Thrawl strained, listening for the familiar, winding call of the horns. The Zirc rarely sounded them and usually only just before a sandstorm. They worshipped the storm-winds, and some said that the nomads followed them across the desert. He squinted, trying to see what was going on. The wind had risen to a harsh shriek, and his eardrums ached.
‘The soul-winds are screaming,’ Chown grunted. ‘The dead are angry.’
‘When are they not?’
‘In Ghur, we know how to treat the dead-that-are-not.’ Chown drew a line across his throat. ‘The stake, the sword, the fire. Simple. But here… not so simple. The dead are different here.’ He handed Thrawl the spyglass. ‘Look, scribe.’
Thrawl’s mouth was dry as he looked through the spyglass. Chown was right. There was a storm on the horizon. But not of sand or rain.
Instead, a howling gale of spectral green energy was racing across the dunes towards them. He thought he glimpsed horsemen there among the roiling tide, and worse things besides. He stared, unable to tear his eyes away. Unable to speak.
‘No, not simple at all,’ Chown said.
The nighthaunt host sped across the burning sands like the evening tide. Cackling chainrasps led the way. Their clawed, skeletal limbs emerged from tattered grave-shrouds, and their fleshless countenances gnawed mindlessly at the air as they spilled towards the trundling wagon-fortresses. A volley of flaming arrows raced to meet them.
‘Idiotic savages,’ Malendrek said, watching as the arrows fell harmlessly among his hosts. ‘However far they flee, they cannot escape us.’ The Knight of Shrouds sat atop his skeletal steed, his flickering gaze locked on the line of towering, wooden conveyances. ‘Perhaps they prefer to die tired,’ Pharus said. He stood near the Knight of Shrouds, his sword planted point-first before him, his gauntlets resting atop the pommel, watching the assault. ‘Well-rested or exhausted, they will perish all the same,’ Malendrek croaked, not looking at him. ‘All living things must die. My nighthaunts will rip the lives from these nomads. Their souls are our tithe to the Undying King, whose will we enact with this joyful slaughter.’
The first of the chainrasps reached the rearmost wagon. They clawed at the wood, their talons steaming as they encountered the sigils of protection carved there. The Zirc had enough experience with the dead to know how best to hold them at bay. But this was no ordinary attack – the chainrasps were not simply feral spirits, but an army. They would find a way in, eventually.
‘They must be punished for their defiance,’ Malendrek continued, hauling back on his steed’s rotting reins and causing it to rear. ‘Retribution must be had.’
Pharus did not reply. Malendrek wasn’t really talking to him. Since departing Nagashizzar, he had come to realise that the Knight of Shrouds liked to hear himself talk. Malendrek waxed philosophical, when he wasn’t uttering bitter denunciations of individuals Pharus was not familiar with.
But despite being obviously mad, Malendrek was smart. He had a keen strategic mind, beneath all the ranting. As they moved across the desert, following the trade roads, the army of the dead had added to its ranks. They had collected the inhabitants of mining encampments and oases. Souls were harvested from cooling bodies and added to the nighthaunt ranks, while the carcasses were later dragged stumbling in the army’s wake. An efficient use of materials, in Pharus’ opinion.
But the deadwalkers were slow and the deathrattle even slower. They would take days to reach the walls of Glymmsforge. Only the nighthaunts had the speed to strike the city before the gap in its defences was discovered. Which it would be, eventually.
Another volley arced from the upper levels of the rearmost wagon-fortress. Pharus watched the arrows fall, a part of him calculating the trajectories. The second volley did no more harm than the first. The Zirc were not unprepared. They would have other, more effective means of defence in readiness.
He turned, studying the sloped walls of the fort beyond the wagons. The Zirc had led them right to it. It was a crude thing. A muddle of harsh lines, interrupting the serenity of the desert.
As has ever been the way of Azyr.
Pharus nodded. Sigmar’s influence was spread in stone and starlight. Where his armies marched, cities sprouted in their wake and grew fat and strong on the resources of the realms.
The folk of Azyr are ticks, buried into the flesh of worlds.
Pharus nodded again, unable to deny it. The folk of Azyr felled forests, flattened mountains, emptied seas – all in the name of Sigmar. Gods other than him were cast aside and forgotten by fickle mortals, seeking stifling safety within walls of celestine.
They will do the same to Shyish, if they are not stopped. The living are ever hungry, ever greedy, the voice inside him murmured. They are not fit caretakers for existence. Only the dead can uphold the foundations of existence. Only in the arms of death, can the realms know true peace. Until all are one in Nagash…
‘And Nagash is all,’ Pharus said. He could see why the Zirc had led them this way. A ruthlessly pragmatic folk, these nomads. The fort was close enough to divide their pursuers’ attentions. The Knight of Shrouds was already casting baleful glares in the direction of the sandstone walls, and muttering to himself.
The living were greedy. But so too were some among the dead.
The fort must be taken. No word can escape, no warning.
Pharus uprooted his sword and looked at Malendrek. ‘With your permission, I shall deal with the fort,’ he said. ‘I shall cast stone from stone and drive the souls within into the arms of the hungry dead.’
Malendrek looked down at him. ‘You still stink of Azyr,’ he said, idly. ‘I can taste the storm on your soul, Pharus Thaum. You wear the raiment of a deathlord, but you will never truly be one. Your hubris knows no bounds.’
Pharus met the burning gaze without hesitation. There was no fear in him, and he knew, in some secret part of his soul, that Malendrek was just another pawn.
Just as you are.
‘I am but a weapon in the hands of the Undying King,’ Pharus said. ‘Let me gather the tithe, Knight of Shrouds. Let me do as Nagash made me to do.’
Malendrek turned away. ‘Do as you will, little soul. I have the business of death to be about.’ He urged his steed forwards, and its hooves left burning impressions in the sand as it galloped after the Zirc wagons.
Pharus turned to find Dohl hovering behind him. ‘We are ready to greet our new brothers and sisters in death,’ the guardian of souls rasped. ‘But give the command, and we shall welcome them into our ranks, Lord Pharus.’ He raised his lantern, and the dead of the Grand Oubliette and a dozen oases roiled around him, screaming and howling. At Pharus’ nod, Dohl thrust his lantern forwards, and the hordes of chainrasps rushed towards the distant walls of the fort with an eager roar.
Pharus lifted his blade. He felt strangely eager – here then was the first test of his new self. The enemy before him served the same master who had abandoned him. Would they see the truth, as he had? Or would they merely fall and be added to the horde now surging past him? Inside him, something laughed.
It does not matter. Nagash is all, and all are one in him.
‘Come, my sweet lord, why do you dawdle? There is justice to be done.’ Rocha drifted past him, trailing pale, blood-stained fingers across his armour. ‘And heads to be lopped.’ She gave a cackle and sprang into the air, joining the mad rush. Pharus glanced at Dohl, who gave a dolorous sigh.
‘She is but a tool, my lord – blunt yet effective,’ he said, as he followed after his flock, surrounded by a knot of moaning, whimpering spirits. Pharus felt a lurch within him as the lantern’s glow passed beyond him. He wanted more than anything in that moment to bask once more in that eerie radiance.