Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

But strength alone could make the difference in struggles like the one playing out before his eye. Discipline frayed, patience fractured, and focus crumbled before overwhelming strength. As he watched, one of his students, a former shaman of one of the Vault tribes called Niscos, extended a hand, as if pushing against a great weight. A zombie jerked and staggered, taking a step towards one of the Strigoi, who made a complicated gesture. The zombie twitched and bent around, reaching towards Niscos.

Niscos bared his fangs and clenched his hand into a fist. The zombie whipped back around, body rupturing with the force of the motion. Bones cracked and shattered and its skin bubbled and tore as it lurched towards the Strigoi. The Strigoi stumbled back, waving his hands. The zombie staggered on, unheeding, shoved forward by Niscos so forcefully that it began to shed pieces of itself. It seemed to explode as it crashed into the Strigoi, its jaws clamping shut around the man’s throat. Niscos gave a whoop, and his concentration wavered.

W’soran winced as the Strigoi’s companions made Niscos pay for his inattention — a dozen corpses fell on the vampire, bearing him down. Shattered bones stabbed into his flesh, seeking his heart. Niscos howled and backhanded a corpse, sending it spinning head over heels into the air. W’soran let his gaze drift towards the other combatants. If Niscos survived, he would have learned a valuable lesson. If not — well, he could be replaced, eventually.

Similar scenes played out all around the duelling necromancers. A group of skeletal spearman shivered to dust as two opposing wills sought to control them, and a number of fresher corpses simply burst, as if they’d been left out in the sun too long. Broken bones shaped and re-shaped themselves in complex, chaotic geometric patterns as the two groups of necromancers sought to employ them. Missiles crafted from chattering skulls hurtled across the battlefield and cages and traps made from stripped flesh and cracked bone fastened themselves about the unwary. Black fire washed across a number of corpse-constructs, unravelling them as they lumbered forward. For a moment, W’soran wondered whether he would need to become involved.

When he caught sight of the wolf-tail standard of the king of the Draesca bobbing over the fray, however, his concern faded. Chown, the latest to bear the weight of W’soran’s gift, was a more vigorous battle-sorcerer than Shull had been. W’soran’s keen gaze found the necromancer-king easily enough. Chown was burly, even with the weight of years clinging to him, and he was wreathed in the stuff of death as he rode at the head of his ancestors. A mace made from the skull of an ogre whirled in one hand as he crashed into the Strigoi lines, and he beat an enemy vojnuk down from his horse with a smash from his heavy shield.

The dead kings of the Draesca charged with him, wielding the weapons they had used in life. Shull was there, his mummified skull split in a silent howl as he swept his sword out to lop off the head of a rider before he rode down a frantically gesturing enemy necromancer. Morath’s students would find their petty magics availed them nothing against the wight-kings. They were too much at one with the stuff of death to be controlled by any but a master of the Corpse Geometries.

He grunted, satisfied that the Draesca could bolster the flagging flank. His attentions switched to the centre, where the ranks of Strigoi spearmen waited, unmoving. Living men these, and seemingly disinclined to attack his silent ranks of skeletal soldiers. He wondered whether they had grown used to the dead in the intervening years, or whether their fear had only grown worse from the proximity.

‘Why aren’t you moving?’ he hissed, trying to gauge whether it was cowardice, or strategy. Then he caught sight of movement in the enemy’s rear — men, falling back and fleeing into the tree-line. Cowardice then — not unexpected, given how hard his forces had been pressing those of Strigos.

In the years following their attack on his watchtowers and border forts, W’soran had moved rapidly, striking multiple points at once and driving the invaders from his territory. His legions marched unimpeded across the frontier, burning and pillaging as they hammered the Strigoi lines, driving them back again and again. The Strigoi had gone from being on the offensive to being on the defensive, and quite rapidly. One by one, their forces crumpled and fell back, streaming through the crags and bowers of Ushoran’s domain.

It had been surprisingly easy. Ushoran’s forces outnumbered his, but Strigos’s defences were stretched thin. Wild tribes of men and orcs continued to attack the frontiers, and undoubtedly, Neferata was taking advantage of the situation in some fashion. Nonetheless, it was easier than he’d expected. And that worried him. But not enough to make him stay his invasion — the time had come.

Eventually, he knew, Ushoran — the thing that Ushoran had become — would have to face him. Nagash could never abide a direct challenge. Ushoran, possibly, but not Nagash. It was just a matter of applying the right amount of pressure. He leaned forward over the horn of his saddle, watching the Strigoi centre disintegrate. With a whisper, he set the ranks of skeletons standing before him to advancing. It was just a matter of pressure. What a torturer did to the body, a general did to the enemy army. It was a simple thing, taken in that regard, and he wondered that he had never before seen the simplicity of it.

The assassination attempt had been the signal, he now knew. It had been obvious — obvious! Ushoran was a wolf in a trap. W’soran wondered whether he could feel himself slipping away, to be buried beneath the black soil of the crown’s thoughts. He thought perhaps that Ushoran did, and that the attempt on his life had been a desperate ploy to end his threat obliquely. Perhaps Ushoran thought it a way to circumvent the crown’s prodding and pushing, and to stave off the inevitable.

The lines of the living gave way before the relentless march of the dead, and W’soran urged his horse forward with a slight smile. ‘Pressure,’ he murmured and gently clasped his amulets. Soon, he would need them. They would give him the power he needed to confront his old friend and rip him from his perch. A moment which was approaching swiftly — the Strigoi were retreating all across the frontier, falling back before his followers, the ragged remnants of their armies returning to Mourkain, ceding territory to the invaders. Horns blew, catching his attention.

He twisted in his saddle, and made a sharp motion. His bodyguard formed up in a protective phalanx. The wights wore heavy armour and had, in life, been chieftains of those tribes that W’soran had beaten into submission in the Vaults and the other nearby ranges. Now, in death, they served him as an imperial guard more than a hundred strong, ready to carry him through the fires of war to inevitable victory.

The horns belonged to the Strigoi, of course. In the tangle of battle, a group of riders had become separated from the rest, and they were galloping hard for their receding lines as his skeletal horsemen harried them. They crashed into the rear of his lines and he hissed in annoyance. The lead rider wore the black armour of Ushoran’s personal guard, and his snarling-visaged helm was decorated by trailing streamers of coloured cloth.

W’soran reacted quickly. At his silent command, the dead began to shift position, to encompass the riders. There was little sense in letting them reach safety, especially if the one in the lead was, as W’soran suspected, the enemy commander, Gashnag.

‘And won’t it be nice to see him again, eh?’ he muttered to himself as his steed charged. He leaned forward in the saddle, and his bodyguard spread out around him, smashing aside their own forces at his command. He could always resurrect them later, after all.