Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

‘Never mind,’ W’soran snapped. Stregga grinned insouciantly at him, and the two new vampires giggled.

‘Frightened, were you, old monster?’ Stregga said.

‘Simply surprised; Neferata was never what you’d call bright. I thought even the rudiments of the art of death were beyond her,’ W’soran said, pulling his cloak and his dignity about him. It was a childish response, but it had the desired effect. The newcomers hissed like angry cats. Stregga, more used to W’soran’s insults, merely frowned. W’soran looked at Vorag. ‘I was not invited.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ Vorag said. The Strigoi smiled slightly — a dangerous expression. Vorag only smiled when he was killing something, or preparing to kill something. ‘I am capable of speaking without you at my elbow, sorcerer.’ The gathered Strigoi sniggered and laughed. All except Sanzak, who remained silent, W’soran noted. ‘Or have you at last come to tell me that my war-engines are ready to take the field?’

W’soran paused. Vorag had been growing increasingly impatient in regards to the war machines. He wanted to take to the field, now that he had a citadel and a growing army. Exactly what lands he intended to claim in these barren mountains, he’d never said. Their army was, as yet, too small to confront Ushoran’s forces. Unless…

‘What word, Lord Vorag?’ W’soran asked, smoothly changing the subject. ‘What news do our guests bring?’

‘Neferata lives, old monster. And she has conquered,’ one of the newcomers said. ‘Khemalla and I have come to bring word — Lahmia lives again.’

‘And what would you know of Lahmia, little creature?’ W’soran asked. ‘What would you know of its grandeur, of its glory? What would you know of anything pertaining to the Great Land?’ He snorted. ‘Or has Neferata been filling your heads with stories?’

‘Watch your tone,’ the Arabyan, Khemalla, said as her dark eyes flashed. ‘Layla speaks the truth — Lahmia lives. And it stands against Mourkain, and the usurper, Ushoran.’

‘Funny how he wasn’t a usurper until he made Neferata bow,’ Melkhior murmured.

Khemalla snarled, and her sword was in her hand in an eye-blink. Melkhior drew his blade in the nick of time. Steel rang on steel and Khemalla spun about Melkhior. Her blade lashed out, nearly drawing blood. But W’soran intervened, grabbing her wrist with a speed that shocked all of those present, and slung her to the ground.

‘Insulted and attacked as well,’ W’soran snarled. He glared at Vorag. ‘Has my time here come to an end, Bloodytooth? Should I and my followers leave you to your dreams of empire and wandering doxies?’

Vorag swept back the edge of his cloak. ‘And you think I would simply let you leave? No, I require your aid, necromancer. I need your magics. But perhaps you don’t require all of your limbs, eh?’ The Strigoi hunched forward, spreading talon-tipped fingers.

W’soran knew he wasn’t bluffing. He also knew that he could likely dispatch the Strigoi with little difficulty. But dispatching the others at the same time might have been a tad too tricky. So, instead of responding, he merely met Vorag’s gaze and held it just long enough. Then he looked away and stepped back, hands lowered.

Vorag glared at him for a moment longer, and then grunted, satisfied. ‘Neferata sends word that Ushoran’s attentions are on her now. Abhorash has been recalled to Mourkain,’ he said.

W’soran shrugged and said, ‘And?’

‘And, it is an opportunity,’ Stregga said. ‘One we have been waiting for, the opportunity to put the true heir on Kadon’s throne.’ She gestured to Vorag, whose grin widened. ‘In his veins runs the blood of Kadon and Strigu, the first hetman of Strigos, and in his hands, the empire will prosper, even as it rots on the vine with Ushoran.’

‘And what of Gashnag or the other nobles who stand at Ushoran’s side?’ W’soran asked. ‘They might have something to say about that, especially given that Strigu’s blood runs in their veins as well.’ He raised a hand to forestall a rebuttal. ‘No, no, I’m in favour of overthrowing Ushoran, of course. I simply dislike these games of semantics your mistress insists on playing.’

‘And here I thought scholars liked words,’ Stregga said.

‘We prefer truth,’ W’soran said. ‘Better the truth of the blade than the lie of the sheath. Ahtep of Mahrak said that, in his scroll, Higher Truths . I have a copy, if you wish to read it? No?’ He looked at Vorag. ‘What does she want, Vorag?’

‘Lord Vorag,’ Vorag rumbled.

‘What does she want, Lord Vorag,’ W’soran said.

‘For us to invade Strigos’s eastern territories,’ Sanzak said, speaking up for the first time. The scar-faced Strigoi fiddled with his scalp lock, his ugly face grave. ‘A task which we have neither the resources nor the time to accomplish properly, not if Ushoran intends to pitch Abhorash and the northern Tekes — the warrior lodges — against the Silver Pinnacle. Which he will do unless he’s gone addle-brained,’ he said. He looked at W’soran. ‘Has he?’

‘No, more’s the pity,’ W’soran said, sucking on a fang. ‘Mad, yes, but stupid… no.’

‘What about the engines you promised me?’ Vorag asked. ‘With those, we could devastate the eastern marches and even the vaunted Red Dragon himself will not be able to stand against us!’

W’soran fought a smirk as he caught the bitterness and scorn in Vorag’s words. The enmity between Abhorash and Vorag had begun even before he’d arrived in Mourkain, and it lasted to this very day. Vorag had been the pre-eminent champion of the nascent empire and Ushoran’s sword arm, until the Champion of Lahmia had arrived, with his small band of savage killers. Ushoran was no fool. He’d put Abhorash in charge of as much of the army as he could get away with, and more since, and Abhorash had created a martial engine more deadly than anything that had marched across Nehekhara in Settra’s time. The champion had a gift for war and for making men into warriors. He’d built Ushoran a juggernaut of an army and then used that juggernaut to pave an empire.

When it came to military matters, Abhorash was the next-best thing to a god. It was in every other endeavour that he failed miserably, and always had. W’soran still remembered the grim champion, dogging Lamashizzar in times long past, as hungry for the secrets of immortality as the rest of them, himself included. And when Neferata had usurped those secrets and made them into something infinitely more terrible, Abhorash had bared his throat as quickly as the rest of them.

Just why he’d done it, what he’d wanted out of it, W’soran still didn’t know. For the fools like Ankhat or Ushoran, immortality was an end in and of itself. For Neferata it was simply her due. For himself, the power that came with immortality had been his goal. But for Abhorash, what?

Even as he thought of the champion, he said, ‘The engines are not ready. Not yet.’

‘You have had almost two years, sorcerer,’ Vorag growled.

‘I need more abn-i-khat,’ W’soran said. ‘Those war machines require inordinate amounts of the wyrdstone to function, and that means I need more than I have.’

‘And where do you suggest we get that stone? Perhaps we should crawl down into the skaven burrows and borrow a bushel or two?’ Stregga said.

‘No.’ W’soran smiled. ‘We take Nagashizzar.’

The Sea of Claws

(Year -1166 Imperial Calendar)

The great bat shrieked in hunger as it swooped high over the choppy, frigid northern waters. That it was dead, and had, indeed, been dead for a number of years, and thus could not be hungry, made no difference to it. W’soran, astride its back in a saddle crafted from furs and tanned human skin, felt a distant kinship with the massive beast.