Soul Wars

Chapter thirteen Inevitable

Ayala turned, peering east. The wind brought with it a grave-chill, and the hint of a sour meat stink that was unpleasantly familiar. The old woman pulled her tatterdemalion robes tight about her, suddenly cold. Her hand fell to the curved knife sheathed on her hip. It was a good knife, blessed and edged with silver, but it made her feel no safer.

This was not a night for safety. No night was safe, not in Shyish. But this night especially – something felt wrong. Something had changed, though she didn’t know what. A few days ago, the sky had twisted in on itself, and the ground had shuddered. Tremors weren’t unknown in the desert, but never were they so forceful.

There was something coming. She felt it in her water, the way a sand-rat felt the shadow of a bird’s wings. From close by, music rose towards the stars as her kith and kin held back the shadows with the old songs. They would be dancing too, around the fire, whirling so that their robes caught the light and made the air swim with reflected colour. Noise and colour – these were the strongest proofs against the dark.

‘The wind in your bones, grandmother?’ her granddaughter, Uskya, called out as she drew near. Ayala turned. Uskya was the image of her mother, Ayala’s daughter, dead these past two turns of the season. The young woman was dark of eye and hair, with the slim build that characterised the Zirc. Her robes were of many colours, the same as Ayala’s, the same as those worn by every nomad in the nine hundred tribes. ‘Come back to the fire, we’ll soon drive it out. Feytos has made dinner.’

‘I know, child. Why do you think I’m out here?’ Feytos, her other grandchild, was chieftain now, like his father before him. Among the Zirc, it was tradition that a chieftain prepare the evening meal. Unfortunately for all of them, Feytos was a terrible cook.

Ayala glanced back towards the quintet of towering wagon-fortresses that bore her tribe across the desert sands. The enormous conveyances resembled wheeled citadels, their frames studded with balconies, garrets and towers. Higher than all of these were great pipes of bronze. Thin streams of steam wafted from the pipes, signalling the cooling of the massive boilers that turned the wheels.

The wagon-fortresses were arranged in a rough circle about the gigantic bonfire that the nomads had started. Feeding the fire had taken more of their precious supply of wood than Ayala approved of. But if there was ever a night for it, this was it.

Uskya laughed and interlaced her arm with Ayala’s. ‘He is not that bad a cook, grandmother. And the meat is good – the best the Azyrites had.’

Ayala sniffed. ‘The best they were willing to trade, you mean. They keep the best for themselves, always.’ The traders at Fort Alenstahdt were shrewder than she liked. They made her brothers, sneak-thieves all, look like naïve children when it came to bargaining. All of the Azyrites were like that, though.

She looked up at the stars. They seemed so cold and remote, this night. The Zirc worshipped Sigmar, who wore the firmament as a nomad wore robes. The Azyrites claimed to worship him as well, though their golden man-god seemed nothing like the Wind-Walker she and her tribesfolk venerated.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the sound of moaning. Out in the dark, jackals began to yelp. Uskya shuddered. ‘Deadwalkers,’ she said.

Ayala nodded, eyes narrowed. ‘And close.’ The hungry dead roamed the desert in grave herds, usually only a few dozen, but sometimes numbering in the hundreds. She listened and heard the slow ­shuffle of feet across the sand.

‘Getting closer,’ Uskya added. She tugged on Ayala’s arm. ‘Come. Let us go back.’

Ayala resisted. She’d seen something – starlight, glinting off steel. ‘There’s something else out there. Do you hear it?’ Like the rattle of war-plate, and the slow rasp of bone on bone. Her hand fell to the hilt of her knife.

The wind was howling now. Sand scraped her cheeks. Something – a man, perhaps – staggered over the top of the nearest dune, stumbled and fell. It rolled across the sand, leaving a wide trail. Uskya took a step towards it. ‘Is he…?’

Ayala caught her wrist. ‘No.’

The body flopped over and lurched upright with a crackle of strained ligaments. It gave a ghastly moan and sprang forwards, faster than Ayala expected. Usually, the dead were slow. But this one moved almost as quickly as a normal man. She jerked her granddaughter out of its path and reached for her knife. The corpse floundered into her, teeth gnashing.

As they fell, she saw more deadwalkers begin to stagger down the dunes. She fumbled at the dead man’s face, trying to keep his teeth from her throat. Uskya appeared over the deadwalker’s shoulder, her own knife in her hand. She drove her blade into the corpse’s neck, trying to sever its brainstem. The corpse jerked, knocking her sprawling. It lurched half-up, eyes fixed on new prey.

Ayala slashed out, recapturing its attentions. Her blade ripped the dried flesh from its cheek, exposing bone. It turned with a groan and snapped at her. She felt a jolt of pain and jerked back. The corpse followed, and she slammed her knife into the rotting hole where its nose had been. Angling the blade, she sliced into what was left of its brain. Black ichor gushed over her hand, and the corpse toppled off her. She jerked her blade free and Uskya rushed to her, helping her to her feet. ‘Hurry, grandmother, hurry! They are coming!’

Corpses shambled towards them, slower than the first, but not by much. And marching in their wake, skeletal forms, clad in rotting leather and tarnished armour.

Behind them, cries of alarm rose from the bonfire. Someone had finally noticed the dead. Something shrieked past, riding the night wind. Ayala looked up, as Uskya caught her uninjured arm. The old woman’s eyes widened as she saw ghostly shapes, swooping down through the black, skimming past the stumbling corpses. They seemed to fill the sky, from end to end, like carrion birds drawn to the feast.

Her folk had many names for them. So too did the Azyrites. She shoved Uskya towards the wagons. ‘The light, we must get into the light.’ Uskya didn’t argue. She had known what those shrieks heralded since childhood. All Zirc did.

The sands boiled behind them as they ran for the gap between wagon-fortresses, and the firelight beyond. Things cackled, just out of sight. Unseen hands tore at Uskya’s robes, and Ayala turned, slashing the silver blade out. The cackling things retreated, but only for a moment. And the walking dead drew ever closer.

‘Cold… so cold…’ Uskya said, clutching at herself where the dead had gripped her. Ayala nodded.

‘So are they,’ she said. ‘Hurry.’ The glow of the bonfire washed over them. The camp was in an uproar. Men and woman huddled together, fearful of the things that spun like great moths or bats, just out of the glare of the light, while others ran for the wagons or slashed uselessly at the spirits. Shadow-shapes stretched across the sands, clutching at the inattentive. Nomads shouted and thrust spears or blades into the gauzy things, trying to pin them to the ground. The dead slipped away, only to return like nightmares.

‘What is this, grandmother?’ Uskya asked. ‘Why is this happening?’

Ayala said nothing. Her kin raced about, gathering up what belongings they could, before hurrying to reach the safety of the wagon-fortresses. Steam belched from the copper pipes, as desperate crews stoked the boilers. Horns blew, and lanterns were lit, washing the sands with light. She saw her grandson, Feytos, bellowing orders to his kinsmen.

He wore his armour beneath his robes, as was habit with most of the men. He gestured with a silver sword, bought at great expense from some Azyrite merchant. ‘Get to the wagons,’ he roared. ‘Full steam west. Make for Fort Alenstahdt!’ He caught sight of them. ‘There you are – quickly, get aboard.’

His eyes widened slightly as he noticed Ayala’s wound, but before he could speak, something crashed down on him from above. It screamed like a water-panther as it landed, and Feytos died with its blade in his back.

The thing rose, jerking the blade free. It was like no dead man Ayala had ever seen: a thin, stretched shape, wrapped in black iron and grave shroud. Eyes like amethyst light blazed from within a shadowed helm, and the face that held them twisted and changed from that of a man to a fleshless rictus as she watched.

It took a step towards them, moving with an awkward, stuttering gait. It twitched and was suddenly closer. Every spasm brought it nearer. The world around her seemed to slow, and the night became as tar. She heard Uskya shouting, as if from a vast distance. But she could not look away. His eyes blazed brighter and brighter, drawing her in. The world closed about her and fell away.

And then the dead man was staring down at her.

Pharus stared down at the old woman, studying her. She gazed up at him, as if frozen. Everything seemed frozen, as around them, the dead went about their bloody work. The air was filled with screaming. Of the spirits that surrounded him, the chainrasps were the most numerous. Spiteful things, broken by Nagash’s will, their forms dictated by the circumstances of their death, they filled the clearing amid the wagons in a dolorous tempest, whispering and wailing.

But there were others as well. Black-eyed dreadwardens, scythe-wielding reapers and glaive-bearing stalkers swooped and drifted among the panicking nomads, killing any who tried to resist or were too slow to reach the dubious safety of the wagons. Some of the nighthaunts served him, while others were bound to Malendrek.

The Knight of Shrouds was howling out his contempt nearby. Malendrek had ridden his skeletal steed into the heart of one of the wagons, leading his ghostly horsemen in an orgy of bloodshed. Somewhere out in the desert, Grand Prince Yaros and Crelis Arul would be making their own way towards the slaughter, leading their forces.

A mass sigh ran through a knot of nearby chainrasps, and they scattered, revealing a hunched, broken shape, wrapped in a rusty shroud of keys and locks. The spirit’s face was hidden beneath a helmet that might once have been in the shape of a dog’s muzzle, or a bird’s beak, and it wore a crude, rusting hauberk of scalloped plates. In its colourless hands, it gripped handfuls of chain, which flickered with nauseating energies.

Those chains, Pharus knew, could draw in a soul, and trap it. Fellgrip was a jailer of the dead. It was trailed by a coterie of lesser phantasms – its wardens. These spirits clustered about the hunched thing, whispering to it and lashing out at the other, lesser chainrasps with clubs and rusty axes, driving them away from their master.

‘Fellgrip,’ Pharus said. Fellgrip twitched its chains at the sound of his voice, and their rattling sent a shiver through Pharus’ soul. The temptation to strike the Spirit Torment down was almost overwhelming – something about it unsettled him, and instilled in him a sense of terrible foreboding. It stared down at the old woman with malign intensity, and he extended his sword between them. ‘Go. Collect the tithe. This one is mine.’

Fellgrip gave a disgruntled warble and drifted away, followed by its lackeys. Arkhan had bound the creature to him, somehow, as he had bound several other powerful spirits. Pharus turned back to his prey.

The old woman still stood as if frozen. Steam billowed, mingling with the smoke of the bonfire, enveloping them both. Several of the wagons were starting to move, their great wheels shaking the earth. Pharus reached out, almost gently, and caught the old woman by the throat. She barely struggled. There was a wound on her arm, and he could see the black strands of deadwalker poison spreading through the flickering light of her soul. A quick death would be a mercy for her.

He raised his blade. It yearned to taste her blood and flesh, and he yearned for it as well. To sup on the moment of her death, to take some of her warmth into himself. He was cold. So cold. So empty.

Something silver flashed out of the corner of his eye. He felt a blow and flung the old woman aside. The younger nomad stood before him, holding the silver sword of the man he’d killed. She darted past him, to the side of the old woman. ‘I won’t let you hurt her,’ she shouted. Her voice echoed strangely, and he paused. Her face reminded him of another… younger, but with the same eyes, full of fear and determination…

…hurt her…

…won’t let you hurt her…

He twitched the echo aside and raised his blade.

…the dead were everywhere in the streets, everywhere he turned…

…his halberd swept down, chopping through a door as dead hands caught at him…

‘Elya,’ he croaked. A name. Whose name?

…a small girl – Elya? – wailed as something from the grave clutched her to its bosom…

He stopped, sword raised. It was as if something held him fast.

…he had raised his lantern, and there was thunder…

He heard the hiss of a voice inside him.

Free them, Pharus. Life is a cage, and only the dead are truly free.

It was not the first time Pharus had heard that voice, since leaving Nagashizzar. It had been barely audible, at first. A soft murmuring. But it had grown louder, the farther they travelled from the Silent City. It spoke to him of what he must do, of the justice owed him. He could not ignore it, and so he listened.

Still, he hesitated. The words felt wrong, somehow.

Nagash freed you. Nagash will free them all. They will see, as you now see.

But the very notion seemed somehow antithetical to him. He shook his head, trying to clear it. A human gesture, more from instinct than need. The doubts fluttered like moths and receded. The sword felt heavy in his grip and slowly, he lowered it. The old woman, on her feet now, caught the younger by the hand and dragged her away from him. He did not move to stop them.

He caught sight of something that might have been the hint of a skull in the facets of his sword. Its gaze burned into him, and he shuddered as a sense of displeasure radiated through him. He tore his eyes away and turned, needing something… hungry for something…

‘You hesitated.’

He spied a thin shape, stretched and too tall, wafting towards him, dragging a massive axe in its wake. Spirits hurried from its path, almost as quickly as they had made way for Fellgrip. The newcomer’s face, half-hidden beneath a ragged hood, lacked definition, save where it was forced into shape by the mask of ashes and dried blood she wore. She smiled at Pharus, revealing blackened teeth.

‘Why did you hesitate, my sweet lord? Even in life, I never hesitated.’

‘It is not for you to question me, spirit,’ Pharus snarled.

She bowed mockingly. ‘Have you forgotten my name already, my lord? Shall I remind you? I am Rocha, my lord. Entyr Rocha, Lady of the Fourth Circle. In life, I was High Executioner of Helstone. In death, I am the axe in your hand. But speak, and I shall mete out justice to those who defy you.’ She looked past him, in the direction the women had fled. ‘Shall I hunt them down, lop off their heads and present them to you?’ She lifted her axe, and Pharus saw that the blade had been stained black with blood.

‘No,’ he said. The air smelled of death. Bodies lay in heaps and piles. One of the wagons burned, and chainrasps cavorted in the flames, as nomads screamed. Deadwalkers and deathrattle warriors stalked through the haze of smoke, pursuing the living.

‘The Mortarch of Sacrament bid me serve you,’ Rocha hissed, drifting closer. ‘He casts forth his hand, and a thousand gallows-ropes snap taut. A true lord, wise and mighty.’ She peered at him. ‘But you are not. Not yet. Light still flickers in you. I can taste it and – oh – it is a deceitful thing. It will lead you astray, that light.’ She hesitated. ‘I thought to grasp it, once. I was betrothed to a prince. A mighty prince.’

She trailed off, her gaze unfocused, lost in memories. The spirits that clung to her began to moan and wail, and her gaze sharpened once more. ‘But he is gone, and I am here. I sent a thousand or more souls to face the Black Judge when I was alive, and many more since.’ She ran a thumb along the pitted edge of her axe. ‘It was my duty then, and my only pleasure now. As it should be yours.’ Her voice was as harsh as a raven’s caw. ‘Rejoice, for you have found justice at last. The guilt of life is taken from you, and you are free.’

She shuddered slightly, and Pharus saw that the weak spirits were clutching at her arms and pulling at her hair. He could hear their voices clearly now – high, thin accusations and curses. She floated back to the slaughter, muttering to the gibbering spirits in resigned tones. He watched her go and felt a flicker of something – unease? Sympathy?

‘Do not waste your sorrow upon her, my lord. Innocent blood stains her hands, and her crimes fill volumes in the Libraries of Mourning.’

Pharus turned. The spectre behind him was tall and clad in black burial robes. He wore a sword on his waist, its sheath tattered and the bare blade etched with dolorous sigils. His face was hidden behind an iron death-mask, such as those worn by the ancient folk of the Ghurdish Hills. The mask was a beast’s head, complete with tusks and curling horns.

A suit of shattered armour hung from his starveling frame, and in one pale hand he clutched a staff, topped by an ancient lantern. Within the lantern, a shrivelled hand sat, each of its fingers topped by an eerie, green flame. The light of the creature’s lantern was… warm. Comforting almost. Part of him longed to bask in it.

‘Omphalo Dohl,’ Pharus said. ‘Come to chastise me as well?’ Dohl was another servant, gifted to him by Arkhan.

‘Not so, my lord. Never. I am but a humble shepherd of broken souls.’ Dohl’s voice was reminiscent of a funerary bell. Each word was like a portent of doom.

The nighthaunt drifted closer, and the light from his lantern washed across Pharus. The gnawing hunger and cold that had begun to build in him faded momentarily, and he sighed. ‘That light – it reminds me of something else. I think… I think I used to carry such a light, once.’

He looked around. The battle – if it could be called that – was all but over. Deadwalkers crouched over unmoving forms, tearing mindlessly at the cooling flesh. Deathrattle stood silent and unmoving, awaiting commands. And the nighthaunts flocked like carrion birds to the high tiers of the fortress-wagons, hunting any who might still be hiding.

Dohl drifted closer. His eyes were black behind his mask. As pitiless as the void. But not malignant. Not evil. Merely… empty. ‘It was taken from you, along with all that you were or could have been. You were denuded of your power and strength, and cast down by an uncaring god. Gaze into my light, if you would see the truth.’

Pharus looked away. ‘I know the truth. Why would a god lie?’

‘What is a lie but the shadow of a truth?’ Dohl pulled his staff back, so that the light faded. Pharus grimaced. The hunger was back and worse than before. It clawed at his non-existent insides, and he felt ravenous. Not for meat or drink but for something else. He wanted to lash out. To tear open living flesh and draw out the screaming soul within.

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘No. No, I do not want that.’

But he did. That need pulsed in him, loud and insistent. What right had the living to the pleasures now denied him? What right had they to the sun, to the breeze, to the touch of a loved one? Or even something so simple as the taste of an apple? Was it not just, then, to take such unearned and unappreciated privileges from them?

As if reading his thoughts, Dohl said, ‘In death’s shadow, all men are equal, in misery and reward. For the Undying King bestows blessings as well as curses. But only upon those who acknowledge his primacy.’

Pharus closed his eyes. But even then, he could see the light of Dohl’s lantern. It was inescapable. ‘He gave me my form,’ he said softly. ‘Remade me from nothing.’

He freed you from captivity. He will give you justice.

‘Sigmar abandoned you,’ Dohl said. ‘Nagash saved you.’

As he will save all that is.

Pharus bowed his head. ‘Yes.’

Dohl loomed close. ‘I sense your doubt, my lord. It hangs heavy over you. Look into my lantern light, and your doubt will burn away. You will see the truth, and all doubt will be lifted from you.’

Pharus opened his eyes. He turned, ready to look, when a harsh laugh caught his attention. He whirled, and Dohl hissed in annoyance. ‘Who dares–?’

‘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.