Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

“Waugh!” came another roar from the Black Guard, and yet again the shuffle and stamp of their sandaled feet.

Merayet, throwing herself down on the ground and slapping at her unconscious daughter’s face, cried, “Namisha, daughter, tell the Pharaoh he wrongs you. Tell him you are a good girl and pure. Say it is so!”

“Corrupt!” Pharaoh cried, his voice a throbbing whistle of rage. “The whole family—all in this together.” He lifted his hands up high. “You have been tried, Harsin Ben, and you are found wanting. Let your punishment stand as an example to others who would practice treachery and deceit upon the Pharaoh!”

“Waugh!” howled the Black Guard, and they swept across the plateau to engulf the Ibizins in a merciless crush of ebony bodies.

As eight of the huge blacks moved directly to Pharaoh’s litter-throne and lifted it shoulder high, four more drew curving swords and took up positions about the elevated throne, facing outward and watching the remainder of their colleagues as they commenced to mete out preordained “punishments” to the Ibizin family.

While Harsin Ben, Adhan and Khai were grabbed and held immobile—forced to look on in helpless horror as they squirmed in the grip of members of the Black Guard—so the rest of the huge Nubians pounced upon Merayet where she sprawled beside Namisha. They dragged her away from the girl and stripped both of them, tossing torn fragments of fine linens all about.

When the women were completely naked, four of the blacks lifted Khai’s mother up horizontally and held her with her arms and legs outstretched, forming a human cross. Namisha was lifted into the same position; and without more ado, coldly and apparently without lust, the Black Guard commenced to rape both mother and daughter—one awake and screaming, the other oblivious of her body’s torment—relieving themselves into their spreadeagled bodies one after the other and from the standing position.

The whole hideous process was remarkably quick and efficient, with each man working for mere seconds before withdrawing to be replaced by the next in line. Semen quickly formed small pools where it dripped from the suspended bodies of the brutalized women; and as the fifteenth or sixteenth massive black took his turn with Merayet, so she gave one final shriek and lost consciousness. At that, the four who held her sat her up in mid-air, their hands supporting her beneath knees and armpits, until her naked body formed the shape of a chair.

They ran with her in that position to the east-facing rim of the plateau. There, at intervals along the rim, bronze measuring rods stuck up vertically from locating holes in the outer blocks of stone. Two of these had been filed needle sharp; and upon one of them, without pause, the blacks placed Merayet’s body, ramming her down onto the rod until she sat on the very lip of the plateau with her legs dangling over the side. The rod came out, red and glistening, from a position near the top of her spine.

Namisha, too, was hurried over to the rim beside her mother, but as she was being lifted up above the second of the two sharpened rods, so she regained consciousness. One scream only she uttered, high and bubbling, as she was driven down onto that long, slender bronze fang. Her limbs flailed spastically for a split second as the rod’s point slid out above her left breast, and then she was still.

Through all of this, the three male Ibizins had howled, wept and struggled like madmen in the grip of the huge Nubians. But now, summoning a crazed strength from some hitherto unsuspected well, Adhan threw off the men who held him and turning, drove a sandaled foot into the groin of one of them that held his father. As the guardsman doubled up in agonized amazement, Harsin Ben somehow struggled free of the other man and hurled himself toward Pharaoh.

Adhan, snatching a spear from an astonished guardsman, went in the opposite direction. He rushed at the crowd of terrified dignitaries, their wives and families, howling: “Where are you, traitor, fiend? Oh, I know you now. You, Imthod Haphenid, you and no other—you have done this thing! In order to advance your own lofty ambitions, you have destroyed us! Where are you, sickly slug of a man? For as heavenly Re is my witness— I’ll yet eat your rotten brain!”

The officials, to this moment horrified spectators only and in no way personally involved, now found themselves trapped between a frothing maniac and the northern rim of the plateau. They scattered to left and right as Adhan drove through them, until Imthod was revealed where he had hidden behind them. Drained white and trembling, the former apprentice cringed on the very rim of eternity as Adhan aimed his spear.

“Seduced my own sister, did I?” Adhan screamed. ” ‘Defiled’ her, did I? I did not. But I now know who did!” He drew back his spear arm to make his throw, but then—

The spear was wrenched out of his hand from behind and a great black arm locked about his throat. He was dragged backward and hurled down onto the plateau’s roof. A crowd of furious Nubians poised their spears and swords over him.

“No!” came the whoosh and roar of Pharaoh’s voice. “Spare him—but see that he never fathers children. The Ibizin line is forever cursed and must not be perpetuated!”

Pinned down, Adhan could only shriek and froth at the mouth as his clothes were torn from him and one of the blacks took out a sharp, curved dagger. In another moment, his screams soared up the scale … then fragmented into sobbing and insane babbling as his captors, done with their grisly work, released him. On all fours, leaving a trail of blood, he crawled for the plateau’s rim.

“No!” Pharaoh whooshed again. “He may not kill himself. Take him to the foot of the ramp and release him. Let him live … as a reminder.”

As Adhan’s mutilated body was dragged away toward the ramp, Pharaoh turned his attention to Harsin Ben. The old architect had actually managed to fight his way to the cordon of Nubian guardsmen around Khasathut’s throne. There they had stopped him, gutting him as he vainly tried to overbalance the royal litter. Holding his entrails where they threatened to spill through his fingers, he now lay where he had fallen; and knowing that he was already a dead man, Harsin Ben gave vent to all his rage, agony and horror as he cursed Pharaoh with an unending stream of fevered maledictions.

For a few moments more Khasathut listened to the dying man, before lifting his arm to point toward the plateau’s rim. Two members of the Black Guard lifted Harsin Ben up and ran to throw him, guts fluttering like rags behind him as he flew, over the plateau’s rim into empty space....

To fill the utter silence which followed, a chill wind blew up that keened across the plateau and made a twisting sand devil in front of Pharaoh’s throne. Then Khai’s sobbing sounded on the quivering air and the spell was broken.

Slowly Khasathut’s masked head turned in Khai’s direction. The boy was slumped between a pair of blacks, exhausted by his terrific struggling. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead and dripped perspiration; his white shirt and kilt were drenched and adhered to his body like wet rags.

“Anulep,” said Pharaoh, his voice completely void of emotion. “Take the boy into the pyramid. Do whatever is necessary to prepare him for training, which is to commence as soon as practicable. You will be personally responsible for his training, and eventually he will relieve you of certain of your duties—which I have long considered to be excessive. You have three months....”

For answer, the Vizier bowed his head. He beckoned to the guardsmen holding Khai and they followed him as he entered the loftier chambers of the pyramid through an arched entrance of carved stone to disappear into stark black shadow. Stumbling dazedly between the blacks, Khai turned his head once as he was half-carried under the archway. Staring back through eyes which were glazed dull with shock, he looked one last time upon a scene which burned his mind like drops of acid: