[Nagash 03] - Nagash Immortal Read online

  Growling thoughtfully, Eekrit regarded the messengers that knelt at the foot of the dais. This would be no field battle, where he could stand atop a piece of high ground and take in the movements of his entire force. This assault would follow dozens of twisting paths through the labyrinthine fortress, directed by a steady flow of messages between Eekrit and his chieftains. He would be no closer to the battle than the dais upon which he now stood.

  The warlord rested his paw upon the hilt of his sword. His ears flattened against the side of his skull. With a twitch of his tail, the air about Eekrit grew heady with musk. A stir went through the skaven assembled upon the dais; at the foot of the stone platform the messengers gripped their paws against their chests and raised their snouts. Pink noses twitched; lips quivered, revealing blunt, yellowed teeth.

  Lord Eekrit stretched out his free paw. “Go!” he commanded in a shrill voice. “Carry my command to the chieftains! Swarm through the tunnels! Tear apart our foes! Seize the treasures of the Horned God! Strike-strike!”

  Chittering and squealing, the messengers scattered in a blur of dark cloaks and whipping tails. They raced down narrow lanes between the great war-packs, sending a ripple of excitement through the restless horde. Within seconds, the runners were lost from sight. Then, from the far end of the cavern, came a blood-chilling chorus of bone whistles, rising and falling in an eerie cadence that never failed to set the warlord’s fur on end. In response to the call, pack leaders snarled and spat at their warriors. The giant mass of furred bodies began to heave like an angry sea as the army began to move. Thousands of clawed feet scraped on stone; the air shivered with a cacophony of brass bells and clashing cymbals. Lord Eshreegar screeched a command to his scout-assassins and sent them racing after the mass of warriors, their black cloaks flapping about their flanks. The army’s many scouts would be responsible for leading the scattered contingents of clanrats through the maze of tunnels towards their objectives. Lord Eekrit turned his attention to one side of the dais and beckoned for a goblet of wine.

  The skaven were marching to war.

  ——

  War in the Deeps

  Nagashizzar, in the 96th year of Geheb the Mighty

  (-1325 Imperial Reckoning)

  The skaven horde came swarming up out of the bowels of the great mountain, pouring in a flood of snarling, snapping, sword-wielding bodies into the shadowy corridors and noisy mine works of Nagash’s fortress. Guided by Lord Eshreegar’s scout-assassins, they overran level after level in a headlong dash for the treasures that Nagashizzar contained.

  Surprise was absolute. The lowest levels of the fortress were all but deserted, so the skaven were more than halfway to their objectives before they encountered the first of Nagashizzar’s skeletal inhabitants. The handful of undead labour parties caught in the horde’s path were literally crushed underfoot, trampled by the weight of thousands of charging, brown-furred warriors. The momentum of the charge was so great that the old bones were crushed to powder within moments. By the time the rear ranks passed over the same spot, naught but tendrils of dust remained.

  The attackers reached the deepest of the mine shafts within minutes. The dank air trembled with the piping wails of bone whistles and the screech of skaven war cries as the clanrats erupted into the flickering light of the tunnels and fell upon the slow-moving skeletons. The disparity in numbers told against the undead labourers at once: the skaven came at their foes in packs, dismembering the skeletons with contemptuous ease. The initial encounters were over so quickly that actual skaven casualties occurred only in the aftermath, as the clanrats took to squabbling with one another over upturned carts of god-stone nuggets, or found a convenient, out-of-the-way spot to slip a knife into a troublesome rival.

  As the invaders rose through the many levels of the fortress, resistance began to slowly increase. More and more, the skaven would burst into a strategic passageway and find a phalanx of skeletons waiting for them. Swords, spears, claws and teeth clashed with picks and shovels, or sometimes nothing more than bony, grasping hands. In each case, the defenders were quickly overrun, scarcely slowing the clanrats’ headlong advance.

  The first real fighting of the skaven assault occurred in the last, highest mine shafts. Almost two full hours had passed since the attack had begun, and the warriors of Clan Morbus, who had been given the honour of running the farthest to seize the most played-out of the mine shafts, found themselves up against packed ranks of skeletons armed with spears and wearing tattered but functional armour. Here the onslaught faltered, as the clanrats were forced to chew their way doggedly through the press of slow-moving foes. Before long the passageways became choked with heaps of bones and bleeding bodies, but the snarls of the chieftains—and the sharp jab of their blades—kept the clanrats fighting towards their goal.

  The skeletons fought to the very last, giving ground only after they had been hacked to bits. The clanrats overwhelmed the remaining defenders at the very entrances to the topmost mine shafts, only to find the sloping tunnels dark and nearly devoid of treasure. The warriors who had been fighting in the front ranks slumped wearily against the tunnel walls and commenced to lick their wounds, leaving the rest to scuttle about in search of some kind of plunder. They cursed and spat, finding only a handful of nuggets in the deepest part of the shaft—which found their way unerringly into the paws of the much larger and cleverer clan chieftains.

  It wasn’t long at all before small parties of enterprising skaven began exploring the branch-tunnels that led to the upper levels of the fortress. All of the god-stone carved out of the upper shafts had to have been taken somewhere, after all. When the first few parties didn’t return immediately, the rest of the clanrats took it as a sign that there were valuables up above, and the wretches were helping themselves to as much of it as they could. More small groups skulked off and when they didn’t return, still more and still larger parties set off after them, until finally the chieftains took notice and took out their ire on the lackwits who remained behind.

  That was when they heard the first, faint, bloodcurdling howls—shrieks of madness and savagery the likes of which no skaven throat could make—echoing from the upper passageways. Moments later came a bare handful of hysterical clanrats, covered in gruesome wounds that turned foul with poison before the chieftains’ very eyes.

  A cold wind gusted down the branch-tunnels, filling the mine shaft with the dusty stench of old death. Over the frenzied howls of the approaching monsters came the eerie wail of horns and the tramp tramp tramp of thousands upon thousands of skeletal feet.

  At first, the destruction of his servants in the lowest levels of the fortress escaped Nagash’s attention; accidents occurred from time to time, and what was the loss of ten or twenty skeletons out of the teeming multitudes under his control?

  It was only when the labour parties in the lowest and deepest mine shafts vanished that the necromancer realised something was amiss. Treachery, Nagash thought at once, immediately suspecting Bragadh and the northmen of some kind of coup. Furious, he drew upon the power of the burning stone, focussing his awareness on the skeletons toiling in the lower levels so he could come to grips with the scope of the attack. Even as he did so, three more of the mine shafts were overrun; dozens more skeletons were destroyed, but in the split-second before they ceased to exist, Nagash caught a glimpse of his foes. They weren’t wild-eyed, bearded northmen, however; instead, he saw a seething mass of armoured, dark-furred bodies, wielding short, pointed bronze swords or cruel-looking spears. There was a flash of beady eyes, red with reflected light, and the snapping of curved, chisel-like teeth—and then darkness.

  An angry hiss grated from Nagash’s leathery throat. The ratmen! An army of them, loose in the deepest parts of his fortress! It had been centuries since he’d set eyes upon the filthy creatures, and then only in small, cowardly little packs. They slunk like jackals through the wastelands to the west of the great mountain, searching for pieces of burning stone. In those days h
e’d slain each and every one he’d found, whether they carried any stone on them or not. Their very existence offended him.

  Somehow they had discovered the great lode of sky-stone buried within the mountain—his mountain—and they had come to lay their disgusting hands on it. Nagash vowed that when he’d slaughtered these interlopers, he would find the stinking holes from whence they’d come and wipe them from the face of the earth. Bragadh and his young warriors would have the blood they were thirsting for after all.

  The lash of the necromancer’s will resounded across the length and breadth of the fortress, and tens of thousands of skeletons swayed like wheat against its invisible weight. They answered the call to arms in silence, save for the creak of dried skin or the clatter of bone.

  Not long afterwards came the ominous tolling of alarm gongs from the tallest towers of the fortress. The deep, shivering notes reverberated through the air and sent a chill down the spines of the living. Across dozens of marshalling grounds, companies of northern warriors paused in their training and looked skywards, wondering at the sound. How could there be an alarm when there was no enemy to be seen for leagues in any direction?

  In the shadowy recesses of the great fortress, packs of Yaghur raised their heads and added their howls to the spine-tingling chorus. The noise rolled like an avalanche down the mountain slopes and across the grey sea, where it reached the ears of hundreds more of the flesh-eaters. Entire tribes emptied from their foetid lairs, loping like apes across the reeking, marshy ground in response to their master’s call.

  Within the fortress, living messengers ran back and forth from the great hall, carrying Nagash’s commands to his barbarian troops. Meanwhile, the necromancer threw every available skeleton he could into the ratmen’s path to slow them down while he assembled his spearmen into companies near the surface.

  His rage grew as one mine shaft after another fell to the swarming creatures; their numbers were vast, easily as large as any Nehekharan army, and he had to concede that the assault was being carried out with speed and skill. Comparing the rate of their advance to the marshalling of his forces on the upper levels, Nagash could see that the ratmen would overrun all of his mine shafts and possibly even reach the upper levels themselves before his army was ready to act. Working quickly, he despatched several large companies into the upper mine shafts to slow down the enemy advance and keep the monsters bottled up below ground. Nagash meant to keep the ratmen penned up in the tunnels, where he could grind the horde to pieces under the relentless advance of his spearmen. He had no need of cunning manoeuvres or elaborate stratagems; Nagash planned to come at the trespassers head-on, crushing the ratmen under the weight of his troops.

  The necromancer filled the upper tunnels with spearmen and hundreds of slavering flesh-eaters, then despatched Bragadh and his warriors to seal off the surface exits of each of the mountain’s mine shafts. Any attempt by the ratmen to escape his advance—or outflank him along the surface—would be met with a thicket of barbarian spears. All too slowly, the units of his army moved into position, like pieces on a gaming board, while his rearguard troops in the upper mine shafts were slowly but surely cut down by the advancing ratmen. When the invaders finally broke through and swarmed into the mine shafts, Nagash turned his attention upon the Yaghur. Whispering words of power, he exerted his mastery over the foul creatures and stirred them to action.

  Gripped by the necromancer’s unyielding will, the flesh-eaters crept silently down the dimly lit tunnels towards the invaders. Though they could not be controlled as completely or as easily as the true undead, they were swifter, stronger and far tougher than his regular troops and their constant hunger made them keen predators. At his command, the flesh-eaters found places along the tunnels to lie in ambush for any advance parties of ratmen that ventured their way.

  The Yaghur didn’t have long to wait. The first, small scouting parties were swiftly overwhelmed, succumbing to the flesh-eaters’ filthy talons and powerful jaws. Behind them came still more of the invaders, in ever-larger and less-cautious bands, until finally there were so many of the rat-creatures to contend with that the Yaghur couldn’t possibly take them all at once. A handful of survivors managed to escape the flesh-eaters’ clutches, fleeing back the way they’d come. With a mental command, Nagash ordered the first of his companies to advance, intending to strike before the clanrats could organise a proper defence.

  Once again, the Yaghur struck first. The blood-spattered beasts erupted from the branch-tunnels hard on the heels of the dying ratmen, sowing terror and confusion through the enemy’s ranks. The air shook with the baying of bone horns and the tread of marching feet. When the first companies of spear-wielding skeletons emerged into the upper mine shafts the stunned invaders lost their nerve and fled, trampling one another in their haste to escape. From his throne in the great hall many levels above, Nagash smiled cruelly and poured the energy of the burning stone into his lead companies, speeding their limbs and pressing hard upon the ratmen’s heels.

  The tide of battle, at first so overwhelmingly in favour of the ratmen, turned just as swiftly against them. The invaders fled back into the lower levels, spreading panic amongst their fellows. The necromancer’s forces reclaimed one mine shaft after another; they slew so many ratmen in the process that they couldn’t keep up with the survivors in the corpse-choked tunnels. The Yaghur, provided with a feast the likes of which their kind hadn’t seen in centuries, required constant pressure to keep them focussed on the battle at hand, slowing the pursuit still further.

  Lord Eekrit was eating fermented musk-berries and preparing a letter to inform the Grey Lords of his great victory when the first of Lord Eshreegar’s scout-assassins returned to the great cavern. At first, he paid no mind to their near-frantic whispers as they reported to the Master of Treacheries. The scouts had been ordered to continue their explorations of the levels beyond the mine shafts, in hopes of finding where the skeletons were storing the god-stone. From the sound of their voices, he surmised that what they’d found was far greater than anyone had expected.

  The first intimation that something was wrong came not from Eshreegar, but mad Lord Qweeqwol. The old seer limped up next to Eekrit and leaned in close. “It’s begun,” he hissed, his scarred nose twitching. “Time for battle. Fight-fight!”

  Eekrit curled his lip in a bemused scowl. What in the Horned One’s name was he babbling about? He glanced up, and caught sight of Lord Eshreegar. The Master of Treacheries looked like he’d swallowed a live spider.

  The warlord glanced down at the bowl of half-eaten berries in his left paw. On impulse, he stuffed the remainder in his mouth and gulped them down. Thus fortified, he went over to the scouts. The black-robed underlings shrank back at his approach, their tails lashing apprehensively. At once, the fermented berry juice curdled in Eekrit’s guts.

  “What is going on?” the warlord asked, his voice deceptively mild.

  The Master of Treacheries turned slowly to regard his commander. The skaven’s whiskers twitched.

  “There… ah,” Eshreegar began. “There is a small problem.”

  Eekrit’s tail twitched. “What kind of problem?”

  “Ah…” the Master of Treacheries considered his reply carefully. “It’s possible there are more skeletons here than we thought.”

  The warlord’s beady black eyes narrowed on Eshreegar. “How many more?”

  Eshreegar stole a glance at his minions. The scouts focussed their gaze on the cavern floor, as though contemplating an escape tunnel.

  “Well. Perhaps… five or six,” Eshreegar said weakly.

  The warlord’s ears flattened against his skull. “You and your rats have had years to scout this place,” Eekrit hissed. “There were two thousand of the skeletons, you said. And now you tell me you missed five or six hundred more?”

  Eshreegar seemed to shrink in on himself. His head drooped below the level of the warlord’s snout. His whiskers twitched and he mumbled something under his breath.
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  “What was that?” Eekrit demanded. “Explain yourself!”

  “Not five or six hundred,” the Master of Treacheries said in a defeated voice. “Five or six thousand.”

  The warlord’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “I said—”

  Eekrit cut him off with an upraised paw. “I heard what you said,” the warlord snarled. “How… where…” He paused, breathing deeply. His paw clenched, as though ready to claw out Eshreegar’s eyes. “Where are they now?”

  Speaking quickly, his voice pitched barely above a squeak, Eshreegar related what he’d heard from his scouts. “Clan Morbus is in-in full retreat,” he finished. “The upper shafts have been retaken.”

  “And what of Rikek and Halghast?” the warlord demanded. They would be the next clans in line if the skeletons continued their descent.

  Eshreegar spread his paws helplessly. “There is no-no word yet.”

  “Find. Out.” Eekrit growled.

  The scouts leapt to obey without waiting for a word from their master. As soon as they were gone, the warlord stepped close to Eshreegar, until the two skaven were snout-to-snout. He sensed an opportunity here.

  “The Council will want an explanation,” Eekrit hissed.

  Eshreegar made a half-hearted shrug. “One skeleton looks much like another,” he said.

  “It is your business to tell the difference!” the warlord snapped. “Do you imagine the Grey Lords will be sympathetic, Eshreegar?”

  “No.”

  Eekrit nodded. “Just so. You will need allies if you hope to keep-keep your hide.”

  The Master of Treacheries nodded. “Of course,” he replied. “I understand.”

  The warlord nodded. “Good. Then fetch a map. Now.”

  Eshreegar gave a quick nod of obeisance and turned to bark orders at a nearby underling. The warlord folded his paws against his chest and began to pace, his mind working quickly.