W’soran inspected the ancient book carefully for signs of damage and then set it aside. The immortal stepped carefully into the circle and picked up Thutep’s skull. “I held open the doorway as long as I could,” he said absently, studying the grisly artefact. “Much longer, and we might have lost the skull. The amount of energy focussed on it was… considerable.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Ushoran said. “What went wrong? Why couldn’t you summon him?”
The immortal did not reply at first. His shoulders tensed. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“I thought you said—”
“I know what I said!” W’soran snapped. He turned to Ushoran, his withered face a mask of rage. “The skull was the perfect link to Nagash. It should have worked! The rite has never failed me before. Never!”
Silent, shuffling thralls emerged from the shadows and went to work restoring some order to the wind-wracked library. Ushoran absently watched them as they worked, trying to force his stunned mind to function. “If not the rite, then what else could it have been?”
W’soran shook his head slowly. “An unforeseen complication. A… temporary setback. Nothing more,” he said. He stared at the skull for a moment more, then turned and placed it carefully into the hands of a waiting thrall.
“I must think on this,” he said at last. “Perhaps it has to do with the vibrations of the third enumeration…”
The immortal’s voice drifted away as he turned back to the summoning circle. He stroked his pointed chin with a clawed hand as he studied the dense bands of ritual symbols. It was not a dismissal as such, but Ushoran could see that he had been clearly forgotten.
That suited the Lord of Masks. He slipped silently from the library and swung the heavy stone door shut behind him. It was nearing dawn, and he had one last bit of business to attend to.
The tomb thief was clever and cautious, but nevertheless predictable. His scent led from the Travellers’ Quarter to the Red Silk Quarter, down by the city docks. With little more than an hour to go until dawn, many of the district’s dice houses and brothels had shut their doors. Dozens of revellers lay in the filthy streets, overcome by too much wine, or lotus root, or both. Bored-looking men from the City Guard checked each insensate form in turn; those who were clearly members of Lahmia’s noble class were lifted from the gutter and urged on their way, while the others were efficiently searched for valuables and left where they lay. A few small knots of leathery-skinned sailors followed along behind the guardsmen, looking for stout bodies to fill the rowing benches of their merchant ships.
Ushoran took two long steps and leapt from the edge of the dice house’s roof, clearing the narrow alley with ease and landing in a crouch on the pleasure house next door. He paused there for a moment, his hulking form hidden in deep shadow, nostrils flaring as he tasted the hot night air.
He followed the thief’s scent to the far side of the roof, keeping low and creeping along on hands and feet like a jungle ape. It felt good to hunt again, he thought, feeling the salt breeze against his bare skin. He found it ironic that, despite what he had become, he had less opportunity to indulge his appetites now than he’d had as a mortal.
Ushoran intended to savour the next few minutes as much as possible. The failed attempt to summon the Usurper’s spirit had left him deeply unsettled. He and W’soran were playing a dangerous game, one that could threaten Lahmia just as much as Neferata’s obsession with Alcadizzar, but what other choice did they have?
Swift and silent, he paused at the low parapet and peered over the edge. The rooms on this side of the building looked out over the wide harbour and the slate-grey sea. Ushoran paused, his large, lantern-jawed head swinging from left to right until he caught the scent of his prey. In one fluid motion, he planted a wide, clawed hand on the parapet and swung out over the edge. For a delicious instant he hung in empty space, thirty feet above the ground, then he dropped like a cat onto the wide ledge of a window directly below.
The window to the bedchamber had been left open to let in the cool sea breeze. Ushoran’s gaze swept across the dimly lit room. The air was still tinged with blue streamers of incense and lotus smoke. A trio of figures lay tangled in the silk sheets upon the low, wide bed.
Ushoran ran his tongue along jagged teeth as he climbed silently into the chamber. It was the work of a few moments to find the bag of coins he’d given the thief just a few hours before. He hefted the bag in his hand and smiled, then set it carefully beside the bedchamber door.
There was more than enough coin left to pay for the mess he was about to make.
—
Reversal of Fortunes
Nagashizzar, in the 99th year of Asaph the Beautiful
(-1295 Imperial Reckoning)
The fires could be seen from the tallest tower of the fortress, glittering like a necklace of rubies across the hilltops along the northern shore of the Crystal Sea. From the dark lanes that ran along the terraced mountain slope, hundreds of the Yaghur filled the night air with eerie, ululating howls as they caught wind of the devastation that had been wrought on their squalid homes.
Thestus folded his arms and studied the distant lights. “I count six fires,” he said grimly. His skin was pale as chalk beneath the moonlight and his once-dark eyes were now the colour of eastern jade. But for a few tendrils of black hair that fluttered in the breeze rolling in from the sea, the barbarian stood with the statue-like stillness common to the undead. “Judging by their positions, I would say that the largest of the Yaghur nests have been put to the flame.”
Nagash stood beside Thestus atop the narrow tower, his body shielded from the sea breeze by a heavy, hooded cloak. Ancient flesh crackled as he clenched his fists in rage. Dimly, the necromancer felt the leathery tendons of his right hand start to give way under the pressure; with an act of will he exerted his power and re-knit the corded flesh back together. The practice had grown so common over the last few years that he performed it almost without conscious thought. There was a sound like the tightening of dry leather cord, and his fingers curled inwards like a grasping claw. Too much of the ancient tissue had disintegrated, leaving the remaining tendons foreshortened. The realisation further deepened Nagash’s fury.
“Despatch ten companies of infantry,” he snarled. “Run the damned ratmen to earth and destroy them!”
Behind Nagash, in the shadow of the tower’s arched doorway, Bragadh answered coldly. “Send the Yaghur if you want to chase the ratmen,” he said. “It’s their filthy holes that are burning, after all.”
Nagash rounded on the warlord, his eyes blazing angrily. Words of power rose to his fleshless lips, ready to form an incantation that would shrivel the barbarian like a moth in a candle flame. The necromancer’s anger was palpable, radiating from his body in icy waves, but the warlord was unmoved. He stood with his fists clenched at his side, his expression icy and resentful. Diarid stood close by, his expression neutral but his body tense, as though ready to throw himself between Bragadh and the necromancer’s wrath.
“You forget yourself, Bragadh,” Nagash hissed. “More important, you forget your oaths to me.” The menace in his voice was like a knife, poised and ready to strike.
Yet the warlord seemed heedless of the danger. His voice took on a hard edge all of its own. “Not so,” he replied. “Be assured, master, I have forgotten nothing. I remember all too well how I swore to obey you—while you, in turn, swore to protect the hill forts of our people. And look what came of that.”
Doom had befallen the hill forts of the northmen five years ago, not long after Nagash’s failed counter-stroke against the ratmen. In one night, four of the largest of the barbarian settlements had been set upon by the enemy, who burrowed up into their midst and slaughtered every man, woman and child they could find. The hill forts’ small garrisons were totally unprepared to deal with the savage raids, and without any sorcery of their own there was no way to predict when or where the next attack would occur. More settlements were attacked on th
e following night, and on the night after that. By the time that a messenger reached Nagashizzar with the news, nearly a dozen of the hill forts had been destroyed. Bragadh and his kinsmen had been beside themselves with rage. They begged Nagash for permission to march north and protect the hill forts; even though many of the barbarians hadn’t seen their homes in decades, their rough sense of honour demanded that they take action. Nagash had refused outright. The barbarian companies were needed in Nagashizzar, helping to secure the mine shafts still under his control.
Instead, the necromancer had withdrawn to his throne chamber and begun working on a great and terrible ritual. The drafting of the sigil alone had taken days, marking out a great circle and hundreds of complex runes with abn-i-khat dust. Nagash had ingested still more of the dust, until his withered flesh was saturated with it. Then, upon the hour of the dead, he entered the great circle and began a fearsome incantation.
Once, long ago, he’d kept Bragadh and his barbarians in line with the subtle threat that their homeland was rich with the bones of their ancestors. Any rebellion by the hill forts could be crushed by the simple expedient of raising a punitive army drawn from the barrows of their own ancestors. Nagash now called forth the bones of the ancients not to punish the hill forts, but to protect them from further harm. Across the length and breadth of the barbarian lands, hundreds upon hundreds of skeletal warriors rose at Nagash’s command and returned to the hills that had once been their homes.
When next the enemy raiders came pouring up from their tunnels, they ran headlong onto the swords and axes of the ancient dead. The few survivors were sent screeching back the way they’d come—only to return in greater numbers on the following night. Defeat followed defeat, but the enemy was undeterred. The raids grew more sporadic and more widely scattered; sometimes they inflicted more damage, sometimes less. Always they were chased off with substantial loss of life, but the tempo of the attacks never abated. They continued for months, then years, and slowly Nagash grasped the purpose of the enemy’s strategy. Though they lost nearly every battle against his forces, they were succeeding in forcing him to maintain scores of large garrisons across the northlands. Relatively small raiding forces were requiring him to maintain thousands of undead troops, draining his energies at a constant and prodigious rate. Meanwhile, the incessant tunnel warfare beneath Nagashizzar ground on and on, further taxing his strength and dividing his attentions.
After five years, the strain had become severe. Worse, it had sowed seeds of discord among his barbarian troops. Nagash had watched Bragadh grow more sullen with each passing year; the damage inflicted on the hill forts had reduced the stream of new recruits to a mere trickle. Now the ratmen felt bold enough to strike at the heart of the Yaghur as well. The enemy was drawing a noose around the mighty fortress, one agonising inch at a time.
Before Nagash realised it, his deformed right hand was raised to strike at Bragadh. Lambent bale-fire crackled hungrily along the curved fingers, increasing in power with each passing moment. Bragadh never flinched; his resentful glare practically invited the necromancer’s wrath.
Perhaps Bragadh wanted to be struck down, Nagash thought. Certainly, the enemy would wish it. There was no telling what repercussions such a blow would have on the rest of the barbarian army. The northmen worshipped Bragadh almost like a god at this point; to destroy him might incite the barbarians to open revolt. Though Nagash was certain that he could ultimately crush such an uprising, doing so would require troops that were desperately needed in the tunnels, and he had no doubt that the ratmen would take advantage of the crisis.
The noose around Nagashizzar drew inexorably tighter.
For a long moment, Nagash struggled to choke back his rage. Slowly, he closed his fist and willed the pent-up energies to dissipate.
“The day will come,” the necromancer grated, “when you will regret having spoken thus. For now, you will simply obey.”
Nagash reached out with his will and seized both of the barbarian warriors. Bragadh and Diarid went rigid, their eyes widening in horror as the necromancer used the power of his life-giving elixir to reach into their very souls.
“You are mine to command,” Nagash hissed. “Now and forever more. And I say take your warriors and go forth.”
Bragadh’s body trembled as the warlord struggled against Nagash’s grip. A low, agonised groan seeped past his tightly clenched lips. But no matter how hard he fought, the effort was futile. The warlord’s trembling increased and his body began to bend, like a river palm in the face of a howling desert storm.
Just before Bragadh could succumb, a slender figure emerged from the shadows beyond the tower doorway. Bone charms clinked softly as Akatha interposed herself between the warlord and Nagash.
“This accomplishes nothing,” she said to the necromancer. Her voice was hollow and cold, but her steady gaze and straight-backed pose still held some of the witch’s old defiance. “Unless it is your intention to play into the enemy’s hands.”
Fresh rage boiled up from Nagash’s withered heart. His left hand shot out, seizing the witch by the throat. Visions of hurling the barbarian woman over the tower battlements danced before his mind’s eye.
“You dare to speak thus to me?” he hissed. Ancient flesh along the back of the necromancer’s hand crackled and flaked away as his bony fingers tightened around Akatha’s neck. He felt her body stiffen, but her cool, penetrating stare never faltered.
“I do what I must,” the witch replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “Despatching the great kan’s warriors is pointless. If the raiders still remain, it is only because they have set an ambush for you.”
Akatha paused, drawing a tortured breath. “The rat-things… have grown clever,” she managed to say. “They are… forcing you… to waste your power on… futile gestures. You… cannot… react. You… lack… the strength.”
Her words only inflamed Nagash further. With an angry snarl he summoned still more power, dragging Akatha to the edge of the battlements as though she weighed nothing at all. Behind the necromancer, Bragadh let out a startled shout of protest.
More blackened pieces of skin crumbled away from Nagash’s wrist in puffs of faintly glowing dust. The muscles and tendons lying along his arm looked like fraying cords of cured leather. All at once, he felt the bones of his wrist and hand shift ominously, as though threatening to burst apart beneath the strain. Without thinking, he summoned yet more power to force the bones into their proper place—and in that fleeting moment of concentration he understood that the witch spoke true. Whether the ratmen understood it or not, they were pushing him to the point of dissolution.
Nagash released Akatha. The witch half collapsed, slumping against the battlements. She looked up at the necromancer through a fall of tangled hair.
“The ratmen hope you will send warriors out into the hills,” she told him. “Is it not obvious?”
Nagash had no answer. With an effort, the witch forced herself onto her feet. “If you would strike at them, do so at a time and place of your own choosing and marshal your strength where it will do the most harm.”
The necromancer glared hatefully at the witch. The fact that Akatha was right only made him want to destroy her all the more. He relished the thought of forcing his will upon her and commanding the witch to cast herself from the top of the tower. She would struggle, no doubt, but that would make it all the sweeter. Yet was her destruction worth the power it would cost?
Nagash whirled on Bragadh and his champion. “Send word to your companies,” he told the warlord. “Any warriors within the tunnels are to head for the surface and await my command.”
Bragadh eyed the necromancer warily. “What are you planning to do, master?” he asked.
“Something the damned ratmen will not expect,” Nagash replied.
* * *
The pale, crescent moon hung low in the sky to the west, casting its glow slantwise across the killing ground. Eekrit could hear the snarling howls and guttural
barks of the flesh-eaters coming from a long way away, the maddened sounds carrying easily across the rolling, marshy ground. Like all skaven, the warlord could see perfectly in the darkness, and he searched the line of sickly yellow trees across from his hiding place for the first signs of the monsters’ approach.
The raid on the flesh-eaters’ foetid nests had unfolded with the mechanical precision of one of Lord Vittrik’s tooth-and-gear contraptions. Unlike the campaign against the barbarian forts further north, Eekrit had no intention of digging his way directly into the monsters’ foul burrows. Instead, his force, composed of the entirety of the army’s scout-assassins and half a dozen chosen packs of clanrats, had emerged from tunnels at the base of each of their hilltop objectives and quickly surrounded them.
Once upon a time the hilltops had been ringed with protective wooden palisades, but centuries of neglect had reduced them to barely-recognisable ruins. At the appointed time, bone whistles had skirled faintly along the night air and the scattered companies had swept up and over the broad, flat-topped hills. The handful of flesh-eaters caught on the surface were swiftly and silently despatched, then the skaven spread out and located the many entrances to the monsters’ reeking burrows. Heavy bladders of oil were brought up and emptied into all but a few of the tunnel mouths. By the time the first howls of alarm began to echo up from the darkness, the skaven had torches ready to toss in as well.
After decades of bitter fighting, the skaven had learned how much the flesh-eaters hated and feared the touch of fire. The oil went up with a hollow, hungry roar; from there it was merely a matter of lurking outside the unlit tunnel mouths and slaying the survivors as they emerged.
The fighting was as savage as it was merciless. No quarter was expected or given; the flesh-eaters were maddened by bloodlust and pain, and the skaven had come to fear and hate the unnatural creatures as they did little else. The monsters burst from the tunnels singly or in shrieking packs, many of them burning with sickly yellow flames, and Eekrit’s warriors rushed in and cut them down with spear and blade. After five years of brutal raids against the barbarian tribes, the warlord’s troops had become fearless, hard-bitten fighters—and Eekrit along with them, much to his surprise. Thanks to the thrice-damned Lord Velsquee, there had been little alternative.
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