Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

‘Is it?’ Melkhior asked. ‘It seems like no kind of immortality to me.’

‘You place too much importance on the body, my son. That has ever been your main failing,’ W’soran chided. He strode towards the cages where a number of orcs crouched snarling, fresh from the mountains. They were survivors from the Red Eye tribe, given the pernicious pink tint that afflicted their piggy orbs. W’soran strode close to the cages and the orcs howled and lunged at the bars, grasping at him wildly. ‘These husks are like anchors, holding our minds in bondage. Nagash was a fool — clutching at the physical, when he should have concentrated on the spiritual. The raw stuff of magic flows in us, pumping our blood and allowing us to wield it as a weapon, or to embrace it to transform, moulding our shapes as we see fit. Not without good reason do the Cathayans call our kind Yiangshi, or “corpse-ghost”.’ He held up his hand, as if to examine it in the light of the braziers that lined the cavern. ‘We are ghosts possessing our own bodies. In time, I will know the secret that Nagash stumbled upon, like a cave-dweller learning of fire.’

‘That’s why you want Ushoran to unlock the secrets of the crown,’ Melkhior said, quietly. ‘That is the debt you wish to collect.’

W’soran looked at his apprentice. ‘Among others, yes.’

Melkhior shook his head. ‘Plans within plans,’ he muttered.

W’soran snorted. ‘Where you see complexity, I see subtlety. Birds and stones, boy — the only lesson Neferata ever took from me was that of the subtle plan. Plans are like layers of armour, insulating you from failure. You would do well to remember that,’ he said pointedly.

Melkhior frowned. ‘I have taken your every lesson to heart, my master.’

‘A beautifully parsed sentence, my boy,’ W’soran said. ‘I have long feared that the art of rhetoric and grammar died with the Great Land.’

‘You are a good teacher,’ Melkhior said.

W’soran smiled. ‘Another beautiful sentence. Now, I dislike having these Strigoi hanging about, getting up to mischief. We’ll need to organise a new campaign for them. Something that takes them far enough away to not trouble me with their incessant complaining, but close enough that — eh?’ He stiffened. ‘I smell something.’

Melkhior tensed, and his hand flew to the hilt of the sword on his hip. The other acolytes reacted more slowly, but reacted all the same, clutching at their knives or scrolls. It had been years since the last skaven incursion, but there were more tunnels than even W’soran’s diligent vermin-hunters had been able to ferret out.

W’soran turned in place, head cocked. The only sounds he heard were the bubbling of the alembics and the screeching of his captives. But he smelled something out of place. As he looked about, the great web of chains suddenly rattled. W’soran spun around, raising a hand.

A dark shape launched itself from the chains. A blade flashed. W’soran staggered back as the flesh of his palm parted and he howled. He slammed back against the cage of orcs and they grabbed at him, pinioning him. Tusks sank into his flesh and bellicose roars deafened him. The dark shape seemed to skate towards him, blade angling for his heart.

Then Melkhior was there, deflecting the blow. He shoved the would-be assassin back. The dark shape crashed among the acolytes, who scattered. It bounded to its feet, revealing itself to be a man — no, a vampire — clad in dark leathers. A scalp-lock whipped about his head as he slashed the air with his sword and drew a heavy dagger from his belt.

‘Assassin,’ Melkhior snarled.

‘Really, how observant of you,’ W’soran shrieked, ripping his arms free of the orcs. ‘How impressive that you were able to deduce that,’ he continued with a hiss. Another hiss, ‘It’s almost as if you have eyes and can use them. Imagine that!’ He whirled about and barked a sibilant incantation. The orcs writhed as if lashed by invisible whips and shied back from the bars, cowed.

He jerked back just in time. A second assassin dropped from the top of the cage, his sword burying itself in the stone. It snapped off, and the vampire tossed it aside with a curse as he leapt for W’soran, his fingertips extruding claws.

W’soran backhanded the assassin, shattering his neck and spine with a single blow and sending the body hurtling across the laboratory. ‘You dare,’ he roared. ‘You dare attack me here? ’

‘Master, look out,’ Melkhior bellowed, flinging himself against W’soran even as a third killer materialised from the shadows, wielding a short, stabbing spear. The blade, edged with silver, hissed as it pierced Melkhior’s side and he screamed in agony. He chopped down on the spear, shattering it as he fell. W’soran shoved him aside and spat another incantation.

A knot of blackness formed on the assassin’s chest. The vampire stepped back, confused. The knot billowed and blossomed into something else; tendrils of purest darkness exploded from it, ensnaring the hapless assassin. He had time for one, single scream, before he was drawn into the small obsidian knothole in a cacophony of snapping bones and tearing flesh.

W’soran rose to his feet with impossible grace and turned to search for the last assassin. The vampire was gone. W’soran’s lips writhed back from his fangs and he turned, stooped, and plucked Melkhior from the floor like a man snatching up a hare. ‘How did they get in here?’ he roared, clutching Melkhior by the throat. ‘Where were my guards? This is my citadel, Melkhior! Mine! How did they get in here? Fool. Fool!’ Melkhior could only respond with a weak gurgle. ‘You worthless ape, you spawn of flea-bitten jackal,’ W’soran howled.

With a frustrated shriek W’soran tossed his acolyte aside. He turned, fixing his acolytes with a burning, one-eyed glare. ‘Find him. Find any others who might be with him. Scour this mountain peak to root and find him! I want to know who has dared to invade my sanctum! Find him, find him, find him ,’ he howled as the mountain echoed with his fury.

The City of Lashiek

(Year -1147 Imperial Calendar)

The soldiers of the Dowager Concubine burst through the door of the villa, even as they had burst through the gates outside only minutes before. The battering ram they used fell heavily to the floor as they reached for their weapons. The zombies lurched towards them, groaning. W’soran scooped up the tomes he’d been scribbling in and pressed them to his chest as he whirled about and slapped the life from an extraordinarily quick — and extraordinarily unlucky — soldier in the same motion.

‘Kill them,’ he snapped. ‘Kill them all!’

More zombies lurched past him, their jaws champing mindlessly as they fell upon the invaders. W’soran looked down at the thing on the table — a patchwork cadaver, built from the most perfect of parts, excised from the freshest corpses — and hissed in frustration. Another experiment, ruined.

He was alone in his dwelling, having sent Zoar and his other remaining acolytes out to prepare his new lair for his arrival. Araby was no place for him, not any longer. Not with Arkhan the Black storming the walls of every city within reach. The last thing he wanted was to become bogged down in a conflict with his old foe, especially when there were more important matters to be attended to. There was a ship in the harbour waiting for him, and he had intended to crew it with the dead he now hurled into battle with the invaders.

The servants of the Dowager Concubine had been hunting for him for weeks. The crippled old witch had sought his aid in resurrecting her dying son, in order to maintain her stranglehold on the city. He had done so, and taught her the limited arts she needed to keep the zombie of her firstborn relatively inoffensive-looking. With a puppet corpse-caliph on the throne, she could rule safely. He had thought that would have earned him a few weeks grace at the least, but the wily old crone had turned on him the moment she no longer needed him. He had planned for betrayal, but he was astounded that she had discovered his lair in an abandoned villa in the heart of the port city so quickly.