03 - Nagash Immortal

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  Bragadh raised his head slowly and met his master’s gaze. Whatever else the barbarian was, he was not without courage. “I come to speak of your army, great one,” he replied, speaking in badly accented Nehekharan.

  Nagash’s irritation grew. When Bragadh spoke of the army, he meant his kinsmen. His living kinsmen. It galled him to think that he still needed the assistance of flesh-and-blood servants; they reminded him that, despite everything, there were still practical limits to his power.

  “Is there an issue with their training?” he asked, his broken voice somehow mocking.

  Bragadh visibly steeled himself. “The training is the issue, great one,” he replied calmly. “There is no end to it. There are men within the spear companies that have known nothing else their entire lives.”

  The northmen were mighty warriors, but they fought like animals, hurling themselves wildly at their foes without a thought to the larger battle at hand. Nagash wanted soldiers who could fight in disciplined companies and not break the first time they faced a cavalry charge. The northmen were commanded to learn the proper arts of spear and shield, how to march as a unit and respond to trumpet calls just as Nehekharan infantry did. The forges of Nagashizzar worked day and night to arm them with the weapons that were the equal of anything that the great cities could provide, for in time they would march in the vanguard of the vast host that would reduce his former homeland to ruins. Even now, hundreds of years after the war against the rebel kings, the taste of his defeat at Mahrak burned like a hot coal in his guts. It was not enough to defeat the Nehekharans; Nagash wished to destroy them utterly, to crush their armies and grind their cities to dust, so that no one would ever doubt that he was the greatest conqueror to walk the earth since Settra the Magnificent.

  “Are they not learning as they should?” Nagash rasped. The question was as pointed and as menacing as a poisoned blade.

  “They are not learning the ways of war, great one,” Bragadh declared. “They march to the trumpets in their sleep, but most of them have yet to spill a foeman’s blood. The purpose of an army is to fight.”

  The necromancer’s burning eyes narrowed to pinpoints. “The army will fight when I command it,” he replied. He recalled the Bronze Legion of Ka-Sabar and the companies of Rasetra, his greatest adversary during the war. He had no doubt they could grind the barbarians under their heel. “Your companies are brittle. They are not ready to stand against veteran troops.”

  “That can only come with experience,” Bragadh countered. There are tribes of rakhads in the mountains, north of the great plateau. They are fearsome in battle, but as wild and undisciplined as we were, years ago. We could blood the warriors against them, great one.

  “A short campaign, not far from the hill forts. The army would be easy to supply, and we could reap a fine harvest of slaves into the bargain.”

  Nagash stared thoughtfully at the barbarian leader. There was some merit to the idea; in his day, the great cities would often stage small-scale raids against one another to give their young nobles the chance to spill some blood and see what battle was like first-hand.

  But was that the only reason for Bragadh’s request? After twenty-five years, the northmen had recovered the strength they’d lost in the long war against Nagashizzar; now they were better trained and better equipped than they had ever been before. Once they had left the shadow of the great fortress, would they not be tempted to rebel? It was possible, the necromancer thought.

  His gaze shifted from Bragadh to his champion, Diarid, then to Akatha. Their faces betrayed no hint of treachery, but that meant little. The northmen were slaves, and what slave didn’t dream of taking a knife to his master’s throat?

  Nagash was silent for a moment, considering. “How large a force do you propose?”

  Bragadh’s shoulders straightened. “No more than five or six thousand,” he replied quickly, his voice growing eager. “A warband that size would be small enough to manage in the mountains, yet easily strong enough to deal with a single tribe of greenskins.”

  The necromancer nodded slowly. “Very well,” he replied. “How quickly can such a force be assembled?”

  Bragadh smiled wolfishly. “The warband could be on the march by the end of the day, great one.”

  “Good,” Nagash replied. “Then Thestus and the raiding force should be back at Nagashizzar by the end of the summer.”

  Nagash watched Thestus look up in surprise. The lieutenant’s gaze shifted from Nagash to Bragadh. A faint grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.

  Bragadh frowned, as though uncertain of what he’d just heard. “Thestus? I don’t understand.”

  “Your place is here, training the rest of the army,” Nagash explained. “Surely you didn’t intend to lead the raid yourself?”

  Bragadh glanced over at his rival. When he caught the grin on Thestus’ face, he ground his jaw angrily. After a moment, he said, “Thestus is… a capable warrior. But he knows nothing of the rakhads. The only foes he has ever known have been his own people.”

  Thestus bridled at the contempt in the warlord’s voice. Nagash chuckled, a sound like grinding stones. “One foe is the same as another,” he observed. “All men die in the same way.”

  “The greenskins are more beasts than men,” Bragadh declared. “Sending Thestus against them would be a disaster!”

  “Then we will send no one,” Nagash answered coldly. “Your warriors will have to wait for battle until we begin the march on Nehekhara.”

  “And when will that be?” Bragadh demanded, forgetting himself.

  “Soon enough,” Nagash replied. “Do your work well, and you will hasten the day.”

  The tone of Nagash’s reply made it clear that there was nothing more to be said, but Bragadh was not quite done. As the barbarians rose to their feet, he folded his muscular arms across his chest and scowled up at the necromancer.

  “Forget the greenskins then, we will continue to train instead,” he said, “but mark me, a knife can only be sharpened so much before it’s worn down to a splinter. Men live to spill the blood of their enemies! If they aren’t given a foe to test their strength against, they’ll make one for themselves.”

  Nagash stared down at the warlord. He leaned forwards slowly, his mummified hands clenching the arms of his throne. “If there is blood to be spilled at Nagashizzar, I will spill it!” he hissed. “Caution your warriors not to crave death too much, Bragadh, or I will give it to them!”

  Thestus blanched at the tone in Nagash’s ghastly voice. Figures stirred in the shadows: the misshapen forms of the necromancer’s flesh-eaters edged towards the barbarians, their talons scraping across the stone floor. Long, black tongues lolled from their fanged mouths, and their pointed, jackal-like ears were pressed flat against their bald, bulbous heads. Wet, rasping growls rose from their throats as they readied themselves to pounce upon the northmen.

  The barbarians glared hatefully at the flesh-eaters. Diarid’s hand strayed to the hilt of his sword, but Bragadh forestalled him with a curt shake of his head. The warlord tore his gaze away from the monsters and looked up at Nagash.

  “I hear, great one,” he said through clenched teeth. “I hear and obey.”

  Satisfied, Nagash leaned back against his throne. “Then go,” he said, dismissing the northmen with a wave of one leathery hand. “And remind your warriors who is master here.”

  Bragadh bowed his head slowly, then turned his back on the flesh-eaters and stomped angrily from the hall. Still growling, the creatures made to follow, but Akatha paused and fixed the pack with a cold-eyed glare that stopped them in their tracks.

  Nagash’s eyes narrowed upon the witch. Akatha met his stare fearlessly, turning away only a heartbeat before the gesture could be construed as a challenge. She fell into step behind the warlord, never once looking back at the necromancer or his beasts.

  The flesh-eaters watched them go, growling deep in their throats.

  * * *

  With miles of walls and hundr
eds of feet of crenellated towers, Nagashizzar was the largest and most terrible fortress ever built—but already there was an enemy gnawing at its roots.

  Thousands of feet below the necromancer’s great hall, in vast, dripping caverns and half-finished galleries, a mighty host had been gathered. The army was so huge it could not be contained in one place. It spread like a sea of dark-furred bodies through the deeps, waiting only for word from its master to flood the upper levels of the fortress and claim its treasures for the glory of the Horned God.

  In one such teeming cavern, the master of the army stood atop a roughly hewn dais carved from the living rock and surveyed the stinking multitudes arrayed before him. Shifting, greenish light cast by god-stone lanterns played across a sea of armoured bodies. Naked, pink tails twitched restlessly; long snouts wrinkled, tasting the foetid air. Thin lips drew back from long, chisel-shaped teeth. Hungry, chittering whispers filled the echoing space with a malevolent, surf-like roar.

  Eekrit Backbiter, Lord of Clan Rikek and master of the largest army of skaven assembled in the history of the Under-Empire, rubbed his clawed paws together expectantly and thought of the wealth and power that would soon be his. There was more god-stone buried within the mountain than his people had ever seen before. Its discovery had driven the scheming Grey Lords to paroxysms of treachery and murder that had consumed the Great Clans for decades before the Seer-lord had finally intervened. The resulting alliance had led to the creation of the expeditionary force, comprised of massive contingents of warriors from each of the twelve Great Clans and their vassals. Arrayed against them—as far as the army’s black-robed scouts were aware—were but a few thousand walking corpses toiling in the mines. No one had ever explained to Eekrit’s satisfaction just where those corpses had come from, and what exactly they were doing with the god-stone they carved out of the mountain’s heart. Old Vittrik One-eye, master of the host’s war engines, once surmised that the skeletons might be the remains of slave workers from a long-dead kingdom, animated by energies from the very stones they mined and driven to toil in the mines for all eternity. Eekrit suspected the warlock was talking from the depths of one of his many wineskins, but wasn’t so foolish as to point this out to the engine-master.

  Truly, Eekrit didn’t care who the mountain’s skeletal inhabitants were. His warriors alone outnumbered them more than ten to one. The mountain would be his within a matter of hours; keeping it was likely to be a far more dangerous task altogether.

  The dais was crowded with those who would be all too happy to poison his wine or slip a dagger between his ribs the instant it became profitable to do so. Just to Eekrit’s right was his lieutenant, Lord Hiirc, a young and callow little fool from Clan Morbus, currently the most powerful of the Great Clans. Outwardly, Hiirc didn’t seem threatening in the least; he had no experience as a war leader, no especial prowess as a warrior, nor any notable murders attached to his reputation. He was sleek and well fed, his face marked with fine scar-tattoos and his chisel-teeth capped with gold, in the style of the obnoxiously rich. But Eekrit didn’t mistake the veritable treasure-trove of god-stone amulets wound about Hiirc’s scrawny neck; the idiot glowed from so much refined stone that he hardly needed lantern-bearers to find his way about in the darkness. Of course, Eekrit hadn’t gotten a good look at the amulets themselves—that would have been considered rude—but he’d heard enough from his spies to know that the vast majority of them were wards of protection against everything from assassins’ knives to ague. There were clan lords who weren’t so thoroughly encased in protective spells, which spoke volumes to the crafty Eekrit. Clan Morbus wasn’t protecting Hiirc; they were guarding his position within the army. Eekrit had no doubt that Hiirc’s retinue was stuffed to the snout with “advisors” far more experienced and capable than the young rat lord, who would then direct the course of the campaign from the shadows in the event that Hiirc found himself in control of the army.

  Then there was the army’s black-robed Master of Treacheries, Lord Eshreegar, who commanded the companies of scout-assassins. The scout-assassins were the army’s eyes and ears—and its left-hand dagger, when the situation demanded it. Eshreegar’s rats had spent years exploring the tunnels and chambers of the great mountain, until they knew it better than their own spawning-nests; for that reason alone Eekrit had made every effort to favour, flatter and outright bribe his way into Eshreegar’s good graces. Eshreegar had accepted the warlord’s many gifts with great pleasure and had deigned to provide a few choice secrets about the workings of his rivals, but Eekrit couldn’t be certain exactly whose side the Master of Treacheries was on. The warlord had tried to hedge his bets on the march from the Great City by attempting to suborn several of Eshreegar’s lieutenants, but the three rats who’d accepted his bribes had managed to suffer gruesome and wildly implausible accidents before the army reached its destination.

  Lord Eshreegar crouched to Lord Eekrit’s left, in whispered consultation with several of his black-robed dagger-rats. He was tall and lean for one of the rat-people, a veritable giant among the scout-assassins, who as a rule tended to be small, swift creatures.

  Though his reputation as a stalker and a slayer was legendary among the clans, the expedition to the great mountain was his first in command of a scout cadre. It spoke highly of his connections and reputation among the secretive assassin clans, if not necessarily his ability as a scout leader.

  And then there was Lord Qweeqwol, the expedition’s representative from the grey seers. Ancient, addled and canker-ridden, mad old Qweeqwol was believed by many to be well past his prime; most of the rat-lords in the Great City assumed that he had been chosen to accompany the expedition as a concession to the Council of Thirteen. Since the Seerlord was the driving force behind the great alliance that had made the expedition possible, the Grey Lords would be exceptionally sensitive to the slightest hint that the grey seers were arranging things to their own personal benefit. Few skaven imagined old Qweeqwol to be much of a threat in that regard.

  Eekrit was one of the paranoid few. He couldn’t help but take note that Qweeqwol had not only been Seerlord himself for more than forty years, he had voluntarily retired from that position in favour of Greemon, the current Seerlord. Most skaven thought that only confirmed just how far gone Qweeqwol really was. Eekrit wasn’t so certain.

  The warlord cast a wary glance over his shoulder at the aged seer. Qweeqwol was at the very rear of the crude dais, his wrinkled paws clutching a thick, gnarled staff of black cypress. The entire length of the staff had been carved with arcane sigils and inlaid with crushed god-stone, so that the air around the wooden shaft shimmered with a haze of magical energy. The white-furred skaven had his back to the proceedings, his pointed snout wrinkling as he studied the striations in the back wall of the cavern. Qweeqwol was muttering to himself, the sibilant words pitched just slightly too low for Eekrit to make out. When the warlord’s gaze fell upon him, the seer straightened slightly. His mangy head turned to regard Eekrit; green light played across patches of bald, greying skin grown misshapen with pulsing tumours. Qweeqwol’s ears were ragged and frail, as thin and fragile as wet parchment, and where his eyes had once been there were only blasted hollows, ringed by ancient, scarred flesh. Twin orbs of pure, polished god-stone, carved in the likeness of eyes, glowed from those ruined sockets. They fixed Eekrit with an eerie, unblinking stare.

  It was all the warlord could do to keep his tail from lashing with unease. A cave-in, he thought. That was what he needed. A shower of sharp rocks on the heads of those who vexed him. Sharp, poisoned rocks. Yes, that would do. He should speak to Vittrik. Perhaps something could be arranged.

  Lord Vittrik, the engine-master, was nowhere to be seen. Typically the warlock-engineer never strayed far from the glowing, spitting contraptions he and his clan-mates had brought from the Great City. The god-stone machines of Clan Skryre were legendary among the skaven; they were also notably capricious and often as deadly to their operators as to anyone else. All too fr
equently, the bronze casings of their fearsome weapons simply blew apart in the heat of battle, sending jagged splinters of glowing metal tearing through friend and foe. There were many clan lords who scorned the upstart warlocks and their unstable inventions; others feared them, believing that they could one day become among the most powerful of the clans, if only they could obtain enough quantities of god-stone to produce their machines en masse. Of all the clans, they had the most to gain from the success of the expedition. Eekrit thought that made Vittrik a natural ally, but the warlock-engineer was irritatingly oblivious to his overtures. Fiery contraptions or no, if the Skryre clanrats couldn’t master the simplest intrigues they would very soon find themselves extinct, Eekrit mused.

  There was a stir from the scout-assassins. Lord Eshreegar was trying to get his attention, snout raised, paws resting atop one another, tight against his narrow chest. The towering skaven had to hunch his shoulders somewhat to lower his eyes to a level just beneath the warlord’s.

  “All is in readiness,” Eshreegar murmured. His voice was not unlike the sound of bronze being drawn across a whetstone. “The scouts await your signal.” Which was a circumspect way of saying, get on with it.

  Lord Eekrit flicked his ears in agreement, his tail lashing against his heels. He was garbed for war, cased in a heavy hauberk of bronze scales over a thick jerkin of tanned human hide. A heavy cloak, stitched with runes of protection against ambushes and betrayals, lay across his shoulders. An amulet inset with a palm-sized piece of god-stone hung from a golden chain around his neck. It was both a badge of rank and a token of the Horned God’s favour. He reached up to stroke its polished surface with the tip of one claw.

  Growling thoughtfully, Eekrit regarded the messengers that knelt at the foot of the dais. This would be no field battle, where he could stand atop a piece of high ground and take in the movements of his entire force. This assault would follow dozens of twisting paths through the labyrinthine fortress, directed by a steady flow of messages between Eekrit and his chieftains. He would be no closer to the battle than the dais upon which he now stood.