Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

‘Stand and face justice, butcher,’ the warrior leading the soldiers bellowed. Something in his voice tugged at W’soran’s attentions and he peered at him. He saw a flash of red through the slits in the chainmail mask that covered his face. He did not wear the armour of a common soldier, or even one of the esteemed Royal Harem Guards of Lashiek, but was clad instead in the war panoply of one of the kontoi of Bel Aliad. Ragged silk strips flared from the spiral point that topped his helm as he spun about, cleaving the heads from a trio of zombies with one fluid blow.

Then he was upon W’soran, who jerked to the side as the warrior’s blade hammered down onto the edge of the table, splintering it. His attacker wrenched the blade free and it spun in his hands as he lunged for W’soran again. With a snarl, W’soran grabbed the swordsman’s wrists and they stood for a moment, muscle locked against muscle. That close, W’soran could smell the stink of sour blood and death that marked the kontoi as one of his kind, if an unfamiliar one.

‘What are you?’ W’soran growled. ‘Who are you?’

The kontoi hissed, ‘Neferata sends her regards, butcher.’ As W’soran’s good eye widened, the kontoi kicked him in the belly, flinging him back. He crashed through a bevy of zombies, but regained his feet quickly, avoiding a blow from the kontoi’s blade. W’soran sank his talons into the wood of the floor and ripped a number of boards free. Gripping one, he caught his opponent’s next blow. The heavy blade sank into the wood and W’soran twisted the sword from his enemy’s grip. The kontoi did not hesitate; with a roar, he flung himself at W’soran, smashing him in the face with an armoured forearm.

‘Get off me,’ W’soran spat, catching the next blow on his palm and closing his fingers about the warrior’s fist. With a heave of his shoulder he jerked the vampire into the air and swung him about, smashing him into the wall of his domicile and through it, rupturing the mud-brick easily. The kontoi crashed against the wall of the building opposite and tumbled into the alleyway.

W’soran turned. More soldiers thrust forward, jabbing at him with spears. He hissed and took the obvious path. In a single bound, robes flaring, he leapt the hole and struck the opposite building, clinging to the brick like one of the colourful tree-dwelling frogs of the Southlands. He turned about and craned his neck, giving the horrified soldiers a parting hiss.

Then, quickly, he scuttled for the edge of the roof. He could recreate his experiments elsewhere, under more convivial circumstances. However, even as he cleared the edge of the roof, he heard the scrape of armour on brick. He turned to see the kontoi hauling himself up, eyes flashing with rage.

‘Do you really think you stand a chance against me, dog?’ W’soran cackled, raising his hand. ‘And weaponless and alone at that?’

‘What made you think he was alone, old monster?’

W’soran whirled. Neferata crouched on the roof behind him, surrounded by her handmaidens. She extended the blade she held and smiled cruelly. ‘The Dowager Concubine has asked — monarch to monarch — that I remove you from her demesnes, W’soran. Being as you are still my subject, I could not, in good conscience, refuse her.’

‘I am no subject of yours,’ W’soran hissed. ‘Why do you persecute me?’

‘Why,’ Neferata said, her smile sliding from her marble features. ‘Why? Is the span of your memory so fragile a thing that it cannot bear the weight of what you have done, old monster?’ She slashed the air with her blade. ‘You killed our land! You destroyed everything, alongside Nagash! It is your fault Lahmia fell, it is your fault the Great Land is now nothing more than a sandy tomb, and I shall extract that blood-debt from your wrinkled hide.’

W’soran stood. Rage washed over him. How dare she blame him? How dare she put her failures at his feet? With a snarl, he said, ‘Then by all means… come and try your hand, oh queen of nothing!’

Crookback Mountain

(Year -279 Imperial Calendar)

The assassin managed to avoid W’soran’s search parties for six months. For half a year, the vampire hid in the depths or scaled the peak, avoiding hunters of every shape and description — from Strigoi to wights to the giant bats that lived in the vast caverns far below the mountain. In the end, it was the smallest thing that caused him to meet his end — a common slave.

Unlike W’soran’s brood, the assassin required regular nourishment. And in the mountain, the only nourishment to be had for one of their kind was the slave pens. Mostly, the slaves couldn’t tell one predator from another. Indeed, it wasn’t his identity that proved the assassin’s undoing, but simply that he was a vampire, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Red Eye orcs had been growing restive for months. As more and more guards were diverted to the hunt, the orcs, ever-surly and unfailingly aggressive, took advantage. Revolt in the pens was not unheard of. But it was usually squashed quickly and effectively. But on that day, at that moment, there simply weren’t enough dead men to contain the living. The orcs seized their moment well — as another troop of skeletal guards marched out of the cavern, bound for a search of the southern crags, leaving less than a hundred in place to guard three times that of greenskins.

Crude tools, intended for mining, smashed down on bone, battering the unfeeling sentries from their feet. The overseer, an acolyte named Hruga, sounded the alarm before launching himself into the fray. And the assassin, in the pens to assuage his thirst, was caught up in the green tide as the orcs, seeing only another vampire, attacked him as readily as they attacked everything else.

Such were W’soran’s conclusions after the fact. When he arrived, the pens were in complete disarray. Orcs battled the dead throughout the large cavern. He saw a half-dozen orcs bring down an armoured skeleton, dragging the dead warrior from his feet. The revolt was disorganised, chaotic. It had no centre — it was merely a tantrum of beasts, flinging themselves at their tormentors en masse. The orcs required no lightning rod to incite them to violence, only to organise them. In time, if they won free, a new warlord might arise to lead the Red Eyes to battle.

‘Kill as many of them as it takes to herd the rest back into their pens,’ W’soran growled, flinging the edge of his cloak back. ‘We stop this here, now . Go!’ Melkhior and the other acolytes moved quickly. They knew the danger that faced them as well as W’soran did. There were close to ten thousand orc slaves in the bowels of the mountain. Even a third of that number could threaten their control of the hard-won citadel.

A howling orc burst past the acolytes, swinging a mattock. It was a big brute, covered in scars and blue tattoos. W’soran drew his scimitar and bisected the beast in one smooth motion. His acolytes hesitated. W’soran gestured with the bloody blade. ‘What are you waiting for? Kill them!’

The battle that followed was no sort of battle at all. A dozen sorcerers unleashed the most devastating spells and incantations that they knew within a confined space. Orcs were incinerated, torn apart, shrunken to screaming mummies, or otherwise massacred in minutes. And through it all, W’soran stalked, killing the rebels with gestures and the edge of his blade.

In a way, it was a relief. For six months, frustration had piled upon frustration for him. The body of the assassin he had slain in the initial attack had revealed nothing. The killers were Strigoi, but again, that meant nothing. There were Strigoi scattered to the four cardinal directions, serving four different masters, including himself. Ushoran’s empire had splintered and fragmented like a stool bearing too much weight, just as W’soran had planned. There were no clues to those who had sent them, no subtle signs or indications of their loyalties. They could have even been freebooters — lone vampires looking to take territory for themselves.