Master of Death

Chapter Thirteen

The City of Magritta

(Year -1017 Imperial Calendar)

W’soran lashed out with his blade, decapitating the guard and sending his body spinning aside. ‘Onward,’ he shrieked, gesturing for his acolytes and the dead legions that followed them to advance after him as he stormed up the great marble steps of the Temple of Myrmidia.

The very stones of the city of Magritta howled in agony as his undead legions stormed through the streets and washed the sun-baked bricks with blood. On his right, Zoar tore the head from another temple-guard and lashed the ranks of panicking city militia with sorcerous fire. The Yaghur howled with laughter as he killed men by the dozens.

W’soran raced up the stairs, brushing aside the guards in their archaic bronze armour and robes. He had spent the past three decades killing many such men — in Araby, Tilea and now Estalia, where he was known as Nourgul the Wamphyro. The gods of Nehekhara might be dead and dust, but there were newer gods with newer wisdoms, and W’soran wanted them. He had spent the years since his expulsion from Lashiek hunting secrets. Nagash, he knew, had learned some of his wisdom from the druchii. They had bargained dark secrets for sanctuary, for all the good it had done them, in the end.

He had run across several members of that race in his hunt. None had been particularly forthcoming, but he had gotten what he needed regardless. As he would claim what he desired this time, even if every follower of this paltry hill-goddess thought to stand in his path. He had defeated the silent stranglers of the Black Oasis in Araby, and slaughtered the corsair-witches of the Sartosian reefs to claim the secrets they guarded, and he would do the same to these so-called Myrmidons. It was said that the Temple of Myrmidia housed one of the greatest libraries in the known world. It was a storehouse of knowledge, and W’soran intended to plunder it.

A warrior met him as he ascended the last stair, leaping heroically to the attack, his wide-bladed spear sliding across the surface of his shield in a screech of metal-on-metal. W’soran caught the head of the spear and flung it to the side, even as his blade crashed into the guard’s shield. The man staggered back, off balance, and W’soran lashed out with a kick. Metal buckled and the warrior was flung backwards. He slumped against the doors and let his dented and crumpled shield roll free of his grip. With a groan, he drew the short, leaf-shaped blade sheathed at his hip and staggered to his feet, sword in one hand and spear in the other.

W’soran gave him no time to recover. He lunged beneath the spear thrust and batted aside the short sword, and sank his fangs into the man’s thick neck. With a twist of his head, he ripped out the guard’s throat and sprang over the body as it fell. The doors had been blown off their hinges by an earlier sorcerous blast, and he easily stepped inside.

The central forecourt of the temple was massive. Vast marble columns rose upwards, holding up the great domed roof. A giant statue of the goddess herself stood sentinel in the centre of the forecourt, leaning on a shield and clutching a heavy spear, an eagle on her shoulder, its wings fully spread. Her eyes seemed to glare down at W’soran and he grinned.

A phalanx of at least fifty Myrmidons awaited him, shields raised and spears lowered. They were clad in bronze cuirasses and greaves, and wore full-face rounded helms topped by flaring horse-hair crests. As one, they stepped forward in tight formation, as if to drive him back through the doors.

‘Oh no, I’m not leaving without what I came for,’ W’soran hissed, acknowledging their intent. ‘I didn’t raise every pox-ridden corpse between here and the northern coast just to get chased off by a bunch of bully-boys.’ He gestured, pulling tight the strands of dark magic that swirled about him like an infernal halo. The spirits of the dead, some from the marshy barrows he’d discovered near Magritta and some newly wrenched from their cooling bodies, billowed through the open doors and washed over him, roiling and splashing silently towards the Myrmidons.

The Myrmidons met the rushing wall of ghosts with silent stoicism, even as many of their number fell and died and joined the spectral throng. They pressed forward, ignoring the dead, and men from the rear rows moved to fill the gaps in the front ranks. By the time they reached him, barely a third remained, but impossibly, they did not stop.

W’soran gaped, nonplussed, but then swept his sword out and spat a flurry of incantations. Black lightning jolted from his eyes, punching holes in the phalanx, and sorcerous fire engulfed men. The ghosts tore at the rest, but still, they came on. The first spears reached him a moment later, driving at him with cruel inexorability. Desperate now, he slashed out, chopping through them. Shields struck him, pushing him back. He was stronger than any man, any dozen men, but nonetheless, they forced him back towards the doors, even as he cursed and railed.

Zoar came to his aid, followed by those of his acolytes who were at the forefront of the battle. The vampires hit the phalanx like a thunderbolt, tearing through it and giving W’soran the room he needed to use his full strength. Soon enough, it dissolved into red ruin, as men died where they stood, trying to prevent the vampires from entering their temple.

W’soran stepped over the bodies, gore dripping from his armour and skin. ‘Shut those doors. I want no interruptions,’ he barked, gesturing behind him without turning. He met the goddess’s marble gaze and laughed softly. ‘It’s mine,’ he said.

‘Perhaps — then again, perhaps not,’ a deep voice murmured.

W’soran hissed and turned. Abhorash, clad in bronze mail and a cuirass emblazoned with the face of the goddess, stepped from around the statue, holding a heavy spear. Behind him came his Hand, the four vampires spreading out around their leader. Each was arrayed in a similar fashion, though they carried swords rather than spears.

‘What are you doing here?’ W’soran sputtered.

Abhorash didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he looked up at the statue of the goddess. An expression, wistful and sad, crossed his hawk-like features. Then, he smiled slightly and looked back at W’soran. ‘Repaying a debt,’ he said, simply. Then, he tossed the spear up, caught it easily and sent it hurtling, point-first, towards W’soran’s heart.

The Worlds Edge Mountains

(Year -265 Imperial Calendar)

Strigoi arrows bit into W’soran’s lines as they marched towards the enemy where they crouched in among the thick scrub trees. The broad heads of the arrows crunched through bone, dropping his dead soldiers where they marched across the frost-covered open ground. Spines and skulls burst at the point of impact, or were simply obliterated by the heavy catapults that lined the ridge above the trees. A large rock crashed down nearby, burying a group of skeletons, and he flinched slightly in his saddle. His will pulsed and a troop of mounted corpses, clad in heavy, dwarf-forged mail, thundered towards the war-engines. Normal riders and normal horses would not have been able to make it up the slope, but for dead men it was no more difficult than open ground.

His forces had crossed the mountain passes that divided the edges of the Strigoi Empire from the territory nominally controlled by Vorag a fortnight before, and this was the first time he’d been able to bring the barbarians to battle. They’d set their scouts and flankers to draw his forces into the bowl-shaped valley amongst the smaller peaks of the mountains on the eastern border of Strigos and he’d obliged them, despite gleaning their intent. They’d set a trap for a jackal and caught a mountain cat. He did not know where they were exactly — he left such pedestrian matters to Ullo and the others — but he knew they were close to Mourkain. He could practically follow the buzzards.

His grand strategy was playing out to perfection. Patience and cunning had won out over bloodlust. He had bided his time, stalling and reining in his more over-eager followers, waiting until his enemy’s attentions were overwhelmed by the myriad threats besetting him. Ushoran was surrounded by snapping jackals — Neferata, renegades in his own court, the wildling tribes and the orcs — and he was unable to prevent the approach of the mountain cat that would tear out his heart. Strigos was a dying beast, stumbling towards its final stand, and W’soran would deliver the killing blow. Smiling, he looked out over his army, the tool by which he would extract Ushoran’s heart.

As ever, there were no living men in his forces — only easily biddable bones and dead meat filled his ranks. Skeletons clad in armour or scraps, mounted on equally bony steeds or on foot, marched or galloped at his direction. War machines crafted from fossilised timber and the bones of great beasts flung heavy stones; swarms of scuttling half-things, part spider, part skaven, part scorpion and goblin, crafted in his laboratory and animated by his malice, swarmed towards the enemy. The bones of great giants, clad in patchwork mail and bearing armoured howdahs across their shoulders holding ranks of skeletal archers. Massive mockeries of Nehekharan ushabti, created from boiled and congealed flesh and the bones of ogres and orcs, loped forward, wielding crudely forged khopeshes and monstrous bows. Overhead, the corpses of ancient carrion birds of immense size cut through the darkly overcast sky alongside fluttering clouds of bats, and the gigantic cousins of the latter swooped low over the Strigoi lines, plucking men into the air to drain them of blood or simply tear them to pieces. All these things and more trudged, marched, stomped and slithered through the melting snows and dust of the field, at his command, and the commands of his acolytes.

‘Their left flank is crumbling,’ Arpad howled gleefully, suddenly riding past him, a train of mounted skeletal horse archers following in his wake as he made his way to where the fighting was the thickest. ‘Ullo has that preening fop Gashnag on the run, sorcerer! The day is ours!’

W’soran waved a hand to indicate that he’d heard. He had expected as much, but his attentions were on the right, where several of his acolytes duelled with those of Morath. There, the battle was going worse. His students were masters of the death-winds, each worth a handful of Morath’s disciples, but they were outnumbered here. If W’soran seemed to never have enough students to hand to accomplish what he desired, Morath seemed to suffer from a surplus. For every one of W’soran’s, Morath had three. Then, the Strigoi needed many necromancers to do what a single one of W’soran’s minions could accomplish with a wave of a claw.

The two groups of necromancers were at a standstill, and the dead caught between them, frozen in the midst of the fray. The Strigoi had dragged their own dead to their feet to meet W’soran’s corpse brigades, and both groups of dead men trembled where they stood, pinned by the opposing magics. Controlling the dead was all a matter of will, and bending them to yours. It required discipline, focus and patience as well as raw force. W’soran’s followers had the latter in excess, but the former were alien concepts to many of them. They had been barbarians when he’d given them the gift of immortality, and they were savages still.

But strength alone could make the difference in struggles like the one playing out before his eye. Discipline frayed, patience fractured, and focus crumbled before overwhelming strength. As he watched, one of his students, a former shaman of one of the Vault tribes called Niscos, extended a hand, as if pushing against a great weight. A zombie jerked and staggered, taking a step towards one of the Strigoi, who made a complicated gesture. The zombie twitched and bent around, reaching towards Niscos.

Niscos bared his fangs and clenched his hand into a fist. The zombie whipped back around, body rupturing with the force of the motion. Bones cracked and shattered and its skin bubbled and tore as it lurched towards the Strigoi. The Strigoi stumbled back, waving his hands. The zombie staggered on, unheeding, shoved forward by Niscos so forcefully that it began to shed pieces of itself. It seemed to explode as it crashed into the Strigoi, its jaws clamping shut around the man’s throat. Niscos gave a whoop, and his concentration wavered.

W’soran winced as the Strigoi’s companions made Niscos pay for his inattention — a dozen corpses fell on the vampire, bearing him down. Shattered bones stabbed into his flesh, seeking his heart. Niscos howled and backhanded a corpse, sending it spinning head over heels into the air. W’soran let his gaze drift towards the other combatants. If Niscos survived, he would have learned a valuable lesson. If not — well, he could be replaced, eventually.

Similar scenes played out all around the duelling necromancers. A group of skeletal spearman shivered to dust as two opposing wills sought to control them, and a number of fresher corpses simply burst, as if they’d been left out in the sun too long. Broken bones shaped and re-shaped themselves in complex, chaotic geometric patterns as the two groups of necromancers sought to employ them. Missiles crafted from chattering skulls hurtled across the battlefield and cages and traps made from stripped flesh and cracked bone fastened themselves about the unwary. Black fire washed across a number of corpse-constructs, unravelling them as they lumbered forward. For a moment, W’soran wondered whether he would need to become involved.

When he caught sight of the wolf-tail standard of the king of the Draesca bobbing over the fray, however, his concern faded. Chown, the latest to bear the weight of W’soran’s gift, was a more vigorous battle-sorcerer than Shull had been. W’soran’s keen gaze found the necromancer-king easily enough. Chown was burly, even with the weight of years clinging to him, and he was wreathed in the stuff of death as he rode at the head of his ancestors. A mace made from the skull of an ogre whirled in one hand as he crashed into the Strigoi lines, and he beat an enemy vojnuk down from his horse with a smash from his heavy shield.

The dead kings of the Draesca charged with him, wielding the weapons they had used in life. Shull was there, his mummified skull split in a silent howl as he swept his sword out to lop off the head of a rider before he rode down a frantically gesturing enemy necromancer. Morath’s students would find their petty magics availed them nothing against the wight-kings. They were too much at one with the stuff of death to be controlled by any but a master of the Corpse Geometries.

He grunted, satisfied that the Draesca could bolster the flagging flank. His attentions switched to the centre, where the ranks of Strigoi spearmen waited, unmoving. Living men these, and seemingly disinclined to attack his silent ranks of skeletal soldiers. He wondered whether they had grown used to the dead in the intervening years, or whether their fear had only grown worse from the proximity.

‘Why aren’t you moving?’ he hissed, trying to gauge whether it was cowardice, or strategy. Then he caught sight of movement in the enemy’s rear — men, falling back and fleeing into the tree-line. Cowardice then — not unexpected, given how hard his forces had been pressing those of Strigos.

In the years following their attack on his watchtowers and border forts, W’soran had moved rapidly, striking multiple points at once and driving the invaders from his territory. His legions marched unimpeded across the frontier, burning and pillaging as they hammered the Strigoi lines, driving them back again and again. The Strigoi had gone from being on the offensive to being on the defensive, and quite rapidly. One by one, their forces crumpled and fell back, streaming through the crags and bowers of Ushoran’s domain.

It had been surprisingly easy. Ushoran’s forces outnumbered his, but Strigos’s defences were stretched thin. Wild tribes of men and orcs continued to attack the frontiers, and undoubtedly, Neferata was taking advantage of the situation in some fashion. Nonetheless, it was easier than he’d expected. And that worried him. But not enough to make him stay his invasion — the time had come.

Eventually, he knew, Ushoran — the thing that Ushoran had become — would have to face him. Nagash could never abide a direct challenge. Ushoran, possibly, but not Nagash. It was just a matter of applying the right amount of pressure. He leaned forward over the horn of his saddle, watching the Strigoi centre disintegrate. With a whisper, he set the ranks of skeletons standing before him to advancing. It was just a matter of pressure. What a torturer did to the body, a general did to the enemy army. It was a simple thing, taken in that regard, and he wondered that he had never before seen the simplicity of it.

The assassination attempt had been the signal, he now knew. It had been obvious — obvious! Ushoran was a wolf in a trap. W’soran wondered whether he could feel himself slipping away, to be buried beneath the black soil of the crown’s thoughts. He thought perhaps that Ushoran did, and that the attempt on his life had been a desperate ploy to end his threat obliquely. Perhaps Ushoran thought it a way to circumvent the crown’s prodding and pushing, and to stave off the inevitable.

The lines of the living gave way before the relentless march of the dead, and W’soran urged his horse forward with a slight smile. ‘Pressure,’ he murmured and gently clasped his amulets. Soon, he would need them. They would give him the power he needed to confront his old friend and rip him from his perch. A moment which was approaching swiftly — the Strigoi were retreating all across the frontier, falling back before his followers, the ragged remnants of their armies returning to Mourkain, ceding territory to the invaders. Horns blew, catching his attention.

He twisted in his saddle, and made a sharp motion. His bodyguard formed up in a protective phalanx. The wights wore heavy armour and had, in life, been chieftains of those tribes that W’soran had beaten into submission in the Vaults and the other nearby ranges. Now, in death, they served him as an imperial guard more than a hundred strong, ready to carry him through the fires of war to inevitable victory.

The horns belonged to the Strigoi, of course. In the tangle of battle, a group of riders had become separated from the rest, and they were galloping hard for their receding lines as his skeletal horsemen harried them. They crashed into the rear of his lines and he hissed in annoyance. The lead rider wore the black armour of Ushoran’s personal guard, and his snarling-visaged helm was decorated by trailing streamers of coloured cloth.

W’soran reacted quickly. At his silent command, the dead began to shift position, to encompass the riders. There was little sense in letting them reach safety, especially if the one in the lead was, as W’soran suspected, the enemy commander, Gashnag.

‘And won’t it be nice to see him again, eh?’ he muttered to himself as his steed charged. He leaned forward in the saddle, and his bodyguard spread out around him, smashing aside their own forces at his command. He could always resurrect them later, after all.

He straightened in his saddle as they closed and gave a ringing shriek. It was answered by several nearby packs of ghouls, all clad in primitive armour and adorned with coarse tattoos and brands. They wielded rough weapons — femurs with blades hammered through them, maces crafted from skulls, and crude digging implements repurposed for battle. Among them were several of the large war-ghouls of his own creation, and it was these beasts who answered his call and chivvied forward their smaller pack-mates. They loped towards the riders at W’soran’s cry, seeking to cut them off.

W’soran caught up with them a moment later. He jerked his mount to a trot as his wights thundered ahead, crashing into the enemy. When a hole had been punched through their ranks, he let his mount lunge forward through it. His sword licked out, lopping off the top of a rider’s head, and then he was face to face with Gashnag.

He’d been infamous among the court for his vanity and a maddening obsession with Cathayan silks and foreign trinkets. A slim creature, golden-haired and prone to fits of poetry, he’d nonetheless earned a reputation as a fierce duellist and ruthless killer. That was one of the reasons that W’soran had seen fit to employ both Gashnag and his cousin, Zandor, as his agents against Neferata’s machinations in better times. Zandor had perished at the Silver Pinnacle, but Gashnag seemed to have come into his own. His heavy helm had been struck from his head, and his hair was unbound, whipping about his thin face. His armour was black, but edged in gold and of fine craftsmanship. Intricate scenes from Mourkain’s history had been engraved on his cuirass and his pauldrons bore grimacing devil faces. His eyes widened as he caught sight of W’soran.

‘You,’ he snarled. His sword snapped out, hissing as it sliced the air. W’soran easily avoided the blow, jerking back in his saddle. Their mounts circled each other as they traded blows, their blades crashing together. ‘Traitor,’ Gashnag shouted.

‘Opportunist,’ W’soran corrected, scoring his opponent’s cuirass with a swift blow. Gashnag grimaced and aimed a slash at W’soran’s head. W’soran interposed his blade and pressed the blow aside. ‘If Ushoran put you in command, I must say I made the right decision. Not quite like those epic poems of the glorious wars waged by ancient Strigu, eh, Gashnag?’

They spun apart. The wights continued to fight with Gashnag’s men. Gashnag jerked his mount around and the horse smashed into W’soran’s bony steed. W’soran squawked as the other vampire slashed the straps of his saddle. He toppled from the top of his steed with a distinct lack of grace and crashed to the ground. Trapped by the thicket of stomping hooves that surrounded him, he instinctively curled into a ball, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Nevertheless, sharp-edged hooves struck him and he crawled through the mud, trying to get clear.

A pair of hooves thudded down on his back and pain rippled the length of his spine. The hooves lifted, and W’soran flung himself onto his back, hands out-thrust. He spat a guttural stream of words and the rearing horse squealed as javelins of purest darkness pierced its belly and chest. It toppled like a cut tree, carrying Gashnag to the ground with it.

W’soran rose. He winced as his spine popped, realigning itself. Gashnag kicked his way free of his dying mount and rose to his feet, hands twitching as he sought the sword he’d dropped. Then he thrust out a hand and barked strange syllables. The air seemed to ignite and W’soran stepped back as his robes caught fire. Hissing in anger, he swept his arms out sharply, snuffing the fire. ‘That’s a new trick,’ he said.

‘I’ve got more than that,’ Gashnag said. ‘Some of us are not fools, old man. And sorcery isn’t so difficult when you’ve got centuries to learn it in.’ Then, as if to twist the knife, he added, ‘And Morath is a much better tutor than you ever were.’

W’soran snorted. ‘You always were an arrogant fool, Gashnag.’ Gashnag gestured and more fire splashed across the air mere inches from W’soran’s face. Behind him, the corpse of his steed flopped over and twitched. ‘Sorcery is not a bludgeon, it is a scalpel.’ The horse’s hide split, peeling away, and its carcass opened like a flower as bones and organs uncurled and spread. Gashnag shouted crooked words, trying to hook the winds of magic to his will, to pierce W’soran’s mystical defences. ‘It is a subtle art, requiring skill and will in equal measure — neither of which you possess in any great quantity.’

The flopping horse-flower fell upon Gashnag with a convulsive heave, hunks of flesh and chains of bone wrapping about the vampire’s limbs. He yelped in surprise, and turned. He tore at the thing as it bore him down. Spears of splintered bone punched through his shoulder and belly, piercing his mail with sorcerous strength as slithering organs sought to tighten about his head. W’soran watched intently, his hands clasped before him.

‘To manipulate the winds of death requires the temperament of an artist, and the patience of a philosopher. Any fool can learn to bark a few incantations, if his blood is sour with the stuff of dark magic. Ushoran’s bite might have given you the ability, but you will never know the true power of it all,’ he said, raising his arm. The effluvium of the battlefield rose at his gesture — blood and offal swirled about him in a foul cyclone. The bodies of Gashnag’s men twitched and jerked, rising. ‘Not even Morath will know, for he is too frightened to see. He fears the power, when he should embrace it.’

Howling ghosts rose from the blood-soaked soil, both ancient spirits from battles centuries old and the recent dead, and sped towards W’soran. He glanced at them, seeing the black strands of magic which bound them to a trio of approaching riders. They bore the tattoos of the Mortuary Cult, and they wore flapping furs and bronze skull masks. They galloped towards him on their stubby Strigoi steeds, gesticulating and shouting, racing to Gashnag’s aid. Gashnag tore at the thing holding him captive, struggling to get free, as the spectral host surrounded W’soran and slid over him like shadows, unable to reach him thanks to the swirling cloud of battlefield detritus. W’soran looked around without concern, ignoring the moaning phantoms.

The battle had collapsed into a disorganised melee. The living fled from the dead, and the Strigoi lines had collapsed. His followers were pursuing their defeated foes with gleeful howls or grave silence. He smiled as the spirits of the departed approached him, followed by their summoners. They needed to salvage Gashnag. Ushoran likely didn’t have many generals left, given the defections and deaths. Not that Gashnag was much of a general. W’soran chuckled. In a way, letting the vampire escape would hurt Ushoran more than help him. ‘Fine,’ he said, decision made. ‘A trade, then.’

He cocked a hand and then snapped it forward, as if hurling a spear. The typhoon of blood and offal swirling about him shot forward at the gesture, hurtling towards the approaching necromancers like a rain of gruesome arrows. Bits of bone and boiling blood pierced their bodies, plucking them from their saddles and dropping them to the ground. ‘Three talented students for a brute, a good trade, eh, Gashnag?’ he said, glancing at the vampire as he tore his way free of the horse carcass. They locked eyes through the swirling cloud of ghosts and W’soran said, ‘Run away, Gashnag. Tell Ushoran that I’ll be along shortly.’

Gashnag ran. Not quite with his tail tucked between his legs, but close enough. He sprinted for the trees, avoiding battle, joining his men in harried flight. W’soran raised a hand and caught the loose threads that bound the ghosts that continued to swirl about him like a semi-sentient fog bank, and he stalked towards the trio of necromancers. All three were quite dead, and he examined the fading glimmer of the magic that had inundated them. ‘Yes, three for one is quite fair, I think,’ he said.

He stretched out his hand, stirring the embers of their magic the way a man might stir a campfire. He had not seen fit to craft any more such creatures as those he had summoned that day when the Lahmians had come for him. Their presence had annoyed him on a spiritual level, their proximity grating on his senses like a file on iron. He had freed those wraiths, but had remembered and refined the method behind their creation, like a blacksmith hammering out imperfections.

Words slipped from his mouth. The words were meaningless, a vocal focus as all incantations were, stabbing his will into the corpses at his feet, stirring the ashes of their souls into white-hot fury and drawing them forth in a cataclysmic display of power. As before, so many years ago, that power burst from the bodies like coruscating clouds of inky darkness. The ghosts that fluttered about him seemed to shrink back from these new spirits. If the dead could be frightened, the bound souls of dead necromancers would be the thing that did so. He watched the things gain shape and form and sniffed in satisfaction.

‘Mighty magics indeed, my lord,’ a voice growled behind him. W’soran turned to see Chown riding towards him. The Draesca king’s body and armour were covered in blood, and his great mace dripped a trail as it dangled from his grip. The bat-winged helm seemed to pulse with a satisfied hum upon his white-haired head, and, as ever, W’soran examined it closely, peering up at it, wondering if the piece of him that lurked within it had yet flowered into malign sentience. ‘I would know those secrets,’ Chown continued, his eyes glowing with an eerie light. Then, a moment later he added, ‘If it would please you, my lord.’

Yes, there’s definitely something of me in you, man, W’soran thought in amusement. ‘In time, oh mighty king, you shall know this and many things besides.’ He gestured to the blood that coated Chown’s mace. ‘Victory, then, I take it?’

‘Victory and death,’ Chown said, grinning fiercely. ‘The dogs of Morgheim have fled the field, and my riders harry them. We shall hunt them to the very walls of their lair and bring them to battle, my lord.’ Around him, the dead kings of the Draesca seemed to groan softly in agreement, and their glowing eyes sought out W’soran. He met their gazes and raised his hand in benediction, and the dead seemed to sigh.

‘Aye, that we will, King of the Draesca, and soon to be Lord of the Vaults,’ W’soran said. Chown’s face betrayed his surprise and pleasure. W’soran smiled thinly. ‘Emperor Vorag has sworn it, and as his castellan, I shall ensure it. You will be lord of those mountains, though we must scour them of life.’ Chown gave a grunt of satisfaction. The barbarians were easy enough to placate, W’soran reflected, and their wants were minimal at best. He could easily take back his gift at a later date, should he so desire, after all.

Ullo and Arpad rode towards him, the former holding a knot of heads by their scalp-locks. The slack jaws of the heads sagged, revealing their fangs. By the condition of them, it appeared that Ullo had simply ripped them loose from their owners’ necks. He held up the gory trophies and his black eyes glittered. ‘Ushoran must be desperate if he’s reduced to employing such thin-blooded weaklings. These pups barely had five decades apiece. They were no sport at all.’

‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing,’ Arpad said, grinning. ‘I prefer an easy fight, me.’ He twisted in his saddle, looking around. ‘That’s what this has been from the first.’

‘Too easy, maybe,’ Ullo said, examining the heads, as if trying to glean an answer from their vacant stares. The black gaze flickered to W’soran. ‘What do your magics tell you, sorcerer? Is the empire dying?’

‘Can’t you smell it?’ W’soran asked, spreading his arms and tilting his head. Overhead, lightning flashed in the bellies of the clouds. ‘We are in at the death, Ullo. Strigos lies panting in the mud, our arrows and spears jutting from its hide.’ He inhaled the stink of the battlefield, inflating his narrow chest. ‘Why else would I have stripped my — Vorag’s — territories of troops? Why else would my agents spread the gospel of fire and sword through these black hills as openly as they do? Mourkain will be ours before the first snows of the season fall.’

‘If your acolytes at Crookback Mountain send us reinforcements, aye,’ Ullo rumbled. He scratched a flat cheek with a bloody talon. ‘Have you had word from Melkhior these past weeks?’

W’soran looked at him. ‘What are you implying?’

‘We are far from our territories, sorcerer. We might not have supply lines, as such, but neither do we have an easy route ahead of us. We might be able to raise the dead with every battle, but even they don’t last forever. Our enemies know how to fight them, and how to fight us. We lost Orcuk and Scabeg of Illios in this battle, both of them pinned like flies to the ground by men — mortal soldiers. And half of my spearmen, dead though they were, are no more — burnt by sorcery and blasted to ashes. And Ushoran has been sending smaller and smaller forces against us. There’s not enough dead to replace our losses. We’re fighting for every stretch of ground and our armies are being ground down, slowly but surely.’ Ullo said it all flatly, and without accusation. Nonetheless, W’soran was stung by his words.

‘What would you have us do then, Ullo? Retreat, perhaps?’ he snapped.

‘I speak of caution, not retreat,’ Ullo growled back. ‘Perhaps we should wait until Lukas and Vaal the Thirst have rejoined us,’ he added, naming two of the other renegade Strigoi, both of whom who had taken smaller forces to the west and the north-east, respectively, in an attempt to lead off any reinforcements for Gashnag’s now-destroyed force. ‘With their forces added to ours, we could punch through the ring of fortifications that line the Plain of Dust and reach Mourkain within a fortnight. But if Melkhior doesn’t supply us with reinforcements soon, it’s going to be a slog. We’ll be lucky if we’ve got enough cold bodies to throw at Abhorash when the Great Dragon inevitably unfurls his wings and moves to stop us.’

‘Not to mention that they’ve got their own sorcerers,’ Arpad interjected, gesturing hesitantly to the floating, black spectres that W’soran had wrought from the remains of Morath’s acolytes. Even creatures as brutal as the Strigoi feared the wraiths on an instinctive level, like wolves faced with a maddened bear. ‘Three less now, I admit, but who knows how many he’s got…’

‘One or a hundred, it matters not,’ Chown said. ‘For we have our Lord W’soran, whose might is unparalleled.’ The Draesca flashed his blackened teeth in a grin. W’soran glanced at the savage necromancer and felt a twinge of something that might have been affection, as a parent for an extremely stupid, yet loving, child. The Draesca had always held him in some reverence, a fact that often slipped his mind. The brutal tribesmen viewed him with less fear than the Yaghur had felt for Nagash, for his touch had ever been light. Strangely, they were more than willing to fight and die for him, despite that.

‘Be that as it may, you might be right,’ W’soran demurred. Ullo wasn’t; he was a fool, and over-cautious, frightened as he was of Abhorash. Nonetheless, Ullo was too valuable to ignore or supersede. W’soran knew that the shark-faced Strigoi’s loyalty was held only by that thinnest of threads — a debt of honour. He had saved Ullo at the Battle of the Black Water, and the Strigoi seemed to feel that he owed W’soran his grudging service in return. And Ullo was the only reason that the other renegade Strigoi remained loyal.

W’soran was not deaf to the mutinous whispers of his bloodthirsty servants. Some Strigoi thought he had done away with Vorag, since his disappearance into the eastern mountains. That W’soran was only using the name of the Bloodytooth as a mask for his own desires. That was true as far as it went, though he’d done nothing to Vorag. Indeed, the Bloodytooth’s fate was as much a mystery to him as it was to the others. He’d been too busy, and disinclined besides, to find out what had happened to the would-be emperor of Strigos.

Perhaps Vorag had run afoul of the unbound dead of Nehekhara, or some other enemy, and been destroyed. Perhaps Neferata had gotten her vengeance for Vorag’s abandonment at last, and his brute head decorated a spear in the Silver Pinnacle.

Perhaps he had simply decided not to return.

That last thought was the most disturbing. He had expected Vorag’s army, whatever was left of it at any rate, to slink back to Crookback Mountain sooner or later. Though he had convinced Vorag of the victories that awaited him in the southern reaches, he knew that there was little way that such a brute could take Nagashizzar, let alone conquer the risen kings of the Great Land. He had simply wanted his figurehead safely out of the way while he drew Ushoran — Nagash — out of hiding and into the open. If Vorag returned triumphant, fine, and if he returned beaten, even better, so long as he returned. With W’soran as his vizier, Vorag could rule, and rule well and long. And W’soran would have the order he needed to make a true and uninterrupted study of Nagash’s crown and the secrets therein.

And then, once he had those secrets…

But none of that mattered now. Carts before horses, he thought. For now, it was Ullo who was the key to his victory. It was Ullo who held the loyalties, or at least the respect, of his Strigoi generals. Not poor W’soran, who was regarded, at best, as a necessary evil by his followers, despite everything he had done for them. And while Ullo did not require as much placation as Vorag, it was best not to press him too far. The vampire had a ruthless sort of practicality, and would, if push came to shove, easily forget his debt to serve his own ends.

W’soran sniffed and looked around, meeting the gazes of his commanders. Then, his gaze travelled to the horizon, where blackness seemed to spread across the sky like spilled ink on paper. Nagash was waiting, he knew, crouching like a beast in a cave. He grasped his amulets, succumbing to a sudden nervous impulse. He felt as if he were standing in a storm wrapped in iron and waiting for the lightning to fall. ‘We will make camp and await our allies. I will send messages to Melkhior, inquiring as to his tardiness. And then we will march to Mourkain, and lay claim to an empire!’