Master of Death

Chapter Eight

Nagashizzar

(Year -1151 Imperial Calendar)

Alcadizzar screamed. Nagash held the last king of Khemri aloft in one hand and used the other to carve symbols of fell power into his bruised and tattered flesh. Arkhan and his fellow liches watched silently. Ushoran and W’soran stood off to the side, watching as well, but not quietly.

‘What is he doing?’ Ushoran hissed. ‘Is it just torture, or something else?’

‘His agony fuels the magic,’ W’soran said, watching enthralled. ‘He is using Alcadizzar’s life to craft a spell of death.’ Nagash’s skill for necromantic improvisation was unparalleled. Where W’soran had to study and experiment until his mind staggered beneath the weight of it all, Nagash seemed to simply wrestle the winds of magic into whatever shape he desired. He was all raw power, with neither nuance nor ritual to hinder him from simply forcing reality to bend to his terrible will.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean “why”,’ W’soran whispered. ‘You know as well as I do what Nagash intends. And it will be beautiful.’ Even as he said it, the doubts, new and old, crowded at the forefront of his mind. Some he had come by himself, in his years in Nagashizzar. While he had once thought of Nagash as a god, in truth, the Undying King was something else. Just what he was, W’soran couldn’t say, but he was no god. He was no invisible master, speaking through oracles and dusty tomes, but a hard, cruel presence. What went on within that blackened skull no one could say, but Nagash at least thought as a man, and an exceedingly petty and spiteful one at that.

Why else would he have brought Alcadizzar before him, to gloat over him as he had done only moments earlier, before beginning his current ministrations? W’soran shook his head. ‘Beautiful,’ he said again. ‘The sands will give birth to generations of the dead… entire dynasties will bow before the Undying King and we will lead them to war against the men of Araby and Ind. We will bring order and peace to this world, Ushoran. And all for the glory of-’

‘Nagash,’ Ushoran said, softly. ‘Just Nagash.’

W’soran looked at him. Alcadizzar screamed again and writhed in Nagash’s unyielding grip as blood poured down his body to drip and collect in the stone runnels set in the floor. Ushoran watched and his eyes were like stones. Whether he was enjoying the king’s agonies or not was impossible to tell. His face might as well have been a mask. ‘Why do you call him the Undying King, when he is no kind of king at all?’ he asked, as if to himself. ‘Just because he wears a crown, that does not make him a king…’

W’soran grunted and glared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘Nothing; it is a shame Neferata is missing this. I’m sure she’d have enjoyed seeing her old pet flayed by inches,’ Ushoran said.

‘Whose fault is that, then?’ W’soran asked quietly. ‘We should have beaten Abhorash and brought them both here in chains. Nagash would have thanked us. Instead, see — he honours Arkhan and those bags of bones. It is we who are his true servants — they are but tools.’

As if he’d heard them from across the throne room, Arkhan turned to look at them. The green glow in his gaze was gloating, and W’soran bristled. Ushoran didn’t react. He ignored Arkhan, and the liche returned the favour. Indeed, save W’soran, few took notice of Ushoran at all, least of all Nagash, though Ushoran had sought to curry favour at every opportunity.

‘Do you truly think she would have been content to serve, W’soran?’ Ushoran asked. He looked at the other vampire. ‘Are you?’

‘I — what about you, Ushoran, are you content?’ W’soran asked, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Neferata would have served. She would have had no choice.’

‘There are always choices,’ Ushoran said, turning back to watch Alcadizzar’s agonies. W’soran frowned and turned as well, and just in time — Alcadizzar gave a bull-bellow of pain and anger and flailed his way free of Nagash’s grip.

Emaciated as he was, broken and weak as he was, Alcadizzar was no coward. He sprang towards Arkhan and the other liches, and tore the black blade from the sheath on Arkhan’s hip even as he gave a desperate shove, knocking the liche back into his fellows. Blade in hand, Alcadizzar spun about and lunged for Nagash.

W’soran intercepted him, catching the downward stroke of the blade on the bracers of his crossed wrists. ‘You,’ Alcadizzar groaned, pallid face twisted in fear and loathing.

‘Me, little prince,’ W’soran said. ‘And this time, your women aren’t here to save your hide.’ He shoved Alcadizzar back, knocking him to the ground. W’soran made to pounce, when he felt the chill clutch of Nagash’s gauntlet on the back of his head. Fingers like iron hooks dug into the thin flesh and he was ripped into the air and flung casually aside, his howl of pain trailing after him.

‘NO! YOU WILL NOT KILL HIM, LITTLE LEECH,’ Nagash said. W’soran landed hard enough to crack the stones of the floor and he felt things break and burst within him. He had felt Nagash’s strength before, but never in such a way. He lay panting as Nagash hefted Alcadizzar once more, after divesting him of his weapon. ‘HE IS WORTH MORE TO ME THAN YOU. HIS BLOOD IS WORTH MORE TO ME THAN THAT OF A THOUSAND OF YOUR KIND.’

‘I simply sought to aid you…’ W’soran wheezed.

‘I HAVE NO NEED OF YOUR AID.’

Nagash turned back to his work. Arkhan scooped up his sword and looked down at W’soran. ‘On your feet, old monster… we’ll soon have an army to lead.’ The liche turned without waiting for a reply. W’soran staggered upright, clutching his healing ribs tightly. He looked around and saw Ushoran, still standing in the lee of one of the great columns that lined the throne room. Before he could say anything, the Lord of Masks turned and faded into the shadows…

The Badlands

(Year -300 Imperial Calendar)

W’soran gave vent to a howl of fury as he caught the arrow mere inches from his head. He snapped it in two and hurled the pieces aside. More arrows sailed through the deeply overcast sky, slicing through the falling snow to pierce the tattered mail of the marching dead that trudged towards the crude, but massive, palisade that blocked the mountain trail. ‘Tear it down,’ he snarled, batting aside another arrow with his scimitar. ‘Leave not one piece standing!’

The pace of the dead quickened as he let his anger fuel the incantation that sprang to his lips, invigorating them. They were almost running now, bones sheathed in frost and bronze moving with inhuman fluidity. The warriors on the palisade — living men, these, and soldiers of Strigos — cried out and redoubled their efforts. The compact horse-bows the Strigoi favoured thrummed as the rate of fire increased, and broad-headed arrows crashed home, knocking skeletons sprawling. The ones that reached the wall set up the heavy scaling ladders they carried. There was no telling how many would make it to the top. The Strigoi were already hurling rocks down on the climbing skeletons, battering them from the ladders.

The palisade, and the small border fort beyond it, had been built in the years following his departure. Ushoran had not been idle. With determined efficiency he had begun fortifying the mountain passes that provided the most direct routes into his empire. Border palisades occupied the most distant points, and further in, larger fortifications watched over the frontiers. This one was one of the smaller ones — the pass it sat astride was a minor gouge in the spine of the mountains, barely fit for a raiding party, much less an invading army. That was why he had chosen it.

W’soran had always favoured the swift, unseen blow over the give and take of regular combat. He knew from Vorag’s newer recruits that Strigos was at war with a number of the larger tribes occupying the north and west, including the Draka and the Fennones. In centuries past, the Strigoi had driven the ancestors of those tribes west and out of the mountains, and there were old grudges aplenty waiting to be settled. The savages cascaded into the mountains, burning and raiding before retreating back to the lowlands. The Strigoi, long used to martial superiority, were finding it curiously difficult to handle tribes they’d long since thought effectively cowed.

W’soran thought he detected Neferata’s pale fingers in that particular pie. She had wormed her way into the good graces of the larger tribes, supporting this chieftain over that one and providing this bit of that to those, and welded them into a web of nonaggression pacts. Too, she had spread the stories of Mourkain’s wealth and decadence, convincing the barbarians that Strigos, far from being a vibrant and dangerous foe, was nothing more than a sick old wolf, ripe for the killing.

He’d hoped that Ushoran’s eyes were full on the lands of the tribes, and Neferata’s new fastness, and that he’d decided to ignore Vorag’s ever-growing band of rebels. No such luck, however, as this fastness attested to. Ushoran was many things, but a fool wasn’t among them. The mountain fortresses were only temporary stumbling blocks, set up to slow any advance from the east, to enable Ushoran to divert forces to repelling a substantial invasion, whether it be renegade Strigoi or orcs.

W’soran jerked the reins of the skeletal horse he rode in frustration, and turned it about. ‘We need to find another way over that palisade,’ he said. He and his coterie sat some distance from the battle, protected from what weak light managed to pierce the clouds by a large, heavy pavilion made from tanned skins and held aloft by uncomplaining armoured wights.

Melkhior, sitting on his own bone nag not far away, nodded. ‘As I said earlier, my master,’ he said, carefully not meeting W’soran’s gaze. ‘The pass is too narrow, and they’ve done too good a job bolstering that palisade. It’ll take us days to knock it down.’ He peered up and around the edge of the pavilion and continued, ‘by which time, the snow will be coming down too heavily and we’ll be trapped.’

‘Careful, my son,’ W’soran grated. ‘One would think you were chastising me.’

Melkhior flinched. ‘Never, master. I was merely pointing out the facts of our situation.’

‘Facts are good, Melkhior. Let’s stick to those, shall we, and leave any commentary aside,’ W’soran said pointedly, looking at his commanders. ‘Well, my lords, any suggestions?’

The Strigoi were a varied lot. There was the wolf-grinned Arpad, who wore the serrated-edged armour of a timajal and a peaked, crested helm that covered all of his face but for his lower jaw. Then there was Tarhos the Hook, a burly, barrel-chested Strigoi who wore his namesake in place of his left hand. The hand had been bitten off by one of the great bull-headed beastmen that haunted the mountains and Tarhos, with the customary practicality of his people, had taken one of the beast’s horns after he’d killed it, and made it into a replacement for the missing limb.

Last of the trio was Ullo of Carak, a minor frontier agal from one of the far northern provinces. Ullo was a raw-boned monster, all slope-skulled and pebble-skinned, like a shark wrapped in furs. He had served with Abhorash in the north and wore a profusion of amulets torn from the necks of northern champions and chieftains, and played with them constantly. He and the others rode sturdy, stubborn Strigoi mountain horses, and scalps aplenty dangled like tassels from their saddles. All three had been given the blood-kiss by Ushoran. All three had turned on him in the years following Vorag’s exile, seeking better opportunities with their fellow agal.

Ushoran had inadvertently created a stagnant aristocracy for his empire. Undying lords rarely made way for their heirs in a timely fashion. The Strigoi, already given to duelling, had begun to kill each other with startling regularity not long into Ushoran’s first century of rule. Then, perhaps that had been Ushoran’s plan to control a rowdy and often overly-ambitious people. It had his characteristic, light touch — Ushoran had always enjoyed letting others do his work for him.

‘Get above them,’ Tarhos grunted, scratching his chin with his hook. ‘We could scale the cliffs, descend on them.’

‘And then what?’ Arpad asked, leaning over his saddle horn. ‘A few men against a small army? I know you fancy yourself a hero from the sagas but I’m quite particular about how I spend my blood.’

‘Abhorash would have taken the wall himself,’ Ullo said, his dead eyes meeting W’soran’s.

‘Well, Abhorash isn’t here, for which we should all be thankful,’ W’soran snapped. ‘Otherwise all of our heads might be decorating the walls of Ushoran’s palace.’ He glared at the trio of Strigoi. Vorag had long since gone east with the bulk of his forces, leading them towards Nagashizzar and the lands beyond. He had left a garrison at Crookback Mountain, nominally under W’soran’s control. But Ullo and his fellows were there to keep W’soran in check, and to see that he didn’t get any ideas above his station.

It would be easy enough to see them dead. But he needed them. He needed their experience, and their men. Each had brought with him a complement of living men; or, as W’soran liked to think of them, raw materials. With them, W’soran had an army capable of holding off both Ushoran and, should she choose to make an issue of it, Neferata. That was Vorag’s intention, at least.

But W’soran had other plans.

Plans that would be stalled for a season or more, if he allowed this pathetic palisade to hold him back for even one day longer. He opened his mouth to snarl an order when something almost familiar brushed across the surface of his mind, like the touch of a bat’s wing. His mouth snapped shut and he turned his horse about, peering at the palisade. As he watched, a Strigoi on the wall was gutted by a skeletal warrior. The dead man slumped. Then, with a familiar jerk, he shoved himself up, his blank gaze fixing on the corpse that had done for him, and he lurched into it. The two corpses, one fresh, one long dead, tumbled from the palisade to crash into the hard ground.

‘Necromancer,’ Melkhior hissed. W’soran nodded.

‘Well, that changes things a bit,’ he murmured. ‘I wondered whether Morath managed to find a place for himself in Ushoran’s kingdom. It seems he has.’ Melkhior growled and W’soran chuckled. ‘All the more reason to break this obstacle, it seems. And for lack of better ideas, I suppose I’ll be doing the breaking.’

With a snap of his reins, he urged his undead mount forward, into the swirling snow. The Strigoi and Melkhior followed, at a distance, uncertain as to his intentions. As W’soran rode through the ranks of the dead, a curious ripple spread through them. Skeletons dropped their weapons and grabbed hold of one another. Bones shifted and locked with a loud, squealing clatter. W’soran ignored the arrows that rattled around him. The bones rose over him in a wave, and then became something else. Fifty skeletons, then twice that, drew close and joined, and the pile heaved forward and grew steadily as it did so. Skulls rolled upwards as if tugged by invisible strings and arm bones descended, pressing together tightly as hundreds of fingers curled and clicked.

The conglomeration rose and stepped forward, and the cliff face shuddered. W’soran’s mount reared and then its bones joined the mass as well, and fleshless hands reached out, passing him upwards towards the chattering crown of a hundred-hundred skulls. The thing stooped low over the palisade as it bent forward, its conglomerate hands tearing at the barrier. Logs cracked and burst asunder in a spray of splinters and men went screaming into the air from the force of the attack. Even as W’soran stepped onto a platform crafted from ribs and skulls, part of the palisade burst inwards, crushing its defenders like scuttling insects.

He had learned the art of crafting such creatures in Nagashizzar. Dead flesh and bone was much more malleable than living, and it could be welded into a million different shapes, if one had but the imagination and will to do so. It required a certain exhalation of energy to do it on this sort of scale, but W’soran had fed earlier in the day on a prisoner, and had the strength to burn. Such magics were beyond living men, however. Only the undead had the dark strength required to bend the dead into such monstrous shapes.

But the living had their strengths. Dead men rose bloody and broken, and threw themselves upon the giant, scaling it like fleshy spiders. W’soran had hoped his little demonstration would attract the enemy’s attention, and his hopes had been borne out. The zombies were fast, thanks in part to their animator’s desperation as well as their relative freshness. W’soran swept his scimitar from its sheath and lopped off a reaching arm as the first of the dead men flung itself up onto the platform. It stumbled forward and he grabbed its sagging, pulped skull with his free hand. He could see the dark threads of magic which bound it to its master. Invisible to any but one trained in the art of seeing, they blazed like cold fires to his eyes.

Beyond the palisade was a second, smaller wall. And built into that wall was a stone bunkhouse. Less a fortress than a wind-break, it was nonetheless a strongpoint, built to withstand punishing weather and the inevitable greenskin attack. It was also where the enemy necromancer was located, to judge by the flickering darkling skeins that stretched like ghostly leashes from the dozens of dead men who scaled his creation.

Below him, Ullo and the others had joined the assault. They rode pell-mell through the ranks of the dead, eager to be in at the kill. Melkhior followed them, cloak flapping, and the wights running in his train, their barrow-blades drawn and their eyes glowing like hell-lamps.

‘The bunkhouse,’ W’soran bellowed, gesturing with his blade. ‘Take him, Melkhior!’

The human defenders of the palisade broke and retreated as Ullo and his companions crashed into them. There were more than a hundred men left, enough to put up a hearty defence. Their courage, however, broke in the face of the snarling trio of vampires riding down on them. Their courage had been linked to the solidity of their defences, and with those defences only a memory, so too was their fighting spirit.

The zombie squirmed in his grip, bringing W’soran’s attentions back to the matter at hand. More of them had gained the platform and they stumbled towards him, even as his conglomerate giant ripped another section of the palisade apart. It was a simple enough matter to reach out and snag the magics that bound the zombies to their animator, and the work of but a moment to break them, and usurp them. The dead stiffened and slumped, his will now theirs.

Down below, he saw Melkhior’s undead steed spring into the air and clear the heads of the panicking soldiers. Even as its hooves touched the hard ground, horse and rider were galloping towards the bunkhouse where men, braver than the rest, had made their stand. Arrows pierced his apprentice’s cloak as Melkhior rode them down, laying about him with his blade, his gruesome features twisted in an expression of fierce glee.

W’soran looked down at the zombie. ‘Morath, Morath… you would not forget what I have taught you in the heat of battle. You wielded spells as an archer does arrows,’ he said. ‘Still, that one’s unbridled savagery has its place…’

As if he’d heard him, Melkhior gave a pantherish growl and vaulted from his mount, striking the head from one of his remaining foes even as he landed, the few men still standing scattering in terror. Melkhior gestured and the iron-banded doors to the bunkhouse exploded into fiery fragments.

The air suddenly blistered with the stink of ozone and Melkhior staggered as talons of lightning clawed at him from within the bunkhouse. Another crackle of lightning and he reeled back, smoke rising from him. The enemy necromancer stepped through the shattered doors, surrounded by a cluster of armoured corpses. The latter were clad head to toe in the sharp-edged, banded mail of Ushoran’s personal guard, their rotting faces hidden behind the visors of hair-crested, bat-winged helms. The wights lunged towards Melkhior, blades hissing as they cut the air.

W’soran’s own wights met them there, as Melkhior fell back through their ranks. The two groups of dead men duelled in silence, trading heavy blows with an empty remorselessness. Melkhior circled the group and bounded towards the necromancer, his jaws wide and his cloak flaring about him like wings.

W’soran examined the man as he wove defensive gestures. He was a Strigoi, and had the characteristic broad build, but was pasty from lack of sunlight. He wore thick robes, a pitted iron cuirass and ornately engraved pauldrons. A wooden case, containing a number of scrolls, was attached to his belt, and a small tome, with a locked clasp, was chained to his belly like a piece of extra armour. On his pale skin curled the black tattoos of Mourkain’s Mortuary Cult.

W’soran grunted, as if struck by a blow to the gut. He didn’t recognise the man, and as once-head of the cult, it was he who had inscribed the tattoos of obedience and subservience on all the members. He fancied it had been one of his better ideas. Neferata wasn’t the only one with experience in twisting faith, and the cult — a backwater version of the Great Land’s own far-reaching priesthood — had given W’soran access to hundreds of fresh corpses on a daily basis. It hadn’t been difficult to introduce the cult to the Strigoi, and Ushoran had seen the wisdom of a state religion — especially one that he controlled — at once.

The cult had spread rapidly. The Strigoi, given their history, were quite comfortable with death, and it had been a matter of mere decades to introduce them to the worship of Usirian and the other charnel gods, albeit suitably altered for W’soran’s purposes.

In the night of fire, the night he’d left, he’d burned the temple to cover his escape, slaughtering those priests and students that he couldn’t bother to have with him in exile. He’d ripped the guts out of the cult and left it for dead, wanting Ushoran to have nothing of his to exploit. He hadn’t expected that it would continue in his absence. Was Morath responsible for that as well? If anyone could have rebuilt what W’soran had destroyed, it would have been Morath. ‘Ah, Morath, you cunning boy,’ he said, stroking a zombie’s head as the corpses clustered about him. ‘I should have expected that Ushoran would find some use for you. Still, for it to come to this…’ He clucked his tongue.

The enemy necromancer spat spells with rapid-fire enunciation, ripping apart the air with the force of his magics, and words of withering and burning spun about Melkhior as he cut through the air. As he pounced on the necromancer, he screamed in pain. But the necromancer’s screams were louder. Melkhior had lost his blade in that first surge of magics, and he tore into the spell-caster with fangs and claws. The fight was over in moments, and the sweet scent of hot blood filled the air.

W’soran gestured and the bone-giant began to disassemble itself, bit by bit, returning to its component parts, even as it passed him from hand to hand to the ground. He stepped lightly across the snowy ground and trotted towards Melkhior, who crouched over the dead man, his jaws hooked into the man’s throat. ‘That’s enough,’ W’soran said.

Melkhior ignored him. His eyes were red with blood-greed and he snarled like a cur with a bone. W’soran frowned and reached out, swiftly grabbing Melkhior’s unruly mane and jerking him from the body. With a twist, he hurled his apprentice aside. Then he sank to his haunches and ripped the tome from the dead man’s body. It was a heavy thing, its covers made from some hairy animal hide stretched over a bone frame, with a brass spine and iron nails holding it together. He snapped the lock with a flick of his finger, and scoured the pages.

They were made from tanned skins, and were blotchy and flabby. As he’d thought, the incantations and spells within were his own, albeit changed slightly. He stood, still flipping through the pages. Morath had adapted what he’d been taught, changing it to compensate for the lack of raw magical strength that afflicted men. ‘Bold, my student,’ he muttered. ‘To twist the gifts of the gods, rather than accepting what should be.’

It had never occurred to him that such could be done. Oh, the old tomb-priests of the Great Land had done it, but they had had the gods to intercede for them, to hear them tell it. But if Morath’s scribbling was correct, then skill might provide a balance to strength. Morath had never accepted that the blood-kiss was the logical next step in his tutelage. He had stubbornly held tight to his humanity. Perhaps there had been something to his stubbornness after all.

W’soran clapped the tome shut as Melkhior picked himself up. He looked at his apprentice and shook his head. ‘You are an eternal disappointment in a sea of inevitable frustration, Melkhior. You brawl like a beast, when you should duel like a king. Have I not taught you my magics? Have I not equipped you with the arts of death and divinity? And still, still, you resort to the basest carnage. Perhaps I made a mistake, eh? Perhaps I am an old fool, hmm? Perhaps I should have chosen others to accompany me, to become my good right hand, eh?’

He hefted the tome and gesticulated with it. ‘Maybe Morath, who, at least, seems to have learned something from my poor efforts.’ He shook his head again. ‘Ah, if only Zoar had not been so selfless, I might have the help of a bright student. Poor W’soran! To be so alone, abandoned by his pupils, and left only with dullards to aid him in his task.’

‘Are you finished… master?’ Melkhior growled.

‘Only until you disappoint me once again,’ W’soran said and tossed him the tome. ‘Collect his other scribbling. If Morath has assumed my duties as head of Mourkain’s Mortuary Cult, it would behove us to learn exactly what he is teaching them.’ Hands clasped behind his back, he looked about the inside of the palisade. While he and Melkhior had dealt with the necromancer, the butchery had continued. The dead that the necromancer had controlled — including the wights — had fallen like string-cut puppets with his passing. The living had continued to fight for some few minutes more, but save for a few, strangled cries the defenders of the palisade were now silent.

Ullo and the others strode towards him, kicking aside snow and bodies. ‘This place is ours,’ Arpad said, removing his helmet and tucking it beneath his arm. ‘Now what are we planning on doing with it?’

‘Oh, we’ll find a use for it, I’d wager. Beyond that other wall there are the far frontiers of Strigos, my lords,’ W’soran said, throwing out an arm. He did not look in the direction he had indicated, for he knew what he would see. The black, flickering blotch that spread oily coils across the horizon, day or night, a brooding malevolence that beckoned him even as it caused his mind and spirit to quail in terror. The shadow of Nagash was spreading daily, lending the sting of urgency to W’soran’s natural impatience. He did not know whether the spreading shadow implied that Ushoran was growing more powerful, or simply being more swiftly hollowed out by the nightmare mind that resided in the iron crown he wore. ‘Lands that should have been yours and mine, and now belong to puppets of cursed Ushoran. Let’s go take them back, shall we?’

‘Vorag’s command was to assume control of the high passes and then wait for him to return,’ Ullo grunted, his tiny eyes glittering.

‘Why wait to do later what can be done now?’ W’soran asked, shrugging. ‘I have never been a patient man. How many years will it take Vorag to wrest control of the gateway to the east from the skaven and the unbridled dead, eh? Even with the aid of those of my students that I sent to accompany him, it will take time.’

‘We have nothing but time, sorcerer,’ Tarhos said. The big Strigoi’s hook hand was scarred and cracked and he ran a whetstone over it, clearing the bone of imperfections. ‘We are immortal, after all. What do a few centuries, more or less, mean to us?’

‘Ah, so, that is the reason,’ W’soran said, with a nod. He wrapped his cloak tight about him and turned away. ‘I had wondered why you three were chosen to be my watchdogs. And now I see.’ He chuckled. ‘You are cowards. Of course he left you behind!’

Arpad gnashed his teeth and Tarhos growled. Only Ullo remained silent. ‘Watch your tongue, sorcerer!’ Arpad snarled, gesticulating with his helm. ‘We have bathed in oceans of enemy blood and taken the tusks of thousands of urks! The greenskins fear us even more than the ratkin!’

‘Orcs and vermin are one thing — but the might of Strigos? It is no shame to be afraid of Abhorash, or the warriors he has chosen to replace you in defence of Mourkain. Even Vorag is afraid…’ W’soran purred, glancing at them.

Tarhos roared and leapt for him, hook swinging up as if to perforate W’soran’s skull. Melkhior lunged to meet him, his sword locking against the hook. The two vampires strained against one another in the swirling snow. Arpad, as if shocked by his companion’s attack, had his blade half-drawn, but Ullo grabbed his arm, forcing the sword back into its sheath. The grey-skinned Strigoi looked at W’soran, and then reached out an arm, hooking Tarhos by his scalp-lock and yanking him backwards off his feet.

‘Sanzak warned me about you, sorcerer,’ Ullo said, idly kicking Tarhos in the side of the head to calm him. He shoved Arpad back and grinned, displaying a mouth full of triangular razors. ‘He said you couldn’t be trusted, that you would lie to us to serve your own ends.’

‘And what if our ends happen to coincide, Ullo?’ W’soran asked.

Ullo’s grin became a smile. It was an unsettling expression. ‘Then we would follow your lead. Wherever it may take us,’ he said.