The Valley of the Dead

 

Night brought the moon, and the red haunter on the horizon brought forth the sorcerer.  Dekenius waited with unease, for he was more accustomed to granting audiences than having them granted.  He waited in a ring of burning torches upon the sand-cut ruins of some forgotten temple, and as always he wondered at the age of this place.  So many centuries of rise and fall, of passion and war and the slow returning of the floods year after year.  So many ruins to be seen everywhere, places without names, none remembering what they had been.

There were no guards, he would not look the fool by thinking his men could protect him from one like this.  He had seen what this desert warlock had done at the battle, and it frightened him, and the fact of that fear was like a stone on his tongue he could not swallow.  Dekenius feared little, and he ill-liked the taste of it now.  He had called for aid in a moment of weakness, and it was bitter.

The sky was clear as glass, ancient stars blazing on high, and he saw a darkness come from the horizon beneath the moon.  It billowed like a banner, and then he heard the beat of hooves.  A lone rider approached, robed in ebon like the night.  The horse was black and breathed glowing light as from a fire, and sparks trailed from the hooves where they touched the earth.

The rider drew closer, and larger, until Dekenius saw it was a horse taller than any he had seen, if horse it was, and the man who sat upon it was a giant who loomed against the stars.  Beneath the cowl he saw the shadow of a white face and dark eyes that gleamed like jewels, and there was a scent of bitter earth and heavy incense that came from within the black robes.  The rider drew to a stop and looked down at him, and Dekenius had never felt so small.

“Greetings, son of far lands,” came the deep voice that seemed to come from far away, from everywhere.  “You have crossed a sea to take a kingdom.  You are a soldier and a general, and you have courage most men do not.”

“You know much of me,” Dekenius said, finding his mouth was dry.

“I have ears.  I listen to what the night says.”  The rider pushed back his hood, and Dekenius looked upon the pale face of the ancient one, the emperor of the lost lands, the Black Flame.  Utuzan.  He looked timeless, as though he were without age, both young and very old.  There was something about the shape of his face – some proportion that seemed not entirely human.

“You fled your homeland and became a renegade, because you would not bow your head to another,” Utuzan said.  “Will you bow your head to me?”

“You offered help, and I accepted, because I needed it,” Dekenius said.  “I have not sworn to follow you, nor will I.  I am not a man who yields my freedom.  I fight for it.”

“Indeed, else you would be of little use,” Utuzan said.  “I have taken Meru and High Ashem as my own, and I will take Greater Ashem as well.  My reach is long, and I shall encompass all lands I desire to make my new empire.”  He looked down at Dekenius, searchingly.  “I will need a king to rule Ashem for me.  I have other vassals, and some of them have failed me.  Do not seek to dissemble.  If you would be king of this land say so, and you will be at my command, but do not promise what you cannot give.”

“I will not,” Dekenius said.  He looked away.  Many things might change, as they always did in war.  Promises now might cease to hold later.  He had broken vows he had held more holy in his life.  But this man was a power, and a power such as this might be directed against many enemies.  If he kept to himself, he would have to fight both Utuzan and the Hatta, and he knew he could not do that.  Even if he could win such a war, sooner or later the Imperator would send another force after him.  He could not hold onto this place with the men he had, not in the face of that.

“So you must decide, son of Varon,” Utuzan said.

“I am deciding,” Dekenius said.  “You ask no small thing.”

“I offer no small thing,” the giant said, and Dekenius made a gesture of assent, for it was true.

“Very well.  I shall not be your slave.  I shall not bow and scrape before any throne.  But I shall be your general, as I was to my Imperator of old.”  Dekenius rubbed at his jaw, feeling the stubble there, wishing for a proper bath.

“The man you betrayed?” Utuzan said, his voice light.

“Never,” Dekenius said.  “I was the one betrayed.  My lord Neverus was poisoned, and the man who took his place, Retarius, sought to have me stripped of my titles, my men, my fortune.  The senate feared me, and I would have been undone had I not escaped them.  I have fought and bled for Varon for  thirty years, and they would have put my head on a spike.”  He looked up at the rider, measuring him.  “If you will help me strike at any enemy that comes within reach, then yes, I will serve you.”

Utuzan looked him up and down, and then nodded.  “Very well.  First, you must defeat the Hatta.  Their king is a great warrior, and their men are fierce.  They must be beaten before they can join me, and you will strike that blow.”

Dekenius nodded gravely.  “I will.”

o0o

Arsinue came with the night, and she walked the sands with wrath.  The camp of the Hatta spread out along the riverside, and she saw Zudur had pitched his tent in among the tombs of the ancients.  She tasted blood when she saw it.  A great fire blazed, throwing crimson light upon the weathered faces of the dead carved from river stone.  Ageless eyes watched the dark without emotion.

She entered the camp unseen, and she slipped through the shadows to Zudur’s tent, red with fire and hung with horse tails and scalps.  She entered without leave, finding him within, grinding his sword sharp with a stone, and he did not look when she entered.

“I feel you like a fever,” he said.  “You come in the night and bring your curses.”  He looked at her, his eyes reflecting fire.  “Are you ill-pleased?”

“I gave you the path to follow, the way to defeat Dekenius, but instead you strove against him at a place he chose, and so he has escaped you.”  She folded her arms, gold dripping from her wrists.  “I give my counsel and you spurn it.  Do you spurn me as well?”

He laughed.  “You think I will conquer your kingdom for you?  I know you think I am a fool.  A barbarian unfit to sully your land.  You use me as it pleases you, to defeat the enemy you could not overcome.”  He scraped the stone along the iron edge, and beside him the sleeping lion shifted and looked at her with one golden eye.  “Dekenius did not escape me because of any failing of mine.  The power of sorcery aided him.  I have heard the whispers of this desert seer who comes from the old kingdoms in the south.  Tell me of him.”

Arsinue scowled, lowering her head to glare at him from beneath her brows.  “You fear a sorcerer?  You who are the chosen of your god?”

He laughed again.  “I have lain atop an ekimmu of the dark and seen her hungry fangs as I sheathed my spear in her.  I know you are no mortal woman any longer, so do not mock me when I speak of wizardry.  I broke Dekenius’s lines, I wounded him and I would have shattered his army, save that then winged devils came from above and spat fire upon the earth.  That is no Varonan war-engine, that is witchery.”  He dragged his thumbnail along the edge of his blade.  “Can you match it?”

She scoffed.  “He is nothing, a nomad conjurer.  One of the mad holy men who sometimes arise from among the barbarians.”

“Is it nothing that he broke Meru, and High Ashem?  My men hear stories from the prisoners taken from the villages, from the women in their tents at night.  If half the tales are true, then he is no charlatan.  He commands desert and wind, and he calls forth demons from the edge of the earth.”  Zudur laid his sword across his knees.  “Do you have a power to match that?”

Arsinue breathed deep, tasting the smoke of the camp-fires, the animal smell of horses and men.  Blood and fire and iron all together, and she saw her kingdom in a haze of red, the towers of Qahir like a dream floating above her in the night.  She would not have her kingdom stolen by Dekenius nor by this man, nor anyone.  She had slain her own brother to hold her throne, she would not shy from anything else.

“I may indeed,” she said.  She was silent for a moment.  “A day west from here, at the edge of the desert, is the valley of the dead, where the ancient tombs of the kings lay before the days of the eldest dynasties.  Ride north tomorrow to the crossing at the village of Enkhu, and then cross the river and follow the road until dark.  Dekenius will stalk you, knowing he must prevent you from reaching the city.  If I am right, he will cross to the south of you and seek to cut you off, and then you can lead him into the valley.  I will meet you there.”

“And what is in the valley?” he said.  “Why that place?”

“Face him at dusk,” she said, turning away.  “I will show you sorcery to match whatever he can conjure.  I will show you both the power of Ashem as of old.”  She turned away from him, gathering her black robes around herself, and then she slipped away into the night.

o0o

Dekenius marched his men before dawn, turning his path westward, out of the muddy riverland and into the hard border of the desert.  He rode his horse before them, knowing they must see him upright and unwounded to keep their courage.  They had seen the power of Utuzan, but they would not trust it, would instead fear it as they would fear any such magic, as he did, if he were truthful.

Beside him rode the woman Shedjia on her own dark steed, and it seemed to him that his guards and attendants did not see her at all.  She moved like a shadow among shadows, and at times he lost sight of her, though he knew she was always close.  She would lead them now, before the sun rose, and he did not know what path they were to follow.  He had to trust her and he did not.

She looked back at him and smiled.  “This way, son of Varun,” she said, and she turned from the road and led him between rocks and into a defile.  He followed, the whole column in his wake.  He heard men mutter and curse, the jangle of harness and the stomping of horses and mules.  Commanders called for the men to follow the turn, and then it seemed as if the sound was stolen away.

Dekenius rode through a sudden darkness, his horse snorting and sidling under him.  The world seemed to fall away, and he looked up to see only stars that he did not know.  For a moment he was alone in the dark, dizziness clawing at him, and then he emerged into a sudden twilight.  He looked up and saw the glow of the oncoming sun had moved from one horizon to the other.  He shook his head, feeling the ache of his bruises, and he wondered if perhaps he was losing his mind.

They emerged from the haze into a wide valley with steep sides, and he saw the cliffs were dotted with carved reliefs and marked by the cracked stone doors of once-sealed tombs.  A double line of pillars and statues marked a path down the center, and the floor was flat and laid with sand, scrubby bushes growing near the edge and climbing the layered stone walls.  It was a place of desolate and faded beauty, and he found it both affecting and unnerving.

“Behold the valley of the dead,” Shedjia said.  “The vale where kings were buried for untold ages.  Once dark powers guarded this place, and fanatics of forgotten gods haunted the cliffs to slay any who came, but now it is truly a place only of the dead.”  She turned in her saddle and smiled at him.  “You have stepped through time and space both.  It was before dawn, now it is night, and in the night, the Hatta will come against you in this place, thinking to catch you by surprise.  Take your place, deploy your men, and be ready when they appear.”

Dekenius looked to the fading sun, and he realized it was not his orientation that had changed – the sun was on the far horizon because it was setting, and the day had already gone.  It made him feel as though he might swoon and fall, but he gripped tight to the reins, knowing he must show neither fear not weakness.  He kept his face impassive and merely nodded to her.  “It shall be done.”

o0o

Arsinue entered the vale of the dead as the sun faded away, the high cliffs shielding her from the dying light.  She walked alone, as she must, for tonight she would call on unclean things, and hope they answered her cry.  The wind lay slack as the horizon turned to silver and copper, and she heard scorpions crawling in the rocks, cobras whispering as they emerged into the hunting dusk.

The valley was haunted, and she tasted spirits like wine on the air.  The cliffs were honeycombed with tombs carved for the ancient dynasties, most of them long since plundered, the dead left to molder and turn to dust with the years.  Some of the crypts were still sharp, their lines clean and the inscriptions upon them still plain to see, while others were ground away to nothing but a bare hole in the rock, watchful like the eyes of a skull.

The path of the kings was marked down the center of the valley, the road itself long vanished, and only the columns that had marked it and the statues that guarded it remaining even as ruins.  Arsinue had read the histories, knew the story of this place.  If she shut her eyes she could envision the death rituals enacted here beneath the desert stars – the pillars wound with garlanded flowers, braziers alight with roaring fires, masked priests calling out to the powers that guard men beyond death.

And she knew the stories no one told.  She knew the day that had blighted this place and caused men to abandon it.  Hundreds of years gone – more than half a millennia – another invasion of barbarians had come from the east.  They had broken the armies of the old dynasty, and then had pursued the king himself to this valley, where he had called on his men to embalm him in the old way while he yet lived, and as they cut and sawed at his flesh he called out a curse upon the enemy.

It was written that a black wind came then from the guarded tombs, and upon that wind was borne a howling evil.  A few men fled from the valley to tell their tale, but neither the king, nor his enemies ever returned, and it became a place shunned by even the dead.  Only the brave came to rob the crypts, but it was said that few escaped alive, and those who did went mad.

Arsinue paced over the sand-gritted rock, feeling it beneath her feet.  Cobras reared up as she passed, giving their obeisance to the Black Queen of the dark.  Scorpions crawled in her shadow, and she heard the cries of jackals as the stars emerged like silver eyes.

She heard horses and cursed, thinking Zudur had come too soon, but the sound came from the south end of the vale, and she looked there with her night-sharp eyes and saw the hated standards of the Varonan legions moving there like a pestilence.  Her lips curled in a sneer as she saw Dekenius was here, deploying his legions and his horse across the narrow part of the valley.  He had come here swifter than she would have believed, but it would not matter enough to save him.  He might prepare to face the riders of the Hatta, but he would not stand against the powers of the night.

She walked to where a statue stood, the head gone long ago.  She touched it, the desecrated image of the last king to die in this place, and she called forth an ancient phrase in a dead language, sending forth her call into the gathering dark.

o0o

Dekenius heard the scream arise, like something wrested from a beast in the night.  It rose up and up, and then he heard words within the howl, words he could not understand.  He felt his skin grow thick with pinned flesh, and he called forth to his men.  There was no other sound, no sign of horse or riders, but he knew the attack was coming now.  The cry echoed off the canyon walls, reverberating among the empty tombs, and trickles of sand and stone flowed down the rocks, shaken loose by the call of the dark.

Men raced one way and another, forming up a solid line here at the narrowest pass of the valley.  He was able to stand his troops six men deep, shields edge to edge, spears a bristling wall.  Fires burned behind the line, casting light against the walls of the vale, but also casting the helmed shadows of the soldiers ahead of them like phantoms.  He rode down the line, sword in hand, calling for his men to form and stand fast.  He felt the dark behind him like a vast maw, and he was aware he had been placed in a position where he must win or die, with nowhere to fall back.  He looked for Shedjia and saw no sign of her, and he felt cold down in the pit of his gut.  He had been led here, and now he was alone.

He called for horsemen and sent a handful riding south through the dark to seek out a line of retreat if the needed one.  To escape riders they would need a fallback position, a redoubt to hold while the army withdrew.  He looked up at the cliffs to either side of the narrow cut, wondering if rocks could be prized loose to drop down and block the path, but the slope was too steep to climb easily, and the rock looked solid.  To attempt it by night would be folly.

He heard cries come from the dark, high, wailing sounds like the howls of jackals, and he turned back to face forward.  There was one, and then another, and he felt the hair rise on his arms as he wondered what kind of devilry he had brought his men to battle with.  This was a charnel valley, filled with the memories of the dead, and what if there were more than memories?

There was movement in the night, and Dekenius rode forward, peering through the darkness.  Something like a black shroud poured from the mouths of the tombs, covering the ground, and it took a moment before he realized they were hordes of rats.  Thousands of blisterlike eyes gleamed in the dark as the creatures rushed over the ground.  In his mind he saw his men consumed by swarming teeth, and he bellowed for the watch-fires to be lit.

At either end of the line, just forward, he had commanded the men to pile great heaps of dried brush and firewood, and now they were soaked in oil and ignited, blazing up into towering flames that roared against the dark and threw crimson light against the stones and the sentinel rows of idols.

The rats screamed like a sea of of teeth and fled from the light, and then Dekenius saw what came behind them.  Upright, shrunken and black, wrapped in tattered cerements and rotted armor, the dead of the valley came forward in a march of the unclean.  They glared with eyes like black stones, and their bared teeth were fixed in the grin of the slain.  Their flesh was hard as wood and groaned when they moved, and they held up swords and daggers green and black with age.

Men shouted up and down the line, and Dekenius saw them waver, men drawing back, spears waving and clattering against each other.  He could feel them about to break, but he hammered his sword blade on his saddle-bow and lifted up his voice – a voice that had commanded on so many fields of battle.  “Hold fast or die!” he roared.  “There is nowhere to run!  You are legions of Varon, and you will stand and fight like your fathers before you!”

The shout went up from the commanders.  “Men of Varon!  Men of Varon!” and Dekenius saw the line firm, the wavering stiffen.  The unliving horde pressed closer, jaws yawning with an unspeakable hunger, and the legionaries drew back their arms and hurled the first flight of javelins into the enemy.

o0o

Arsinue watched the army of the dead shamble forward, staggering on broken legs and rotted feet, moaning the horror of their accursed fate.  Javelins lashed into them, piercing desiccated shields and flesh, but unable to slay what was already dead.  Here was the lost army of invaders, imprisoned between death and life, and now they came to her call.

The attack crashed into the Varonan line, and she heard men scream as they came to grips with the dead.  Swords hacked and split flesh and bone, and ancient brazen swords shivered to pieces.  Tireless, fearless, unknown to pain, the dead fought relentlessly, and she saw the Varonan legions give ground before the assault.

Then she saw sparks light in the dark, and she heard the clatter and roar of the siege weapons as they let loose.  A volley of flaming missiles shot from the onagers and smashed into the dead, splashing them with fire and turning the dry corpses into blazing forms that writhed and clawed at the sheets of flame that engulfed them.  The ballistae loosed and their long bolts rove through the unliving army, ripping the marchers apart.

Yet still the accursed ones did not falter, for fear was not their companion, and they fought on with shattered bones and burning flesh, clawing without weapons when they had none, dragging legionaries down and tearing them to pieces.  They feasted on the flesh of the slain, and their wailing cries in a dead speech echoed from the walls of the valley.

Arsinue felt the shudder of hoofbeats through the stone beneath her feet, and she turned as Zudur rode into sight at the head of his army, torches blazing in the night.  She laughed and held up her arms to the sky.  “Come, sons of Hatta!” she called.  “Come and see your enemy crippled before you, and then strike the final blow!  Tonight the usurper dies, and I will drink his blood until it fills me and courses from my mouth!”

o0o

Dekenius shouted for the engines to fire as fast as they could, all the while he watched as his front line bent back under the pressure of the unliving assault.  In the face of the ravening wights of the dead, he knew if the line broke he would never rally it again.  If the legion cracked, it would shatter and never be remade.  He saw his men hunted through the dark, torn apart by evil revenants, and he gripped his sword tighter.

The fire illuminated the place where the forces met in a hellish blaze, and the walls of the valley were splashed with the shadows of men and creatures as they flailed at one another.  Spears shattered, shields cracked, skulls were riven and bodies hacked apart.  Dekenius saw the line bulge inward and he rode to the center, shouting for the men to hold.  He saw men backing away and he kicked them, shoving them forward.  He knew if he saw anyone break and run he would have to cut them down.

On the far side of the bloody line a figure rose up, mist boiling around it like a shroud.  Taller than the other shades, it was wrapped in funeral cerements and decked with golden arm-rings and a crown as the kings of old wore in the days when Ashem was young.  Dekenius saw the light gleaming in those night-blue eyes and heard the thing howl as it drove the unliving army onward.  A dread king of the death lands come to claim lives for the price of immortal unlife.

Dekenius shouted and seized a javelin from a nearby soldier, and he drew back his arm and hurled it at the towering apparition.  He saw the iron point limned with blue fire, and then it shattered apart in the air, falling to the earth in pieces that steamed with cold.

The undead king lifted his staff, the serpent head at the tip glowing with a pale fire, and Dekenius felt his flesh crawl.  And then a shadow came alive and was suddenly there before the night monarch.  He saw black robes and braided hair, and then Shedjia struck with her shadow daggers, and the thing howled as she cut it apart.  Black mist poured from cold wounds, and the ruler shrank back, withering away in a few heartbeats.

Shedjia vanished, back to the dark from which she came, and the unliving king staggered back, fell to the ground, and then his bones broke and scattered into pieces.  The army of the dead cried out as one, and then a wind blew across them that no mortal man could feel.  The legions watched as the implacable fiends fell into dust and billowed away on the black wind, howling their grief to a forgotten world.

The sound of hooves came rushing, and then the Varonans saw an enemy they understood come thundering from the dark.  Arrows fell like deadly rain, and men covered under their shields, soldifying the main line.  Now they faced men, and men they could slay.

Dekenius shouted for his war machines, and the charge of the Hatta was broken by a rain of fire and steel.  Only a few of them reached the main line and crashed against the wall of shields.  The smell of blood was thick in the night air, and the sound of iron on iron was deafening, echoing from the sides of the valley.  The Hatta recoiled, re-formed, and then they came again.

Even Dekenius felt himself filled with admiration for their courage, for they rushed through the hurtling stones and bolts and javelins as though they were nothing.  Men and horses were crushed under, ripped apart, sent to the earth in flames, and yet the others kept on.  At the head of them rode the hulking form of their king, a tower in the saddle, his iron sword uplifted and shining red in the light of the bonfires.

The charge struck home, and this time the legions could not hold it back.  The center split apart, and Dekenius found himself in the path of the enemy.  He saw Zudur there at the tip of the wave, as though it bore him along above the earth, and he spurred his horse to meet him.  Their swords clashed in the dark, and sparks rained down from the edges of their blades.  Caught in the storm of riders, they whirled and struggled, their horses shouldering against one another, screaming fury and wild-eyed.

Their swords smote against each other again and again, iron singing until the edges were notched and toothed like saws.  Zudur’s strokes had terrible power, and Dekenius’s hand went numb from meeting them.  He struck a fierce blow against the nomad king’s helm, and then the giant struck him across the chest, denting his armor and hurling him backwards.  The reins snapped in his hand, and then he crashed to the earth, spitting out dust.

A shadow was upon him, and he felt hands grip his cloak and drag him up.  He saw red eyes, and then the white face of Arsinue was before him, teeth bared in a rictus of fury.  “Now is the end, usurper!” she snarled.  “Now you shall pay for what you did to me, what you caused my brother to do, and for his death.  Yes, even that I lay before you!  Now I shall have your blood!”

“No!  No!”  Dekenius twisted, trying to get free of her.  “Utuzan!  Utuzan I call on you!  Aid me!  Aid me!”  He groped for the hilt of his dagger, tasting blood on his tongue.  It could not end like this.  He would not allow it.

o0o

There was a blast of light, and a stroke of red lightning erupted skyward from the valley floor.  Smoke boiled out, black as shadows, and from the cloud Utuzan emerged, a towering form wrapped in night with terrible, blazing eyes.  Horses screamed and fled from him, and the fighting stilled all around as men saw him and felt the power of his presence.  It settled like a weight, and no one could take their gaze from him.

He was silent for a long moment, and then he nodded.  “You are Arsinue, rightful Queen of Ashem.  I am pleased to meet you at last.  You are elusive.”  He gestured.  “This man has wronged you.”

Arsinue caught her cold breath and shook out her braided mane.  “He has.  I will not be kept from my vengeance, or my throne.”

Dekenius reached out for him.  “My lord.  Save me, do not let her kill me like this.  You need me to complete your conquest!”

“I do not,” Utuzan said.  “I set you a task, and you failed in it.”  He looked to Arsinue.  “Do what you will.”

Dekenius screamed, and then Arsinue was on him like a wolf.  She sank her fangs into his throat, and then with a convulsive wrench she tore it out in a spray of red.  She spat Dekenius’s flesh aside and wiped her mouth, watched him shiver and twitch as his life ran out red on the dusty earth.  There was a rush of pleasure at the sight of it that was so physical and intense that she shivered, and then after that there was nothing, for her enemy was dead, and yet nothing he had done was undone.

She looked at Utuzan, the man she had heard of, the stories out of dark ages, whispered secrets of a lost heir to a lost empire, and now he stood before her, and she felt the power in him like the gathering of a storm.  She looked back as Zudur rode to her, his lion beside him, blood on his battered sword and rent scale armor.

Utuzan looked at them both, and there was no fear in him at all, that was plain to see.  “I am the first and last,” he said.  “I have come to forge a new empire, and none shall stop me.  I shall have kingdoms broken to my fist, and kingdoms must be ruled.  I will have need of kings.  Gather to me, and you shall have my power at your back like the wind.  Stand against me, and nothing will save you.”  He held out his hand.  “Rise, Queen of Ashem.  I give you back your throne.  Walk with me, and all shall be as it shall be.”

She looked at him, giant and implacable, and she felt a thrill in her dark heart.  Here was one worthy to call an ally, an equal, or even a master.  The night blazed with fire and the scent of blood.  She took two steps forward, uncertain, and then she placed her bloody hand in his.