a moment, leaving carnage in her wake, before she sprang to Neferata’s side, blood coating her bare, pale arms to the shoulders.
‘They smell foul and taste worse, I’d wager,’ she hissed, her dark eyes narrowing.
‘Needs must, when the gods demand, Naaima,’ Neferata said, bringing her blade up and letting it extend in front of her. She grasped the hilt with both hands and chuckled. ‘Their blood is red enough, regardless.’
‘It’s not the bottle, it’s the vintage, Lady Neferata,’ Khaled said, stepping to join them as the beasts pawed the snow and gathered their courage. He flung off his furs, revealing a tight cuirass of banded and beaten metal over a jerkin of thin, brightly coloured silk. He spun his sword with a flick of his wrist, his eyes meeting those of each of the beastmen in turn.
‘And what vintage would these abominations be, Khaled?’ Naaima said.
‘Something unsubtle and northern,’ Khaled said, grinning insouciantly at her.
‘Silence,’ Neferata said, and the pair fell quiet. She ran a finger along the thin runnel cut into the length of her blade, where the blood had collected. Delicately she licked the tip of her finger and grimaced. ‘Sour,’ she said.
‘Needs must, Neferata,’ Naaima murmured, her tone only vaguely teasing.
Neferata shot a glare at Naaima and then swung the sword, splattering the nearest beastmen with blood. ‘Needs must,’ she said. ‘Twelve left.’
The beastmen had got over their confusion. They started forwards in a howling, stamping mass, drawing courage from numbers. Something snarled and sprang from the snow to the side, bringing down a squalling, goat-headed monster. The desert-leopard’s fiery coat stood out in the snow as it shrieked a challenge at the beastmen before it casually bit the top of the goat-thing’s head off.
‘Ha! Cheat!’ Stregga snarled, springing from a tree to wrap her long arms around a simian brute’s head. She gave it a vicious twist as her feet touched the snow, snapping the creature’s spine and nearly jerking it from its back. She finished the job with all the efficiency of a fish-wife and shook the bloody spinal column at the leopard. ‘Cheat, Rasha! No points for you!’ she said, and the leopard snarled in reply. Neferata smiled slightly at the sight of the beast. The changing of skins came less easily to those who had accepted her blood-kiss than it did herself or Naaima. It had taken Rasha almost a century to learn how to do it without agony or mistake, and only because Neferata had tutored her relentlessly in the practice. The others still couldn’t; not even Khaled, quick study that he was. He might learn in time, if he survived.
A beastman spun and swung a crude hammer at Stregga’s head. With a wild cry, Anmar interposed herself. Her sword pierced the hammer-wielder’s gut and lifted it off its cloven feet, hurling it backwards where it landed limply near the leopard. Anmar panted slightly, her body shaking from blood-hunger and exertion.
‘Nine now I think you’ll find, my queen,’ Khaled said, looking at Neferata, who said nothing. She and the others glided forwards. The six vampires surrounded the nine beasts, closing in on them from all sides. The battle that followed was brief and bloody. In moments, every beast was dead and their foul blood warmed the bellies of their killers.
‘Tastes like goat,’ Stregga said, sucking blood from a dollop of hairy flesh. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or like what I recall goat tasting like.’
‘It tastes foul enough without you adding to it,’ Rasha, now returned to her own shape, snapped, letting a beastman fall from her grip to thump into the pink-stained snow. She wiped the back of her hand across her jaw, smearing more blood than she removed.
‘Needs must, children,’ Neferata said, looking down at the crumpled form of the dwarf. He was breathing shallowly, and his blood smelled strangely acrid, like hot metal on a forge fire. She prodded his body with her sword, and he groaned.
‘Tough little creature,’ Khaled murmured, sidling up beside her. He cleaned his blade with a hank of beard torn from one of the dead dwarfs. ‘Still… he won’t last long out here, not like that.’
‘No,’ Neferata said, not looking at him. She prodded the dwarf again. The dawi had not been a common sight in Nehekhara. Indeed, she had not seen one at all until many years later, in Araby. And that one had been dead and stuffed as part of a caliph’s trophy room. This one did not seem much healthier.