‘Yes, he’s attacking the slave pens!’ Melkhior said. He yowled out orders to his creations and they hurried to obey. W’soran gestured for his wights to follow them, and they hurried towards the lower levels of the citadel.
By the time they reached the slave pens, the battle was in full swing. Ghouls and skeletons clashed with orcs clad in scavenged gear and wielding improvised weapons. The orcs were not quite a horde — there were only perhaps a hundred or so, W’soran noted as he stepped out onto the overseer’s balcony to look down into the pens. In the pens, the still-imprisoned orcs were rattling their cages and bellowing out encouragement. The few remaining human slaves had huddled as far away from the fighting as they could get.
Bats filled the cavern, diving at the attacking orcs and clinging to them like squirming, hairy shrouds. Groups of ghouls mobbed individual orcs, knocking them off their feet and the skeletal guards duelled with others. Melkhior leapt lightly from the balcony and dropped straight down into the melee, blade in hand, gruesome face split in a screech of rage.
He cleaved an orc in two as he landed and backhanded another hard enough to pulp the creature’s skull. More of them rushed towards him with raucous howls. W’soran watched for a moment and then turned his attentions to the wider battle. He was in no hurry to join the fight; the orcs, for all their ferocity, were hardly a threat. Melkhior could handle them easily enough, and if he couldn’t, well, it was of little concern to W’soran.
He scanned the battle, hunting. Dork was easy enough to spot, when you knew what to look for. Greenskin magic had a particular aura about it, like charged air after a storm, or cold water washing over stones. He could taste it on the air.
Dork was big, bigger than most orcs he’d seen. The mines built muscle, and the orc stood head and shoulders over his followers. He had the ocular pigmentation that marked him as a Red Eye, and wore a headdress made from the hides of cave lizards and armour scavenged from earlier battles. With an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, Dork smashed his way through the guards, bulling his way towards the slave pens. His intent was obvious. The orc needed an army. W’soran smiled.
The smile faltered when he saw the emerald lightning crawl across Dork’s scarred flesh as he locked blades with a wight. Dork howled, his red eyes going green and blazing like torches, and the wight exploded, ripped apart by the brutal magics spiking out from the greenskin’s twitching form. Dork stomped his foot and the cavern shuddered in sympathy.
‘Well, aren’t you full of yourself,’ W’soran murmured, watching the shaman storm towards the pens. He leapt lightly from the balcony, his magics coiling about him like a breeze, carrying him safely to the cavern floor. As he landed, there was a thunderclap of dark magics and orcs were sent tumbling, their bodies wreathed in sorcerous fire. He didn’t bother to draw his sword. Instead he wove complicated gestures and gave his magics free rein. Orcs died by fire and lightning; others were torn apart by living shadows, or swallowed by the rock of the cavern. Methodically, he carved his way through them until he reached Dork, who spun about, piggy eyes blazing with fervour.
‘Oi, Bluddrinka,’ Dork roared, clashing his weapons together.
‘Bossbluddrinka,’ W’soran corrected in the greenskin tongue. He spread his arms and bared his fangs. ‘Come, beast… show me your power.’
Dork howled again, and his muscles seemed to swell. The hazy aura about him snapped into sharp focus, and W’soran was reminded of the vision he’d had of Ushoran, with Nagash’s shadow superimposed over him. For a moment, the orc, as large as he was, appeared akin to a giant crammed into a body that was three sizes too small. The cavern shuddered and great chunks of rock fell as Dork charged forward, swinging his weapons.
W’soran eeled around the first blow and twitched aside from the second as Dork’s aura sparked and snapped like an overfed fire and the green heat washed over him. He drew his blade in time to block another heavy blow, and batted aside the axe as it dug for his chest. The orc was fast — almost impossibly so. More green lightning sparked from Dork’s frame, striking the walls and floor and W’soran as well. His flesh peeled and split where the crackling energy touched him and he hissed in consternation.
‘Crumpya,’ Dork roared. ‘Chopya!’
‘I think not,’ W’soran snarled. He shoved himself back, sliding momentarily out of the orc’s reach. Dork was strong. Too strong, in fact. W’soran glared about, his mind calculating and discarding possibilities. He knew much of the greenskins, including… ‘Ah,’ he hissed. Death magic swirled about him in a black cloud as he began to draw power from every part of the cavern. Dork charged towards him, bellowing.
W’soran thrust out his arm, and a rippling bolt of black energy burst from his palm. It narrowly missed Dork, who roared in triumph and brought his weapons down on W’soran. The latter barely held back the descending blades with his scimitar, and he sank to one knee, momentarily overwhelmed by the raw, sorcerously enhanced strength of his opponent. Dork leered down at him, certain of his triumph. Then, when he saw the wide grin on his opponent’s face, the orc hesitated.
‘Yesss,’ W’soran chuckled. ‘You are a smart one.’
Behind Dork, the slave pens had fallen silent. Every single living thing, orc or otherwise, in the pens was dead, killed by the lethal magics that W’soran had hurled at them — hundreds of orcs, slain in a single moment. Dork’s jaw sagged as his gaze flickered between the pens, hunting for any signs of life. Then he turned back, his eyes glowing so brightly that W’soran was forced to cover his own.
Dork howled. And every surviving orc, those who had come with their new warboss to free their fellows, howled with him, their great jaws gaping as they gave vent to a communal scream of primal ferocity and berserk rage. The cavern began to shudder and shake. The ceiling ruptured and bats spiralled frantically as jagged chunks of stone crashed down, piercing the floor and releasing serpentine cracks that sped across the ground.
W’soran climbed to his feet. Nearby, a trio of orcs fell as their heads burst. As if that had been a signal, more orcs twitched and fell as their skulls popped. There was a growing pressure in the cavern, and W’soran’s mystically attuned senses screamed a warning. The ground beneath his feet burst, the hard stone shifting like melting ice. He turned and ran. Dork remained where he stood, a focal point for the snarling rhythms of green lightning that threatened to collapse the entire cavern.
W’soran reached the wall upon which the observation balcony sat and scrambled up it, climbing like a malformed and arthritic spider. He caught sight of a black-clad form — Melkhior — doing the same. They reached the balcony at roughly the same time, and both vaulted through the archway into the corridor beyond as a heavy fang of rock sheared the balcony away from the wall. W’soran turned and laughed wildly as around them, Crookback Mountain shook with the rage of Dork of the Red Eye tribe.
‘Did you see that, Melkhior? Did you see it?’ he shouted, as the corridor groaned and the mountain’s guts rumbled. Smoke and dust boiled out through the archway, and grit caked them as W’soran’s wights, whom he’d left safely behind, helped them up. ‘Fascinating, eh? Impressive, wasn’t he? To have that much power in him must surely be a result of-’
‘Impressive? Impressive,’ Melkhior hissed. He snapped forward, like a striking adder, claws digging for W’soran’s throat. ‘You nearly destroyed everything, you fool!’
W’soran caught his wrists and jerked him around. With a twitch of his arms, he slammed his acolyte against the wall and pinned him in place, using one hand to hold his wrists and his other to cup his jaw. ‘And so what?’ W’soran asked. ‘It is mine to destroy, Melkhior, just as you are. You are still mine, aren’t you?’ he continued, his voice dropping low. He squeezed Melkhior’s jaw and felt bone crack and the muscle rip beneath his fingers. ‘Yesss, I made you, my son, and I can unmake you. You are a tool, boy, to be used as I see fit, as is this citadel, and everything in it. And I will use you, to secure my victory.’