A day and a night passed. Then another. W’soran’s ire grew. Finally, on the third day, he despatched one of his immortals to find Arkhan—only to discover that the liche had taken the warriors directly under his control and headed west two days before.
Furious, W’soran roused the rest of the host and chased off after him, determined not to let Arkhan reach Khemri first and deprive the necromancer of the honour of capturing Alcadizzar. The vast army lumbered and lurched up the narrow pass and onto the Golden Plain, spilling like a dark stain across the barren fields. The necromancer drove his troops forwards ruthlessly, marching both day and night; the dust and ash stirred by their marching feet was drawn upwards by W’soran’s magic to perpetuate the vast sea of cloud that shielded them from the burning sun.
It took more than three weeks to finally catch up with Arkhan, clear on the other side of the desolate plain. W’soran’s cavalry caught sight of the liche’s forces drawn up in fighting order some ten leagues west along the trade road, not far from where it branched southwest towards Lybaras. A league away, with their backs to the Lybaras road, waited a Nehekharan army.
The necromancer’s infantry caught up with Arkhan’s troops some four hours later. W’soran commanded them to halt a short way behind the liche’s forces and then led his palanquin forwards in search of the broken-toothed bastard.
Arkhan sat astride a huge, skeletal horse, surrounded by a group of mounted wights near the centre of his battle-line. Unlike W’soran, who had retained his sigil-marked robes, the liche had traded his filthy rags for bronze and leather armour. A tarnished bronze helmet covered his skull, its skirt of leather and bronze rings surrounding his face and neck like the lower part of a cowl. The liche’s snarling face turned to the necromancer, green eyes burning from their bony sockets. With a creak of leather he raised his hand and pointed a bony finger at the distant army.
“Explain this,” Arkhan grated.
W’soran brought the palanquin to an abrupt halt. “Isn’t it obvious?” he snapped. “Some of that misbegotten rabble in Lahmia must have escaped and carried a warning to Lybaras. You didn’t think they would just sit and wait for us to show up outside their walls, did you?”
A guttural hiss slipped past the liche’s rotten teeth. “Lybaras and Rasetra both,” Arkhan declared. “It would have taken weeks to muster them, much less march all this way to meet us. How is that possible?”
“How should I know?” W’soran shot back. “The Lybarans have all manner of strange devices, do they not? Perhaps they spied us coming from a long distance away.”
“You’re an even bigger fool than I remembered,” Arkhan sneered. “You swore to Nagash that the great cities were divided. That they couldn’t muster a proper defence against us.”
The necromancer felt a moment of unease as the implications of what the liche was saying finally sank in. From this moment forwards, if anything went wrong on the campaign, Arkhan would try to blame W’soran for it.
“You call that a proper defence?” the necromancer shot back. “I always suspected you were a coward, Arkhan. That’s a fraction of the army I nearly defeated at Lahmia, years ago!”
Arkhan leaned back in his saddle and considered W’soran for a long moment, until the necromancer began to wonder if the liche would be foolish enough to reach for his sword.
“Indeed?” he said at length. “Then your legions should have little trouble defeating this one.” He raised his hand; all at once, his entire force turned to the right and began to march northwards, out of the path between W’soran’s forces and the enemy.
W’soran glared at Arkhan, furious that he had let the liche outmanoeuvre him so easily. “Very well,” the necromancer hissed. “Pull your warriors back to the north-east and keep them out of my way. You can manage that much, can’t you?”
Arkhan did not deign to give him an answer, merely turning his horse about and heading off to the north. W’soran clenched his fists, sorely tempted to blast the liche from his saddle and settle things once and for all. Reluctantly, he stayed his hand. Now was not the time, not with an enemy army just a few miles distant.
Seething, he turned his palanquin about and returned to his waiting legions. With a few curt orders and a string of mental commands, the army began forming into battle-line. Archer companies clattered forth to take up position in front of the spear companies, while cavalry and chariots took their places at the flanks.
As they were assuming their places, W’soran studied the enemy force. Truthfully, the force seemed at least as large as the one Alcadizzar had led against Lahmia—perhaps eighty to a hundred thousand warriors. He spied heavy infantry in the centre and on the flanks, screened by large units of archers to the front and chariots to the south. Just behind the battle-line were perhaps two-score small, wheeled catapults, arranged in alternating ranks to fire over the heads of the infantry. A formidable force, the necromancer allowed, but woefully outnumbered against the assembled legions of undead. With a mirthless smile, W’soran ordered his archers and spearmen forwards.
The tightly packed spear formations descended the sloping ground towards the enemy troops. Minutes passed as the two forces drew together. W’soran could dimly hear trumpets calling back and forth along the enemy battle-line. When the advancing skeletons were perhaps a thousand yards away, the necromancer saw men begin working the winding arms on the Lybaran catapults. The necromancer issued another command and his archers picked up their pace, trotting ahead of the spear companies to provide covering fire for the last few hundred yards before contact. At two hundred yards, they came to a halt and drew back their bowstrings in a single motion, then unleashed a hissing storm of arrows into the ranks of the enemy infantry. Many fell upon upraised shields or glanced off rounded helms, but others slid through narrow gaps and buried themselves in flesh and bone. Holes opened in the ranks as men fell, wounded or dying.
The skeletal archers prepared for a second volley, but now the enemy bowmen responded, sending up a shower of their own missiles. They plunged down among the lightly armoured archers, punching through dusty ribcages and bleached skulls. Where the arrows struck, there was a tiny white flash and the skeletons collapsed to the ground.
The flashes caught W’soran’s attention at once. Whatever it was, it snuffed out the magic animating the corpses like pinching a candle flame. It had to be magic of some kind, the necromancer realised with alarm.
Down on the field, the skeletal archers unleashed another, more ragged volley of arrows. Almost immediately, the Nehekharans fired back, and hundreds more of W’soran’s archers were destroyed. With a snarl, he ordered the survivors to retreat. As the archers turned about and trotted through narrow gaps between the spear companies, W’soran issued curt orders to his retainers. The immortals raised their arms and began to chant, casting the first incantations of the battle.
The spear companies pressed forwards, undaunted by the punishment suffered by the archers. At five hundred yards, a trumpet blew from the enemy battle-line, and all twenty catapults went into action. Clutches of smooth, rounded stones the size of melons fell among the spear companies, crushing shields and shattering bones. Knots of spearmen simply ceased to exist, as though flattened by the stomping feet of an invisible giant.
A hundred yards later, the catapults fired again, then a hundred yards after that. The lead companies of spearmen were all but destroyed, but there were still thousands more ready to take their place. At two hundred yards, another shower of stones fell, plus a flight of enemy arrows that sowed yet more carnage through the ranks. Snarling, W’soran raised his hand to the sky and all eight immortals unleashed their incantations simultaneously. Necromantic power surged through the undead spearmen, filling their spindly limbs with a momentary burst of additional vigour. They surged ahead in a silent mass, weapons levelled, charging across the last two hundred yards faster than either the enemy bowmen or the catapults could react.
The enemy archers saw the danger approaching and retreated at o
nce, snatching unfired arrows out of the ground by their feet and racing back to safety behind the heavy infantry. Moments later the Nehekharan battle-line roared in challenge as the undead spearmen crashed against their upraised shields and the battle was truly joined.
The Rasetran army was clad in heavy armour of leather and bronze plates and they wielded iron-bladed hand axes or heavy maces with deadly skill. Their shields were marked with runes of protection; their weapons with symbols that crumpled skeletons with every blow. W’soran and his retainers responded with another series of incantations that speeded the attacks of their spearmen, until the bronze spearheads jabbed into the enemy like the heads of vipers. The slaughter on both sides was terrible to behold, but the Nehekharans stood their ground against the onslaught.
W’soran lashed at the undead legions with the force of his will, hurling the entire host at the stubborn foe. To the south, skeletal cavalry and chariots charged into the mass of Nehekharan horse, touching off a wild, swirling melee. Companies of archers and spearmen advanced behind the undead cavalry, striking the Rasetrans from the flank and unleashing volleys of arrows at the struggling Nehekharan horsemen. To the north, another force of undead cavalry and infantry were swinging around the enemy’s left flank. Trumpets sounded a desperate call for reinforcements, as the enemy left began to bend backwards under the pressure. Before long the undead charioteers would be able to swing past the struggling infantry and strike at the Lybaran catapults at the rear of the army.
Still the Rasetrans fought on, stubbornly refusing to give ground against the onslaught. The Lybaran catapults continued firing over their heads into the rear ranks of the undead, along with the archer companies, but ultimately the effort was a futile one. The skeletons felt no fear or pain. They did not know the meaning of retreat. They fought until they were destroyed, whereupon the next warrior in line took their place and the battle went on. Slowly, inexorably, the undead host began to spill around the flanks of the struggling army, like a pair of jaws that would soon close and swallow the living warriors whole.
After nearly an hour of fighting, the Nehekharans reached the breaking point. Their flanks had nearly collapsed and their infantry companies had taken a terrible mauling. Suddenly, trumpet calls sounded up and down the battle-line, and the withdrawal began. With a steady, disciplined tread, the companies fell back a step at a time, angling slightly back towards the south-west.
Sensing victory, W’soran urged his troops to redouble their efforts. More incantations were cast—but this time, to the necromancer’s surprise, their effects were dispelled by cunningly directed counter-magics. Furious, W’soran searched the aether for signs of the enemy spellcasters—but before he could locate them, there was a sudden surge of magical energy and the ground before the struggling warriors seemed to erupt into a howling wall of blinding dust and sand.
W’soran drove his warriors forwards, into the howling sandstorm, but perversely, the sounds of fighting dwindled rather than intensified. The enemy was in full retreat, shielded by the concealing storm. The necromancer switched tactics, marshalling his retainers to dispel the storm. Within minutes, the spell was unravelled, but swirling clouds of dust still obscured the field of slaughter, making it difficult to gauge the enemy’s position.
By the time the dust had cleared enough to see, the necromancer was left cursing in disgust. The Rasetrans had pulled back with surprising speed—even the catapults had managed a rapid withdrawal, towed down the trade road by teams of horses. The enemy cavalry had wheeled about and followed in their wake, screening the weary infantry from pursuit.
W’soran glared sourly at the retreating Nehekharans. He’d won, at best, a minor victory. As long as the enemy army remained intact, it still posed a threat. Now he would be forced to chase them, all the way to Lybaras and beyond if he must. That would cost precious time, while the cities of the west marshalled their forces on the other side of the Bitter Peaks.
The necromancer spat a curse at the mortals. At the bottom of the slope, Arkhan was walking his skeletal horse amongst the piles of enemy dead, no doubt searching for some piece of evidence that could be used to damn him before the Undying King.
Already, the campaign was proving to be a long and a bitter one.
—
Tides of Bone
West of the Golden Plain, in the 110th year of Khsar the Faceless
(-1162 Imperial Reckoning)
The spirit wailed like a damned soul, wracked by the binding sigil and the force of Arkhan’s will. It wavered like a luminous thread of smoke above the body it had inhabited in life, that of a young, handsome Rasetran clad in finely wrought iron armour. Dried blood coated the prince’s square chin and spread down the front of his breastplate like a coating of rust. An arrow jutted from the side of his throat.
With an angry sweep of his hand, the liche dispelled the summoning ritual, returning the prince’s spirit to the realms of the dead. He spat another string of arcane syllables and the bloodstained body jerked, as though startled. A groan escaped from the prince’s lungs, forcing a stream of thick congealing blood from the corpse’s slack mouth. Grave-light flickered from the depths of the man’s filmy eyes. The dead man climbed stiffly to his feet; with a growled command the liche sent the corpse to join the ranks of the Undying King’s army.
Hours had passed since the battle with the Nehekharans and the bulk of the undead army remained close to the corpse-strewn battlefield. Arkhan had been forced to wait until nightfall to interrogate the spirits of the enemy dead; after his abrupt departure from Lahmia several weeks ago, W’soran refused to let him out of the necromancer’s sight. Even now, he sat upon his ridiculous palanquin just a few yards away, sneering under his breath while Arkhan worked.
Arkhan would have liked nothing better than to twist the necromancer’s head off his bony neck and feed his old bones to the jackals, if they would have them. The battle with the Nehekharans had confirmed his suspicions that W’soran didn’t know the first thing about war. The necromancer had simply thrown troops at the mortals until the much smaller army had no choice but to retreat—and had taken substantial losses in the process. Unfortunately, if he killed W’soran now, he couldn’t be certain how the immortal’s progeny would react, and Arkhan could not effectively command the vast army without them. If the battle with Rasetra and Lybaras was any indication, he would need all the warriors at his disposal to conquer the great cities.
The enemy was far better prepared than they had any right to be and now he knew the reason why.
W’soran stirred from his reverie as the dead Rasetran prince shuffled past. “That’s the eighth one,” he snapped. “How many more do you intend to question? We’re wasting valuable time.” He waved his skeletal hand to the south. “Every hour we spend here allows the Lybarans to get another mile closer to their city.”
“That is the least of our concerns,” Arkhan snarled. “All of Nehekhara is up in arms. They somehow knew we were coming while our ships were still sailing down the strait!” He pointed to the prince’s walking corpse. “They’ve been preparing for our coming since Lahmia fell, nearly forty years ago. How is that possible?”
“It’s not,” W’soran said flatly. “The very idea is absurd. Alcadizzar is many things, but he’s not an oracle.” He snorted in derision. “The spirit must have lied to you.”
Arkhan’s fists clenched angrily. “The ritual compelled him to speak the truth.”
“Then he was mistaken,” W’soran snapped. “What does it matter? Nehekhara must be conquered and Alcadizzar brought back to Nagashizzar in chains. The Undying King has commanded it and we must obey.”
It matters a great deal if we’re marching into a trap, you fool, Arkhan thought. “The Nehekharans know we’re coming,” Arkhan insisted. “What is more, they’re armed with weapons and magic that we had no idea they possessed.” He folded his arms. “We’ve lost the element of surprise and today’s battle shows that we can’t depend on numbers alone to d
efeat the enemy.”
W’soran studied him warily. “What do you suggest?”
“We still have one advantage the mortals cannot match: our troops are tireless and can march longer and faster than anyone else. The Rasetrans and the Lybarans were put in our path to slow us down, while the cities of the west marshalled their troops. If we move quickly, we can still catch them unawares and defeat them one city at a time.”
“How?”
“We divide the army. You take a third of the host and keep Lybaras and Rasetra at bay, while I head west at once and strike for Khemri. If I can take Quatar and the Gates of the Dawn by storm, I can be at the Living City within three weeks. Once Alcadizzar is defeated, the rest of the cities should fall easily.”
The necromancer shook his head. “Oh, no. You think I’m going to waste my time on this side of the Brittle Peaks while you march into Khemri and claim all the glory?”
Arkhan glared at the immortal. “We cannot leave Rasetra and Lybaras free to act while we march into the Valley of Kings,” he grated. “If they marched into the valley behind us, we would be caught between two forces, with little room to manoeuvre.”
Even W’soran could see the danger in such a situation. “I’ll send four of my retainers to keep Rasetra and Lybaras occupied,” he said. “That’s almost a third of the army. More than enough to hold the Nehekharans at bay.”
“Very well,” Arkhan said grudgingly. He didn’t want W’soran anywhere within a hundred leagues of him, but for the moment, he needed the fool’s cooperation or else the entire invasion was in peril. “We leave at once.”
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