The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  True, he had personally profited greatly from the War beneath the Mountain, as it was being called back at the Great City. God-stone was being carved from the mine shafts under his control and shipped home in staggering amounts. His personal fortunes and those of his clan swelled with each passing season; they had grown so great that Rikek was now considered among the most powerful of the warlord clans. He could afford the best of everything, even sorcerous potions and charms of god-stone to preserve his handsome looks and youthful vigour. Eekrit had even begun to seriously consider buying his way onto the Great Council once the war ended, if it ever ended.

  There was just no end to the damned skeletons. For every one his warriors killed, there seemed to be a dozen more ready to take its place. The northmen who’d apparently allied themselves with the walking corpses were at least something his people knew how to deal with. Long ago they’d had a running war with the humans over their meagre store of god-stone, and while the barbarians were fearsome warriors in their own right, the fact was that they had lost their war with the skaven all those centuries ago. They could be beaten. The corpse army, though, that was something else again.

  The long war of attrition was consuming skaven lives at a horrifying rate. New companies of reinforcements were arriving from the Great City every month. When the first loads of god-stone had begun to arrive at home, there had been a massive swell of volunteers from the clans, each seeking to make their own fortunes in the war. Now most of those treasure-seekers were dead, spitted on enemy spears or eaten by the enemy’s pallid corpse-takers, and their gnawed skeletons stood in ranks behind their foe’s tunnel redoubts. All that Eekrit got from the clans now were mobs of terrified slaves and sullen criminals; he suspected that the Great City hadn’t been so free of bandits in centuries.

  So far, the Council of Thirteen had tolerated the bloody stalemate thanks to the wealth of god-stone Eekrit provided, but he knew that such tolerance had its limits. The Children of the Horned God had never fought so long and so bitter a war in the entire history of their people and their resources, however vast, were not without their limits. He had to find a way to break the deadlock, and soon, before the Grey Lords decided to take matters into their own paws.

  Eekrit glanced sullenly at Eshreegar. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

  The Master of Treacheries shrugged. For once, Eshreegar couldn’t be blamed for having no news to give the warlord; his scout-assassins had been covering the diversionary assault, many levels away from the disaster. “We know that the northmen are accompanied by a witch,” he observed. “It’s said they have powers of divination. She might have predicted the attack.”

  “Not that,” Eekrit growled. “The burning man.”

  Eshreegar’s ears rose in surprise. “You believe the pack leaders’ tales?”

  “The fools didn’t have the wit to change their story, no matter how many throats I-I cut,” Eekrit grumbled. “So I must assume they were telling the truth, strange as-as it seems.”

  The black-robed skaven considered the warlord’s question. “A sorcerer-corpse, perhaps?”

  Eekrit’s whiskers twitched. “Is such a thing possible?”

  The Master of Treacheries shrugged again. “Perhaps Qweeqwol knows.”

  The warlord bared his teeth in disgust. “Most days I’m not certain which side that-that lunatic is on.”

  When the war had first begun, Eekrit had made a point of soliciting the old seer’s advice, showing him the respect that Qweeqwol’s station deserved; to do any less would have tempted the wrath of the Seer Council. All he’d gotten for his trouble were riddles, or rambling discourses on treachery and death—as though he needed an education on those subjects. Qweeqwol came and went as he pleased, roaming the caverns and the lower tunnels at will, even occasionally making token appearances along the battle-lines. It was as though the seer was searching for something, though what was anyone’s guess. And yet, he wasn’t entirely useless. Eekrit could think of at least three separate occasions over the years where Qweeqwol had taken an interest in the course of the campaign and supported Eekrit’s strategies in the army’s war councils. On two of those occasions, Lord Hiirc had very nearly turned the army’s chieftains against him, but the seer had stomped into the middle of the proceedings and had the would-be rebels baring their throats with little more than a hard stare and a few well-chosen words. Come to that, Qweeqwol had also been instrumental in persuading Lord Vittrik to part with those precious war engines of his. It was as though the seer was pursuing an agenda all his own, but Eekrit hadn’t the first clue what it might be.

  A thought occurred to the warlord. He tapped a claw meditatively against the armrest. “If this magical terror is half as deadly as those fools claimed it to be, perhaps I could appeal to the Seer Council for someone…”

  “Younger?”

  “Less insane.”

  Eshreegar let out a high-pitched snort. “Best of luck with that,” the Master of Treacheries said, his pink tail twitching.

  The warlord’s ears flattened in irritation. He raised a paw to summon a scribe, and was surprised to see one of his slaves already racing to the foot of the dais. Eekrit straightened.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  The slave stretched himself out at the base of the steps—no mean feat, with the puddles of cooling blood scattered across the stones. “New-new arrivals, master,” the slave gasped. “From the Great City.”

  Eekrit’s whiskers twitched. Travellers to the mountain were rare, especially these days, and the next contingent of reinforcements weren’t due for another few weeks.

  “What manner of arrivals?” he asked.

  “Warriors,” the slave squeaked. “Many-many of them.”

  Eekrit gave the Master of Treacheries a penetrating stare. Eshreegar tucked tail and head both.

  “I-I don’t know,” he said weakly. “I’ve heard nothing.”

  Eekrit growled deep in his throat. “One day you’ll have to tell me the story of how you came to be a master of scouts,” he said darkly. “I imagine it’s a very amusing tale.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the warlord stalked down off the dais and across the audience chamber. His bodyguards fell into step behind him in ordered ranks, polearms held across their chests and tails lashing aggressively. The slave let out a startled squeak and dashed ahead of Eekrit to pull open the chamber’s double doors.

  Beyond lay a complex of walled spaces and narrow passageways, framed by three-quarter-height walls of mortar and stone, which included lavish living quarters for Eekrit and loyal members of his clan who served in his retinue. More bodyguards stood watch at strategic locations throughout the complex, ever vigilant for signs of treachery. They pounded the ends of their polearms on the stone floor as Eekrit approached, sending passing slaves scrambling out of the warlord’s way.

  The warlord’s mind raced as he hurried through the maze of dimly lit corridors. He wasn’t fool enough to assume that the sudden arrival of troops was a good sign, nor was he going to sit idle and wait for their leader to come and pay his respects. It was entirely possible that one clan or another—possibly Morbus, or even Skryre—had decided to alter the balance of power in their favour and claim the mountain’s riches entirely for their own. The longer he waited to assert himself, the more time the new arrivals had to begin pursuing their own agendas.

  The clangour and stench of the cavern steadily grew as the warlord left his clan’s lair behind. The great space, once so vast it easily held as much as a quarter of the entire skaven expeditionary force, was now sub-divided into dense warrens of living quarters, foundries, storage sites and slave pens. The labyrinth of chambers and passageways spread outwards from the cavern for as much as a mile in every direction—an under-fortress to match the sprawl of towers and structures crowding the mountain slopes high above. There were even marketplaces stretching back along the wide tunnels that led to the Great City, where traders from the lesser clans gathered to provide goods a
nd luxuries for the wealthier members of the expeditionary force. Eekrit couldn’t even guess how large the population under the mountain had grown over the last two decades; in another ten years the under-fortress might become a subterranean city every bit as tangled, scheming and treacherous as anywhere else in the growing skaven empire.

  Hot, dank air swirled around the warlord, reeking of scorched metal, offal and old, pungent musk. Skaven screeched imprecations at their slaves; somewhere a whip cracked and a young voice cried out in pain. Copper furnaces huffed and roared, sending up thin ribbons of acrid smoke and casting waves of pulsing green light across the soot-stained roof of the cavern. It was the sound and smell of civilisation, Eekrit mused. Whether the skeletons wanted it or not, the skaven were here to stay.

  The warlord and his bodyguards cut like a knife through the crowds of labourers, slaves and clan warriors milling along the main arteries that led across the floor of the cavern. He headed for the broad square that lay just inside the cavern opposite the Skaven Gate, which opened onto the wide tunnel that led from the mountain back to the Great City. As they approached the square he could hear the deep buzz of voices up ahead.

  Eekrit emerged at the side of the square opposite the Skaven Gate and, even knowing what to expect, the sight of the warriors assembled there stunned him. The entire assembly area was packed from one end to the other, and judging by the commotion over by the gate, there were still more arriving. Facing him were packs of towering, broad-shouldered skaven warriors, armoured in layered plates of bronze and wielding polearms with broad, curved blades. They were the heechigar, the elite storm-walkers of the warlord clans, rarely seen in the field unless—

  The warlord felt his hackles rise at the sight of the two skaven standing in the shadow of the storm-walkers. One was mad old Qweeqwol. The aged seer was standing with his back to Eekrit, his knobby paws gripping the ancient wood of his glowing staff as he spoke in low tones to a tall, lean skaven lord.

  Eekrit’s tail twitched. The warlord clamped down hard on his musk glands. The skaven lord was older than he, and wore a fine harness of bronze plates chased with gold. Glowing tokens of god-stone hung about his neck, and another god-stone the size of a swamp-lizard egg shone balefully from the pommel of a curved sword resting at his hip. His lean, dark-furred head bore the marks of the battlefield: a triangular notch had been neatly sliced from the skaven’s right ear, and a fearsome old scar spread down his cheek and across his throat like a jagged fork of pale lightning. But it wasn’t the terrible scars, or the vicious sword and armour that struck terror into Eekrit’s ruthless heart, it was the unassuming grey wool robe that hung about the lord’s broad shoulders.

  Eekrit’s bodyguards snapped to attention at once, the butts of their polearms striking the stone in a single, well-practised motion. The sound caught the attention of the skaven lord, whose dark eyes narrowed coldly as they regarded the warlord. Noticing the sudden change, Qweeqwol turned about slowly and focussed on Eekrit as well, his glowing green eyes unblinking and inscrutable.

  Lord Eekrit clasped his paws over his stomach and approached the newcomer. Despite his best efforts, his whiskers gave a single, nervous twitch.

  “An honour,” Eekrit managed to say. The back of his neck itched as he sank to his knees before the Grey Lord. His eyes were on a level with the baleful light at the pommel of the skaven’s sword. “A great-great honour, yes.” The warlord’s fawning expression faltered. “Ah, my lord—”

  “Velsquee,” Lord Qweeqwol announced. “Grey Lord Velsquee, of Clan Abbis.”

  Eekrit stole a glance at the seer. Was the old fool smirking at him?

  “My lord Velsquee,” he continued, pronouncing the name with care. “Welcome you to the under-fortress.” The warlord bowed his head. “How may I serve the Council?”

  The Grey Lord stared coldly down at Eekrit. “Under-fortress, eh?” he said. “I suppose you’ve scratched out a lair for yourself somewhere in this nest.”

  Eekrit gritted his teeth. The stonecutters had only just finished the last touches on his chambers. “I would be pleased to make them available to you, my lord,” he managed to say. “Will you be visiting for long?”

  Velsquee rested a clawed paw on the hilt of his sword. “As long as it takes to win this war,” he said with a wicked smile. “This stalemate’s gone on long enough. It’s time for a change of strategy.”

  FOUR

  Necessary Evils

  Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, in the 98th year of Tahoth the Wise

  (-1300 Imperial Reckoning)

  The night air was sultry in the Travellers’ Quarter, redolent with sweat, cooking spices and sour wine. Crowds of immigrants—mostly from the struggling cities of Mahrak or Lybaras, but also a few from as far away as drought-stricken Numas—mingled with dusty caravan drivers and scowling sell-swords as they plied the tightly-packed merchant stalls in search of everything from fine saddles to silver jewellery. The singsong chants of the merchants seemed to drift like smoke through the humid air, rising and falling over the muted buzz of the crowd.

  The night bazaar stretched for six winding blocks through the quarter, and was anchored at the eastern end by a wide, paved square lined with ale-houses, wine-sellers and incense shops. Lord Ushoran sat at a table beneath a faded linen awning of a wine-seller’s shop, idly fingering the cracked rim of a clay cup filled with date wine as he studied the faces of the passers-by.

  Tonight he chose to wear the face of a well-to-do scholar: a dispossessed Lybaran noble, perhaps, driven from his home by the steady decline of the collegia there and forced to continue his studies in self-imposed exile. The serving girls and the other patrons of the wine shop saw a man of middle years, stooped with age, his pate gone bald save for a thin fringe of white. His nose was crooked, his eyes watery and deeply set. His cheeks were pocked from a bout of river fever, and starting to show the rude blush of a man who indulged in too much wine. A dark brown robe hung from his hunched shoulders, the fabric rich but faded from years of hard use. Around his thick neck hung a chain made of elongated links of gold, decorated with more than a dozen brass-rimmed lenses of glass and faceted crystal—one of the many tools of the scholar-engineer’s trade.

  In the past, he’d had to be far less ostentatious with his disguises, for there was only so much one could do with a change of clothing and a bit of face paint. He’d tried to blend with the teeming crowds, quickly dismissed and easily forgotten. Now, he was limited only by his imagination and he could switch guises with but a moment’s concentration. Ushoran could cloud a mortal’s mind simply by willing it, placing any image in his or her mind that suited him. It was a gift that none of his fellow immortals possessed and, more importantly, one that not even their supernatural senses could penetrate. Which was for the best, as far as he was concerned. He doubted that Neferata or Ankhat would approve of what he had become.

  Ushoran was nothing like the acerbic, cerebral W’soran, but he still considered himself a scholar of sorts. Mysteries and secrets intrigued him, and the process of death and rebirth was one of the greatest mysteries of all. Though Neferata had forbidden the cabal to create immortal progeny of their own, he had made a few discreet experiments over the centuries and suspected that the others—especially W’soran—had as well. He’d made good use of the dozen or so safe houses he’d established throughout the city, with their deep cellars and sets of stout chains fixed to the walls.

  Along the way, he’d learned a great deal. Their kind could only draw sustenance from living blood; animals could serve, but the vigour they possessed was far less potent than a human’s. Starvation steadily weakened them, but did not bring extinction—merely a kind of nightmarish torpor, which could only be broken by the taste of blood. The vigour gleaned from living blood gave them strength and speed far surpassing any mortal, and allowed them to swiftly heal any wound save outright decapitation. If their heart was pierced, or rendered unable to beat, they became torpid until the offending object was removed. As a
result, they were nearly impossible to kill. Fire inflicted lasting injury; direct sunlight sapped their vigour with terrible speed, and especially intense sunlight burned like a brand. Ushoran suspected that sorcery could harm them as well, but had to wait to test the theory himself.

  Such qualities were common to all immortals. In addition were the unique gifts that manifested in Neferata and the rest of the cabal—those who were transfigured by the complex and gruelling mixture of poison and magical ritual that Arkhan the Black had used to resurrect the queen herself. Neferata’s goddess-given beauty and allure had increased tenfold, lending her powers of seduction and mental domination far beyond mortal ken. Arkhan, the aristocrat and political creature that he was, demonstrated his own sense of eerie charisma and razor-keen perception. In life, Arkhan had been a well-known hunter and breeder of horse and hound, and Ushoran wondered if perhaps his gifts had developed along those lines as well. W’soran, the secretive former priest, was entirely the opposite. He had been transformed into a repellent, skeletal creature, more corpse than man, but his grasp of the arcane—and necromancy in particular—possibly rivalled that of the infamous Nagash himself. That left Abhorash, the former king’s champion, and Zurhas, the feckless cousin to the late Lamashizzar. Abhorash had fled the city almost immediately after his transformation and Ushoran could only speculate on the particulars of his transformation, but given his dedication to the arts of warfare, Ushoran suspected that Abhorash had gained a degree of physical prowess equal to—or possibly greater than—the fabled Ushabti themselves. If true, there was no deadlier warrior anywhere in the world.

  As for Zurhas, Ushoran hadn’t a clue. The former nobleman seemed more furtive and rodent-like with every passing year. Perhaps his gifts extended to gambling and whoring, two of his favourite pastimes. It stood to reason. Every one of them had changed in ways that reflected their true natures, for good or ill.