Another lightning strike hit the corpse of a Black Guard, coruscating across silver armour. He pushed himself to his feet, more viscera spilling from the axe wound in his gut, halberd levelled in dead hands.
‘No,’ murmured Malekith as the two dead things fell upon the Naggarothi, who cried out in horror moments before being cut down. ‘No. Not like this. Not now.’
More lightning struck, again and again, increasing in frequency until the whole valley was ablaze with flashing energy. A fog of undeath sprang up from the ground, reanimating all that it touched, shambling figures advancing within the green mist to beset the druchii companies that had stalled in their counter-attack.
Malekith watched as the eagle he had slain earlier flapped ragged wings, digging itself out from under a pile of broken branches. Its rider, the asur prince with the bow, emerged from the fog and mounted the great bird, and the two soared aloft, together in death as they had been in life.
Across the pass the Naggarothi counter-attack had advanced over thousands of dead and now the slain were returning, striking from behind their lines. Beset by the undead the regiments of druchii fractured, losing all coherence and strategy. Malekith bellowed out his rage, cursing Teclis’s name, vowing to gut the meddling Sapherian when they next met, no matter the consequences.
All was not lost, despite Malekith’s tirade. Even as the undead clawed and dragged down his warriors, so they also fell upon the asur. The Whiteweald had been a battleground for the past few days and before that the daemons had slaughtered thousands of Chracians. Now the Wind of Death breathed new vigour into rotting flesh and half-stripped bones. With sinews of magic driving them, the dead of the Whiteweald rose, falling on Chracian and maiden guard, aesenar and druchii without discrimination.
Malekith swooped low over the battlefield, searching for some presence of Ystranna. Though he had perverted the winds of magic to his needs, he had unfinished business with the handmaiden of Avelorn.
There was no sign of her, either mystical or physical, and Malekith bit back his frustration. She had escaped, no doubt with other commanders and mages. Her army was retreating, fighting through the dead of the Whiteweald, but protected from pursuit by the reanimated corpses of the recent battle.
The Witch King considered going after them, or commanding Imrik to wipe out the Chracians, but the present threat of the undead curtailed the urge. Such had been the ferocity of the battle and the daemon invasion the undead outnumbered his host and the dragons were needed protecting what army he had remaining. It would avail him nothing to wipe out Ystranna’s force only to have no army of his own to exploit the slaughter.
For most of the night he held the tide with Urithain and Seraphon, putting to the sword reconstituted manticores and hydras, slaying again dragons that had the day before been killed by war machine bolts and magic.
When his constitution had recovered sufficiently, in the greyness just before dawn Malekith tapped into the well of magic opened by his confrontation with Ystranna. He let the winds of magic spill forth from the fissure that broke the flank of the mountain, a wave of pure Ghyran washing away the taint of Shyish as one might cleanse infection from a wound, sending the last of the animated dead back to their graves.
All across the Whiteweald walking corpses collapsed, the light going from their eyes, undead grasps losing grip of weapons and shields. The druchii stumbled around in the aftermath, in no position to fight or pursue, their voices lifted in praise to their king and the gods and goddesses of the underworld.
Malekith could do no more and bid Seraphon to bear him back to his pavilion. Dismissing the dragon he issued one last command to the Black Guards that stood watch: he was not to be disturbed by anybody.
As soon as he passed out of their sight, Malekith slumped, overwhelmed by the exertions of the day. He staggered to his iron throne and collapsed into its embrace, weary in mind and body.
Sleep came, but brought with it a nightmare of death. Malekith’s dream was filled with visions of Nagash’s Great Ritual as the dead of the world burst forth from ancient graves and slid open the portal stones of their tombs.
In the Northern Wastes above the empire of the humans the corpses of thousands of dead marauders returned to life, breaking out of crude cairns to savage their former kinsmen. Chaos-cursed armies and knightly expeditions of battles long past fought again their wars of pillaging and retribution.
Across the realm of the dwarfs, runes and seals cast to prevent such magical incursion melted and burned, releasing tormented spirits that moaned and wailed through the chambers and halls of the mountain cities.
The gardens of Morr, the humans’ guardian of the dead, were awash with the Great Necromancer’s power, the rituals of the priests availing naught against the sorcery of the first Necromancer. The bodies of burghers and nobles clambered from ornate mausoleums while in the potters’ fields beyond the walls of towns and cities generations of dead were revivified and fell upon the slumbering citizenry.
Eventually darkness came and Malekith dreamed no more.
Eighteen
Fresh Plans
Though rested in mind and in body, Malekith awoke with a restlessness of spirit.
At first he could not fathom what disturbed him so. It was like an appointment he could not remember, or that he had misplaced some object and had forgotten that he should be looking for whatever was missing. He sat on the throne trying to work out what it was that vexed him, when suddenly he realised what it was.
There were only seven winds of magic.
The Wind of Death, Shyish, was gone. Not abated or dampened as he might expect following the immense raising of the dead by Nagash, but completely gone. Like a grin missing a tooth the winds blowing from the north were incomplete and it was this sensation that was so irritating to his psyche.
His smouldering form burned into fresh life as he bellowed for Kouran to attend him. With full wakening returned memory, and the recollection that Ystranna had escaped the trap she had unwittingly sprung.
‘How long since the battle?’ the Witch King demanded before Kouran could even offer a bow or salute.
‘Three days, my king,’ replied the captain. ‘And two more nights. I despatched scouts by horse and foot and wing but there is no sign of the Chracians or the host from Avelorn.’
‘Of course not,’ snarled Malekith, standing. ‘They have been bloodied and seek to bind their wounds. The mountains hold not only hunting lodges and peat-burners’ huts. There are fortresses here, hidden, dug into the stone like dwarf-holes. The Chracians have gone to ground and wait for us to make our next move.’
‘We shall not disappoint them, my king. The army is ready to march north at your word.’
‘North?’
‘To the coast, my king. Is it not your intent to seize the harbours and crossing to the Blighted Isle?’
This seemed presumptuous of Kouran, to explain strategy to the Witch King, but Malekith knew no insult was intended and let it pass.
‘I would no more have that tree-witch dogging my heels than I would the Anars. We will scour Chrace until she and her army are destroyed.’
‘My king, it could take a season to find them and they are ensconced within their hidden keeps, another season and more to break their defences.’