‘I still can’t believe that you brought that cat with you.’ Arkhan turned at the harsh croak, and examined the angular, patchwork face of the man who stomped towards him. Ogiers was – or had been – a nobleman of Bretonnia. Now he was a horseless vagabond, whose once-minor interest in necromancy had suddenly become his only means of protection, in the wake of Mallobaude’s failed rebellion. He was also a giant of a man, who towered over the bodies of his former men-at-arms.
‘And I can’t believe that something so inconsequential weighs so heavily on your mind,’ Arkhan said. ‘And you do have a mind, Ogiers. That’s why I pulled you from under the hooves of your kinsmen’s horses. What of the others? Did we leave anyone on the other side?’
‘Some. No one consequential. That jackanapes Malfleur and that giggling maniac from Ostland. Fidduci made it through, as did Kruk,’ Ogiers said with a shrug. Arkhan stroked his cat and considered the man before him. Ogiers’s beard, once so finely groomed, had become a rat’s nest, and his face was splotched with barely healed cuts and bruises. Big as he was, he slumped with exhaustion. He’d discarded most of his armour during the retreat over the Grey Mountains, but he’d kept what he could – more, Arkhan suspected, for sentimental reasons than anything else. The other necromancers likely looked just as tired. He’d pressed them hard since they’d reached the borderlands, keeping them moving without stopping. He forgot sometimes, how heavy flesh could be. It was like an anchor around you, bone and spirit.
He considered leaving them, while he forged ahead, but knew that would only be inviting trouble. They were frightened of him, but fear only went so far. He needed to keep them where he could see them.
Mallobaude’s rebellion had stirred a hornet’s nest of necromantic potential. In the months before his first, tentative missives had reached Arkhan in his desert exile, Mallobaude had sought to gather a colloquium of sorcerers and hedge-wizards to counter the witches of the lake and wood who bolstered the tottering throne of his homeland. Dozens of necromancers and dark sorcerers had responded, trickling over the Grey Mountains in ones and twos, seeking the Serpent’s favour. When Arkhan had arrived at last, he’d been forced to initiate a cull of the gathered magic-users. Most were merely fraudsters or crooked creatures with only a bit of lore and a cantrip or two – hardly useful in a war. These he butchered and added to the swelling ranks of dead, where they’d be more useful.
Others he’d sent off to the fringes of the uprising, to distract and demoralise the enemy. The rest he’d gathered about him as his aides. He’d rescued the best of these in the final hours of the rebellion, gathering them to him and whisking them away from harm. Many hands made quick work, and he had much to do. The angles of the Corpse Geometries were bunching and skewing as the world shuddered beneath the weight of some newborn doom. The world had teetered on the edge of oblivion for centuries and it appeared that something had, at last, decided to simply tip it over.
The thought was neither particularly pleasant nor especially unpleasant to Arkhan, who had long ago shed such mortal worries. Death was rest, and life a burden. He had experienced both often enough to prefer the former, but the latter could never entirely be shed, thanks to the grip Nagash held on his soul. ‘We will keep moving. Let the dead fall. This land is full of corpses, and we no longer have need of these. They merely serve to slow us down.’ He swept out a hand, and the shambling legions at their back twitched and collapsed as one with a collective sigh, all save the two enormous corpses that bore the heavy, iron-bound Books of Nagash in their arms. The two zombies had, in life, been ogre mercenaries from across the Mountains of Mourn. They and a mob of their kin had been drawn to Bretonnia by the war, and slain in the final battle at Couronne. Arkhan had seen no sense in wasting such brawny potential, and had resurrected them to serve as his pack-bearers.
‘This is the first time we’ve stopped in days. We are not all liches, lord,’ Ogiers said, looking about him at his fallen warriors. Arkhan had dispatched them with the rest. If Ogiers disapproved, he was wise enough to say nothing. ‘Some of us still require food, sleep… A moment of rest.’
Arkhan said nothing. Behind Ogiers, Fidduci and Kruk made their way towards them over the field of fallen corpses. Franco Fidduci was a black-toothed Tilean scholar with a penchant for the grotesque, and Kruk was a twisted midget who rode upon the broad back of the risen husk of his cousin, clinging to the wight like a jongleur’s pet ape.
‘What happened? All my sweet ones fell over,’ Kruk piped.
‘Our master has seen fit to dispense with their services,’ Ogiers said.
‘But my pretty ones,’ Kruk whined.
‘If you’re referring to those Strigany dancing girls of yours, they were getting a bit mouldy,’ Fidduci said. ‘Best to find some new ones, eh?’ He looked at Arkhan. ‘Which we will, yes? This is not a land for four innocent travellers, oh most godly and grisly of lords,’ he said cautiously.
‘Frightened, are you?’ Arkhan rasped.
‘Not all of us have escaped death’s clutches as often as you,’ Ogiers said. He looked around. ‘Maybe we should take our leave of you. We will only slow you down, lord, and you disposed of our army, thus rendering our contribution as your generals moot.’
The cat examined the gathered necromancers with milky eyes. Its tail twitched and its yellowed and cracked fangs were visible through its mangled jowls. Arkhan stroked it idly, and said, ‘No, you will not leave my side. Without me, you would be dead. Actually dead, as opposed to the more pleasing and familiar variety. We all serve someone, Ogiers. It is your good fortune to serve me.’
‘And who do you serve, oh most puissant and intimidating Arkhan?’ Fidduci asked, fiddling with his spectacles.
‘Pray to whatever gods will have you that you never meet him, Franco,’ Arkhan rasped. ‘Now come, we are a day from… What was it called, Kruk?’
‘Valsborg Bridge, my lovely master,’ Kruk said. The diminutive necromancer hunched forward in his harness and pounded on his mount’s shoulders. ‘Come, come!’ The wight turned and began to lope in a northerly direction.
Arkhan gestured with his staff. ‘You heard him. Come, come,’ he intoned. Fidduci and Ogiers shared a look and then began to trudge after Kruk. Arkhan followed them sedately. As he walked, he considered his reasons for coming to Sylvania.
Bretonnia had been, if examined honestly, an unmitigated disaster. He had intended to use the civil war as a distraction in order to crack open the abbey at La Maisontaal and secure the ancient artefact ensconced within its stone walls, but Mallobaude had failed him. He’d been forced to retreat, gathering what resources he could. He intended to return, but he required more power to tip the balance in his favour. And time was growing short. The Long Night fast approached, and the world was crumbling at the edges.
There was no easy way to tell how long it took them to reach the bridge, even if Arkhan had cared about marking the passage of time. More than once, he and the others were required to fend off roving bands of ghouls or slobbering undead monstrosities. Bats swooped from the sky and wolves lunged from the hardscrabble trees, and Arkhan was forced to usurp their master’s control to protect his followers. Ghosts haunted every crossroads and barrow-hill, and banshees wailed amidst the bent trees and extinct villages that they passed on the road to Valsborg Bridge. It was Mannfred’s hand and will behind these obstacles, Arkhan knew. The vampire was trying to slow him down, to occupy his attentions while he mustered his meagre defences.