02 - Nagash the Unbroken (34 page)

Cold terror clenched Neferata’s throat. Without thinking, she drew upon her
power and shoved Khalida backwards. Her cousin was hurled off her feet, flying
back for nearly five feet before landing hard on her back. Khalida turned the
impact into a backward shoulder roll and sprang swiftly back onto her feet.
Blood glistened on the tip of her sword.

Now she knows how strong I am, Neferata thought. She won’t make that mistake
again.

They circled one another for a moment, contemplating their next moves.
Neferata’s left hand ached dully, and the wound in her chest felt like it was on
fire. Abhorash’s words echoed dully in her mind.
You’re going to have to make
this quick.

She stared at Khalida, her eyes pleading. “Don’t do this,” she whispered.

But Khalida was beyond hearing. With a snarl she rushed forward again, sword
held low. She was on the queen in moments. Neferata tried to twist aside again,
but felt the point of Khalida’s blade dig into her hip. She cried out, groping
instinctively for Khalida’s wrist again, but the attack was only a feint. Swift
as a snake, Khalida jerked the blade away and brought it around in a swift,
looping motion, straight for the side of Neferata’s throat.

She saw the blade arcing towards her out of the corner of her eye. With a
scream, Neferata called upon her power once more and surged forwards, deeper
into Khalida’s embrace. Her cousin’s sword missed its mark by inches, carving a
furrow across the back of Neferata’s neck.

The queen held her cousin for just a moment, and she could feel Khalida’s
heart hammering wildly through the thin fabric of her robe. Then they parted.
Khalida took one step back, her expression slack. Her gaze fell to the hilt of
Neferata’s blade, jutting at a downward angle from her side. Slowly, wonderingly
she grasped the hilt with her left hand and with a strangled gasp, pulled the
weapon free. Dark blood poured down Khalida’s side.

Neferata watched in horror as her cousin sank to the ground. An agonised cry
split the stunned silence. It was Anhur, his face a mask of anguish.

The queen fell to her knees beside Khalida. Her terror was gone, replaced
with a bottomless well of sorrow. Without thinking, she pressed her hand to the
wound in her cousin’s side, but the bleeding would not stop. The warm fluid ran
over her fingers and stained the sleeve of her robe. Khalida made a choked sound
and tried to move, but she was already growing weak. Her eyes were open,
searching wildly about for something or someone.

“Oh, gods,” Neferata whispered. “Oh, great gods.” Her eyes burned, but no
tears would come. She laid a trembling hand against Khalida’s cheek, staining it
with blood. “Forgive me, little hawk. Please, please forgive me…”

She could still be saved, Neferata realised. She took her lower lip in her
teeth and bit down hard, tasting blood. She bit until her lip was bitter with
the taste.

Neferata took Khalida’s head in her hands and turned it until their eyes met.
She lowered her face, until all they could see was one another’s eyes.

“Kiss me,” she said to Khalida. “Kiss me, little hawk, and you’ll live
forever.”

Khalida stiffened. Tears welled in her eyes. Her head trembled, and her hands
pressed weakly at Neferata’s shoulders. When she spoke, her voice was almost too
faint to hear.

“No,” she said.

“Please,”
Neferata said. She pressed closer, and felt Khalida push
back with the last of her strength. “I never wanted this. I never wanted
any
of it, but Lahmia needs me. Please, let’s kiss and be friends again, like
before.”

Khalida resisted a moment more, and then Neferata felt her body relax. With a
gasp of relief, the queen pressed her bloody lips to Khalida’s.

Her cousin did not return the kiss. Khalida’s body was utterly still.

After a long, painful moment, Neferata raised her head again and stared into
Khalida’s vacant eyes. Slowly, she became aware of people shouting, and a man’s
voice wailing in misery. Hands grasped Neferata’s shoulders and pulled her away
from Khalida’s body. Her robe was heavy with blood.

Ankhat stepped close, whispering in her ear. “Say something,” he urged.
“Everyone is waiting to hear the goddess’ verdict.”

Neferata’s gaze fell to her cousin’s body, and felt her heart break.

“Justice is served,” she said in a hollow voice.

North of the Plain of Bones, in the 96th year of Ptra the
Glorious

(-1350 Imperial Reckoning)

Cold, dead hands seized the priests and dragged them towards the towering
wooden statue of Malakh that stood in the hill fort’s ceremonial square. Pieces
of splintered wood, scavenged from the fort’s shattered gates, had already been
piled around the statue’s base and soaked with pitch from the temple’s own
storehouses.

The Forsaken priests screamed and kicked, crying out to their god to bring
down bloody vengeance on the invaders, but the skeletal executioners paid them
no heed. The four old men were all that remained of the god’s temple at
Maghur’kan, the chief hill fort of the northmen’s petty empire. Those members of
the cult that hadn’t died in the bitter defence of the main gate were dragged
from the temple cellars and their bodies left to bleed out in the muddy street.

Every man, woman and child still living after the month-long siege of
Maghur’kan had been herded to the edges of the square to bear witness to the
death of their god. The night air trembled with their muffled wails. Most were
so weak from hunger that they could manage little else.

Nagash sat upon a palanquin of polished oak at the southern end of the
square, surrounded by the skeletal warriors of his bodyguard and a score of
northmen vassals drawn from hill forts conquered during the long war. The
struggle against the Forsaken hadn’t lasted years, or decades, but
centuries
—nearly two hundred and fifty years since that first, confused night battle
upon the Plain of Bones.

The northmen had proven to be mighty warriors, and their witches possessed of
great skill and cunning. Nagash had lost count of the number of battles that had
been fought down the years, but in most cases the Forsaken had given as good as
they’d got. Ultimately, the path to victory had rested on the simple fact that
the Forsaken had to eat, and his army did not. By keeping up constant pressure
on one hill fort at a time, he prevented the northmen from adequately tending
their fields and setting back enough food for the winters to come, until finally
they had been so weakened by hunger and sickness that they couldn’t resist
Nagash’s constant attacks. And so the northmen had been enslaved, one hill fort
at a time, until only Maghur’kan remained.

The necromancer watched as the priests were lashed to the great totem of
their god. Off to the east, near the circular wall of the hill fort, one of the
Yaghur let out a bone-chilling howl. Children squealed in terror, burying
themselves in their mothers’ skirts. No doubt the barbarians were feasting well
tonight.

When the ropes had been drawn tight, Nagash rose from his seat and stepped
onto the stinking mud of the square. Heavy, leather robes, faced with polished
bronze medallions inscribed with runes of protection, flapped about his lean
limbs. A deep hood, its hem ornamented with tiny disks of gold, concealed all
but the flickering flames of his eyes. There was a dry clatter of bone as his
bodyguard made to follow him, but he held them back with a wave of his hand and
a curt mental command.

His legion of undead servants had grown so vast that he could no longer keep
them all under control at the same time. Most functioned more or less
autonomously, operating on a strict set of commands according to their function.
It was an arrangement he’d perfected out of necessity during the long campaigns
in the northland. Unfortunately he’d yet to find a way to impose the same degree
of control on his human minions without ultimately killing them. He was instead
forced to rely upon intangibles such as loyalty and devotion, which, as far as
he was concerned, was a kind of sorcery all its own.

Thus, the death of the priests was a ritual in more ways than one, Nagash
mused, as he approached the condemned men.

Malakh’s high priest had been lashed to the statue facing Nagash. He and the
two senior priests to his left and right glared at the necromancer with pure,
fanatical hatred.

“You have not won!” the high priest spat. The Forsaken spoke a purer,
somewhat more cultured form of the tongue once spoken by the Yaghur. “You will
not defeat great Malakh by ending our lives! He is eternal! He will triumph
after—” the holy man’s curse faltered.

“After my works are dust, and I am nothing but bones,”
Nagash chuckled
cruelly.
“Your curses mean nothing to me, old man.
I
am eternal. What
can your petty god do to one who has passed beyond life and death?”

The high priest thrashed against his bonds. “May pestilence find your house!
May it burrow in the walls and consume your treasures!”

Nagash shook his head in disgust. The Forsaken had been worthy foes. He’d
hoped for better from their high priest. He raised his right hand. The energies
of the burning stone had permeated the flesh that remained, until it was swollen
and foul with cancerous tumours. Black veins, thick and pulsing with unnatural
life, penetrated muscle and tendon and sank their roots into bone, where they
drew sustenance from the deposits of burning stone. He reached out and seized
the priest’s jaw, cutting off his tirade. Nagash’s fingers left streaks of slime
on the northman’s cheeks.

“There is nothing your god can do to me that I have not willingly
inflicted upon myself,”
Nagash said.
“Malakh’s days are done. Go and tell
him, when your soul is wandering the wastelands beyond death’s door.”

Nagash released the high priest and withdrew a few steps. On cue, Thestus,
the leader of his Forsaken vassals, came forward with a blazing torch in his
hand. The northman, once the chieftain of a hill fort nearly as large as
Maghur’kan, wore leather and bronze armour in the Nehekharan style, and his
scalp had been shaved bare. His hard, craggy features showed no emotion at all
as he approached the bound priests and held his brand aloft. It was important
that the people of Maghur’kan saw one of their own feeding their god to the
flames.

“Witness!” Thestus cried. “Malakh rules here no longer! From this moment
forward, Maghur’kan serves only Nagash, the Undying King!”

The high priest spat upon Thestus. The Forsaken warrior’s only reaction was
to bend low and thrust the torch into the wood directly beneath the holy man’s
feet.

Flames
whooshed
through the pitch-soaked wood, until the totem and the
men tied to it were wreathed in hungry blue flames. The priests began screaming
at once, their cries of agony piercing the night. From the narrow mud lanes of
the hill fort, the Yaghur began to howl in reply. Nagash listened to the
gruesome chorus for a moment, savouring the sound, then left Thestus and his
warriors and headed to the opposite side of the square, where the warlord’s
great hall could be found.

The Forsaken built their halls the same way they built their barrows. It was
large and dome-shaped, with a roof of wood and thatch, and the only building in
the entire fort with a thick, stone foundation. As he approached the hall, dark,
humanoid shapes glided from the shadows and paced along behind the necromancer.
They wove back and forth in Nagash’s wake like a pack of two-legged hounds,
panting and sniffing at the sweet smell of roasting flesh.

There were no guards stationed outside the hall’s large, round door; only a
pair of lit braziers, vainly trying to hold back the shadows of the night. The
Yaghur raised clawed hands to shield their faces from the hateful light; their
eyes shone a pale yellow in the firelight, like a jackal’s.

Nagash passed through the open door, noting the sorcerous wards that had been
incised into its wooden foundation. Protection against misfortune, against
pestilence and evil spirits… he felt not the slightest murmur of power from the
old symbols. Perhaps they had died along with the men burning in the square
outside.

Beyond the door was a wide passageway leading to the centre of the hall,
flanked by branching corridors that ran left and right around the building’s
circumference. Tapestries hung along the walls, depicting glorious victories
against the northmen’s many enemies. Nagash saw human tribes defeated and
enslaved, and fierce battles against hulking, green-skinned monsters that walked
upright like men. He also saw one old, threadbare tapestry that depicted the
Forsaken triumphing over a horde of rat-things like the ones he’d encountered in
the wasteland.

Interestingly, there were no tapestries showing mighty victories over their
old foes, the Yaghur. Nagash wondered what his long-time vassals thought of such
an omission—if they thought of it at all.

At the far end of the passageway, Nagash entered a large, circular great
room, dominated by a crackling fire pit in the centre of the space. A crowd of
silent, grim-faced warriors stood around the dying flames, their scarred faces
fixed in masks of anger and despair. They turned as the necromancer appeared,
and retreated slowly to the perimeter of the room.

These were the Forsaken warlord’s few remaining allies, as well as the
survivors of his own personal warband, gathered together at Nagash’s command to
bear witness to Braghad Maghur’kan’s submission.

Over the tips of the crackling flames, he could see Bragadh, the last of the
Forsaken warlords. Even in defeat, the young leader of the northmen was proud
and defiant, flanked on his right hand by Diarid, his scarred, grey-haired
champion, and on his left hand by Akatha, the last of his witches. Akatha’s two
sisters had died horrible deaths during the battle at the fort’s main gate. She
had survived Nagash’s sorcerous bolts only because of the heroism of another of
Bragadh’s champions, who had stepped in front of the blast and had died in her
place. Like Bragadh, she was very young, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six. In
Nagash’s day, as a priest in Khemri, they would have been considered little more
than children. It was a sign of how badly the northmen had suffered during the
last, bitter years of the war.