Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

Khai offered a grim smile. “I could not blame him,” he answered.

He went outside into the cool predawn and splashed a few drops of water onto his face. The crack of light glowed stronger in the east and the breeze from the north was gradually strengthening. Khai sniffed the air, lifted his head and stared through the dawn’s half-light. It was strangely still. Dim figures moved as in a mist. Sounds were muffled, dull. Chill fingers seemed suddenly to tickle Khai’s spine. He shuddered.

“It’s coming… .” he half-whispered.

“What’s coming, Lord ?” Kindu’s eyes were round.

Khai did not hear his Nubian lieutenant. He looked at the sky, at faint wisps of cloud which seemed to be revolving, spinning slowly in a vast aerial wheel above Asorbes. The silence deepened and all eyes followed Khai’s skyward. The clouds thickened, turned an angry blue, then black. Their vast circular rush accelerated.

“Don’t panic!” Khai’s voice rose in the preternatural stillness. “Keep the horses calm. And when it comes—whatever it is—then look after your own skins. But whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t panic! The seven mages are with us. Remember that: the seven mages are with us!”

His cry was passed on down the line, thrown from throat to throat, audible to tens of thousands of warriors. “The seven mages are with us! The seven mages are with us!” They shouted it… they believed it—and in this way, though unbeknown to Khai and his army, the strength of the seven mages was made stronger yet. …

Gahad and Manek saw the aerial harbinger of horror at the same time as did Khai, and while they knew less about it, still they recognized it as the Dark Heptad’s work. For now the racing clouds were black as night, and bright green traceries of electrical fire stabbed here and there between arms of the spiraling mass. With the sun rising over Asorbes and setting the city ablaze beneath its own infernal halo, and the disk of cloud spinning madly above and glowing with its burgeoning energies, the scene was fantastic and awe-inspiring. And frightening—

Especially when the energies of the rushing cloud began to expend themselves downward!

And now Khai knew what elemental power the Dark Heptad had brought against him. It was fire … but not clean red roaring flame. No, for this was a darkly necromantic fire—a fire bred of hell’s own breath—green lightning that lashed out of a throbbing sky and walked the earth on stacatto stilts of death!

Asorbes was enclosed behind a dancing screen of lashing bolts, forks of green fire that walked outwards from the city and advanced on the lines of the besieging armies. The front ranks drew back, their faces flashing green to the rhythm of the advancing bolts, their mouths open and gaping, screaming horror at the emerald inferno. Tree stumps burst into flame at the touch of the terror and steaming craters leapt open with each blinding stab. The ring of fire advanced, the green stilts lifted and came down in hissing, crackling fury; lifted and came down—

And came down among the massed ranks of Ashtarta’s armies!

Three times the myriad bolts struck, rods of fire that fell in unison, tearing earth and men and horses and chariots, turning them to charred ruin. Three times and then—

Then they paused, withdrew, flickered back into the clouds like the tongues of startled snakes. The heavens became tumultuous, tossing and boiling in their anger, their indecision. And slow but sure, the spinning stopped, reversed itself, and the clouds began to turn in the opposite direction— against the will of the Dark Heptad!

“The seven mages are with us!” Khai sang out in sulphurous air. “They are with us!” And again his cry was taken up by a thousand, a hundred thousand throats.

Now the lightning walked again, and more purposefully—but now it walked back the way it had come, on forked stilts which strode devastatingly through the massed ranks of the Khemites. For minutes the slaughter went on, until Khai thought that he and his entire army with him must surely be deafened and blinded. Then, in one final burst of fire, the howling clouds expended the last of their energies on the gates of Asorbes themselves.

And the gates fell. In gouting ruin, they fell. Blown asunder and smashed flat, destroyed by that very power which the Dark Heptad had thought to hurl against Kush.

Khai turned his face to heavens which already were clearing even as he gazed. “Thank you, you seven mages!” he cried, his teeth white and wide in the glowing dawn. “Thank you....”

He dragged a half-stunned driver into a chariot and handed him the reins. “Let’s go,” he yelled in the man’s ear. “Now!”

And with a roar and a rumble only a little less loud than that of the now silenced lightning storm, the armies of Kush drove down on Asorbes.

Down into the riven pastures of Asorbes thundered the hordes of Kush, their iron swords invincible, their chariots devastating, their hearts bursting with the savage joy of meeting the foe here, now, face-to-face in his heartland, beneath the walls of Asorbes itself, whose name was now synonymous with that of the detestable Pharaoh and all that was evil. In streaming thousands, they cut through the remnants of the lightning-blasted defenders, flinging them down on the scorched earth in red and tattered ruin.

To give them their due, the Khemites fought back, but they were quite simply overwhelmed and swept under, as by some mighty wave. And when they were drowned, that wave did not pause but swept on—on and in through the shattered gates of the city.

Surprisingly, the rain of arrows from atop the walls was not as heavy as was expected. Later it became known that this was chiefly due to the activities of Adonda Gomba and his army of resurgent slaves. Though the slave king had received and understood Khai’s message, he had known that he could not help in the matter of the gates: that in the hour of Asorbes’ direst peril, his men simply would not be allowed anywhere near the gates. Therefore he had determined to help Khai in other ways.

One hour after receiving Khai’s message, as night drew its dark cloak over the city, Pharaoh’s elephants were poisoned in their pens. They would not be brought into action against the invaders. This was one way in which Adonda Gomba cut at the heart of Khem, but there were others. Since many slaves had been assigned re-supply tasks on the city’s high, wide ramparts, the slave king had decided that this was where he must strike his heaviest blow for Kush. Thus, when Ashtarta’s armies drove on Asorbes, the slaves working atop the walls had turned on the very Khemish archers they were supposed to support! And so the invaders’ losses were minimal from what must otherwise have been a veritable rain of death.

Immediately inside the gates, all was scarlet chaos. Khemish reinforcements had massed there, had been torn to shreds when the green lightnings shattered the gates inwards. Khai saw this first, for his chariot was first under the massive arch of the north gate and so into the city. Close behind drove Kindu and Nundi, their vehicle leaping and jolting as it flew over shattered timbers and heaped bodies, while behind them ... behind them came the bulk of Khai’s warriors, and leading them a sight to strike terror in even the bravest hearts.

For while the charioteers and horsemen had been busy mopping up the Khemites outside the walls, Khai’s impis had ran—literally ran! —down across the scarred fields and into the city.

Some of those black giants bore clubs, others assagais, and all were painted like demons from men’s blackest nightmares. Five thousand Nubians, huge men all, and each one of them trained to a peak of killing efficiency. Their shields went up together to meet whirring swarms of arrows; their voices chanted together as they advanced at the trot; and their message was one of grim and terrible resolution: