Josh Reynolds - Neferata

COME.

COME TO ME.

‘No!’ Neferata screamed. It was Nagash. Nagash’s voice, inundating her thoughts as slimy water slipped through unseen cracks.

MINE. YOU ARE MINE.

COME.

The horizon screamed with her, and the earth itself seemed to heave in terror. Alarms were ringing throughout the city.

The sky was shot through with green cracks and she could feel the dead in the burying grounds stirring in their shrouds. Blood burst from her nose and ears and eyes, coating her face. The others suffered similarly, and the ghouls set up a wail as they stared gape-jawed at the sky. Tormented spectres hurtled through the air like leaves caught in a wind.

It was as if something were calling all of the dead of the world north. Neferata’s flesh writhed on her bones, as if it wanted to give in to the call. She took a step and then another.

‘There! There is the witch causing this!’ a voice bellowed. Neferata tried to focus through the blood. Al-Khattab galloped towards her, his impressively moustachioed face split in a self-righteous snarl. He swung up a sword. Soldiers followed, carrying weapons and torches. ‘Burn them out! Burn this nest of abomination to the stones!’ he roared.

Maddened and terrified of something that only she could hear, Neferata screamed and sprang to meet them, teeth and claws bared. With a howl, the ghouls followed their queen into battle…

The screams of wyverns and the bellicose roars of giants and trolls mingled with the general cacophony of the massed horde as it moved like a wave through the narrow valleys of the mountains. The orcs moved at a steady trot, not from organisation, but from simple eagerness. They were drawn to battle. Some wore armour scavenged from the dead, while others wore headdresses of bone and scalloping sapphire tattoos. They scrambled through the low river valley, tumbling trees and setting up a cloud of dust that blocked out the dull light of the mid-winter sun.

‘Wazzakaz is efficient. It only took him ten years to beat the horde into some semblance of shape,’ Rasha said, crouched low on the slope that overlooked the river of green winding its way through the valley. ‘The dwarfs look as if they intend to meet them at the other end of the valley, where it starts to rise.’

‘They’re trying to lead them as far from the Silver Pinnacle as possible. A horde that size could lay a siege for years, if not decades, and once it got in, they’d be impossible to root out fully,’ Neferata said, lying near her handmaiden. Orcs were like mould that way. They always came back when you least expected it, and ruined the grain in the process.

Her forces had found that out, almost to their cost, over the past few months. She had accompanied Vorag into the field as she had promised Ushoran, and it had been as frustrating as she had feared. They had wiped out the stragglers, the outcast tribal bands and the wolf-riders who scavenged from the Waaagh!’s leavings, but it seemed that the Waaagh!’s progress left almost as many greenskins in its wake as it added to its strength. Water splashing in a bowl indeed, even as she had said to Naaima.

The question now was, were the hands she had chosen to hold that bowl strong enough and quick enough to do as she required? Impatience thrummed through her momentarily. Part of her longed to be back in Mourkain, but it was too dangerous now.

Though W’soran had never given her an indication that he knew that she knew about the crown of Mourkain, she would have been foolish to assume otherwise. In the decades since she had pulled the secret out of Morath, the shadow-war between her agents and those of W’soran had escalated. Mourkain was simmering with discontent, and the conflict between them was only adding fuel to the fire. Thus, to keep the pot bubbling, but not yet wanting it to boil over, she had left. W’soran would lower his guard, and then she would know why he and Ushoran were so desperate to get their claws on Kadon’s crown.

The soft scrape of twine on wood brought Neferata instantly alert. She cut her eyes towards Rasha, who jerked her chin and blinked three times. Neferata exhaled and rose slowly into a sitting position. ‘You may as well come out,’ she said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’

‘Have you then?’ a gruff voice replied. ‘Well, isn’t that just dandy?’ A broad shape moved out of the rocks. The dwarf wore a leather coat over a suit of blackened mail, and had a crossbow pointed in a general fashion at Neferata. A broad-brimmed floppy trader’s hat cast the dwarf’s face into shadow, and his beard was threaded through with orc tusks and rat skulls. ‘And why might that be, manling? Want to pick our bones clean after the urk are done with us? Going to root through our gruntaz , hmmm?’

‘Hardly,’ Neferata said. ‘We’ve come to offer aid.’

‘Oh, have you now? Isn’t that a blessed event?’ the dwarf replied caustically. ‘Stop moving or I’ll pin your pretty ears to your skull.’ This last was directed at Rasha, whose hand crept towards her sword. ‘D’you take me for a wazzok , is that it?’

‘You ask a lot of questions for one who sounds so certain,’ Neferata said mildly. ‘I assume that Thane Razek Silverfoot is in charge of your expedition?’

The dwarf’s eyes narrowed. The crossbow rose a few inches. ‘And if he is?’

‘He’ll want to see me.’

‘Will he now?’ the dwarf said. He gave a thin whistle, and several more dwarfs, all dressed in dark clothing and armour, rose from their hiding places, all carrying crossbows. Neferata blinked, impressed. She hadn’t even smelled them. ‘Well then, rinn , let’s see about that, shall we?’ The dwarf jerked his crossbow and Neferata and Rasha were surrounded by the other dwarfs. The whole group began to climb the slope.

They made good progress, despite having to stop when the shadow of a wyvern skidded across the rocks nearby. Luckily, orcs weren’t the most observant of creatures, and the outriders were more concerned with reaching the battle than with securing the horde’s flanks.

The aperture was well hidden. It took Neferata, with all her superior senses, three tries to spot it, and only then because she caught the steady thrum of dwarf heartbeats as the stone that blocked the opening was rolled aside. She and Rasha were led into the darkness of the steeply angled tunnel beyond. The entirety of the slope had apparently been honeycombed with tunnels that went off in seemingly random directions.

There were a number of dwarfs in evidence; dozens, in fact. Not quite a fighting force, but more than just observers, judging by the weapons they carried. Many of them wore the aprons and padded clothing she had come to associate with the engineers’ guild. Razek had had several members of that secretive organisation amongst his coterie in Mourkain.

‘It’s an und — a watch-post, you’d call it,’ a familiar voice said. Neferata turned. Razek looked little different from the last time Neferata had seen him. A new scar decorated the side of his face, descending from his scalp line, down through his eye and disappearing into his beard. But he was the same bulky, tough-looking creature she remembered. He sat at a round stone table, his hands flat on its surface. His expression changed from curiosity to something more alert as he examined her. ‘I didn’t realise manlings lived so long, Neferata.’

‘My folk are long-lived. We are well-made, as your people might say,’ Neferata said.

‘Perhaps you are at that. It’s been some time since we shared a drink,’ Razek said, fluffing his beard. He glanced at one of his warriors. ‘Beer,’ he said. The warrior hurried off with an alacrity that Neferata envied. If only her own servants were that quick to obey.