The necromancer called upon his fading reserves of power once more. The incantation reverberated through his mind. From the dais, he sensed a surge of power as the enemy began his counter-spell, but the move was a fraction of a second too late.
Streamers of dust raced across the killing ground and entwined themselves about Nagash. They swallowed him up like a desert whirlwind; then he vanished from sight.
The rat-sorcerer was still casting his counter-spell when the necromancer emerged from the veil of dust onto the centre of the dais. Nagash found himself standing in the midst of a score of slave rats, who screeched in panic and scattered in all directions when they saw the terrifying figure in their midst. He saw the enemy sorcerer at once, standing close to the edge of the dais and raising a gnarled wooden staff over his head as he cast his spell. To the necromancer’s left, a large group of ratmen was lifting fire-globes from straw-filled wooden boxes and loading them into the baskets of a trio of small metal catapults. Standing to one side of the catapult crews was an old, bent-backed ratman whose shrivelled frame seemed two sizes too small for the ornate bronze armour that he wore. A multitude of strange metal devices and glowing tokens of burning stone festooned the ratman’s war harness, reminding Nagash somewhat of the engineer-scholars of far-off Lybaras. The ratman turned at the panicked cries of the slaves and his one eye widened in shock.
Nagash wasted no time with elaborate spells. As the one-eyed rat-creature let out a warning screech, the necromancer seized a slow-moving slave rat by the scruff of his neck and hurled him at the nearest crate of fire-globes. The impact upended the crate, sending three glowing, glass orbs bouncing across the stone. The catapult crew screeched in terror; the quicker ones leapt for the bouncing globes, while the rest fled for their lives. None of them were quite fast enough.
One of the globes bounced high and came down with a thin, brittle crack. There was a malevolent hiss as the mixture inside mixed with the open air and then the globe detonated. Half a dozen ratmen disappeared in an expanding ball of fire that touched off the remaining globes in a cacophonic drumbeat of explosions.
Velsquee had just about convinced himself that they had the upper hand when the air around him was suffused with bright green light and the noise of the battle was drowned out by a flurry of angry blasts emanating from the dais. The Grey Lord felt a wave of heat prickle the back of his head and neck; on reflex he cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the source. What he saw stunned him. One entire corner of the dais, including Vittrik’s catapults and their crews, had vanished in an expanding ball of flame. Molten shrapnel from the war engines buzzed through the air, trailing glowing arcs of green fire.
The momentary lapse in concentration nearly cost him his life. The kreekar-gan’s skeletal champions were uninterested in explosions or balls of fire. They took advantage of the distraction, though, and pressed their attack against Velsquee. One blade slipped easily past the Grey Lord’s guard and was only just turned aside by the plates of his enchanted armour. The second wight’s sword sliced at his neck and it was only the Horned God’s luck that it failed to kill him. Instead of slicing through his neck, the blade glanced off the rim of his thick gorget and tore a long, cold gash from his right jawbone to just behind his ear.
Velsquee staggered from the blow, screeching in pain at the sword’s icy touch. The last of his god-stone tokens went dark, its power vanishing in a puff of smoke as it deflected the blade’s deadly magic. The battle against the two enemy champions had been the hardest fight of his life; the wights were fast as serpents and ferociously skilled. He’d managed to land a number of blows against them that would have killed a living man, but the wights took little notice. In return, he’d been wounded several times, and only the quality of his wargear had saved him from certain death. As it was, an ominous sensation of cold was spreading through his body and sapping his strength. Sooner or later, his guard was going to slip, and the fight would be over.
There was nowhere to run, even if Velsquee wished it. The enemy had driven a wedge partway into the storm-walkers formation, its point aimed squarely at him. To his left and right, the heechigar were locked in combat with the northmen, and more storm-walkers formed a jostling wall of flesh behind him. The hafts of their polearms battered his shoulders as the heechigar struggled to bring them to bear.
The wights surged forwards, preparing to strike again. Suddenly, Velsquee had an idea. As the enemy champions lunged at him, the Grey Lord dropped into a crouch. The movement didn’t faze the wights in the least; they simply shifted their aim and lowered the points of their blades. But now the storm-walkers behind the Grey Lord had room to bring their heavy weapons to bear, and they began hacking desperately at the skeletal warriors. The wights shifted targets effortlessly, bringing their swords up to deflect the fearsome polearms—and giving Velsquee the opportunity to attack their spindly legs.
The burning stone set in the pommel of Velsquee’s blade flashed angrily as he chopped through the knees of the champion to his left. The wight toppled, still slashing and stabbing at his foes. Its black blade struck the Grey Lord’s right shoulder at the same time Velsquee’s sword swept down and crushed its skull. The wight’s spirit uttered a despairing wail and its body collapsed into a heap of mouldering bones.
Now the tables were turned. The remaining wight was beset by three attackers, and no amount of speed and skill was enough to hold them all at bay. The skeletal warrior’s blade stabbed one heechigar through the throat, but the second warrior’s polearm crashed through the wight’s left shoulder, severing the arm and shattering ribs like kindling. Velsquee surged upwards, slicing off the wight’s sword arm and then chopping off the champion’s head. In a fit of pure spite, he grabbed the bouncing skull with his free paw and flung it at the barbarians with a curse. The northmen immediately opposite him recoiled at the sight of their fallen champions, giving the Grey Lord a moment’s respite.
The battle still raged unabated. Velsquee reckoned that the northmen had suffered the worst, but they were still stubbornly hanging on. The Grey Lord glanced about, searching for the kreekar-gan, but the enemy sorcerer was nowhere to be seen.
Behind him, the explosions had ceased, but part of the wooden dais was still ablaze. Velsquee spat a bitter curse at Vittrik and his damned inventions. The Skryre lord had assured him there would be no accidents. There was no sign of Vittrik or Qweeqwol from where Velsquee stood. If the human witch had failed and the old seer had fallen, the army was in dire peril indeed.
The Grey Lord turned back to the second rank of storm-walkers and grabbed the arm of one of his lieutenants. “Push forwards!” he told the warrior. “The northmen must be close to breaking!” He pointed to the dais. “I’m going up there to find Lord Qweeqwol!”
The heechigar nodded curtly and reached for the bone whistle hanging about his neck. Velsquee pushed past the burly warrior and began working his way back through the formation. A grim sense of foreboding quickened his steps. Despite all their careful planning, something had gone terribly wrong.
Nagash focussed his will and reached for the power of the abn-i-khat. Slowly, cautiously, he took stock of his battered body. The chain of explosions had struck him like an invisible wall of stone, smashing bones and flinging him like a child’s doll to the far side of the dais. Once again, his armour had spared him from the full force of the blasts, or else his body would have most likely been torn apart.
As it was, the damage was still great. His bronze armour was scorched nearly black, and was pierced in more than a dozen places with jagged pieces of metal from the enemy’s wrecked catapults. The red-hot shrapnel had wounded his corpus in ways a mere blade could not, costing him much of his magical reserves.
Slowly, unsteadily, Nagash rose to his feet. Thin tendrils of smoke curled about his ravaged frame. Flames licked at the corner of the dais where the catapults once stood. The war engines were gone; their frames had melted in the heat and the tension of their own tightly-wound springs had ripped them apart. Nothing r
emained of the old rat-engineer and his crews except smears of ash and a few blackened chunks of bone.
The rest of the dais was covered in smouldering bodies and melted pieces of bronze. Nagash searched among them for the rat-sorcerer. After several long minutes, the necromancer found him.
The wizard’s body lay sprawled on the steps of the dais, opposite where the catapults had been sited. He was by far the oldest ratman Nagash had ever seen, with patchy white fur and a face covered in a patchwork of deep wrinkles. Like Nagash, the rat-sorcerer had been caught in a storm of red-hot shrapnel from the exploding catapults. Despite the many protective talismans wrapped about his robed body, a single piece of metal about a foot long had penetrated the sorcerer’s wards and lodged in his neck. His blood spread like a crimson carpet down the dais’ wooden steps. The sorcerer’s eyes, made from polished orbs of burning stone, fixed Nagash with twin pinpoints of cold green light. Hungrily, the necromancer reached for one.
A scuff of claws on wood brought Nagash’s head around just in time to see the enemy warlord rushing at him, his curved sword held high. The necromancer surged to his feet, bringing up his obsidian sword just in time to block the ratman’s downwards blow. The force of the impact drove Nagash back a step, nearly sending him tumbling down the steps of the dais.
The enemy warlord was a fearsome figure at close quarters, his fine bronze armour streaked with blood and hung with a half-dozen charred magic tokens. His scarred face was contorted in a mask of pure, bestial rage as he unleashed a storm of terrible blows against Nagash’s head and upper chest. The warlord’s skill with the blade was great, and the necromancer, in his weakened state, was hard-pressed to match him.
Nagash tried to drive the ratman back, feinting at his face and then slashing quickly at his legs. The obsidian blade rang against the warlord’s armour but its magic turned the sword aside. The ratman refused to give ground, however. With a vicious curse he took the blow on his leg and chopped down with his sword. The magic blade sheared through the necromancer’s weakened armour and buried itself in his left shoulder.
The necromancer reeled from the blow. Darkness seeped back into the corners of his eyes. Without thinking, he reached up with his left hand and seized the warlord’s sword wrist. Snarling, he turned in place, pulling the warlord off his feet and throwing him down the steps of the dais. The ratman lost his grip on his sword and landed hard, sprawling onto his back.
Nagash reached up and pulled the warlord’s blade free from his shoulder. Casting it contemptuously aside, the necromancer glared coldly at his foe. The ratman was struggling to stand, though it was clear that he was in terrible pain.
It was a pity there wasn’t time to savour the moment. Nagash raised his hand, calling upon one last mote of power. At the bottom of the dais, the warlord looked up at the necromancer. An expression of shock registered on the ratman’s face, and then he ducked, covering his head with his arms.
Nagash laughed at the warlord’s futile attempt to save himself. He was still laughing when the glowing green orb struck the dais just behind him.
Green flames were spreading swiftly along the wooden steps by the time Eekrit and Eshreegar reached the edge of the dais. Shielding his face against the heat, Eekrit squinted into the blaze in search of the kreekar-gan’s body. Other than some scraps of charred leather and some blobs of molten bronze, there was no sign of him. The burning man had vanished.
“You missed!” the warlord snarled.
The Master of Treacheries scowled at Eekrit. “I tried to tell you those orbs are heavier than they look, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Around them, the heechigar were skirting the flames and rushing to Velsquee’s side. Off in the distance, towards the upper branch-tunnels, the sounds of battle were growing more intense.
“See if you can find the rest of our raiders and get them heading into the lower levels,” Eekrit said. “Be quick. We don’t have much time.”
Eshreegar nodded and vanished silently into the shadows. Moments later the storm-walkers returned, carrying Velsquee on a makeshift stretcher made from the Grey Lord’s cloak and two polearm hafts. Despite his pain, when he caught sight of Eekrit he tried vainly to pull himself upright.
“What in the Horned God’s name are you doing here?” Velsquee rasped. “You’re under-under arrest!”
“It’s well for you that I’m not, my lord,” Eekrit answered coolly. “Another moment and you would have been dead.”
The Grey Lord glared at him. “You were guarded by a dozen heechigar. How did you possibly escape?”
Eekrit flicked his tail smugly. “How else? I bribed them with more gold than they’d earn in a lifetime,” he answered. “Storm-walkers or no, they were still skaven and every child of the Horned God has his price.” He folded his arms. “We had to fight our way through a barbarian warband that was blocking the lower branch-tunnels. We finally drove them back, but by then it was too late. We saw the explosions and ran to the dais as fast as we could.”
“What happened to the kreekar-gan? Did-did you destroy him?”
Reluctantly, Eekrit shook his head. “When Eshreegar found an unbroken fire-globe at the bottom of the far side of the dais, we thought we had our chance. I’ve no doubt we hurt him, but somehow he escaped.”
“How-how can you be so sure?” Velsquee demanded.
“Because the damned corpses are still fighting,” Eekrit snapped. “They’re all over the mine shaft. Our warriors are in full retreat. If we don’t get out of here right now, we’re going to be cut off from the under-fortress.”
“No!” Velsquee protested. “We-we can hold them here!”
“That’s exactly what the burning man wants you to think,” Eekrit shot back. “We have to withdraw, while we can still salvage this situation. Otherwise, the kreekar-gan could drive us from the mountain entirely.”
For a moment, Velsquee looked as though he was going to argue further, but then his body was wracked with a spasm of pain that left him gasping and semiconscious. The Grey Lord lay back against the stretcher. It was a few moments before he could master himself enough to speak.
“The army is yours, Warlord Eekrit,” Velsquee told him. “Do as you see fit.”
Eekrit drew a deep breath. From this moment forwards, the decision to retreat would be laid squarely on his shoulders. Even half-delirious from pain, Velsquee was careful to cover his own tail. Gritting his teeth, he bowed to the Grey Lord, then turned to the storm-walkers.
“You,” he said to one of them. “Find a pack leader with a whistle and tell him to sound the retreat. The rest of you carry Lord Velsquee to the under-fortress and find him a healer. Go!”
The heechigar obeyed with gratifying speed. In moments, Eekrit was alone on the burning dais, tasting ashes on his tongue. The battle was lost and possibly the war as well. Much depended on how steep a price the burning man had paid for his victory.
Thinking bitter thoughts, the warlord turned to leave. Just as he did so, something stirred beneath a pile of dead slave rats just a few feet to his right.
Eekrit’s paw flew to the hilt of his sword. There was a high-pitched moan from the pile of corpses, then a pair of bodies rolled away to reveal the burnt and bloody face of Lord Hiirc.
“Is-is he gone?” Hiirc asked. The skaven lord clawed his way out from under the pile of bodies, his eyes darting frantically around the dais. “The-the burning man. Is he gone?”
The warlord stared at Hiirc in surprise. Slowly, his eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes,” he said. “The kreekar-gan has fled. There’s no one here now but you and I.”
“Thank the Horned One,” Hiirc exclaimed, too rattled to recognise Eekrit’s voice. He let out a fearful groan as he turned away from the warlord and took in the devastation around him.
“Listen carefully,” he said to Eekrit. “When we get back to the under-fortress, you must tell everyone that I fought the burning man.” Hiirc nodded to himself. “Yes. I fought him, and-and I was winning. But then that fool Vittr
ik dropped one of the fire-globes, and the blast knocked me out.” He turned back to Eekrit. “You can remember that, can’t you?”
The skaven lord froze. His eyes widened as he recognised at last whom he was speaking to.
Eekrit smiled cruelly. “Oh, yes. I’ll remember every word.” He took a step towards Hiirc, his blade rising slowly. “By the time I’m done, they’ll be talking about your heroic death from here all the way back to the Great City.”
—
Children of a Hungry God
The Golden Plain, in the 101st year of Sokth the Merciless
(-1265 Imperial Reckoning)
The bani-al-Hashim rode northwards for nearly a week, beyond the abandoned farmlands and into wild country where few Lahmians had ever dared tread. They moved only at night and burned no fires, eating unleavened bread and sleeping on the cold ground, because that was the tradition the bani had brought with them out of the desert. In ancient times, the children of the desert had to be wary of gathering in great numbers, lest they draw the attention of their many foes.
By the time Faisr al-Hashim and his people reached the rolling foothills along the northern edge of the great plain, there was already a vast city of brightly coloured tents pitched along the grassy slopes, their roofs rippling like banners in the chilly autumn wind. Dawn was breaking and herds of lean-limbed horses were stirring in the lower meadows; their guardians, keen-eyed youngsters armed with javelin and bow, straightened in their saddles and nudged their charges out of the path of the new arrivals. Faisr and his warriors, nearly a hundred in all, nodded to the young men and women as they passed, and favoured their herds with a polite degree of predatory interest. The sentries puffed out their chests and accepted the compliments with raised lances and their best, most intimidating stares.
Alcadizzar rode alongside Faisr al-Hashim and nodded solemnly at the sentries as the bani-al-Hashim went by. He was dressed in layered desert robes and a chequered headscarf like the rest of the tribe’s warriors and after twenty years among the desert raiders he sat in the saddle nearly as well as they. If the youngsters realised he wasn’t a true son of the desert, they gave no sign of it.
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