Master of Death

Chapter Nine

Nagashizzar

(Year -1151 Imperial Calendar)

Nagash was dead.

W’soran stared at the remains of the throne, and the deep, black score marks that covered it. The throne had been crafted from large blocks of stone and sections of petrified wood and lined with the bones of beasts and men. Still-glimmering strands of abn-i-khat shot through the stone, casting a sickly illumination over the floor all around it. Nagash’s corpse was missing, perhaps taken by the skaven his minions had reported were mobilising in the antechambers and lower levels of the citadel. With the Undying King dead, the ratkin were readying themselves for war once again. Too, the dead of Nehekhara, raised from their slumber by Nagash’s Great Working, would soon be banging on the gates, looking to separate his flesh from his bones. Without Nagash’s will to bind them, they were as much the enemies of the remaining inhabitants of Nagashizzar as the vermin that seethed in the depths, or the orcs howling in the slave pens.

W’soran hissed and thumped his head with balled-up fists. He glared about him at the throne room, at the flagstones of black marble and the wide columns, covered in elaborate and grotesque carvings, which loomed upwards to meet the arched ceiling. It had seemed so magnificent, the first time he’d seen it. Now, it seemed facile and empty, as if Nagash’s death had drained away the malevolence that had once been imbued in the stones and columns.

‘How,’ he muttered. ‘How could this have happened?’ How could Nagash have been felled? How could a god… die?

No answer came to him, in the vastness of the now-abandoned throne room, but he knew, regardless. Nagash hadn’t been a god. His claims to the contrary, and all hubris aside, it had become increasingly clear to W’soran that Nagash was many things, but a god was not one of them.

Would a god have had to bargain with the ratkin? Would a god have taken such pleasures in the torture of a mere mortal, as Nagash had Alcadizzar? That Nagash had not allowed him to extract the price of his stolen eye from Alcadizzar had been a disappointment; he had gorged on the fallen king’s pain like a flea, keeping it all for himself. W’soran closed his eyes. And would a god have denied his truest servant, in a fit of pique?

He went to the throne and traced the gouges. A tingle of magic — ugly and acidic in nature — coursed through his fingertips. He pulled his hand back quickly, flexing his fingers. He could see it in his mind’s eye. Nagash’s final moments had likely been swift ones. That was the only way he could have been overcome, with speed and ferocity. W’soran had considered it himself, in those private moments in recent months, when he was far from Nagashizzar.

The attacker had probably taken him as he sat slumped, exhausted after his Great Ritual. That would have been the perfect moment, and Nagash had known that. Why else would he have sent them all — W’soran, Arkhan and the others — from Nagashizzar while he did it?

He saw his master now for the paranoid creature he truly was. Nagash had been afraid of them all. He had been afraid of their power, afraid that they might usurp his much-vaunted dominion of the dead. He feared that once more the usurper would be usurped and tossed down by his followers.

W’soran had returned first. He had felt Nagash’s death reverberate through the winds of magic and the pain had nearly driven him mad. The tattoos of obedience that Nagash had scratched into his flesh had burned like acid and he had nearly toppled from his palanquin into the Mortis River. Carried on a cloud of scarabs, he had returned to Nagashizzar to find the dead there toppled at their posts, and ratkin swarming the corridors, armed for war.

He glanced around, at the pathetic, smoking heaps that marked the final moments of a number of the latter. They had attacked the moment he arrived, and he had been sore pressed for several confusing moments. The pain of Nagash’s death had disorientated him, and Nagashizzar, once a place of safety and strength, now seemed menacing, like a beast that had slipped its leash. Without Nagash, Nagashizzar crouched ready to serve a new master.

‘Master,’ Zoar said, stepping into the throne room. ‘The ratkin have retreated for the moment. We have revivified a number of the citadel’s guards, but we require your might to bring them all back from the dark vale.’ The Yaghur looked tired. W’soran had left his acolytes behind when he’d made his sudden journey, and they’d pushed themselves hard to catch up. Undead as they were, the magics they’d used still drew on their strength and will, something none of them had in abundance. W’soran chose for certain qualities, and initiative and endurance were not among them.

‘I am coming,’ W’soran said, examining his hands. Slowly, his fingers curled into fists. ‘We have much to do, and the night slips by.’

‘What are we going to do, master? What will we do now, with the Undying King… taken from us?’ Zoar asked. Nagash had been a certainty for the Yaghur for centuries. Zoar and his brethren had been shaken to their core, no less than W’soran, by the destruction of Nagash. If they could know fear, they did so at this moment.

W’soran looked at Zoar. ‘What will we do?’ he asked. ‘Anything we want, Zoar, for Nagashizzar is ours, as of this moment, and Nagash’s empire with it!’

The Worlds Edge Mountains

(Year -290 Imperial Calendar)

‘We welcome you, oh speaker of the dead,’ Shull, High King of the Draesca, wheezed, his white-haired head bowed beneath the weight of the tall, bat-winged helm he wore. He sat slumped in a throne constructed from wood and the bones of a great cave beast, killed by some ancient tribal champion in the mists of history. Bronze braziers stood to either side of the throne, their flames both warmed and lit the lodge-house that served as Shull’s palace. It was mostly empty. A great fur rug covered the floor before the dais that held the throne, and rough benches lined the path to it.

In normal times, the sub-chieftains of the Draesca would sit on those benches, as their high king welcomed official guests. But these were not normal times, and W’soran was not a normal guest. He stood before the throne, cloaked and hooded, with his face hidden by the bronze mask he’d worn as high priest of Mourkain’s Mortuary Cult, and inclined his head.

‘And I give thanks for that welcome.’ W’soran examined the old man carefully and could see the weight of unnatural years that clung to him. There was a cruel power in the helm the old man wore; W’soran knew this, because he’d put it there. The metal helm was as much a vampire as the man who’d created it, and no high king had yet lasted longer than seven years wearing it. ‘Many have forgotten me, in my exile,’ he continued. ‘Many have turned from the ways of the charnel fields, and the teachings of the Mortuary Cult, in these dark times.’

‘Not the Draesca! Never the Draesca, my lord,’ the high king coughed, bending forward to hack up a spatter of blood onto the rough-hewn planks that made up the floor of the lodge-house. ‘The Draesca hold tight to the old ways,’ he continued thinly, gesturing to the great berths that marked the walls of the structure. In the berths sat the dusty, shroud-wrapped bodies of the previous chieftains. W’soran could practically taste the flicker of dark magic nesting in each of those corpses, like maggots in a wound. ‘We hold tight to our ways and our mountains both,’ Shull croaked, and a darkling power flared deep in his sunken eyes. He was on the sixth year of his reign, and his body was weighed down by decay and nearing death. ‘Thanks to you, my lord,’ he continued, essaying a gap-toothed smile.

The Draesca inhabited the mountains of the northern fringes of Strigos, and the south of the Draka and the Fennones. They were a large tribe, made of dozens of feuding clans, and ruled by the high king, who was chosen by tribal coronation. Neferata had gotten her hooks into the other tribes early, but the Draesca had been W’soran’s the moment he had forged their helm of kingship for them.

There was a part of him in the helm, even as there was a part of Nagash in the crown that now occupied Ushoran’s head. It had taken him centuries of research and failed experiments to create the process that had gone into the forging of the helm. It had not been an idle whim.

He had known from the first what black presence squatted brooding beneath the crude pyramid that Kadon had built and Ushoran usurped. Ushoran had as well, though he had not truly understood. But W’soran had. What he had not known was how it had gotten where it was, many hundreds of miles from where it should have been. Those last few days in Nagashizzar, in the wake of Nagash’s destruction, he had scoured the citadel for any sign of the crown. It had been the symbol of Nagash’s authority, and somehow, Nagash had sealed a portion of himself — of his essence — into the black iron. It was that shard of the Undying King that had drawn first Ushoran and then the others, one by one, to Mourkain.

It was a strange sort of immortality, but one that occupied W’soran’s thoughts more and more. Somehow, some way, Nagash had defied the utter destruction of his physical shell. Some small, but steadily growing shard of him was anchored to the world by the crown. And like a burrowing insect, it had found both shelter and sustenance in the masters of Mourkain; first Kadon and now Ushoran.

Yes, it was a peculiar sort of immortality. It was a bodiless eternity, existing as pure intellect, until settling within another shape, usurping bodies as he had the throne of Khemri at the beginning of the whole sad history of things. And W’soran desired to know just how he’d done it. Thus, he’d created the helm of the high kings for the Draesca.

‘I merely sought to lend aid to the faithful,’ W’soran said smoothly. Shull’s frame quivered, racked by shuddering coughs. And I wanted to see if I could improve upon Nagash’s artless craftsmanship, he thought. He did not see his own eyes staring back at him from within Shull’s, though that didn’t bother him overmuch. After all, had Nagash’s crown possessed its raw, mad sentience before his doom had fallen upon him in the form of a crazed Alcadizzar? ‘Your people have prospered since I last journeyed to these lands, oh mighty chief-of-chiefs. It pleases me to see it.’

He had taken a small contingent and gone north from the Badlands, after breaching the ring of protective fortifications that blocked the high pass, to take the lay of the land himself. His were the only eyes he could trust. He’d left Ullo in charge. Melkhior had not been happy, but W’soran had seen little reason to abet his acolyte’s delusions of military prowess.

In fact, he was beginning to wonder if it might not be best to remove Melkhior from the field entirely. Like all Strigoi, he fancied himself a warlord in the offing; in the first tentative raids they’d made into the fringes of Strigos, he’d relied less and less on his magics, and more and more on his sword-arm. A muscle unused soon withered, W’soran knew.

Not that one more or one less apprentice mattered; W’soran had begun collecting a new coterie of acolytes as he travelled around the edges of Ushoran’s crumbling empire. Itinerant shamans and exiled hedge-witches had found new homes and new purpose beneath his wing. That was ostensibly his reason for visiting the Draesca who, above all the other tribes, birthed men with a great capacity for controlling magic. Among them, he’d find a number of willing apprentices. Part of him wondered if it were due to the helm… whether it corrupted them, even as the crown had the Strigoi.

Besides his scholarly interest, the Draesca were one of the few fonts of information about what was going on in Ushoran’s lands available to him. His old spy network had been systematically dismantled or re-purposed by Ushoran in the months following his flight. And before the next stage of his plan could be enacted, he needed to know how things stood.

From the Draesca he’d learned about orcs proliferating once more in the eastern reaches of Strigos, and of the internal revolts within the Strigoi settlements along the Skull River. He’d learned that the tribes in the Vaults and the Black Mountains were attacking all along the Strigoi frontier. The empire was fluid at the best of times but it had become positively porous since the last time W’soran had been within its boundaries. The Draesca were among the largest of the tribes of the western heights, and they had taken to warring regularly with their fellows. It was a very encouraging picture, all things considered — Mourkain’s belly was exposed and the empire of Strigos was ripe for the plucking.

‘We have had nothing but good fortune since you made us this gift,’ Shull said, reaching up with trembling, liver-spotted fingers to stroke the grotesque gargoyle skull carved on the front of the helm. ‘We are unassailable, and invincible. The ancestors themselves ride to war with us, bringing death and terror to our enemies.’ He gestured to the berths and the bodies therein. ‘The tribes of the lowlands shudder in their lodges when we descend upon them with fire and sword.’

W’soran nodded and said, ‘And what of your relations with Mourkain, High King?’ The Draesca had been included in those early negotiations centuries before, when Strigos had begun trading dwarf-crafted weapons to the mountain tribes in return for unmolested trading routes and aid against the orcs that filled the mountains like toadstools. Since the fall of the Silver Pinnacle, the dawi had slammed their doors against the men they shared the mountains with, even as they waged incessant war with the greenskins, who seemed drawn to the burrows of the under-men with a passion that W’soran found alarming. The battles between the stunted ones and their enemies stretched across the mountains, sweeping up any unlucky enough to be caught in the middle. More than one tribe of hillmen had been extinguished, caught between the immovable object and the irresistible force.

Shull spat a glob of blood to the floor. ‘That for Morgheim,’ he croaked. That was the name the mountain folk knew Mourkain by. It meant ‘place of death’, which, W’soran supposed, was as accurate a title as any. Shull went on, ‘It is a sick beast, staggering on two legs to its dying place. The wild men of the far hills carve portions from its hide daily, and the Great Red Dragon cannot be everywhere at once.’

W’soran’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Abhorash. The champion had been given the nickname not long after his arrival in Mourkain, and it suited him. He was certainly just as arrogant, not to mention just as dangerous, as one of those semi-mythical beasts. ‘So it is true, then…’ he murmured. Part of him had suspected that Neferata’s agents had been exaggerating.

‘They say you have gone east, lord,’ Shull said. ‘That you serve under the banners of the Bloodytooth and that he is the true hetman of Mourkain.’

‘Oh? And who says this?’ W’soran asked.

‘The Handmaidens of the Moon, oh speaker of the dead,’ a sibilant voice purred. ‘And we would know.’

Thin, elegant shadows detached themselves from the darkness behind Shull’s throne, and W’soran cursed himself for not having noticed them earlier. The Lahmians were slender creatures, with eyes like lamps in the darkness of their cowls. There were three of them and they wore the thin robes of the followers of the hill-goddess Shaya. That was another of Neferata’s innovations.

One threw back her hood, revealing crimson tresses and a feral beauty. ‘I am Iona,’ she said.

‘I know who you are,’ W’soran said.

‘Oh? I was not aware that we were acquainted.’

‘Not you personally, but one of you is as much the same as another,’ W’soran said stiffly. The others were slowly circling him, like a pack of lionesses on the hunt. He tensed, wondering if they intended to attack him here. Had they been waiting for him? Had Neferata come to the obvious conclusion, when her handmaidens failed to return, and when Vorag had not launched an invasion of Strigos? The scar on his chest tingled painfully, and he remembered the thrust of the wood and the darkness of the jar. Ruthlessly, he pushed down the twinge of hesitation.

‘The handmaidens carry word from one tribe to another,’ Shull said. ‘Even as they have since the time of the first high king, Volker Urk-Bane.’ He coughed into a clenched fist, and Iona stepped to his side, as if concerned. ‘They bring us joyful tidings, my lord. They give hope that the tyrant who rules Morgheim will soon be staked out for the birds, and that a true king, and friend to the tribes, will rule.’

W’soran stepped back, trying to keep the Lahmians in sight. His escort were outside, waiting for him. He’d brought only living men with him, reasoning that it would make travel easier and less noticeable, and, if worse came to worse, he could butcher the lot and raise them. Now he was regretting it. The Strigoi warriors, tough as they were, would not provide much obstacle for the Lahmians. And his new apprentices were untested, and far too ignorant for his liking. For a moment, he wished he’d brought Melkhior with him, rather than leaving him behind.

‘Do they? How curious. I’d heard nothing of that, though I do indeed serve the Bloodytooth,’ he said. He glanced to the side, at the berths, and reached out with his mind to fan the embers of dark awareness in the mummified Draesca kings to life. ‘Perhaps the handmaidens are not as all-knowing as they claim.’

‘Or perhaps you are not as much in the confidence of the Bloodytooth as you think,’ Iona said softly. ‘Perhaps your services are no longer necessary. Perhaps the Bloodytooth requires better advisors than withered old priests.’

‘Will you allow your guest to be insulted, High King?’ W’soran demanded. Neferata knew. He could feel it in his bones, in the barbs that edged the words of the Lahmians. She knew and she was angry. It had been foolish to think that he could infiltrate these mountains without alerting her. She had eyes and ears in every lodge-house and yurt from the lands of the daemon-worshippers to the Vaults. Once again, he’d allowed his impatience to get the better of him. Now he was once again forced to deal with her petty distractions.

Shull blinked owlishly on his throne. ‘What?’

‘You are tired, High King. The burden you bear is heavy,’ Iona murmured, and W’soran could hear the hypnotic thrum in her words. She reached out to stroke the old man’s cheek and he trembled. How long had they been soothing him with soft whispers and gentle words? ‘Sleep now, and let us speak with your guest.’ She shot a venomous look at W’soran and walked over to him as Shull sagged in his chair, his eyes closed. ‘He is dying, you know. Your magics are eating him up from the inside out,’ she continued, in a low voice.

‘There is a saying… something about eggs and breaking them,’ W’soran said. ‘It is of no matter. He is mine, hag. The Draesca are mine. I can do as I wish with them. You are not welcome here.’

‘We do not require your welcome or your blessing, old monster,’ one of the other Lahmians hissed, exposing her fangs. ‘We require only your scalp, preferably wet.’

‘Assassins, then,’ W’soran said mildly. ‘How boring — I had thought better of Neferata. I had thought she might have more pressing affairs, what with Vorag’s absence from the field.’ He grinned beneath his mask. ‘How is that working out for her, by the way? As I recall, she was always something of a poor general.’

The Lahmian who’d just spoken hissed and struck, bounding towards him with impressive speed. Iona threw out a hand and shouted, ‘Varna — no!’

Varna’s claws tore through W’soran’s robes as he spun away from her. The third Lahmian leapt for him then, and her blow tore the mask from his face. He slapped her aside with a snarl. Varna’s claws tore across his back and he staggered.

From outside the lodge-house came the screams of men and horses. W’soran whirled towards the doors, his good eye blazing with anger. He could smell spilled blood and death. It had been a trap after all. He glanced at Shull. The old king still slumbered; whatever the hags had done to him still held.

Varna came for him again and his rage lent him strength. He caught her wrists and slammed her into the benches. He turned, robes flaring, and saw Iona speeding towards him, her feet barely seeming to touch the floor.

‘We did not come here to kill you, old monster, despite Varna’s impetuousness,’ she said, easily dodging his wild blow. Her fists crashed against his belly and shoulder, staggering him. She bounced out of reach and fell into a strange serpentine stance, arms raised and legs bent.

‘Cathay,’ he grunted, rubbing his shoulder. The blow hadn’t — quite — hurt. ‘I see Neferata has learned the fighting arts of the war-monks of the Bastion.’

‘Priestesses — women — should not be seen carrying blades,’ Iona said. ‘We did not come for your life.’

‘Then why did you?’ W’soran asked.

‘She wants to see you. She requires your counsel.’

‘Then let her come see me. I’m sure she knows by now where I reside.’

Iona made a face. ‘She has doubts as to your hospitality.’

‘As well she should,’ W’soran growled. ‘Did she ever tell you the jar story?’ Iona frowned in puzzlement. W’soran went on, ‘She once stabbed me and stuffed me in a jar. It was an experience one does not easily forget… or forgive. But I did try. I offered her palaces and power undreamt of and she turned on me again. She has tried to kill me numerous times since. And now… now she wants to see me? Now she asks for my counsel?’

He gave a bark of laughter. ‘No. She just wants to stuff me in another jar. But here is my counsel, regardless… huddle in your tomb. Close the doors. And leave the world to your betters, oh queen of dust and bones. This war does not concern Neferata. It never has. The sooner she realises that, the better.’

Iona did not react with anger. She inclined her head and said, ‘It was not a request. Our people have taken yours, by now. You are alone, and we will take you to the Silver Pinnacle in chains, if we must.’

‘Try, by all means.’ W’soran spread his arms with a smile. As the three Lahmians closed in on him, the dead kings of the Draesca sat up as one. There had been almost forty kings in the years since he had first gifted Volker with the helm, and their bodies had been wrapped tight and packed head to foot in the berths in the walls. They had been interred in full ceremonial panoply, with bronze breastplates and winged war-helms, and the best weapons of their tribe, whether sword, axe or spear, had been strapped to their hands. Now, they moved and shifted, ancient armour creaking and squealing as they dropped to the floor, mummified faces contorted by rictus snarls and their ancient majesty and brutal authority bound to W’soran’s will. Almost forty wight-kings, made stronger in death than they ever had been in life, turned their faces towards him, eyes blazing like will-o’-the-wisps.

The three Lahmians had frozen in shock as they suddenly found themselves surrounded. ‘What-? ’ Iona asked, eyes wide.

W’soran took a moment, savouring their sudden confusion. ‘Chains, was it?’ he asked. ‘Did you think me a jackal in a trap? That this place, amongst the entirety of these pathetic mountains, would be the place to attempt to take me? I told you… these people are mine. Dead or alive, they belong to me. I wonder — am I hurting Neferata by killing creatures as foolish as you, or helping her?’ He looked at the wights and raised a hand. ‘They grow tiresome. Kill them, mighty kings of the Draesca. Kill them for your master.’

Weapons, ranging from crude rust-splotched iron affairs to ornate dwarf-wrought blades and axes decorated with ceremonial inscriptions, were drawn with a collective hiss as the wights turned towards the trio of vampires and began to advance. W’soran stepped back, off to the side. Eager to see the carnage as he was, he thought he might be needed outside. It was becoming something of a habit, this disposal of Neferata’s pets. Perhaps it was time to see to her once and for all.

He reached the doors even as the first wight struck. One of the Lahmians screamed. He thrust the massive oaken double doors open with a single shove and examined the pigsty beyond. He clucked his tongue as he looked around the courtyard. Shull’s palace was located at the top of the uppermost barrow, and heavy paving stones marked the descent down from the upper courtyard, where the most important warrior lodges were located, to the bowl-shaped depression amongst the barrow fields below, where the bulk of the population of the settlement resided.

To call the main settlement of the Draesca a city, was to befoul the term. It was barely a town — squatting lodges and huts, occupying a series of descending and expanding plateaus, huddling behind a series of rough palisades, and the smell of cooking fires and unwashed bodies thick on the evening air. The Draesca had built their city on the barrows of their ancestors, carving themselves a place in a hill of burial. Even the lowest palisade rose above the hummocks of earth and stone that held untold generations of Draesca dead. The air, water and soil were saturated with the stuff of death. The people lived with it. They marched to war with their ancestors and their homes were built on bones and barrows.

Nonetheless, they were not noticeably quick to join the great majority. The Lahmians had struck with commendable swiftness, while the Draesca watched. His men, whom he’d left on the lower plateau, were dead or dying, all save a tiny knot of warriors who had sought refuge in one of the warrior lodges that spread out in disorganised fashion in a semi-circle around Shull’s laughable palace. One or two of his prospective apprentices lay dead as well. The others were with the Strigoi, watching the approach of the Lahmians with horrified awe through shattered wooden walls and tatty fur windbreaks. There were only six of the Lahmians, and in as many minutes, they had butchered three times their number.

‘And to think, Neferata once accused Ushoran of being profligate with our gift,’ he said, loudly. ‘Six little scullery maids, all in a row.’

His voice echoed down through the courtyard. The Lahmians below were not clad in robes, but in travelling leathers and piecemeal armour. In helms and cloaks, at a distance, human eyes might mistake them for men. Up close, there were too many curves and too few scars. They turned like hunting hounds at his call, their gear spattered with blood, their jaws agape and their weapons dark and dripping.

W’soran clapped his hands together, once. ‘Well then, little maids. Here I am. Come and get me,’ he said. They did so, and in a rush, moving like quicksilver blurs up the stairs. They came at him from all sides, closing in too swiftly for his eye to follow.

Even as they drew within a sword’s length, the ground beneath them ruptured and split, disgorging the dead. Bony talons clawed the air and gaping skulls bit blindly. The moment he had set sandalled foot on the ground, his magics had seeped down into the loose soil, caressing the closest dead into semi-awareness. Besides the honoured interred of the tribe, there were also mass graves at the entrance to every lodge-house, where enemies of the Draesca were buried alive in order to bring good fortune to those who resided in the lodge. These skeletal horrors, wrapped in roots, rags and chains, burst from their pits to grapple with the surprised vampires and drag them down into the churning dirt. One alone managed to avoid the clutching hands, and she hurtled towards W’soran, blade scything out towards his neck.

His palm brushed aside the blade as the talons of his free hand buried themselves in his attacker’s throat. He met her doomed gaze with one of amusement and gave a chortle as he twisted and yanked, tearing out her throat in a spray of black ichors. The body toppled past him as he stepped daintily aside and started down the stairs. The other vampires were tearing themselves away from the dead, albeit slowly. They would be free soon enough, however. W’soran paid them no heed. He clasped his hands behind his back as he walked.

‘It should come as little surprise to you, or your mistress, that I am not a worldly man,’ he called out, over his shoulder. ‘I know little of spying or politics. But I do know quite a bit about faith. I was a priest once. I was a speaker for the dead, a preparer of corpses and a master of the mortuary rites. I prepared the dead for their final journey to the gods, and saw to the proper sealing of tombs. I buried poor men and rich men, powerful men and weak. All were equal in death, I thought. Foolishly, as it turned out. Even the dead have their own hierarchy.’

He stopped before the crumpled bodies of the men who would have been his apprentices. Even in death, their bodies so much cooling meat, there lurked a kernel of dark magic within them. One had been the shaman of a hill tribe, and still wore furs that stank of dark caves and bat droppings. The other had been a hedge-witch, surreptitiously plying his trade on the fringes of settlements. Both had had the potential to be something greater. W’soran had smelled it in them, and he found it almost insulting that they had been so casually slaughtered before achieving that potential.

At the top of the steps, the doors to Shull’s palace were torn from their hinges by the flying body of a Lahmian. Iona had struck them with crossed forearms and she spun about, landing in a crouch, her snarling features pointed towards the wights that pursued her. She was bloody, but seemingly unbowed. Yet another failing of Neferata’s teachings — her creatures did not have the good sense to know when to give up.

He turned back to the bodies. With an almost gentle gesture, he raised a hand over them. The essences of the two dead men rose at his motion, seeping through the rents and gouges in their mutilated bodies like smoke through the slats of a burning hutch, to coalesce beneath his palm in two swirling spheres of absolute darkness. Yes, there had been great power in them, waiting to be unlocked and honed. And that power was frustrated and angry. He let slip a bit of his own magic to join theirs, and the spheres bulged and bristled, forming twin shapes, quite unlike anything he’d seen before. Then, he had never before tried to draw forth the spirits of slain magic users.

There was a hideous beauty in the slow flowering of the nightmare shapes. He could feel them drawing strength and substance from the stuff of death which inundated the town, in a way that was at once familiar and strange. Smoky shapes that might have been bones or serpents or something in-between roiled within the masses.

‘Fascinating,’ he murmured, watching as the shapes writhed in the air before him, changing and stretching. A surge of curiosity snapped through him, as strong in its way as his thirst for blood. He had been too long away from his laboratory and library, too long away from his alembics and tomes. He thought of the entombed Lahmian, Layla, and blind, mad Iskar. He’d ordered the skaven to be fed regularly on gruel made from its own kind, laced with abn-i-khat, and the result was an impressive longevity. Layla, on the other hand, was rotting on the vine, kept alive only by his good graces and the vat of skaven blood he’d ordered her submerged in.

As he thought of one Lahmian, a second almost killed him. Only the hiss of parting air alerted him to the passage of the blade. He whirled and struck her wrist with bone-splintering force, knocking her sprawling. Even as she fell, however, Iona lunged to take her place, red hair wild and knotted with gore. ‘Murderer,’ she snarled. He stumbled back as she struck at him with her palms and feet, bending and snapping and spinning so fast that it was all he could do to avoid the blows. ‘Monster,’ she growled, dropping low and kicking his legs out from under him.

He fell atop the bodies of his late followers. Behind Iona, two more Lahmians approached. Their sisters, including the creature called Varna, looking decidedly the worse for wear, were busy holding off the wights. W’soran squirmed back, chuckling. ‘If I am a monster, I am not alone, little maid,’ he said.

He looked up, at the ethereal shapes coiling and twitching above him. They looked like nothing so much as rag-clad bones wreathed in smoke. He flung out a hand. ‘Kill them!’ he bellowed. He had no idea what sort of spirits he had conjured. Now was as good a time as any to see what they were capable of.

The two rag-clad phantoms shot forward, spiralling through the air towards the Lahmians. Iona, quicker on the uptake this time, leapt to one side. The two following her were not. One was jerked into the air by bony hands like a toy. She screamed as her alabaster flesh puckered and blistered at the touch of the thing. A gout of frigid air burst from her open mouth and a hellish frost formed on her limbs and face, even as her struggles weakened. The other suffered a similar fate, her flesh blackening with an impossible cold, and her hair cracking and falling from her scalp in brittle lumps as she was dragged into the air and wrapped in fluttering rags and rattling bones.

‘Oh my,’ W’soran said. Lost for a moment in the beauty of his new discovery, he sat on the ground and clapped his hands like a gleeful child. His excitement was interrupted by a savage thrust from the Lahmian whose wrist he’d shattered. Her sword carved a red trail across his scrawny chest and he fell back and bent beneath the blade as it hooked around, biting for his neck. He scrambled backwards like a spider, his crouched body crooked unnaturally as the Lahmian tore the ground in pursuit, skittering after him like a mongoose on the trail of a serpent.

With a creak and a pop of old bones he bobbed to his feet just in time to avoid another palm-strike from Iona, who spun about him, catching him in the shoulder, elbow and knee with a further flurry of swift blows. She moved like one of the cruel apes of Ind or one of the Dragon-Emperor’s pet water-snakes, always gone by the time his eyes reached the last space she’d occupied. The natural speed of a vampire, coupled with the deadly skill of a war-monk, made for a lethal combination. A hand held flat like a blade skidded across his cheek, opening the dry flesh to the bone, and he staggered. The sword of the other Lahmian kissed his spine and he gave a cough of pain. He had to get clear of them, to give his newest creations a chance to come to his aid.

Moving swiftly, he trapped the thrusting sword beneath his arm and threw himself forward, tearing it from its owner’s grip. The Lahmian staggered and W’soran seized the opening, whipping the blade about in a wild but powerful blow, almost severing the other vampire’s head from her shoulders. Iona gave a cry as her sister fell and dived towards him. A crackle of sorcerous lightning flung her back before she could reach him. He watched her tumble to the ground, hissing in pain, and then turned back.

Shull stood in the doorway of his palace, a hand raised, and his eyes alight with a weird glow. He looked even closer to death than before, and his ceremonial armour hung from his shrivelled frame. Nonetheless, his crooked, arthritic form radiated a terrible power. Shadows snapped and surged around him like pennants caught in a strong wind and the wights had formed about him like an honour guard.

‘I beg your forgiveness, my lord. The whispers of my beloved brother-kings awoke me from the cursed slumber these witches placed upon me.’ Shull’s glowing eyes fell upon Iona. She had clambered to her feet, and Varna and the other surviving Lahmians had joined her. ‘The Handmaidens of the Moon are no longer welcome in the lands of the Draesca. You have proven false, and dead or living you will find no friends here.’

His words echoed strangely across the settlement, slithering through the oily air and alighting in the ears of every watching tribesperson like bats seeking a roost. Weapons were drawn, and looks of grim determination replaced the previous expressions of fear and worry.

W’soran stepped away from the Lahmians, and grinned as Shull continued. ‘Wherever you go in our lands, the hand of every man will be turned against you, for this betrayal. You are accursed and I bid you go and trouble my sight no longer.’

The Lahmians hissed, and one — Varna — made as if to launch herself at Shull. But Iona grabbed her shoulder, halting her. She looked at Shull and inclined her head. ‘Let it not be said that the servants of the goddess of mercy and moon do not heed the commands of kings. We do not go where we are not invited.’ Her gaze switched to W’soran. ‘This could have been avoided, old monster. Now… it is war between us.’

‘Were you under the impression it was ever anything but?’ W’soran said. He exposed his fangs. He laughed. ‘Neferata and Ushoran both think they are entitled to rule this fallen world, one by blood and the other by delusion. But they are wrong,’ he called out to the Lahmians as they took their leave. ‘Only one among our accursed crew is fit to rule. Tell her that, little maid. Tell her what her old counsellor has said. Tell her that W’soran has decided to take what he is owed, and that the debt to him will soon be repaid in full and in blood!’