The Dark Lord

by a looping, sideways strike.

Gods, Khalid breathed, what a champion! Even Patik might find his match!

The Sahaba fell back, leaving a handful of bodies on the pavement. The Roman line stood unshaken. Khalid felt the air change, momentum shifting around him. The panicked crowds had thinned, through the ground still jumped with an enormous, drumming beat. The dead are coming, Khalid realized.

Someone started shouting behind the Roman lines and Red-beard turned, falling back a step. Khalid cursed as another legionary stepped smoothly into his place. Some kind of courier ran up, gabbling at the general.

Khalid glanced around at his own men, seeing weary faces, though they were still game for another go. He licked his lips. He'll know he's trapped... the dead will be upon us soon and there's no way out. Perhaps... perhaps he will surrender! The young Arab's heart leapt at the thought, for the honor and unsurpassed bravery of the Roman general touched even him.

'Roman!' he shouted, stepping out of the wary line of Sahaba. 'Roman, listen!'

Red-beard turned towards him, wiping sweat out of his eyes. 'What do you want, rebel?'

'Your city is lost,' Khalid called into sudden, encompassing silence. Everyone fell quiet, the men on both sides staring at him in speculation. A few citizens ran past, faces haunted, but they spared no attention for the two opposing lines of soldiers. The young Arab pointed to the east. 'Great Persia enters the city—his armies swollen by the risen dead—and you have no hope but honorable surrender. Yield your swords to me, and I will protect you!'

The red-beard gave him a considering glance, then leaned down, speaking softly to the messenger. The man nodded sharply, then bolted off down the docks. The Roman smiled, a grim, wintry expression without humor or malice. 'Romans do not surrender,' he called, voice ringing in the air. 'If you wish our swords, you'll take them from the dead, as the ghouls you are!'

A laughing shout rose from the legionaries and many of the Germans clashed their swords and axes on their shields, raising a drumming, raucous noise. In response, the Sahaba growled and Khalid's face set, graven stone showing no mercy or remorse.

'Allau ak-bar!' the Sahaba roared, taking a step forward in unison. Fresh reinforcements joined them from the causeway. Khalid caught sight of Jalal and Shadin from the corner of his eye, and felt fresh hope jolt through him. The Romans matched the shout with their own: 'The City! The City!'

A wordless cry ripped from Khalid's lips and he bounded forward. His men followed a breath later and a ringing crash echoed from the buildings and the water. Again, a fierce melee raised a vicious din on the docks, as Roman and Sahaban soldiers grappled, trading blows. Men toppled from the line of battle, slicking the ground with their fresh blood.

—|—

A pack of gaatasuun were feeding in the entry hall of the Sema as Dahak entered. The sorcerer's face darkened with rage, pale eyes passing swiftly across the scattered bodies of priests and attendants. The prince's tunic was scorched and riddled with ash-burned holes. His usual poor humor deepened into simmering rage as he took in the carnage filling the tomb hall. There was dark, drying blood everywhere and the floor was slick with greasy-white entrails and offal. One of the corpse-men squatted on the floor, desiccated flesh peeling from a mottled black-and-gray back, as it pounded a newly dismembered head against the tile paving. The skull made a sharp, cracking sound as the blow split open the cranium. The gaatasuun's withered fingers pried aside bone, letting a long black tongue dip into the opening. A thick slurping sound followed.

Dahak made a sharp motion, no more than the effort of a man brushing aside a fly and the dozen or more corpses feeding in the chamber stiffened—motive force denied—and then crumbled to dust. The skull—suddenly released—clattered across the floor and came to rest at the prince's feet.

The Lord of the Ten Serpents bent down, face twisted in a grimace—half amused, half irritated. Black fingernails bit into bone and he lifted the skull. Once, a man with a neatly trimmed beard and a powerful nose had worn this ragged, bloody scrap of flesh and glistening white. There was a gelatinous sloshing sound as the head rolled between Dahak's fingers.

'Where is the Sarcophagus?' A snap of command, echoing with a trembling hum, filled the prince's voice. His high brow creased in mild concentration.

The skull stiffened in his hands, a leprous white glow sparking in empty eye sockets—no more than red- rimmed holes, where dusty fingers had lately gouged—and the jaw twitched and spasmed. The tongue, at least, remained whole and a gargling sound issued from the broken head. Dahak grunted, finding the words unintelligible.

'Speak clearly!' the prince commanded, and sinews crawled like worms under torn flesh, muscle knitting to bone, arteries swelling with a thick, dark gray humor—not blood, no, but close enough to serve. Watery charcoal- colored fluid spilled from the mouth and Dahak held the thing at arm's reach, so as to keep his long pantaloons free of such offal. 'Where is the body?'

'Not...' croaked the priest's dead tongue. '...here... taken.'

'What?' A hiss of rage followed and black talons squeaked through fibrous bone. 'Who has taken the Pretender's body? When?'

'Persia...' The head sighed, more fluid spilling from the mouth and staining the prince's hands. 'Shapur the Young took him... away.'

'Shapur?' Dahak stared at the leaking head in dismay. 'Shapur the Manichean?'

The head tried to nod, but could not. The leprous radiance dimmed in the eye sockets and Dahak's face contorted into unbridled rage. His fist closed with a convulsive jerk and the skull shattered into fragments. Spitting furiously, the prince cast the bits and pieces away. As they flew, black flame enveloped them and only dust sifted to the ground.

'Curse him, curse the child and all his debased house!' Dahak turned slowly, blazing eyes sweeping across the dumb stone faces of ancient kings and gods. They did not amuse him, these stiff Ptolemies and weak-faced animals grafted to human bodies. The prince stalked among the rumpled shapes of the dead priests, searching for another whose cranium was intact enough to question.

After a moment, he sighed in despair. The gaatasuun had been swift to satisfy their hunger.

'All this effort, for nothing...' Dahak leaned against a wall, suddenly weary. The vast effort of revivifying the tomb-lost dead and drawing them forth from the ground, sending them in crashing, endless waves against the Roman walls, imbuing each dead husk with enough of a spark to motivate hands and legs, began to tell. The prince stared around, feeling defeat leech the strength from his body. 'We have taken an empty coffin—only dust and worms and vermin hiding in the walls.'

He pressed a hand across his eyes. They burned with fatigue and even the thin, greenish sunlight slanting down from high, close-set windows hurt. So much time wasted. The Sema empty and my agents will have to search the length and breadth of Persia for the Pretender... An old, half-heard voice emerged from black, turgid memory. Shapur raised a great edifice at Taq-I-Bustam—perhaps he hid the body there—I will send the Shanzdah to shatter mountains and cast down cliffs to find out!

Dahak rose, face set, the moment of weariness past. His will asserted itself, banishing weariness and despair alike. Eyes narrowing to burning slits, he turned his attention outward, sending his thoughts winging across the leagues to the west.

Where are my faithful ones, he asked the void. Have they found our other prize?

Faintly, the Shanzdah replied, feeling his will searching for them. We are here, they called.

Dahak frowned again. He caught a sense of limitless emptiness, of heat, of fist-sized black stones lining a narrow track winding between desolate hills. The first of the Shanzdah was walking, leather boots sliding in fine sand. Where are you? Where is the duradarshan? Where is Lord Shahin?

We failed, came the cold reply. Dahak snarled silently, feeling nothing but truth reaching across the leagues to him. The Romans were here—and the witches helped them—they