Josh Reynolds - Neferata

There was a voice in her head, calling out to her as if from a vast distance. It called her to the black, pleading with her to look, to see, to come. The staff cracked against her upraised forearms. Khalida lunged smoothly, as she had in life. A gash opened across Neferata’s left breast, and then her claws punched through the paper-thin flesh of Khalida’s midsection. Bones crunched and linen tore as she savaged the corpse-woman.

There was a sigh from the ranks of waiting dead, and then they stepped back, opening a path for her to join the others. Neferata looked down at Khalida, lying broken much as she had centuries before. But this time, she was not dead and her tongue was not stilled. ‘Go, Neferata. Your master calls.’

‘What?’

‘Your master calls. Run to him. We will meet again.’

Neferata hesitated, yearning to smash the white death-mask, to eradicate that mocking, solemn expression. Instead, she turned and ran. As she did, she swore that she would never do so again. And even as she swore that, she knew that it was a lie…

Time passed differently for immortals. It was something that had taken some getting used to; the passage of days was now like an eye-blink and centuries became as days. Even so the time spent in the darkness moved altogether too slowly for Neferata. Patience was not a virtue she possessed in abundance at the best of times and she was fast running out. But as bad as it was for her it was worse for others, whose hungers were stronger for all that they were less controlled.

‘We should take them now,’ one of the vampires, a cunning creature called Varna, growled, shifting her weight from one bare foot to the other as they crouched in the shadows of one of the interior tunnels that ran between the levels of the hold. A prisoner they’d taken a few days previously had, under the influence of Neferata’s mesmerism, confirmed that the tunnels were old ore veins that had been repurposed as doglegs to be used in the event that the Silver Pinnacle was ever compromised. The tunnels explained how the dwarfs had launched their ambushes and counter-assaults in the first weeks of the siege. They had also used them to send messengers to other dwarf holds. None of those messengers had got far.

Neferata didn’t reply to Varna’s remark, nor did she take offence as she once might have. Weeks with barely palatable blood and the strain of the constant dance of ambush and counter-ambush in these cramped tunnels had rendered even Naaima irritable. For the younger vampires, it was likely a torment. Iona snarled wordlessly at the other vampire, silencing her complaints.

Iona’s group had rejoined them after the destruction of the dwarfs’ breweries and water supplies. Rather than demoralising the dawi, however, the destruction of their beer supply had only served to incense them. Neferata had lost two more of her handmaidens in the days following, to dwarf ambushes in or around tempting targets. The dwarfs had lost more, however.

Now they crouched within one of the cramped tunnels that crisscrossed the entirety of the hold. From them, one could reach anywhere within Karaz Bryn if one didn’t mind travelling in nearly suffocating darkness for days on end. Even the dwarfs weren’t certain how many there were these days. Some had been sealed off and forgotten for one reason or another, their iron doors rusted shut. It was on one side of such a door that Neferata and her followers waited.

On the other side, dwarf voices murmured. The dwarfs had been using the ore veins for the last month to launch surgical strikes against the flanks of the Strigoi forces as the dead moved steadily and inexorably through the upper levels of the hold. How he had gotten the interior entry gate open, Neferata couldn’t say. Regardless, once inside, Khaled’s talent for bloodletting had come to the fore and the dwarfs had been forced into a steady retreat. There were only a few thousand warriors in the Silver Pinnacle, not nearly enough to stem the advance of the dead. With Morath at his side, Khaled had forced the dwarfs back and back, as she had known he would. The dead might not be able to rule the living, but they could grind them down well enough. Gate after gate had fallen.

Now, only one remained.

Just beyond the rusted portal that blocked their way was the vaulted hall that led to the so-called Deeping Stair. Beyond the Deeping Stair were the temples and shrines. The dwarfs had chosen to make their last stand beneath the gazes of their gods. They had hunkered down, prepared to outwait their enemies, despite a lack of food, resources or reinforcements.

Perhaps they thought the runners they had sent along the Underway to request aid from other dwarf holds had escaped. Perhaps they thought that the Strigoi would grow bored. Perhaps they thought neither of these things but could do nothing else save sit waiting stubbornly for the end, whatever form it took.

Neferata stood. The eyes of her handmaidens followed her. She gestured, and felt the cool, damp presence of the spirit-host. It had only grown larger since she had first brought the ghosts from the depths of the river. Dozens had become hundreds as dwarf spirits were wrenched from their bodies and added to the spectral morass which followed the vampires like an omnipresent mist.

‘We must get the last gate open,’ she said.

‘That means revealing ourselves to an entire army,’ Naaima said.

‘A risk we’ll have to take,’ Neferata said. She looked at Naaima. ‘The time has come. My patience has grown thin and the dwarfs aren’t moving any further. It is time to bring this farce to an end.’

‘Which end, the one Ushoran envisions, or the one you’ve been plotting since we arrived?’ Naaima said softly. Neferata blinked. Naaima sighed. ‘I know you.’

‘The only one that matters, Naaima. Mine,’ Neferata said, after a moment. She looked around, meeting the unblinking gazes of her handmaidens. ‘Ours,’ she amended. ‘Here we will be free. Here, in these halls, we will build a New Lahmia.’ She reached out, stroking Varna’s knotted and tangled hair. ‘Here we will be queens. We will be the queens of the world. Let Ushoran gnaw the bones of Mourkain. Let him have his petty kingdom. When it falls, we will still be here. When all of the kingdoms of the world are footnotes in the histories of scribes yet to be born, we will still be here. We will sit here, astride a throne made from the world’s spine, and our subjects will be kings and hetmen.’

‘What of Khaled? What of Morath or the Strigoi?’ Naaima said. ‘What of Ushoran?’

‘We will do as we have always done with those who would try and stop us,’ Neferata said. Seeing the look on Naaima’s face, she added, ‘Once the gate is open and the dwarfs are in retreat, you will take the others and bind the Strigoi. They are as few in number as we and they’ll be fewer after the coming battle. She hesitated, then, ‘Leave Morath for last.’

‘What of Khaled?’ Naaima said, and Neferata heard the unspoken question — and Anmar? — and she looked away.

‘I will handle him myself.’

Naaima fell silent. Neferata smiled thinly. The others trusted her, and obeyed her implicitly. Naaima knew better, knew enough to know that Neferata was not infallible. But she obeyed. They lived on the sharp end, and to hesitate was to get cut. She gestured. ‘Go, my hungry she-wolves,’ she said curtly. Iona and Varna snarled and sprang for the door. Their shoulders struck it, and the iron bolts popped from the stone and the door toppled inwards with a thunderous clang. Dwarf voices were raised in surprise as Iona and Varna scrambled to their feet and to the attack.