Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

W’soran seethed at the touch of those gazes. He longed to burn the impertinence from them. But Ushoran had convinced him to approach Abhorash peacefully, in contrast to his aggressive pursuit of Ankhat and, later, Neferata. In the months since his capture, the Lord of Masks had swiftly — indeed, more swiftly than W’soran had anticipated — regained his faculties. Even as W’soran had hunted for Ankhat, Ushoran had begun his hunt for the others, infiltrating the cities of the coasts of Araby and Nehekhara, his guise switching and changing month to month as he moved once more among mankind.

Nagash had already enacted the initial stages of his great plan. Soon, there would be no time to search for the wayward members of the Lahmian Court and bring them to heel at Nagash’s behest, and once again W’soran would be the fool. He imagined Arkhan’s look of arrogant triumph — no mean feat, given the liche’s lack of a face — and ground his fangs in annoyance.

He had already lost Neferata to a moment of foolish indiscretion. He had thought to overawe her with his power, and had attacked her where she laired in the desert, surrounded by an army of ragged tribesmen. He traced the barely-healed scars that covered his throat. Neferata had resisted more strongly than he’d anticipated, and her handmaidens were as deadly as he remembered. They’d almost killed him. Only Ushoran’s intervention had allowed them to escape.

Now, she was in the wind, and Ushoran had convinced him to cease hunting her and to instead set a trap. W’soran grunted and the moment of reverie passed. Ushoran and Abhorash were still speaking. ‘And you are sure she is coming here?’ Abhorash said. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at them.

‘There is nowhere else,’ Ushoran said. ‘She is not a creature of the deserts and the discomforts of the wilds. She wants a city to rule, with civilised folk, not barbarians. Bel Aliad is the closest, and the tribes will be inclined to attack anyway given their history. The question is, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Why should I do anything?’ Abhorash said.

‘Because otherwise she will take this city, and when she has done that, Nagash will take it from her, as he intends to take Nehekhara,’ Ushoran said bluntly. He made a fist for emphasis. ‘This city — these people — they will die for her ambition, even as Lahmia did.’

‘Again, what is that to me?’ Abhorash said, but more softly this time. W’soran felt a flash of disdain. Ushoran knew Abhorash’s weaknesses well enough, it seemed. Abhorash had always been too concerned over seeming to care as to the fate of his inferiors. Even as he had supped on them, he had taken no more than was necessary, and had treated it as one might a distasteful duty. He curried favour from insects and played hero to apes, greedily supping on their adulation even as the rest of them did so with blood.

‘Perhaps nothing or perhaps everything… you’ve served the masters of this city for months, Abhorash, training their household cavalry in the ways of war. You have seen off desert raiders and brigands aplenty. The people hail you as a hero. Will their hero vanish, as the long, final night descends? Will you leave them as you left us?’ Ushoran asked.

‘Quiet,’ Abhorash growled.

‘It’s true and you know it, champion,’ W’soran interjected, spitting the word. ‘You abandoned the city to Neferata and she bled it dry and served its husk up to Alcadizzar. Will you do the same again?’

Abhorash’s snarl was terrible to hear. There was a depthless fury there, and W’soran stumbled back. He raised his hands, ready to defend himself, when Ushoran stepped between them. He faced Abhorash unflinching.

‘Nagash is coming, Abhorash, and he will be unstoppable. The things we have seen…’ Ushoran shook his head. ‘But you can spare this city his wrath, just as you can spare it Neferata’s.’

Abhorash narrowed his eyes. After a long moment, he said, ‘What would I need to do?’

Ushoran glanced at W’soran, and then turned back. ‘What you should have done the moment you first learned what Neferata had become, champion,’ he said.

‘I will not kill her,’ Abhorash growled.

Ushoran raised a placatory hand. ‘No. She is a queen, after all. And one does not simply kill a queen.’ He smiled grimly. ‘No, you will capture her, champion. You will capture Neferata for us…’

Crookback Mountain

(Year -321 Imperial Calendar)

‘Why did you run here, W’soran?’ Stregga asked, sliding a hank of skaven fur across the wet surface of her sword to clean it. She sat on a dead rat ogre, her limbs clad in battered leather and bronze armour, her hair hidden beneath a conical Strigoi helm. She peered down the length of the blade, one fang exposed as if in consternation. ‘Surely there were safer places?’

‘Safer than at your lord’s side, you mean,’ W’soran said, wrenching his scimitar from the body of a skaven. ‘And yes, quite likely,’ he added. Dozens of dead skaven littered the corridor. ‘I could have returned to Cathay, perhaps, or gone into the west. Perhaps I have become a patriot, in my dotage, eh?’ He looked at her slyly. ‘Why has your mistress remained? Why does she not flee far from these climes? Why tempt fate?’

‘Neferata does not flee,’ Stregga said stiffly.

‘Neferata always flees. She has always run from that which she does not wish to confront,’ W’soran said. ‘I have no doubt that when Ushoran trounces her rabble in the field, she will flee yet again.’ He looked at her. ‘Will you go with her then, I wonder? Or will you remain here, with your new master?’

‘Vorag is not my master,’ Stregga said, rising smoothly to her feet. ‘He is my lover and my king, but I have but one mistress, and he is not it.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘It wasn’t a question worth answering,’ Stregga said, turning away from him. ‘Besides, you didn’t answer mine, either.’

W’soran grinned and gazed about the corridor. Several ranks of skeletal spearmen waited patiently for orders, the points of their spears dark with skaven blood. There were a number of Strigoi with them, including several newcomers — frontier ajals unhappy with Ushoran’s reign, mostly, though there were a few who were genuine idealists, looking to create a vampiric utopia free of so-called ‘outsiders’. Vorag had sent them all down into the tunnels as a test of loyalty when the skaven had come to call. Most were returning relatively unscathed, though there were a few missing faces. The skaven had refined their methods for dispatching lone vampires — lassos, hooks and flames, if the remains were anything to judge by.

As he’d predicted, the skaven had attacked within a month of the sentries being pulled from the depths. The ratkin had boiled out of the darkness like the waters of a flood, sweeping through the lower reaches of the mountain with a speed that belied their habitual cowardice. They’d made for his laboratories straight away, and he’d defended them with a ready savagery that had set the skaven to flight amidst a cloud of fear-musk. But other sections of the mountain had not been so well defended. The lower corridors had fallen quickly, and were soon filled with squirming hairy bodies.

Even now, the great central cavern, which stretched up into the uppermost reaches of the mountain, was the scene of massed combat. Rank upon rank of skaven hurled themselves against the dead with a frenzy that bespoke chemical or perhaps sorcerous inducement. The echoes of that struggle carried dully through the rock around them. Battle had been joined in full several days earlier, and the pace of it had neither slowed nor ceased since. The skaven were determined to recapture their citadel at any cost, and were apparently willing to sacrifice as many of their kind as it took to do so.