She would kill all of the traitors and fools. Instead, she said, ‘You have made your choice, little leopard. You have chosen your brother over me.’
‘Could I do otherwise?’
‘Only you can say,’ Neferata said, turning away. ‘Blood calls to blood and like to like. I made a mistake with your brother. I should have left him dead on the floor of his secret room, and taken only you. But even then, I knew I could not separate you. It seems nothing will.’
She strode away, noting Khaled approaching as she did so. She wondered whether he had heard. From his expression, she guessed that he had. A momentary surge of satisfaction lifted her mood as she stepped outside. The wind and cold enveloped her and she welcomed it.
Besides her handmaidens, a troop of skeletal horsemen and spearmen, their bones coated in glistening ice, accompanied her. A token force and one she intended to leave near the river. There would be plenty of dead within the hold for her to manipulate, if she were right.
The dwarfs entombed their dead, as W’soran’s studies of Mourkain’s depths had shown. There were generations upon generations, going back to the first inhabitants of the hold, all waiting for her gentle summons to march to war against their kin. They would catch the dawi in a pincer, between two walls of bone and metal.
When they reached the river, she found that it had indeed frozen solid, just as Redzik said. Neferata stood on a bluff overlooking the river, Naaima and Iona beside her. They had left the others below, out of sight, with the dead. Neferata sniffed the wind. Several of the corpse-wolves were prowling nearby, their gait awkward and uneven.
‘We’ll set the dead to shattering the river. Once we have a hole, we’ll go down,’ she said. ‘We will awaken the dead of the hold even as the Strigoi batter their way in. If need be, we will of course open the doors for them again. Eventually.’
‘Are you certain that this is wise?’ Naaima said.
She was eyeing the river distrustfully, but Neferata knew she wasn’t actually talking about that. ‘No,’ Neferata said. ‘But we face two enemies here, not one. And we cannot strike until they are both properly weakened.’ She looked askance at Naaima. ‘Or would you have me remain a slave?’
‘I would have you live,’ Naaima said, not looking at her.
Neferata stared at her for a moment longer. Then she looked at Iona. ‘Gather my handmaidens. We will descend as soon as possible.’
‘What about Anmar?’ Naaima said suddenly.
‘She has chosen to remain by her brother’s side. I have chosen to allow her to do so.’
Naaima said nothing, but Neferata caught the soft susurrus of her thoughts nonetheless. She knew exactly what her handmaiden was thinking. She glanced at the other woman. ‘You think that was a mistake?’
‘I think that even though we are immortal, that even though we are no longer human, something yet remains for us of mortality and humanity. And for some of us more than others…’ Naaima brushed a loose strand of frost-stiffened hair out of her face. ‘Khaled’s betrayal hurt us all.’
‘Not you. You never liked him to begin with.’
‘Nothing good comes from men like that.’
‘Nothing good comes from men,’ Neferata corrected. ‘Lamashizzar, Alcadizzar, W’soran, Ushoran, Abhorash… Nagash.’ The last name was said in a bitter snarl. ‘All of them men and all fools and monsters. They seek to bind us to their destinies, as if we have none of our own. As if we should be thankful.’ She spat the last word. She looked at the river, her eyes dark and far away. ‘Our destiny is here, Naaima. Here in these cold stones. The dawi worship death, even as the people of the Great Land did, before Nagash – before we – perverted it. There is old death, old strength in the bones of the mountain and it is upon that strength that I shall build…’ She trailed off.
‘Build what?’ Naaima said.
Neferata spun. ‘How many wolves did we bring?’
‘What?’
The bullet took Naaima in the shoulder, crunching through her pauldron and shoulder joint alike and spinning her around and off her feet. Neferata made to grab her, but too late. Naaima plummeted off the bluff. The ice shattered at the point of impact and the vampire slipped into the dark water.
The wolves she had seen before had shed their reeking skins, revealing the squat shapes of a number of dwarfs, who’d been wearing them. One was recognisable, even at a