‘Only me, spirit. I come to confer with your master.’
Grand Prince Yaros stood looking down at the body of the man Pharus had killed, his axe cradled in the crook of one arm. His steed stood behind him, its rotting reins held by a skeletal servant. Yaros turned to look at Pharus. ‘Your blade is barely wet, my friend.’
Pharus waved Dohl back and sheathed his sword. ‘And yours is wet not at all.’
Yaros nodded. ‘True. I have no interest in wanton slaughter. I am a warrior, not a butcher. As you are, I suspect.’ He patted the blade of his axe fondly. ‘I will contain my fury until we reach the walls of Glymmsforge. There, I shall drown the streets in blood.’
‘Nagash will be pleased.’
‘Perhaps,’ Yaros said, in dry tones. ‘For our lord and master, Glymmsforge is but an academic quandary. It is not a city to be humbled, but a symbol of Azyr. It is to be cracked asunder and no stone left atop another. He will send armies to do this, until it is done, and then his mind will turn elsewhere, to the next quandary. For him, the spheres.’ He gestured about him. ‘For us, the sand. And here we shall wage a war of liberation.’ He pounded his chest-plate with a fleshless hand. ‘Our soldiers merely wait for our call.’
‘Soldiers?’ Pharus asked, looking away from the wagons.
‘There are armies undreamt, slumbering beneath these sands. It is my honour to awaken them, in the days to come. My task, as Malendrek has his, and you have yours.’ Yaros gestured expansively with his axe. ‘In my youth, there were a thousand oases in the Zircona Desert, and around each a kingdom sprouted.’ He gave a rattling chuckle. ‘They are gone now, alas, those grand fiefdoms. But the seeds they planted – the fallen heroes and soldiers of forgotten wars – yet remain, awaiting the call of one of royal blood.’
‘You,’ Pharus said.
Yaros gave a harsh laugh, like sand scraping stone. ‘I am the son of kings, am I not? Did I not lead their descendants to glory at Akakis? Did I not pull down the citadels of the Wolf-Duke? Am I not the Hero of Orthad?’
Pharus, who could not recall ever hearing of those events, merely nodded. Yaros peered at him, witch-light flickering in the sockets of his skull. ‘I am, my friend, as surely as you must be. We Deathlords are, all of us, heroes. Even Malendrek, for all that he is a spiteful shade.’ He turned away. ‘We are heroes,’ he said again, and Pharus wondered if he too had a voice inside, whispering certainties.
The living fear you as the prisoner fears freedom.
‘They fear us,’ he said, echoing the voice.
‘Of course they fear us, my friend. How could they not? We are lords of death.’ Yaros glanced at him. ‘You stand in august company, you know. Our names are legend, in the halls of twilight. Not Malendrek’s perhaps, but mine certainly. And I am not alone.’ He pointed his axe north. ‘There, in the lands of ice and snow, the Rictus Queen rules a country of the dead. I pledged my troth to her, though she refused me.’ Yaros loosed a doleful sigh. ‘And Count Vathek, whose soul Nagash keeps locked away in an iron box. I rode beside him at the Battle of Lament. Him and a hundred others. Heroes, my friend. Heroes, all.’
Tools, the voice whispered in Pharus’ ear. Tools put to good use.
‘Why did you wish to speak to me?’ Pharus said, growing tired of Yaros’ rambling. The deathrattle prince seemed easily distracted.
Yaros laughed again. ‘Why, to take the measure of you, little spirit. To see whether there is steel in you, or only spite.’ He leaned close, almost conspiratorially. ‘Malendrek says you stink of Azyr. And I can smell it on you.’ He tapped Pharus’ chest-plate with his axe. ‘There is an ember, smouldering inside you. But it grows smaller by the day. And soon it will be gone entirely, and you will be one of us.’
Pharus drifted back, and Yaros turned. His servant sank down, and Yaros used the skeleton as a step-stool to climb into the saddle. He hauled back on the reins, causing the fleshless horse to rear silently. ‘Be of good cheer, my friend – death is the end of strife, and your course is set,’ he called out, as he turned his steed about and galloped away to join his warriors. The skeletal servant trotted after him.
Pharus watched him ride away, and then turned to Dohl, who hovered nearby. ‘How many wagons escaped?’
‘Three, my lord. Should we pursue?’
‘In time,’ he said distantly. There was no escape. No matter how far they went, or where they hid, they would all come to Nagash, in time.
It is inevitable. You are inevitable.
He glanced down at his blade and saw again the hint of a skull, leering at him from within its depths.
The living are weak. They know fear and doubt. It is a burden on them.
‘Life is a burden,’ Pharus said.
Life is a cage. In death are all slaves freed. All are one in Nagash.
Pharus paused. His hand fell to the hilt of his blade. He could feel the sands shivering through the hourglass there. ‘And Nagash is all,’ he said finally.
Chapter fourteen
Inviolate
‘Welcome to the Gloaming,’ Lord-Veritant Achillus said.
Balthas looked around, unimpressed. His surroundings put him in mind of a honeycomb, perforated by courtyards and blind alleys. He saw wretched structures with broken windows patched over with rag-and-board, dirt-smeared walls and rotting foundations. A canopy of crude bridges and gantries stretched above the street, from one side to the other. The sounds of singing, fighting, squabbling and screaming echoed all about him. ‘It’s a slum,’ he said.
‘Yes. And a large one.’ The lord-veritant stopped, as something crashed down on the street ahead. Balthas glanced up and saw a head vanish inside an open window. Shouts and curses echoed down from other windows, and rooftops. The city was in uproar. Not fully fledged panic, yet. But tensions were high. The Glymmsmen were stretched thin, handling the influx of new people to the city, all of whom brought with them tales of the dead.
In the wake of the cataclysm, it was too much. Flagellants roamed the streets, howling prayers. The citizens, inured to siege mentality, resignedly readied themselves for another assault. But this was different, and they knew it – for the enemy was already here.
More things – bricks – crashed down. People ran along the rooftops, shouting warnings. Balthas glanced back at the cohorts of Sequitors and Castigators following in his wake. They had orders to ignore such provocation, where possible.
‘They seem unhappy with our presence,’ Mara said. The Sequitor-Prime looked around, her gaze sharp behind her war-mask. She was not used to this, Balthas knew. The enemy was normally in front of them and clearly defined.
‘It is rare that we bring glad tidings,’ Achillus said. He raised his staff, and the lantern atop it flashed. ‘Especially to the Gloaming.’ As the light washed across the nearby storefronts and walkways, the catcallers above fell silent. ‘But they know me, here. And they know not to cross me.’
‘How many times have you had to do this?’ Balthas asked.
Achillus shrugged. ‘Enough to know that it is never simple.’ He paused. ‘Shyish is not simple. The dead are too close, here. Their whispers are shouts, and some among the living are too willing to listen.’
‘This is not the same thing. Deadwalkers are more akin to a pox than anything else.’
‘I know what deadwalkers are, lord-arcanum,’ Achillus said bluntly. ‘I have fought them since the first stones of Glymmsforge were set.’ The light from his lantern drove back the shadows and revealed huddled beggars in alleyways and cats slinking through gutters. Pigeons burst into flight, startled by the radiance. And something else – a warmer glow, like a current of hot air, tinged with amethyst. ‘This way.’