Josh Reynolds - Neferata

‘What in Usirian’s name are they doing?’ a vampire snarled as she plucked a bolt from her thigh. Neferata snorted.

‘Exactly what I supposed they’d do. They’re sealing the entry hall.’

‘We have to stop them!’ Khaled snarled, gesturing with his sword.

‘No, not us,’ Neferata said. She turned her face to the snowy wind. A thin black shape galloped through the doorway on a horse that was nothing but bone and balefire. Morath glared about him with hollow eyes as his arrival scattered the gathered vampires. The snow turned to steam as it touched him. Large leather-winged shapes joined him, swooping up towards the balconies with predatory shrieks.

‘Just in time,’ Neferata said, sheathing her sword.

‘It took more than I suspected to keep the bats flying in the storm. Even dead flesh and necromancy have their limits,’ Morath said, watching as the fell-bats attacked the dwarfs above. One by one, they either retreated or died, and soon not one living dwarf remained in the entry hall.

A moment later, the chamber resounded with the sounds of the inner doors of the hold slamming shut as one.

The siege of the Silver Pinnacle had begun.

The village clung to the rocky coast, a swift wind from the shores of Sartosa. Neferata leapt from the galley even as it crunched into the soft sand. She wore dark robes over her armour, as did her followers. Naaima, having no taste for such things, had stayed behind. Khaled and Anmar, however, had been eager to come. The siblings followed her up across the shore, their expressions hungry.

‘An exquisite plan, my queen,’ Khaled murmured. ‘We shall lull the druchii into complacency and then strike.’

‘We will strike, won’t we? I detest those creatures,’ Anmar said. ‘I detest handing people over to them even more.’ The young woman looked pensive. There was no moon and a thick mist crept inland from the sea, obscuring them from anyone who might have been watching.

‘Rather than feasting on them yourself, you mean,’ Khaled countered, grinning.

‘Among other reasons,’ Anmar said primly.

‘Yes, it is a detestable business, but it is necessary,’ Neferata said. ‘We must ensure our influence takes root in the senate, and we need allies among the old ruling class. Sparing their people the druchii levy will see to that.’

‘I still don’t see why we don’t simply take power,’ Khaled said. ‘None could gainsay us.’

‘As we tried in Bel Aliad, you mean?’ Neferata asked pointedly. She turned on him. ‘Only a fool does not learn the lessons of the past, my Kontoi. Are you a fool?’

‘He meant no insult, my lady,’ Anmar said quickly.

Khaled glared at his sister, but said nothing. Neferata sniffed and continued on. Regardless of the necessity of the thing, she had to admit that it had been too long since they had hunted properly. Murder and bloodshed were things that she had learned to avoid, following the events in Bel Aliad. No sense in alerting the hounds to the trail, was there? And there was even less sense in revealing yourself to the hawk.

She restrained a growl and instinctively searched the shadows, though there was no cause. The angry dead were an ocean away and her nemesis was with them. Let Arkhan waste his immortality fighting opponents who couldn’t be killed. She had no reason to do so. The world was large enough.

And it’s not as if you were frightened, said her treacherous thoughts. It’s not as if seeing her again shook the very foundations of your sense of self.

There had been such hatred there, in her eyes. All-consuming and terrifying. Would she have hated so much, had she accepted Neferata’s kiss? Neferata glanced at the siblings, wondering whether the same hatred lingered in their hearts. Did they resent her? Did it matter, as long as they feared her? Khaled looked at her, and in his eyes she saw only the same mingled hunger and desire that was always there. He was a yawning void of need, always wanting what he could not have, always demanding what could not be given.

She knew that he was mad, even as his sister was mad, and she herself was the maddest of them all. The world was mad; a world where the dead walked and the proper order had turned topsy-turvy.

Behind them, she heard the soft pad of the feet of the ghouls they had brought from Sartosa — the sad, tattered remnants of the great ghoul-cult of Mordig — as they slipped from the bellies of the galleys that had brought them. Over a hundred of the creatures followed them inland as they moved towards the sleepy village.

‘Take them,’ Neferata hissed. The ghouls swarmed past her, loping towards the village…

Heavy mauls struck the massive interior doors that led into the hold. The mammoth ghouls who wielded them were even bigger than the creatures Neferata had faced. W’soran had outdone himself, fattening the beasts on the blood of her co-conspirators. Sticky protrusions of bone stuck out from their elephantine hides and their lungs flexed like bellows as they pounded unceasingly at the ancient portal, filling the air with thunderous groans as well as the reverberation of metal on metal. There were six of them, and Neferata knew that twice that number wouldn’t have been enough to bring down the doors. Not with the enchantments woven into the very core of their creation.

Behind the beasts, the silent ranks of the dead, their number swelled by the disgorged inhabitants of the great barrows and mass graves that riddled these hills, waited. Hundreds of tribes had come and gone in the centuries since Kadon had first raised Mourkain from the rock, and the dead of those tribes yet remained, if one knew where to look.

Amongst the dead, Morath sat astride his skeletal horse, surrounded by a vanguard of Strigoi, all clad in the black armour of Mourkain’s foundries. Ushoran had sent his most eager warriors to accompany her in her task. Or perhaps they were his most expendable ones. Some were fierce berserkers, like Dragoj or Racki, who had been among the first to turn on Vorag when he had faltered. Others, like taciturn Redzik and his clinging shadow Dzaja, were seasoned campaigners sent to keep hold of the reins. And then there were the overly-ambitious fence-sitters like Zandor and his cronies; they had sat out the coup, waiting to jump to the side of the victors. Now they sought to prove their loyalty with the over-enthusiastic fanaticism of the new convert.

Neferata and her handmaidens waited off to the side. ‘We’re not getting in this way,’ she murmured.

‘Then what would you suggest we do? Talk them into opening those doors?’ Khaled said, striding towards them through the ranks of skeletons. He looked at Neferata. ‘Then maybe you could, at that,’ he added.

‘I wouldn’t dream of interfering,’ Neferata said smoothly.

‘You’re supposed to be leading this little sortie, or had you forgotten?’ Khaled growled, not quite meeting her eyes. He didn’t dare, not even now.

‘You’re quite the one for determining what I’m supposed to be doing, aren’t you, my Kontoi?’

‘Horns,’ Naaima interjected.

‘They’ve been tootling for all they’re worth since this began,’ Khaled snapped. ‘What matters a bit more noise?’ He shot a glare at Naaima for daring to interrupt.

Neferata looked at Naaima. ‘Different horns,’ the former said. ‘Different signals, but to whom—’