(Year -265 Imperial Calendar)
Strigoi arrows bit into W’soran’s lines as they marched towards the enemy where they crouched in among the thick scrub trees. The broad heads of the arrows crunched through bone, dropping his dead soldiers where they marched across the frost-covered open ground. Spines and skulls burst at the point of impact, or were simply obliterated by the heavy catapults that lined the ridge above the trees. A large rock crashed down nearby, burying a group of skeletons, and he flinched slightly in his saddle. His will pulsed and a troop of mounted corpses, clad in heavy, dwarf-forged mail, thundered towards the war-engines. Normal riders and normal horses would not have been able to make it up the slope, but for dead men it was no more difficult than open ground.
His forces had crossed the mountain passes that divided the edges of the Strigoi Empire from the territory nominally controlled by Vorag a fortnight before, and this was the first time he’d been able to bring the barbarians to battle. They’d set their scouts and flankers to draw his forces into the bowl-shaped valley amongst the smaller peaks of the mountains on the eastern border of Strigos and he’d obliged them, despite gleaning their intent. They’d set a trap for a jackal and caught a mountain cat. He did not know where they were exactly — he left such pedestrian matters to Ullo and the others — but he knew they were close to Mourkain. He could practically follow the buzzards.
His grand strategy was playing out to perfection. Patience and cunning had won out over bloodlust. He had bided his time, stalling and reining in his more over-eager followers, waiting until his enemy’s attentions were overwhelmed by the myriad threats besetting him. Ushoran was surrounded by snapping jackals — Neferata, renegades in his own court, the wildling tribes and the orcs — and he was unable to prevent the approach of the mountain cat that would tear out his heart. Strigos was a dying beast, stumbling towards its final stand, and W’soran would deliver the killing blow. Smiling, he looked out over his army, the tool by which he would extract Ushoran’s heart.
As ever, there were no living men in his forces — only easily biddable bones and dead meat filled his ranks. Skeletons clad in armour or scraps, mounted on equally bony steeds or on foot, marched or galloped at his direction. War machines crafted from fossilised timber and the bones of great beasts flung heavy stones; swarms of scuttling half-things, part spider, part skaven, part scorpion and goblin, crafted in his laboratory and animated by his malice, swarmed towards the enemy. The bones of great giants, clad in patchwork mail and bearing armoured howdahs across their shoulders holding ranks of skeletal archers. Massive mockeries of Nehekharan ushabti, created from boiled and congealed flesh and the bones of ogres and orcs, loped forward, wielding crudely forged khopeshes and monstrous bows. Overhead, the corpses of ancient carrion birds of immense size cut through the darkly overcast sky alongside fluttering clouds of bats, and the gigantic cousins of the latter swooped low over the Strigoi lines, plucking men into the air to drain them of blood or simply tear them to pieces. All these things and more trudged, marched, stomped and slithered through the melting snows and dust of the field, at his command, and the commands of his acolytes.
‘Their left flank is crumbling,’ Arpad howled gleefully, suddenly riding past him, a train of mounted skeletal horse archers following in his wake as he made his way to where the fighting was the thickest. ‘Ullo has that preening fop Gashnag on the run, sorcerer! The day is ours!’
W’soran waved a hand to indicate that he’d heard. He had expected as much, but his attentions were on the right, where several of his acolytes duelled with those of Morath. There, the battle was going worse. His students were masters of the death-winds, each worth a handful of Morath’s disciples, but they were outnumbered here. If W’soran seemed to never have enough students to hand to accomplish what he desired, Morath seemed to suffer from a surplus. For every one of W’soran’s, Morath had three. Then, the Strigoi needed many necromancers to do what a single one of W’soran’s minions could accomplish with a wave of a claw.
The two groups of necromancers were at a standstill, and the dead caught between them, frozen in the midst of the fray. The Strigoi had dragged their own dead to their feet to meet W’soran’s corpse brigades, and both groups of dead men trembled where they stood, pinned by the opposing magics. Controlling the dead was all a matter of will, and bending them to yours. It required discipline, focus and patience as well as raw force. W’soran’s followers had the latter in excess, but the former were alien concepts to many of them. They had been barbarians when he’d given them the gift of immortality, and they were savages still.
But strength alone could make the difference in struggles like the one playing out before his eye. Discipline frayed, patience fractured, and focus crumbled before overwhelming strength. As he watched, one of his students, a former shaman of one of the Vault tribes called Niscos, extended a hand, as if pushing against a great weight. A zombie jerked and staggered, taking a step towards one of the Strigoi, who made a complicated gesture. The zombie twitched and bent around, reaching towards Niscos.
Niscos bared his fangs and clenched his hand into a fist. The zombie whipped back around, body rupturing with the force of the motion. Bones cracked and shattered and its skin bubbled and tore as it lurched towards the Strigoi. The Strigoi stumbled back, waving his hands. The zombie staggered on, unheeding, shoved forward by Niscos so forcefully that it began to shed pieces of itself. It seemed to explode as it crashed into the Strigoi, its jaws clamping shut around the man’s throat. Niscos gave a whoop, and his concentration wavered.
W’soran winced as the Strigoi’s companions made Niscos pay for his inattention — a dozen corpses fell on the vampire, bearing him down. Shattered bones stabbed into his flesh, seeking his heart. Niscos howled and backhanded a corpse, sending it spinning head over heels into the air. W’soran let his gaze drift towards the other combatants. If Niscos survived, he would have learned a valuable lesson. If not — well, he could be replaced, eventually.
Similar scenes played out all around the duelling necromancers. A group of skeletal spearman shivered to dust as two opposing wills sought to control them, and a number of fresher corpses simply burst, as if they’d been left out in the sun too long. Broken bones shaped and re-shaped themselves in complex, chaotic geometric patterns as the two groups of necromancers sought to employ them. Missiles crafted from chattering skulls hurtled across the battlefield and cages and traps made from stripped flesh and cracked bone fastened themselves about the unwary. Black fire washed across a number of corpse-constructs, unravelling them as they lumbered forward. For a moment, W’soran wondered whether he would need to become involved.
When he caught sight of the wolf-tail standard of the king of the Draesca bobbing over the fray, however, his concern faded. Chown, the latest to bear the weight of W’soran’s gift, was a more vigorous battle-sorcerer than Shull had been. W’soran’s keen gaze found the necromancer-king easily enough. Chown was burly, even with the weight of years clinging to him, and he was wreathed in the stuff of death as he rode at the head of his ancestors. A mace made from the skull of an ogre whirled in one hand as he crashed into the Strigoi lines, and he beat an enemy vojnuk down from his horse with a smash from his heavy shield.
The dead kings of the Draesca charged with him, wielding the weapons they had used in life. Shull was there, his mummified skull split in a silent howl as he swept his sword out to lop off the head of a rider before he rode down a frantically gesturing enemy necromancer. Morath’s students would find their petty magics availed them nothing against the wight-kings. They were too much at one with the stuff of death to be controlled by any but a master of the Corpse Geometries.