Текст книги "Neferata"

Автор книги: Josh Reynolds

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SEVENTEEN

The City of Sartosa

(–850 Imperial Reckoning)

The khopesh, its blade pitted and scarred by sand and time, chopped into the marble column, missing Neferata’s head by inches. She slid down and lashed out with a foot, kicking the dead thing in its ribcage and snapping its spine. It toppled, only to be replaced by two more. Spears thrust at her, and blood spurted from her cheek and arm. She cursed and smashed a leering skull with a jab of her palm.

As the dead crowded into the plaza, she slithered up the column, avoiding the bronze weapons which sought her heart. She leapt for the aqueduct, splashing into the water. She paused and surveyed her villa. Ghouls spitted on the spears of Settra’s legions writhed in the torchlight, reaching vainly for her. She felt neither sympathy nor pity for the creatures, though she had brought them to this sad fate.

The screams of her handmaidens, however, evoked rage. She longed to throw herself back into the fray, but her instincts of self-preservation were too strong. The sound of chariot wheels crunching across the cobbles reached her, and she turned and ran along the aqueduct. In the distance, Sartosa burned.

Megara’s warning had haunted her for years, but she had never truly believed that they would come for her. And now it was too late to do anything but run. The Tomb-Fleets of Settra the Imperishable had come to Sartosa, carrying the vengeance of Nehekhara across the sea.

‘Neferata,’ Naaima called out. Neferata saw her handmaiden on the roof of the villa with the other survivors. She heard the creak of dusty strings and saw a line of skeletal archers.

‘Get down, fools!’ Neferata shouted, as the arrows sped forth. She did not look to see who had fallen. Instead, she turned, alerted by the quiet tremble of the aqueduct. The butt end of a staff caught her in the belly, folding her over. She sank to her knees and looked up. ‘You,’ she hissed.

‘Neferata,’ Khalida of Lybaras said in a voice like the rustling of ancient silk. Her slim form was bound tight by the ceremonial wrappings and her proud head still wore her funerary head-dress and the mortuary mask that hid the ravages that death had made upon her once beautiful face. ‘In the darkness I dreamt of you, cousin.’

‘I dreamed of you as well, little hawk,’ Neferata said, rising slowly to face her cousin.

‘Hawk no longer. My wings are dust and bone,’ Khalida said. Her wrists creaked as she began to spin the asp-headed staff. It was the same staff that she had been entombed with. Neferata had placed it in her hands herself. ‘I crawl through time now, like an asp.’ So saying, she struck out, the serpentine head of the staff cracking Neferata across the shoulder and nearly spinning her around. Khalida slid forwards, the water seeming to part for her linen-wrapped feet as she struck again and left a red gash across Neferata’s back.

Neferata fell forwards into the water, agony such as she had never felt spitting through her. She rolled aside, nearly falling out of the aqueduct as the bronze-shod end of the staff came down, cracking the stone. Water began to flow down through the crack.

‘You took my wings, Neferata. You made me crawl. Now I will return the favour. Crawl, cousin,’ Khalida said, her tone remorseless and empty of the emotion that should have permeated such a statement. ‘Crawl.’

‘Never,’ Neferata snapped, kicking Khalida in the midsection. The dead woman staggered and Neferata came to her feet, her talons flashing and ripping through the wrappings around Khalida’s chest, revealing the leathery flesh beneath. Fingers like iron bands fastened on Neferata’s throat and she felt herself hefted, then she was flying down into the plaza. Tiles cracked and exploded beneath her. The dead circled her, but none moved to attack. She was Khalida’s prey, and no other’s.

Neferata pushed herself to her feet as her cousin approached, her torn wrappings fluttering about her like hissing snakes. The staff snapped out, catching her on the chin, and she was airborne again before landing heavily. ‘Nehekhara is dead, Neferata, and all her people with her. Why should you escape the fate of the Great Land? Why should you walk in twilight, while your people suffer in darkness?’

‘Because I am queen,’ Neferata snarled, lunging up and grabbing the staff. The two of them swung about, struggling. ‘And the suffering of our people is not my responsibility, cousin. I tried to save them!’

‘Is that what you call it?’ Khalida said, wrenching the staff away. Neferata ducked the blow and her claws scored the beautiful mask. Khalida stepped back. ‘Your actions damned them, though they knew it not until the end.’

‘No,’ Neferata growled.

‘Yes,’ Khalida said. She struck again and again, forcing Neferata to dodge and back away. The dead allowed her to retreat. ‘Your existence dishonours the memory of our people, cousin. It spits on their grave.’

‘They dishonoured me,’ Neferata shrieked, anger burning through her. ‘They forced me out! They burned my beautiful Lahmia! They deserved all that Nagash did to them!’ As the words slipped her lips, she felt it again – that dark, watchful presence that had been coiling within her ever since she had set foot on Sartosa’s shores. It purred in satisfaction and she saw darkness. She shook her head and Khalida’s staff caught her on the arm.

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…

The Silver Pinnacle

(–326 Imperial Reckoning)

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.

‘Harry them. Take every alcove and cul-de-sac,’ she shouted, raising her sword. The spirit-host boiled around and between the remaining vampires squeezing into the corridor beyond. Neferata loped in its wake, as swift as thought. There was no light within the passageway, but she saw plain enough. The dwarfs there radiated life and heat and saliva filled her mouth.

The dead and the soon-to-be-dying came together in the darkness. The dwarf line held, shields raised and axes high as the vampires rampaged among them. Neferata’s sword split a dwarf’s helmet and the head beneath even as the doomed warrior struck at her in vain with his axe. She waded into the line, followed closely by the others, the spirits of the hungry dead clustering on the flanks, pulling down dwarfs with ethereal talons.

‘Hold steady, lads, it’s just an ill-breeze,’ a dwarf bellowed. His axe was decorated with runic symbols that burned bright as he swiped at the ghosts. Several shrieked silently and dissipated as the axe blade cut through them. Neferata felt a spike of pain as the spectres vanished and she lunged for the dwarf. He caught her blow on his shield with a grunt, and the force of the impact drove him to one knee. His axe hissed, as if red-hot, as it cut at her and she hastily jerked back. Like the hammers wielded by the king’s guard, some enchantment had been worked into the metal.

Neferata traded blows with the dwarf as the corridor floor ran red. Undeterred by the runic axe, the spirits swept forwards, enveloping the dwarfs and sucking the life from them. As each dwarf fell, the face of the one facing Neferata grew harder and harder, and his blows came faster and faster, as if by defeating her he could save those of his men who remained. And perhaps he could have, if she had let him.

He chopped out at her, overextending himself. She rolled around the blow, stone scraping beneath her sandals as she twirled and brought her sword up into his back. His mail buckled, and the sword screeched against the metal as it penetrated and popped out of his barrel chest in a blossom of blood. She withdrew the sword and turned as he toppled onto his face. The dwarfs were retreating now, falling back along the corridor towards the point where it opened up into a balcony that overlooked the great hall beyond. A wide set of curving stairs waited for them on one side of the gate, leading down to the open floor below.

Neferata paused, taking in the scene. The Deeping Stair was a mile across and three miles long and carved from a single plane of rock. In other circumstances, it would have been breathtaking. It was the main artery for travel in the hold, and even now, dwarfs hurried across it, seeking the safety of the temple district located below. She recognised the immense statues of the dawi gods and goddess, watching with blank-eyed sadness as their people streamed for the safety the temples promised. She could feel the same burning pressure emanating from those buildings as she had felt at the Vaults.

With that realisation came an understanding of the pattern to the dwarf movements. They were fighting a rearguard action, trying to give their people a chance to reach safety. She grimaced. If they reached those temples, they would be almost impossible to dig out. Unless they came out of their own free will. Her frown faded and she moved on, still thinking.

The vaulted chamber rang with the sound of weapons as the fight spilled onto the balcony. The large doors that led to the entry hall shuddered on their hinges and ranks of dwarfs waited for the undead without to break in. There were shouts of surprise from their ranks and reinforcements hurried towards the stairs, seeking to halt the incursion.

Of the dozen or so dwarfs who remained on the balcony, a small group of five set themselves to guard the retreat of the others in a display of commendable bravery. Like their commander, they intended to sell their lives dearly. Neferata leapt from the balcony, bypassing them entirely. Her handmaidens followed, leaping and bounding, leaving the spirit-host to deal with the survivors from their entry. As the spectral creatures boiled across the balcony, the vampires descended. Neferata’s eyes found the pulley and wheel system that controlled the titan doors and she gestured with her sword. ‘Take it! Get it open!’ she howled.

Crossbow bolts rattled off the stone and their armour as more dwarfs moved to stop them. One of her handmaidens, a brunette creature called Sabine, was punched backwards, a bolt standing at attention between her breasts. She writhed and shrieked as she squirmed on the ground, clawing at her chest. Neferata ignored her follower’s plight as she bounded towards the gate mechanism. She hit the crank with her shoulder, throwing her whole body into the act. The immense chain that raised the counter-weights which would open the door shook as she hit it.

Crossbow bolts sprouted from her back and her arms. She gasped in pain, but resisted the urge to turn on her attackers or retreat. More bolts smashed home, and she slumped, coughing blood. Yet with a grinding roar, the gates to the inner deep began to swing open. Neferata rolled off the mechanism and fell to the floor as the gigantic ghouls that led the Strigoi advance ripped the doors the rest of the way open and admitted the undead host.

The sounds of battle filled the air and she closed her eyes. The crossbow bolts that had pierced her began to fall free one by one as she encouraged her metamorphic flesh to expel them. Hooves clopped close. ‘A handy trick,’ someone said. Neferata cracked an eye.

Morath looked down at her, his blistered face twisted into a smile. Neferata pushed herself to her feet. ‘Was it? I have so many that I lose track,’ she said. She turned. The dwarfs were stubborn, but they were outnumbered and unprepared. Their horns were already calling for a retreat.

‘Your plan worked, I see,’ Morath said, leaning forwards across the pommel of his saddle. He didn’t ask how she had survived, or what had occurred since her disappearance.

‘Of course it did,’ she said, snatching up her sword and sheathing it. ‘They’ll fall back to the Deeping Stair. We need to harry them, to keep them from regrouping here. I want them running.’

‘Easily done, now that we have some room,’ Morath said, snatching at his reins and turning his mount. The dead pushed forwards, ignoring the impotent fury of their foes. The dwarfs gave ground grudgingly, but give ground they did. They had been thrown off their guard by Neferata’s sudden entry, and the Strigoi’s advent had prevented them from reforming the shield wall.

Corpse-wolves and mummified horsemen galloped past her, following the retreating dwarfs. She let them go. The army would be spread out across the hold, if she judged Khaled correctly. There would be more bastions of resistance than just here, but here was the main one. Here, at the heart of the hold, was where Borri would be. And Khaled wanted Borri. Khaled needed the king’s head and beard to establish himself as Ushoran’s right hand.

Her Kontoi had thrown himself into the snake-pit with his eyes wide open, and he knew well what would keep him from getting bitten. He would rise far. But never to where he desired. Not now. Not with the crown sitting on Ushoran’s brow, dictating the commands of a being better forgotten.

She smiled. She had seen the web for what it was, in the end, and seen the crown for the spider it pretended not to be. A trap by any other name; it was the soul of another dead man, trying to force her into his shadow.

Kings, undying or otherwise, had no use for a queen who spoke her mind. And Neferata had no use for kings. And soon, she would have no need to fear them. That was, if she didn’t die in the process.

Mounted on skeletal steeds, Khaled and Zandor rode towards her. Trust the Strigoi to stay close to his greatest rival. Both men displayed surprise at seeing her, and the latter showed a certain amount of trepidation. Perhaps it hadn’t been Khaled who had arranged for her to walk into an ambush after all.

‘Hail, my Kontoi,’ Neferata said, plucking a final bolt from her body.

‘I thought—’ Khaled began as he swung down off his steed. Zandor followed suit, frowning.

‘I know what you thought,’ Neferata said. ‘Yet here I am, my Kontoi, coming to your rescue again.’

‘Rescue,’ Khaled repeated, glaring at her.

‘Oh yes, though you don’t deserve it.’ She looked back and forth between them. ‘Which of you was it, I wonder, who decided to let me walk into a trap? Was it you, my Kontoi? Or was it perhaps you, Zandor?’ She leered at the Strigoi, who stepped back. ‘Regardless, the dwarfs are falling back to their final redoubt.’

‘Ushoran will be most pleased,’ Zandor said smugly. ‘You have done well, woman.’

Neferata didn’t reply. Khaled looked at her. ‘They’re retreating to their temples, aren’t they?’ he said, eyes glinting. ‘Zandor and I will take several of the Strigoi and cut them off. We can’t let them scurry into their damnable holes. I would be done with this.’

‘For once, we are of one mind,’ Neferata said. ‘There will be women and children in those temples. I want them alive.’

‘Why?’ Khaled said.

‘Because I have commanded such,’ she said, putting an edge to her words. ‘I intend to offer the dwarfs terms—’

‘What?’ Zandor snarled. ‘Who are you to—?’

‘I am Neferata of Lahmia,’ she snarled, backhanding the Strigoi and knocking him from his feet. She turned her glare on Khaled, pinning him in place before he could draw his sword. ‘That should be reason enough to do as I command. I want them alive, Khaled, alive and unharmed.’

Khaled stepped back and hauled Zandor to his feet. The Strigoi glared at her groggily, but said nothing as Khaled hauled him away. Neferata watched them go, and then said, ‘You can come out now, Anmar.’

The girl stepped out from the shadows of the gateway, her sword gripped loosely in her hand. ‘Who would you have helped, I wonder?’ Neferata said, turning to her. Anmar said nothing. She met Neferata’s eyes, but only for a moment.

‘Have I ever told you about my cousin?’ Neferata said. ‘Her name was—’

‘Yes, you have,’ Anmar said softly. Neferata stopped, nonplussed. ‘Why would you spare them?’

‘The dwarfs?’ Neferata said. Anmar nodded. Neferata smiled thinly. ‘Spite. Ushoran wants them exterminated. Thus, I will spare them.’ That and it would be easier to get the dwarfs to surrender if their loved ones were offered safe passage.

‘Is that why you tried to take the crown?’

Neferata hesitated. ‘Why are you asking this? Yes, girl, I wanted the crown for spite.’

‘Is that why you took me?’ Anmar said, shifting her sword in her grip.

‘I—’ Neferata hesitated again. What had got into the girl? ‘Anmar, you are my little leopard. I took you because I wanted to give you my gift.’ She stepped towards the girl. ‘Anmar—’

‘I must go. My brother will need me,’ Anmar said, slipping past Neferata and speeding after Khaled.

‘What would you have done if she’d helped him?’ Naaima said. Neferata turned and saw her oldest handmaiden picking her way across the bodies of the dead. Before Neferata could speak, Naaima continued. ‘The others are doing as you commanded, never fear. The Strigoi will never see them coming.’

‘Good.’ Neferata peered at her. ‘You will take Morath.’

‘I will be gentle,’ Naaima said, flashing a crooked smile.

Neferata nodded. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt her,’ she said finally. ‘She is as dear to me as my own sister.’

‘So was Khalida,’ Naaima said. ‘And when it was necessary, you snuffed her as if she were a flame.’ Naaima smiled sadly. ‘We are tools, Neferata. You call us sisters, but we are but pieces on your game-board. You collect us and hoard us, and sometimes you spend us. Sometimes you spend us for ambition. Other times, it is for spite.’

Neferata stared at her, stunned. Naaima stepped forwards and took her mistress’s face in her hands and kissed her softly on the cheek. ‘And we love you for it, because we cannot help but to do so. You unmake us as easily as Nagash’s crown threatened to unmake you, and remake us in your image.’ She stepped back and turned away.

Neferata watched her go, part of her wanting to batter the sad smile from Naaima’s face. But the other part, the cold, calculating part, merely made her nod. She pushed the distraction of it all aside. She trotted towards the ongoing battle, slowly at first, then picking up speed.

Neferata scanned the stairs with the eye of an experienced general as she ran. She had learned over the centuries to read the ebb and flow of battle as easily as Morath read his mouldy parchments. This was a fighting withdrawal. They had caught the dwarfs by surprise, and there simply weren’t enough of them to face a foe that was seemingly limitless, not to mention fearless. It would be a retreat, then, down to the next level where the final defences were likely already being prepared.

The dwarf rearguard on the Deeping Stair fought with tenacity, but the dead noticed only obstacles, not determination. The sheer number of skeletons and dwarf zombies pulled down the defenders, reducing them from a solid battle-line to struggling, fast-consumed knots of embattled heroes. Rune-weapons blazed in the hands of the mightiest warriors of the hold, and for a moment, just a moment, it seemed as if they might be enough.

King Borri stood amidst his bodyguard. He still held Razek’s axe and he gesticulated with it in the direction of the relentless legions stalking towards the dwarf ranks. Borri was as canny as his son, and the dwarfs of the Silver Pinnacle had fought the dead before. As Neferata watched, a dozen dwarfs ran forwards at Borri’s command, carrying bubbling cauldrons full of pitch. They slung them into the advancing dead. A moment later, crossbow bolts with burning tips were fired over the heads of Borri and his men.

The wide expanse of floor leading to the Deeping Stair exploded into flame. By itself, it wouldn’t have stopped the dead, but it did slow them down enough for the miniature catapults that had been dragged into position on the lower landing to be of use sooner rather than later. Irregular chunks of rock were flung into the air and where they struck, they left a trail of splintered bones and gaps in the ranks.

Morath winced at each impact. Neferata looked up at the necromancer as she reached his side, where he was surrounded by a grave-guard of skeletal horsemen clad in rotting leather and bronze armour that had gone green with age. ‘Pull them back,’ she said. ‘Between the heat and the rocks, the barrow-dead are too vulnerable.’

‘Then what do you suggest we send in their place, harsh language?’ Morath said, not looking at her. The strain of controlling so many dead was plainly visible on his face. Neferata caught sight of Naaima on his other side.

‘No, but there are a wealth of troops they might not be so eager to bounce rocks off,’ she countered, sweeping a hand out to indicate the dwarf dead. Morath blinked. Then he smiled weakly.

‘Ushoran was right to send you,’ he said. His smile faded. ‘I—’ he began, but she waved him to silence.

‘Raise them, necromancer. Set brother against brother. Let’s give our hosts something worthy to record in their pathetic book of complaints, shall we?’

Morath squared his shoulders and took a breath. Neferata felt him pluck the strands of dark magic that clustered near the bodies of the slain with his mind. He raised a hand, his fingers hooked like arthritic claws. Morath had changed much over the past few years. Only traces of his previous handsomeness remained; he was a shrivelled wreck now, but more mighty than he had been. With W’soran’s flight, the burden of Mourkain’s magical needs had fallen on Morath’s shoulders. He had kept the kingdom running, but only just.

In comparison, bringing the newly dead to their feet was as nothing. The dwarfs stirred, ruined mail scratching across stone. She inhaled the strange sickly-sweet scent of over-ripened life. Bloody fingers twitched and heels drummed on the floor. Eyelids peeled back from poached-egg eyes and as one, with a groan, the dead sat up. Gripping their weapons with slack necessity, the dead dwarfs turned as a mass towards Borri’s battleline.

The dirge, when it came, was something of a surprise: a collective song of mourning, slipping from the mouths of every dwarf still breathing. Neferata watched as the dwarfs faced their dead kin, singing their sad slow song, and she felt a moment of what might have been respect. There was no fear there, only sadness. The song rose in volume until the very stones seemed to reverberate with its rhythm.

The passage of the dead beat out the flames. Still, beards and braids caught alight, wreathing the zombies in halos of flame as they stumbled towards their former companions in a grim parody of martial discipline. Neferata heard the Strigoi howling in mockery and disgust filled her. This was a necessity, not a pleasure. In another, better world, the dawi would have been her allies. She glanced at Morath, noting the flat expression on his face.