Book of The Dead

From a hill five kilometres from the city of Kallas, Leras Sathin watched the approaching cloud of darkness rolling in above with a sense of quiet horror.

“Are we really going to stand here and watch this happen?” he muttered to himself, not expecting an answer.

“Of course,” the man beside him replied firmly. “We are here as official witnesses for the court. We will do our duty and watch, no matter what may unfold.”

Leras had seen veteran soldiers many times in the past. He could be considered one himself, with more than a decade in the field, but the man beside him had been fighting longer than the Sathin Lord had been alive. Mostly bald, his eyebrows almost completely white and heavily scarred, Artur Greyhame had travelled from the north in his youth, signed up to serve the house of Mirasmas, and had continued doing so for over four decades.

Not a Noble in any sense of the word, he nevertheless held the unconditional trust of the Duchess and Duke, which meant even those with the blood needed to be mindful in his presence.

“I understand that,” Leras replied, terse and uncomfortable, “but I don’t feel right standing by and watching while an entire city is put to death.”

Artur raised a brow at him, his grey eyes steady and uncompromising.

“Are you that confident that the city will fall? Is there no chance the defence is successful?”

“I don’t want to doubt the capabilities of my fellow houses–” he began, only for the old man to cut him off with a laugh.

“Fuck me. Talk as much shit as you want, lad, I don’t care.”Leras bristled instinctively at being spoken to in such a manner, but quickly let it go. This was hardly a time to be drawing lines in the sand related to social hierarchy.

“It’s generally not done,” he said, by way of explanation. “I don’t want my words getting back to them and being used against my family.”

“I won’t say a damn thing and neither will anyone present. Am I clear?”

“Yes, General Greyhame,” the massed guard around them said in unison, never glancing in their direction but rather facing outwards, watching for danger.

In total, the Duchess had sent a thousand troops to accompany the General and ensure he remained safe. It was enough that Leras felt confident they wouldn’t be targeted by the nightmarish winged beasts he had witnessed several days prior.

“If I am speaking in confidence, then I would say that the Soldiers who serve House Ladisla are a collection of overweight, undisciplined sops who spend most of their time pretending to patrol brothels rather than doing any actual fighting. Protected to the west by the frontier territories, unthreatened from the east and without a nearby rift, Kallas hasn’t faced a threat greater than merchants trying to avoid paying fees.”

Artur laughed aloud, his eyes alight with genuine mirth.

“Aye. You aren’t wrong. Kallas is as soft as a city in the Empire can get. But Ladisla isn’t the only house to send troops, there are others who have contributed to the defence.”

“Against a hundred thousand undead? I can’t help but think the siege will be a short and bloody affair,” Leras said. “The Necromancer will not want to delay for long. Every day brings the Golden Legion closer.”

“You are right about that. Once they are here, it will be that much harder for the houses to try and work around the Emperor’s will. Then we can have a proper fight.”

General Greyhame sounded eager at the prospect of a pitched battle against a rampaging undead horde. Having seen it for himself, Leras was far less enthused. Though he did yearn to defeat the enemy, liberate his lands and avenge the desecration of his family estate.

Both men stood and watched for a time as the cloud continued to roll in and thicken overhead. In the distance, the three great columns of darkness spewed their magickal smoke into the sky, covering the land in darkness. As it drew closer, three spheres began to form, and Leras drew the General’s attention to them.

“These were conjured when he marched on the frontier as well. The mages believe they convert magick in the air to Death Magick, sucking it in from quite a distance away.”

“Makes it a heck of a lot harder to cut off the flow of magick to the undead,” Artur mused, his eyes narrowing as he saw the spells coalesce and take shape. “Like a tick sucking on the blood of the world. Did you try to destroy them?”

Leras shook his head.

“We have been ordered not to engage,” he pointed out. “Other than minor harassment, we didn’t engage with the undead at all.”

This was still technically true for all of the Noble houses in the South. The Imperial order had come down to put aside all petty grievances and unite their armies and militia under a central command to fight back against the invasion. House Ladisla was not an exception by any means and should have pulled all available troops away from the city to comply with the Imperial command.

Yet they hadn’t, and the Duke hadn’t directly reprimanded them, nor ordered them to abandon the city. Kallas was simply too important to be given up without any semblance of a fight.

Unlike the frontier territories, Leras thought with some bitterness.

His own people could be driven from their homes and dispossessed, and the house he married into could have their palace pillaged—that didn’t cause any upset anywhere. Kallas and other cities of the interior? They would surely be defended.

If the defence of the city were successful, House Ladisla would be showered in glory, no doubt. If not, there would be no punishment for disobeying orders.

“If they can hold out for five days,” the General remarked, stroking his chin, “that would be enough. The Duke can’t gather up the army and march to relieve the city, his hands are effectively tied until the Imperial representative arrives. In five days, the Golden Legion should be here, and if the undead are still tied up assaulting the city, we could crush them against the walls, Legion from the north, our own army from the south.”

Leras considered it for a while, then shook his head. Five days was not a long time for a siege. Assaulting a prepared city or fortress could take weeks, months, even years. Surrounding a city the size of Kallas wouldn’t be easy. Since it backed onto a river, it would be necessary to block the port in order to prevent supplies from getting in.

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Yet he doubted the Necromancer had any intention of trying to slowly starve the city and wear it down. He would go over or through the walls.

“I’m not sure if five days is realistic,” he remarked finally.

“For which side?” asked Greyhame, raising a silver brow.

“The defenders. I think it will fall in three days at the most.”

The General considered, his veteran eyes focused on the wall, the gate, then on the thickening storm clouds above.

“Although the Soldiers of House Ladisla are shit, they haven’t skimped on the budget for the walls,” he said, testing Leras. “Those gates are almost as strong as those at Mirasmus itself. It won’t be easy to get in.”

“When a hundred thousand undead are scrambling over the walls all day and all night, it won’t matter how strong the gates are,” Leras replied.

“Aye, you might be right.”

It was clear that Artur didn’t quite share his opinion, but he didn’t dismiss it either, willing to be proven wrong.

“May as well settle in,” the old man remarked. “Things are going to start getting interesting soon. Keep an eye out, lads,” he remarked to their guards, “we don’t want to be taken by surprise.”

“Yes, General,” they replied in unison.

Over the next few hours, they watched as the miasma washed forward in a wave until it started lapping against the walls of the city itself. From the south, the source of the darkness, those great columns of smoke drew closer and closer, the Necromancer himself shielded within the thickest part of the cloud, no doubt. It was unnerving that the undead couldn’t be seen, despite there being so many of them. A hundred thousand skeletal soldiers, yet not a one was visible, just a rolling cloud of black mist that obscured everything.

“Can’t see the disposition of the army,” the General grunted. “That’s annoying. If I could at least look at how they were deployed I could tell if the Necromancer knew what he was fucking doing.”

However, over the next hour, they did catch their first glimpse. As they began to move to encircle the city, the sources of the miasma did spread out, but not far enough to cover all the terrain. The undead, however, proved they were perfectly willing to emerge from their cover.

Far enough from the walls that they didn’t need to fear bombardment, disciplined ranks of skeletons marched out of the mist. Black bones, smoking black armour and eyes of purple light, visible even from this distance. Amongst their ranks, large, heavily armoured figures with ethereal green flesh marched, along with others who glided over the ground holding enchanted staves in their hands.

“Damn,” Artur cursed.

“What?” Leras said, wondering if he’d missed something.

“Look at the way they’re moving,” the General pointed as more and more undead emerged under the light. “Neat blocks, covering each other’s flanks, no openings presented to the city side. They know there isn’t another army out here they have to worry about. These movements are defensive and cautious, not showing any unnecessary weakness. It takes longer, but it gets the job done better. Seems as though the Necromancer knows what he’s doing after all.”

They’d barely had anything to look at for more than a few minutes, but already the General had made that assessment? Still, there was a point Leras needed to correct.

“I don’t think the Necromancer knows much about managing an army,” he said, thinking back to the man he had met.

Leras had met people like that before. Not insane, or maniacally bent on death and destruction, but wholly devoted to their magick. There was an air about people like that, as if, even if they were looking and speaking to you, their thoughts were elsewhere, buried in a labyrinth of sigils and words that didn’t make sense to anyone but themselves. That was probably why he was here, he realised, watching alongside the General. He was one of very few people who had actually met the enemy, and the Duke wanted those insights for his best leader.

“He doesn’t need to know,” Leras went on, finishing the thought, “he only needs to kill someone that does.”

“Right,” Artur breathed, nodding grimly. “I wonder which poor bastard he got his hands on? Whoever it was, they’re competent.”

The two men continued to talk back and forth, but mostly they watched in thoughtful silence as the siege continued to unfold between them.

It rapidly became clear that the undead did not intend to fully encircle the city, Curiously, they didn’t block the eastern gate at all, nor establish any presence along the road there. A major road that ran alongside the river, any regular attacker would ensure it was blocked, but it was apparent that the Necromancer didn’t care.

Leras had been right in his assumption. The undead would assault the city directly. Artur had a deeper insight.

“He’s leaving them a way out,” he remarked, pointing. “Not only are they not blocking the path, they’re staying well over a kilometre away from it. I’m betting the main assault is going to hit from the west of the city. How long before the people storm the eastern gate and demand to be let out?”

“Is that a bad thing?” Leras wondered.

Siege warfare was not his speciality. He was a desert fighter, tangling with kin and Dust Folk in the dunes. Hit and run, rapid assault fighting were his bread and butter, not these massed armies and high walls.

“People fight harder when they don’t have a way out. This will weaken the resolve of the people. Either the Soldiers will need to block the gate and fight off their own people to prevent them from leaving, which is a nightmare for everyone, or they let them go, creating chaos and weighing the rest of the province down with refugees. Either way, it’s a nightmare.”

Once the skeletons were in place, the two men both expected the assault to begin almost immediately. After all, the Necromancer was on the clock. Five days, that was the limit. Any longer and he risked being pincered between two reinforcing armies.

Instead, once the movement had stopped, the skeletons simply stood, eerily still and silent, facing toward the distant walls without taking a single step forward.

What were they doing? Leras turned to Artur, eyes questioning.

“Hard to say. Normally, for a siege like this the attacking army will start building and assembling siege engines. Ladders, towers, rams, catapults and trebuchets. It can take weeks, which is why I assume that isn’t what’s happening. Anything the Necromancer intends to use will have been built already.”

“So… what are they waiting for?”

“Siege magick,” the General replied. “Takes time to make ritual circles, prepare components and all of the other magick shit they need to do. If they weren’t covered with a cloud of darkness, the defenders would already be launching fire at wherever the undead mages were setting up, but they can’t see them. Once the undead start launching spells, they’ll know where they are and can shoot back, but until then the mages on the walls will be focusing on defenses. They should know what’s coming.”

He pointed.

“There, see that flicker of light on the walls? Shields are going up. It takes a huge amount of energy to protect the walls. So they only flick the shields on and off when necessary, and only in the locations getting hit. Right now they’re doing final testing.”

Privately, Leras still believed that the Necromancer had no intention of attacking the walls, making those defences a waste of time, but he was about to find out either way.

As the sun was beginning to set, covering the terrain in a soft orange-tinted glow, the undead were finally ready. As those dark spheres overhead continued to rain down death on the terrain below, casting a gloom over the nearby land, spells burst out of the miasma.

Two, five, eight, twelve, fifteen separate casts rose up out of the dark mist, roiling clouds of darkness that climbed high overhead, arcing up until they reached the level of the clouds overhead.

“That’s a bit grim,” Artur remarked.

“What?” Leras said, eyes agog.

“The spells, look at them more closely.”

As they started to descend, he looked harder and realised what he had missed the first time. They were skulls, colossal skulls of Death Magick falling down toward the city below.

Leras stepped forward, a horrible realisation dawning on him.

“He’s not aiming for the walls,” he said.

Even from this distance, they could hear the screaming of those dreadful skulls as they fell toward the city below.

“No,” Artur replied grimly. “No he’s not.”