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Nagash: The Undying King – Extract

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One

PLAGUE-FIRES

I still endure.

The skies weep, the seas boil, the ground cracks, but I still endure.

Let the stars gutter and the suns go cold, and still, I will endure.

The reverberations of my fall shattered mountains.

My servants are in disarray, bereft of my guiding will.

But I still endure.

I am death, and death cannot die.

It can only be delayed.

– The Epistle of Bone

The mountain air trembled with the squeal of splitting wood as the outer stockade succumbed to the greedy flames. The fire was not natural, for no natural flame burned the colour of pus. Natural fires left ash in their wake, not virulent, shrieking mould. It was a fire roused by sorcery, and only sorcery could snuff it. But there was no time. And, in any event, there was no one among the Drak who possessed the strength to do so. Not even their war-leader.

Tamra ven-Drak, voivode of the Drak, oldest of the highclans of the Rictus Clans, felt her soul wither as the great hall where she’d been born collapsed with a groan. Lodge poles burned like torches, and the skulls of three generations screamed useless warnings to their living kin from their rooftop perches. The fire spread like a thing alive, leaping from peaked log to thatched roof without pause.

‘Back, get back,’ she cried, shoving her clansfolk along, away from the creeping flames and towards an ornately carved stone archway. ‘To the inner keep – go!’ A stream of frightened faces surrounded her, pushing and shoving to escape the oily haze which preceded the plague-fires. The walls of the inner keep were high and sloped backwards, surrounding the lodgehouses of the highborn, as well as the great storehouses which fed her folk in the darkest months of winter, and the icy wells which drew fresh water up from beneath the earth.

The walls had been built in centuries past by greater artisans than her people now possessed. What few living warriors that remained to her clan were stationed there, loosing arrow after arrow at the invaders. Once the last of her folk were safely through, they would retreat down through the lichgates hidden beneath the lodgehouses and within the great wells, then along the secret paths that led into the surrounding wilderness. Those ancient paths had been carved for this very contingency after the black days of the Great Awakening, and they would be the salvation of her people – if she could buy them the necessary time.

Tamra held her ground, letting her clansfolk break and flow around her. The enemy would be inside the outer palisade in moments, and she intended to greet them with all due hospitality. She was a daughter of the Drak, and could do no less.

She caught the edge of her chest-plate and shifted it. The armour was old and ill-fitting, digging into her flesh at inconvenient points. An heirloom from the Age of Myth, it had belonged to her father, and had been handed down from one voivode of the Drak to the next for generations. A stylised serpent, once a vivid red but now a faded brown, marked its faceted surface. It was the symbol of a fallen kingdom, and of lost glories.

Sister.

She glanced at her brother. His empty eye sockets burned with witchfire flames, and his fleshless fingers clutched the hilt of his barrowblade tightly. You should go. They will be here soon. His words echoed in her head like a freezing iron wind. Your responsibility is to the living. Leave this to the dead.

‘No, Sarpa. We will meet them together.’

She recalled the day he’d died to an orruk blade, and the ceremony that followed. She’d left his body on a high slope, to be picked clean by scavenger birds and flesh-eaters. She had carved the sigils of rousing into his bones herself, as he would have done for her. As they’d both done for the dead who now surrounded them in a phalanx. The old dead, the loved dead, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers; the countless generations of the Drak, stirred to fight anew for hearth and home. Death was not the end for the Drak. They lived and died and lived again, to serve their people and their god, and they had done so since the coming of the Undying King and the Great Awakening.

And now the dead were all her people had left, in these final hours. They outnumbered the living two to one, with barely several hundred of her people left to flee. Most of their living warriors, and the hetmen who’d led them, had fallen, slaughtered in open battle by an enemy far stronger than them. But the dead held firm, and so would she. She could feel them fighting on the walls and in the streets. The majority of the dead were scattered throughout the outer keep and along the palisades, fighting to delay the inevitable. One by one, their soulfires were snuffed out as the enemy pressed ever forwards.

‘We hold them here, until the outer village is empty,’ she said. ‘Then we retreat, no faster than we must. Let them blunt themselves on our shields. We are Drak. What we have, we hold.’

We hold, the dead echoed. The skeletons were armoured in bronze and carried weapons and shields of the same. Steel was precious, and carried only by the living; they needed it more than the dead. She could feel the flicker of soulfire animating each of the fleshless warriors, the brief embers of who they had once been. Such was the gift of the highborn of all the Rictus Clans. Only those who could stir the dead could lead the living.

Overhead, black clouds grumbled with the promise of a storm. The skies of the north were never silent, never peaceful. The snow had ceased for the moment, but soon it would be replaced by rain. Purple lightning flashed in the belly of the clouds, and she watched it for a moment. Then, the pox-flames parted and the enemy arrived in a rush.

The first to come were the hounds, their fur soggy with pus and their eyes faceted like those of flies. They bayed and loped forwards in a seething mass of rotted fangs and blistered paws. Bronze-tipped spears slid home, turning their howls to shrieks. Those beasts that made it through the thicket of spears died to swords and axes. As the hounds perished, their masters arrived, lumbering through the plague-fires. The blightkings were monsters, clad in filthy tabards over grimy war-plate marked with the sign of the fly.

They advanced with a droning roar, hefting outsized weapons in flabby hands. They struck the bronze shield wall like a foetid fist, and the line bowed inwards.

‘Sarpa,’ Tamra said, fighting to keep her voice calm. Her brother stepped smoothly towards the enemy. His barrowblade sang a deadly song as it rose and fell, removing limbs and heads. The blightkings’ momentum was broken in moments. They fell back, their droning song giving way to cries of alarm.

They retreated, seeking shelter in the plague-fires. But she could hear the distorted jangle of pox-bells and the thump of skin drums, and she knew more were coming. These had only been the most eager, the least disciplined. She looked around the palisade yard, watching as the last houses of her people were consumed, along with the bodies of the dead. Where the plague-fires burned, her magic was as nothing, and the dead were lost.

They are coming, Sarpa said.

‘Fall back to the archway. Tighten the line.’ She had learned the art of the shield wall from her father, and from his mother before him. Their spirits had whispered to her, in her infancy, and shown her much: the proper way to wage war, to raise walls, to lead. The dead had taught her the lessons of a thousand years. But they had not prepared her for this.

The lands claimed in millennia past by the Rictus Clans were far beyond even the northernmost cities and principalities of Shyish. They were harsh lands, clinging to the frozen coasts of the Shivering Sea. No enemy had ever come so far north in all the centuries since the coming of Chaos. Or at least none had survived the attempt. Those the cold did not claim inevitably fell to the shambling packs of deadwalkers who haunted the thick forests and ice floes in ever-growing numbers.

But these creatures – these rotbringers – were different. They easily endured conditions which had defeated even the most frenzied of the Blood God’s worshippers. And now they were at her walls, battering down her gates. The remains of her strongest warriors hung from their flyblown banners, and the villages of her people were smoke on the wind.

This siege was the culmination of an assault on her territories which had lasted days. The rotbringers were marching north, and they seemed disinclined to leave anything larger than a barrow-marker standing in their wake. Her people had been driven steadily northwards from steadings and camps, until they’d had nowhere else to run. She hadn’t had enough warriors, living or dead, to do more than delay the foe. And now, not even that.

How had it come to this? Was Nagash dead, as the southerners claimed? Had the Undying King truly fallen in battle? How could one who was as death itself die? Her mind shied away from the thought, unable to accept such a thing. Nagash simply... was. As inescapable as the snows in winter, as ever present as the cold, he had always been and always would be. To consider anything else was the height of folly.

Chortles of barbaric glee filled the night as scabrous shapes climbed the palisades. She looked up. These ones were men, rather than monsters, but only just. Clad in filthy smocks and rattletrap armour, they carried bows. Some of them might even have been Rictus, once, before they’d traded their souls for their lives. She’d heard from refugees that several of the lowland tribes had joined the foe, though whether freely or under duress no one had known. It didn’t matter. Whoever they had been, they were the enemy now.

Shields, Sarpa said.

Bronze shields were raised with a clatter, covering Tamra, even as the dead continued to retreat. She heard the rattle of arrows, and saw one sink into a skull. A yellowish ichor had been smeared on the arrowhead, and it ate through the bone in moments. The skeleton collapsed, dissolving into a morass of white and yellow.

Tamra hissed in revulsion and flung out her hand. Amethyst energies coalesced about her fingers before erupting outwards in an arcane bolt. The palisade exploded, and broken bodies were flung into the air. As the echo of the explosion faded, the blightkings gave a roar and thudded forwards, supported by more of their mortal followers.

The dead reached the archway a moment later. ‘Brace and hold,’ Tamra said, as Sarpa pushed her back into the archway. It was the only route into the inner keep, short of knocking down the walls themselves, and these were not mere palisades of hardened wood. They were hard stone, packed by dead hands in better days. Sorcerous fire might eat away at them, but it would take time. Her people would be gone by then, scattered into the crags and hollows. There were hidden shelters in the high places, and secret roads in the low. Some of them would escape. Some would survive, and find safety among the other clans.

Axes crashed against shields for what felt like hours. The dead held firm. Sarpa stood beside her, waiting with eerie patience for what was surely to come. Tamra looked up at the archway, which rose high and wide around them. A hundred generations of Drak artisans had added to it, chiselling away cold stone to reveal scenes of life and history, great battles and small moments, the story of her people. She placed a hand against it. ‘I will miss it,’ she said.

We hold, Sarpa said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hold.’ That was what Drak did best. Come raiding orruks, marauding ogors or vengeful duardin, the Drak held. Their bronze shield walls had never been broken before today, and she was determined that they would not break again. Not while she drew breath. ‘Hold, brothers and sisters. Set your feet and lift your shields. We are Drak.’

We are Drak, came the ghostly reply. The dead held, as they always did. She reinforced their will with her own, adding her strength to theirs. Bronze swords slid between locked shields, seeking swollen flesh. Bodies piled up before them, creating a second wall, this one of flesh. She considered drawing them back to their feet, but her strength was flagging. Best to save her power for holding this last phalanx together.

All around her, great maggoty axes hewed apart bone and bronze. Skulls fell to the snowy ground and were crushed beneath the tread of the enemy. The dead retreated, their line contracting. They left a trail of carnage behind them, but the enemy continued to press the assault. Tamra’s breath rasped in her lungs as she spat darkling oaths. Amethyst fires seared pox-ridden flesh clean, as chattering spirits ripped warriors from the ground and sent them crashing into the stones. But it was not enough. Soon the spirits faded and the purple flames dimmed, leaving only the oily green of the plague-fires.

The archway cracked and crumbled as the dead were pushed back. The courtyard of the inner keep was empty of all save for those who had died on the walls. With a thought, she jerked them to their feet, though it repulsed her to do so. It was not right to animate the dead thus, not when flesh still clung to their bones, but necessity drove her. The deadwalkers lurched towards the foe, tangling them up, buying her a few more moments.

You must flee now, sister, Sarpa pulsed, his voice piercing the veil of pain that was beginning to cloud her thoughts. Her skull ached, and her heart stuttered in its cage of bone. She had never attempted so much magic in so short a span. All around her, the last lodgehouses of the Drak were burning. Stores of food, hoarded against the winter, were consumed by the flames. The ancient wells, which had served her folk since time out of mind, now vomited up a virulent steam, as the waters within turned foul and black.

She backed away, clutching her head. The back of her legs struck something. She turned. An immense wooden effigy, carved in the likeness of the Rattlebone Prince, stared down at her with empty eyes. As a child, she had prayed to Nagash, begging him for the strength to aid her people in battle. When she made the bones dance for the first time, she’d thought that he had answered her, that he’d blessed her. But where was he now? Where was the Undying King when his people needed him?

Tamra, her brother said. Go. Thunder rumbled overhead, as if in agreement.

‘No. I will not leave you.’ She flung out a hand, trying to summon the strength for another spell. ‘I will...’ She trailed off as a hush fell. The pox-worshippers had broken off their attack as they spilled into the courtyard, holding back, as if in readiness for something. ‘What are they doing?’

Waiting, Sarpa said.

Tamra did not ask for what. She did not have to. She could feel what was coming easily enough. The flats of rusty axes thudded wetly against pustule-marked shields, and the droning song of the pox-worshippers rose in tempo. Their ranks split like a wound, disgorging a rotund shape, clad in foul robes. The newcomer waddled towards the dead, a leering grin stretched across his pallid features. Toadstools sprouted in his wake, pushing through the yellowing snow, and a cloud of flies swirled about his head like a halo.

Tamra could taste the fell magic seeping from him. A sorcerer. The same who had set the palisades alight and burnt the forests black.

‘Well. Well, well, well. What have we here?’ His voice was like mud striking the bottom of a bucket, and he flashed rotten teeth in a genial smile. ‘Dead men walking.’ He sniffed and looked around. ‘This is the place for it, I suppose.’

He gestured, and a pox-worshipper limped forwards, cradling a grotesque banner in the crook of one bandaged arm. The creature set the banner upright. Plague-bells dangled from a daemonic visage wrought in iron. A pale liquid sweated from the face and pattered to the ground, causing virulent wisps of smoke to rise from the churned snow.

‘I, Tulg, claim this place in the name of the Most Suppurating and Blightsome Order of the Fly,’ the sorcerer said. He gesticulated grandly. ‘Be joyful, for life returns to these dead realms.’

‘This place is not yours to claim,’ Tamra said loudly. Loose snow whipped about, as the storm grew in intensity overhead. Thunder rumbled. The crackle of the plague-fires was omnipresent. Somewhere, a hunting horn blew. She tried to shut out the noise, to focus on the enemy before her. If she could kill him, the foe might flee. Her people might yet be saved or, at the very least, avenged.

‘Is it not? We seem to be doing a fine job, regardless.’ The sorcerer looked around. ‘I see no defenders of merit. Only old bones and a scrawny woman. If that is the best you savages can muster, our crusade will be easier than Blightmaster Wolgus claimed...’

‘Kill him,’ Tamra said. The dead surged forwards, their fleshless frames lent vigour by her will and fury. The sorcerer laughed and swept out his hands. Plague-fire consumed the remaining skeletons, one after the other. She staggered as their soulfire ebbed and her spells were torn asunder. The ache in her head grew worse, and she clutched at her scalp.

Back, sister. Sarpa shoved her aside as a claw of green flame swept down and he thrust up his shield to meet it. For a moment, he held it at bay, but the flames writhed around the edges of the shield and the bronze began to corrode. It blackened and sloughed away, and the flames poured down, engulfing her brother. He sank to one knee, his spirit groaning in her head. Tamra... sister... run...

Lightning flashed, searing the night. She heard the sorcerer utter a startled oath, and she screamed as her brother’s soul was snatched away from her flagging grip. Smoke billowed, filling the courtyard. Coughing, she sank back against the statue of Nagash.

‘I beg you help me,’ she said, staring up at the effigy. ‘Heed me, Undying King. Heed your servant in this, her hour of need. Help your people...’ Her voice cracked and she slumped against the statue. Tears froze on her cheeks. ‘Help us.’ She saw the blackened hilt of Sarpa’s barrowblade and snatched it up. As she lifted it in both hands, it crackled with the fading sting of lightning and burnt her palms.

‘I do not know what sort of sorcery that was, but lightning or no, it will avail you nothing,’ the sorcerer said, as he waved the smoke aside. ‘I think I will chain you to my master’s palanquin, corpse-eater. Or what’s left of you. You do not need your arms or legs to stump along, awkward though it may be.’ He coughed. ‘And your scalp will look fine hanging from the banners of the Order of the Fly.’ He clapped his pudgy hands together gleefully. ‘So... arms, legs and hair. In that order, I think.’

‘Come and take them, if you can,’ Tamra said, forcing herself upright. Grief sat like a lead weight in her chest, along with not a little fear. Her brother was gone. But she was a daughter of the Drak, and death was to be embraced. She extended Sarpa’s blade. She heard the winding of a hunting horn again, closer this time.

The sorcerer chortled and advanced, green fire dripping from his crooked fingers. ‘Maybe I’ll burn your tongue out as well. You seem like the type to curse overmuch.’ The pox-flames flared bright and began to swell around him. As they did so, a shadow fell over him, and he glanced up, eyes widening. ‘What–’

A flash of red and black descended. The ground shook, the flames were snuffed and the sorcerer vanished, his body abruptly pulped beneath the curving talons of the monstrosity which now crouched between Tamra and her foes. A long, whip-like tail of vertebral segments lashed with feline agitation as fleshless jaws sagged, exhaling a cloud of masticated spirits. The wailing spirits swirled about the beast, bound to its creaking bones by some fell sorcery. The blightkings drew back from the dread abyssal as it pawed at the snow, fastidiously scraping what was left of the sorcerer from its claws.

Its rider leaned forwards in her saddle, a mocking expression on her youthful face. She was beautiful, Tamra thought, though it was a deadly kind of beauty, like that of a fine blade. She wore black armour, studded with bones, and a tall headdress, in the fashion of the ancient kingdoms of the Great Dust Sea. Her exposed arms were the colour of marble, and her lips were blood red. Her eyes shone like those of a great mountain cat caught in the torchlight.

‘Did we interrupt? My apologies – Nagadron grew impatient.’ The rider’s pale hand stroked the black iron bones of the dread abyssal’s neck. At her touch, the monster stiffened and uttered a piercing shriek. ‘I am Neferata, the Queen of Blood and Mistress of the Barrowdwell. And you... well, it doesn’t really matter, does it?’ Her thin lips stretched in a feral smile as she drew a long curved blade from a sheath on her saddle. ‘After all, you’ll be dead soon.’

The dread abyssal surged forwards, limbs clicking like the workings of some great mechanism. Neferata leaned low, and at her gesture, the bound spirits boiled forwards. They rolled over the blightkings and their mortal followers like a malignant bank of fog. Spectral claws and blades separated heads from shoulders and spilled intestines into the snow. The blightkings tried in vain to strike back at their unearthly foes, but their blows chopped harmlessly through the smoky forms.

Nagadron slammed full tilt into the distracted blightkings, and Neferata’s sword flickered out, capitalising on the damage done by her spectral warriors. She gave a shriek of laughter as the dread abyssal bore a bloated warrior down and bit off his head. An arcane bolt sizzled from her palm and zigzagged through the ranks of pox-worshippers, reducing them to smoking husks. As the slaughter progressed, Tamra heard the hunting horn once more, louder than ever, and felt the ground tremble beneath her feet.

The blightkings broke as Neferata savaged a path through their ranks, and they began to spill back towards the archway, seeking safety. But there was none to be had. A column of armoured riders astride coal-black horses speared through the archway and into the disorganized rabble. The newcomers wore black armour, and their pale feminine faces glared out from within baroque helms as they lashed out at the foe. They pierced the enemy ranks like a blade and the column split in two, encircling the pox-worshippers. The carnage which followed was brief and cruel. When the last of the blightkings lay dissolving in his own juices, Neferata turned her monstrous steed back towards Tamra. As she passed by it, she uprooted the plague-banner and tossed it aside. ‘You are welcome,’ she said, looking down at Tamra.

‘Thank you, great lady,’ Tamra stuttered. She had heard stories of the being known among the Rictus Clans as the Great Lady of Sorrows, but seeing her in the flesh was something else entirely. The vampire radiated a terrible strength, as if her lithe shape were but a mask, hiding something infinitely more monstrous within. Eyes like agates bored into her own, and she felt as if her mind and soul were being peeled back bit by bit.

‘You are of the Drak?’ Neferata said. She gestured to her face. ‘You have that look, something about the jaw.’

Tamra sank down to one knee, leaning against her brother’s sword. ‘Yes, O Queen of Blood. I am Tamra ven-Drak, voivode of these lands.’ She looked up. ‘Or I was.’

‘Yes. You look a bit like dearest Isa. The eyes, I think.’

Tamra hesitated. Queen Isa ven-Drak had been dead for centuries, and her bones long since dust scattered on the wind. Neferata turned away as one of the black riders trotted towards her. ‘The rest of our blightsome friends?’ she asked.

‘Scattered, my lady,’ the vampire said as she removed her helmet. ‘Or impaled, for those who follow to find.’ She had been beautiful, once, and still was, if you ignored the hunger in her eyes and the stains of old gore streaking her ornately crafted war-plate.

‘Ah, Adhema, your little jokes will be the death of you, I fear.’

‘But not today, mistress.’

‘No, not today. Today the Sisterhood of Szandor has won a great victory,’ Neferata said. She looked back at Tamra. ‘Where are your people? Some survived, I assume.’

‘Fled into the crags and hollows,’ Tamra said. She rose at Neferata’s gesture. ‘Where it is safe, my lady.’

Adhema snorted. ‘There is no safety. Not here or anywhere else.’

‘No. But perhaps we might make such a place.’ Neferata raised Tamra’s chin with the tip of her sword. ‘Call your people back. They must go north, to the shores of the Rictus Sea, to the great redoubt there. You know it?’

‘I... yes. Is-is this the word of Nagash? Has he returned? Is he to lead us in battle once more?’ Tamra couldn’t stop the questions from spilling out.

‘Nagash?’ Neferata said, looking down at her. She leaned over and spat in the direction of the effigy. ‘That is for Nagash. And good riddance to him.’

Tamra watched the gobbet of crimson spittle slide down the statue’s cheek. ‘Where is he?’ she asked, softly.

‘Not here, sister,’ Neferata said. ‘I fear we have only ourselves to look to, in the dark days to come.’ She gave a mocking smile. ‘And what a relief it is.’

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For Sylvie, who keeps me going.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

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