‘He wasn’t paying attention,’ Melkhior said, meeting W’soran’s calculating gaze. Idly, he touched the ruptured flesh that marked the spot where Hruga’s head had once rested. ‘The orc tore it off.’
‘I see that,’ W’soran said, leaving the assassin to his servants. ‘Orcs are strong, but it is odd to find one quite that strong.’
‘They are a varied species. I incinerated it, better safe than sorry,’ Melkhior said, rising to his feet. W’soran smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Better safe than sorry. He was the closest to you in ability amongst the current crop, was he not, poor Hruga? Ah well, no matter.’ He glanced at the wounded assassin, who was now held aloft on the points of several spears kept by his servants. The vampire’s blood ran down the spears to patter across the floor in thick, ropy streams and W’soran reached out a palm to catch some of it. It tasted of grave-mould and rot, and he grimaced.
‘He is a Strigoi,’ Melkhior said, looking at the assassin. ‘Ushoran sent him, obviously. As I have said,’ he said.
‘As you never cease saying,’ W’soran corrected. ‘For six long months, you have said it, and I have said — what was it — ah, better safe than sorry,’ he continued, flinging Melkhior’s words back at him. ‘Yes, that was it. I want to be sure who my enemies are before I begin flailing at shadows, my son. Is there perhaps some other reason you are so eager to convince me of Ushoran’s guilt, eh? Is it a desire to press Strigos, perhaps?’ He glared at his acolyte for a moment before turning about and gesturing for his servants to carry the weakly struggling assassin away.
W’soran favoured the fuming Melkhior with a final glance. He motioned to the cavern and the bodies that littered it. ‘Clean up this sty, my son. That is your duty, after all.’
In the days that followed, W’soran questioned his would-be killer with the same single-minded intensity he had used in the hunt. To make an assumption, he knew, could prove fatal. He was surrounded by enemies both real and potential, and to divert his attention from one to the other wrongly was to court disaster.
For years, he had realised that he was fast approaching the knife-edge of things. The sharp end drew close, bringing with it the culmination of plans and schemes decades in the weaving. Since the fall of the first border-fort, he had spread his shadow further and farther across the mountains. His agents moved through the settlements and fortified villages of Strigos, spending gold freely, buying loyalty or indifference as the situation warranted. Fools like Melkhior thought war was a thing of armies and engagements, when W’soran knew, from experience, that it was more about the ground and time you chose, than the forces you brought. Battles could be won or lost for a matter of space or moments.
‘I will not fight until I am ready,’ he murmured. The assassin had been nailed to an examination table. Heavy iron spikes had been driven through his wrists and ankles and silver chains draped his neck and chest. The touch of that metal on his bare flesh filled the air with a scent reminiscent of burning pork and W’soran sniffed in satisfaction. The assassin was awake, though in tremendous pain. W’soran gestured to the chains, careful not to touch them.
‘Silver,’ he said. ‘I have been aware for many years of its more unfortunate properties in regards to our kind. Oh, we do not require it to kill or maim one another, but it does give one a certain edge, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He waited for a response. When none appeared to be forthcoming, he sniffed again and snapped his fingers. Several of his crooked scribes lurched forward, bearing his tools and instruments. Carefully, W’soran selected a delicate blade, covered in curving sigils. ‘This belonged to a creature of my limited acquaintance who was as foul a torturer as has ever trod the jewelled sands of this world, despite her ageless beauty.’ He smiled, lost for a moment in a pleasant memory. ‘I have her head somewhere.’
He chuckled and deftly sliced open the assassin’s leg, ignoring the vampire’s scream of agony. ‘But I learned quite a few things from her before our sudden, but inevitable, falling out. From her, I learned of certain men in the Southlands, who can draw the secrets from an enemy simply by devouring them.’ He sliced the assassin’s tendon and stripped it free of its cage of meat. ‘It’s a similar belief to that of the sadly now-extinct Yaghur of the Eastern Marshes, who ritualised the… consumption of human flesh in order to gain the strength of enemies and placate the souls of the slain. Barbarity at its worst, I’m sure you’d agree, but not without its… points of interest, shall we say?’
W’soran held up the tendon and examined it in the torchlight. ‘It was an interesting theory — the consumption of a thing to reveal its secrets. Blood is a potent sorcerous tool, of course, but flesh… in flesh there is a strange sort of magic, I have found. I have never tried it at length of course, being no savage. But, needs must when the devils drive, eh?’ Then, he dropped the quivering shred of muscle into his gaping jaws. Chewing, he watched as the assassin thrashed and snarled. Swallowing, he said, ‘Nothing yet. Well, we have plenty of time.’ He raised the blade, and bent to extract another piece.
Days flowed into weeks. Every day W’soran ate a bit more of his would-be killer, working his way up from soles to crown. As his teeth tore the tough flesh, as his tools flayed the thrashing body, he sucked out every secret contained in the Strigoi’s mind, all save one. One secret, and one alone, the Strigoi took into oblivion with him — the name of whoever had sent him and his fellows to murder W’soran. W’soran was forced to admit that his prisoner might not have known it.
The Strigoi had screamed many names, true, in his torment, but none bore the ring of authenticity. The names of Strigoi nobles and Lahmian courtesans, of village headmen and kings; hundreds of enemies, rather than simply one, and for a brief moment W’soran contemplated conspiracy. It had been a conspiracy that had driven him from Mahrak, and a conspiracy that had ruined him in Mourkain, so why not another?
But things were different now. A conspiracy required order and necessity to function — only one of those things was evident in the incident. All that remained were furtive facts. Someone required his death, and they had acted on it. They would try again, that much he was certain of. But who had made the move? Whose game was this?
Webs were spun within webs, overlapping and interconnected. A complex arrangement of action and reaction, a murderous geometry that caused an ache in his skull — even as it raised more questions. How had the assassins bypassed his defences? How long had they been in his citadel? The last had seemed far too familiar with the hidden places of the mountain to be a new visitant.
W’soran sprawled on his chair — his throne, part of him whispered, for where else would he make his throne room but his laboratory? — and stared unseeing at the ruins of the assassin. He stroked his bloody chin, trying to puzzle out the problem. But for every strand he teased out, two more became knotted. It was Neferata’s way to attack openly if only to drive in the subtle blade, thus, the orcs to distract him and the assassins to kill him. But why use Strigoi, when her handmaidens were more effective killers, unless she intended to throw suspicion elsewhere?
But, she would know. She would know that W’soran would suspect such, and thus would not bother. So, the assassins were sent by someone else. Ushoran, then, but Ushoran was not fool enough to attack so haphazardly. No, Ushoran wouldn’t have sent two assassins, or even twelve. He’d have sent hundreds. Unless he knew that W’soran would suspect Neferata, and was trying to pit his enemies into open battle against one another.