to unwelcome guests and muffles wisdom.’

  ‘It can also give us strength, my cousin,’ Khalida said, picking up the scroll. ‘It makes sense of the insensible and draws order from chaos.’

  ‘Hmp,’ Neferata grunted, reclining on her divan. ‘Tradition is a trap, little hawk, and nothing more. It holds as tightly and sinks as deeply as the fangs of the asp.’

  ‘A trap,’ Khalida murmured. For Neferata, life had been a trap. Everything was a cage, to keep her from doing as she wished. Every tradition was a bar, every friendship a chain. Now she was beyond it all. She looked around. A sour moon gleamed down, caressing crag and wall. She had unconsciously made her way to the gates of Nagashizzar, now long since forced wide, in the hours since her defeat of Ushtep. She had done so many times, though whether Djubti knew that or not, she couldn’t say. There was a prickle on her shrouded flesh, a faint stirring in her spirit.

  She looked around the courtyard of Nagash’s cursed citadel, taking in the vast walls and leering skulls carved into them. There were piles of the real thing in the high alcoves, and where once they would have glowed with sorcerous fire they now sat blackened and silent. Mighty towers, now long since crumbling, rose towards the night sky like the withered fingers of a sprawled corpse and there was a layer of filth covering everything, like that which might be on an untended tomb. Most avoided this place, a place even the dead feared. She could not. Not so long as there was a chance–

  Rocks rattled. Dark shapes, small and swift, ran through the shadows and red eyes gleamed. Khalida smiled and thumped the ground of the ruined citadel’s courtyard with her staff. ‘Come out, Keeskit. I see you there.’

  The rat-thing shambled into the light, hairy body shrouded in a cloak the colour of the stones. Paw-hands rested on the pommels of two serrated daggers which were sheathed on either stunted hip. A hairless tail lashed and a rag-wrapped muzzle split, revealing yellowed teeth. It chattered at her in its own tongue with a mish-mash of Arabyan and Cathayan words, oft-repeated and with odd pauses. She replied in kind, unafraid of the dozens of scurrying shapes which surrounded her.

  They knew better, now.

  Indeed, after that lesson had been taught, and more congenial contact established, these ratkin were almost easier to deal with than her fellow kings and queens. Certainly less greedy; they only wanted the mountain and the abn-i-khat which nestled in its bowels. As Khalida had no use for either, she was happy to let them mine it unmolested in return for information from further to the north. They had burrows throughout the mountains, and little occurred there that they did not have some knowledge of.

  Keeskit was the only survivor of that original meeting, but not for much longer, Khalida judged. There was silver in his muzzle and his bow was unsteady. One of his followers would kill him soon, she thought, or perhaps one of the ghouls that the ratkin incessantly warred with. She felt a twinge of sadness at the thought for all that Keeskit was a foul little thing. When she had been alive, everything seemed to move so slowly, but now…

  As they spoke, Keeskit gestured and one of the other ratkin brought forward several human heads, much the worse for wear. They were withered things, drained of all fluid and badly mutilated. She yanked the golden blade she had taken from Ushtep and tossed it to Keeskit, who accepted it with a chitter and a flourish. It was always good to reward service. She thanked the ratkin and they left her there with the heads. She stared down at them, wondering what they would say if they could talk. Would they curse the one who had sent them?

  ‘How many,’ she whispered, her voice as dry as sand. ‘How many will you send, cousin? How many men will spill their blood on these slopes before you come yourself?’ She looked up, examining the tall turrets and crooked spires of the dead citadel.

  The tall minarets of Bel-Aliad the Beautiful cracked and fell beneath the relentless tread of the warsphinxes of the Great Land. Arkhan the Black had fled to the borders of Araby after being ousted from Khemri and the legions of Settra had followed.

  Khalida stalked through the flames, her khopesh and staff sweeping out in opposite directions to cut down the leaping ghouls that sought to stall her advance. They bore Neferata’s stink, the black bile of Nagash’s blood. Ghouls swarmed around her, biting and snarling and she danced and slew, leaving a red trail in her wake.

  And then a tall form, swathed in black iron and red robes, was cutting at her with a black blade. She caught the blade on her staff and swept her khopesh out, drawing sparks from a scarred and pitted cuirass. Her attacker staggered. She whirled, cracking him across his fleshless jaw with her staff. She recognised him now, recognised the stink of the charnel magics that permeated his cursed form – Arkhan the Black, Arkhan the Accursed. Was Neferata aiding him, she wondered, or had he come to take her city from her even as Settra’s legions had come to take it from him?

  She made to hit him again when a pale hand encircled her staff and jerked her back. Khalida turned, khopesh licking out. A straight-edge sword caught the khopesh and held it. Khalida’s dead eyes widened. ‘You,’ she spat, her voice hoarse from centuries of disuse.

  ‘You,’ Neferata, once Queen of Lahmia, said, her own eyes widening and the snarl slipping from her features. Khalida jerked her staff free of her cousin’s grasp and twisted her wrist, ripping the blade from Neferata’s hand. Neferata leapt back as the staff came down, cracking the ancient stone of the street. In her cousin’s face, Khalida saw something foul writhing, another face superimposed over Neferata’s features, now gone feral after long years feeding at the human trough. The face mouthed hateful curses as Neferata sprang for her, claws extended like those of some great cat. Khalida stretched out a hand, catching Neferata’s throat. She held the hissing, spitting thing that had once been her cousin, her mother and sister in all but name, and tried to find some sign of the woman, the queen she had been.

  The black b
lade came down on Khalida’s arm, nearly severing it, and Neferata rolled free. Khalida spun, following her, and Arkhan stepped between her and her prey, sword extended. ‘Finish her, Neferata,’ Arkhan wheezed and his voice was like oil on rocks or the flutter of bats’ wings. Khalida turned, waiting for Neferata’s attack. It did not come.

  Instead, Neferata ran.

  She had run. Run from Bel-Aliad to Copher, from city to city, fleeing the Wars of Death. Khalida, bound to Settra’s service, had not been able to follow her cousin. ‘Are you still my cousin?’ she said to the empty courtyard. Part of her wanted to believe otherwise. Part of her raged against the abominations that her cousin and the courtiers of Lahmia had become. That part of her had not died when she had, gasping out her life on the tip of Neferata’s sword, her ears filled with the sound of her cousin’s begging.

  Neferata had begged her to live. Had pleaded with her, had offered up her tainted blood. Khalida had refused and had… died. The end result, however, was the same. She looked at her hand again, at the black veins, clogged with rotten blood and the way her flesh flaked and peeled beneath linen wrappings. Her muscles cracked and her bones clicked and she felt nothing either way. She was not a person but an automaton, no more human now than the beast-headed ushabti which stalked beside Settra’s legions.

  That part of her that was consumed by righteous anger had kept her moving when so many of the other Awakened had retreated into dreams and their tombs to hide from the new day that Nagash had forced upon them. She had marched beside Settra, seeking to punish the servants of Nagash. When the liche priests had found signs of the blood-drinkers amongst the pale men of the western shores, she had been in the first war-galley to set sail from Zandri. And in Sartosa, she had again seen her cousin and the thing that rode her. It had crawled into her skin and wore her face and mind like armour.

  ‘You took my wings, Neferata,’ Khalida rasped, hatred burning through her shrunken veins. ‘You made me crawl. Now I will return the favour. Crawl, cousin, crawl.’ Around them, Sartosa burned, even as Bel-Aliad had burned. The fleets of Zandri had come for the men of the west, and they would be punished for thinking that the seas were theirs to ply.