Текст книги "Neferata"

Автор книги: Josh Reynolds

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Zandor reacted first, half drawing his sword before her talons opened his face to the bone. He screamed and reeled, clutching at his face even as she caught Gashnag’s sword in her hand. Blood dripped down the blade as the tableau held for several seconds. Then she tore the blade from the startled Strigoi’s hand and backhanded him into the great bronze doors of the throne room. The doors burst inwards, carried wide by Gashnag’s weight. He slid across the floor, his armour clattering, and Neferata followed him, carrying his sword.

‘My Lady of Mysteries, to what do we owe the pleasure?’ Ushoran said. He looked human and ordinary on the throne. Anmar sat at his feet. The chamber was empty save for the hooded figures which stood near the great throne like a silent court, and the bulky forms of several monstrous ghouls. She was reminded of the creature that W’soran had unleashed on her in the vaults and she hissed. He had made more of them, obviously, and he had got better at whatever dark process had been involved in their creation. These creatures were bigger than the other, and were not quite so patchwork. They gazed at her with dim hunger and she remembered how the other had attached itself, remora-like, to her arm.

She tore her eyes from the monster to the steps of Ushoran’s throne where Anmar sat, head bowed and shoulders hunched. Neferata gazed at the girl for a moment before she addressed Ushoran. ‘I come to reclaim what is mine,’ Neferata said, gesturing to Anmar. See how he sits in your chair, the voice hissed. She ignored it.

‘If you had been a few moments slower getting here you would have had nothing to reclaim,’ Ushoran said idly. ‘I intended to give her to W’soran’s pets there. What do you think of them, hmmm? Much improved from the last time you saw one. They are quite striking and vicious as well. They have a taste for the blood of our kind, I’m told. Isn’t that so, W’soran?’

One of the hooded figures standing near the throne tossed back his hood to reveal W’soran’s desiccated features. ‘Oh yes, as I’m sure Neferata realises by now.’

Neferata ignored him. ‘Why have you taken my handmaiden, Ushoran?’ she demanded.

‘You mean to say that your little spies haven’t told you yet?’ Ushoran said, gesturing to Naaima as he pushed himself up from the throne. He spread his arms. ‘Someone tried to kill me,’ he said. He gestured to Anmar. ‘This creature of yours was seen in their company.’

‘By whom?’ Neferata said.

Ushoran’s eyes flickered aside, towards W’soran. ‘A little bat,’ he said.

Neferata snorted. ‘Of course. Why else would he have sent his beasts, rather than alerting his king?’

‘You would know all about that, would you?’ W’soran spat. ‘What secrets do you keep, Queen of Mysteries?’

Neferata ignored that. ‘Anmar,’ she said. ‘Come here.’

‘She stays, Neferata,’ Ushoran said mildly. ‘She must be punished.’

‘Then I will punish her,’ Neferata said, extending her hand towards her handmaiden. ‘Come here.’ Anmar rose hesitantly. When Ushoran made no move to stop her, she bolted towards Neferata. Neferata held her for a moment, examining her. ‘Your brother has much to answer for,’ she murmured, stroking the girl’s hair.

‘He saved me,’ Anmar hissed. ‘W’soran’s monsters would have killed me, my lady! They’d have left me in the street like the others!’ She grabbed Neferata’s hand. ‘It was the only way, my lady,’ she said urgently.

Neferata hesitated. Then, anger overrode the brief spark of regret. ‘He should have saved all of you,’ she hissed. She stepped past Anmar and glared at Ushoran. ‘Anmar and the others were following a conspirator, as you commanded. That is why she was in his presence. My people work at crooked angles, Ushoran, and must occasionally play friend to our – to your foes.’

Ushoran cast a lazy glance at W’soran, who trembled with rage. ‘I told you,’ Ushoran murmured. He looked back at Neferata. ‘This is the throne room of Ancient Kadon himself, you know. And it was here that I killed him. Impressive, is it not?’

‘Why should I be impressed because you managed to throttle some elderly madman?’ Neferata asked.

‘Elderly, yes, but mad? No,’ W’soran said. ‘Kadon’s knowledge was greater even than mine.’

‘Many things are greater than you, W’soran,’ Neferata said pointedly.

Ushoran laughed. ‘Such venom you spit, my queen. Such raw red rage you display, and for what? What have we done to elicit it?’

‘The night is short, Ushoran, and I lack the patience to go into the many perfidies that you and that sour old corpse-thing by your side have inflicted upon me and mine. Tell me why I should not take this latest insult as the last?’

‘Because you’re curious,’ Ushoran said, grinning. He tapped his head. ‘I am as well. Does it speak to you in the quiet moments, Neferata? I’d wager it does.’

She hesitated, struck by the sudden certainty that there was a deeper game here. She had intended to use this breach to bully Ushoran into revealing his secrets at a later time. But perhaps Ushoran was seizing an opportunity of his own. Tread carefully, she thought to herself.

‘Ahhhhh,’ Ushoran breathed, nodding knowingly at her silence. He glanced smugly at W’soran. ‘I told you that it speaks to her and Abhorash as well, I’d wager. And you said that they lacked the spark or wit to hear it.’

‘Hear what?’ Neferata snarled, taking a step forwards. She knew the answer already, but she wanted to see the limits of the web Ushoran was spinning. Dust falls from the eyes of heroes and kings, and the dead are stirring in their tombs, the voice whispered. They will rise and march and thrust the world into a silent, serene shape. The Corpse Geometries will bend and slide into formation for the dead, binding the fires at the poles and snuffing the stars themselves.

‘That,’ Ushoran said, as the shriek of the nails-on-bone voice faded in her head. ‘I thought I was privileged at first, to hear it. Like a lover’s croon. But it’s not,’ he said, the humour fading from his voice. ‘It’s the command of a master to a servant.’

W’soran bridled, grimacing. ‘It’s an echo, Ushoran… I’ve told you—’

Ushoran moved so fast that Neferata barely caught it. He backhanded W’soran, catapulting the thin vampire off his feet and to the floor in a heap. W’soran’s servants closed ranks, and the air was suddenly alive with the acrid odour of fell magics. Ushoran paid them no mind, instead focusing his attention on Neferata. ‘It’s like acid, isn’t it? Etching its way into your thoughts. You never met him, of course. That’s why you don’t recognise it. But I did, and when I heard it…’ He shook his head. He made a face. ‘W’soran was his favourite. Like a child with a new toy. He barely noticed me, damaged as I was. He left me to his beasts.’ His fingers curled into fists and his human seeming wavered. ‘But it was I who answered his call first! I who came to him! Me!’

‘Which is why we’re still here, of course,’ W’soran said, as his acolytes helped him to his feet. Ushoran tensed. ‘All this time after the fact, we’re still here, trapped in this primitive shadow of Lahmia, forced to grub in the dirt like peasants.’ W’soran wiped a bit of blood from his lipless mouth. His eyes swivelled to Neferata. There was more than just disdain there. There was also a warning. Ushoran wasn’t the only one spinning a web. ‘Because the first to come wasn’t strong enough to do what needed doing,’ he added, still looking at Neferata.

‘Silence,’ Ushoran snarled.

‘What are you yammering about, old leech? What secret are you dancing around?’ Neferata said.

‘Have you ever wondered why our king wears no crown? The savages he rules so admire a fine crown.’ W’soran grinned.

‘Kadon’s crown…’ Neferata said, a number of things falling into place. Both W’soran and Ushoran started at that, but Neferata drove on before they could recover. ‘But that is not Kadon’s voice I hear, is it?’

‘In part perhaps,’ W’soran said with a shrug. ‘But as Ushoran said, there’s a reason you didn’t recognise it. Or maybe you did, but pretended you didn’t, even to yourself. You have heard it before, haven’t you, centuries ago? I know, because I was there when Nagash spoke to you.’ He looked at Ushoran. ‘We both were.’

Nagash. The name hammered into her brain like a nail. Nagash, the Great Necromancer. Nagash, whose name had been wiped from the historical records of the Great Land. Nagash, whose elixir of immortality even now pumped in altered form through her veins.

‘Nagash’s, not Kadon’s… It is Nagash’s crown,’ she whispered.

‘My crown,’ Ushoran countered, his hands twitching slightly. ‘And with it, I will rule even as he did. But my rule will extend unto eternity, as even his failed to do. I will not make his mistakes and I do not possess his flaws. But I will have all of his power…’

‘But you don’t. Not yet. Why?’ Neferata said. ‘Where is it?’

Ushoran hesitated, his smugness evaporating. He looked almost… afraid. W’soran answered her, and he sounded as hesitant as Ushoran looked. ‘Here. Right here and yet it is so far away.’

Ushoran went to the wall behind the throne, towards an empty niche where a statue might once have stood. He placed a hand against the stones and a hidden door slid open, revealing a set of winding steps. ‘There,’ Ushoran said softly.

‘Ushoran—’ W’soran began.

‘No. No, if she wants to see it, we shall let her.’ Ushoran looked speculative. ‘Perhaps… perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps this was the answer all along.’ He looked at the dark passage. ‘Perhaps this is the price he demands.’

‘Neferata, don’t,’ Naaima said as Neferata stepped towards the passage. Neferata shook Naaima’s hand off. Her handmaiden’s voice was drowned out by the sudden roar of silence that spilled out of the darkness. It was an absence of sound which muffled everything. Ushoran stepped within and she followed, hesitant at first and then faster. Her instincts screamed warnings of treachery and deceit but not for the first time in her life, she ignored them. She had to see what lay beyond. She needed to confront that which had drawn her here, even if it endangered her very existence.

‘Come and see, it said, and I came unto Mourkain and saw,’ Ushoran whispered hoarsely as they walked. His words rustled in the narrow tunnel like bats and the stones of the corridor beyond the hidden entrance seemed to vibrate in tune to his voice. Gently, she brushed dust from the stones, revealing the crude pictograms which had been scratched into the walls by the ancient builders. Like the hieroglyphs of home, these told the story of the tomb. The body had been found in the river that curled through the mountains, a crown in one hand. The body of a mighty man, larger than any man of the Strigoi, though reduced to ruin by unknown enemies. His features had been obliterated by old marks, like those made by claws.

‘Who was he, Ushoran?’ she said.

‘Can you feel it, Neferata?’ he said, ignoring her question as they reached the end of the corridor.

‘What is it?’ she said, shivering. There was a vibration in her bones. It echoed from the floor and the walls and ceiling, and it was as if she were inside some great, living organism.

‘The echo of a heartbeat,’ Ushoran said, not looking at her.

Neferata listened, and knew he was right. The thudding boom-boom-boom, echoing up from untold depths and seeping through the stone, had the regular rhythms of a man’s heartbeat. Steady, strong… familiar. ‘No,’ she said as the sound caressed her ears.

Ushoran turned, his face twisted in a sneer. ‘Yes. Listen to it, Neferata. Do you hear it? Do you hear his heart? Does it beat faster?’ He made to grab her and she slithered back instinctively, out of his reach. ‘Do you hear him?’

The air became cold and sluggish and damp. Neferata swiped instinctively at it, as if it were full of cobwebs. A hand grabbed her wrist, but dissolved into curling wisps of mist as she spun. Words bled through the rock, snippets of past conversations.

‘Damn you, Ushoran, who is buried here?’ she snapped.

‘You did this,’ Ushoran said. ‘You made him this way!’

Neferata turned around and around as half-formed faces made to speak and dissolved in a silent storm surrounding her. All familiar, though they spanned swathes of time she had not been there to see. The faces were of a child, a boy, a man and – what? – a corpse or a wraith or wight? Regardless, he was a king.

Alcadizzar, the boy she had raised as her own. The man she had groomed to be king and the king who had died for Nehekhara. Neferata hissed and spat as the smoky fingers drifted across hers in a gesture at once familiar and abominable. ‘Away, wraith,’ she said, swiping her claws through the wisps.

‘Mourkain is built on his bones,’ Ushoran snarled, lunging through the mist. He grabbed her wrists and his human façade rippled and tore like wet papyrus, revealing the horror beneath. Grey dead flesh over an ape’s skull, with a thicket of fangs spilling from a lipless mouth. Eyes like the embers of a dying fire glared at her as he tried to pull her close.

‘W’soran cannot break his hold over the crown! And without the crown I cannot truly be king! But you – maybe you…’

Neferata bent and brought the soles of her feet sliding up between them. Catching Ushoran in the belly, she tore him loose and sent him flying back. He hit the rock and screamed, as if it burned him. She rose. The floor felt warm beneath her feet. She smelled the hiss of cooking meat and, a moment later, felt the pain.

She was burning, even as Lahmia had burned, as Khemri and Zandri had burned, at Nagash’s command. Alcadizzar whipped her with a lash of fire and regret and she screamed in agony. Ushoran, driven berserk by pain, roared and charged and his massive talons nearly took her head off. She ducked and he cut a gouge in the rock face. She cut through his belly and chest and his growls became screams as she opened him to the spine. He fell and writhed on the ground, his skin bubbling and rupturing. Turning, she began to run even as the heat ate into her own limbs. She had to escape this place. Her feet were burned raw and an agony she hadn’t felt since that first night of her new existence raced over her nerves, eating at them like acid. Still, she stumbled on, trying to escape the embrace of the tunnel. If she could get to the main chamber, perhaps the pain would stop. That was all she could think about.

She could hear Ushoran following her, his claws scraping stone. The corridor felt as if it was closing like a fist around her and the needle-on-bone voice of the crown was drowned out by the grim rumble of stone and the echoes of Alcadizzar’s voice as it thrummed through her mind, evoking ancient memories and ancient pain.

She burst out of the tunnel like a bat from the depths, flames wreathing her slender shape. She screamed, and there was nothing human in her voice. Ushoran caught her in mid-air, his grotesque gargoyle shape having sprouted wings. He too was on fire and the flames congealed greedily as his talons sought her throat. Maddened by pain and need, the two vampires crashed down onto the floor.

Her hair crisped and crackled like cloth in a cooking fire and her face split and shrank against her bones as she sank her fangs into Ushoran’s throat. He howled and bucked, pummelling her with burning fists. They thrashed and fought, rolling across the floor. She worried the flesh of his throat, the blood boiling from the heat even as it reached her mouth.

‘Off – get off,’ he yowled, muscles heaving beneath his charred skin as he slapped her aside. She spun through the air and struck the wall, dropping bonelessly to the floor. The flames winked out, leaving them both blackened wrecks. Neferata cracked a crisped eyelid.

More of the obese ghoul-things had come into the chamber while she had been gone, and not just them. Smaller ghouls and the dead men who served W’soran as his guard filled the hall, surrounding her followers.

Stupid. She had been stupid to come here. Ushoran coughed and scrambled to his feet, his charred flesh cracking and sloughing off. He had been burned before and he shook it off with the speed of experience. His claws scraped the floor as he made his way towards her. His previous berserk rage seemed to have left him, and he looked deflated and weary.

‘You see?’ he croaked. ‘Even in death, he denies us our due. The crown is ours by right. With it, we can recreate that which was lost.’

Neferata pushed herself to her feet. The voice of the crown – Nagash’s voice – was back, smashing at her doubts and worries and fears. For an instant, she wondered if this was how others felt when she turned her gaze upon them.

The instant was washed away by visions of a great city, not quite Mourkain or Lahmia, but a blending of both. It was a city of possibilities, a city of could-be and will-be; a city ruled forever by a night-hearted aristocracy, where she would sup on the blood of princes and kings as all the rulers of the world bowed at her sandalled feet, and on her brow, a crown.

Crown and throne, Neferata, it purred. Goddess and queen, Neferata – that is what you will be. All yours…

Did Ushoran hear the same? Did it speak to him in the same soothing tones? Did it make the same promises? Perhaps it had even done so for Kadon.

‘You have done your best to keep me on my throne,’ Ushoran hissed. ‘You have done this even as you have schemed to supplant me in the minds of my subjects. That is why I ask you this now. Help me, Neferata.’ He half-reached for her, with a trembling claw. ‘You want Lahmia back, just as I do, just as Abhorash does, and W’soran.

‘Help me,’ he said again. ‘Help me put the world back to rights, Neferata.’

Take the crown and the throne and the WORLD…

The lessons of the past crumbled in an instant, like the dead flesh which drifted from her burned limbs like black snow. All that was left was desire.

‘As my king commands,’ Neferata said, taking Ushoran’s hand with her own.

TWELVE

The City of Lashiek

(–1147 Imperial Reckoning)

Neferata led her handmaidens through the crowded streets of the Corsair City, her robes and cowl pulled close about her, and a veil of hammered gold discs hiding her face from the sun. There was a ship waiting for them in the harbour. It was to take them to Sartosa, across the sea. The streets were full of merchants, mercenaries and refugees, all going in every direction at once. Overhead sea-birds wheeled, croaking, and mangy dogs trotted through the streets.

She stopped as a group of soldiers, clad in silks and bronze, marched past in ragged formation, pennons snapping from their spear-points. It galled Neferata to abandon Araby. Bel Aliad was a smoking ruin, thanks to Arkhan, and the other caliphates reeled under his continued assault. Armies of the dead trod the Spice Road, harrying what forces the caliphates could muster, and Araby was no longer a place for patient schemes and subtle machinations. But that did not mean that such would always be the case.

She caught sight of a flash of red. ‘There she is,’ Naaima murmured a moment later, standing behind her mistress. She gestured towards a shisha house on the other side of the street. Naaima and the others were dressed much as Neferata was, all save Khaled, who wore the armour and full-face helm of a Kontoi. Ragged silk strips hung limply from the spiral point that topped his helm and his cloak was ragged and threadbare. His eyes were haunted behind the chainmail mask that covered his face.

The destruction of Bel Aliad had struck him hard. Every desire and dream that he had nurtured to his breast for the past decade had vanished like a wisp of smoke, leaving him empty of either ambition or energy. Anmar was equally shaken, but had chosen not to emulate her brother’s apathy, instead throwing herself into Neferata’s schemes with admirable abandon. For Khaled, Bel Aliad had been a kingdom to be won. For his sister, however, it had been little more than a cage.

Neferata led her followers towards the shisha house. Men sat on reed mats outside of it, inhaling sweetly scented smoke from a waterpipe. Anmar sat on a similar mat within, wearing a bright crimson robe. She looked up as they entered and laid a hand on the arm of the woman who crouched nervously beside her. The woman was a slave, and pale-skinned like the barbarian tribes who inhabited the far north. ‘My lady,’ Anmar said. ‘The ship is ready whenever we are.’

Neferata nodded and glanced at the slave, who trembled and turned away. The woman stank of fear. Anmar gently stroked her neck, calming her. ‘Ilsa here is a servant of the Dowager Concubine, aren’t you, Ilsa?’ Anmar said softly. The young vampire’s eyes glinted. ‘She has agreed to your offer, mistress, and has sent Ilsa as a gift. The girl speaks the language of Sartosa. The Dowager thought she might translate for us upon our arrival.’

Neferata smiled beneath her veil. Though she was leaving Araby for greener pastures, her influence would remain. The Dowager Concubine was the ruler of the Corsair City in all but name, and with her protection, Neferata’s servants would flourish. When she had re-settled herself, she would re-establish her influence in the caliphates for as long as they stood.

She knelt and reached out, taking the terrified slave-girl’s chin. Neferata smiled and held the girl’s gaze, soothing her and mesmerising her. ‘I’m sure that she will come in handy in one fashion or another,’ she murmured…

Nagashizzar

(–328 Imperial Reckoning)

The air stank of rot and swamp gas, and scavenger birds spun through the overcast sky. There was no sun in these lands, and there hadn’t been for hundreds of years. In the Desolation of Nagash, it was always grey and dark and foul, a reflection of its creator’s soul. Nagashizzar was a twisted blend of mountain and fortress, and it loomed above the dead land like a monolith to a forgotten god.

It had taken them the better part of a year to reach the shores of the Sour Sea from Mourkain, and Neferata climbed swiftly, ignoring the tiny avalanches her movement set loose. Her patience had worn thin over the months of journeying and she was eager to reach her goal. The others followed at some distance. Ahead of her, Layla moved with inhuman grace, leaping and climbing, marking the safe path. ‘I smell ghouls,’ the girl called back.

‘These mountains are filthy with them,’ Morath said from below. The necromancer climbed slowly and cautiously, lacking the grace of his protectors. ‘There are thousands of warrens in these hills, thanks to Nagash.’

‘I would have thought that they’d have left,’ Rasha said, helping Morath climb. ‘When he died, I mean.’

‘Where would they go?’ Morath said. ‘When they were human, before Nagash corrupted them, Cripple Peak was their home. That ancestral memory keeps them here, lurking in the blighted shadow of Nagashizzar.’

‘The question is not their presence, but their intentions. I would not fight unless we have no choice,’ Neferata said, stopping to wait for the others to catch up. ‘This journey has taken up too much time as it is.’

‘It may take even longer, I fear,’ Morath said, leaning on his walking stick. He looked bad, cadaverous even, as if his human vitality were being leached away by their surroundings and replaced by something else. ‘Nagashizzar is massive, according to W’soran. It may be months before we find a safe way inside, let alone find that which we seek.’

‘Which is?’ Layla said, dropping down to perch bird-like above Neferata.

‘You should listen more than you natter, girl,’ Rasha said.

Layla stuck her tongue out between her fangs. Neferata chuckled. She reached up to yank on the braid of hair that dangled from the girl’s head. ‘We seek one of the Books of Nagash, child. One that W’soran seems certain is still hidden somewhere in this stinking pile.’

‘Implying it’s one that the old thief didn’t manage to steal when he fled,’ Rasha said.

‘There were nine of them,’ Morath said, looking up towards the high towers of Nagashizzar, shrouded in grey mist. ‘Nine books in all, comprising all of Nagash’s knowledge on the subject of death.’ Morath raised a hand. ‘W’soran stole one, as did Arkhan the Black. The other seven, however…’ He gestured limply. For more than two decades, Neferata had aided the necromancer in hunting down every scrap of information about those books. Her agents had scoured Araby, Cathay and Ind, hunting stories and memories. Neferata herself had travelled to the decadent coastal cities of the Black Gulf and hunted a certain Abdul ben Rashid through the Street of Booksellers in Copher, where she had torn him apart in broad daylight after he refused to hand over his necromantic scribbling.

And in two decades, all signs had pointed towards Nagashizzar.

‘Like as not, rats chewed them to rags and ghouls use them as loincloths,’ Rasha said. Morath glared at her, but said nothing. Neferata smiled. Necromancers were precious about their parchments and papyri.

‘We’d best hope not, my huntress,’ Neferata said, turning to continue on. ‘We need them.’ I need them, she thought. W’soran had sworn that those books had the secret to binding Alcadizzar’s angry ghost and freeing Nagash’s crown from his clutches. And Neferata wanted that crown. It was the only reason she had agreed to Ushoran’s mad plan of an expedition to Cripple Peak. It had taken them months to get here, and would likely take them months more to find those books, barring interruptions.

A shrill cry echoed from the rocks, rebounding down the spine of the mountain. Neferata’s head jerked up, and her nostrils flared. She smelled sour blood and rotting meat. It seemed that someone had come to greet the visitors. They had been forced to fight more than once on their trip through the Desolation, battling mutant beasts and the degenerate tribes of savages who clustered on the shores of the Sour Sea, but it had been days since they’d left the territory of the tribes behind.

A tumble of rocks rattled down from above, nearly dislodging Layla, who yelped as she was struck. Rasha shielded Morath and Neferata swatted a rock aside with her hand. A group of men would have likely been discomfited by the rock fall. For vampires, it was barely an annoyance.

‘Rasha, stay beside Morath!’ Neferata barked, drawing her sword. ‘Layla, get back here and help her!’

‘But—’ Layla began, searching for the creature that had dared to drop rocks on her.

‘Now,’ Neferata snarled, bounding up the slope with more speed than caution. ‘Keep the sorcerer breathing, whatever else happens.’

Over the years, Neferata had become intimately familiar with the methods and manner of the corpse-eaters. Where there was death, there were the eaters-of-the-dead. They had a society of sorts, and kings and queens and lords and ladies. They were a mockery of the men they had descended from, but even mockery has a kernel of truth.

But these ghouls were not like the almost-tame creatures that scampered through the tunnels beneath Mourkain, or the organised tribes of Araby. No, these mountain-ghouls were a breed apart. It was akin to the difference between wolves and dogs. Hidden tunnel mouths suddenly vomited clay-crusted simian shapes. The ghouls boiled from their tunnel like wasps from a disturbed nest, their ape-like agility propelling them down towards her from all directions. They had painted their flesh with clay and filth, and some carried sharpened bones as weapons. Most, however, seemed to content to use their claws and teeth.

Neferata shrieked, casting her voice at them like a weapon. Several dozen stumbled to a halt, tripping up those immediately behind them. Neferata was on them a moment later. Her sword slashed across the front rank, gutting four of the creatures and lopping the arms from a fifth. She pressed her attack, aware that even with all of her strength the creatures could pull her down through sheer weight of numbers. She had to break them; they were scavengers by nature, and would retreat if their prey looked to be too strong.

Her elbow came down between the head and shoulders of a ghoul, shattering its neck even as her leg swept out. Her foot crushed a slavering jaw and the force of the kick spun the ghoul in place, dropping it dead to the rocks. Her sword darted out, chopping like a cleaver into grey flesh. Severed limbs lay heaped on the ground as she created a corridor of death through the ghoul ranks.

Alone, Neferata had blunted the momentum of the ambush. The ghouls scrambled back from her, yelping and howling. Many retreated for their holes, but more stayed. Greasy bodies crashed into her as they sought to drag her down. When she killed one, two more took its place. Hooked claws tore her flesh and she returned the favour. She was in constant motion, her feet and hands crushing skulls and splintering bones even as her sword removed heads and spilled intestines.

For a moment, the snarling creatures that swirled around her wore the faces of enemies new and old, of every obstacle that stood in her path – Razek and Al-Khattab, Lamashizzar and Khalida, Khaled and Ushoran. Obstacle and enemy were interchangeable concepts for Neferata and she wondered, in the bliss of bloodletting, when that had become the case.

Then the moment passed and she stood alone, drenched in blood. The survivors squatted around her, stinking of fear, their yellow gazes riveted on her. It was ever the way with the corpse-eaters; simply kill enough of them and they worshipped you. If only men were so easy.

Neferata stretched out her sword, catching one of the larger beasts beneath its jaw with the flat of the blade. It gurgled something. She frowned. ‘Morath, I trust W’soran taught you whatever debased mewling passes for the language of Nagashizzar,’ she called out.

Morath hurried towards her, flanked by Neferata’s handmaidens. The blades of both vampires were dark with blood, but only a few ghouls had been opportunistic enough to attack them. Those creatures littered the slope below. Morath spoke in a halting, gurgling tongue that seemed to be less word than bark. The ghouls answered with barks of their own. Morath turned to Neferata, who was examining the blood dripping from her sword to the rocks. Several ghouls squatted low and snuffled at the spreading stain. ‘You’ve impressed them,’ Morath said.