Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

‘You forget honour,’ Abhorash rumbled, standing nearby, hands clasped behind his back as he gazed down at the pile of maps that Ushoran’s cartographers had been hard at work crafting for the better part of two years. The edges of those maps were still hazy, but, if you squinted, and the light was good, the rough outline of an empire became somewhat visible.

It was only the three of them in the chamber of Kadon’s pyramid that Ushoran had designated as his war-council. That was not unusual, though it had grown rarer as the years passed and they began to recall just how much they actually disliked each other. But initially, Ushoran had seemed to welcome the awkward camaraderie — indeed, he seemed almost desperate for it, and W’soran, despite himself, could not blame him. In the deeps of the mountains, a black voice tolled again and again, urging them on and whispering malevolently seductive promises. He recognised that voice, even if Ushoran did not, and it made him frequently question his reasons for acquiescing to Ushoran’s request that he join him in the benighted land.

‘I forget nothing. I merely disregard it in this instance. Mourkain — Strigos — has forfeited honour, to the dawi way of thinking. A change of leadership will not change that. All that is left is this shiny bit of promise,’ Ushoran said, examining a nugget. ‘And this, they want. They crave it, as we crave blood.’ He tossed the nugget onto the table and sniffed. ‘So we will extend the proper invitations and see what comes of it.’

‘Idiocy,’ W’soran said, leaning forward and balancing on his knuckles. ‘Why beg what we could borrow, why borrow what we can take, eh?’

‘Why take what will be freely given?’ Ushoran asked. He glanced at Abhorash. ‘What of the northern frontier?’

‘The daemon worshippers come in great numbers, but they are… fragile,’ Abhorash said, his arms crossed, his face set. ‘I can drive them back, given time and men. Once a few of their champions lose their heads, they’ll scurry back to their wastes.’

‘And what of the devils that accompany them, eh?’ W’soran sneered. ‘Will you chop their heads off, champion?’

‘I rather thought that you might help him with that, old monster,’ Ushoran said, pulling a map towards himself. ‘Unless, of course, you have finally learned what you need to know from Kadon’s scribbling to acquire for me my crown?’

W’soran froze and he noticed that Abhorash did the same. Both vampires traded a glance and then looked at the Lord of Masks. For a moment, just an instant, something seemed to hunch over Ushoran, something infinitely massive and terrible, and the torches set into the walls hissed and flickered as if that same something were drawing the heat and light from them.

Oh yes, it had its claws deep in him, no doubt about it. The question was, did it want him? Or was Ushoran merely… a substitute?

Everything about the place seemed to press down upon him as he stood there, as if it sought to force him to crawl before it. The voice — his voice — was louder now, murmuring constantly, just behind his thoughts. An aura of darkness clung to the stones and his bones felt brittle and cold within their envelope of weak flesh.

Death coiled waiting in this place. But waiting for what — or whom — he could not say.

W’soran licked his lips. ‘Not — ah — as yet, Ushoran,’ he said.

‘Lord Ushoran,’ Ushoran corrected. ‘We must observe the proprieties, W’soran. I am a lord now… but I will be a king soon — an undying one and a great one, as soon as you fulfil your part of our bargain, old monster.’ His eyes flickered, as if something lean and hungry moved behind them, jaws agape and mind athirst. ‘Get me my crown, W’soran, so that I might remake this world into a better one.’

The City of Mourkain

(Year -260 Imperial Calendar)

Mourkain was burning. The city was alight with a hundred fires as its walls shuddered beneath the weight of the siege that encompassed it. Smoke rose into the night sky in thick plumes as the screams of dying men and the roar of battle rose to mingle with it in the heights. Bats wheeled and flapped across the face of the moon and the air was full of wailing spectres and howling spirits.

W’soran hunched forward in his saddle and cackled as the zombie-dragon smashed into the inner gates of Mourkain, a cloud of noxious gas spewing from its bony jaws to engulf the warriors who cringed back from it in horror. Its ancient talons gouged the stone, sending rock tumbling down into the river below. Its serpentine neck whipped back and forth, and its pestilential breath spread across the wall and into the gatehouse, killing men in their dozens.

The Strigoi warriors screamed and tore at their armour as it corroded, and their flesh, even as it sloughed from their bones. W’soran gestured and a rippling bolt of black sorcery tore through a watchtower, ripping the edifice from the wall and dropping it down into the gorge below to crash into the raging waters.

Satisfied, he flexed his will and the dragon pushed away from the wall with a rasping cry. It was not a natural sound and it affected those who heard it almost as badly as the zombie-dragon’s breath had done. The monster flapped its tattered wings once, twice and then it was barrelling upwards through the smoke-choked night air.

Below him, the siege of Mourkain spread out in a gore-stained panorama. The city was surrounded by a heavy wooden palisade in concentric and ever-shrinking rings that jutted from the rocky slope. Smoke rose from within, striping the air with greasy trails. The decaying bodies of Draesca tribesmen had been impaled on great, greased stakes lining the approaches to the city.

Bone-giants battered at the palisade, killing men with every sweep of their great khopesh or spears. Ushabti crafted from bone and clay and rotting meat stalked through gaps the giants had already made, followed by hunting packs of ghouls and crypt horrors. The sky was filled with swarms of bats, both of the normal variety and the titan monstrosities that he had wrenched from their slumber in the depths. Squalling, screeching monstrous bats smashed into the watchtowers and high barricades, their quivering spear-blade noses sniffing out any defender whom they might devour.

Within the palisade, a great stone gateway rose, blocking access to a wide bridge of thick wooden logs that led to a second, smaller gate. Beneath the bridge, the river crashed and snarled, and even at this distance he could feel the spray. As W’soran cackled in glee, his wights led skeletal legions towards the bridge as quickly as their dead legs could move. The outer gates could be controlled from within the city proper, as long as the ropes held. And if the ropes were cut, the stone gates would remain closed and the bridge sealed off. The Strigoi on the inner walls had been intent on doing just that when he’d attacked. Now they had no time.

He looked beyond the wild river that separated the palisades from the inner fortifications, towards the ancient stones where what might have been the remnants of some long-ago destroyed wall rose up, linked anew by newer stone fortifications put in place long ago by W’soran’s own servants. He found it to be the height of irony that those same servants would now tear down all they had built.

It had taken almost three years for his forces to fight their way through the lines of fortifications that marked the Plain of Dust and surrounded Mourkain in its mountain fastness with a ring of stone and iron. Ushoran, ever the keen student, had plucked inspiration from the four compass points, mingling the military styles of Nehekhara, Cathay and even the terrifying strongpoints devised by the dwarfs — hard-to-reach isolated towers, firmly anchored to the rock and packed with supplies and armaments for a hundred men. For three gruelling years, W’soran had led his nightmare legions past each defensive line, smashing them one after the other. In that time, he had faced numberless enemy necromancers, northern mercenaries and dozens of Strigoi — Gashnag’s peers, spouting childish incantations as they sought to match his mastery of the winds of death. None had done more than distract him. W’soran now wore a necklace of fangs to match his necklace of wyrdstone, and the still-aware, still-screaming heads of his vampire enemies hung from his standards like strange fruit. But none of them were the enemy he truly wished to face.