Ghoul King: Conqueror of Worms, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Ghoul King: Conqueror of Worms
About The Author
Legal
eBook license
Ghoul King:
Conqueror of Worms
Josh Reynolds
The ghoul gave a ululating shriek as it sprang from the porous slope of volcanic rock. Its filthy talons were spread and its slavering jaws were wide as it hurtled down towards the intruders, followed by a screaming, snarling tidal wave of its slick-fleshed brethren. A hundred more ghouls boiled out of the cancerous innards of Cripple Peak, skin stretched tight over starveling bellies and crooked bones, their howls rising in discordant symphony towards the mocking, silvery moon above.
Vorag of Chaim, the Bloodytooth, timajal of Strigos and prince of Mourkain, waited for them, his long, muscular arms spread wide, and his eyes blazing like twin hell-lanterns. Coarse white fur ridged his bare arms, and his barrel torso was clad in a cruelly ridged cuirass of ornate design. Armour of a similar grotesque design sheathed his legs, and a kilt made from braided scalps and flayed skin dangled from his waist. He carried no weapon, for he needed none, save his own strength and speed. Vorag Bloodytooth needed no weapon because he was a weapon, and more deadly than any sword, spear or axe. His face shrivelled and assumed a bestial cast in the moonlight, and he threw back his white-maned head and gave a thundering roar. Then, the echoes of that roar still bouncing from the rocky crags all about him he sprang to meet the ghouls.
Vorag struck the first knot of scabrous cannibals, opening a red door into their ranks with a wide sweep of his claws. He thrust himself in amongst them, trampling the dying even as he slapped the life from those lucky enough to survive his first strike. Blood spattered across him, soaking him finger-to-shoulder as he savaged his way through the enemy. He rampaged amongst them, his undead flesh absorbing their futile blows with a monstrous resiliency. Ghouls died in fives and tens, closing with him only to be wrenched apart, disembowelled or crushed.
Vorag whirled and backhanded a leaping ghoul, shattering its spine. Pleasure filled him; this was what he lived for, what he had been bred for. He was built for blood and slaughter, and even before he had accepted the gift of a grateful king and become the creature he now was, he had relished battle in all of its gore-choked glory.
But now, he did not simply relish it. Now, he fed on it. He grew strong on the blood of his enemies, thanks to Ushoran. The name brought a face swimming to the surface of his red-tinged thoughts – a face at once monstrous and regal, inhuman and heroic. Ushoran the Liberator, Ushoran of Lahmia, Ushoran the vampire, who had come to Mourkain and thrown down the sorcerer-king Kadon, and taken the latter’s empire for his own. Vorag had once ridden at Ushoran’s right hand, slaughtering his enemies and waging his wars of conquest and expansion.
But no more. Now, Vorag waged his own wars, and ruled his own lands. Soon, his empire would outstrip Ushoran’s and, in time, perhaps even consume it. The thought filled him with darkling warmth – he longed to see his enemies broken and bleeding at his feet, and to hold their eternal lives in his hands. They had used him and thrown him aside when his use had ended. They had turned his own people, for whom he had shed so much blood, against him. And for that insult, the Bloodytooth would glut himself on their heart’s blood for as long as it took to wring every spiteful, arrogant drop from them. Ushoran, Neferata, Abhorash… All of them would fall beneath his teeth and talons, to be used up and thrown aside, as they had done to him.
A gnawed femur crashed down on his shoulder, and he twisted with inhuman grace, burying his talons in the shrunken belly of a ghoul. Its eyes bulged as he divested it of its guts with a flick of his wrist. He raised the reeking mass and tilted his head. His jaws gaped like those of a snake preparing to swallow a rodent and he greedily swallowed the black blood that dripped down. Tossing the drained hunk of meat aside, he turned his gaze on the remaining ghouls.
Those closest to him had drawn back, their ferocity blunted by his rampage. They cowered around him in a wide ring, snarling and pacing, unable to muster the courage to press their attack. Even once-men like ghouls recognised that the first to attack the intruder would be the first to die. Vorag turned slowly, his expression contemptuous. ‘Is that it?’ he growled. His voice carried easily, and the ghouls stirred at the sound of it. ‘Is this all that remains of you? Are you nothing but maggots, burrowing in the corpse of a mountain? I was told that you were men once, and as proud and fierce as any son of Strigu, as any ajal or vojnuk of my folk.’ Vorag licked blood from his talon-tips, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Is this all you are now? Beasts, fit only for the butchering?’
A ghoul, larger than the others, a tabard of rattling bones and twine covering its chest, rose and shrieked. It lunged from the ranks of its fellows and sprinted for Vorag. He avoided its wild blows easily and caught it by the back of the skull. Vorag wrenched the struggling creature into the air and looked up at it. ‘Is that all you are?’ he snarled as he shook it like a hound shaking a rat. ‘Is it?’
The ghoul struggled in his grip, its face twisted into an expression of animal rage and fear. It gibbered, and clawed for Vorag’s throat. With a grunt, he dashed its brains out on the rocky slope. As if that had been a signal, the remaining corpse-eaters began to retreat, scattering back into their holes and hollows. Vorag watched them go, and then turned to look down the slope where his followers waited. There were six of them – five Strigoi ajals, clad in furs and banded mail, their heads shaved clean save for the traditional scalp-locks that marked blooded warriors amongst the Strigoi, and one other, clad in tattered robes and clutching a staff topped by a man’s skull, the yellowed bone carved with strange symbols and words in a language long since dust. Vorag directed his next words to the latter. ‘What did it say?’ he asked.
‘It said, “We are men”, mighty Vorag,’ the shave-pated vampire hissed, black eyes glittering. His name was Kadar, and he was one of W’soran’s prize pupils. Or so he claimed; in truth, Vorag suspected that Kadar was less a sorcerer than a spy, placed in his entourage by the old monster.
W’soran, too, was an exile from Mourkain. His enemies were Vorag’s enemies, and he had thrown in his lot with the renegade Strigoi, seeking protection as well as vengeance. But the old monster was cunning, and more dangerous than he pretended. He and his acolytes might resemble withered mummies, but they were as deadly as any Strigoi warrior, living or dead.
Still, Kadar had his uses, as he had proved in their march to the east. It was his magics that had animated the bones in the mountain passes, foothills and marshes they had traversed since leaving Crookback Mountain and which now swelled the ranks of Vorag’s army.
‘So it was a liar,’ Sanzak grunted as he climbed the slope towards his master. Sanzak looked like a lump of raw meat with fangs, but his eyes sparkled with a keen intelligence. Like Vorag, he had been gifted with immortality, and like him, he had fled Mourkain. Sanzak was the most loyal of the vampiric noblemen who had chosen to follow Vorag east after he had been driven from Strigos. In life and in death, he had served the Bloodytooth with honour and dedication.
‘No, they do not have the wit to lie,’ Vorag rumbled. He glared down at the dead ghoul, taking note of the crude ritual scars that marred its frame and the bones it wore. The other creatures had been clad in rags, but this one…
‘A clan chieftain,’ Kadar said, appearing suddenly at Sanzak’s elbow. The Strigoi jerked away with a startled hiss. Kadar looked as if a strong wind would snap him in half, but he was capable of moving swiftly, and with a silence that Vorag’s scouts envied. If Kadar had noticed Sanzak’s reaction, he gave no sign. He scrutinised the corpse and swatted it with his staff. ‘Or, perhaps calling it a pack-leader might be more appropriate.’ He looked at Vorag. ‘There will be more attacks the longer we stay here.’
‘Good,’ Vorag said, turning to look at the grim peak rising high above them. Cripple Peak, and at its summit, the black-iron citadel called Nagashizzar. It had been abandoned for centuries, avoided by all but the corpse-eaters and the rat-things that seemed to infest the bowels of the mountains like a plague. Ushoran and W’soran and all of the rest feared this place. They feared the dark spirit that still clung to it like a shadow, even if that spirit had found another place to dwell. For a moment, he wondered if they were right to do so, then he brushed the thought aside.
Whatever daemon now drove Ushoran, it was no concern of Vorag’s. Whatever nightmare presence W’soran swore inhabited the crown of Mourkain, Vorag cared not at all. He was not Ushoran, and needed no crown or gee-gaw to prove his dominion. He was Vorag, and Vorag conquered, crown or no. His thoughts turned to the problem at hand.
‘That was impetuous of you, you know,’ Sanzak said mildly. ‘Rushing ahead like that is why we’re in this mess to begin with, you’ll recall.’
Vorag glanced sidelong at Sanzak. His words were true enough, which only added to their sting. It was his desire to take Ushoran’s throne that had caused him to move before his then-allies were ready and to subsequently abandon the lands he had once called his own, driven out by men he had once called ‘comrade’, riding beneath the banners of that fool, Abhorash. Idly, he wondered if Neferata had forgiven him for that moment of foolishness yet. It had cost her as well as him. ‘Are you calling me foolish?’ he asked.
‘No, merely pointing out that you have an army, and you should use it,’ Sanzak said. He gestured to the mountains in whose shadow they stoo
Vorag shook the hand off. He looked at other four ajals. They were a motley lot: greedy, grasping opportunists who had not prospered as they wished under Ushoran, and had thrown in their lot with his rival. He wondered whether Neferata, or W’soran come to that, had been whispering in their ears as well as his own. Other than Sanzak, he trusted none of them further than he could throw them.
A wave of sadness washed through him. Once, he had had many trusted brothers. Oathsworn and twice-blooded, they had been swayed to support Ushoran in those early turbulent years. And as each of them was given Ushoran’s gift, they had drifted apart, no longer brothers, but rivals and then, at last, enemies. Gashnag… Ullo… Morath. Brothers and would-be heroes, become something else entirely thanks to Ushoran and his cursed ilk.
Ushoran had made the Strigoi something more than men, but also something less. He had taken honour from them, and replaced it with ambition. He had made them powerful, but at a cost that Vorag was only now discovering. Morath had tried to tell them, in those early days, but they had not listened.
‘I doubt these fine ajals share your opinion, my friend,’ Vorag said, gesturing to the ajals and smiled to show that he was joking. They laughed agreeably, but their smiles, like his, held knives. He could tell from Sanzak’s expression that he was not fooled. ‘Besides, the day I can’t set a few corpse-hounds to running is the day I go lie out in the sun.’ He looked at Sanzak. ‘Your concern is noted, but I must be the one to break them,’ he said.
‘There are easier ways, my lord,’ Kadar purred. ‘The eaters of the dead are as numberless as the sands of the shores of the Sour Sea, but they cannot stand up to the army that stands at our back. With but a word, I could send your legions into the warrens and tunnels beneath this mountain to bring these foul beasts to heel.’
‘No,’ Vorag said flatly. He chopped the air for emphasis. ‘I want them broken, not annihilated. I need them, sorcerer.’ He looked at the necromancer. ‘Or have you forgotten our purpose here?’
‘It would be a simpler matter to simply raise them afterwards–’ Kadar began, eyeing the bodies thoughtfully. He stopped as Vorag turned to look at him. ‘As you wish, my lord,’ he said, grudgingly.
Sanzak looked at Vorag. ‘Then what should we do, Bloodytooth? Storm the tunnels with fang and claw? I don’t relish fighting the grey-skinned bone-lickers on their home ground. From what the old monster told us–’
Kadar snarled and spun, bringing the head of his staff up just beneath Sanzak’s chin. ‘You will show Master W’soran the respect he deserves when you speak his name, barbarian,’ he spat.
‘Or what, you crypt-lizard?’ Sanzak growled, slapping the staff aside. ‘Will you match your sorceries against mine?’ The burly Strigoi had, at Vorag’s quiet encouragement, begun to learn the arts of the winds of death. The dark magic that brought groaning corpses from their graves to fight again was far too useful to leave to creatures like Kadar and the rest of W’soran’s coterie. Vorag never had, and never would, trust the other vampire and his followers. They were not warriors, and most of the blood they spilled was each other’s, in their incessant internecine squabbles. They fought each other for W’soran’s attentions like murderous children. That the old monster encouraged such bloodletting was only one of his annoying habits.
Vorag looked at them. ‘Enough,’ he said. Both vampires fell silent. The gathered ajals watched silently, used to the duo’s bickering. Some of them had already chosen sides, he knew. Some curried favour with the necromancers, either because they were easily impressed by stumbling cadavers or because they wanted the secrets of how to accomplish such themselves. The others, the more traditional amongst his followers, sided with Sanzak, mostly because they wanted no part of the sorceries that Kadar employed. Vorag did not care one way or another – as long as both camps bent knee to him, and fought when he told them to, they could do what they liked.
He looked back down-slope, where his army waited. Though their numbers had been limited at the beginning, their ranks had swelled with the newly-risen dead in the intervening years. The black wolf-tail banners of his standards flew in the sour breeze over a largely silent legion. Rank upon rank of weather-picked bone waited for his command, and his other Strigoi sat at their head, mounted on the black, red-eyed steeds that had been bred in the dark stables of Mourkain. Cannibal horses for vampire riders, he thought, amused.
And amidst the army, protected from attack, was a large black palanquin, borne aloft by a group of the great crypt horrors that W’soran had created. The large, yurt-like shroud that covered the palanquin was made from wolf fur and wyvern hide, daubed black with ash and mud to keep it sealed from the glaring eye of the sun. The morningstar did not trouble Vorag as much as some of his followers, and there was little enough of it in these perpetually overcast lands, but he had learned from harsh experience that caution was not the same as cowardice.
For a moment, as he looked at the unmoving flaps of the palanquin’s entrance, he thought that he could hear her voice, that he could see her shadow there, that at any moment, her pale hand would slide the flap aside and he would catch a flash of golden hair and…
Vorag closed his eyes and stilled the sudden spurt of raw, red, rage that bubbled up from within him. He turned and looked east, towards the future, rather than the past, where the mountains became sand and jungle. The lands of the dead, where mighty armies composed of mummified kings and their bony servants clashed in grim parody of the living. And beyond them, the jewel of Araby, where caliphs ruled isolated cities and waged war on desert raiders. Such places were the stuff of legend to one who had been born in a barbarian lodge, behind a crude palisade, in the harsh, high mountains. These were the lands that he had come to take.
Heat bloomed within him as he contemplated the undertaking. It was a conquest worthy of him, though he knew that had not been W’soran’s reason for suggesting it. He met Kadar’s calculating gaze and smiled, causing the other vampire to flinch and turn away. You are a snake I have yet to tread upon, he thought, you and your master both.
W’soran thought him an idiot, he knew. And his acolytes shared that opinion, save, possibly, Melkhior, who had once fought at Vorag’s side in the wars against the northern daemon-lovers. They thought him a blood-hungry brute; indeed, that, he fancied, was their opinion of all Strigoi. That was Neferata’s opinion, certainly. His smile grew as he thought of his mighty queen, her mind as convoluted as a spider’s web. Even she failed to see what Ushoran had seen in the hill-folk he had raised from the mire of mad Kadon’s rule. The Strigoi lacked sophistication, it was true. But they had passion.
In them burned the blood of Strigu, first of their people, and the warrior who had carved a kingdom out of the wilderness for his folk, to give them sanctuary from the horrors that pursued them. Strigu, whose son, Kadon, had bound spirits and monsters alike and driven back the daemon-lovers and the braying beast-folk when his father had died at the talons of the monstrosity called the Sun-Eater.
Kadon had been a mighty chieftain in his time. He had been a mighty king, who had led his folk to his greatness, only to dash them on the stone of his hubris, even as Ushoran was now doing. That, in the end, was why Vorag had come east. He would return to Mourkain – to Strigos – only when it was time to topple the usurper of Strigu’s legacy.
But to do so, he would need an army.
That was why he had come to Cripple Peak. There was an army within it, and one that others had used to good effect. The ranks of his legions would swell, and he would have the might he needed to accomplish what was necessary, as well as smash down his enemies.
He strode down the slope as Kadar and Sanzak and the others followed him, the two still bickering, though more quietly than before. The other Strigoi met him, and he hurled orders at them like javelins. Pickets would be set, and scouts sent out, to watch for the armies of the dead that patrolled the southern regions ceaselessly, hunting for any who might dare to seek access to the fortress of their great enemy from that direction. Since he had absolutely no intention of getting any closer to Nagashizzar than he absolutely had to, he was not overly worried about the restless dead of Nehekhara. If they attacked, he would fight, but was otherwise content to leave them for the moment. He had more important matters to attend to.
