Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

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.