Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

Faster he ran, his feet dragging in sand, slipping and stumbling as he kicked at his men and urged them to greater effort. Daylight was a haze of light somewhere ahead, and close by there came a third great thump as another door fell. This time the solid rock beneath the shifting sand actually jumped, telling Khai that his time was almost up. The next door would be closer still, possibly the one which even now shifted above the doorway that loomed ahead. A doorway, yes—glaring white light seen through a mist of sand—but Khai hung back to send the last of his men scrambling and leaping out into the open air.

He made to follow, glanced upward once at the square base of a massive block that moved gratingly in the ceiling and poised itself, then closed his eyes and hurled himself forward. Full length in mid-air, Khai flew, willing himself across the deadly threshold and feeling the rush of air suddenly compressed by sheer bulk as that gigantic door fell.

And as he sprawled in the dust, so the earth jarred mightily beneath him and shuddered into immobility. Clouds of dust billowed up at once, obscuring everything, and when they settled Khai turned his head to look back. There, mere inches from his feet—where moments ago a huge doorway had gaped— now a massive wall of impenetrable rock stood solid and impassive.

In another moment—while yet he strove to convince himself that indeed he still lived and had escaped that horrible death of deaths—Kindu and Nundi were anxiously helping him to his feet….

While Khai and his body of men completed their task in the base of the pyramid and made their escape, the fighting in the city was furious and bloody. Ashtarta’s warriors were winning inexorably through, however, and had closed in on Pharaoh’s forces until the great majority of survivors were clustered in the streets close to the base of Khasathut’s mighty monument. There they fought and died, hewn down by the iron swords of the invaders.

To any observer, the battle would have presented an awe-inspiring spectacle whose center was the great pyramid itself. From its base, which now gleamed yellow where patches of beaten gold overlaid the fine white skin, its sides rose steeply colossal to a now tiny summit. Its dizzy steps and hugely sloping ramp were splashed red with blood and obscured by a rising haze of sweat, dust and the steam of spilled entrails. Overlooking all, the sun, too, was shrouded, appearing as a bruised and bloodied orange eye.

But through all the chaos, it could plainly be seen that the war was over. Khem was the loser, her wizards and warriors defeated, her forts and now her fortress city brought down. Only the pyramid remained as refuge for those hundreds of desperate defenders who yet fought on, retreating ever higher up the steps and the great ramp as the invaders, swollen by thousands of blood-crazed slaves, poured after them in relentless waves.

Flanked by his Nubian lieutenants—gory with blood-slimed sand—Khai ran from the base of the pyramid to join that thronging, victorious horde. Pausing at the foot of the steps, he sheathed an iron sword, cast about with worried eyes and sniffed at the reeking air. Then he grimaced, turned to his comrades and said:

“It’s Khasathut I want. I won’t rest until he’s dead. He wasn’t in the pyramid’s lower quarters, which means that he must be somewhere up there—” and he pointed at the great ramp where it joined the sloping east face of the pyramid. “There will be soldiers in there, too, quite a few, I’d guess. But if our lads go in after them they’ll be forced into the open sooner or later, and Pharaoh with them. Since the lower entrances are blocked, there’s only one way in or out. Right there!” And again he pointed, this time at a dark square doorway high in the pyramid’s face.

The entrance was at the very top of the ramp. Flanking it were wide steps cut into the face of the pyramid itself and rising to the flat summit. Even as the three gazed up at that dark doorway, suddenly there was movement in and about it. One, two of Pharaoh’s Black Guards emerged—then four more, a dozen, and—

“Look!” Khai hissed through clenched teeth. He used a blood-streaked forearm to brush blond hair from his steely blue eyes. “Do you know what that is? That curtained chair they’re carrying? It’s Pharaoh’s litter.”

“And see,” said Nundi, pointing. “There’s the reason why the drones are fleeing their hive. Those fires we set are spreading.”

As the last members of the Black Guard came pouring out of the high doorway, for all the world like angry bees or ants from a threatened nest, black clouds of smoke followed them, roiling out from the pyramid’s single remaining doorway in ever-thickening ropes. Eight of the huge blacks struggled with the litter up the steps to the summit, somehow managing to keep the canopied chair on an even keel, while the rest, perhaps fifteen or sixteen of them, followed their laboring colleagues with curved swords drawn, forming a barrier against any attack from below.

“Khasathut’s in that litter,” Khai snapped, “and he’s mine! And look— there’s Anulep, the Pharaoh’s Vizier, too. Tall and thin, like a praying mantis. He’ll be the one who turned the sand on us. The two of them together. I don’t know which one has the blackest heart, Anulep or his master. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’ve got them.

“I’ve got them!” he roared, clenching his fists and shaking them over his head. “You there, out of my way,” and he raced up the steps with Kindu and Nundi doing their best to keep pace with him. As they climbed higher, so the massed warriors made way for them; and Khai’s orders—that Khasathut was not to be touched, that his cordon of blacks on the summit was not to be attacked—preceded him, were relayed ahead by the booming authoritative voices of his chiefs.

The fighting was almost over by the time the trio reached the ramp. Pockets of desperate resistance were still being encountered in the city’s streets and squares and on its perimeter walls, but the desperation of the Khemite soldiers was born of the sure knowledge that they were finished. Khai and his lieutenants looked back once—gazed out over a city which already gouted flame and smoke from a myriad blazing fires, at streets overrun with rampaging slaves and warriors howling their victory as they hunted down the last remnants of Pharaoh’s army—and then they made for the summit itself.

On their way up the center of the ramp—whose sides were lined with Kushites, Nubians, Siwadis and freed slaves alike, all cheering Khai and his companions on and forming a crowd behind them as they climbed ever higher—they hurdled bodies where they lay sprawled in death’s poses and stepped over discarded, gore-slimed weapons. Never once did they accord this grisly debris a moment’s consideration; their goal was to reach Pharaoh and his cordon of guardsmen on the summit, and nothing could distract them from it. Only upon climbing to the doorway, which still issued a little smoke, did they pause for a moment to gain strength for the final assault.

As the last few puffs of smoke belched out from the dark doorway and began to drift away over the city, Khai stared up at the two dozen or so remaining steps to the summit and stiffened. Seeing his look of disbelief, Kindu and Nundi peered upward through the rapidly dispersing screen of smoke. Khasathut’s litter stood at the very rim of the flat summit, with its forward shafts projecting. Between the shafts, his head and shoulders hidden from view, Anulep kneeled with his back to the steps. Members of the Black Guard flanked the litter, spears at the slope in their right hands, curved swords at the ready in their left.