Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

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.