02 - Nagash the Unbroken (4 page)

How the mighty have fallen,
Nebunefer said.
You dare to call the
mighty Ptra a parasite? He created the earth, and everything that lives upon it.
What little power you possess was stolen, ripped from the souls of the innocent.
It’s finite, and the last sands of the hourglass have almost run out.

“Not yet, you old fool,”
Nagash snarled back.
“If you were still
flesh, I would wring your neck a second time! Watch!

His limbs felt leaden, his joints frozen like corroded bronze, but Nagash
would not be denied. Slowly, clumsily, he forced his good arm to work, and then
his legs. Minutes later, he stood shakily on his feet again, but Nebunefer was
gone.

“Jackals,”
he spat into the darkness.
“We’ll see who laughs
last.”

It took more than an hour for Nagash to climb the opposite slope, snarling
curses and burning with fever all the while. His limbs were growing stiffer by
the moment. He drove himself onward with nothing more than the belief that the
dark mountain was just ahead, right over the top of the next ridge.

It had to be.

He would not succumb. He would not fail. He was the rightful King of Khemri,
heir to Settra’s throne, and by extension the master of all Nehekhara.

A faint wind hissed along the ridgeline, just a few yards out of reach. A
voice drifted down to him, riding on the sandy breeze.

Usurpation is not a right, brother.

Thutep stood at the crest of the ridge, his face turned towards the moon
hanging low overhead. His older brother seemed damnably at peace, staring up at
Neru’s beaming face. Only his fingertips, worn down to stumps of splintered
bone, hinted at his last, awful moments, buried alive inside his own tomb.

“The strong have the right to rule,”
Nagash hissed.
“You were weak.
You did not deserve the throne. Khemri’s fortunes suffered under your reign.”

Thutep shrugged, never taking his eyes from the moon and the open sky.
That was the will of the gods,
he said.
You were a priest, and a prince
of the realm. You wanted for nothing—

“Nothing except an empire,”
the Usurper said bitterly.
“Had I been
firstborn, the people of Khemri would have served me gladly, and the city would
have prospered. If you would blame anyone, blame those damned gods you so adore.
It was they who made me no more than a second son. It was their will who
ultimately sealed you inside that tomb.”

His brother had no answer to that. By the time Nagash reached the summit,
Thutep was gone.

Beyond the ridge was a broad, rocky plain. The dark mountain, and its promise
of power, might have loomed among the company of a dozen other peaks along the
horizon to the east. Beyond their jagged summits, the sky was already paling
with the light of false dawn.

There was nowhere to hide. No caves, no overhangs, no brush-covered
depressions to crawl into and escape the fire of the sun. Nagash knew it would
sear his skin in minutes, but that was of little concern to him. Far worse was
its effects on the elixir. The older he and his immortals had become, the more
that sunlight sapped the strength of their stolen vigour. When he and his armies
marched to war, they moved in a perpetual darkness wrought by fearsome sorcery.
Even at the peak of his powers, Nagash doubted he would have survived a full
day’s exposure to the sun.

As things were now, he didn’t think that he’d last more than a few minutes.

Gritting his teeth, Nagash began scraping at the baked ground. Ptra could not
have him. He would sooner cover himself in dirt like an animal than concede
defeat to god or man.

May I be of service, great one?

The voice was soft and too sincere, the kind of tone a servant would take to
mock his master to his face. It sounded right by Nagash’s ear. With a monumental
effort, he turned his head and glanced up at the ghostly figure kneeling by his
side.

Khefru was holding out his hand to Nagash, as though to help him stand. The
former priest, who had helped Nagash learn the secrets of necromancy and later
conspired with him to seize the throne, smiled down at his former master through
a mask of flame. As the Usurper watched, the priest’s body became wreathed in
sorcerous fire, just as it had centuries past when Nagash had learned of Khefru
and Nekerem’s betrayal.

“Traitor,”
Nagash hissed.
“Snivelling coward! Enslaving your spirit
was too good for you! I should have consumed you utterly when I had the chance.”

To Nagash’s surprise, the ghost’s burning face turned bitter.
More is the
pity,
Khefru said.
Better oblivion than an eternity wandering in the cold
places of the world. You’ll understand soon enough.
The former servant
turned, gauging the time until dawn.
Not long now.

But the Usurper refused to be cowed by the spirit’s ominous words.
“Let it
come!”
he said.
“What do I care if I’m freed from this broken husk of a
body? You were never a match for me in life, Khefru—not you, nor Thutep, nor
even Nebunefer or Neferem. You shall be my slave again, you cur. Watch and see.”

Khefru’s smile broadened as the flames bit deep into the flesh of his face.
Do you imagine that it’s just the four of us? Oh, no, great one. We’re just
the ones who could reach you the easiest. There are others out there in the
shadows, waiting for your demise. All the people of Mahrak, slaughtered in their
thousands and cast adrift, without Usirian to judge them or Djaf to conduct them
to the afterlife. All the soldiers of both sides who fell in the final battle,
and all the skirmishes who came after, and all the common folk who perished in
the famines and plagues that wracked the land afterwards. You cannot imagine so
many,
the former servant said.
But you will have all eternity to
entertain them.

This time, Nagash watched the spirit go. Khefru simply stood up and walked
away, without so much as a backwards glance. He headed westwards, into the
fleeing shadows, and dissipated like smoke.

The scavengers heard him raving long before they actually saw him. He was
lying face down in the middle of a rocky plain, spitting curses in a tongue they
didn’t understand and directed at nothing they could see. The wasteland had
obviously driven the hairless one mad, not that it made any difference to them.
His meat would taste the same regardless.

The four of them were starving. There had been six of them once upon a time,
when they’d been sent from the tunnels of the Great City to scour the World
Above for the hidden gifts of the Great Horned One.

During the second year of their great hunt, they’d seen the claw of their god
trace a green arc across the sky, and had followed its trail into the depths of
the wasteland, where they’d found a scar gouged in the packed earth and a
handful of treasures nestled together like a clutch of new-laid eggs.

Great was their fortune, or so they’d believed. Great would be their glory
when they returned with their bounty to the clan master! But tracing their steps
back out of the cursed waste had proved much more difficult than they’d
bargained for. After the first few months the food had run out, and hunting in
the rat-forsaken wasteland was slim. Mad with hunger, they’d turned on one
another, and the two weakest had become food for the rest.

When the last of that meat ran out, more than a month ago, the four hunters
had spent weeks waiting for one of their fellows to slip up and become the next
meal, but none of them were so careless. Finally, growing more and more
desperate, one of the band began gnawing at the Horned God’s sky-gift, in hopes
of gaining the upper paw over his companions. Out of self-preservation, the
other hunters began to nibble their share of the god-stone as well. It tore like
a knife through their guts and set their nerves on fire, but it lent them enough
vigour to survive and keep the stalemate going.

The hunters ate of the god-stone sparingly, fearing the wrath of the
clan-master when they finally did manage to return to the city. Their fur was
falling out in patches, and awful, glowing lesions appeared on the raw skin
beneath. Catching the scent of the hairless one was a gift from the Horned One
himself, they reasoned. They hoped to find enough meat on the prey’s bones to
last them until they could escape the wasteland and make their way home.

When they caught sight of the prey’s shrivelled, leathery body they began
squabbling over the spoils at once. Knives were drawn. Threats were spat.
Alliances were formed and broken in the space of minutes. Finally, the leader of
the little band put an end to the bickering and declared that each hunter was
entitled to one of the prey’s limbs. Once those were cut off, the torso would be
divided four ways, and then they’d all get turns sucking the sweetmeats out of
the skull. With dawn looming close on the horizon, the band grudgingly reached
an agreement. They shuffled about the hairless one, choosing which limb they
wanted and scheming how to steal the rest when an opportune moment arose.

The leader of the pack hefted his knife and flipped the prey onto his back—the better to get at the entrails when the time came. To their surprise, the
prey was still alive, its eyes widening at the sight of the knife in the pack
leader’s hand. The hunters chuckled. The meal would come with a little
entertainment as well.

Hissing expectantly, the pack leader bent down and grabbed the bony wrist of
the prey’s one good arm. He started to stretch it out for a clean cut when the
hairless one reared upward with a howl and sank its teeth into the hunter’s
throat!

Flesh tore. Hot blood sprayed across the rocky ground, and the pack leader
let out a choking squeak. The hairless one was clumsy and slow, but the hunters
were weak themselves and stunned by the sudden ferocity of the attack. They
barely had time to react before their would-be prey grabbed the knife from the
dying pack leader’s hand and buried it in the chest of the hunter to his right.
Then, with an exultant howl, the hairless one leapt upon the third hunter and
the two fell to the ground, stabbing wildly at one another with their knives.

In the space of just a few seconds, the pack had been all but destroyed. The
realisation proved too much for the fourth hunter’s fragile courage to
withstand. It abandoned its pack-mates and fled squeaking into the pre-dawn
shadows.

Nagash pulled the crude knife from the monster’s throat. Dark blood bubbled
from the wound. He bent over it at once, gulping down the hot liquid as the
creature shuddered in its death throes.

The power! He could taste it in the vile thing’s blood. The Usurper drank
deep, marvelling at the fire that raced through his withered limbs.

When the monster was dead he leaned back, chest heaving, face bathed in gore.
His emaciated body shuddered as successive waves of agony wracked it, but he
welcomed the sensation for what it was. A semblance of power was coursing
through his form once more, restoring to him a small amount of vitality.

One day he would thank Khefru for the incentive to try his luck with the
beasts. Had he not been so persuaded to survive, the battle might not have gone
half so well as it did.

The Usurper glanced about the plain, looking for where the last of the
monsters had gone, but the creature had vanished from sight.

What monsters were these? For the first time, Nagash could study his
attackers in detail. They looked like nothing so much as diseased men with the
heads and naked tails of
rats.
They were even dressed in filthy kilts
made of some sort of woven plant matter, now frayed and begrimed with the dust
of the wasteland. Silver earrings glittered from their rodent-like ears, and one
wore a thin, gold bracelet around its right wrist. Each of them carried bronze
knives of surprising quality, as well made as anything forged in distant
Ka-Sabar.

The only other possessions they carried were rough, leather bags,
tightly-knotted and secured to their leather belts. Nagash reached down and
tugged at the one on his last victim’s belt—and felt a shock of power like a
live coal burning in the palm of his hand. He dropped the bag with a start. Then
after a moment’s thought he carefully sliced open the side with the point of his
bloody knife.

At once, a sickly green glow emanated from the slit. Working carefully with
the knife, Nagash opened it further and dumped the bag’s contents onto the
ground.

Two small lumps of glowing green stone, each about the size of his thumb,
rolled onto the hard ground. The light they cast was intense. Where it touched
his bare skin it set his nerves to tingling.

Nagash reached down and carefully picked one up. Heat suffused his
fingertips, radiating from the stone in a steady, buzzing stream. He inspected
the stone carefully, and was shocked to find what looked like teeth marks
chiselled into its rough surface. The creatures were
eating
the rock?
That explained the traces of power in their blood.

The Usurper’s heart began to race. The creatures must have come from the dark
mountain. How else could they have come by the same power he sought? No other
explanation made sense.

Already, the pain was fading from his limbs, settling into a dull ache that
pulsed like a hot ember in his chest. He considered the glowing rock for a
moment more, and abruptly reached a decision. Setting the stone back on the
ground, he took the hilt of his knife and broke it into three smaller pieces.

With only a moment’s hesitation, Nagash picked up the smallest piece and
swallowed it.

Fire burst along every nerve in the Usurper’s body. His muscles swelled with
power; his scalp tingled until it burned. Nagash’s mind reeled under the
onslaught. It was far wilder and harder to channel than any power he’d known
before, but the intensity was still nothing like the enormous energies he’d
wielded in the past. It raged through his body, wreaking havoc on flesh and
bone. He seized it with his will and directed the raging torrent where he wished
it to go.