Neferata

SIXTEEN




The Black Gulf

(–900 Imperial Reckoning)

Neferata lounged on the divan on the deck of the black ark, stirring the wine in her goblet with a finger. Khaled and Anmar stood behind her, their hands on their weapons and their eyes watchful. The druchii slave-master examined the line of shivering, weeping people, occasionally lifting a chin with the butt of a coiled whip.

‘They are pathetic,’ the white-haired elf woman lying on the divan across from Neferata said.

‘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 Silver Pinnacle

(–326 Imperial Reckoning)

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.

Images of vampiric handmaidens spreading outwards from the silent peaks of the Silver Pinnacle, dwarf gold in their saddlebags and her commands in their ears, filled her mind’s eye. She could control nations from the safety of this place; an unseen queen, ruling an invisible empire.

The world would be hers. Nations would rise and fall at her merest whisper. Her daughters would craft empires in the west to match any in the east and they would all bend knee to her as she waited in this place, which straddled the spine of the world.

And then… and then… what?

Before she could come up with an answer, something new intruded on the darkness and silence. Sound carried strongly through the water. Down in the dark, Neferata looked up and saw the teeth of a great wheel bite into the water, and heard the thump and thunder of distant mechanisms. She thrust herself upwards, floating high, reaching out a hand. Her claws sank easily into the tough wood and she was unceremoniously yanked upwards towards the orange glow that lit the surface above. Below her, Naaima and the others followed suit, launching upwards to cling like barnacles to the wheel.

Water cascaded down her face and down in rivulets across the jagged planes of her armour as she burst upwards into the light and heat. Neferata crouched on the wheel as it rose towards the apex of its cycle. The mines of the Silver Pinnacle were as different from the mines of Nagashizzar and Mourkain as the day was from the night. They were places of reverence as well as toil and in the light of the lanterns hanging from the support beams she saw dwarfs everywhere, closing off tunnels and lowering grates over sluice gates. They were obviously sealing the mines in order to prevent just the sort of attack she was planning. They simply hadn’t done it quickly enough.

Neferata balanced on the moving wheel for a moment, readying herself, and then leapt off with a sinuous motion. As she landed, she bisected a surprised-looking dwarf with an almost playful flick of her sword. As the two gushing halves fell, she was already moving. Naaima and the others followed suit with predatory grace. The vampires spread out like a wolf-pack on the hunt. The dwarfs had noticed them by then and a number of them, carrying mine-tools or weapons, moved to meet the invaders with a loud cry. Others rushed for the exits. If they reached them, the alarm would be raised.

Naaima caught up with Neferata. ‘You have a plan, I trust,’ she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the forges and the cries of the charging dwarfs.

‘Oh yes!’ Neferata said, laughing. ‘We will make them afraid of the dark.’ Neferata spun towards the river. Through the centuries, the Silver Pinnacle had been besieged a thousand times, but it had withstood each and every attack. The bones of those defeated armies lay scattered across the mountains and the spirits of warriors killed by the murder-make of the dawi clung tenaciously to those bones, wherever they might lie. Savages from the north and orc tribes from the east, raiders from the west and monsters from the deep, all had broken themselves on the Silver Pinnacle.

The bottom of the river that coiled around the mountain like some grim, black serpent was littered with the decaying detritus of some of those expeditions. And more besides, for the same river stretched through the mountains, running like a living vein. There were a million dead clutched to the river’s bosom and Neferata intended to rip as many free as she could. As her handmaidens fought the trapped dwarfs, Neferata stared at the black waters. She stepped back and drew the whispering skeins of dark magic to her the way a weaver might pull threads. Black veins pulsed in her pale skin and her countenance became nightmarish as her human seeming died beneath the waves of dark magic washing over and through her.

Morath had been right, in his way. It wasn’t that she possessed an aptitude for the magics, but that the thing that she had become was one with that dark lore. Even as Arkhan and Nagash had replaced their humanity with a swirling void of magics, so too had she become a being of those alien winds. They flowed through her altered form more easily than they did through Morath’s fragile human shape. She could hear the thunder of a hundred thousand voices, caught in the shifting waters.

They rose from the water like a morning mist, threadbare at first and then thicker, more real. The wraiths were not all human. Orcs and other, unrecognisable creatures wafted silently amongst the cloud of summoned spirits. Their essence had been wrung from the water by sheer force of will and Neferata found the strain almost comforting. It was good to know that her mind’s strength was still intact. Hollow eyes met hers and ghostly heads bowed to her will. She gestured without turning. ‘Take them,’ she breathed. A waft of turgid, freezing wind surrounded her as the spectral forms clustered around her swept forwards, trailing tendrils of sickly light.

The host of spirits flowed towards the dwarfs and swept over them like a hot wind over desert dunes. Where they struck, dwarfs died, and soon enough the tunnel had fallen silent, but horns blew in the deep and alarms sounded somewhere close by. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Neferata scanned the tunnel mouths that gaped all around them, and then spotted a strange mechanism composed of a flat wooden platform connected to a complex pulley system. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘There,’ she said.

‘Do you know how to work that device?’ Naaima said.

‘No, nor do we need to. We climb,’ Neferata said. As she spoke she chopped through the pulley system, slicing the thick ropes and sending parts of the mechanism rolling across the floor. ‘And not all of us,’ she added as she turned to her followers. ‘Naaima, Varna and Therise, you will come with me. Iona and Freja will lead the rest in two groups. Iona, you will take those metal aqueducts,’ she said, gesturing to the heavy bronze pipes that were sunk into the river on the other side of the water-wheel. Another strange mechanism, studded with valves and stopcocks, sat high above the water. More pipes led from it into a narrow tunnel cut into the roof of the hall. Neferata suspected that those pipes led throughout the hold. There were likely other reservoirs of water in the mountain, but she suspected the pipes would lead to all of them.

‘The dawi prize their beer almost as much as their gold. Follow those to the breweries. Razek once boasted to me that beer flowed from the breweries even in times of war. Destroy them and damage the aqueducts as you go. Thirsty enemies are weak enemies,’ she said. Iona hissed in pleasure and gestured to three of her sisters. The vampires sprinted towards the pipes. Neferata looked at one of the others, a blonde former slave from one of the tribes that roamed the northern mountains. ‘Freja, find the storehouses. Even dawi need to eat. Destroy their supply lines. Burn them if you can. A fire is as good as an army, especially when they’ll have no warriors to spare in putting it out. Go!’

Neferata watched Freja and her sisters run for the doors. In the weeks they’d spent waiting for the Strigoi to locate the point where the river entered the mountain she had tutored her followers in Khazalid. They knew enough to follow the markings to their targets. And if not… if not, they would serve as a distraction if nothing else.

She looked at Naaima and gestured to the tunnel above them. ‘Now we climb.’

The spirit host filled the tunnel like smoke, accompanying them as they climbed. Even as the first warriors entered the mine in response to the alarm, the vampires were already gone. Nothing was left behind save dead dwarfs.

Such an occurrence was to become common in the days ahead. Neferata and her handmaidens slunk through the side-tunnels and crooked passages of the Lower Deeps, striking where the dwarfs least suspected. There were many places to hide, for creatures used to seeking the darkness. Too, these levels were thinly patrolled. Most of the able-bodied were on the higher levels, fighting the bulk of the forces arrayed against the Silver Pinnacle.

Despite weathering any number of sieges, the defences of the Silver Pinnacle had never been penetrated to this degree, and the dwarfs scrambled to meet the threat that crept among them, red-eyed and bloody-fanged in the dark. And to their credit, these attempts were not wholly without success. Three of them were caught over the following days, and their screams still echoed through the depths. The dwarfs were not cruel. But they were thorough.

Despite the loss of her sisters, Freja accomplished her own task. A thrown lantern and burst casks of beer set the great storehouses alight and as the dwarfs fought to put the flames out, she had retreated into the darkness, seeking out her mistress.

Those dwarfs who could be spared to hunt Neferata and her followers were ambushed and slaughtered by their prey, their bodies hung up in the corridors to drain. Soon, the dwarfs abandoned the hunt, and instead stayed close to the well-lit and heavily defended areas. As Neferata had hoped, they had come to fear the dark, ceding it to her without realising that she had been moving in a singular direction since arriving. Razek might have put it together, but Razek was dead.

She and her followers moved ever upwards, bypassing treasure vaults and barracks, looking instead for more solemn targets. Namely, the Vaults of the Ancestors: the hallowed halls where the dwarfs of the Silver Pinnacle laid their dead to their eternal rest.

The grand tombs of Karaz Bryn were filled with generation upon generation of dawi dead. There were thousands of perfectly preserved bodies there, awaiting the dark touch of Neferata’s magics. And when she woke them from their dreamless slumber, they would march beneath her banner, crushing her enemies – all of her enemies, living and dead – beneath their metal-shod tread.

Eagerness filled her as they drew nearer to their goal. Morath had shown her how to scent the charnel breeze of hidden tombs and she had learned her lessons well. And from Ushoran, though she would never admit it, she had learned the art of hiding in plain sight. Thus, when they at last reached the tomb-hall where the Vaults lay, they entered surreptitiously and soundlessly.

With an abominable speed, the vampires crawled along the ceiling, slithering out of the passage and up among the support buttresses and rock formations of the tomb-hall beyond. There was no darkness in the hall, save that which clung to the ceiling, and dwarfs, much like men, rarely looked up.

The hall housing the Vaults was immense, stretching for what seemed like miles. The great doors that marked the Vaults themselves were only slightly smaller than the gates to Karaz Bryn itself, and even more ornate. Spread across the centre of both gates was emblazoned the scowling face of one of the dwarf gods, though at that size it was hard to tell which. Radiating outwards from that glaring visage was an intricate mandala of words and images and symbols, none of which made any sense to Neferata. Perhaps it was a recounting of the deeds of all of those interred within, or of their clans.

Regardless of the purpose of the decorations which adorned them, the doors themselves radiated the same implacable menace which marked the gates of the Silver Pinnacle. The closer they drew, the more the presence pressed against them.

‘Neferata…’ Naaima hissed. Neferata stopped and craned her head back to see her followers huddling some distance behind her as if they were rooted to the spot. And even farther back, the spirit host clustered around the top of the archway that marked the entrance to the hall. Immediately, Neferata cursed herself for a fool. Of course the dwarfs would have some form of protection on their tombs! She turned back to the Vaults, squinting. Her flesh crawled at the thought of drawing any closer, but there was no other choice. To turn back now was to admit defeat.

‘I will go. When I give the signal, attack,’ Neferata called back softly to her followers.

‘And what is the signal?’ Naaima hissed in reply.

Neferata smiled. ‘You’ll know it when you see it.’ With that, she continued on, not stopping until she hung over the gates like a cave-lizard. As she crawled, she watched the ceremonial guards below. They wore ornate heavy armour, and wielded two-handed axes. One was smoking a pipe and the stink of the weed within caused her nose to wrinkle in disgust. There were a half-dozen of them ranged out before the doors. That the dwarfs would spare able warriors on guarding such a place when their hold was under attack told her how highly they valued the tombs of the dead.

She froze as the scrape of boots on stone sounded. More guards, these dressed in battle-stained armour and smelling of bloodshed, strode towards the Vault, surrounding a familiar robed figure. Abruptly Neferata recalled the dwarf woman who had stood beside Borri on his throne. What was she doing here?

The leader of the group before the Vaults obviously wondered the same, as he barked a gruff query. ‘Who goes there?’

‘It is I, Dromble… Hilga,’ the priestess said in a clear timbre. Sound carried easily in the vast space of the hall.

‘Priestess,’ the tomb-warden said, hastily combing at his immaculate beard with his hand. His men followed suit, instinctively preening before the dwarf woman. ‘You honour us with your presence.’

‘As you honour our ancestors with your devotion to duty,’ Hilga said.

‘But why are you here? Surely it is not safe for you down here. Several of those zanguzaz are loose down in the depths.’ At the word, the priestess’s escort looked around warily, clutching their weapons tightly.

‘Nowhere is safe, I am afraid. And I am to ensure that the vaults of our honoured dead are proof against the foul magics of our enemy,’ the priestess said, stepping briskly past him and placing her hands against the doors. ‘In our last war with the men of Mourkain, they dragged the dead from the ground, both theirs and ours. ‘

‘Uzkular,’ a guard muttered.

Hilga nodded. ‘Aye, they wring motion from the dead and I intend to see that our dead stay safely and honourably in their tombs, as the gods intended.’ She waved a hand, and a faint glow crept through the contours of the mandala.

The guards shifted uncomfortably, obviously unused to seeing such things. Neferata crept closer, her flesh prickling as the priestess began to speak. A warm glow spread outwards from the dwarf woman’s fingers, illuminating the heretofore unseen runes that marked the doors in turn. Neferata felt the urge to flee grip her in the face of that glow, but she forced herself to creep forwards. The bats that were nestled in the nooks and crannies of the ceiling chattered quietly at her approach, and she stretched her mind towards them.

Their minds were like tiny candle flames and they crowded towards her, their hairy bodies covering hers for a moment. Once, such a thing would have disgusted her. Now she welcomed it. She let her hand drop and the bats followed it, circling her arm like a tornado of leather wings and teeth. ‘Go,’ she hissed. The bats spiralled down towards the guards and the priestess in a squeaking horde.

There were hundreds of bats and only two dozen dwarfs. Neferata dropped from the ceiling, landing on all fours before Dromble, who gaped at her in astonishment before Neferata closed her hands around his head and crushed both his skull and his helmet with one brutal motion. Then, without pausing, she jumped towards Hilga, knowing instinctively that the priestess was her most dangerous opponent. She caught the dwarf’s robes and yanked her away from the doors. Hilga uttered a sharp cry and a short-hafted hammer appeared in her hand. It bounced off Neferata’s pauldron and she released the priestess.

Hilga scrambled aside as one of the gruff warriors who’d accompanied her attacked Neferata. He swung his two-handed hammer in a mighty blow, and Neferata’s skin itched as the silver-threaded head of the hammer narrowly missed her. Her hands shot forwards, her claws tangling in his beard, and she wrenched him into the air and hurled him at the Vault doors hard enough to kill him. Blood splashed over the doors and she hissed in pleasure as the omnipresent pressure emanating from them dimmed. ‘Ha!’ she said, turning to lunge for another dwarf. A guard staggered towards her blindly, his head trapped in a mask of bats. Neferata grabbed him, crushing his limbs as she hefted him like a sack of grain and sent him crashing against the doors. Blood and brain matter splattered across the decorations and a moment later Naaima and the others dropped to the floor, racing easily through the cloud of bats. Naaima, a sword in each hand, sprang amongst the dwarfs in a violent dance punctuated by streamers of blood.

‘Your magic is powerful, woman,’ Neferata said, stalking towards Hilga, who had got to her feet. ‘But I am more so.’ The dwarf woman’s reply was to attack. Her hammer’s head was inscribed with more runes than Neferata’s eyes could discern and it fairly hummed as it flashed towards her. She stumbled back, falling against the doors to the tombs. Her flesh sizzled and she screamed.

She staggered forwards and fell, smoke rising from her. ‘No, blood-drinker,’ Hilga said. ‘You will not desecrate our dead.’

Neferata growled low in her throat and then, as something caught her eye, she smiled nastily. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that.’

Hilga’s eyes widened behind her helm and she spun. Dromble stumbled towards her, animated by Naaima’s will. The other dead dwarfs were already falling upon those of their fellows who had survived the vampires’ attack. ‘No,’ Hilga whispered as Dromble clutched at her. ‘No!’

‘Yes,’ Neferata hissed, lunging to her feet and grabbing the priestess from behind. ‘Unlock it, priestess, and I will let you live.’ In the distance she could hear the sound of clomping boots. Reinforcements were on their way. They had no time.

‘Never,’ Hilga cried out, struggling in Neferata’s grip.

‘Then die,’ Neferata snarled in frustration, shoving the dwarf into the grip of her dead companion. Dromble gripped the priestess’s braids in one hand and clawed for her throat with the other. Hilga set her feet and drove her hammer into the tomb-warden’s skull, cracking it and the helm protecting it. But not soon enough; Dromble’s fingers tightened, cartilage popped and flesh tore, and Hilga toppled backwards, choking on her own blood.

‘Neferata, we must go,’ Naaima said. As if to emphasise her words, dwarf horns blew, signalling the approach of more warriors. The animated corpses of the guards swayed in place and then, one by one, as if struck by a strong breeze, they toppled. The magic that seeped from the Vaults was too strong to keep the dead animated for more than a few moments.

Neferata glared down at the body, and then at the doors that were forever barred to her. With a frustrated snarl, she led her handmaidens back into the darkness.