—<ONE>—

War in the Deeps

Nagashizzar, in the 96th year of Geheb the Mighty
(-1325 Imperial Reckoning)

 

 

The skaven horde came swarming up out of the bowels of the great mountain, pouring in a flood of snarling, snapping, sword-wielding bodies into the shadowy corridors and noisy mine works of Nagash’s fortress. Guided by Lord Eshreegar’s scout-assassins, they overran level after level in a headlong dash for the treasures that Nagashizzar contained.

Surprise was absolute. The lowest levels of the fortress were all but deserted, so the skaven were more than halfway to their objectives before they encountered the first of Nagashizzar’s skeletal inhabitants. The handful of undead labour parties caught in the horde’s path were literally crushed underfoot, trampled by the weight of thousands of charging, brown-furred warriors. The momentum of the charge was so great that the old bones were crushed to powder within moments. By the time the rear ranks passed over the same spot, naught but tendrils of dust remained.

The attackers reached the deepest of the mine shafts within minutes. The dank air trembled with the piping wails of bone whistles and the screech of skaven war cries as the clanrats erupted into the flickering light of the tunnels and fell upon the slow-moving skeletons. The disparity in numbers told against the undead labourers at once: the skaven came at their foes in packs, dismembering the skeletons with contemptuous ease. The initial encounters were over so quickly that actual skaven casualties occurred only in the aftermath, as the clanrats took to squabbling with one another over upturned carts of god-stone nuggets, or found a convenient, out-of-the-way spot to slip a knife into a troublesome rival.

As the invaders rose through the many levels of the fortress, resistance began to slowly increase. More and more, the skaven would burst into a strategic passageway and find a phalanx of skeletons waiting for them. Swords, spears, claws and teeth clashed with picks and shovels, or sometimes nothing more than bony, grasping hands. In each case, the defenders were quickly overrun, scarcely slowing the clanrats’ headlong advance.

The first real fighting of the skaven assault occurred in the last, highest mine shafts. Almost two full hours had passed since the attack had begun, and the warriors of Clan Morbus, who had been given the honour of running the farthest to seize the most played-out of the mine shafts, found themselves up against packed ranks of skeletons armed with spears and wearing tattered but functional armour. Here the onslaught faltered, as the clanrats were forced to chew their way doggedly through the press of slow-moving foes. Before long the passageways became choked with heaps of bones and bleeding bodies, but the snarls of the chieftains—and the sharp jab of their blades—kept the clanrats fighting towards their goal.

The skeletons fought to the very last, giving ground only after they had been hacked to bits. The clanrats overwhelmed the remaining defenders at the very entrances to the topmost mine shafts, only to find the sloping tunnels dark and nearly devoid of treasure. The warriors who had been fighting in the front ranks slumped wearily against the tunnel walls and commenced to lick their wounds, leaving the rest to scuttle about in search of some kind of plunder. They cursed and spat, finding only a handful of nuggets in the deepest part of the shaft—which found their way unerringly into the paws of the much larger and cleverer clan chieftains.

It wasn’t long at all before small parties of enterprising skaven began exploring the branch-tunnels that led to the upper levels of the fortress. All of the god-stone carved out of the upper shafts had to have been taken somewhere, after all. When the first few parties didn’t return immediately, the rest of the clanrats took it as a sign that there were valuables up above, and the wretches were helping themselves to as much of it as they could. More small groups skulked off and when they didn’t return, still more and still larger parties set off after them, until finally the chieftains took notice and took out their ire on the lackwits who remained behind.

That was when they heard the first, faint, bloodcurdling howls—shrieks of madness and savagery the likes of which no skaven throat could make—echoing from the upper passageways. Moments later came a bare handful of hysterical clanrats, covered in gruesome wounds that turned foul with poison before the chieftains’ very eyes.

A cold wind gusted down the branch-tunnels, filling the mine shaft with the dusty stench of old death. Over the frenzied howls of the approaching monsters came the eerie wail of horns and the tramp tramp tramp of thousands upon thousands of skeletal feet.

 

At first, the destruction of his servants in the lowest levels of the fortress escaped Nagash’s attention; accidents occurred from time to time, and what was the loss of ten or twenty skeletons out of the teeming multitudes under his control?

It was only when the labour parties in the lowest and deepest mine shafts vanished that the necromancer realised something was amiss. Treachery, Nagash thought at once, immediately suspecting Bragadh and the northmen of some kind of coup. Furious, he drew upon the power of the burning stone, focussing his awareness on the skeletons toiling in the lower levels so he could come to grips with the scope of the attack. Even as he did so, three more of the mine shafts were overrun; dozens more skeletons were destroyed, but in the split-second before they ceased to exist, Nagash caught a glimpse of his foes. They weren’t wild-eyed, bearded northmen, however; instead, he saw a seething mass of armoured, dark-furred bodies, wielding short, pointed bronze swords or cruel-looking spears. There was a flash of beady eyes, red with reflected light, and the snapping of curved, chisel-like teeth—and then darkness.

An angry hiss grated from Nagash’s leathery throat. The ratmen! An army of them, loose in the deepest parts of his fortress! It had been centuries since he’d set eyes upon the filthy creatures, and then only in small, cowardly little packs. They slunk like jackals through the wastelands to the west of the great mountain, searching for pieces of burning stone. In those days he’d slain each and every one he’d found, whether they carried any stone on them or not. Their very existence offended him.

Somehow they had discovered the great lode of sky-stone buried within the mountain—his mountain—and they had come to lay their disgusting hands on it. Nagash vowed that when he’d slaughtered these interlopers, he would find the stinking holes from whence they’d come and wipe them from the face of the earth. Bragadh and his young warriors would have the blood they were thirsting for after all.

The lash of the necromancer’s will resounded across the length and breadth of the fortress, and tens of thousands of skeletons swayed like wheat against its invisible weight. They answered the call to arms in silence, save for the creak of dried skin or the clatter of bone.

Not long afterwards came the ominous tolling of alarm gongs from the tallest towers of the fortress. The deep, shivering notes reverberated through the air and sent a chill down the spines of the living. Across dozens of marshalling grounds, companies of northern warriors paused in their training and looked skywards, wondering at the sound. How could there be an alarm when there was no enemy to be seen for leagues in any direction?

In the shadowy recesses of the great fortress, packs of Yaghur raised their heads and added their howls to the spine-tingling chorus. The noise rolled like an avalanche down the mountain slopes and across the grey sea, where it reached the ears of hundreds more of the flesh-eaters. Entire tribes emptied from their foetid lairs, loping like apes across the reeking, marshy ground in response to their master’s call.

Within the fortress, living messengers ran back and forth from the great hall, carrying Nagash’s commands to his barbarian troops. Meanwhile, the necromancer threw every available skeleton he could into the ratmen’s path to slow them down while he assembled his spearmen into companies near the surface.

His rage grew as one mine shaft after another fell to the swarming creatures; their numbers were vast, easily as large as any Nehekharan army, and he had to concede that the assault was being carried out with speed and skill. Comparing the rate of their advance to the marshalling of his forces on the upper levels, Nagash could see that the ratmen would overrun all of his mine shafts and possibly even reach the upper levels themselves before his army was ready to act. Working quickly, he despatched several large companies into the upper mine shafts to slow down the enemy advance and keep the monsters bottled up below ground. Nagash meant to keep the ratmen penned up in the tunnels, where he could grind the horde to pieces under the relentless advance of his spearmen. He had no need of cunning manoeuvres or elaborate stratagems; Nagash planned to come at the trespassers head-on, crushing the ratmen under the weight of his troops.

The necromancer filled the upper tunnels with spearmen and hundreds of slavering flesh-eaters, then despatched Bragadh and his warriors to seal off the surface exits of each of the mountain’s mine shafts. Any attempt by the ratmen to escape his advance—or outflank him along the surface—would be met with a thicket of barbarian spears. All too slowly, the units of his army moved into position, like pieces on a gaming board, while his rearguard troops in the upper mine shafts were slowly but surely cut down by the advancing ratmen. When the invaders finally broke through and swarmed into the mine shafts, Nagash turned his attention upon the Yaghur. Whispering words of power, he exerted his mastery over the foul creatures and stirred them to action.

Gripped by the necromancer’s unyielding will, the flesh-eaters crept silently down the dimly lit tunnels towards the invaders. Though they could not be controlled as completely or as easily as the true undead, they were swifter, stronger and far tougher than his regular troops and their constant hunger made them keen predators. At his command, the flesh-eaters found places along the tunnels to lie in ambush for any advance parties of ratmen that ventured their way.

The Yaghur didn’t have long to wait. The first, small scouting parties were swiftly overwhelmed, succumbing to the flesh-eaters’ filthy talons and powerful jaws. Behind them came still more of the invaders, in ever-larger and less-cautious bands, until finally there were so many of the rat-creatures to contend with that the Yaghur couldn’t possibly take them all at once. A handful of survivors managed to escape the flesh-eaters’ clutches, fleeing back the way they’d come. With a mental command, Nagash ordered the first of his companies to advance, intending to strike before the clanrats could organise a proper defence.

Once again, the Yaghur struck first. The blood-spattered beasts erupted from the branch-tunnels hard on the heels of the dying ratmen, sowing terror and confusion through the enemy’s ranks. The air shook with the baying of bone horns and the tread of marching feet. When the first companies of spear-wielding skeletons emerged into the upper mine shafts the stunned invaders lost their nerve and fled, trampling one another in their haste to escape. From his throne in the great hall many levels above, Nagash smiled cruelly and poured the energy of the burning stone into his lead companies, speeding their limbs and pressing hard upon the ratmen’s heels.

The tide of battle, at first so overwhelmingly in favour of the ratmen, turned just as swiftly against them. The invaders fled back into the lower levels, spreading panic amongst their fellows. The necromancer’s forces reclaimed one mine shaft after another; they slew so many ratmen in the process that they couldn’t keep up with the survivors in the corpse-choked tunnels. The Yaghur, provided with a feast the likes of which their kind hadn’t seen in centuries, required constant pressure to keep them focussed on the battle at hand, slowing the pursuit still further.

 

Lord Eekrit was eating fermented musk-berries and preparing a letter to inform the Grey Lords of his great victory when the first of Lord Eshreegar’s scout-assassins returned to the great cavern. At first, he paid no mind to their near-frantic whispers as they reported to the Master of Treacheries. The scouts had been ordered to continue their explorations of the levels beyond the mine shafts, in hopes of finding where the skeletons were storing the god-stone. From the sound of their voices, he surmised that what they’d found was far greater than anyone had expected.

The first intimation that something was wrong came not from Eshreegar, but mad Lord Qweeqwol. The old seer limped up next to Eekrit and leaned in close. “It’s begun,” he hissed, his scarred nose twitching. “Time for battle. Fight-fight!”

Eekrit curled his lip in a bemused scowl. What in the Horned One’s name was he babbling about? He glanced up, and caught sight of Lord Eshreegar. The Master of Treacheries looked like he’d swallowed a live spider.

The warlord glanced down at the bowl of half-eaten berries in his left paw. On impulse, he stuffed the remainder in his mouth and gulped them down. Thus fortified, he went over to the scouts. The black-robed underlings shrank back at his approach, their tails lashing apprehensively. At once, the fermented berry juice curdled in Eekrit’s guts.

“What is going on?” the warlord asked, his voice deceptively mild.

The Master of Treacheries turned slowly to regard his commander. The skaven’s whiskers twitched.

“There… ah,” Eshreegar began. “There is a small problem.”

Eekrit’s tail twitched. “What kind of problem?”

“Ah…” the Master of Treacheries considered his reply carefully. “It’s possible there are more skeletons here than we thought.”

The warlord’s beady black eyes narrowed on Eshreegar. “How many more?”

Eshreegar stole a glance at his minions. The scouts focussed their gaze on the cavern floor, as though contemplating an escape tunnel.

“Well. Perhaps… five or six,” Eshreegar said weakly.

The warlord’s ears flattened against his skull. “You and your rats have had years to scout this place,” Eekrit hissed. “There were two thousand of the skeletons, you said. And now you tell me you missed five or six hundred more?”

Eshreegar seemed to shrink in on himself. His head drooped below the level of the warlord’s snout. His whiskers twitched and he mumbled something under his breath.

“What was that?” Eekrit demanded. “Explain yourself!”

“Not five or six hundred,” the Master of Treacheries said in a defeated voice. “Five or six thousand.”

The warlord’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I said—”

Eekrit cut him off with an upraised paw. “I heard what you said,” the warlord snarled. “How… where…” He paused, breathing deeply. His paw clenched, as though ready to claw out Eshreegar’s eyes. “Where are they now?”

Speaking quickly, his voice pitched barely above a squeak, Eshreegar related what he’d heard from his scouts. “Clan Morbus is in-in full retreat,” he finished. “The upper shafts have been retaken.”

“And what of Rikek and Halghast?” the warlord demanded. They would be the next clans in line if the skeletons continued their descent.

Eshreegar spread his paws helplessly. “There is no-no word yet.”

“Find. Out.” Eekrit growled.

The scouts leapt to obey without waiting for a word from their master. As soon as they were gone, the warlord stepped close to Eshreegar, until the two skaven were snout-to-snout. He sensed an opportunity here.

“The Council will want an explanation,” Eekrit hissed.

Eshreegar made a half-hearted shrug. “One skeleton looks much like another,” he said.

“It is your business to tell the difference!” the warlord snapped. “Do you imagine the Grey Lords will be sympathetic, Eshreegar?”

“No.”

Eekrit nodded. “Just so. You will need allies if you hope to keep-keep your hide.”

The Master of Treacheries nodded. “Of course,” he replied. “I understand.”

The warlord nodded. “Good. Then fetch a map. Now.”

Eshreegar gave a quick nod of obeisance and turned to bark orders at a nearby underling. The warlord folded his paws against his chest and began to pace, his mind working quickly.

The situation could still be salvaged, Eekrit thought. Five or six thousand more skeletons were an unwelcome surprise, but his force still outnumbered the enemy more than ten to one. That didn’t even count the thousands of slaves attached to the army—fodder that he could use to bury the attackers by sheer weight of numbers if he wished.

So far, the enemy had provided him with a solid alliance with Eshreegar, and bloody humiliation for Clan Morbus. That would keep Hiirc and his minders in check for the foreseeable future.

A pair of slaves scuttled up onto the dais, carrying a large, rolled parchment between them. Eekrit smiled to himself as they unrolled the map at his feet.

Yes, the warlord thought. This might actually turn out better than he’d hoped.

 

Resistance increased steadily the deeper Nagash’s forces went. The ratmen holding the lower mine shafts were fresher and forewarned of the counter-attack by streams of fleeing survivors from the upper levels. Nagash’s warriors began to encounter more prepared defences and formed companies of warriors holding key tunnel junctions leading to the lower shafts.

Nagash drove his troops remorselessly forwards, determined to cleanse Nagashizzar of the invaders. When his companies encountered heavy resistance, he simply ground the ratmen down; gladly trading one of his warriors for one of theirs, until finally the creatures broke and ran. He had fewer of the Yaghur to call upon now; most of the surviving flesh-eaters were either too gorged or too exhausted to be much use. So far, the northmen had successfully held the ends of the mine shafts so that the retreating ratmen couldn’t escape the necromancer’s trap. With almost half of the mountain’s mine shafts back in his hands, he had a sizeable reserve force of living infantry to call upon, but he was loath to trust them unless he absolutely had to.

What troubled Nagash was that he hadn’t yet plumbed the depths of the enemy force. Every army had its breaking point, he knew; an invisible line where its leaders knew that they’d given all they had and it was time to pull back or risk destruction. Gauging an enemy’s breaking point was a fine art, one that separated competent generals from great ones. Nagash knew without doubt that he was a great leader, but this subterranean battlefield offered him no clues as to the dispositions of his foe.

Though he had a god’s-eye view of the battlefield from his own troops’ perspective, he had no idea what the ratmen had waiting for him around the next bend in the tunnel. He’d expected fierce resistance in the upper levels of the mountain, then less organised resistance as he broke through the enemy’s front line and encountered his reserves. But there didn’t seem to be a front line that he could discern, not in the manner of a traditional field battle. This was an entirely different style of warfare—one that he began to suspect the ratmen were better capable of fighting than he was. They certainly seemed to know the layout of the lower tunnels as well as he did, which led him to wonder just how long they’d been hiding down there, biding their time until they chose to strike.

Hours passed and the fighting wore on. Nagash breached one defensive line after another. Now more than three-quarters of the way through the lower levels of the fortress, his troops had reclaimed all but a handful of the newest, deepest—and therefore richest—mine shafts. The enemy resistance grew clever and more determined. His lead packs of flesh-eaters were lured into five separate ambushes and badly mauled by dark-robed rat-creatures wielding knives and razor-edged obsidian darts, then a company of ratmen attempted to launch an attack at his flank through a network of half-finished tunnels. Or they had been half-finished, the last time he’d turned his attention to that part of the under-mountain. It appeared that the invaders had actually spent some time and effort in expanding the tunnels, displaying a kind of instinctive engineering skill that such monsters had no right to possess.

The advance began to lose momentum against a seemingly endless tide of screeching, furry bodies. His skeletons were within a few hundred yards of the next mine shaft, but no matter how many of the creatures his warriors killed, it seemed like three more sprang up to take their places. The necromancer’s anger grew. For the first time, he regretted not entering the battle himself—but in the close confines of the tunnels, his sorcery would only be effective on localised portions of the battle. And as it stood now, he was literally miles from the front lines, with no swift way to reach the centre of the action.

Nagash leaned back against his throne and once again considered summoning the northmen. A flanking attack down the mouth of the lower mine shafts could well tip the balance… but then he remembered the steady look of defiance on Akatha’s face, and his paranoia asserted itself once more.

He redoubled his attack on the rat-creatures, fuelling the lead companies with still more sorcerous power. The invaders had to be near the limits of their strength, he told himself. They had to be.

 

The counter-attack couldn’t keep going much longer, Eekrit told himself. There had to be an end to the damned skeletons, sooner or later.

Hopefully sooner, the warlord thought nervously as he studied Eshreegar’s map. The fighting was now less than five levels away. He fancied that if he opened his ears fully he could hear the faint sounds of battle, though he knew that it was just his imagination.

At least with the battle close at hand he had a better idea of how things were progressing. A steady stream of messengers were running to the front lines and making it back to report within minutes. He doubted the master of the damned skeletons had half so good a picture of the battlefield as he did.

The enemy had pushed his clanrats nearly all the way back to the caverns where they’d started from. At last count, he had only five mine shafts still in his possession, and one of those was about to fall. If he didn’t manage to turn things around very quickly, he might as well ask Eshreegar to put a poisoned knife between his eyes. Better that than report his defeat to the Council.

The warlord turned to the Master of Treacheries. The counter-move had been Eshreegar’s idea; no doubt if it succeeded, he would try to use it to balance his utter failure to determine the actual size of the enemy force. Unfortunately for him, Eekrit was increasingly certain that the revised estimate of five or six thousand skeletons was still woefully inadequate—not to mention the reports of howling, ogre-like creatures that seemed to accompany the skeletal spear companies like packs of jackals. When all this was over, Eshreegar would have a great deal of explaining to do, Eekrit thought.

“What are the reports from the slaves?” he asked.

Eshreegar paused for a whispered query to one of his scouts. With a curt nod, he turned back to Eekrit. “All is in readiness,” he replied.

Eekrit gave the map one last look and then reached his decision. It was now or never.

“Send word to Clan Snagrit,” he ordered. “Begin the retreat.”

 

The change in the tempo of the fighting was palpable. For more than an hour, the ratmen had been fighting tooth and nail—sometimes literally—to keep the skeletons from forcing their way into the next mine shaft. The branch-tunnels were choked with pieces of bone and heaps of furry bodies, and no matter how hard Nagash pushed his troops, the advance ground inexorably to a halt.

Both sides hammered at one another without pause, until the course of the battle was measured in mere feet gained or lost. And then, slowly but surely, the pressure against the skeletons began to ebb. First the ratmen were pushing hard against the skeletons, trying to drive them back; then their momentum dwindled until they were at a virtual standstill. It was only minutes later, when the invaders actually began to retreat back the way they’d come, that Nagash began to suspect that the ratmen had finally reached their breaking point.

The invaders withdrew quickly, but in fairly good order, careful not to create any gaps that Nagash could turn to his advantage. That convinced him the retreat wasn’t a feint; had they been trying to lure him into an ambush, he would have expected to see a tantalising gap open in their lines to lure him into a killing zone. Sensing that the endgame was near, Nagash drove his companies forwards all the harder, pressing the enemy across the entire front in hopes of creating so much strain that it finally shattered. Then the slaughter would well and truly begin.

Nagash’s companies reclaimed yet another mine shaft. There were only four left in enemy hands, the excavations begun so recently that they had yet to commence full operation—in fact, the mine shafts themselves had yet to be extended all the way to the surface of the mountainside. This served to limit the avenues of approach and channel the retreating invaders into fewer and fewer tunnels, which in turn permitted Nagash to focus his battered forces into larger, more powerful columns. The exhausted ratmen would have no reprieve as the undead warriors chased them inexorably into the deeps.

Level by level, the skeletal companies drove the ratmen back. From time to time, the enemy lines would halt and resistance would stiffen, but never for more than a few minutes at a time. Nagash’s certainty grew: clearly the enemy’s troops were exhausted and they had no reserves to call upon. Sooner or later, the leader of the ratmen would be forced to either sacrifice a rearguard so the rest of his army could escape, or else find a place to make a doomed, final stand.

Within an hour, Nagash’s troops were closing in on the next mine shaft. Here the chambers and passageways were rudimentary in the extreme. Nagash’s past philosophy of expansion was predicated on one thing only; access to the mountain’s deposits of burning stone. His labourers first created exploratory tunnels to locate sources of abn-i-khat, then created galleries and chambers around the tunnels in anticipation of mine work to come. The necromancer knew that there were numerous natural tunnels and caverns throughout the lowest levels, as well as half-finished spaces that the enemy had been using for some time. If the ratmen hoped to outflank him through one of these natural approaches, he would be ready for them.

The spear companies reached the branch-tunnels leading into the fourth mine shaft and pressed onwards, forcing the ratmen back into the wide, echoing tunnel. The invaders continued to fall back across the dimly lit mine shaft—and then halted with their backs to the branch-tunnels at the far side. The loathsome creatures stood shoulder to shoulder, brandishing their weapons and snarling defiantly at the advancing skeletons.

Nagash smiled, already anticipating the final battle. He poured troops into the mine shaft, taking full advantage of the space to bring his greater numbers to bear against the enemy. No matter how fierce the ratmen thought they were, the fight would be a short one.

The two sides came together, not with a flurry of war-horns and the thunder of charging feet, but with a dreadful, appalling slowness. The ratmen watched the thicket of spears press in about them, one slow, implacable step at a time. Many became unnerved by the warriors’ soulless advance, but there was nowhere left to run. Their angry snarls turned to panicked whimpers, then to shouts and screeches of terror as the bronze spear-points closed in.

In seconds, the screams and shouts of the living were drowned by the rising clatter of metal and wood, as swords and axes beat against spear-shafts and the rims of bronze-edged shields. Ratmen fell, pierced through the neck and chest, their blood slicking the stones. Bones cracked like brittle branches. The invaders had already learned to focus their attacks against the legs of the undead warriors; they toppled to the tunnel floor, rendering their spears all but useless and hindering the advance of the troops behind them.

More of the ratmen threw themselves desperately at Nagash’s host. They came rushing through narrow passageways and rough-hewn tunnels, probing for a way to reach the army’s flanks, but in each case their path was blocked by a phalanx of skeletal troops. Soon, Nagash knew, the ratmen would realise that there was nowhere left to turn and that defeat was imminent.

The enemy fought hard, matching Nagash’s troops blow for blow. The battle raged across a two-hundred-yard length of mine shaft and at a score of smaller side-tunnels to either flank. The ebb and flow of the fighting absorbed the necromancer’s full attention—so much so that by the time he saw the ratmen’s trap, it was already too late.

To either flank of the undead advance, and a full two levels behind the front rank of the army, rough stone walls burst apart under the frantic claws of digging ratmen. Years before, the invaders had begun expanding side-tunnels in anticipation of their own mining operations in the depths of the mountain. Now their tunnelling masters skilfully turned those unfinished passageways to deadly knives aimed at the centre of the skeletal horde.

The ratmen broke through into the flanks of Nagash’s forces at almost a dozen points. Whips cracked and a storm of snarling, snapping rat slaves tore into the packed ranks of skeletal warriors. Armed with picks, shovels, heavy rocks and bare paws, the slaves rushed in low, tearing at the skeletons’ legs and lower spines. The skeletons, packed tightly into the narrow tunnels, couldn’t bring their weapons to bear against the sudden onslaught and losses began to mount.

The first indication Nagash had of trouble was a sudden surge in ferocity from the ratmen inside the mine shaft. Where moments before the invaders seemed to be locked in a last, desperate stand, now they pushed forwards against the undead ranks with steadily mounting fervour. With sheer, bloody-minded ferocity the ratmen began to drive wedges into the skeletal companies. They scrambled over heaps of their fallen kin, their feet and legs coated in crushed bone and gore, and began hacking at every bony limb they could reach. Skeletons collapsed by the score and were crushed underfoot as the ratmen carved deeper and deeper into the enemy ranks.

What shocked Nagash more than the wild counter-assault wasn’t the attack itself, as much as the waves of attackers that came pouring out of the tunnels and into the mine shaft. These warriors weren’t the exhausted, desperate creatures he’d expected; they were fresh troops, well armed and eager for a fight.

For just a moment, the necromancer was incredulous. Somehow, somewhere, he had made a miscalculation.

Thinking swiftly, he ordered his troops to redouble their efforts, determined to swallow up the enemy’s counter-attack and smother it by sheer weight of numbers.

Nagash’s awareness swept backwards, along the arteries that supplied his advance. It was then he saw the enemy’s flanking attack and realised how he had been duped. The sheer scale and complexity of the ambush had been greater than anything he’d imagined his foes to be capable of. Worse, their numbers seemed endless.

The enemy had chosen to face his troops inside the mine shaft for the very reason that it would draw in as many of Nagash’s warriors as possible. The branch-tunnels created choke points both into and out of the long tunnel, and now the pincers of the enemy’s flanking movement had effectively cut them off from reinforcement. That left fully a third of his army isolated, and the rest strung out along miles of connecting tunnels where they couldn’t bring their full strength to bear.

As Nagash watched, the enemy’s flank attacks poured warriors into the tunnels in staggering numbers. They fought down the connecting tunnels in both directions, tightening the noose around the skeletons trapped inside the mine shaft. Immediately, Nagash ordered skeletons from the upper levels to push forwards, trying to batter their way through the enemy positions and link back up with the front lines, but he could already sense the tide of battle starting to flow away from him once more. After another moment’s hesitation, he came to a galling decision.

The necromancer broadcast his orders to the horde. Within the mine shaft, half of the warriors formed a rearguard to hold the attacking ratmen at bay, while the rest began to withdraw back down the branch-tunnels towards the enemy’s flanking units. He had to salvage what forces he could and form a defensive line until he knew the full extent of his enemy’s dispositions.

It took almost three hours for his warriors to fight their way out of the trap. The enemy’s flanking attacks were finally driven back, but not before the skeletal rearguard had been overwhelmed. The ratmen surged forwards, scrambling over heaps of shattered bones, and harried the withdrawing skeletons until they fetched up against fortified defensive positions three levels above. The invaders hurled themselves at the fortifications three times, only to be repulsed with heavy losses. After the third attack, the survivors paused, muttering and snarling to one another as they considered their next move. Nagash used the time to further reinforce his lines and prepare for more flanking attacks, but after half an hour the invaders slowly withdrew to their own hastily-formed lines.

The first battle of Nagashizzar had reached its bloody, inconclusive end.