Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

A phalanx of at least fifty Myrmidons awaited him, shields raised and spears lowered. They were clad in bronze cuirasses and greaves, and wore full-face rounded helms topped by flaring horse-hair crests. As one, they stepped forward in tight formation, as if to drive him back through the doors.

‘Oh no, I’m not leaving without what I came for,’ W’soran hissed, acknowledging their intent. ‘I didn’t raise every pox-ridden corpse between here and the northern coast just to get chased off by a bunch of bully-boys.’ He gestured, pulling tight the strands of dark magic that swirled about him like an infernal halo. The spirits of the dead, some from the marshy barrows he’d discovered near Magritta and some newly wrenched from their cooling bodies, billowed through the open doors and washed over him, roiling and splashing silently towards the Myrmidons.

The Myrmidons met the rushing wall of ghosts with silent stoicism, even as many of their number fell and died and joined the spectral throng. They pressed forward, ignoring the dead, and men from the rear rows moved to fill the gaps in the front ranks. By the time they reached him, barely a third remained, but impossibly, they did not stop.

W’soran gaped, nonplussed, but then swept his sword out and spat a flurry of incantations. Black lightning jolted from his eyes, punching holes in the phalanx, and sorcerous fire engulfed men. The ghosts tore at the rest, but still, they came on. The first spears reached him a moment later, driving at him with cruel inexorability. Desperate now, he slashed out, chopping through them. Shields struck him, pushing him back. He was stronger than any man, any dozen men, but nonetheless, they forced him back towards the doors, even as he cursed and railed.

Zoar came to his aid, followed by those of his acolytes who were at the forefront of the battle. The vampires hit the phalanx like a thunderbolt, tearing through it and giving W’soran the room he needed to use his full strength. Soon enough, it dissolved into red ruin, as men died where they stood, trying to prevent the vampires from entering their temple.

W’soran stepped over the bodies, gore dripping from his armour and skin. ‘Shut those doors. I want no interruptions,’ he barked, gesturing behind him without turning. He met the goddess’s marble gaze and laughed softly. ‘It’s mine,’ he said.

‘Perhaps — then again, perhaps not,’ a deep voice murmured.

W’soran hissed and turned. Abhorash, clad in bronze mail and a cuirass emblazoned with the face of the goddess, stepped from around the statue, holding a heavy spear. Behind him came his Hand, the four vampires spreading out around their leader. Each was arrayed in a similar fashion, though they carried swords rather than spears.

‘What are you doing here?’ W’soran sputtered.

Abhorash didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he looked up at the statue of the goddess. An expression, wistful and sad, crossed his hawk-like features. Then, he smiled slightly and looked back at W’soran. ‘Repaying a debt,’ he said, simply. Then, he tossed the spear up, caught it easily and sent it hurtling, point-first, towards W’soran’s heart.

The Worlds Edge Mountains

(Year -265 Imperial Calendar)

Strigoi arrows bit into W’soran’s lines as they marched towards the enemy where they crouched in among the thick scrub trees. The broad heads of the arrows crunched through bone, dropping his dead soldiers where they marched across the frost-covered open ground. Spines and skulls burst at the point of impact, or were simply obliterated by the heavy catapults that lined the ridge above the trees. A large rock crashed down nearby, burying a group of skeletons, and he flinched slightly in his saddle. His will pulsed and a troop of mounted corpses, clad in heavy, dwarf-forged mail, thundered towards the war-engines. Normal riders and normal horses would not have been able to make it up the slope, but for dead men it was no more difficult than open ground.

His forces had crossed the mountain passes that divided the edges of the Strigoi Empire from the territory nominally controlled by Vorag a fortnight before, and this was the first time he’d been able to bring the barbarians to battle. They’d set their scouts and flankers to draw his forces into the bowl-shaped valley amongst the smaller peaks of the mountains on the eastern border of Strigos and he’d obliged them, despite gleaning their intent. They’d set a trap for a jackal and caught a mountain cat. He did not know where they were exactly — he left such pedestrian matters to Ullo and the others — but he knew they were close to Mourkain. He could practically follow the buzzards.

His grand strategy was playing out to perfection. Patience and cunning had won out over bloodlust. He had bided his time, stalling and reining in his more over-eager followers, waiting until his enemy’s attentions were overwhelmed by the myriad threats besetting him. Ushoran was surrounded by snapping jackals — Neferata, renegades in his own court, the wildling tribes and the orcs — and he was unable to prevent the approach of the mountain cat that would tear out his heart. Strigos was a dying beast, stumbling towards its final stand, and W’soran would deliver the killing blow. Smiling, he looked out over his army, the tool by which he would extract Ushoran’s heart.

As ever, there were no living men in his forces — only easily biddable bones and dead meat filled his ranks. Skeletons clad in armour or scraps, mounted on equally bony steeds or on foot, marched or galloped at his direction. War machines crafted from fossilised timber and the bones of great beasts flung heavy stones; swarms of scuttling half-things, part spider, part skaven, part scorpion and goblin, crafted in his laboratory and animated by his malice, swarmed towards the enemy. The bones of great giants, clad in patchwork mail and bearing armoured howdahs across their shoulders holding ranks of skeletal archers. Massive mockeries of Nehekharan ushabti, created from boiled and congealed flesh and the bones of ogres and orcs, loped forward, wielding crudely forged khopeshes and monstrous bows. Overhead, the corpses of ancient carrion birds of immense size cut through the darkly overcast sky alongside fluttering clouds of bats, and the gigantic cousins of the latter swooped low over the Strigoi lines, plucking men into the air to drain them of blood or simply tear them to pieces. All these things and more trudged, marched, stomped and slithered through the melting snows and dust of the field, at his command, and the commands of his acolytes.

‘Their left flank is crumbling,’ Arpad howled gleefully, suddenly riding past him, a train of mounted skeletal horse archers following in his wake as he made his way to where the fighting was the thickest. ‘Ullo has that preening fop Gashnag on the run, sorcerer! The day is ours!’

W’soran waved a hand to indicate that he’d heard. He had expected as much, but his attentions were on the right, where several of his acolytes duelled with those of Morath. There, the battle was going worse. His students were masters of the death-winds, each worth a handful of Morath’s disciples, but they were outnumbered here. If W’soran seemed to never have enough students to hand to accomplish what he desired, Morath seemed to suffer from a surplus. For every one of W’soran’s, Morath had three. Then, the Strigoi needed many necromancers to do what a single one of W’soran’s minions could accomplish with a wave of a claw.

The two groups of necromancers were at a standstill, and the dead caught between them, frozen in the midst of the fray. The Strigoi had dragged their own dead to their feet to meet W’soran’s corpse brigades, and both groups of dead men trembled where they stood, pinned by the opposing magics. Controlling the dead was all a matter of will, and bending them to yours. It required discipline, focus and patience as well as raw force. W’soran’s followers had the latter in excess, but the former were alien concepts to many of them. They had been barbarians when he’d given them the gift of immortality, and they were savages still.