‘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.
The necromancer liked this no better than she, she knew. They were both prisoners of Ushoran’s madness, though Morath had chosen that fate willingly. She had offered him a place, and he had turned away out of loyalty to an ideal. ‘I could have been your queen,’ she murmured. Morath looked at her.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, necromancer. Stay back and leave the fighting to those with the thirst for it.’ Neferata trotted after the dwarf dead. She drank in the swirling winds of dark magic as she moved, using it to abate the thirst she felt. She felt her features stretch and sharpen and her muscles harden. She broke into a sprint as the first of the zombies connected with the dwarf battle-line. Others joined her — the Strigoi, shadowed by her own handmaidens, and around them, the war-ghouls of W’soran’s devising, their mammoth tread shaking the floor as they roared out unintelligible challenges to the enemy.
The two forces connected with a thunderclap. The dead were a wave washing over the rock that was the defenders of Karaz Bryn. Dwarfs fell, pulled down by the hands of their fellows or crushed by the hammers of the war-ghouls. Neferata bounded from the ground to a ghoul’s thigh and then off one of the great statues that stood sentinel over the stairs, landing near Borri. She had to force the king to flee. The Strigoi followed her like a pack of ravening hounds, avoiding the press of the fighting in order to reach the king and his guard.
Borri saw her in the instant before she reached him. He pivoted, nearly slicing her nose off with the axe, and then followed up with the hammer he wielded in his other hand, knocking her off her feet. She rolled beneath the feet of the attacking Strigoi as they flung themselves at the king’s guard with bestial abandon. Claws and swords clashed with ancient armour and ancestral hammers and the iron wall of dawi guards disintegrated into a melee within a melee.
Borri’s hammer shattered a Strigoi’s snarling face, sending the vampire hurtling backwards. Neferata ducked under the flailing body and brought her sword around, locking blade to haft with Borri’s hammer. He grunted as he realised her strength and crossed the hammer with the axe, glaring at her between them. ‘Treachery,’ he said. ‘You manlings know nothing but treachery.’