Master of Death

Chapter Three

Nagashizzar

(Year -1168 Imperial Calendar)

‘How dare you,’ W’soran snarled, fangs exposed and claws extended. ‘What are you doing in here, liche?’ The chambers were in shambles, scrolls and papyri scattered about the stone floor and the bodies of his apprentices amongst them. Most lived; one, at least, was dead, his torso a smoking ruin. That one would not be punished for his failure to stop the intruder, but the others… ‘Answer me,’ W’soran snapped. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Whatever I like,’ Arkhan the Black said, turning. His voice was a hollow rasp, and it seemed to echo in W’soran’s mind rather than in his ears. In one bony hand, he held the throat of the strongest of W’soran’s apprentices, Zoar. The barbarian still struggled, albeit feebly, his claws scoring the bone of Arkhan’s fingers. ‘These were my chambers, after all.’

‘You weren’t using them,’ W’soran said. ‘Release my property.’ He had claimed the chambers soon after arriving in Nagashizzar, several decades before. Nagashizzar had once rung with the sounds of living men, hundreds of them, if not thousands; whole tribes and clans of the savage barbarians from the eastern marshes. Now, it was eerily silent, save for the scrape of bone on metal. Only the dead resided in the mountain fortress of the Undying King now, and of the dead, only a few dozen were self-aware enough to interact to any great degree. Most were wights, or liches like Arkhan; the corridors rang with the sounds of the internal battles that served to occupy their time when they were not about Nagash’s business. W’soran had won his chambers in one such struggle, early after his arrival. His powers had grown by leaps and bounds under Nagash’s tutelage, even as his blind devotion to the being he had seen as a god began to dim.

‘Oh.’ Arkhan glanced down at the weakly struggling vampire. ‘Is this yours?’

‘Release him, liche, or-’

‘Or what, leech, you’ll finally strike openly at me?’ Arkhan said, letting Zoar slide from his grip. ‘The assassins you sent to kill me in the deep mines failed, W’soran, as you can see.’ He turned and spread his arms. ‘Do you have the courage to attempt it yourself?’

‘I sent no assassins,’ W’soran said. ‘Perhaps you have more enemies than you know.’ It was the truth, as far as it went. He had ordered no attack on Arkhan; no, his target of late had been one of the liche’s comrades, Mahtep. The latter was prone to hiding his decayed features behind a mask of human flesh and wore heavy armour in imitation of their master, Nagash. He was also a stupid creature, prone to challenging his betters whenever Nagash fell into one of his contemplative moods and removed himself to his throne to ponder upon the Great Work. While the Undying King communicated with whatever dark spirits drove him, his minions squabbled amongst themselves, lashing out at one another openly. Mahtep had decided that this year, it was W’soran’s turn to suffer the annoyance of his attentions.

Mahtep had sent scuttling creations of bone and sinew, their carven fangs loaded with poison, to kill W’soran as he meditated. W’soran had returned the favour with the gift of a bellicose serpent-thing composed of a hundred human spinal columns and the head of Mahtep’s favourite skeletal steed. Mahtep had been dragged into the northern barrows by the thing; no one had seen him come back up yet. W’soran wasn’t concerned. If he survived, he’d know better than to try again. And if he didn’t, well, surely Nagash would thank him for removing a weak link amongst his disciples.

‘Something stinking of grave-mould and whatever bastard elixir you call blood attacked me in the mines,’ Arkhan said, striding towards W’soran. ‘It nearly tore my head off.’

‘Perhaps it was a singularly ferocious ghoul,’ W’soran said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Or perhaps it was one of these jackals you call apprentices,’ Arkhan rasped.

‘Or maybe it is something else,’ W’soran said. He paused, considering. ‘Several of the others have reported that there is a — ah — “stirring” in the warrens of the corpse-eaters below us. They’re growing bold, without Nagash’s will to hold them in check, and attacking the corpses in the mines, feasting on them.’

‘Then we will slaughter them,’ Arkhan said. He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘What do you suspect, blood-drinker?’

‘I think someone — something — is plotting to take Nagashizzar by force.’

‘The skaven,’ Arkhan said.

W’soran shook his head. ‘No. It’s something else, something more cunning than any ratkin. If Nagash were paying attention, I do not think it would dare…’

‘But he is not,’ Arkhan said. His empty eye sockets flared suddenly with a weird light.

‘No,’ W’soran said. He smiled crookedly. ‘But we are.’

Crookback Mountain

(Year -325 Imperial Calendar)

‘Drive them back!’ Vorag roared. With a bellow worthy of a bull-ape, he wrenched the rat ogre’s head from its massive shoulders and sent it sailing back into the mass of skaven that sought to push the undead out of the cramped and crooked tunnel. The two forces met and fought beneath the light of the large, eerily glowing green censer spheres that had been strung from the roof of the tunnel. The skaven had fortified the tunnel and were in the process of sealing it off when Vorag’s forces had attacked.

The Bloodytooth was at the forefront, as always. He disdained the use of weapons, relying instead on his own claws, fangs and strength to carry him through. At his side, Stregga screeched like an angry wildcat and beheaded a spear-wielding skaven with a single fluid movement. Together, the two of them formed the point of the spear. The tunnel was barely wide enough for a dozen men to move shoulder-to-shoulder, and it was up to the Strigoi to dismantle the crude barricades that the skaven had constructed.

W’soran watched it all from a safe distance. There were ten ranks of skeletal troops between him and the Strigoi, marching forward blindly. He followed them, shrouded in his robes, Melkhior to one side and Zoar to the other. ‘The skaven are falling back,’ Zoar murmured.

‘You doubted it?’ Melkhior snorted.

‘I was merely making an observation,’ Zoar said mildly. ‘It seemed strange, given their persistence earlier…’ He looked at his rival with a hooded gaze. Zoar had made a game of provoking his fellow disciple. Melkhior, for his part, rose to the bait every time. It was yet another reason that W’soran despaired of the Strigoi ever achieving his full potential. There was too much pride there. Melkhior would never be anything more than what he was. Neither would Zoar, but the Yaghur had had longer to get used to the fact, and his ambition was ashes and embers. Melkhior’s blazed like fire.

‘Maybe they simply know when they are beaten,’ Melkhior said.

‘Unlike some people,’ Zoar said.

Melkhior rounded on him with a snarl. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I thought you were supposed to be intelligent, Strigoi. Figure it out.’

Melkhior leaned close to Zoar and growled. Zoar yawned into his face. W’soran ignored them, and instead concentrated on the shard of abn-i-khat balanced on his palm. The wyrdstone, as the Strigoi had taken to calling it, had a particular resonance; each piece called to its fellows, growing warmer as it drew closer if one exerted the slightest touch of magic to it. W’soran had several more shards slung around his neck, and each glowed with a strange light. He was using the lot as lodestones, trying to find the quickest, most direct route to the main warren of their enemy, or at the very least, wherever it was that they were keeping their store of the stone and constructing their weapons. Sanzak and the other Strigoi were leading similar assaults in the tunnels running parallel to the one they found themselves in, pressing the skaven back on multiple fronts. They were accompanied by W’soran’s other apprentices. With the dead from the previous battles added to their ranks and the discovery of the food stores, consisting mainly of the stacked and gnawed bodies of skaven and greenskins, in the upper reaches, Vorag’s army had swelled to a significant size.

Nonetheless, it had taken almost a year to reach this point. Months had been wasted, crashing through pits and hidden caverns, burning and slaughtering the seemingly numberless creatures. They had faced only one more war-engine in that time, and the skaven, with prescience that was as frustrating as it was startling, had destroyed it when they realised that the vampires were after it. The vermin had been retreating steadily since then, squirming deeper and deeper into the darkness, fighting only to delay or harry the undead, rather than defeat them. They had even taken to collecting their dead, or burning them, in an attempt to wage a war of attrition.

Vorag roared and heaved the body of the rat ogre towards the barricades, shattering them and sending skaven tumbling. The vampire vaulted the still-twitching body and fell upon the fleeing ratkin. Stregga was right behind him, as were his personal guard. The vampires moved so quickly, they outpaced the dead marching behind them. W’soran snorted in disgust. Foolishness… why bother with an army if you were going to abandon them at the first whiff of blood?

His eye caught a quick, furtive movement from above. W’soran looked up, and his good eye widened. ‘Usirian’s jowls,’ he snarled, throwing up a hand bristling with necromantic power. ‘They’re above us!’

There were dozens of stunted, black-clad bodies clinging to the roof of the tunnel. Their black rags were covered in cave-dusts and their fur was slick with something vile that W’soran knew had served to kill their scent. Each was armed with a bandolier of clay flasks. Even as W’soran raised his hand, one of the skaven plunged its claw into its rags and extracted a handful of flat, metal disks.

The disks hissed as the ratkin sent them spinning through the air. They sank home into W’soran’s palm and forearm, eliciting a shriek of anger as his spell was disrupted. He staggered back, clutching his arm. ‘Kill them!’ he snapped.

Zoar and Melkhior reacted swiftly, unleashing a barrage of deadly magics. Skaven fell, screaming and burning. But not all of them, and not quickly enough — W’soran saw it all in an instant. The plan was obvious, in retrospect, and he cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. The skaven had drawn them in, drawn them deeper into the cramped tunnels, and now they were going to be made to pay. The surviving skaven tore off their bandoliers and hurled them towards the ground.

The ground erupted in green flame and the rock of the tunnel groaned and shifted as the flasks exploded, ripping the heart out of the tunnel. The skaven had used the wyrdstone for explosives. The tunnel was tearing itself apart, cracks running through the walls and floor. Skeleton warriors were consumed in the explosion or crushed by the falling rocks, or swallowed by the gaping floor. As the tunnel collapsed, the skaven, as trapped as W’soran and the others by what the latter now realised had been a suicide mission, leapt down, blades at the ready. A sword chopped into his raised arm, and he felt the sizzle of something smeared on the blade. With a scream, he smashed the skaven into the wall, even as the floor gave out from beneath him.

He heard Melkhior and Zoar scream as they all fell into darkness. Furry bodies slammed into him, squealing curses in their own chittering tongue as they hacked and chopped at him. He could smell something seeping from them; a poison perhaps, or a drug designed to remove their natural tendency towards cowardice. That was the only explanation he could find for their persistence. W’soran struck rock, bounced and spun, tumbling. His fingers found a hairy throat and he tore it open. Incisors sank into his shoulder and he hissed and reached backwards.

More rocks struck him. The explosion had caused a chain reaction. It was collapsing the tunnel and those below, ripping a wedge straight through the network of frail corridors like a knife through a wasp’s nest. Fleshy tails wrapped around him, squeezing and pulling. He couldn’t reach his sword. He caught a blade, breaking it and stabbing at its wielder.

W’soran grunted as he struck an outcropping. A normal man, especially the man he had been, would have been pulped a few moments after the explosion. As a vampire, short of being completely mashed into a fine paste, he had no doubt he would survive it. The skaven must have been desperate. Why else would they risk destroying their own fortress?

What if that was their intent? To gut the mountain and bring all of its glacial weight down on the invaders, entombing them forever. The thought chilled him — he had been buried before. For the first time in a long time, panic surged through him. Suddenly, survival was something to be feared. In animal terror of the great weight closing in around him, he flailed about and his claws dug into the rock. He could smell the fear-musk of the skaven now, and their writhing bodies tumbled past. He couldn’t see Melkhior or Zoar.

He scrambled up, trying to pull himself to safety. The fear grew, sweeping him up into its embrace and sucking him down. How long would he persist, buried in the darkness — centuries, possibly or even millennia; his experiments in that regard had not been forthcoming. He thought again of the vampires he’d left in the dark of Mourkain and he cowered, waiting for the collapse to end.

Stones crashed down around him, and dust swirled, obscuring his vision. As the last rock bounced away, W’soran shoved himself quickly into a crouch. He was unable to rise any further. His armour was cracked and hanging from his thin frame in ragged strips. His robes were torn and his flesh was streaked with black blood. He’d lost his blade. He didn’t bother to call out for his apprentices. If they had survived, they would find him. If they had not, they would be of little use.

The tunnel was little more than a half filled-in grave. There was little room to move and if he’d still been a breathing man, he’d likely have suffocated in minutes. But he wasn’t breathing and he could move. ‘Small mercies,’ he grunted. The rock swallowed his voice.

He looked up. Part of the tunnel had fallen in, across two sections of the wall, creating a small air pocket. Beyond the pocket, the rest of the tunnel was probably buried. He could see the crushed and pulverised remains of a number of skaven caught between the rocks.

Panic teased his thoughts. Suddenly, he was back in his jar beneath the temple, unable to move, to blink the spiders from his eyes or pluck the beetles from his flesh. He wouldn’t be buried again — he couldn’t! He closed his eyes and clamped down on the fear. ‘Why should you fear?’ he whispered to himself. ‘You are fear. You have been trapped before. Think. Think!’ He clutched at the abn-i-khat amulets dangling from his neck and squeezed them.

Abruptly he opened his eyes. He looked down, and the panic fled like a morning mist. ‘Haaaa,’ he breathed. The amulets glowed and trembled in his fingers. He held them up to his mouth and blew on them, expelling a lungful of sorcerous breath. The glow grew, and he felt the sickly warmth of the stones on his palm. Gathering his legs under him, he wrenched one of the amulets loose.

He hesitated. He had never dared take that step in imitation of Nagash. There was no telling what the eating of the stone would do to a being like him, or whether it would even have any effect whatsoever. But if it did… it was concentrated magic. Eating it had made Nagash more powerful than any other necromancer. Eating it empowered the skaven as well. And he needed power. He looked at it, looked at the way it seemed to suck in the darkness around it. The wyrdstone ate light and darkness alike, and the shadows seemed to be dragged towards the nooks and crannies of the amulet, as if grasped by invisible talons.

Even so, the worry was there. Nagash had consumed it and been consumed by it. He had been made both more and less than a man by a lifetime’s consumption of the soft, powdery stone. He had become addicted, requiring more and more of it to empower his spells.

Then, power was a stronger drug than any W’soran had ever heard of. The only thing it was good for was gaining more power. That was what creatures like Neferata and Ushoran had never understood — power was an end in itself, to be hoarded and increased, as the skaven did with their wyrdstone.

The weapons, the secrets of the skaven, would give him that power. They would give him the power to stare down the mad, phantom soul that rode poor, pathetic Ushoran towards oblivion, and to add its power to his own. ‘You think you’re safe, old liche?’ he murmured, examining the abn-i-khat. ‘You think your secrets are safe, hiding in that iron circlet? You think to devour me, hollow me out like a mummy and slip inside to ride me into the dark, far future, my master? You’re wrong, as you were wrong about Alcadizzar. I will be the one to devour you. I will swallow the carrion remnant of your tattered soul, Nagash, and I will be a true master of death.’

W’soran opened his jaws and his tongue, the colour of a leech flush after a feeding, unrolled and extended upwards like the questing tendril of a squid, rising past his thicket of fangs. The tip of his tongue brushed against the amulet, exploring the rough facets. A surge of power rippled through him and he shivered in anticipation. Then, with a grunt, he dropped the amulet into his mouth.

Even as his fangs sank into the soft stone, his body shuddered. He felt as if he had bitten into a lightning bolt, as if he were burning up from within. Swallowing the small chunks of stone, he flung out his hands and spat words of power. Dark magic coursed through him, and he felt it more strongly than ever before. A sorcerous blast struck the rocks and the rough stone bubbled and slopped like mud. W’soran scuttled forward, unleashing blast after blast, carving a path to freedom. The remaining amulets grew warmer, and he was tempted to eat another, but resisted the urge.

He continued forward for what felt like minutes, but might have been hours. The abn-i-khat pulsed in his long-dried veins, and his mind felt as if it were full of quicksilver; his thoughts rattled in his head like hornets trapped in a flask. Part of him wondered if this was how Nagash had seen the world. It was as if everything was moving in slow motion. He could see motes of dust drifting past him, and the sparks that made up the flames that spread from his hands. He could see what was to come and how to make it so with searing clarity, and he laughed as he cut his way through the bowels of the mountain.

Then, one final wall exploded outward and, wreathed in the smoke of his passage, W’soran stepped through, into a massive cavern. A hundred pairs of glittering eyes stared at him in shock. There were skaven everywhere and they all froze. He smelled their fear and smiled.

The cavern was larger than any yet encountered, and full to bursting with the stuff of construction. It reminded W’soran of the ancient ruins of the dwarfen workshops he’d discovered high in the mountains. It was lit, as with the rest of the mountain, by great braziers and censers exuded foul-smelling smoke. Rats scurried underfoot. Baskets full of abn-i-khat were everywhere. Great chains hung from the roof and half-built war-engines occupied most of the cavern floor. The skaven appeared to have been caught in the process of dismantling the engines for transport.

Suddenly, the determined holding action made sense. The skaven were trying to get their creations out of the reach of their enemies. W’soran could almost admire their persistence in defending the objects of their artifice. He held up a hand wreathed in black flame. The skaven tensed, watching him like vermin caught in sudden torchlight. He savoured the fear-stink rising from them.

‘Run,’ he hissed, ‘or die, it makes no difference to me.’ His voice carried to every corner of the cavern.

The skaven ran. W’soran laughed and killed those too slow to get out of his reach as quickly as their fellows. His magic speared out, killing them in droves. Skaven ran burning and screaming. The cavern was filled with the stink of cooking rat as W’soran stalked towards the contraptions, intent on claiming them for his own. As he strode, his thoughts uncoiled and slithered ahead and around him, latching onto the guttering life-sparks of dying skaven. With a mental jerk, he pulled the dead to their paws and set them scrabbling after their fellows. In an orgy of mindless hunger, the dead fell upon the living and the cavern echoed with the sounds of slaughter.

Abruptly, the euphoria he’d felt was replaced by a gnawing pain. For a moment, the world skidded around him, out of sync and blurry as his stomach lurched and the bile in his veins became turgid and weighty, dragging his limbs down, causing him to stumble. With a moan, W’soran staggered against one of the war-engines as a cold shudder ran through him. He felt like a punctured waterskin, leaking and deflating all at once. The temporary burst of energy the abn-i-khat had given him was leaving him. Bubbling pus leaked from his wounds and pores as his body expelled the last traces of the stone he’d eaten. He felt weak and wrung out. He shook his head and shoved himself to his feet.

A moment later, the blade of a spear cut through the spot where his head had been. The blade gashed his shoulder and threw him backwards. The wound burned and he saw that the blade of the weapon that had cut him was crafted from pure wyrdstone. Hissing, he pulled himself up into a crouch, one hand pressed to his injury.

A skaven crouched on the war machine, clutching the spear in its heavy gauntlets. Serrated black armour covered dirty robes, and its fur was a pure white where it peeked out through both armour and cloth. A heavy helm hid its head, and its eyes glowed green through the eye-slits. He wondered, as he examined it, if this were one of the so-called ‘warlocks’ the few captives he’d taken over the past months had spoken of.

The skaven pulled back the spear and spat his earlier bravado back in his face, ‘Run-run or die-die, man-thing. It makes no difference to Iskar of Skryre.’

W’soran rose. He’d taught himself the rudiments of the rat-things’ language, with the unwilling help of the captives they’d taken in the campaign so far. He’d always had a facility for tongues, even ones as animalistic as that of the skaven. ‘There’s always a third option, vermin. I kill you and wring the blood from your furry carcass.’ He snapped his fangs together. His keen ears caught a new sound above the cacophony of the battle going on in the cavern. Weapons clashed somewhere, followed by a roar that might have been Vorag. W’soran chuckled. ‘You’re out of time.’

‘There is always time,’ the skaven snarled. It sprang from its perch, wielding its weapon with skill. Only W’soran’s speed saved him from being gutted and he backed away from the stabbing blade. The skaven pressed forward, seeking to impale him.

He loosed a sorcerous bolt, hoping to catch the creature unawares, but it simply raised its weapon and caught the spell on the blade. The bolt evaporated, and the glow in the skaven’s eyes seemed to grow brighter. ‘Weak man-thing,’ it chattered. ‘I see-see your weakness.’ It tapped the side of its helm with a talon.

‘Silence, beast,’ W’soran said. More magics flew from his gesticulating hands. The skaven’s blade swiped out, cutting through his spells as if they were nothing more than an evening fog. The creature loped forward, its tail lashing.

W’soran staggered back and tripped over a corpse, toppling backwards. The white-furred skaven darted forward with a high-pitched cry of triumph. W’soran’s palms slammed together on either side of the blade, trapping it. The skaven planted its paws on his chest and put all of its weight on the spear, trying to force the blade into his skull. W’soran grimaced and resisted. Slowly he sat up, and the skaven was shoved back. For the first time, he saw fear in its eyes.

With a growl, W’soran pressed his palms together. The wyrdstone blade shattered in his grip. The skaven stumbled back. It opened its mouth, as if to scream.

W’soran gave it no chance to do so. He let loose a final spell, and a corona of heat engulfed the creature. Without its blade, it had no way of dispersing his magics and it stiffened as its fur shrivelled, its robes caught fire and its armour melted to its quivering frame. It fell backwards with a loud clank, smoke and steam rising from its body.

He rose and squatted beside it. It still lived, albeit not for long, unless something was done. Almost gently, he pried the helmet from its head, causing it to thrash in agony. Ignoring its squeals of pain, he examined the helm. ‘Ingenious,’ he muttered, tapping the green lenses.

The cavern was silent now. The survivors of his attack had either fled or joined the ranks of the dead things that stood still and stiff, waiting for his next command. The sounds of fighting were growing louder. After the explosion, the Strigoi must have continued to press forward. Vorag wouldn’t let the loss of his army stop him. W’soran laughed, imagining the expression on Stregga’s face when she saw him waiting for them.

He looked at the skaven. Its eyes had been cooked in their sockets, and they rolled madly as it writhed. W’soran patted its blistered snout fondly as he looked from the helm to the half-constructed war machines. ‘You were right — ah — Iskar was it? There will indeed be time aplenty. Time enough for me to flay your cunning little secrets from you, and make them mine.’ He looked down at the trembling creature and licked its blood from his claw-tips. It moaned.

‘Won’t that be fun?’ he said, smiling.