02 - Nagash the Unbroken (21 page)

The chunk of
abn-i-khat
burned like molten lead in his shrivelled
stomach. He had carved a piece of stone the size of his fist from the centre of
the Burning God’s eye and had forced it down his throat, and the tempest raging
within his flesh made the storm above seem as gentle as an evening breeze. He
could feel every nerve, every muscle fibre, every inch of flesh and bone with
sharp-edged detail. He felt every blade of grass beneath his feet, and every
tiny mote of power within them—he could even feel the lingering vestiges of
life force in the hide cloak that lay across his shoulders. A veritable sea of
sensations raged within him from one moment to the next: it might have been
pain, or pleasure, or a mingling of both. Nagash could not tell any longer. He
was long past the point of making distinctions between the two.

Yet his mind was absolutely, utterly clear. His thoughts were gleaming and
sharp-etched as obsidian, and beggared the lightning for speed. What mighty
deeds could he have accomplished in Khemri with such clarity of thought? The
power of the Black Pyramid paled in comparison.

The site he’d chosen for the great ritual was a flat region surrounded by
four barrow mounds near the exact centre of the plain. He’d chosen the spot not
only because it would allow him to cast his invocation over the entire area, but
also because the pathways around the barrows would serve to channel the
barbarian patrols in predictable ways. Nagash had no doubt that they would
appear, once his work began in earnest.

There were more of them than he expected, and by either luck or design they
struck at more or less the same time. Thin cries rose and fell amid the howling
gale as sword- and spear-wielding acolytes charged blindly across the open
ground towards the beacon of flame. Behind them, tiny pinpoints of green light
glowed like sullen coals as a dozen priests brandished their bronze reliquaries
and made ready for battle.

The necromancer straightened, gauging the acolytes’ approach. To his mind,
they seemed ponderous and slow, stumbling haltingly across the wet ground
towards him. When they were halfway to him, he raised his dagger skyward and
reached out with his will.

Slay them!

Blinded by eagerness and lashing curtains of rain, the acolytes did not
register the figures rising up from the dark ground until they’d charged in
among them. The skeletons reared up with disturbing speed, rain coursing from
their age-darkened bones, and closed in on the barbarians from all sides.
Obsidian blades flashed, severing limbs and spilling entrails. Bony hands
grabbed at the acolytes, dragging them to the ground by their robes or by their
hair. Leering skulls closed in, jaws snapping, their eye sockets alight with
green flame. In moments, the acolytes’ bloodthirsty shouts had turned to
confused and agonised screams, punctuated by the clang and clatter of blades as
the survivors rallied and fought for their lives.

It took several long seconds for the priests to grasp what was happening, and
when they did their response was potent but poorly coordinated. Nagash felt a
ragged volley of invocations from across the field as the priests tried to seize
control of his warriors. Here and there one of the skeletons stumbled beneath
the onslaught, and the acolytes lashed out at them, smashing several to pieces.
The barbarians took heart, sensing that the tide of battle was about to turn—and then Nagash raised his left fist skyward and hissed a dreadful invocation of
his own.

An ominous rumble echoed through the clouds overhead, followed by stuttering
flashes of lightning. Moments later, the priests were stunned by a single arc of
burning, green light that plunged to earth and struck the barrow mound between
them with a sputtering hiss. Another glowing mote fell from the bruised clouds,
then another, and then there was a clap of thunder and a shower of burning hail
the size of sling stones plunged down upon priests and acolytes both.

Men fell dead with their skulls dashed in or their necks broken. Others
shrieked in agony as their robes burst into greenish flames that the rain could
not quench. The priests scattered under the onslaught, running in every
direction to escape the attack, and the sight of their panic unnerved the
beleaguered acolytes, who tried to break free from the clutches of the undead
and escape into the darkness. Many were cut down as they tried to flee, or were
dragged to the ground by claw-like hands and torn apart. The last thing the
survivors heard as they fled for their lives was the sound of soulless, mocking
laughter riding the howling wind.

The skeletons made no effort to pursue the fleeing barbarians. Heedless of
the sizzling hail, those undead warriors with no weapons of their own began
plucking weapons from the bodies of the dead, while the warlord and his skeletal
retinue went about killing the wounded that had been left behind. Perhaps a
third of their number had been destroyed in the fighting, their bones scattered
across the smouldering ground.

The losses mattered little to Nagash. Close to forty-five dead barbarians
littered the battleground, some still burning as the magical fire consumed their
flesh. They would more than make up for the numbers he had lost.

Grinning cruelly, Nagash returned his attention to the ritual circle. His
army had only just begun to grow.

The great circle took another hour to complete, while the wind and the rain
raged unabated over the barrow fields. As the hour of the dead approached,
Nagash cast aside his bronze dagger and drew the oilskin bag from his belt. He
bent over the great circle and poured the last of the stone dust into the
channels he’d burned into the earth. When he was done the ritual symbols glowed
with latent power.

It was time. The necromancer tossed the bag aside and stepped into the centre
of the circle. He felt each tiny tremor of energy in the web he’d created—a
net of sorcerous power that he merely had to speak the proper phrases and draw
tight over the plain.

Nagash looked out across the open ground. Skeletal figures waited in the
darkness, silent and patient as death itself; the hetman stood among them, his
rune-sword glinting balefully.

Clenching his fists, Nagash threw back his head and began to chant, spitting
the arcane words into the sky. The arcane symbols within the ritual circle
blazed with light, and the bruised clouds recoiled overhead, receding in every
direction as the power of the necromancer’s invocation spread in a great wave
across the barrow plain.

Power flowed in a torrent from Nagash’s body, racing across the fields and
sinking like claws into the hundreds of barrow mounds. The energies sought out
every corpse, burrowing into rotting flesh and yellowing bones and stirring up
the ghosts of old memories buried within. The spell was attuned to the worst
passions of the human soul: anger, violence, jealousy and hate, and it lent
those memories a semblance of life.

Bodies trembled. Limbs twitched. Dead hands clenched, scattering dust from
decayed joints. Pitiless flames burned in the depths of old, dead eyes.

Nagash felt them stir, hundreds of them, caught within the strands of his
sorcerous web. Ragged lips pulled back in a triumphant snarl.
“Come forth!”
he shouted into the tumult.
“Your master commands it!”

Sealed up in their earthen barrows, the dead heard Nagash’s command, and they
obeyed.

Hands clawed at muddy earth, or tore at wooden boards. The earthen surfaces
of the barrow mounds rippled and heaved. Flashes of lightning silhouetted the
stark outlines of skeletal figures dragging themselves free from their graves.

Silent figures shambled out of the stormy night, drawn by Nagash’s command.
When the southern barrows had been emptied, and a horde of more than a thousand
skeletons stood at his back, the Undying King stepped from the glowing circle
and ordered his army to advance.

The undead horde marched northwards, growing in size as it went. Keepers and
acolytes who’d panicked and lost their bearings in the storm were the first to
die, their terrified screams rising and then quickly vanishing amid the howling
wind. The revenants let the bloodied corpses fall where they were slain and
continued onwards, towards the temple fortress to the north. Within minutes the
mutilated bodies began to twitch, preparing to join the implacable advance.

The lookouts had all retreated into the safety of the fortress the moment the
storm had broken, so there was no one to witness the emptying of the sacred
barrows. It was only when the survivors of the slaughtered patrols came
stumbling out of the darkness that the rest of the order became aware of the
doom that approached. Concealing his fear, the High Keeper ordered his brethren
to the armoury, and them commanded that the ancient alarm-horns to be sounded,
summoning aid from the villages to the north-east. The great horns had not been
blown for hundreds of years, and only two out of the dozen instruments still
worked. The urgent, wailing notes sounded for more than an hour, rising and
falling with the wind. The hetmen nearest the fortress heard the call, but their
warriors refused to leave their families and brave the fury of the storm. When
dawn came, they would march, but until then the Keepers would have to fend for
themselves.

Believing that reinforcements would soon arrive, the Keepers emptied the
armoury and barricaded the southern gates. Lookouts were ordered out onto the
walls, but there was little to see in the darkness and the rain until the
walking dead were almost upon them.

The men guarding the gates heard the first shouts of terror from the acolytes
atop the walls, and then, moments later came the eerie sound of fingers
scratching against the wood. One of the Keepers, hoping to encourage the others,
laughed at the pitiful noise.

At once, the scratching fell silent. The men held their breaths, hands
tightening around the unfamiliar grips of their weapons. A young voice up on the
wall was babbling in fright, begging for the Burning God to save them.

And then the Keepers felt an invisible wave of power wash over them, and the
southern gates began to rot before their very eyes. Iron-hard planks cracked and
splintered, filling the corridors with clouds of dust and snuffing out the
torches. And then the scratching began again, louder and more insistent,
followed by the sound of rending wood.

Within seconds, pairs of flickering, greenish fires shone out of the gloom.
Claw-like fingers raked across the Keepers’ wooden barricades. Men screamed and
called out to their god for aid, while those in front who had no way to escape
hefted their weapons and threw themselves at their foes. Bronze and stone blades
hacked and stabbed. Ancient bones cracked and splintered, and blood spattered
across the walls.

The Keepers of the Mountain were no cowards. Though unused to battle, they
stood their ground and defended the fortress with strength and determination.
The gateways limited the number of enemies that could be brought to bear against
them at any one time, and for a while they managed to hold the invaders at bay.
Some of the senior Keepers arrived with reliquaries of god-stone, and tried to
hold back the undead by force of will. At some of the gates they were
successful, holding the corpses fast so that their brethren could strike them
down.

Yet the enemy was implacable. They knew no fear, nor pain, nor fatigue. When
their legs were smashed, they dragged themselves across the floor and grabbed at
the Keepers’ legs. When their arms were torn off they snapped at the Keepers’
flesh with their broken teeth.

Worst of all, every brother who fell rose up and joined their ranks. Before
long, the Keepers found themselves fighting against the savaged corpses of men
whom they’d known for years or even decades. It was too much for any sane mind
to take.

At one gate after another, exhausted Keepers were overwhelmed, and resistance
began to collapse. Acolytes fled, shrieking in terror, to the deepest parts of
the fortress. They hid themselves in wooden chests, in dry cisterns and bins of
dusty grain, trembling and weeping and whispering prayers for their deliverance
right up to the moment that bony hands seized them and dragged them to their
doom.

The main gate on the temple’s south face was the last to fall. Most of the
order’s senior priests were marshalled there, aiding in its defence, and they
had already thrown back three successive assaults. They had learned enough from
the last few attacks to try a different strategy: instead of hurling their
energies at the army en masse and trying to halt it in its tracks, the priests
were focusing their will on isolated elements, attempting to seize control and
turn them against the rest of the undead horde. Though Nagash’s force of will
far eclipsed any of the individual priests, he found it difficult to control his
army and resist a score of individual attacks simultaneously, and the cursed
priests were starting to inflict significant damage.

A cheer went up from the priests as the third assault foundered. Piles of
shattered corpses clogged the gateway, and the stink of blood and spilled
entrails hung heavy in the air. The defenders had paid dearly since the gate had
fallen, but they’d learned hard lessons since the first assault began. More
barricades had been erected to break up the undead advance, and the priests had
organised themselves to operate in three groups. One group fought while the
second performed the grim task of destroying the corpses of their brothers who
fell in battle, so that they could not be turned against them. The third group
rested and tended the wounded, or formed a new set of barricades for the
defenders to withdraw behind. It was a potent and effective defence; so long as
they kept their heads, they could hold the gate almost indefinitely.

Nagash struck them just as the defenders were rotating groups. All at once,
the piles of old bones glowed a furious green and then exploded, filling the
tunnel with jagged splinters. Men fell screaming, their bodies raked by the
needle-like fragments, and the rest reeled back in shock. Before they could
recover, Nagash himself burst through the gate, his hideous body wreathed in
sorcerous flame. He spat words of terrible power, and darts of fire shot from
his fingertips—where they struck, men collapsed in agony, their bodies
consumed from within. Behind the necromancer came his retinue of ancient
warriors. The undead warlord stepped past Nagash and began slaughtering the
stunned priests with his rune-sword.