Josh Reynolds - Neferata

‘But serviceable enough for the mines,’ Neferata said, setting aside her goblet.

The elf glanced at it. ‘Are the night-grapes of Hag Graef not to your liking?’

‘I have little taste for grapes of any vintage,’ Neferata said. ‘You are satisfied, I trust, Megara?’

‘Never, Neferata,’ Megara said. The druchii corsair was as vicious and as treacherous a creature as Neferata had ever had the misfortune to meet. Clad in her armour and silks and dragon-hide cloak, the elf presented a lethal picture, much more so than Neferata herself, who reclined languidly. ‘But I suppose it must do,’ she continued in strongly accented Sartosan. Lavender eyes gazed unblinkingly at Neferata, who met the gaze without flinching.

‘And you will raid elsewhere?’ she said.

‘My word of honour,’ Megara said.

Neferata laughed. One of Megara’s guards hissed something in their own tongue and drew his curved, serrated blade and made to threaten Neferata. Khaled drew his own scimitar, but before he could move forwards, Neferata waved him still. Megara did the same to her guard. ‘Careful, Neferata,’ she said mildly. ‘My people take offence easily.’

‘But you don’t. And it was you I was laughing at, Megara,’ Neferata said pointedly. ‘Though perhaps I shouldn’t have. You do have honour of a sort. After all, you have kept faith with me ever since I rescued you from my greedy-gut servants that day in Sartosa.’ Neferata had pulled the mauled corsair from the jaws of her ghouls on a whim, an action which had since paid great dividends.

Megara frowned. She did not like being reminded of her debt. ‘We will concentrate our efforts on the far southern coasts. The Arabyans make terrible slaves, but they’re better than this rabble.’ She gestured to the quivering fishermen. Neferata gazed at them dismissively. She gave little thought to their eventual fate; such things were beyond her concern.

The slave-master was still going down the line. He stopped in front of a young woman, broad-shouldered and big-hipped. Honey-blonde hair tumbled down, hiding her face. The slave-master forced her chin up and she spat full in his face. The elf stumbled back, his narrow features twisting in a snarl. The woman lunged, snatching the hook dagger from the elf’s belt. With a screech, she swept it across his belly, spilling his guts onto the deck.

The guards glided forwards, heading off the potential revolt before it could begin. They stepped over the twitching slave-master and herded the woman towards the deck rail. Neferata sat up straighter. ‘What are you going to do with her?’ she said.

‘We’ll toss her overboard. The spirited ones are great fun, but that one will be more trouble than she’s worth,’ Megara said. She looked at Neferata. ‘Why?’

‘I would like her,’ Neferata said, tapping her lip. ‘I can use a woman with spirit.’

‘Better to kill her,’ Megara said. She raised a hand.

Neferata leaned back. ‘Kill her, then.’

Megara looked at her. ‘I thought you wanted her.’

‘I can get twenty such, should I wish. It was a whim.’ Neferata examined her fingernails. Megara did as well, remembering how those delicate-seeming fingers had ripped great gouges in the armour of her fellow corsairs and torn out throats. She did not know exactly what Neferata was, but she knew that she was no mere human, whatever she looked like.

‘Take her,’ she said, waving the guards back. Neferata rose smoothly to her feet and swayed towards the frightened woman. The guards fell back as she approached, their dark eyes watching her warily. The knife came up, but Neferata placed a fingertip on the bloody tip and pushed it gently aside.

‘What is your name?’ Neferata said softly, leaning close. The woman’s chest heaved and her face was dripping with sweat as she backed against the rail.

‘I… Lu-Lupa Stregga,’ she said, her eyes going unfocused as Neferata gazed deeply into them.

Lupa was the local word for she-wolf. ‘Appropriate,’ Neferata murmured. ‘Sleep, Lupa. You will be safe with me.’ Her will crashed over the woman’s, easily battering it down. She snatched the dagger from her slack grip as she slumped. Neferata caught her easily and motioned for Khaled to come and take her. The vampire did, wrinkling his nose as he did so.

‘She smells of fish,’ he growled.

‘So she does,’ Neferata said, licking the blood from the knife and closing her eyes as the heady taste of druchii blood burned pleasingly in her mouth and throat. She tossed the knife down, so that it sank blade-first into the deck.

Megara eyed the knife, and then looked up. ‘We’ll call it a gift, shall we?’

‘You are too generous, Megara,’ Neferata said.

‘Mmm, indeed. For instance, I have another gift to go with that one.’

‘Oh?’

Megara smiled and leaned forwards. ‘You have spies in Araby, I trust?’

Neferata frowned. ‘If I do, I don’t see what concern it is of yours.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Have they mentioned Zandri?’

Zandri. The name of what was once the greatest seaport of long-dead Nehekhara sent a chill through Neferata’s curdled blood. ‘I know it. What of it?’

‘My kin say that sails have been seen in the sour waters there,’ Megara said, her voice low. ‘Tattered sails belonging to ships of wood and bone, they say.’

‘What else do they say?’ Neferata asked.

Megara smiled. ‘They say the dead are preparing to sail, Neferata. And that they are coming for you…’

The river was already freezing over as the twelve vampires waded into its depths, their hands clasped. The water closed over their heads, leaving not a ripple to mark the passage of the human chain as it sank into the depths.

The river bottom was rock and silt and clouds of the latter followed them as they made their way down. They fed on fish and, once, on one of the serpent-things that dwelt in the river, draining them of their turgid juices and leaving the husks to float up. Silt and ice collected on their armour and flesh as they moved, but proved little more than an annoyance. The crushing cold was as nothing to beings who had left mortality far behind, and the trail into the dark was easy to follow.

Dwarfs were no neater than men and they used the river harshly. The cold water clutched close the scents that the Silver Pinnacle excreted, and it was this trail that Neferata and her brood followed into the mountain. The walk through the depths was a long one, a tide of endless hours punctuated only by the appearance of the schools of blind fish which swam up from the mountain’s deep reservoirs and the pale serpentine things which preyed upon them.

Days passed. Neferata’s mind wandered as she walked. She had ever tried to burrow into existing power structures and rise to the top through the meat of the beast, but such was doomed to failure, even as Ushoran’s rule over mortals was. Living societies would expel her even as her own flesh expelled bolts and bullets. But a dead society… Such a society she could rule forever and a day.

It was akin to Nagash’s vision, and yet not. There was no need to eat the world hollow, not when all she required was a few sips of its life’s blood. With a solid power base, without the need to waste her energies fighting rivals and assuring her own safety, there was no limit to what she might accomplish.