Neferata

by Josh Reynolds

  There was more magic awaiting her. It was worked into the welcoming sigils that marked the interior archway and as she passed beneath them, they caused Neferata’s flesh to prickle. The magic struck at the heart of what she was, circling and trapping her in a ring of unseen fire. It took an effort of will not to slap at her flesh and beat out the invisible flames. On her shoulders, the cat shuddered slightly.

  She took hold of herself as the dwarfs came out to meet her, clad in light mail and some carrying high poles with flickering lanterns which threw mad shadows across the rocks and snow. She stood in their light, axe extended, her other hand resting on the pommel of the sword on her hip. Other dwarfs carried crossbows, their bolts aimed unerringly at her.

  ‘Zanguzaz,’ one spat. That meant blood-drinker. Apparently her agents hadn’t managed to hide certain facts from Razek as well as she had thought. It was another failure to set at Khaled’s door when this was done. She inclined her head.

  ‘What of it?’ she said, meeting their hostile gazes with a bland one. ‘I have come to return the ancestral weapon of the Silverfoot clan.’ She let them see the axe.

  ‘Where is the one who bore it?’ one of the dwarfs barked. She could tell by the decorations in his beard that he was in charge. He bore a resemblance to Razek – he was a brother, perhaps, or more likely a cousin. It mattered little to her. Sympathy was no longer a vice she could afford.

  ‘Dead,’ she said simply.

  The dwarf closed his eyes, as if the thought pained him. When he opened them, the banal hostility of the watchman had been replaced by something else. For a moment, Neferata thought he might order his warriors to fire, but instead he simply turned and gestured sharply. ‘Come.’

  The others fell in around her as she was led through the doors. Even as she passed through the archway the doors began to swing shut. She peered up into the gloom, spotting the ancient mechanisms responsible. Massive cogs and gears, the purpose of which escaped her, shifted and spun against one another, setting up a rumble that caused the stone floor beneath her feet to vibrate with a constant hum. She grunted. The cat stretched, yawning. It dropped to the floor silently and retreated into the gloom. If the dwarfs saw, they gave no sign. Their attentions were held with iron rigidity on Neferata, even as she had known they would be. They had not asked for her weapons, for what threat could one woman – even one who drank blood – be to a mighty hold?

  The entry hall was massive, with vast fluted galleries that swept up into smooth balconies that looked as if they had been coaxed from the stone by the hands of a sculptor rather than a stonemason. Tiles lined the floors, each one a work of art in and of itself, depicting an act of heroism or courage by a member of the Silverfoot clan. Large ancestor statues, representing past generations of kings, thanes, and lords of the Silver Pinnacle, lined the walls, each ensconced in his own nook.

  Glowing globes, containing luminescent liquid, hung from stone half-arches spaced evenly along the length of the hall, casting a soft glow across everything. At the other end of the hall was a second set of great doors. These were another defence measure, sealing off the remainder of the Upper Deep from invasion. She knew both from her conversations with Razek and from her own spies over the centuries that the hold had many entrances – not just the one she had come through. There were doors everywhere on this level and others, some hidden, some not.

  Regardless of the size of the attackers’ force, there was no way to lay siege to a dwarf hold. A mountain could no more be surrounded than it could be levelled by conventional means. It must be inundated and worn down from within as well as without. Both could take years.

  She had months.

  The weight of the hold seemed to press down on her as they walked. The thunder of the guards’ heartbeats was like some harsh, strange music to her ears, and its tempo aroused a nervousness in her that she was not used to. It was like being close to the beating heart of the world itself, and she desired nothing more than to drive her fangs into it and drink the earth’s life away and to leave the rocks grey and barren and the soil cracked and dry. She wanted to drink the world’s lifeblood and leave it a husk.

  Her knuckles popped as her hands clenched. One of the dwarfs eyed her and exuded the stink of nervousness. That wasn’t her thinking those thoughts. It was Nagash’s damnable crown. Nagash wanted to eat the world and ride its shell into the darkness between the stars, for an eternity of silence. And Ushoran would help him do it, if there was anything of Ushoran left.

  The crown’s weight had crushed him the minute he placed it upon his brow. It had shattered his personality into fragments, breaking him the way a man might break a horse. And it had nearly done the same to her. It wanted to break everything. It wanted to render the world a vast charnel pit, peopled only by the dead. And she would be damned to oblivion before she let that happen.

  The world was hers; every scrap of dirt, every peasant and lord, human or otherwise. It was hers and Nagash – or his shade – would never have it. She would burn it to ashes before she let that happen. She had lost her city and her empire. She would not lose the world.

  Dwarfs in armour marched past, some throwing curious glances her way. Razek had never spoken of the Silver Pinnacle’s military might, but she knew that it was substantial. They had easily weathered an orc Waaagh! and Kadon’s ill-fated incursions, among other perils. And King Borri had fought against the elves in that distant time when Ulthuan’s armies had marched on the dwarf holds.

  The Silver Pinnacle would not fall easily. Not to conventional tactics.

  A dull rhythmic thudding filled the air. She brushed aside the reverie, concentrating on what was coming. She had been led into a vast chamber, larger even than Ushoran’s gaudy monstrosity of an audience chamber. The first thing she saw was the glaring skull of a dragon.

  She had never seen one. The closest she had ever come was a glimpse of the saurians of the Southlands, and they were as different from dragons as men were from her kind. The skull was large and studded with horns and it bent over as if in benediction.

  Whatever force lingered within those bones, was unwelcoming at best and malevolently hostile at worst. In many ways, it reminded her of the cold malice of Nagash’s crown. A vast, ancient presence that threatened to blot out her senses with the effluvium of its passage. Even Nagash, the voice of the crown said, even Nagash would have hesitated to face that thing when it had lived.

  But it was dead now, and its skull and spine and tattered wings were trophies for the dwarf king who sat glowering beneath it.

  The throne beneath the bones was not large, but impressive all the same, as was the squat figure who sat upon it. Borri Silverfoot, King of Karaz Bryn, Lord of the Silver Pinnacle, looked like an ancient version of his son. He was broader, if anything, and heavily built. He wore no robes, only a sleeveless suit of fine mail, belted at the waist by a broad leather belt. On his white head was a simple circlet of office. His only decorations were the silver charms woven into his great beard and the silver bracers which enclosed his massive forearms.

  Several figures stood to either side of him. One was a dwarf woman, clad in heavy, pale robes with her head hooded and her hands folded into her sleeves. She carried no weapons, but her eyes burned with something that Neferata could not identify beneath her steel half-mask. A burly bare-chested warrior, more squat than any dwarf she had ever seen before, stood a few steps down from the throne. He held an unadorned axe and his head was shaved, save for a swooping crest of rust-hued hair. His beard had been dyed the same colour, and it had been greased into stiff spikes that stuck out in all directions. Just behind the throne, an elderly dwarf stood, leaning against the haft of his hammer, which was taller than he was. His beard reached to the stone, and hundreds of rune-stones had been threaded through it. The sound they made as they clinked together set Neferata’s teeth on edge.

  Her escort fell back as she approached the throne and dw
arfs in heavy armour with their faces hidden behind iron masks took their place. They carried heavy, but perfectly balanced, hammers in their gauntlets, and looked less like living things than stumping mechanisms. They escorted her to the foot of the throne dais and then formed a living palisade around her. It bore the air of formality and ritual, rather than caution, but she knew that even so, the warriors would be alert to any threat to their king.

  ‘My son is dead,’ Borri said, his voice shattering the silence like a hammer ringing on an anvil.

  ‘Yes,’ Neferata said. One of the guards took the axe from her hand and carried it reverentially up the steps to the throne. Borri’s blunt fingers brushed the bloodstains on the handle and for a moment, his eyes clouded over with pain. Then they snapped back into focus and he flicked his fingers. The warrior laid the axe across Borri’s lap and stepped aside to stand with his king.

  ‘How did he die, and how did you come to bring me the news?’ Borri said.

  ‘He did not die by my hand, and I was commanded thus,’ she said.

  A hush fell over the audience chamber, as if every dwarf present had drawn in a breath at the same moment. Borri’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘The manling lies,’ the red-crested dwarf grated. He looked at his king and then at Neferata, and gestured with his axe. ‘She lies! Razek was a mighty warrior!’

  ‘Silence, Grund. I asked how he died,’ Borri said hollowly. Grund fell silent, glaring at her.

  ‘As a result of treachery,’ she said plainly.

  ‘Whose?’ Borri said, his fingers curling almost protectively over the haft of the axe.

  ‘My lord Ushoran’s,’ Neferata said. ‘He struck down Razek and his followers.’

  ‘As the runes foretold,’ the old dwarf wheezed, his knuckles popping as he tightened his grip on his hammer. ‘Razek’s doom was writ long ago. This he knew.’

  Borri gave a stiff nod. ‘It does not mitigate the stain of the misdeed,’ he said. Then, more loudly, ‘Step forth, Grudgemaster! There is a record to be made!’

  An older dwarf, clad in ceremonial robes, stepped forwards from the crowd, cradling a heavy book in his arms. The book was almost as large as the dwarf himself and nearly as thick, and he carried it forwards with difficulty as well as reverence. Its covers were made from thick plates of silver and bronze, and the spine was made of iron. As the book-bearer moved, the king’s guard began to rhythmically pound the floor with the heads of their hammers, and a droning dirge rose from the throats of the gathered dwarfs. Neferata’s hackles rose as the sound resounded through the hall and coiled around her like restraining chains.

  ‘Be honoured, woman,’ Borri said, his voice carrying easily over the dirge. ‘You are to pay witness to something sacred.’ His eyes were deep and dark and sad as they held hers, and Neferata was once more struck by the thought that the dwarfs would make better allies than enemies. Borri motioned to the bones that loomed over his throne. ‘This beast took my father and my brother,’ he said solemnly. Grund flinched, looking away. ‘I took its life and made its lair into my home. The debt was thus paid. Debts must always be paid.’ Neferata said nothing. Borri grunted. ‘Good. Your words are neither needed nor welcomed.’

  The Grudgemaster ascended the stairs towards the throne, and Grund joined him, sinking to one knee before Borri. The book was placed on Grund’s broad back and he grunted as its great weight settled on him. He leaned on his axe for support as the Grudgemaster carefully opened the book. Ancient parchment crackled. The Grudgemaster barked something in Khazalid and a younger dwarf hurried forwards, bearing a heavy stone bowl filled with what Neferata thought might be ink. The Grudgemaster extracted a silver and leather writing implement from within his robes and handed it to Borri, who took it and dipped it into the bowl of ink.

  Silence fell. As the echoes of the dirge faded, Borri began to write. And as he wrote, he spoke. ‘Let it be henceforth recorded that I, King Borri of Karaz Bryn record this grudge before my people. I name myself grudgesworn against Ushoran, King of Mourkain. He is zanguzaz, and treacherous. By his hand did my son and heir, Razek, Thane of Karaz Bryn, meet his doom. Recompense and reparation are called for, and accounts will be settled in blood. Before my thanes, and my people, and with Grungni, Grimnir and Valaya as my witnesses, I swear this oath.’

  The Grudgemaster sprinkled ground stone on the page and Borri carefully blew it off. Then he closed the book and looked up. ‘Why did Ushoran do this?’ Borri’s voice grew soft, but it carried as easily as before. The Grudgemaster took the book up and descended the dais. Grund stood and cracked his neck, working the kinks out.

  Neferata shrugged. ‘Why ask, mighty king? The result stands. Razek is dead and I am here to demand the surrender of your hold.’

  Borri was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. There was no humor in the sound; it was akin to the creaking of rocks just prior to an avalanche, and as he threw back his head, the avalanche fell. The laughter echoed through the silent audience chamber. Unlike in Ushoran’s court, no one here picked up the thread and joined their voice to Borri’s. The king laughed alone. As the echoes faded, he gazed at her steadily. ‘Surrender it to whom, woman?’ Borri rumbled.

  ‘To me,’ Neferata said.

  ‘Mad as well as a liar,’ Grund said. ‘By Grimnir’s beard, I’ll have your head!’ He raised his axe and started down the stairs.

  ‘Stay,’ Borri said. Grund halted. Neferata smiled. ‘She has come under a flag of truce, and audacity buys her mercy. You may leave as you entered, woman. None here will stay you. Go, and leave us to our grief. In time we will meet again, and I shall not be so merciful.’

  Neferata didn’t move.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Borri said, his voice taking on a menacing edge.

  Neferata’s reply was to draw her sword and bound over the heads of the hammerers. The dwarfs sprang into motion even as her foot touched the stairs. Her blade looped out, slicing through Borri’s beard and sending one of the charms bouncing down the stairs. Borri’s hand fastened on the blade and he jerked her forwards even as he drove the tip into the back of his throne. Razek’s axe sliced out and she was forced to release her sword and flip backwards to avoid its bite. She landed in a crouch on the stairs, but not for long.

  Grund crashed into her, nearly flattening her. His axe cut at her a moment later and she found herself surprised by the crested dwarf’s speed. Even as heavy as he looked, he still moved almost as fast as she herself. With a joyful howl, he threw himself at her. ‘Take my burden from me, witch!’

  Neferata had no idea what he was talking about and she had no intention of finding out. She avoided his wild blows, reeling this way and that and once nearly bending double as he swung at her. Grund’s eyes bulged and foam collected at the corners of his jaws as battle-fury swept him up in its embrace. His axe bore no runes or devices. It was simply an axe. But Neferata was loath to test its edge. She sprang back from him, putting a large span between her and the dais.

  But even as she landed, hammers crashed into the stone, narrowly missing her as she danced and wove through the throng of guards that sought to bring her down. She caught a hammer on her palm. Even as her fingers curled around its head, she yelped. Smoke rose from her palm as she jerked it out of its wielder’s grip and grabbed the haft, lashing out with the weapon. A dwarf flew backwards, his helm crushed and the skull beneath turned to paste. Another crumpled, his breastbone shattered despite the protection of his armour. Neferata’s frenzied assault drove the hammerers back, and they spread out, surrounding her but staying out of her reach. She turned slowly in place, keeping them all in sight.

  ‘What did you think to accomplish?’ Borri said, rising from his seat. He jerked her sword from his throne and hurled it clattering to the floor. He stared at the blood welling from his palm and flexed his hand as if the blade had caused him no more pain than an insect bite. ‘Did you think to assassinate me? Did
you hope to remove the heart from my people?’ He grunted. ‘We dwarfs are not as men. We do not quail when our own die. We fight all the harder.’

  He came down the stairs, still holding his son’s axe. The robed woman and the elderly dwarf followed him, and Grund paced in front, trembling like a hound on a leash. ‘This axe has tasted your blood, I think. It thirsts for it still, regardless,’ Borri said.

  ‘It shall have to work to get another taste,’ Neferata said, shaking her palm. Something had burned her. She saw that the head of the hammer was shot through with threads of silver and growled. Razek’s axe had been the same.

  ‘Not as hard as all that, I think,’ Borri said grimly. ‘You are alone, woman. Outnumbered and surrounded. Surrender and I will be merciful. That offer still holds.’

  ‘I think our concepts of mercy differ greatly, King Borri,’ Neferata said, twirling the hammer in her hands. It was a good weapon, but too brutal for her tastes. She spun on her heel and sent the hammer flying towards Borri. She did not wait to see whether it struck its target. Instead, as all eyes followed the hammer, she leapt for an opening in the ring of flesh and steel that encircled her.

  Behind her, she heard the ring of metal on metal and Borri bellowed a command. The floor trembled as the hammerers followed her. Crossbows thrummed and quarrels peppered the floor and walls. Neferata avoided each one with ease. To one with her senses, the bolts appeared to be moving in slow motion. She could see the very air split and twist as the bolts cut through it. Even as the bolts struck the archway of the audience chamber, she was into the corridor beyond and running. She had wasted enough time.

  Horns sounded in the deeps, warning the hold of danger. She knew that the horns were not for her. The corridor trembled as the great gate began to open once more. Frigid air slithered into the hold, greeting her as she reached the entry chamber even as the doors began to spread wide.

  Naaima stood before the doors, surrounded by dwarfs seeking to bring her down. Broad shapes stabbed at her, and her pale flesh was streaked with black blood. Neferata struck the gate-wardens like a thunderbolt. Her talons sank into the back of a dwarf’s head and she jerked him backwards with savage force, snapping his neck and crushing his skull like an egg. More dwarfs flooded into the entry hall through the second set of doors.