Josh Reynolds - Neferata

Neferata shrugged. ‘Why ask, mighty king? The result stands. Razek is dead and I am here to demand the surrender of your hold.’

Borri was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. There was no humor in the sound; it was akin to the creaking of rocks just prior to an avalanche, and as he threw back his head, the avalanche fell. The laughter echoed through the silent audience chamber. Unlike in Ushoran’s court, no one here picked up the thread and joined their voice to Borri’s. The king laughed alone. As the echoes faded, he gazed at her steadily. ‘Surrender it to whom, woman?’ Borri rumbled.

‘To me,’ Neferata said.

‘Mad as well as a liar,’ Grund said. ‘By Grimnir’s beard, I’ll have your head!’ He raised his axe and started down the stairs.

‘Stay,’ Borri said. Grund halted. Neferata smiled. ‘She has come under a flag of truce, and audacity buys her mercy. You may leave as you entered, woman. None here will stay you. Go, and leave us to our grief. In time we will meet again, and I shall not be so merciful.’

Neferata didn’t move.

‘Did you hear me?’ Borri said, his voice taking on a menacing edge.

Neferata’s reply was to draw her sword and bound over the heads of the hammerers. The dwarfs sprang into motion even as her foot touched the stairs. Her blade looped out, slicing through Borri’s beard and sending one of the charms bouncing down the stairs. Borri’s hand fastened on the blade and he jerked her forwards even as he drove the tip into the back of his throne. Razek’s axe sliced out and she was forced to release her sword and flip backwards to avoid its bite. She landed in a crouch on the stairs, but not for long.

Grund crashed into her, nearly flattening her. His axe cut at her a moment later and she found herself surprised by the crested dwarf’s speed. Even as heavy as he looked, he still moved almost as fast as she herself. With a joyful howl, he threw himself at her. ‘Take my burden from me, witch!’

Neferata had no idea what he was talking about and she had no intention of finding out. She avoided his wild blows, reeling this way and that and once nearly bending double as he swung at her. Grund’s eyes bulged and foam collected at the corners of his jaws as battle-fury swept him up in its embrace. His axe bore no runes or devices. It was simply an axe. But Neferata was loath to test its edge. She sprang back from him, putting a large span between her and the dais.

But even as she landed, hammers crashed into the stone, narrowly missing her as she danced and wove through the throng of guards that sought to bring her down. She caught a hammer on her palm. Even as her fingers curled around its head, she yelped. Smoke rose from her palm as she jerked it out of its wielder’s grip and grabbed the haft, lashing out with the weapon. A dwarf flew backwards, his helm crushed and the skull beneath turned to paste. Another crumpled, his breastbone shattered despite the protection of his armour. Neferata’s frenzied assault drove the hammerers back, and they spread out, surrounding her but staying out of her reach. She turned slowly in place, keeping them all in sight.

‘What did you think to accomplish?’ Borri said, rising from his seat. He jerked her sword from his throne and hurled it clattering to the floor. He stared at the blood welling from his palm and flexed his hand as if the blade had caused him no more pain than an insect bite. ‘Did you think to assassinate me? Did you hope to remove the heart from my people?’ He grunted. ‘We dwarfs are not as men. We do not quail when our own die. We fight all the harder.’

He came down the stairs, still holding his son’s axe. The robed woman and the elderly dwarf followed him, and Grund paced in front, trembling like a hound on a leash. ‘This axe has tasted your blood, I think. It thirsts for it still, regardless,’ Borri said.

‘It shall have to work to get another taste,’ Neferata said, shaking her palm. Something had burned her. She saw that the head of the hammer was shot through with threads of silver and growled. Razek’s axe had been the same.

‘Not as hard as all that, I think,’ Borri said grimly. ‘You are alone, woman. Outnumbered and surrounded. Surrender and I will be merciful. That offer still holds.’

‘I think our concepts of mercy differ greatly, King Borri,’ Neferata said, twirling the hammer in her hands. It was a good weapon, but too brutal for her tastes. She spun on her heel and sent the hammer flying towards Borri. She did not wait to see whether it struck its target. Instead, as all eyes followed the hammer, she leapt for an opening in the ring of flesh and steel that encircled her.

Behind her, she heard the ring of metal on metal and Borri bellowed a command. The floor trembled as the hammerers followed her. Crossbows thrummed and quarrels peppered the floor and walls. Neferata avoided each one with ease. To one with her senses, the bolts appeared to be moving in slow motion. She could see the very air split and twist as the bolts cut through it. Even as the bolts struck the archway of the audience chamber, she was into the corridor beyond and running. She had wasted enough time.

Horns sounded in the deeps, warning the hold of danger. She knew that the horns were not for her. The corridor trembled as the great gate began to open once more. Frigid air slithered into the hold, greeting her as she reached the entry chamber even as the doors began to spread wide.

Naaima stood before the doors, surrounded by dwarfs seeking to bring her down. Broad shapes stabbed at her, and her pale flesh was streaked with black blood. Neferata struck the gate-wardens like a thunderbolt. Her talons sank into the back of a dwarf’s head and she jerked him backwards with savage force, snapping his neck and crushing his skull like an egg. More dwarfs flooded into the entry hall through the second set of doors.

‘Did you get the gates?’ Neferata snarled, snatching an axe from a dwarf’s hand and burying it immediately in its owner’s face. A moment later she was forced to use it to deflect a crossbow bolt.

‘They’re opening, aren’t they?’ Naaima replied, narrowly avoiding a blow that would have taken her arm off at the shoulder. Her rejoinder ripped the dwarf’s face from his skull.

‘Then we only have to hold on for a bit longer,’ Neferata said. Even as the words left her lips, a trio of crossbow bolts sank into her back, puncturing her armour like paper and knocking her to the ground. She screamed in pain and surprise, and flopped around for a moment like a fish in the bottom of a boat, before pushing herself to her feet, the heads of the bolts scraping against her insides as she moved. She coughed blood and awkwardly plucked one of the bolts free.

‘Shoot her again!’ the watch-warden commanded. ‘Bring her down!’ He was the one who had escorted her into Borri’s presence, the one who resembled Razek.

Neferata growled low in her throat and sent the bloody bolt flying into one of the crossbowmen, knocking the dwarf backwards with the impact. Naaima yanked the others free as she and Neferata began to back towards the widening portal. Gears groaned as the massive doors allowed a cold wind inside, and a flurry of snow.

More dwarfs filled the entry hall, all armed and seemingly intent on using those weapons on her. Horns sounded loud, low and long from the side-passages and the upper balconies. Neferata scanned the ranks of dwarfs; in minutes, a hundred or more crossbows were aimed at her. And behind the line, King Borri and his hammerers.

‘Get that damned gate closed!’ the king roared. ‘She’s trying to escape!’

‘She won’t get far,’ the watch-warden roared. ‘This is for my cousin, hag!’ His axe licked out, gouging her armour. She swatted him aside, sending him crashing to the floor and his axe flying.