By the time all was done, night had fallen and so Khai retired to his tent. There he sat for a while and drank red wine before lying himself down and trying to rest. His head was bursting, which was most unusual for he was not normally given to headaches. Before falling asleep the pains in his head lifted and it seemed to him that a small voice whispered to him, saying:
“Good, Khai, good! There has been much on your mind and your riding has wearied you. You have not been receptive. Now sleep, sleep and let the Mage of Oneiromancy speak to you in dreams. There are things you should know—things you must do. So sleep, Khai, sleep—and hearken well to your dreams this night, if you would live to dream again!”
VII
GREEN FIRE!
Khai slept for several hours before he once more found himself standing beneath the stars in Kush, this time on the rim of the Gilf Kebir with all the valley of the Nile beneath him, stretching away eastward toward a dark horizon of star-strewn, indigo night. The brown mage was with him, and the Mage of Elementalism, but on this occasion his fellow generals were absent.
As soon as he had greeted the mages, Khai inquired as to the whereabouts of Manek Thotak and Gahad Shebbithon: why were they not present to hear the words of the mages.
“We have no need of their presence, Khai,” answered the Mage of Oneiromancy, “for if we were to tell them what we must tell you, it would make little difference. No, they sleep a dreamless sleep this night, and that is good, for tomorrow will be a day of great taxation. What will be will be, however, and there is no changing it.”
“Your words are ominous,” Khai answered, frowning.
“Aye, ominous—for we know that with the dawn, the Dark Heptad will send a fresh terror against you.”
Khai’s scalp prickled. “A fresh terror? What form will it take?”
The Master of Dreams shook his head; but now the spindly mage of Siwad spoke up. “I am the Mage of Elementalism, Khai, and while I am unsure as to the nature of tomorrow’s terror, I believe it will be of the elements, which are Earth, Fire, Wind and Water. One of these, but which one I cannot say.”
“Then tell me what I must do?” Khai said. “How may I avoid this elemental terror and take Asorbes?”
“You can do nothing, Khai,” answered the Mage of Elementalism, “but I can do much. This is why we have brought you here, so that we might warn you. For until I know which power the Dark Heptad will use, I can do nothing. When I do know, however, then . . . no man is my master in elementalism. No seven men may best me, and I shall have the combined will of my colleagues behind me.”
“Then all will be well?”
“Of this you may be certain: that whichever elemental power Pharaoh’s necromancers use, I shall bend it to my will and send it back against them—to your great benefit!”
“That’s good to know,” Khai answered; but then, sensing that there was more, he asked: “And?”
“And there is another matter,” the Master of Dreams told him. “A matter of great urgency.”
“Say on,” said Khai.
The brown mage nodded. “Very well. When you enter Asorbes, Khai, then you must find the Dark Heptad of necromancers and destroy them without delay. It must be your first priority. Their dark dabbling has brought them to the very portals of hell—portals which they would open! Indeed, they will commit the direst necromantic sin as soon as they know the slave city is doomed. Pharaoh has ordered it: universal insanity if Asorbes falls!”
Khai felt doubt gnawing at his insides. For the first time he was unsure of himself, of the seven mages. “How can you know these things?” he asked.
The mages smiled and nodded their great heads. “How can you doubt us, Khai, when you yourself have communed with the Mage of Mentalism in broad daylight?”
“The yellow mage?”
“Aye, and he has listened to the thoughts of the Dark Heptad, which are black as the pit. Have faith, Khai, and believe. But for now, sleep. Sleep and grow strong in mind, body and faith. The dawn is not far away, and this day shall be one of the most important days that ever men have known. . . .”
Rough hands shook him awake. He started up, gazed into the brown eyes of Kindu. “Lord, dawn will break within the half-hour,” the Nubian told him. “The eastern sky has a bright edge to it, and Asorbes is waiting. The men are being roused and the horses paw the ground. Your battering rams are ready, and N’jakka’s impis have come across the river in the night.”
“What of the Khemites?” Khai asked.
“They are ready, Lord. Their armies on the ground outside the city are half as strong again as ours, and surely many more remain within. The gates are closed and heavily defended: and the Khemites mass beneath the east wall, too, perhaps fearing an attack from N’jakka. Waugh! And they are right to fear him. He is an excitable man and Pharaoh owes him a great deal. Perhaps he will decide not to wait but simply take what he is owed!”
Khai offered a grim smile. “I could not blame him,” he answered.
He went outside into the cool pre-dawn 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.
part
TEN
I
“TAKE THE PYRAMID!”
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:
“Waugh! Kill for Khai!
“Waugh! Kill for Khai the Killer!
“We are N’jakka’s strength. We are his mighty heart!
“Khai is his white brother, and they are mighty above all men!
“Waugh! Kill for N’jakka, in the name of Khai the Killer. In the name of Killer Khai!”
The wall of Khemites broke before them, broke and was trampled underfoot; and in through the gates poured the rest of the charioteers, the horsemen and warriors of Kush. By now the slaves of Asorbes were in uproar, arming themselves en-masse and turning on their overseers and guards, causing a hundred diversions in all quarters of the city. Many of them were starting fires, burning their old, verminous houses in the slave quarters; and others were climbing the stone stairways built into the walls, pouring onto the high ramparts and joining their brothers there, dealing with the Khemite archers wherever they found them.
All was a cataract of noise, a tumult of rushing, furiously brawling figures, of screaming, dying men and beasts. The streets were full of blood and crumpled figures, where bronze swords broke on iron swords and clubs rose and fell to the pounding rhythm of war-hammers. And through all of this Khai rode, his sword a scarlet wand which brought death in near-magical fashion to any Khemish soldier who strayed too close to his chariot; and close behind rode Kindu and Nundi, black and golden and red with blood as the sun rose over Asorbes.
With the majority of the action taking place in and around the gates, the center of the city was comparatively quiet. Breaking through the rear ranks of the defenders, Khai headed for the great ramp and followed the line of its base west toward the pyramid. He had not forgotten the dream-warning of the seven mages in Kush, and his priority now was to find the Dark Heptad and deal with them in short order. Racing parallel with his own chariot was that of his Nubian lieutenants, and a thousand of his most fierce horsemen rode behind.
Several bodies of Khemish troops broke and scattered before the charge of Khai’s party, only to be picked off individually by the mounted swordsmen. The pyramid’s largest body of defenders waited at the base of that vast monument itself, however, and there Khai spied them as he raced his vehicle beneath the sheer cliff of the great ramp. Ordering his driver to rein back a little, Khai gave his men time to draw level with him until they formed a solid front.
The ranks of crack Khemish infantry stood six deep at the base of the pyramid, with archers to the fore. Now, as the warriors and charioteers of Kush urged their mounts to the gallop, Pharaoh’s archers lifted their bows and sent a concerted sleet of arrows leaping toward them. Khai knew how devastatingly effective those archers could be, for he himself had trained with them as a boy; but he also knew their limitations.
His timing was perfect as he roared: “Up shields!” And as bucklers were raised, so the long-shafted Khemish arrows struck home. Horses fell screaming and riders with them; chariots slewed and snapped their axles, flinging their drivers down to be trampled under razor hooves; men died scarcely realizing they were hit . . . but the rest thundered on without pause and seconds later struck the Khemites even as they lifted their bows a second time. Outnumbered the riders of Kush were, for the main body of Khai’s force was still some hundreds of yards to his rear and diffusing through the city, but so ferocious were his warriors and so superior their weapons that Pharaoh’s troops fell like grass before the scythe. It was no contest, but a slaughter,
and in very few minutes, the Khemish defenders were bowled over and trampled down.
It was then that Khai’s driver took an arrow in the eye, whose force was such it came out the back of his head and knocked him clean out of the chariot. Before Khai could grab the reins, the horses ran wild. Then one of them felt the razor edge of a bronze sword across its hamstrings. Down went the proud beast, tripping its fellow and tumbling the chariot in blood and dust. Khai leaped free of the broken vehicle and rolled, springing to his feet in the heart of the melee.
More Khemish troops had appeared, racing out in their hundreds from the many doors that led to the pyramid’s lower levels, and Khai found himself hemmed in by furiously battling men who strove to bring him down. Chariots wheeled about him and horses reared over him; blood spattered his face and hair as his iron sword rose and fell inexorably; his breath rattled hoarsely as he gulped air to fuel his straining muscles. Then—
He could almost sense the shock wave that ran through the ranks of the Khemites facing him. He read horror in their eyes and saw it stamped on their faces as they fell back.
“Waugh!” came the roar of his impis, an explosion of sound made deafening by four thousand assagais and clubs rattled on shields; and “Waugh!” came that cry once more.
“We kill for Khai!” the Nubians roared as they ploughed forward, an invincible black mass. “For Khai the Killer—for Killer Khai! Waugh! Waugh!”
By now Kindu and Nundi were on foot, fighting alongside Khai, and the three of them snarled their savage fury through gritted teeth as they hacked a path through the pyramid’s defenders. Others of Khai’s warriors joined them from the flanks, and in a momentary lull a chief shouted: “What now, Khai?”