The Reaping of Kings

The sky was dark with a curse of smoke, and fire rained down on every side. The towers stood stark against the horizon, and the smell of burning and blood was oppressive as the foot of the invader. It was the fourth day of the siege of Utar, and it promised to be the last. The walls of the city wee scarred and blackened by the unending bombardment of mangonel and catapult, and the ground beneath them was strewn with the scorched forms of the fallen. Carrion birds wheeled in the sky, screaming for death.

At the gates the two armies clashed, and the battle was reaching a crescendo of violence and fury. The invaders crushed against the gate and the battered walls, hurling grapnels and ladders up in the face of the hail of arrows that sleeted down upon them. The ground was black with blood and covered with the dead and wounded, and yet they came onward. Behind them stretched a sea of men, men gathered to take the places of the dead, men with swords and shields ready and eyes filled with the zeal of fanatics.

Above the whole black host waved the banner of the new age. A great black war-standard emblazoned with the sign of the red hand. The Left Hand of Fire, the master of the dark army that marched through the lands, scouring one kingdom after another in the name of their dead god. At the center of the army stood the great tomb, drawn by a thousand slaves dragging chains affixed to the iron tusks of the beasts cast in silver that reared at the front of it. Within the wheeled crypt lay the body of the Sleeping Tyrant, the Nameless King, the Undying, the God of all Kings.

The attackers screamed their war prayers as they rushed the gates, hammering a ram upon the ancient timbers until they snapped, and then they chopped at the broken wood with axes and swords. The defenders sent arrows down upon them, poured hot oil and sand on them and cast down torches to set them aflame, and yet the power of the Left Hand would not let the fire ignite. The battle was an agony of trampled dying men, bloodied steel, and savaged flesh, and then the gates gave way.

The army poured into the gap, screaming their battle songs, and there within they were met face to face by King Samudragos, and his finest men packed shoulder to shoulder on their tall horses. The king was not a young man, and his white beard flowed from under his helm and across his silver breastplate. But he still sat tall in the saddle, and his bright helm still blazed in the faded light. He wore his red cloak over his broad shoulders, and his sword was a flash of steel in the dark.

With a great roar he led his men forward in a furious charge, and they crashed against the enemy like the stroke of a spear. The keen hooves of their horses trampled men to death and split their skulls, swords and axes hacked and clove through armor and bone, flooding the street with crimson. Maces crushed helms and lances pierced shields and men.

In a moment, Samudragos had driven the invaders back to the breach, but the flood of them was too strong to be stopped, and more and more of them came onward to kill and die, seeking in their deaths an immortality among the fallen heroes of their black faith. The king fought in the breach like a war god out of old times. He stood like a bulwark and reaped men down with his great sword, until the steel was saw-toothed and dyed red with blood.

A spear smote him in the side and rent through his armor, pierced beneath his cuirass and flesh. He fell back, gasping and coughing blood, and his men hurled themselves into battle around him to fight back the enemy and retrieve the body of their fallen king. Like mad men they heaped corpses in the broken gateway, and then they fell back, bearing Samudragos on a cloak, killing and dying for every step.

At last they fell back beyond the gate towers, the invaders pressing them closely, but then there was a terrible rending sound and the inner towers collapsed, broken down from within by men who died to do it. The inner towers slid down into a great heap of rubble, blocking the street and burying dozens of the close-packed enemy. Archers rushed in and swept the ground before the gates clear, and then with screams of fury the attackers broke off and withdrew, leaving the earth covered in the bodies of the dead, and the dying.

The way was blocked, but it would not hold. The royal guards bore the body of the king back to the great park before the palace, where silver fountains sang in the shade of peach trees, and peacocks wailed in the twilight. They sent for healers, but the king stopped them, lifting his armor to show them the wound. “I die,” he said. “There shall be no stopping that.”

Their swords notched and their armor red with blood, carrying their own wounds, the guards knelt there beside him on the perfect grass, and the smell of burning and death hung over all like a phantom. “What shall we do, sire?” they said, each hoping for a last wisdom from the king they trusted unto death.

“There is nothing else to do,” he said, his voice weak. “Go to the black tower, give my signet ring to the blind man who guards it, and open the iron door at the top of the narrow stair. Set loose the man who is imprisoned there, and bring him to me.” He breathed in deeply and coughed forth blood. He would not live long, and it was plain upon his face. “Bring to me my son.”

o0o

The black tower stood in the oldest part of the palace, ancient and dark. No one who looked on it did so without turning their eyes away and praying for evil to be turned aside. Ivy grew on the tower, but it was black and poisonous, and it was said that the dark violet fruits that sprouted there would drive a man mad before they slew him, if he so much as tasted the ripe skin.

At the foot of the tower was a grave garden, ancient tombs and cenotaphs overgrown with thornvines and shrouded with flowers, the monuments so worn that no one could say who had been buried in that unhallowed place. On nights when the moon was dark, the spirits of the dead were said to rise like a mist, eyes red and furious.

The soldiers went through that place of death and opened the iron door that sealed the tower. They told themselves not to give in to fear, and yet they shuddered as they passed within. The rooms inside the tower were devoid of light, for the man who guarded them had no need of light. He was bent and disfigured, his face ruined by the long-ago wound that stole his sight. He lurked in the blackness like a devil, leaning on a staff shod in iron and stained with blood. He came forward, his eyes white and staring, and he held out his hand and accepted the heavy golden ring with the carnelian stone.

“The king is dying,” the captain of the guards said in that dreadful silence. “He gave a last command. Take your key and loose the prince from his cell. We are to bring him to where his father lies.”

The blind man said nothing, only made a vile expression and turned his face away, but he took the heavy ring from his belt with the single key and gave it to them. There were no other keys, for this was a prison with but a single prisoner.

The guards climbed the long stair in the dark, carrying lanterns that scarce seemed to push back the shadows. More than one of them thought they would gladly go back to the walls and hurl themselves into battle rather than be here in this place, but they did not stop.

At last they came to the top, where there was a black door, the iron dark with years and bleeding corrosion like trails of blood that stained the floor. There was no window, no way to see inside, only a slot through which the blind jailer might pass what meals he gave to the man within. The captain’s hands shook as he put the key in the lock and turned it, and the sound of the bolt sliding back was like the stroke of an axe.

They wrenched the door open, and then looked into the blackness behind it. The room was cavernous, empty of all but dust and the smell of rage fermented in the darkness. They heard chains, and then the terrible prince of Utar stepped into the feeble lamplight and towered over them.

He wore rags, and they were all that covered his terrible white skin. He wore chains, but they had been broken long ago, and dangled from his wrists and his neck. He looked down at them with blazing eyes, and all of them felt the fear they had fought since they came to this place. This was Prince Kumura, the Accursed Son, and his aspect was terrible, and monstrous.

Cursed when he was a child, his body had been twisted and malformed. He walked with a terrible limp, because his left foot had become a splayed hoof, and his face was hideous to look on. As he had grown from a child, he had become stronger and stronger, until he was a mountain of iron muscle. He was uncontrollable, and out of fear for their lives the king and queen had imprisoned him here, never again to walk free upon the earth, until today.

The captain breathed deep and looked on the prince. “Your father is wounded, and will soon die. He sent us here to bring you to him, and you will come with us.”

Kumura looked at them, one after the other, and they flinched from the glare of his black eyes, his tusked jaw and heavy brow. The captain nerved himself. “You will do as you are commanded, and you will not resist.”

None of them were fast enough to stop the prince when he reached out and seized the captain with his immense hands, and then the sound of breaking bones was loud in the hollow chamber as he wrenched the man almost in half, left him broken and dead on the stone floor. The other guards yelled and held up their swords, staring past the light of their lanterns, ready to stand and die.

“Very well,” the prince said. “I will go.” His eyes glimmered in the darkness. “But I will not be spoken to as if I were an animal.”

o0o

Kumura had not been out of the tower in a dozen years, and the city looked now like a dark dream shadow of itself. Smoke filled the air, and glowing embers drifted down like the snows of the underworld. The streets were filled with terrified people, and they screamed and fled when they saw him. Dressed in rags and chains, he walked with his head high, limping on his hoof. He was royalty, and he would not hide his face, nor act as though he were ashamed.

They took him to the great garden before the palace, where the smell of death lingered among the scented trees. Fountains chimed and sang in the darkness, and there among tended flowers lay a makeshift bier, and on it lay King Samudragos, his face pale and sallow, his eyes sunken deep in hollow orbits. His men tended him, but there was too much blood on his armor and on his cloak, staining the earth below him. Kumura smelled it and knew the old man would not live very long.

The king looked at his monstrous son. “The city has almost fallen, and I am dying, wounded to the heart.” He gestured to the wound in his side no bandage could stanch. “In this last hour, I call upon you, because there is no other to call upon. Accursed you may be, a monster you may be, but when I breathe my last, you will be king.”

“Accursed I was by your foolishness, and your vanity,” Kumura said. “My body was cursed, but it was you who cursed my spirit. Was I less a son because I was no longer fair? You chose it so.”

“You were become a monster,” the king said. “You slew without regard, and you were a danger to all around you. You broke a horse’s neck when you were only a child, with a single bow. You were too dangerous.”

“And had I still been straight and perfect you would have marveled at my strength,” Kumura said. “You would have told tales of my might, and put a sword in my hand to make war upon your enemies. But because I was foul to look on, you feared me. I could have fought this enemy for days, and my strength would have told. Your fear cost the city dearly, and it cannot now be undone.”

The king closed his eyes. “Now indeed I call upon you to be a monster. Be the terror upon those who have come against us. Be what you were cursed to be. Perhaps this is the day for which you were born.” He heaved in a great breath, and his eyes grew wide and his mouth opened as if in a scream that no man could hear, and then he fell back and was still, his last breath a rattle through his bloody lips.

Kumura looked at his father, and then he turned to look on the guards who stared at him with loathing and with fear. One by one, they bowed low, kneeling there with their eyes cast down, and he looked around at the lovely garden, like nothing he had looked upon since he was a child. Smoke drifted through the trees, and the thought that they would soon be burned and cut down was pleasing to him.

And yet, he would not allow another to take away what he had inherited. This city was his right, and he would fight to keep it. If any would raze Utar to the ground, it would be he, not the Left Hand. “Rise,” he said. “Bring me a sword, and let us go and meet our enemies.” He looked toward the walls as the horns of war sounded again. “The killing hour is come.”

o0o

They had no armor that would fit his massive frame, and so he drew a crocodile skin over his shoulders and pinned it in place. He wore an immense helmet that had been made for a statue, and he wrapped elephant hide around his arms to guard them. On his left arm he strapped a shield as tall as a man, and in his right hand he took an executioner’s sword too heavy for a lesser man to lift. The enemy was swarming the walls, battering with rams and catapults, smashing down the walls, crushing the gates, and when they poured through into the city, the Accursed Prince was there to meet them.

They had never encountered a warrior like him. He towered head and shoulders over lesser men, and when he fell upon them he fell like the stroke of lightning. His great horned blade rove through them and cut down men like grain before a threshing scythe. Their spears and arrows glanced from his shield, and even when steel did find his flesh, he shrugged it away and struck back with his terrible strength. Not armor nor bone could withstand his strokes, and he drove the enemy back by his own hand, his men behind him in a wedge of bloodied steel.

Kumura fought his way into the breach where the gates lay tumbled and shattered in a heap of stones. He met the rush of the foe and hurled them back with the onslaught of his fury. He cut them down until he stood atop a pile of the slain, and blood covered the rubble and splashed him to the knees. Wounded in a dozen places, he gave no ground, and he howled for them to come and meet him, to come and be slaughtered.

A blaze of fire shone through the smoke and the growing darkness, and then Kumura saw a burning sword in the hands of a dark man with burning eyes, and he knew that here was the Left Hand of Fire, the one who led this furious crusade. Swathed in black, hooded and masked, only his red eyes glowed in the dark, and he came up the hill of ruined stone like a ghost of dark years. Any man in his path he cut down with terrible lashes of his blade, so quick the eye could scarcely follow.

They met there beneath the shadows of the ruined gate, the sky full of fire and the ground they trod stained red with blood. Kumura struck at the Left Hand, but could not touch him. The dark one was too fast, and he cut at his giant foe with his burning sword. The red blade cut notches from the tower shield, leaving the metal gleaming red from the heat.

They fought in a terrible fury, and any man who came close was ripped apart in a heartbeat. The Left Hand hacked Kumura’s shield to glowing pieces, and then they were sword to sword, terrible skill and quickness against terrible power and ceaseless rage. Kumura lashed out with his long arm and crushed the smaller man against the stones, drew back his heavy sword to kill, and then the Left Hand struck him across the face and split his helm asunder. Kumura felt pain roar through his head, and his left eye went dark.

He reeled back, blood pouring from his ruined eye, and he struck half-blind, shattered stone with his terrible sword. The rubble shifted beneath them, and Kumura roared as the pile of broken stone and butchered bodies collapsed under him. There was a moment of roaring, and then he was crushed under, blinded by dust and darkness, and then he knew no more.

o0o

Kumura woke in darkness. He tried to move and found he was pinned by fallen stone, his joints wrenched and painful. Blood had dried over half his face, and he was blind on that side. He shifted, trying to gain leverage to move. He got one hand free, shoved another block aside and heaved, pushing up through the rock that buried him. He was held down by so much, it was almost impossible to get leverage. He strained again, and then one of the other stones was lifted off him.

He growled and pushed as someone unseen began to dig him free. He saw the light of day beneath an iron gray sky, and then a pale hand reached for him and he took it. He pulled and was dragged up from his tomb, shook dust from his eyes and looked at who it was who aided him.

She was young, younger than he was, and equally pale. She wore battered armor of an ancient style and a long sword at her side. Her left arm was gone below the elbow, the stump wrapped in dark silks. She was dusty and weary-looking, as though she had been traveling for many weeks.

She looked at him. “You can be none but Kumura. I heard the story of your stand against the Left Hand. Of how you fought him, and fell.”

“Fell,” he said. “But I did not die.” He looked to the city, and saw that beyond the walls it was a wasteland. The buildings burnt and torn down, the ruins still billowing with smoke. The smell of death and burning hung over it all, and the sky was filled with the screams of carrion birds at their feasting. He laughed, bitter and poisonous. “King for an hour, and now king of nothing.”

“As was I,” she said. “Both of us have lost our crowns to the one called the Left Hand. Khamag was the name I knew him by, and with that name I shall follow him.” She held out a hand, gesturing to the city. “I am Chona, and I was princess of Samzar, until the betrayal of one I trusted. Now I follow the track of the tomb, the great wheeled sarcophagus that holds the body of the Sleeping Tyrant. Khamag gathers fanatics to his cause, swells his armies with those he conquers. I do not know what his ultimate purpose may be, but I will see him dead before he achieves it.”

Kumura saw his butcher sword lying in the ruins, the dark blade unmarked but black with blood. He lifted it, gripped it in both hands. “If you are hunting him, so will I,” he said. He touched his face. “So will I.”