by C. L. Werner
The sorcerous glamour that had cloaked the warriors on the rise evaporated as the druchii sprang into action. Their concealment had represented something of an abuse of Drusala’s magic, taxing her to the utmost. Only by remaining completely still had the warriors been able to retain the illusion of rock and brush. In motion they were revealed to the elves below. Rank upon rank of darkshards, the hideous power of their repeating crossbows magnified by the half a dozen reaper bolt throwers ranged among their ranks. Naggorite and Ellyrian alike vented a cry of despair when they saw the druchii aiming down at them.
The ensuing slaughter was horrific by any standard. The crack of bowstring, the smash of bolt through armour, the scream of ruptured flesh, all rose into a deafening tumult. In the close press of panicked warriors, the dead were pinned to the living, the wounded skewered to the walls of the pass. Ellyrian knights were shot from their saddles to impale themselves on the swords and spears of the infantry around them. The floor of the pass became a churning sea of death and terror, frantic warriors struggling to escape the massacre unfolding all around them.
Malus had schooled his soldiers well, impressing on them the penalty for restraint or hesitation. Scores of Naggorites fell alongside hundreds of Ellyrians as the gruesome harvest continued. The ground became so soaked with blood that it was reduced to a muddy mash that sucked at the feet of those trying to escape it.
The butchery was more than the asur could endure. At last they broke, fleeing back through the pass and out onto the plain. Though they left hundreds of their dead behind them, the Ellyrian force still numbered in the thousands. The trap had bloodied them, but it hadn’t destroyed them.
Malus paid little notice to the surviving Naggorites as they retreated back into the hills. He was watching the asur, staring with the keen interest of a gem-cutter tending a stone. The Ellyrians were out of the pass, fleeing onto the plain. Their numbers weren’t greatly diminished. But Malus hadn’t expected them to be. All his trap had been designed to do was inflict disorder in the enemy host, to break up the regimental formations, to confuse the discipline that brought them unity. If he had faced a single army, the commander might have restored order as soon as the asur were clear of the pass. That was why he had waited for both armies to merge before confronting them. Instead of bringing strength, the combination had brought weakness. Two command structures, two generals, two elves to which the panicked troops were looking for leadership, for orders.
The panic of the asur continued, the commanders unable to restore order in their mixed host. The retreat brought them close to the burned forest. The forest where the real jaws of Malus’s trap waited.
It had been something of a gamble, entrusting the role to Sarkol Narza and the Bloodseekers. Malus had been worried about their discipline, fearing that their lust for carnage would cause them to act too soon and betray themselves. But Tullaris had impressed upon the executioners the importance of their role, the vital turn they would play in this battle. The individual slaughter they could work on their own would pale beside the wholesale havoc they could inflict by following the drachau’s plan.
It had also proved a vital test of just how powerful the Blood Coven’s powers truly were. He’d taxed Drusala’s magic with her illusion and demanded the Blood Coven perform a similar feat. The red-robed witches had managed their spell with a good deal more bloodshed than Drusala, offering up a dozen sacrifices to Khaine over the course of their ritual, but in the end their sorcery had proven just as effective.
The seemingly capricious burning of the forest had been exactingly deliberate: to confuse the memories of any Ellyrian who knew this ground, and to make the asur oblivious that there were more trees in the forest than there had been before. As the fleeing army retreated past those trees, the glamour cast upon Sarkol and his executioners vanished. Howling like wolves, the murderous horde fell upon the asur. This time it was the Ellyrians’ turn to be cut down like wheat.
The other set of jaws in the trap Malus had prepared came galloping out from the pass. Dolthaic, leading the Knights of the Burning Dark, and Tullaris Dreadbringer, leading the Ossian Guard, the elite of his murderous army. While the cold one knights carved a path through the rear of the confused asur, Tullaris led his killers into the gaps created by the mounted warriors. Left and right, the Ossian Guard played their heavy draichs, rending the Ellyrians at every step.
‘A great victory,’ Malus declared as he watched the slaughter unfolding on the plain. Pinned by Sarkol at the front, Dolthaic on the flank and Tullaris at the rear, the asur were being herded into a ring. It was still possible they might coordinate and break through, but that opportunity was quickly slipping away. The rest of Malus’s army was now marching out from the pass. The survivors of Clar Karond, the veterans of Hag Graef, the Iceblades and Voiceless Ones brought by Drusala from Ghrond, the hordes of exile killers from Har Ganeth, the corsairs of the Eternal Malediction. The Ellyrians still outnumbered the druchii, but their numbers counted for little now. They’d lost cohesion and they’d lost the initiative. For too long, they had thought of themselves as the hunters. It wasn’t an easy thing to understand that they were now the prey.
Silar listened to Malus’s words. He stared down at the carnage in the pass below, at all the dead Naggorites. ‘A great victory, dreadlord,’ he agreed. ‘But I wish it hadn’t cost us so much blood.’
Malus shifted around in his saddle and favoured Silar with a withering stare. ‘Be happy none of it was yours,’ he told his vassal.
‘I am ready to die for the Hag,’ Silar answered, bowing his head.
‘I will remember that, Silar,’ Malus said. ‘I trust you will not have cause to regret your choice of words.’
Shifting his attention back to the battle, Malus watched as the ring of asur was slowly cut to pieces. Undoubtedly some would still escape, but he actually preferred to leave some survivors. They would carry word of what had happened here back to their cities and when Malekith came to lay siege to them, the Witch King would know that it was Malus who was responsible for already decimating the asur armies.
Perhaps Drusala was already telling Malekith of what had happened here by means of her magic. Malus almost hoped she was. Anything that taxed her sorcery further was to be applauded.
‘I will have need of your service this night,’ Malus told Silar. ‘Make yourself available. There is an urgent chore that needs attending to and I’d trust no one else to see it carried out.’
The wind carried upon it a strange warmth. By the starlight, Silar could see an eerie shimmer shining from the peaks of the Annulii. It was a fearsome thought, to understand that even someone without the uncanny gifts of a sorcerer could actually see the magic streaming down from the mountain tops. It was a manifestation of how rapidly the world was coming apart around him. Even if the druchii achieved their ancient dream of conquering Ulthuan, Silar wondered if it would be naught but a Pyrrhic victory. The might of Chaos had engulfed Naggaroth, obliterating the land that had sheltered and reshaped his exiled people for millennia. He had seen the seas tearing themselves apart on the exodus from the Land of Chill. Was it so strange, then, to question whether Ulthuan would be any more inviolable?
Silar pushed aside his doubts, focusing on the task ahead. The least distraction could prove his undoing. He regretted expressing his qualms about Malus’s ruthless strategy now. Perhaps it was that discontent that had led Malus to question his loyalty, and made him decide to employ Silar on such a perilous duty. After all they had been through, he’d half hoped the drachau considered him as something more than just another replaceable lackey. But after all these years, he knew better than that. Whatever bonds they shared, Silar knew no one was indispensable if they stood between Malus and his ambition. Hauclir, Lhunara, even his own father, the vaulkhar Lurhan Fellblade, all had been removed when they became obstacles in Malus’s way.
It was one such obstacle that it had become Silar’s d
uty to remove. Malus had been unusually frank about his reasons for having the sorceress Drusala killed. In addition to his suspicions that she was an agent and spy of Malekith, he had come to suspect she was responsible for the murder of Lady Eldire. As one of the few who was aware of the condition that afflicted the drachau, Malus told Silar that the sorceress knew of Tz’arkan and had displayed her powers over the daemon. It could be only a matter of time before she determined to use that ability to exert control over him. To protect the legacy of the Hag, Malus had to break free of such a hold. For vengeance and freedom, Drusala had to die.
The battle against the Ellyrian host had weakened the sorceress. She had drawn heavily upon her powers to conceal the druchii forces from both the spells and the eyes of the pursuing asur. Even for one of her ability, Drusala had been drained by the demands placed upon her. After the battle, she had quietly left the encampment, stealing up into the hills with only her mute bodyguard, Absaloth.
Drusala had imagined her absence to be unremarked, but in that belief her magic had failed her. The witches of the Blood Coven were using their magic to observe her. They too had been impressed to use their spells during the battle, but because they were three, they’d been able to weather the storm better than Drusala. They had enough power left over to monitor her and to warn Malus when she left the camp.
As he quietly made his way over the rocks, Silar listened for even the slightest noise from the armoured warriors he knew to be nearby. In choosing a squad of assassins to slaughter the sorceress, Malus had selected warriors not from his own army but from that of Tullaris. Disciples of Khaine, the executioners considered murder a sacred act and they harboured no love for either Malekith or the sorceresses of Ghrond. Killing Drusala, for them, would be more than vanquishing an enemy. It was an act that would bestow upon them the blessing of their god.
Twenty Bloodseekers led by the infamous Sarkol Narza. More than a match for one exhausted sorceress and her freakish bodyguard, Silar thought.
Drusala had been cautious enough to light no fires. There would be asur scouts in the area and stragglers from the vanquished Ellyrian armies. It was prudent for her to exhibit a modicum of wariness. She’d have been better served, however, to draw less heavily upon the energies streaming down from the mountains. With the aethyric emanations visible even to Silar’s sight, seeing the energies converging at a single point, spiralling down to a rocky outcropping was like the blast of a trumpet or the burn of a beacon. It announced Drusala’s presence for any who cared to look.
‘The witch dies by my blade,’ Sarkol hissed in Silar’s ear. ‘Do you understand that, Hag-rat? She dies in the name of Khaine, not for your master!’
Silar could see the fanatic gleam in the executioner’s eyes above the face-wrapping he’d adopted. Given the slightest excuse, he knew Sarkol would leave him dead among the rocks. Cautiously, the noble nodded his understanding. ‘I am here only to ensure she dies. How she dies, why she dies, is your business.’
The executioner drew back. ‘See that you remember your place, then,’ he warned. Sarkol pointed an armoured finger at the outcropping. ‘She is there. Half of my followers are working around to the other side. We will strike from here. Between us, there will be no escape for the witch.’
Again, Silar nodded. His fingers tightened around the bronze charm the Blood Coven had bestowed upon each elf in the murder squad. In the event that Drusala wasn’t as weak as they expected, the charm would offer some protection against spells. Not immunity, but a degree of resistance. Sarkol and his Bloodseekers had taken the charms with a good degree more confidence than Silar felt. Then, the killers probably thought themselves protected by Khaine and with little need for talismans and charms in the first place.
Beside him, Silar watched Sarkol’s fingers rubbing a braided strangler’s cord, his thumb working at the rope with careful, measured rotations. It was an old assassin’s trick, a way of measuring time and synchronising an attack. At least one of the executioners circling the outcropping would be keeping time the same way. When they were in position, they would wait for the agreed upon moment to strike.
The superstitious dread of a lifetime raced down Silar’s spine. It was no easy thing, killing a sorceress. If the witch was able to identify her killers before she died, her curse would haunt their bloodline to the eighth generation. It was why Sarkol and the others wore wraps across the lower half of their faces, a precaution against the death-curse. Silar swore at himself for not exhibiting similar caution, but when he’d left camp he’d been more worried about his murderous companions than Drusala’s spells.
‘Be ready, Hag-rat,’ Sarkol whispered. ‘Be vigilant and report to your blasphemous master how the children of Khaine ply their trade.’
Silar could feel more than see the Bloodseekers rise from the rocks and rush towards the outcropping. He rushed after them, determined to carry out the duty Malus had charged him with. When Sarkol struck, he intended to see every sweep of the executioner’s blade.
Behind the outcropping, they found Drusala sitting on the ground, her legs folded beneath her. What seemed a column of dancing fireflies was spiralling down around her, but the glowing flickers weren’t insects. They were motes of aethyric power drawn down from the mountains, seeping into Drusala as she replenished her magic. The sorceress’s skin pulsed with a purple light, her clenched teeth and rolling eyes crackling with energy.
Beside her stood Absaloth, as grim and sinister as ever. The voiceless warrior had drawn his sword and turned to receive Sarkol’s attack. The bodyguard appeared oblivious to the dark shapes hurrying out of the darkness behind him. As arranged, the other executioners were striking at the same moment Sarkol had chosen.
Only they weren’t Sarkol’s elves. Silar hissed a warning when it was obvious to him that there were too many shapes rushing out of the dark. Even as he realised the peril, crossbows were sending bolts into the charging executioners. Five of the killers, half of Sarkol’s force, collapsed under the barrage. The survivors rushed onwards, determined to strike down their quarry before they too were slain.
The foe was quicker than the Bloodseekers, intercepting them before they could get close to Drusala. They were wiry, lean elves, their bodies cloaked in black, their skins pale where they hadn’t been stained with tribal markings and tattoos. Autarii! The savage tribesmen of Naggaroth’s wastelands, descendents of those renegades who’d been exiled from the cities and condemned to fend for themselves in the unforgiving wilds. Silar recognised the nature of the shades at once and an awful suspicion rose into his mind. The same spiral of magic that had allowed them to find Drusala had also guided these shades to her.
The sorceress had foreseen treachery and countered it with a trap of her own.
With cruel knives and crooked swords, the shades flung themselves upon the executioners. Three of the autarii were cut down by the massive blades, hacked to ribbons by the angry steel of Har Ganeth. In return, however, the cloaked savages brought down all of their foes. In the space of only a few heartbeats, only Silar and Sarkol remained.
Sarkol brought his draich crunching through the skull of one autarii and opened the belly of a second. Kicking the wretch from his path, the incensed executioner tried to reach Drusala. Absaloth fended away the butchering sweep, his sword ringing as it crashed against Sarkol’s. The executioner backhanded the bodyguard, laying his cheek open to the bone. Absaloth gave no reaction to the wound, but instead slashed at Sarkol, forcing the warrior back.
The duel that ensued was as brief as it was amazing. Thrust and parry, feint and riposte, Sarkol and Absaloth circled one another. Whenever the executioner seemed about to butcher his foe, the bodyguard’s sword would dance against the draich’s cruel edge. When it appeared that the Voiceless One would prevail, some killer’s instinct would preserve Sarkol at the last second, causing him to weave aside or intercept the blade with the weighted hilt of his draich.
; Silar was too busy trying to fend off the attentions of the autarii who came rushing at him to see the end of the fight. The shades came at him from every side, pushing him back to the edge of the outcropping. With nothing behind him except a hundred-foot fall, he had no choice but to fight. The first shade to come at him was sent rolling to the dirt, clawing at the stump of his arm. The second went hurtling to his death when Silar caught hold of his cloak as the shade lunged at him and spun the elf over the edge.
The autarii circled around him now, wary as old wolves. A snarled command from a shade with a face dominated by black tattoos caused them to back away. Falling back, they unlimbered the crossbows hidden beneath their cloaks.
‘Merikaar! Leave him be!’ The commanding voice boomed like a clap of thunder. The shades flinched at the sound and slipped their crossbows back beneath their cloaks. The tattooed leader scowled, but his eyes were wide with fear.
Silar looked past his attackers. He could see Sarkol staggering on his feet, a gold-hilted dagger piercing the back of his neck. While he watched, the executioner fell. Absaloth, bleeding from a deep gash in his left arm, thrust his sword into the ground and bent down to remove the dagger. Almost gingerly, he restored it to the one who had put it there.
Drusala didn’t even glance at her mute bodyguard when she took the dagger from him. Her eyes were fixed entirely upon Silar. ‘You will excuse Merikaar. His tribe, the Knives of Khaine, are quite devoted to me. Sometimes that devotion can be carried too far.’
The sorceress walked towards the embattled highborn, paying no notice at all to the corpses strewn about her feet. She smiled as she noted the bronze charm Silar wore. Her fingers hovered before it for an instant. She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Each spell bears a signature, and I know this one from long ago.’ She opened her eyes and her smile took on a mocking quality. ‘Aren’t you going to attack? Aren’t you going to fulfil your master’s purpose?’