Then Melkhior was there, deflecting the blow. He shoved the would-be assassin back. The dark shape crashed among the acolytes, who scattered. It bounded to its feet, revealing itself to be a man — no, a vampire — clad in dark leathers. A scalp-lock whipped about his head as he slashed the air with his sword and drew a heavy dagger from his belt.
‘Assassin,’ Melkhior snarled.
‘Really, how observant of you,’ W’soran shrieked, ripping his arms free of the orcs. ‘How impressive that you were able to deduce that,’ he continued with a hiss. Another hiss, ‘It’s almost as if you have eyes and can use them. Imagine that!’ He whirled about and barked a sibilant incantation. The orcs writhed as if lashed by invisible whips and shied back from the bars, cowed.
He jerked back just in time. A second assassin dropped from the top of the cage, his sword burying itself in the stone. It snapped off, and the vampire tossed it aside with a curse as he leapt for W’soran, his fingertips extruding claws.
W’soran backhanded the assassin, shattering his neck and spine with a single blow and sending the body hurtling across the laboratory. ‘You dare,’ he roared. ‘You dare attack me here?’
‘Master, look out,’ Melkhior bellowed, flinging himself against W’soran even as a third killer materialised from the shadows, wielding a short, stabbing spear. The blade, edged with silver, hissed as it pierced Melkhior’s side and he screamed in agony. He chopped down on the spear, shattering it as he fell. W’soran shoved him aside and spat another incantation.
A knot of blackness formed on the assassin’s chest. The vampire stepped back, confused. The knot billowed and blossomed into something else; tendrils of purest darkness exploded from it, ensnaring the hapless assassin. He had time for one, single scream, before he was drawn into the small obsidian knothole in a cacophony of snapping bones and tearing flesh.
W’soran rose to his feet with impossible grace and turned to search for the last assassin. The vampire was gone. W’soran’s lips writhed back from his fangs and he turned, stooped, and plucked Melkhior from the floor like a man snatching up a hare. ‘How did they get in here?’ he roared, clutching Melkhior by the throat. ‘Where were my guards? This is my citadel, Melkhior! Mine! How did they get in here? Fool. Fool!’ Melkhior could only respond with a weak gurgle. ‘You worthless ape, you spawn of flea-bitten jackal,’ W’soran howled.
With a frustrated shriek W’soran tossed his acolyte aside. He turned, fixing his acolytes with a burning, one-eyed glare. ‘Find him. Find any others who might be with him. Scour this mountain peak to root and find him! I want to know who has dared to invade my sanctum! Find him, find him, find him,’ he howled as the mountain echoed with his fury.
Chapter Twelve
The City of Lashiek
(Year -1147 Imperial Calendar)
The soldiers of the Dowager Concubine burst through the door of the villa, even as they had burst through the gates outside only minutes before. The battering ram they used fell heavily to the floor as they reached for their weapons. The zombies lurched towards them, groaning. W’soran scooped up the tomes he’d been scribbling in and pressed them to his chest as he whirled about and slapped the life from an extraordinarily quick — and extraordinarily unlucky — soldier in the same motion.
‘Kill them,’ he snapped. ‘Kill them all!’
More zombies lurched past him, their jaws champing mindlessly as they fell upon the invaders. W’soran looked down at the thing on the table — a patchwork cadaver, built from the most perfect of parts, excised from the freshest corpses — and hissed in frustration. Another experiment, ruined.
He was alone in his dwelling, having sent Zoar and his other remaining acolytes out to prepare his new lair for his arrival. Araby was no place for him, not any longer. Not with Arkhan the Black storming the walls of every city within reach. The last thing he wanted was to become bogged down in a conflict with his old foe, especially when there were more important matters to be attended to. There was a ship in the harbour waiting for him, and he had intended to crew it with the dead he now hurled into battle with the invaders.
The servants of the Dowager Concubine had been hunting for him for weeks. The crippled old witch had sought his aid in resurrecting her dying son, in order to maintain her stranglehold on the city. He had done so, and taught her the limited arts she needed to keep the zombie of her firstborn relatively inoffensive-looking. With a puppet corpse-caliph on the throne, she could rule safely. He had thought that would have earned him a few weeks grace at the least, but the wily old crone had turned on him the moment she no longer needed him. He had planned for betrayal, but he was astounded that she had discovered his lair in an abandoned villa in the heart of the port city so quickly.
‘Stand and face justice, butcher,’ the warrior leading the soldiers bellowed. Something in his voice tugged at W’soran’s attentions and he peered at him. He saw a flash of red through the slits in the chainmail mask that covered his face. He did not wear the armour of a common soldier, or even one of the esteemed Royal Harem Guards of Lashiek, but was clad instead in the war panoply of one of the kontoi of Bel Aliad. Ragged silk strips flared from the spiral point that topped his helm as he spun about, cleaving the heads from a trio of zombies with one fluid blow.
Then he was upon W’soran, who jerked to the side as the warrior’s blade hammered down onto the edge of the table, splintering it. His attacker wrenched the blade free and it spun in his hands as he lunged for W’soran again. With a snarl, W’soran grabbed the swordsman’s wrists and they stood for a moment, muscle locked against muscle. That close, W’soran could smell the stink of sour blood and death that marked the kontoi as one of his kind, if an unfamiliar one.
‘What are you?’ W’soran growled. ‘Who are you?’
The kontoi hissed, ‘Neferata sends her regards, butcher.’ As W’soran’s good eye widened, the kontoi kicked him in the belly, flinging him back. He crashed through a bevy of zombies, but regained his feet quickly, avoiding a blow from the kontoi’s blade. W’soran sank his talons into the wood of the floor and ripped a number of boards free. Gripping one, he caught his opponent’s next blow. The heavy blade sank into the wood and W’soran twisted the sword from his enemy’s grip. The kontoi did not hesitate; with a roar, he flung himself at W’soran, smashing him in the face with an armoured forearm.
‘Get off me,’ W’soran spat, catching the next blow on his palm and closing his fingers about the warrior’s fist. With a heave of his shoulder he jerked the vampire into the air and swung him about, smashing him into the wall of his domicile and through it, rupturing the mud-brick easily. The kontoi crashed against the wall of the building opposite and tumbled into the alleyway.
W’soran turned. More soldiers thrust forward, jabbing at him with spears. He hissed and took the obvious path. In a single bound, robes flaring, he leapt the hole and struck the opposite building, clinging to the brick like one of the colourful tree-dwelling frogs of the Southlands. He turned about and craned his neck, giving the horrified soldiers a parting hiss.
Then, quickly, he scuttled for the edge of the roof. He could recreate his experiments elsewhere, under more convivial circumstances. However, even as he cleared the edge of the roof, he heard the scrape of armour on brick. He turned to see the kontoi hauling himself up, eyes flashing with rage.