Khai drove north—for Manek had not much cared to return to Siwad’s borders, and likewise Khai had had more than enough of Nubia’s jungles—and Manek drove south. The chief Genduhr Shebbithon, now a general in his own right, drove east for the Khemish fort at Pethos; and thus Ashtarta’s army was split into three parts.
Khai took the forts in Kuragh and Ghira in his stride and rushed on north, skirting the edge of the western swamp and heading for Tanos and the forest-land which led to the Nile. Manek took the Afallah fort and wiped out a large body of Khemites west of Peh-il, then rushed into Nubia to reinforce N’jakka’s black legions and slaughter Pharaoh’s forces where once more they had crossed the river. In little more than a week, all of Khem’s armies had turned from their preparations for full-scale assaults on Nubia and Siwad to form a front against Kush which reached from Mylah-Ton in the north to Subon in the south. West of the river, the Khemites camped in their thousands; and in Asorbes, where the Dark Heptad had now been ordered from their interminable task of seeking immortality for Khasathut to more pressing matters, Pharaoh pondered how best to employ them.
He knew now that his soldiers could not stand against the iron swords of Kush, and the chariots of the Kushites were terrible machines whose like had never before been seen in that ancient world. Sheer weight of numbers no longer mattered, for the new weapons of the Kushites made a mockery of all the old concepts of war. And this was where the Dark Heptad came into its own, for the Heptad’s concepts of war were also radically different—as Kush was soon to discover.
Another week passed in which Ashtarta’s armies consolidated their positions, took stock of the territories they had occupied, and deployed in regiments in the forests between the swamps and along the edge of the savannahs east of Daraaf. Nubia and Siwad were well in control of their own territories now and poised to strike when Kush struck; but Pharaoh had not been idle. Ferries had shifted thousands of mercenaries and hastily enlisted youths across the river along a vast front, and these now formed new regiments west of Asorbes, facing the distant camps of the Kushites.
But for all Khem’s might (her armies still outnumbered those of Kush and her allies by more than three to one), Khasathut knew that the actual strengths of his own and Ashtarta’s forces were evenly balanced, that Kush’s weapons had robbed him of his advantage. Hence the hurried intervention of the Dark Heptad. The first weapon those devotees of darkness chose from their arsenal of occult devices was common enough along the banks of the Nile: it was the rat, whose numbers were greater than the armies of Kush and Khem put together.
II
WIZARDS AT WAR
Pharaoh’s black magicians worked quickly and surely, for their new task was more to their liking and well within their capability. “Destroy Kush!” Pharaoh had ordered: “Wipe the Kushites out—Nubia, too—and Siwad! Do what you must, but destroy them. Destroy their armies—and bring their leaders, any that survive, to me!”
If this had been Pharaoh’s wish seven years earlier, then had it been carried out at once; but that would have been to deny him his source of slaves, the raw materials of his pyramid-building, the base upon which his empire was to be constructed. What use to be a ruler of empty lands? Now, however, it was far better to rule empty, destroyed lands than to relinquish sovereignty altogether. To relinquish life itself, before that life was fulfilled, before its ambitions were realized. Now the destruction of his enemies was necessary, essential to his own existence.
So the Dark Heptad invoked the Powers of Darkness and were advised, and accepting that advice, they recruited creatures of darkness to their cause. . . .
Khai had taken Tanos two days ago. Now his army camped in the forest between Tanos and Mylah-Ton, on the edge of swamps which were more desiccated than ever before they had been. The Khamsín lay over the Nile, where a great curtain of dust hung in the eastern sky and darkened the heavens, but the signs of its passing were right here in the forest: yellow grasses and shrubs, trees whose branches and leaves drooped and were utterly dry to the touch.
It was night and Khai lay in his small tent and slept, getting his rest as best he might. Tomorrow he planned to advance on Mylah-Ton, and the day after that he intended to take it. His sleep was restless, however, and not alone from the heat which found its way here from the heart of Khem. No, for a dream kept coming and going, formless as a wraith, so that Khai tossed on his rough bed and sweated in a darkness lighted only by a small hanging fire-pot. Eventually, as the dream took firmer hold on him, he submitted to its spell and so gave it form.
. . . He stood beneath the stars on a hill in Kush with the Mage of Oneiromancy—the keen-eyed brown mage from Daraaf—and with Genduhr Shebbithon and Manek Thotak. Together they stood and looked eastward, toward Khem.
“You fought me, Khai,” said the brown mage, “with a will whose like I have rarely known. Did you not sense it was I, who not only read dreams but occasionally use them in other ways? No matter, for now you are here and I have a warning for you.”
“A warning?” Khai repeated.
“Aye, and it is this: that Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad have brought a monstrous ally against you, and that even now ten million feet race toward you in the night!”
“Ten million?” Khai gasped in his dream. “There are not so many fighting men in all Khem, Arabba and Therae together!”
“Men, no,” answered the brown mage. “Rats, yes!”
“Rats?” Genduhr Shebbithon growled. “Rats?”
“Rats, yes—bearing a plague brought up from the depths of hell—for whomever these rats bite, he shall die on the spot, consumed, gone down in liquid corruption!”
“When, where will they strike, these rats?” Manek asked, hand on sword hilt.
“They come now,” answered the mage, “from the Nile. You must get up at once, all of you, and build fires—a wall of fires from the north to south, wherever your men are camped—to drive the rats back whence they came.”
“Fire?” Khai frowned. “But what of the wind? What little wind there is this night, it blows outward from Khem!”
“Faith, Khai,” the brown mage answered with a smile. “Have faith. Trust in the Mage of Elementalism, who sends a wind even now from the hills of Kush.”
Even as he spoke, the hill on which they all stood seemed to whirl beneath Khai’s feet, to dwindle, shrink away; or else he himself was lifted up in a giant’s hand and borne swiftly aloft . . . to be dumped down on his bed in a tent in the forest.
He awoke with a cry in the night, stumbled from his tent shouting hoarse-voiced orders, roused up his men in a frenzy as he rushed from tent to tent and sent other messengers to do his bidding. Then, east of the camp, he himself set the first fire, and as the forest began to blaze, so there came the first stirrings of a wind from the west, a mournful wind that played with the leaping flames and blew them north and south, set them jumping from tree to tree until Khai and his army drew back in fear. Then, as the wind strengthened, it hurled the fire eastward in a blaze that lighted up the land with a light bright as day.
And it was then that Khai saw the rats and knew that his actions had been just in time. The rats were there, in the fire, blazing as they came through the inferno, flashing into flame as they tried to breach the burning barrier and get at the men where they stood unharmed behind the fiery wall. Some did get through, driven on by the magic of the Dark Heptad, but very few. Bundles of smouldering fur they were, scampering and shrieking, and when they bit—
Khai stood near a man thus bitten, saw him crush the life from the smoking rat before he fell—then saw the flesh melt and slough from his body and the bones come through as all else turned to stinking rot!
“Kill them!” he roared then, snarling his fear and horror. “Kill any rats that break through, but don’t let them bite you!”
The tale was retold in the hills west of Asorbes, where Genduhr Shebbithon sent fire roaring eastward to destroy the gray horde that rushed squealing out from the heart of Khem; and on the s
avannahs north of the Nubian forests where Manek was now camped; so that the morning sun rose on a scene of black, smouldering desolation. In the north, along a front eighty miles long, it was as if a mighty architect had drawn a straight line—to the east of which, even to the banks of the Nile, all was blackened earth. Likewise in the south, where morning found Manek Thotak gazing east across a wasteland of ashes. In Peh-il, the Khemites had seen the fire coming, had made fire-breaks and flooded irrigation ditches, and by some miracle, they had survived both the furnace and the surviving, fleeing rats; but all else was burned. West of Asorbes itself only the swamps had stopped the blaze, but even the swamps were now little more than vast beds of cracked and dried-out mud.
And so the seven mages overcame the black magic of Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad . . . for the time being.
As Khai drove on Mylah-Ton—which only the surrounding swamps had saved from the inferno—and as his chariots and men cut a giant swathe through ashes of wasted forests all along the borders of dead swamps, so the Siwadis crossed the river below the delta and headed east into Syra. The Syrans, themselves oppressed for generations without number, took up arms and joined them, pushing southeast for Arabba.
In the south, Manek Thotak took Peh-il and turned north along the river, while to the east of the Nile, N’jakka’s impis marched on Phemor. The Theraens—in the main, a cowardly folk—had already retreated into their hills above the Narrow Sea, for they had sensed that Khem’s days were numbered and they wanted no more of liaisons or friendships with Pharaoh. And eighty miles west of Asorbes, Genduhr Shebbithon camped his forces in a vast semi-circle at the foot of the hills and gazed east in the direction of Khasathut’s capital. There, like a great cat lying in wait, he licked his lips in dreadful anticipation.
Ohath fell to Khai and he crossed the river to take Bena, and wherever Khem’s soldiers were found, they fell in their thousands; and those who did not desert Khem and flee before the iron invaders were driven back to their country’s heart-land. Eight days after the Great Fires, Phemor fell to the Nubians and Pharaoh was now ringed in by the enemy’s forces. Even then he could have fled east—but where to? The Narrow Sea would eventually stop him, and then he would be trapped between the water and the pursuing tribes of Kush. No, it would be a better plan to remain here and defend Asorbes, which was thought to be impregnable as the east-facing wall of the Gilf Kebir itself.
Moreover, there had been signs. Signs which told Khasathut he should remain at Asorbes. Shortly after the attack of the Kushites there had been green horizons at dawn and orange horizons at night, and the legends said that just such twilights had been seen before the advent of the God-peoples from the skies. Also, the Dark Heptad had warned that their supernatural experiments were taking them very close to the Great Source of all Knowledge, which was also the source of all evil. They might yet give Khasathut the immortality he so avidly desired, and in so doing, give him ultimate power over all men and creatures. The price, as he understood it, would be the Sanity of the Universe, but to Pharaoh that seemed a very small price indeed. . . .
And so, with Khasathut’s blessing, the Dark Heptad continued with their occult experiments and plotted second and third terrors to hurl against the encroaching Kushites; and the more they worked their dark wonders, the easier it became to commune with the Powers of Evil, the closer those Powers drew to them in their gloomy chamber beneath the great pyramid.
As for Pharaoh: he was in a constant rage and continually issued threats against anyone who strayed too close to him. Anulep now spent all of his time placating, pleading and promising, and in hurrying about his master’s business: either conveying Khasathut’s commands or inquiries to his Dark Heptad or his military commanders, or carrying their answers or tremulous excuses back to the God-king.
And so things stood when, not thirty miles away, the General Khai Ibizin took Wad-Gahar above the cataract. . . .
III
THE WINGED LEGIONS
Wad-Gahar. . . .
The name struck a chord in Khai’s memory, but the note was elusive and soon forgotten in the face of more important things. The taking of Wad-Gahar was easy, for Pharaoh’s regular forces had been drawn back into a circle about Asorbes and they had left the protection of the town to ten thousand Theraen mercenaries. These had literally “occupied” the town, for being what they were Wad-Gahar’s rightful inhabitants had been more at their mercy than under their protection.
Their “protection,” indeed—the protection of Theraens!
Khai killed every last one of them, though that meant digging half of them out from their hiding-holes. And when the old people of the town (for there were only very old people and very young children left) saw that the Kushites would do them no harm, they very soon began to show the invaders just exactly where the mercenaries were hiding.
No treachery this, but vengeance! In the two days since the Khemish regiments had fallen back into defensive positions about Asorbes, the mercenaries had looted everything worth taking and raped even tiny children. Seeing their danger, the townspeople had kept them drunk most of the time, which accounted in large measure for the ease with which Wad-Gahar fell to Khai’s warriors. Toward evening, it was all over and the general issued strict orders that the ordinary folk were not to suffer any further molestation at Kushite hands. There was little worth the taking in the ravished town and its people had already lost more than enough.
As Khai watched the townspeople building huge funeral pyres for the dead, his attention was called to evidence of several Theraen atrocities. One of these had been a local brothel, where the women had been beaten and raped repeatedly, even unto death. Arriving on the scene, he found a number of drunken Theraens asleep in various rooms where they were previously overlooked. Each of them he roughly awakened, then personally put to the sword.
Passing out of the place into evening air which already stank of burning flesh, he caught sight of a still mop of crinkly raven hair just inside the door. It was the head of a woman whose body lay with a number of other corpses, still and stiff. A tremble ran through Khai’s massive frame then and he leaned weakly against the brothel’s wall. Now he knew why the name of Wad-Gahar had struck that chord in his mind.
Kindu and Nundi were with him—those dear friends of his out of Nubia, whose very lives were his—and now Kindu said: “Lord, something ails you.”
He nodded. “Aye, possibly. There is a woman in there. She is not black, not quite white, and her hair is much like yours. Bring her out here in the light, for I think I know her.”
In a moment, the woman’s body lay upon a blanket for Khai’s inspection. Her eyes were closed forever now, but they were slanted and had known much laughter. Long-legged and dusky, she was that Mhyna whom Khai had known so long ago. Her own dagger protruded from her breast, with her own hand clenched tight about its hilt.
Khai washed her face and cradled her head and said nothing for a long time. His men left him sitting there and went about their work. As darkness crept in Khai looked up, his eyes dull with unspilled tears. His Nubian lieutenants followed him as he carried the woman down to the wharfside and laid her in the finest barge he could find. Then he poured oil on the reed decks and cast off the mooring rope. As the barge moved out into the river, he took a brand and tossed it aboard, then watched Mhyna’s pyre pass down the river into the night.
That night, Khai camped just south of Wad-Gahar, and the next day saw him ferrying his army across to the west bank. This was not such a giant task as might be imagined, since less than half of his men had crossed with him at Ohath. Now, too, his carts and chariots were brought up and prepared for the final stages of the war—which were to be the siege and eventually the taking of Asorbes. It was late afternoon when the last barge came across, and in the final hour before twilight a hush fell over the river and its banks which was quite unlike anything Khai had ever known before.
There seemed to be a premature darkness to the sky, and not in the east but to the south. Ye
s, the sky over Asorbes was dark—and it was moving!
Khai was one of the first to note the phenomenon. Standing on the bank of the river and watching the darkly mobile mass of sky to the south, suddenly a dizziness came over him that caused him to stagger. Shading his eyes, he leaned against a palm and continued to watch the sky; and as he did so the giddiness came again and he would have fallen. Now, wrapping his arms round the bole of the palm to support himself, he closed his eyes tightly and felt his gorge rising. Then—
“Khai,” an echoing voice said in his head, “do not be afraid, but listen to me. I am the Mage of Mentalism, whose powers were learned as a youth in Syra from an old magician out of the east. I have sought you out to bring you a second warning.”
Khai shook his head and looked wildly about. It was one thing to dream of warnings and such—even to know that such dreams were the work of the seven mages in Kush—but it was quite another to be visited in broad daylight! Shaking his head only made him feel more sick, however, so that he soon desisted and again closed his eyes; at which the voice in his head became much more insistent:
“Do not fight me, Khai, for time is short. My message goes also to Manek Thotak and to Genduhr Shebbithon. Manek hears me and may save himself. Genduhr will not listen—and he is a dead man!”
And now Khai recognized the urgency in the soundless voice and knew that this was no trick of his mind. “Very well,” he said out loud, “say on.”
“Birds and bats and insects, Khai, flies and locusts and wasps. They will devour all that is green, everything that moves. And we seven mages have no power over these, which are not of the elements. The Dark Heptad makes dangerous magics indeed!”