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  Harkdron smiled as he anticipated the onslaught to come. The invaders had preserved their tower against a few spells and spears, but how would they fare against a few hundred ravenous fell bats?

  The shrieking, chirping cacophony that wailed across the wormfields drew every eye skyward. Lascilion was no exception. He cursed when he saw the swarm of gigantic bats that flittered above his army. Each of the monsters was as large as a horse, leathery wings torn and tattered, mangy fur peeling away from rotten flesh and yellowed bones. Sorcerous fires gleamed in the hollows of their broad faces, blazing with the most bitter malignancy.

  Lascilion shouted commands to the warriors around him, calling them to guard against attack from above. The warning, he soon discovered, was unnecessary. The huge bats took no notice of the men and beastmen below but instead sped onwards. He cursed when he understood the objective towards which the fiends were flying. The aerial horrors were making for the great column of iron and wood his warriors were rolling towards the walls of Nulahmia.

  ‘With me,’ Lascilion snapped at his bodyguard. Arrayed in heavy coats of mail that glistened with stolen jewels and plundered gemstones, the Amethyst Guard looked too ostentatious to be dangerous. Many foes had spilled their lives on the axes of Lascilion’s warriors after dismissing them as pampered fops. The Amethyst Guard were connoisseurs of the blade, relishing the excitement of combat with the same ardour as a drunkard with his wine. In the whole of his horde, there were no fiercer fighters than these refined killers, at least not among his mortal followers.

  Even with the Amethyst Guard ready to follow him, Lascilion hesitated as he drew the reins of his snake-like steed and turned its head towards the threatened siege engine. The swarm of bats was nearly on its objective now, rancid bits and pieces falling from their decayed bodies as they swooped in for the attack. He couldn’t reach the hulking spire of iron and wood in time to intercept the enemy. The wards and charms the horde’s sorcerers and shaman had woven to protect the construction from hostile magic would be of little effect against the undead bats. It was doubtful any of the warriors near the siege engine would climb up to confront the attackers; they were too aware of what it would mean if they were to fall inside the framework.

  Lascilion looked away as the first of the bats struck at the framework, scrabbling at the iron fastenings, gnashing its fangs against the wooden supports. Instead, he studied the distance between the siege engine and the walls of Nulahmia. A bark of grim laughter rumbled from the warlord. Neferata had waited too long to unleash her flock. She had let Lascilion get too close, let his horde draw too near the atmosphere of wickedness and depravity that saturated her city. He could feel the defiled energy reaching out to him. Soon it would reach out to others, invigorating and intoxicating his warriors, feeding their lust for conquest. There was naught that her bats could do now to change the situation.

  Or was there? Lascilion turned back to the great spire. The upper reaches were now coated in the leathery wings and decaying bodies of the giant bats. He could imagine the raw terror pounding through the hearts of those within the spire as the ravenous monsters tried to tear their way inside to reach them. It always struck Lascilion as ironic how even a man who knows he is going to die can still feel fear in such magnitude. Of course so few appreciated the strange relish of fear, or the thrill of anticipating one’s own mortality. Rare were those who could truly appreciate the art of a novel death.

  ‘Hold,’ Lascilion told his bodyguard as he stood up in his saddle. In a single motion, he drew Pain and Torment from their scabbards and held both swords above his head. As the two blades touched, a nimbus of purple light flashed from the contact, a signal to the siege masters following behind the lumbering spire.

  Another flash of purple fire answered Lascilion, a flicker that started just behind the spire and then quickly grew into a conflagration that swept up the skeletal framework. Like a colossal torch, the whole of the spire was quickly engulfed in the sorcerous flame, from the base of the wheeled carriage to the spiked crown at its summit. The undead bats were consumed in the arcane pyre, some of the vermin trying to fly away, spinning through the air like blazing torches before plummeting earthward. Others were immolated as they clung to the framework of iron, their wings curling into charred strips, their bodies bursting as the deathly gases within them exploded.

  Shrieks of nigh-unbelievable torment sounded from the spire. From top to bottom, the occupants were caught in the same flame that had devoured the bats. It was a fire that seared not only the flesh but the soul as well. Lacking the vitality to feed the abominable sorcery, the undead bats had been destroyed outright, but for the living victims within, a far more lingering and excruciating doom was their lot. What the vampires had mistaken as the crew of a siege tower were in fact offerings, sacrifices chained inside the framework, mortal fuel to feed an infernal flame.

  The flames wouldn’t burn long. Had the bats set upon the spire a moment sooner, Lascilion would have faced a potential catastrophe. The undead had waited too long, however. The flames would last until the weapon was pulled to the walls. Indeed, the extra measure of fear the fell bats had extracted from the sacrifices was lending the fire an even greater potency.

  Lascilion watched in fascination as the spire swung downwards. The Chaos horde scattered as the blazing framework slammed down upon the bed of the wheeled carriage. Ahead of the gigantic conveyance, immense mammoths were being harnessed to drag the construction forwards, their angry trumpets echoing across the wormfields. Small streamers of purple fire flickered along their harnesses, scorching the immense war mammoths and goading them to pull faster towards the city.

  Howling his delight, the giant daemon Mendeziron marched to the rear of the carriage and gripped the base of the prone spire with his four arms, clinging to it as though to a lost lover. The agonies of the burning sacrifices rushed through him, blazing through his monstrous frame. The enormous daemon reared back, shrieking in obscene ecstasy. Scores of nearby marauders collapsed as the sound smashed down upon them, overwhelming their minds in a riot of sensation.

  Mendeziron’s cry echoed back into the Realm of Chaos, reaching into the senses of his kindred daemons. The burning spire acted as a beacon to the ravening hosts that scratched at the barriers of reality. Shimmering rents opened across the wormfields, disgorging packs of depraved creatures. Lithe daemonettes with sinuous bodies and monstrous claws sprang from the fissures opened by Mendeziron’s shriek. Crab-like fiends scuttled out of glowing cracks, squealing with infernal delight as they drew in the debauched scent of Nulahmia.

  The Keeper of Secrets cried out again, and in reply more daemons came creeping out from the gashes inflicted by his malign power. The defenders now realised the true nature of the siege weapon Lascilion’s horde had built. Not a tower to climb the walls, but an arcane altar to summon a daemon army to tear them down. A storm of arrows pelted the carriage, bolts of necromancy crackled from the claws of vampires and the staves of deathmages, stones flew from the arms of catapults. None of the attacks were sufficient to overcome the malignant magics that rippled across the fallen spire. Arrows were reduced to ash as they hit the purple flames, skull projectiles shattered into bony fragments and wisps of impotent enchantment, spells fizzled out into clouds of harmless smoke.

  The agonies of the mammoths pulling the carriage drove them to ever-greater effort. By the time the purple fires overcame them and left them sprawled along the ground, the carriage had come less than a hundred yards from the Jackal Gate. Still shrieking his ghastly cry, drawing more daemons onto the wormfields, Mendeziron stepped down from the now-unmoving altar. His body steaming with purple flames, the daemon took hold of the burning spire. Wrenching it from the carriage, the Keeper of Secrets dragged it towards the gate. As a last effort by the defenders to halt the daemon, a torrent of boiling blood spilled from the jaws of the stone jackal that looked out over the gate, but it was to no avail. The blood sizzled
as it struck the flames, sending an eerie crimson mist steaming into the air above the ram.

  With a monstrous roar, Mendeziron struck the Jackal Gate – not at the gate itself, however, but at the walls of the gatehouse to the side of the archway. One arm still clenched about the burning spire, the daemon was bristling with the eldritch energies and supernatural sufferings of the sacrificial victims. Enticed to the edge of mania by the depraved atmosphere that saturated the whole of Nulahmia, the daemon’s blow connected with the force of a hundred battering rams. The tremendous magic that fed the purple flames was unleashed in a heartbeat. With a deafening clamour, the entire left side of the Jackal Gate exploded, flung back into the city by the perverse sorcery brought against it. Slabs of stone weighing several tons came slamming down into the streets, pulverising undead defenders, pelting the outer wards of the city with a crushing shower of debris.

  Thousands of barbarous war cries boomed across the wormfields as the horde cheered the incredible destruction. A great surge of beasts and men rushed for the immense gap in the wall where the Jackal Gate had been. The Sorroweaters were in the vanguard, their chief Tokresh-khan leading his warriors into the breach. Lascilion saw some of the undead work their way free from the rubble and try to block the marauders, but they were too few to oppose the oncoming tide. An armoured vampire, his cape torn and tattered, appreciated the fact more keenly than the fleshless skeletons and wights he commanded. After cutting down a dozen of Tokresh’s men, the blood-drinker turned and retreated into the city.

  Lascilion laughed at the vampire’s flight. The creature was only delaying the inevitable. The rest of Shyish was given to Chaos. Now Nulahmia would be added to those conquests.

  Slithering across the rubble, flanked by the Amethyst Guard, the warlord’s steed carried Lascilion into the broad plaza just behind the ruined gate. All around him, swarms of marauders and daemons were streaming into Nulahmia. He saw a brayherd of goat-like gors battering their way into a squat building, and an instant later he heard the screams of the structure’s inhabitants. Neferata had peopled her city with the living as well as the dead, but they were a wretched and broken breed. Men who had spent generations brutalised and oppressed by the vampires would not suddenly discover the courage to fight now.

  It was a far different story with the undead who served the Mortarch. The Queensroad, the main avenue through the city, was thronged with legions of armoured skeletons, shambling zombies and even worse horrors. While part of his horde dispersed to sate the obscene appetites that called to them, Lascilion mustered his own reserves of discipline. Twelve warlords had been dispatched by Archaon Everchosen to find Nulahmia and conquer it. Even the Bloodking had failed to conquer the city. Lascilion alone had succeeded. He wouldn’t allow his own desires to turn victory to defeat now, in the final hour.

  Lascilion raised Pain and Torment once again, letting the purple light flash a second time. It was a signal, a summons to his horde, a command only the most debauched and depraved would defy. In an army such as his, Lascilion knew there were many who lacked the restraint to deny themselves. He scowled when he saw the hulking figure of Mendeziron lumbering off towards the inner wards, seeking the largest concentrations of mortal victims to glut his daemonic hunger. A great flock of lesser daemons followed the Keeper of Secrets, like scavengers loping after a hunting lion, eager to feed off the predator’s leavings.

  The warlord cursed Mendeziron’s disobedience. It was true enough that the daemon had broken the walls and drawn multitudes of his own kind to augment Lascilion’s forces, but clearing the Queensroad would be far more difficult without his might. The lesser daemons and marauders engaging the undead legion were unable to break through the skeletal ranks. Their ferocity and savagery could not break the determination of beings devoid of thought or fear. The undead had to be annihilated, destroyed outright. There would be no rout, no easy victory.

  ‘With me,’ Lascilion ordered the Amethyst Guard. Digging his spurs into the flanks of his snake-like steed, Lascilion slithered across the skull-paved roadway and between the rows of impaled corpses that lined the street. He tried to deafen himself to the cries of outrage and brutality that rose from the dying city, smothering the urge to feed his own appetites. Later. Later there would be time for any abomination he could imagine. Once the city was conquered.

  The warlord turned his face towards the summit of the Throne Mount deep within Nulahmia’s temple district. His forked tongue licked out. He could smell his prey. Neferata was up there, entombed in her palace. Her tyrannical scent was unmistakable. She’d had a long time to perfect her cruelties against her subjects, but Lascilion would show her what it was to truly be devoted to depravity. From her palace, she would listen and watch as Nulahmia perished.

  The spectral blaze of the spirit-beacons stabbed into the smoky sky, staining the plumes with a ghostly green luminescence. Phantoms could be dimly glimpsed flickering in and out of the glowing beams, struggling to draw shape and form from the necromantic energies. Far below, spaced about the flattened plateau of the Throne Mount, the immense bone-clad braziers continued to consume the lost souls that fed the beacon lights. The shambling, grotesque creatures that bore the canopic jars to feed the fires were sometimes themselves consumed, their own miserable energies sucked out from their decayed bodies, their crumbling corpses shattering as they struck the bloodstone platforms upon which the braziers stood.

  Neferata watched the eerie spectacle from the balcony high up in her palace. How many times had she stood here, gazing down upon her city, revelling in the golden lustre of nostalgia? She was more than queen and Mortarch for Nulahmia; she was the city’s mother. Every structure had been raised to her exacting specifications, demolished and rebuilt until they shone with the glory of perfection. The inhabitants, the mortal subjects who bestowed upon the city its vivacity, had been pampered and nurtured to excess. They wanted for nothing; even the least among them was spoiled beyond the imaginings of most men. They wore robes of velvet and gowns of silk, supped from golden plates and drank from cups of sapphire. Even their deaths were things of splendour, spectacles to be remembered and recorded.

  All that Nulahmia had been was vanishing before her eyes. Neferata’s arcane vision allowed her to see through the smoke and darkness that enveloped the city. She could see the Chaos warriors pouring through the shattered Jackal Gate, ransacking and despoiling at will. The beasts and barbarians slaked their crude thirsts upon the flesh of her subjects, glutted their appetite for plunder with the treasures of her people. Among the throng she could see the lithe shapes of creatures devoid of mortal blood, daemonettes that danced through the streets butchering whomever aroused their fiendish interest. The vampire queen felt a shiver course through her. She had faced the handmaidens of Slaanesh before when they had sought her out. It was an experience even she found abhorrent.

  Her legions still held the northern limits of the Queensroad, though they were sorely pressed by the forces of Chaos. That they had held this long was a testament to how much of the horde had quit the battle to ravage the city. Had the full might of the horde been loosed against the Queensroad, the enemy would already have prevailed. As it was, they were obliterating the skeletal warriors and zombies faster than her vampires and necromancers could reanimate them. Once the horde was finished there, only the temple district would be left. Then, the enemy would move against the Throne Mount itself.

  Neferata raised her gaze to the spirit-beacon. She had resisted lighting the fires for as long as she dared. Perhaps some of her court would be motivated to fight harder if they thought help was coming. The delusion of hope could instil a terrible tenacity in the weak-minded. For her part, she doubted any of her fellow Mortarchs would answer the summons. If they hadn’t been overwhelmed by Archaon’s hordes, then they would be like herself – a hunted thing trying to survive in the shadows. To expose themselves to the enemy simply to relieve Nulahmia was something she doubted the likes
of Arkhan or Mannfred would risk. Certainly, if the roles were reversed, she would not go to their aid. Not with the odds so heavily weighed against them.

  That fool Harkdron! Neferata had expected him to fail, but she had anticipated an interval during which she could consider her options and plan her next move. The speed with which her consort had been defeated, the rapidity with which the hordes of Chaos had poured into Nulahmia, had caught her off guard.

  The vampire queen turned her back on the view of her dying city and watched as one of her handmaidens stepped out onto the balcony. Though she appeared as the merest wisp of a youth, Kemsit had existed for millennia as a creature of the night. In better days, she had attended Neferata on royal hunts into the Cobweb Forest to kill werebloods and flayworms. During the great battles against Archaon’s armies, she had served as both spy and shieldbearer for her queen. Now, as she walked between the skeletal morghasts who flanked the balcony, the expression on her face was vulnerable and uncertain.

  ‘My queen, Lord Harkdron has returned,’ Kemsit announced, bowing before Neferata.

  Neferata’s eyes blazed. For just an instant, her rage focussed upon Kemsit. If any other of her handmaidens had brought such tidings to her, they would have been pitched over the balustrade and down to the streets below. Her attachment to Kemsit made her hesitate for the split second she needed to compose herself. Callous bloodshed had its place, but right now it was cunning and strategy that would serve her best.

  ‘Send the fool to me,’ Neferata snarled, dismissing Kemsit with an imperious flick of her hand. All effort at remaining composed drained from her as her morghast guards stepped aside and allowed Harkdron onto the balcony. The regal glamour of the queen vanished from her pale face, driven out by the viciousness of a cornered predator. Fury smouldered in her eyes as she watched her lover advance towards her. His armour was battered and dented, soiled with the stinking gore of things human and inhuman alike. As he bowed before her, the vampire’s mail creaked and groaned.