8 – The Khondoka Resolute

None moved at its cessation, standing still and expectant.  Blade lowered the pipe from his lips and looked at it with confusion writ large across his long face.  For all that had happened, he had expected more as a result.

And Nazaara laughed, mockingly, sending it into the faces of those who stood against him.

“Is that it, Meryti-Senefer?  Did you expect such music to melt my heart?  I am beyond that, and now these two shall die and all of your plans come to ruin.”

“Not so.”

The voice cut through the cavern, a strong and proud voice, stern of demeanour and unwavering in its confidence.  All turned to look to whence it had come, from the direction back to the chamber where Meryti-Senefer lay in her ice bound sarcophagus.

A man stood atop the rise that led down into the part of the cavern, in a hauberk of glittering bronze scales, the sword in his hand shimmering bright silver, reflecting the light so that it fractured and gleamed.  He wore his black hair in long braids and his dark face bore a sense of nobility that would shame kings.  From the ridge he began a slow, purposeful walk down the slope towards them.  Appearing after him, one by one, came the other warriors of distant Kurushu that had guarded Meryti-Senefer, woken from their long, cold sleep by the Song that had rung through the deep places of the earth.

“We are Queen Meryti-Senefer’s Khondoka, her right hand and shield,” spoke the first warrior.  “From our births we were raised for this moment, for all of our lives we trained and strove with but one purpose.  Willingly we accompanied her to this place to share the long sleep.  Now we have awoken to the Song.  Now we will end this, spawn of darkness.”

“You think you can end me, mortal swine?” Nazaara snarled.  “I am endless, above you, beyond you.”

The leader of the Khondoka raised his sword in challenge.  “Then face us and test yourself.  We do not fear you, or the empty threats in your misbegotten words.”

The Khondaka began to spread out through the cavern, forming an arc before Nazaara, ringing the beast in with their bright swords.  It appeared to Blade, as he backed away to give them and their swords room in which to engage Nazaara, that the beast seemed hesitant in the face of their fell determination.

Then the beast roared its defiance and leapt to the attack, scything its claws in two great arcs to try and catch the men off guard.  They were alert to the attack though, and in perfect synchronicity their swords came up, blocking the blows.  Nazzara howled in rage and drew back its arms, as if they had been stung by the touch of their swords.

As its resolve wavered, the warriors pressed home against it, taking their swords into the fray.  They glittered bright as they sung through the air, biting into the arms and legs of Nazaara, each slicing deep and true before sliding free again.

Pain filled Nazaara’s howls at the cuts, and it flailed about with desperate abandon, trying to drive off its persistent assailants.  One of the warriors of the Khondoka took a stray blow across the side of his head and he was flung backwards by the impact of it, his sword falling free from his grasp.  Even before he struck the ground the glacial cold had taken him, freezing him solid.  Then a second man went down as a claw slashed across his chest, tearing open his hauberk as if it had been but cloth.  The rest pressed on, unmoved by the losses, unwavering in their resolve, their only focus being on bringing down the beast before them.

Peregrine, loath to be excluded from any fight, dashed across to where the sword of the first fallen warrior lay and picked it up.  Spinning about, she leapt once more into the fray.  The rents on Nazaara’s body were already deep, yet they did not bleed blood, but cold mists that evaporated as they hit the air and a chill that touched icy upon their skins as it played across them.  Even as she reached the fight, a third warrior went down as he pressed his attack on Nazaara.  The sword he had swung remained lodged deep in the beast’s side, quivering, though no frost touched the blade as it had done with Fianna’s short sword.

Nazaara, hurting like it had never done so before in its aeons of existence, pulled back away, trying to avoid the sting of the deadly bright blades that lashed at it, yet the Khondoka did not relent and the warriors followed after it, forcing it back further still.  In desperation it raised a clawed hand into the air above its head and clenched it tight, while at the same time snarling out a word of sharp, discordant edges.  It staggered the warriors as it tore through the air, assaulting their minds with a cacophony of sounds, buying the beast a few moments of time.

The clenched fist slammed down into the ground with titanic force, splintering the ice beneath it and sending fractures radiating out across the ice sheet from the point of impact.  Jagged spikes of hoarfrost punched up from out of the fractures, rippling along them to form dense walls that hindered movement, standing taller than all there bar Nazaara.

“I sense Nakhataway’s cursed hand in this,” Nazaara growled, taking advantage of the walls to recover from the assault.  The sword in his side was wrenched free and cast to the ground.  “His black soul knows far too much of what it ought not, knowledge stolen from those his superior.  He is not here to save you though.”  Striding forward, Nazaara burst through one of the walls, into a section in which two of the warriors had been trapped, cut off from their fellows.

Peregrine, walled in with the leader of the Khondoka, could only beat futilely at the wall with the hilt of her sword, trying to break through in an effort to aid the two men as they faced off against Nazaara, yet to no avail, for the wall defeated her attempts.  Swords sung as the two warriors silently fought on, attempting to sell their lives as dearly as they could.  In such tight confines as they found themselves, they had little room in which to manoeuvre and little space in which to defend themselves.  That hindered their resolve not at all, as they threw themselves boldly at Nazaara, fighting as a tight knit unit that could only come about from years of training together.  As one blocked the beast’s blows, the other launched slicing attacks that cut deep.

When the end came, it came with the suddenness of a bolt of lightning from out of a cloudless sky.  As a sword struck Nazaara, the icy monster did the unexpected, catching it in one clawed hand.  It gripped tight around the blade, despite the pain that it caused, and hauled on it.  The wielder, caught off guard, stumbled forward, only to be met with a raking claw from Nazaara’s other hand that ended his resistance.  His remaining companion stood alone against Nazaara, and knowing that his options were limited, the end at hand, he launched a sudden, desperate assault on Nazaara, all thoughts of defence abandoned in an effort to cause what damage he could.  High and low the blows came in, whistling through the air with scything flicks of the wrist.  For a moment Nazaara was forced backwards under the onslaught before adjusting to the assault, willingly taking a blow so that a fist could slam through non-existent defences.  The defiance ended in a frozen instant.

Nazaara laughed mockingly, pushing over the frozen statue of the Kurushu warrior so that it toppled to the ground.  Though rent with many cuts and wounds through which the mists bled, the beast still possessed unnatural strength and endurance, backed by a malicious will.  Though the swords could hurt it, it had tasted the best that the warriors could bring and it felt confident that victory would soon be its.  A moment it waited, savouring the expectancy of victory before turning to face the next walled off segment, the one in which Peregrine raged, trapped alongside the leader of the Khondoka.  Beyond them, cut off, were the remaining six men, while Blade remained outside, unable to do aught else but to watch the doom unfolding.

Nazaara stalked to the ice wall and rested hands atop it.  Slowly it began to crumble away the wall, tearing it apart with its hands.  Peregrine looked across to the Kurushu warrior trapped with her and nodded, a grim, wolfish smile on her lips.  Then she set herself, steely eyed, muscles coiled like a tiger ready to pounce, and waited.

At last a gap appeared in the wall and Nazaara thrust his way through, only to be met by Peregrine as she leapt, screaming defiance with all the resolve of her wild blood.  Her sword slashed deep across Nazaara’s wrist, sending spraying forth the ethereal white misty blood.  Nazaara howled at the strike, pulling back its hand.

Then the Kurushu warrior strode to the fore, and purposely took up position in the breach Nazaara had torn in the wall, blocking the path through.  He raised his sword to hold it horizontal to the ground before his face, forming a shield of steel.

“You end here, scourge of the benighted void.  I, Kayemba of Masambe, Blood of the Khondoka, pronounce this doom upon you.  Cast down you shall be, into the dark beyond where never more shall your foul taint be able to trouble men.”

The power and sense of belief in which he spoke caused even Nazaara to take a step back.  Then the beast snarled and shattered a large portion of the raised wall with an enraged blow.

“You pronounce doom on me?” Nazaara howled, pounding at the wall again.  “I am the bringer of dooms, the Curse of Khumuna, the one who feasted upon the blood and souls of kings.  The only doom that shall be here this day is yours.”

Kayemba stepped back from the breach in the wall in response, lowering his sword so that the tip rested upon the ground.

“Then bring me your dooms,” he challenged boldly, “For I fear neither them, nor you.”

Nazaara roared in hate at the defiance and charged, bursting through the gap in the wall of ice.  Head lowered, the vast bulk of the beast thundered forward, direct for Kayemba.  The warrior stood his ground, unmoving, as the charge bore down upon him.  Only at the last second did he throw himself aside, dropping down to one knee and spinning, his sword slicing as he did so, right across the back of Nazaara’s leg, biting deep.  Nazaara stumbled, both from the blow that had struck him, and from Kayemba avoiding the collision, slamming into the ice wall opposite.  It shattered as the bulk of Nazaara crashed through it, to fall heavily to the ground, surrounded by the warriors who had been trapped behind the wall.  In an instant they were upon the beast, hacking down with mighty hewing blows, raining steel and chopping large frozen chunks out of the body of it.  Nazaara screeched and thrashed, trying to avoid the cuts while at the same time attempting to stagger back up to its feet, even while the warriors kept at it, trying to keep it down.

Barely had Nazaara reached hands and knees than Peregrine came charging through the shattered wall, leaping through the air to land boots first upon its back.  Such was the shock of the unexpected landing that it forced Nazaara to crash back to the ground, its face driven into the ice.  Before Peregrine could adjust her footing and balance, Nazaara rolled over in an attempt to dislodge her.  Forced to jump, Peregrine landed lightly away from the fallen beast, spinning to face it once more.

Kayemba strode through the gap, his face ablaze with fires indomitable.

“Now this ends,” he pronounced.  He jumped up onto Nazaara and ran along its body so that he could stand above the giant, leering face and look down upon it.  Black eyes flared wide as Nazaara saw Kayemba coming, the bright sword held high in a double handed grip, ready to plunge down.  The beast snatched at Kayemba in an effort to distract him but Kayemba ignored it and drove the sword down, plunging it right into the fanged maw of the beast, right down to the hilt.  Yet even as the strike slid home, a clawed hand closed around Kayemba’s body, squeezing tight.  The tall black man smiled at the last, with grim satisfaction, his grip still locked firm upon the sword’s hilt, as the cold overcame him.

Nazaara twitched for some time, claws scraping long grooves across the ground.  Peregrine and the remaining Kurushu warriors withdrew, watching as Nazaara at last succumbed to the blow that Kayemba had given his life to deliver.

With the last twitch of the body, Nazaara let out a long exhale of breath, and upon it there came a low wailing.  Wispy mists accompanied the wails, a long cloud of them that kept emerging.  The body started to collapse in on itself as if the mists were drawing the substance from it until at last, reduced to a mere shell, the body crumbled into nothingness, leaving just the wailing mists that lingered above where it had lain.  The walls of ice that Nazaara had thrown up to impede the warriors also began to crumble and collapse, shards breaking off as they began to cascade to the ground.

When at last all that remained was the cloud of mists, a wind began to stir the air, picking up in strength as it blew in from the chamber that held Meryti-Senefer.  It snatched at the mists, tugging at them and fraying them as they sought to retain some form of shape.  The mists were dragged across the cavern by the wind towards where the shimmering chill that had been Nazaara’s prison still hung.  A despairing wail sounded as the mists were sucked into the chill, cut off as the last part of it vanished within.  Then the cold light of the prison flared bright and sharp before it collapsed back in on itself with a dull thud, all sign that it had once hung their vanishing.  A strong blast of wind erupted outwards, buffeting at those watching.  They struggled to hold their footing as their air swirled backwards in the resultant storm.

The storm ended just as suddenly as it had begun and silence fell upon the cavern.  A slow drip of water began to fill the silence as the deep chill that froze the air vanished and the ice started to thaw.  The bodies of the warriors slain by Nazaara now lay free of the ice that had held them, yet dead they still remained.  Those warriors of the Khondoka left standing each took up the body of one of their fallen companions and started to walk back towards the chamber they had come from.

“Wait,” Blade called out as he set off after them.  “I have much that needs answering.”

Peregrine rested a hand upon his shoulder.  “Let them go,” he told him.  “The time for questions will come, but for now the dead must be honoured for their sacrifices.”

As the warriors disappeared from sight, Peregrine collected the swords belonging to those who had fallen from where they had been left on the ground.  Once she had them all at hand, she strode after the warriors with Blade, back up the rise.  As the pair descended down the other side, towards the frozen pool, the cavern began to shake, accompanied by a long, tortuous groaning.  Fractures touched the surfaces of nearby ice as they were jolted by the shocks.

“I do not like the sound of that,” Peregrine stated, a deep frown forming across her brow as she looked up towards the ceiling.  A coating of dust and crystals of ice drifted down to settle upon them.  To her mind, it was better to have a clean death in battle than to be trapped beneath the ground to slowly waste away, or to be buried alive beneath a rock fall with no means of escape.

They hurried as best they could over the uneven ground that was thickly coated with ice, reaching at last the large chamber they had first entered.  There they found the warriors returning their fallen brethren to the positions in which they had been before they were awakened.  Silently Peregrine offered them the swords she held, and these the warriors placed back in the hands of the dead.  Then, just as silent, the remaining men knelt down once more, drawing their swords and planting them point down before resting their foreheads against the pommels of the swords.

No sooner had they done so than fingers of ice crept up out of the ground and started to climb up their bodies, encasing them once more in ice.  Peregrine raised a hand in salute to them.

“Brave men,” she stated.  “If they had been of the Aedring then their deeds would have been sung of down the years, never to be forgotten, and doubly so for Kayemba.”

Blade let out a melancholy sigh.  “I do not think that we shall get any answers now.”

“Pray tell, brave ones, what is it that you wish to know?”

The pair turned at the unexpected arrival of the voice, one that came from a woman speaking an archaic form of Metsheputi, one that they had some trouble in understanding.

The woman stood behind them, framed by the doorway that led back into the caves where Nazaara had been imprisoned.  That she was Meryti-Senefer they had no doubt, for she stood exact as she had lain in the sarcophagus, from the gilt and pearl laced robes of azure blue, to the jewels that dazzled about her body, and her unmistakable beauty.  Yet she stood not before them in flesh, but as a pale shadow, one translucent to the eye.  As they took it all in, another groan sounded and the chamber once more shook about them.

“Speak quick, for not much time remains to us.  The enchantments that long bound this place are fraying and can no longer hold back that which should have been.  Our lingering here is coming to an end.”

“The beast,” Peregrine stated bluntly, before even Blade could get a word in, “Is it dead?”

“A creature of its kind can never truly die, yet it is as much as can be.  It has been cast out, never more to trouble the world of men, as long ago we sought to do.”

“There is something that I do not understand,” Blade added slowly, casting a surreptitious glance towards the ceiling, where the spiders were stirring, disturbed by the shuddering of the earth.  “If you had the means of defeating it in the distant past, why then did you not do so?  Why wait until now?”

“We did not possess the Song,” Meryti-Senefer explained.  “Our plans were laid forth in such a way that the beast could not uncover them, and yet time was running out before we could put them all into action.  So I took it upon myself to become the vessel to contain Nazaara.  In a bid so that he could not break free and disrupt those plans, we sought out the cold places so far from the lands of my birth, where no man yet dwelt.  Here, through enchantments and incantations, a great sleep was laid upon me, and those selected to guard me.  While I slept, Nakhataway was to set forth to seek out the Song that would not just awaken my guards, but to undo Nazaara, in a manner so subtle that not even the beast would be aware that death could now claim it.  I do not know what happened to Nakhataway so that he could not bring the Sing here himself, nor why it took so long to occur.”

The tremor that shook the chamber after her words had ended struck harder than any that had come before, and went on for much longer.  The ground pitched and rolled beneath their feet as if the earth itself was drunk.  The air filled with groans and the cracks of splintering ice.  The shaking sent great slabs of ice crashing down around them, to explode upon hitting the ground.

“Go now,” Meryti-Senefer told them, her translucent form slowly fading away until all that remained were her words.  “You do not have much time remaining.”

Then she was gone, leaving the chamber trembling, the sounds of the tortured earth ringing about.

“There was still more that I wished to know,” Blade lamented.

“There always is,” Peregrine replied, grabbing him by the arm and starting to haul him away from the sarcophagus.  “You heard what she said.  We must be going.”

With a last, regretful look, Blade turned and began to run, chasing after Peregrine who had already loped away, heading for the doors that led back out into the tunnel.  As he ran out through the iron doors, huge slabs of ice began to detach from the walls, carrying webs and spiders with them, plummeting to the ground, blasting air and debris out into the tunnel to buffet at them.  Along the tunnel they ran as the roar of crashing ice echoed around them.

“We’d best hope that the far door is not still closed,” Peregrine called out above the din, “Else we will be trapped like rats when all this comes down into ruin.”

Blade said nothing, concentrating on running and keeping up with Peregrine.  His lungs burned from both the effort and the cold air, and pains stabbed through his side, yet any thought of stopping for a rest was dismissed as fresh tremors shook the ground.

On to Chapter Nine – Flight Across Cold Waters