W’soran examined the squirming, semi-ghostly tendril and smiled. ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘You were ever the most impressive of my students, boy, and far superior to your fellows. It broke my poor heart when you refused my gift — think of what you might have accomplished without fear of death or infirmity, eh?’
‘Think of what I would have lost,’ Morath said, as his assistants helped him to his feet. ‘What you offer is no gift, monster. It’s a curse — better death than a carrion eternity.’
‘Death — ah, well, that will be my last gift to you, then, I suppose…’ W’soran said, with a shrug. Then he flung the writhing remnants of Morath’s spell back at the group of sorcerers who opposed him. The shadow-thing spread and grew, like ink on water, billowing out and engulfing them. Several, Morath included, defended themselves immediately, bellowing desperate incantations to ward off the preternatural tendrils.
Those who avoided them were soon confronted by the skull-wraiths that W’soran had summoned. The bobbing skulls of Mourkain’s enemies, riding their bodies of smoke and black flame, loped towards the sorcerers. Morath destroyed several with a burst of spellcraft, but others crashed into him, burning his flesh with their ghostly talons. Morath screamed and lightning snapped and snarled from him, shattering the champing, burning skulls.
Several of his acolytes pushed through their enemies to confront W’soran. But before they could so much as gesture, or bring the first syllables of a spell to their lips, a bestial shape blurred past them. A heavy blade went snicker-snack and their heads rolled free from their necks.
Ullo turned and gave his shark’s grin. ‘Three more heads for the pile, sorcerer!’ he roared. W’soran smiled as the other vampire bounded towards Morath and his remaining students. Morath had succeeded in sending the shadow tendrils back where they had come from, but he was having a harder time with the skulls. Ullo crashed amongst the necromancers like a cat amongst pigeons, his broad blade looping out to lop off limbs or open bellies. Sorcery did a man little good when his guts were all over his feet. Soon enough, only Morath was standing, and he was forced to draw his sword and defend himself.
Ullo howled, and the two traded blows as W’soran watched in amusement. His mount screeched and belched gas over the Strigoi reinforcements approaching the gatehouse. Down below, a massive bone-giant tore the stone doors from their hinges, sending the ancient doors toppling down into the roaring waters below. The giant shoved its way through the gateway, followed by more of W’soran’s forces — skeletal spearmen and archers took up positions inside the walls as armoured wights charged towards the reeling defenders, and cleared the walls of life with the help of fluttering masses of blood-bloated bats.
‘Sorcerer! Watch out!’ Ullo roared, flinging Morath aside. W’soran glanced at him, and then twisted around to see a descending thunderbolt clad in red. He screeched and drew his scimitar with only seconds to spare, barely halting the blow that would have split his skull.
Abhorash dropped to the parapet of the gatehouse, his fur cloak flaring around his crimson-armoured form. Though he had not seen the former champion of Lahmia in a century, he was as intimidating as W’soran recalled — sheathed in the serrated, sharply curved iron armour of Ushoran’s personal guard, Abhorash was a giant amongst men. He wielded his great sword with its iron blade engraved with curling, savage sigils as if it were a feather, and he moved as if his armour weighed no more than a morning mist.
He sprang for W’soran again, his face contorted in a terrifying snarl within his dragon helm. With a thought, W’soran urged his mount into the air with a single snap of its wings, but too late. Abhorash’s hand flashed out and his fingers sank into the gangrenous flesh of the zombie-dragon’s flank.
Even as W’soran sought to put distance between them, Abhorash hauled himself up, eyes blazing. ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay out of it, you withered old fool,’ Abhorash roared. ‘I warned him that he was only courting betrayal by letting you live!’
‘Who has betrayed who, eh, champion? You betrayed your queen and your new followers by serving a hag-ridden madman,’ W’soran said, rising from his saddle, cloak whipping about him as his mount soared high into the air. ‘What price your loyalty, Abhorash? What has he promised you?’
‘I do not have to explain myself to such as you,’ Abhorash growled.
‘No, nor would I care to hear it, even if you deigned to do so, brute,’ W’soran said. Then, so saying, he leapt from the dragon’s back, and plummeted downwards. While he yearned to wipe the self-righteous sneer from Abhorash’s face, the warrior was not his prey this day.
As W’soran hurtled away, the zombie-dragon twisted around. Abhorash, dislodged by the beast’s undulations, fell, but not for long. The corpse-dragon, responding to W’soran’s urging, coiled about the warrior like a striking serpent, its jaws agape and its talons crunching into the vampire’s armour as it seized him the way an eagle might seize a rat. Its wings flapped once, carrying it higher, and dragged Abhorash into the dark sky.
W’soran dropped through the darkness. His spectral scarabs swarmed about him as he fell, wrapping him in a cocoon of ghostly light, and in the blink of an eye, he was no longer in the air, but standing in the courtyard beyond the walls of Mourkain. His sudden appearance startled Ullo and Arpad. The former grunted and asked, ‘Abhorash?’
‘Occupied,’ W’soran said. As if on cue, the zombie-dragon screeched somewhere far above. He continued, ‘Morath?’
‘Gashnag organised a counter-charge. He and Morath are pulling back what’s left of the usurper’s troops. They’re falling back to the next line of defences,’ Arpad growled. ‘They’re not giving an inch unless we wash it in bone-chips and blood. And we still haven’t taken the outer palisades!’
‘Abhorash’s Hand is to blame for that. That bastard Walak and his cursed brother are out there. It’s all our men can do to keep them contained to the southern palisades,’ Ullo snapped. ‘But we hold the entrance to the city — if we can push on, and take the palace…’
‘If we can take Ushoran, you mean?’ W’soran asked. He stretched, and felt the raw power of Mourkain tug at him. It seemed to grow and shift at his notice, like the heat from a stoked forge. It was feeding on the death agonies of the hundreds who were dying even at that moment, swelling like a toad gorging itself on gnats.
In a way, this was what Nagash had wanted — for all life to be scoured away and the world to be wiped clean. Perhaps that was what Ushoran wanted now as well, and perhaps this moment was not by W’soran’s design alone. The thought filled him with anger, that even now, even here, he was being used as a tool to scour life from the territories he claimed. In invading, in inciting slaughter, he was merely providing Ushoran with the raw materials he’d need for later conquests.
‘Even after all these centuries, is that how you still see me?’ W’soran muttered, casting a glare towards the distant palace. It was a massive structure, bristling with outcroppings and crude structural additions that seemed to serve no purpose save ornamental.
Though it had been designed to look like one, it was a pyramid in name only; the resemblance was superficial. It was a crude mockery of the great pyramids of Nehekhara, devised by barbaric minds and built by unskilled hands. Heavy dark stones had been piled atop one another much like the grim barrows which dotted the northern lands. It careened high above the city, and stable growths of structure flourished along its length. There were narrow windows and balconies and things that might have been towers. It crouched like a beast over the winding river which encircled and ran through Mourkain, and the rest of the city seemed to recoil from it, as if in fear.