‘Careful with those barbed words, old monster,’ Layla said, as she stepped from behind Faethor. ‘The Strigoi are a warrior-people, and they may take your insults and accusations more seriously than you intend.’
‘My accusations were serious enough,’ W’soran said. ‘Though I doubt even Faethor is foolish enough to challenge a withered old thing like myself amidst a battle…’ He grinned at the Strigoi. Faethor purpled, the skaven blood he’d glutted on flushing through his pale skin.
Before he could respond, however, the sound of pattering feet and squealing filled the air. Part of the corridor wall crumbled suddenly, unleashing a flood of rag-wrapped skaven tunnellers, wielding short, heavy blades and long knives. The skaven crashed into the skeletons, shattering them before they could react. Faethor and Layla spun about, striking out at the ratkin. One, clad in a strange mask complete with heavy goggles and bulbous tubes, bounced beneath a sword-blow from a Strigoi and flung a heavy globe of some viscous liquid towards W’soran.
W’soran reacted swiftly. He lashed out with his sword, striking the globe in mid-air. A foul-smelling gas billowed from its shattered remnants and W’soran hissed, tasting abn-i-khat. The masked skaven hurled two more globes before Khemalla reached him and brought her sword down on his skull, splitting it from crown to neck. More gas exploded out, rapidly filling the corridor. The surviving skaven had retreated as quickly as they had come, slithering back through the hole they had made.
‘What is this foulness?’ Stregga snarled, swiping her sword through the gas.
‘Poisonous gas,’ W’soran said. ‘If we breathed, we’d be dead. I don’t think they’ve quite figured out what we are just yet.’
‘Small favours,’ Khemalla grunted. Then, she screamed as a spear-point burst through her shoulder and sent her stumbling forward. W’soran and the others turned as more skaven burst through the gas clogging the corridor. The tunnel-attack had been a diversion, meant to allow the newcomers to get close. All of the ratkin had masks similar to that worn by the slain globadier welded to their flat, skull-fitted helms. These were not the brown-furred common vermin who normally led such attacks, but the heavier, black-furred variety. Clad in thick armour, the skaven charged relentlessly forward, spears thrusting out.
Stregga stooped to haul Khemalla out of the path of the advancing vermin, and W’soran was tempted to strike her then and there. But there were too many witnesses, and even if he’d succeeded, he’d have still had to fight his way free of the tunnel. ‘Fall back,’ he shrieked, ‘fall back! Let the dead earn their keep!’
‘Coward,’ Layla spat, even as she and Faethor followed him back into the ranks of skeletons.
‘But in one piece, which is the important bit,’ W’soran said. The Strigoi were following his example, melting back through the lines of the dead, even as the front rank of skeletons raised their shields and lowered their spears. ‘A shame you left your wights with Vorag,’ he said. ‘We could have used them.’
‘They’ll serve us better keeping the Bloodytooth alive,’ Stregga said, holding Khemalla upright. ‘At least until we can get back to him. Can your bone-bags hold them, sorcerer?’ She looked at W’soran, who shrugged.
‘It depends on whether they’re planning any other tricks,’ he said, even as he knew full well such would be the case. The skaven had begun launching attacks similar to the one that had nearly seen him permanently entombed several years previously. They caught the undead forces by surprise and dropped the weight of a tunnel on them. There was more than one Strigoi still trapped in those collapsed corridors, screaming into the silent dark.
The plan was childishly easy to discern, if you knew, as W’soran did, how the ratkin thought. Collapsing the tunnels choked off the avenues and approaches to the central cavern, forcing the Strigoi to retreat and reform their lines. The skaven, however, were burrowers without peer, and used tools and simple brute force to dig twenty new tunnels for every one they destroyed. The Strigoi, on the defensive, had no time to do the same, even if such labour had been their inclination. There was only one tunnel remaining now, the one they occupied. Once it fell, and reinforcements were cut off from the main cavern, the skaven would make their final assault.
While the thought of being caught in such a collapse again caused him no end of discomfort, there was no other way to achieve his ends without making an enemy of Vorag. The Lahmians had to die, and it was best if it seemed as if the skaven were responsible. He touched the top of his cuirass, where the fraying cords of the abn-i-khat amulets he wore were bunched, for reassurance. When their flanking effort failed, the skaven would likely launch their attack. And, if his luck held, he would be in the perfect position to play the hero.
The first line of the skaven crashed against the skeletons and W’soran gestured, pulling tight on the skeins of death-magic that animated the ancient bones. The skeletons wavered and the skaven took advantage, smashing them aside with victorious squeals. W’soran looked up, and saw the tell-tale cracks forming in the ceiling and walls. The corridor shuddered slightly. None of the Strigoi seemed to have noticed yet. It was a pity that so many would have to be sacrificed, but W’soran took the long view, and besides, what need had he of preening bully boys?
Despite having the advantage, the skaven began to retreat, backing away up the tunnel. Faethor gave a bellow of triumph. ‘They run! At them, wolves of Strigos,’ he roared, lunging through the ragged ranks of the dead, even as W’soran had hoped. With the others occupied, he could ensure that Neferata’s pets met their well-deserved fate. The Strigoi gave tongue to the war-howls of their people and loped free of the thicket of bones.
It took W’soran a moment to realise that Faethor wasn’t with them. The big Strigoi had leapt for the wall even as his brethren streamed past, and now scrambled across the cracked ceiling of the tunnel like an oversized spider.
Danger had always lent clarity to thought for W’soran. Obviously, the Lahmians had decided that his time had come, and Faethor was to be their weapon. With a snarl, Faethor dropped towards W’soran, chopping out with his notched blade. W’soran barely interposed his scimitar in time and was forced back against a shifting, groaning wall. He looked about wildly, trying to spy the Lahmians. They would not leave his death to a fool like Faethor.
‘Now you die, leech,’ Faethor said, hacking at him with determined savagery. ‘Rudek was my kin, and I know full well how you served him. And just now, I felt your magics as our dead men quailed. The Lahmians are right — you cannot be trusted!’
W’soran didn’t bother to reply. He blocked another blow and lashed out, trying to drive Faethor back, to clear enough room to work magic. At the other end of the tunnel, the Strigoi tore into the skaven ranks. The dead hesitated, turned and retreated from the battle, closing in on Faethor. Spears dug for the Strigoi, forcing him to leap aside, away from W’soran. ‘Treachery,’ he roared.
‘Indeed,’ W’soran said, almost amused. He directed the dead forward. ‘Kill him.’
The corridor was shaking now. There was no sudden explosion this time, but instead a gradual shifting of weight, as if the skaven were coaxing the mountain to move. Dust and bits of rock fell from the ceiling, pattering across his head. Faethor stepped back, cursing and snarling as the skeletons closed in.
A whisper of sound tugged at W’soran’s attention. He whirled and saw a thread of movement, almost too quick to catch. Black blood burst from his throat. The pain struck him a moment later. He clapped a hand to his torn jugular as he choked on his own fluids. For a moment, just a moment, he was back in Lahmia, in the temple, and Neferata was loping towards him, inexorable and deadly. Again he felt the hot flash of the old familiar terror — the fear that took the form of the dark and cramped confines of a jar.
Layla darted forward, her eyes alight with murder-lust. Her blade bit into his as he wove a desperate defence. ‘She warned us about you, old beast. She warned us that you would try and turn Vorag against us, that you would strike at us through cunning and deception. And she has decreed that you must die!’