Melkhior had sworn that Zoar had shoved him aside, in a split-second gesture of brotherhood, and been caught full by the blast meant for Melkhior himself. He had sworn it, even though W’soran had not asked, and did not truly care. Zoar had been useful, in his way, but W’soran wouldn’t miss him.
He glanced at his apprentice and said, ‘Perhaps he did love that she-wolf after all.’
‘Vorag has never loved anything,’ Melkhior said.
‘There speaks the voice of experience,’ W’soran said. ‘At any rate, what does it matter? For the price of a witch, we gain a fortress, unthreatened by vermin.’
‘Yes… Vorag’s fortress,’ Melkhior said sourly.
‘In name, perhaps, but in truth, it will be mine,’ W’soran said. ‘Everything falls into place, my son. At last, we are unencumbered by obstacles.’
‘There are still over a hundred skaven between us and that moment, my master,’ Melkhior said hesitantly. ‘What if-’
‘What if nothing,’ W’soran snapped. A wolf-rat lunged between his hulking bodyguards, vile jaws snapping. W’soran plucked the creature out of the air and slowly crushed its throat, enjoying its death-agonies. ‘Everything is going the way it should. Soon, I will be master here and these stones will stink of death, rather than rats.’ He tossed the body aside, nearly hitting Melkhior, who staggered back.
‘And what then, master?’ Melkhior asked, drawing his robes about him as he stepped over the dead beast. ‘Mourkain still stands, and the Silver Pinnacle as well. The immediate obstacles might be dealt with, but we still have enemies…’
‘Yes,’ W’soran said. He reached up to trace the rim of his cuirass. He could feel the heat of his remaining amulets. They called to him, and bitter saliva built at the base of his tongue. He longed to taste the strange fire of the abn-i-khat again, and to feel it burning in his veins, but he resisted the urge. There was no need now, and he refused to fall prey to the addiction that had claimed Nagash. The wyrdstone was a tool, nothing more. It was not his master. He had no master, unloving or otherwise.
Irritated by the sudden flush of need, he shoved past his bodyguards and thrust his gangly arms forward as if stabbing the air. It responded, thickening and curling around his gesturing fingers. He motioned towards the line of skaven and suddenly, the cavern echoed with the moan of spectral winds.
Cold and cacophonous, the air rushed across the dips and gullies of the cavern and washed across the skaven. Even as it did so, strange shapes seemed to gain shape and form within the roll and weft of the wind and they struck, grasping the skaven and tearing at them like phantasmal beasts. Everywhere the wind touched, skaven died, collapsing like grisly puppets that had just had their strings cut. And as they fell, wisps of something rose from their bodies to join the howling wind, adding to the spectral ranks that were now, like some deep-sea tick, freshly infused with blood, fully visible to the horrified eyes of the survivors.
The spectral host spread like the water from an emptied bucket, splashing over more and more of the skaven, ripping whatever vile essence passed for their souls from their bodies and adding them to its own ghostly ranks. Skaven died in droves, toppling in heaps and piles, the ghastly vapour rising from their twitching corpses. W’soran stepped forward, grinning happily. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. The spirits of the dead swirled about him like leaves caught on the wind, and their moans caressed his ears like the sweetest music.
It was in these moments that he felt as close to peace as he thought he could get. Surrounded by agonised spirits and standing on the corpses of his enemies, he felt whole. He opened his mouth like a viper, inhaling the effluvium of battle and death, drinking it in. It made him feel almost as good as the abn-i-khat, almost as strong. He battened on death the way a leech did on blood.
Then again, he needed blood as well. It was a sour note, ruining his enjoyment of the moment. The need his kind had for blood was a weakness, nothing less. It was a link to detestable life and a hook which bound them to the living. Nagash had understood that. Perhaps that was why he had never fully trusted them, never taken them into his confidences. Vampires were bound to the living, as all predators were bound to their prey. In Nagash’s world, vampires were little better than living men.
The thought irked W’soran. Even now, after all this time, he still felt as if he was being found wanting by his old master. ‘Then, at least I’m still walking around, eh, old skull?’ he muttered. He gestured and more ghosts rose and swirled about him, forming up on him as if he were a general and they, his honour guard. He caught sight of Vorag loping towards him. The other vampire looked angry.
‘How dare you?’ he growled. ‘They were my prey, sorcerer! Their lives were mine!’
‘Is your sorrow not yet glutted, Vorag?’ W’soran asked, meeting the Bloodytooth’s glare through the haze of writhing spirits. ‘Would you toss the corpse of every skaven in this mountain on her savage pyre yourself?’
‘Her pyre will make the sky boil, sorcerer, even if I must feed the mountain itself to the flames,’ Vorag hissed, talons flexing, ‘And I will wash these rocks with the blood of her killers. I will swim in their blood and crush the life from every one, in her name. And you will call me Lord Vorag.’ He snapped his fangs like a maddened dog and took a step forward.
W’soran hesitated, noting that Sanzak and the other Strigoi were watching. Sanzak’s expression was contemplative. The Strigoi had kept himself at a distance since the moment that W’soran had burned his way into the central cavern and carved the heart out of the skaven horde. Sanzak knew what W’soran had done, even if he didn’t know the particulars. But he had kept quiet, which was all that mattered.
W’soran had gone back into the darkness of that collapsed tunnel after the battle was over to ensure that Stregga was truly dead. Ostensibly, he had been leading a rescue party. Vorag had clutched Stregga’s withered form to him and keened for hours, shrieking his sorrow to the unheeding rocks.
Of the other two Lahmians, Khemalla was missing, and likely buried somewhere. Layla, however, provided a moment of unpleasant surprise. Despite the state of her head, despite the damage to her body, the Lahmian yet lived, though only just. Unable to provide her the ending she so thoroughly deserved, W’soran had had her body removed along with that of Stregga. The latter’s corpse lay stiff and still on a bier in Vorag’s chambers; the former was ensconced in a stone box in W’soran’s laboratories, awaiting his further examination. He had never imagined that Neferata’s creatures could prove so durable. A bit of luck, perhaps — he yearned to continue his study of vampiric flesh, and Neferata had unwittingly provided him with the raw materials he needed.
‘Surely one torment is as good as another,’ W’soran said to Vorag carefully, gesturing to the hovering spirits. ‘This way, they can be of some use, at least. And you had no complaints when I did the same, a year ago, and saved your hide from decorating a skaven banner pole.’
Vorag thrust his head through the spirits, sending them fluttering like bats. His eyes bulged wildly and his scalp-lock was undone, leaving his lion-like mane, now turned ice-white, to curl about his head. ‘She was mine, W’soran,’ he hissed. ‘Mine and mine alone, just like these…’ He swept out a talon, indicating the dead skaven. ‘Everything is mine, sorcerer. I am king here, I am master and lord. Or do you doubt that?’