“By his Sign shall you know him!” he screamed, his voice reverberating unnaturally around the small room. “The Feaster from Afar wishes to receive me! The heralds come to transport me to the Nameless One’s majestic presence! Iä! Iä! Hastur n’ah Hali! Ygnaiih, thflfthkh’ngha! Iä Yogge-Sothothe!”
The inhuman syllables that tumbled from Rafferty’s mouth were accompanied by an earsplitting whistle that emanated from the bone tube clasped in the effigy’s hand, as if it were being blown by unseen lips.
Lwazi’s spear tumbled from his grasp. He was forced to clap his hands over his ears to try and block out both the piercing whistle that drove into his brain like an iron spike and Rafferty’s chanting, the strange words making his skin crawl and stomach churn.
“Yogge-Sothothe y’bthnk! N’grkdl’ly eh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah! Iä! Sh’tak erklos!”
His warriors were similarly affected. Two fell to their knees under the terrible onslaught, and Sizwe stumbled into a bed and was sent sprawling to the floor… but the floor he landed on was not the smooth wooden planks of the hospital, but gray stone covered with a thin layer of fine black sand. All about them the room shifted and faded. The walls and ceiling disappeared, revealing a landscape that resembled no part of Africa, or anywhere else on Earth. The Zulus and Rafferty now stood on a sandy plain, a few miles from a vast, irregular cluster of huge, cyclopean towers that loomed against a deep yellow sky. Some of the towers were taller than the highest mountains of Zululand and yet were unfeasibly narrow for their height, and possessed curves and angles that should have been impossible for a construction of stone. This forest of bizarre monoliths stretched across the perfectly flat horizon as far as they could see, and in every other direction there was naught but an endless expanse of desolate desert. The landscape was illuminated by two ominous black discs that hung high above in the yellow sky — with mounting dread, Lwazi recognized the twin suns that were the mark of H’aaztre’s demonic realm.
As he stared at those baleful, alien suns, a flicker of movement caught Lwazi’s eye — four shadows broke away from one of the taller towers and soared through the sky like birds on the wing, growing larger as they drew nearer. The terrible whistle and chanting persisted, but the approach of what could only be enemies spurred Lwazi into action. Gritting his teeth against the sounds assailing him, he snatched up his iklwa and tried to rally his men.
“Sons of Shaka! The enemy comes! We must be ready to fight!” Lwazi called out as loudly as he could, but his voice was lost among the cacophony of the bone whistle and Rafferty’s foul paean.
“Yogge-Sothothe ngh’ aaa! Iä! Iä! Radagastrask cetos sihn! Ceddi-ak tribh Azathoth!”
The young warrior had no time to try and rouse his companions again, for the creatures of H’aaztre were almost upon them. They were of roughly human shape, but there was an insectoid quality to their black, chitinous hides, while their long necks and hideous heads owed more to a foul crossbreed of vulture and lizard. Huge, leathery, bat-like wings carried them aloft, and as they swooped down toward the beleaguered Zulus they brandished wicked claws from the end of each malformed limb. Lwazi threw himself to the side to evade the creature that plummeted toward him, but the other Zulus were still incapacitated by the mind-wrenching shriek of the bone whistle and easy prey for H’aaztre’s demons. As Lwazi regained his feet, he was splattered by a fountain of blood and viscera as one of the monsters drove its claws into Sizwe’s stomach and ripped the veteran warrior in half. The other two Zulus fared no better, and were torn to bloody ribbons by the bat-winged horrors before they even had a chance to fight back.
Having to watch the gruesome deaths of such fine Zulu warriors was the last spark Lwazi needed to ignite the ancient fires that burned deep in his indomitable soul. At that moment all distractions fell away. He no longer heard the whistle or Rafferty’s profane liturgy. It did not matter that he stood before an alien city beneath twin suns that no human eyes should behold. He did not care that he faced twisted demons that served an evil deity which had been feared by his people and their forebears for millennia. All that mattered was that he was a Zulu warrior, a proud Son of Shaka, with his iklwa in hand and enemies before him.
“USUTHU!”
Lwazi’s first thrust drove his spear straight into the chest of the creature that had slain Sizwe. The iron blade shattered its carapace, splashing purplish gore from its belly to its vulture-like neck. Lwazi’s left hand snatched his knobkerrie from his belt, and he slammed the stout wooden club into the snapping, fang-filled protrusion of the creature’s maw with a bone-crunching thud. The thing crashed to the ground in an ungainly tangle of limbs and wings, surely dead, and its fellows flapped a few yards away from the enraged Zulu, howling a weird, undulating cry as they went. Perhaps the creatures were not used to their victims fighting back, and so were surprised by Lwazi’s onslaught, but no human reactions could be read on those otherworldly faces. If they were caught off guard they quickly rallied, and with fangs and claws bared, they swept down upon him.
Lwazi met the charge head on, chopping his iklwa downward like an axe while thrusting his knobkerrie forward. The razor-sharp edge of the spear sheared through the left wing of one of the demons, slicing the appendage clean off at its shoulder, and the outstretched bludgeon crunched into the center of its torso. The monster was sent sprawling in the black sand by the thrust of his club, spraying more purple blood from its ruined wing. Lwazi was confident the beast would not rise again, but by focusing his attack on one opponent he had left himself open to its kin. He managed to parry one claw swipe with the shaft of his iklwa, but another raked across his ribs, leaving three deep, bloody runnels in his flesh.
His instinctive reaction to the pain was to lash out, and in doing so he rammed his spear-point into one of the monsters’ elongated necks, almost severing its head. Lwazi hopped backward and adopted a defensive posture to face off against the last of the creatures. The proud warrior did his best to ignore the searing pain in his torso, in the same way he was blotting out Rafferty’s chanting and the bone whistle’s malevolent shriek. The Englishman was now a good twenty yards from where Lwazi stood, still clutching the idol of H’aaztre to his chest as he continued his incantation. The last of the flying fiends was between Lwazi and Rafferty, and, judging by its stance, the Zulu reckoned it was trying to protect the wooden statue and its bearer… but then the thing’s hideous head swung toward the distant city and it once again let loose with its bizarre, wailing cry.
Lwazi followed the creature’s gaze, and to his despair he saw dozens of black shapes slip free of the dark towers and soar into the yellow sky — reinforcements were on the way, far more than he could hope to overcome. But then he realized that the winged horde was the least of his concerns — some of the towers were moving. At first he thought that a cluster of about a dozen of the tallest structures had begun to collapse, but he quickly understood that they had in fact started to writhe and squirm against the horizon with an undeniably organic movement. Those towers were alive, like the gigantic appendages of some unspeakably huge nightmare that lurked just over the distant horizon — a nightmare that had now awoken.
“The Feaster from Afar comes!” screamed Rafferty, his jubilant voice crackling with madness. “Ngh’h’yuh! Hastur Iä! N’ah Hali yaa!”