As they strained against one another, the howling grew louder and louder, until Pharus could hear nothing else. Amethyst sparks spilled from between their swords, and in the polished shadeglass length of his blade, he caught the briefest glimpse of a skeletal countenance – not his own, but Arkhan. Or perhaps Nagash.
With a snarling cry, he tore his weapon free of Malendrek’s and retreated. All at once, the jackals fell silent. ‘If I am nothing, it is only because Nagash has willed it so,’ he said, sheathing his sword without flourish. ‘If you are something, it is only because he wishes it. Or do you set yourself higher than our lord and master?’
Malendrek eyed him balefully. ‘Nagash is all,’ he said, after a moment.
‘And all are one in Nagash,’ Pharus replied.
The Knight of Shrouds seemed to fold in on himself, wrapping shadow and spite about his lean frame. ‘If you wish to walk into the eye of the storm with me, little spirit – so be it. But the glory of the assault will be mine. You will content yourself with opening the gates. Then you may lose yourself as you wish.’ He turned away, muttering to himself. Pharus stepped out of the circle of witch-light, one hand on his blade. He did not expect Malendrek to attack him again, but there was no sense taking chances.
Out among the dunes, he heard the lonely cry of a solitary jackal, and wondered if it was a warning of some sort. Perhaps it was simply a reminder that all things passed and had their end. Even deathlords.
He climbed a dune, the soft amethyst sands barely disturbed by the chill breeze of his passing. His feet did not sink into the sand, did not press it flat or make any indentation. There was no sign that he had passed that way at all. A part of him – small and distant – felt sadness at the thought. It was as if he were nothing more than a dark dream, set loose from the confines of a sleeper’s head.
A sea of ragged tents spread out below him. The dead did not make camp, save when it amused them to do so. Yaros’ deathrattle had raised the tents scattered about the dunes in a parody of military discipline. Fleshless menials, indentured in death as they had been in life, moved among the tents, hard at their unceasing labours. They followed ancient routines, gathering buckets of sand from long dry wells and butchered non-existent game animals. Nearby, deathrattle soldiers erected field defences that would see no use – had seen no use in decades.
These slaves of the Grand Prince ignored him. He suspected that they could not perceive him. Or that if they did, he appeared much differently. He passed among them, unnoticed and unhindered.
It was rare that he was alone, since leaving Nagashizzar. Dohl hovered ever at his elbow, drowning out his doubts with the glow of his lantern. And if it was not Dohl, it was Fellgrip or Rocha. He could not say which of the three he found more distasteful. They were no more his warriors than he was Malendrek’s. They were loyal to Nagash alone. As he was. As he must be. To be otherwise was unthinkable.
He turned back the way they had come and saw the black radiance on the horizon there. A watchful flame, burning in the night. It would grow, in time, until it ate the stars themselves, and turned the sands of all deserts to glass. And he would be a part of it.
Pharus felt no joy at the thought. No fear. Only a dim satisfaction. The way a blade might feel, could it feel, when it was wielded with true skill. He tore his gaze from that dark glow and looked out over the dunes, towards the city on the opposite horizon. Satisfaction faded, replaced by anticipation as he watched the shuffling columns of the dead advance endlessly across the moonlit sands.
He stared at the city. Until recently, he might have stood on those walls and stared out at the dead as they massed for their assault. ‘Reflections and shadows,’ he murmured, flexing a gauntlet. He could not feel the weight of his armour. He’d found that to be the most disconcerting thing about being dead. War-plate should have weight – solidity. But his felt no more substantial than cobwebs.
Only the sword had weight. Too much, for its size. It had grown heavier, the farther they travelled from the Nadir. As if it had become more real, somehow. Or perhaps he had become less so. The thought was not a comforting one. Now, he felt content – felt whole – only in the glow of Dohl’s lantern.
He was sure now that he had once borne a similar artefact. A thing infused with the false light of Azyr. Sometimes, he found himself reaching vainly for it, as the memories fluttered vainly at the edges of his perception. It was as if some part of him were attempting to remind himself of what he had once been. That longing was akin to a wound that would not heal, and only added to the agonies he felt. He had been a part of something, and now was not. And that absence made him angry.
That was the one thing that all of the dead had in common – anger. Anger at the pain they had suffered, at the glories denied them or the promises broken. A righteous anger, shared by the lowest cadaver and Nagash himself. Anger at the living. Anger at the realms themselves, for their defiance of the inevitable.
As the anger rose so too did the cold and the hunger. One fed the other, and he wanted to shriek aloud, to join his voice to that of the feral gheists that prowled the dunes. To scream in rage for an eternity, until all else was silence.
‘It is beautiful, is it not?’
Pharus turned. Crelis Arul stood behind him, accompanied by her wolves. They snarled at him, flashing broken fangs. He gestured with his sword. ‘If they attack, I will slay them,’ he rasped.
‘They are no more alive than you are, little spirit.’ She stepped forwards to join him, ignoring his blade. ‘It is beautiful. So much life, and death. I can hear them, the harvested, in their houses of stone, crying out to us. Can you hear them?’
Pharus peered at her, and then at the city. ‘I hear voices on the wind. In the sand.’
‘Innumerable souls drift about us, unseen and unheard save to those who stand upon the border between life and death.’ Arul cocked her head, as if listening. ‘They say that we are in Lyria – where the dead are given succour and strength through the celebration of their mortal deeds. There are a thousand or more underworlds in Shyish, you know. They rest within one another, like pearls in an oyster. We are a realm of nested secrets – peel back one layer and a new one presents itself.’
She took hold of the flesh of her arm and stripped it back, revealing bloody bone beneath. There were words and sigils in an unfamiliar tongue carved into the bone. ‘See? Secrets.’ She patted the torn flesh back into place.
Pharus sheathed his blade and looked away. ‘If there are spirits here, why do they not serve Nagash?’ He was almost offended by the thought. Death was the end of all lies, of all defiance – so how could such a thing be?
Arul laughed. ‘Nagash is god of justice. And these souls have earned their reward. Why would he bend them to his will, when there are more fitting tools to hand?’ She tapped a crumbling finger against his chest-plate. ‘If we are cruel, it is because we must be. Because it is required that we be so. Did Arkhan not teach you that?’
‘I do not yet know what the Mortarch of Sacrament has taught me. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. A lesson’s worth is judged in the field.’ The words came unbidden to his lips. They were from his other life. He heard a voice, and a name – Lynos. He bowed his head. He was cold and empty. His sword shuddered in its sheath. It, too, was hungry.
Arul watched him, her eyes gleaming behind her veil. ‘Cruel,’ she repeated, ‘because we must be. Nagash has stripped you of warmth and joy, so that you might be a better weapon. As you have stripped the life from others, so that they might join us and see the beauty that awaits them, on this side.’