“He is coming,” the necromancer hissed. “And when he does, you will grovel like a worm at his feet.”
Neferata bent over the necromancer, until their faces nearly touched. Her charnel breath gusted cold against his face.
“A pity you shall never see it.”
The queen’s empty hand snatched up a splintered length of the wooden lectern. W’soran’s eyes went wide. His cry of protest transformed into a wordless scream of rage as she drove the dagger-like fragment into his heart.
Ushoran’s nails etched deep scars into the wood of the table at his back as he fought to maintain an outwards appearance of calm. His head still ached from the dreadful, bell-like tolling that had brought him to the sanctum. The blood in his veins, so freshly stolen from a young beggar mere hours before, had now lost its heat. His limbs felt as heavy as lead. From the tense cast of Ankhat’s face, it was clear that the nobleman had been profoundly affected as well. Ushoran’s gaze fell to the iron sword in Ankhat’s hand and he debated whether he could slip through the door of the sanctum and escape before the nobleman could strike. If he tried, though, and failed, it would only confirm his complicity in W’soran’s crimes. It was all Ushoran could do to maintain his bland facade and conceal his mounting desperation.
Neferata rose slowly from W’soran’s limp body. “Find a barrel and stuff him inside,” she said to Ankhat. “Then bury him beneath the temple.”
Ankhat scowled at the necromancer’s skeletal form. “That should be easy enough. Is there any place in particular you want me to put him?”
“Somewhere that no one will ever find him,” the queen replied. Then Neferata turned to Ushoran.
“And what role did you play in all of this?” she demanded.
The Lord of Masks raised his hands in protest. “None whatsoever, great one,” he said quickly. “I’m no necromancer, as you well know.”
Neferata took a step towards him. Her priestesses stopped pacing about the sanctum and turned to face Ushoran, their expressions disconcertingly intent.
“And yet, here you are,” she replied.
“Clearly we shared the same idea,” Ushoran said, thinking furiously. The best lies, he knew, always began with a splinter of truth. “When that awful pounding began, I naturally assumed that W’soran would have some idea of what it was. As did you, apparently.”
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “And you happened to know exactly how to find him.”
The Lord of Masks affected a shrug. “It is my business to know such things, great one.”
“And yet you have no word of Prince Alcadizzar,” the queen snapped. “How is that, my lord, after all these years?”
Ushoran paused, considering his reply with care. He’d escaped one snake pit and stumbled into another. “We will find him, great one,” he answered. “I’m sure of it.” He licked his lips. “With every passing day, I become more convinced that you are right, and he is somewhere close by. Just a… a few more interrogations and I am sure we will learn something of value.”
Suddenly, Neferata was at his side, her dark eyes peering hungrily into his own. Ushoran’s fists clenched reflexively; he smothered the instinct to bare his fangs at the queen’s wordless challenge.
“I am pleased to hear it,” Neferata growled. “Because my patience is wearing thin. I confess that it’s confounded me why your network of spies has been so successful in every other inquiry except the one that matters to me the most.”
Ushoran kept his voice under careful control. The slightest sense of nervousness was certain to be misinterpreted. “No one is more confounded by Alcadizzar’s disappearance than I, great one,” he said.
“I hope so. I hope the matter has your undivided attention,” the queen said. “Because if he isn’t found soon, you will come to envy W’soran’s fate.”
Later that night, as the hour of the wolf approached, the wind came howling in from the sea, tossing about the ships at anchor and rattling doors along the city streets. Lahmians crouched around their fires, many whispering prayers to Neru and ringing silver bells in hopes of keeping the unquiet spirits at bay. Strange sounds echoed from the darkness outside: angry mutterings and groans, frantic screams and the mocking laughter of jackals. Fingers scratched at the doors of wine shops and pleasure houses and tentative steps paced across the rooftops of many homes, as though searching for a way inside.
In the city’s vast necropolis, one spirit in particular woke in darkness, summoned across the wide gulf by a call he was powerless to deny. Bony hands twitched, scrabbling at the sides of a simple, stone casket. On the exterior of the casket’s lid, complex sigils carved into the stone and inlaid with silver started to glow with heat. Tendrils of steam curled from the protective wards as the will of the spirit contained within fought against its bonds. Within seconds, the silver inlay began to bubble and then drip in molten streams down the sides of the casket. There was a creak of tearing metal as the lead seal covering the seams of the lid slowly gave way, followed by a crash as the stone lid was hurled aside and broke into pieces on the mausoleum floor.
The figure within did not move at first, as though listening to the call that had summoned him out of the darkness. It was his master’s voice, commanding him to rise and serve, as he’d done in centuries past. Once upon a time, the thought would have filled him with dread; now, he felt only triumph and a sense of savage joy. If it meant a release from that endless plain and the wailing of the damned, he would serve Nagash gladly, and drown the world in nightmares.
Ligaments creaking the mouldy skeleton sat up in the casket. His robes hung about his bones in tatters, held in place more by layers of grimy cobwebs than anything else. Beetles and swift, brown spiders scuttled from burrows dug into the desiccated flesh of his ribcage as he gripped the edge of the casket and climbed his way out.
Standing amid the broken shards of the casket’s lid, the skeleton reached into the casket and drew out his skull. The few scraps of flesh that still clung to the bone were dark and curled like patches of old leather. Green fires guttered balefully in deep-set eye sockets and grave-mould clung to his blackened teeth. A stub of broken vertebrae hung stubbornly from the base of the skull, the lower knob sheared halfway through by a powerful sword-stroke.
Slowly, haltingly, the skeleton turned the skull about and lifted it onto its severed neck. The sheared ends gripped together at once, bound by sheer force of will. With a faint, grating sound, the head turned left and right, studying the cramped confines of the pauper’s tomb that he’d been sealed into. Bitter, ethereal laughter echoed in the dank space.
The figure bent, hands searching the darkness inside the casket once more. Finally, the fingers closed about a familiar hilt. The skeleton drew out a long double-edged iron sword, its surface spotted with rust and sheathed in layers of cobwebs, and growled in satisfaction. Then he turned his attention to the crypt’s narrow door.
On the third blow, the thin stone slab broke apart and fell to the ground. Arkhan the Black strode into the night air and raised his sword to the bale-moon gleaming above the western horizon. Then he turned his face to the north-west, where his master waited, and went to serve him.
—
Preparations of War
Nagashizzar, in the 106th year of Asaph the Beautiful
(-1211 Imperial Reckoning)
A black-robed scout-assassin emerged from the wide, shadow-filled lane across the great cavern and skittered silently up to Lord Eshreegar. The two conversed quietly for a moment and the Master of Treacheries nodded stiffly. As the scout disappeared back into the shadows, Eshreegar turned his hooded head and nodded to Eekrit. The skeletons were coming.
Eekrit could feel Nagash’s minions approaching long before he saw the green glow of their eyes, or heard the dry rustling of their steps. He felt it in his old joints and in the back of his throat, as the thick, reeking air of the great cavern turned cold and dank as a grave. Gritting his teeth and leaning heavily on the gnarled cypress cane
in his paw, he rose painfully from the wooden chair his slaves had brought down from the great hall. Behind him, the shackled herds of greenskins noticed the change as well and filled the echoing space with a rising chorus of growls, barks and shrieking cries.
Slavers snarled at the drug-addled beasts, lashing at their scarred backs with metal-studded whips to keep them in line.
Within moments, a pair of eerie grave-lights emerged from the gloom. Bone rasped along rough, slimy stone. A figure emerged, clad in mouldy rags and carrying a rust-spotted iron sword. Eekrit had seen this particular corpse several times before, but couldn’t say for certain what it was. It radiated power, like one of the kreekar-gan’s wights, but held far more intelligence than the rest. Its teeth were black and jagged as splintered ebony, giving its skull a permanent, broken snarl.
Behind the figure marched a long line of hunched, yellowed skeletons, swathed in rotting fragments of clothing and scraps of mouldy flesh. They moved in pairs, each carrying a heavy wooden chest between them. Their knobby skulls turned this way and that, snouts raised as though sniffing the air for their lost clan mates. Though Nagash no doubt held thousands of human skeletons in thrall, it apparently amused the liche-king to send skaven corpses to trade with the Under-Empire.
“By the scales, damn you,” Eekrit snarled, pointing with his cane to the towering wood-and-bronze apparatus at his right. Every three months, it was always the same. As the black-toothed creature glared hatefully at the skaven, the skeletons slowly turned, staring at the scales as though they’d just sprung up from the cavern floor. Then, one pair at a time, they shuffled over and set down their burdens for appraisal. Eekrit waved a paw impatiently and a small gang of skaven hurried forwards to weigh the chests of god-stone and tally the results. The former warlord surveyed the process with a sour look on his face and wondered once again if he hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
“A poisoned cup or an assassin’s knife has to be a better fate than this,” he muttered to himself.
“Not from my experience,” Eshreegar replied, as he joined Eekrit near the creaking scales. Though nearly blind now from age and his injuries during the war, his hearing was as keen as ever. “But, each to their own.”
Eekrit glared at the Master of Treacheries. “Shall we trade places, then?” he sneered. “I could give orders to your scouts and send reports back to Velsquee, while you stare at mouldy ledgers and put up with… with this—” he waved an arm at the noisome herds of shifting greenskins, “each and every day.”
Eshreegar folded his arms and sighed. “Well, Velsquee isn’t exactly happy with the reports, for what it’s worth.”
“No, I expect he isn’t,” Eekrit said, tail lashing irritably. The liche-king had begun rebuilding his strength the very day that the trade agreement had been set and he hadn’t stopped since. The foundries ran day and night, spewing vast clouds of choking fumes into the air above the mountain, while gangs of undead labourers bored dozens of new mine shafts deep into the mountainside. Toppled towers and collapsed buildings had been rebuilt at an ever-increasing pace, as a growing number of northern barbarians were sent to serve in the liche-king’s halls. Looking back now, it galled him to think how close they’d been to victory. He should have listened to his instincts from the outset and thrown everything he’d had into one, final attack. It would have been far better to have tried—and possibly failed—than to sit amidst this rubbish heap from one miserable year to the next.
The appraisers went to work opening each of the chests. Green light flared brightly from each one; within lay carefully stacked ingots of refined god-stone. At a half-pound of stone for every one hundred pounds of flesh or treasure, the skaven had learned to maximise their profits early on by trading in big, muscular greenskins and crates of heavy ores. The wealth they were reaping from the mountain was nowhere near the amount they had mined during the war, but was still a fabulous sum by any normal measure. The sight of so much of the precious stone in one place never failed to set Eekrit’s nose twitching.
One by one, the chests were weighed; two scribes—one from Velsquee’s clan, and one employed by Eekrit himself—noted down the value in their ledgers. When the process was complete, they would be placed under heavy guard until the morrow, when a contingent of Velsquee’s heechigar would come to collect them and carry them back to the Great City. There, Velsquee would sell the stone to the other clans and share the profits with Eekrit and Eshreegar. Eekrit had no doubt that Velsquee was robbing them blind in the process, like any self-respecting skaven would. Despite this, the former warlord had already amassed a sizeable fortune over the last few years. Another decade or so and he might be able to buy his way out of exile.
There certainly didn’t seem to be any point in staying. Nagash had grown far too powerful. If mad old Qweeqwol had been right about the necromancer’s designs, Eekrit didn’t want to be anywhere near the mountain when the liche-king put his plans into motion.
“So many chests! Such magnificent wealth! It-it is pleasing to the eye, yes?”
Eekrit blinked, roused from his reverie by the nasal voice to his right. He glanced over at the wiry, younger skaven who had sidled up beside him. His ears flattened slightly in irritation. “Don’t start, Kritchit. I’m not in the mood.”
Kritchit wrung his knobby paws and gave the former warlord his most unctuous smile. Eekrit thought the slaver looked like a half-chewed lump of gristle. His shoulders were hunched, the left slightly higher than the right, and there was a noticeable hunk of flesh missing from his left thigh, which caused him to drag the leg when he walked. Kritchit’s head and arms were patterned with dozens of old scars and his ears had been chewed down to mere nubs. He was a genuine horror to look upon and reeked of spoiled meat besides. For years he and his band of savages had taken Velsquee’s gold and scoured the mountains for human and greenskin slaves. He was cunning, ruthless, and as greedy a wretch as Eekrit had ever met.
“Mood? How can your mood be anything but grand, my lord?” Kritchit spread his paws, taking in the long line of chests. “Are you not blessed? Is this not a great bounty of wealth laid before you, greater than any conqueror’s due?”
Eekrit’s eyes narrowed angrily. “We carved this much out of the mountain every day during the war.”
Kritchit chuckled. “Oh, no doubt, no doubt,” he said patronisingly. “But this here… this is a gift, yes? Dropped like ripe fruit into your outstretched paw. Did you sweat, and suffer, and bleed for this treasure? No, certainly not. You had but to recline here, in luxury, while my bold raiders and I hunted day and night on your behalf.”
The former warlord folded his arms. “You’re doing this for Velsquee, not me,” he growled. “I’m nothing more than a clerk.”
Kritchit sighed with theatrical weariness, ignoring Eekrit’s reply. “The life of a raider is a hard thing, my lord. Much deprivation. Much danger. Days and nights in the cold, open spaces, without so much as a burrow to shelter in.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“And the greenskins… there are only a few herds left and those are the meanest, cleverest of them all.” The slaver shook his scarred head sadly. “There was much fighting. I lost many good warriors. Some were like litter-mates to me.”
Eshreegar made a disgusted sound. “That’s it,” the Master of Treacheries said. “I’m killing him.”
The former warlord forestalled Eshreegar with an upraised paw. “One share, Kritchit. Same as ever.”
Kritchit drew himself up to his full height, which had the unfortunate effect of making him seem a bit lopsided. His right paw fell to the butt of the coiled whip that hung from his belt. “Where is-is the justice in that?” he said. “I do all the work, take all the risks! I have warriors to pay, kinfolk to bribe. I-I have expenses.”
“One share, Kritchit.”
“It’s been one share for the last ten years! You know how much things cost these days?” Kritchit pointed to the milling herd of slaves. “These beasts killed a dozen
of my warriors when we took their camp and then mauled two more-more on the way here! How do you expect me to-to replace them?” Kritchit licked at his long, front teeth. “Three shares, this-this time.”
“Am I speaking too quickly for you, Kritchit? Should I use smaller words? One. Share.”
“Two shares!” The slaver swept his paw at the line of chests. “Look-look at all that! Velsquee will never miss it!”
Eekrit sighed. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Eshreegar, kill him.”
“Now, look here—”
Eshreegar had a knife drawn and was bearing down on Kritchit when a commotion suddenly erupted at the far end of the cavern. Greenskins bellowed and snarled, shaking their heavy chains and stirring up the entire herd. The slavers shouted back, their whips hissing malevolently through the dank air. Eekrit turned and saw a column of burly, armoured skaven shoving the slavers aside as they forced their way into the cavern from one of the wide tunnels that led from the mountain towards the Great City.
“What’s this?”
Eshreegar paused, knife poised to strike Kritchit. He squinted his one eye at the distant skaven. “Velsquee’s heechigar,” he grunted. “They’re early.”
The storm-walkers poured into the cavern in a great column, polearms at the ready. Behind them, Eekrit caught sight of a gang of bent-backed slaves carrying a swaying wooden palanquin. His eyes widened.
“By the Horned One. What’s he doing here?”
“Velsquee?” Eshreegar asked. “After all this time?”
“So it would seem.” The former warlord’s tail lashed agitatedly. For the life of him, he couldn’t fathom why the old Grey Lord would risk the long and arduous journey from the Great City and that made him very uneasy.
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