were suddenly filled with armed men. Neferata hissed in pain as she jerked the arrow from her shoulder. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ she snarled.
‘It’s Al-Khattab!’ Naaima said, narrowly avoiding a sword thrust that shredded the curtain. Sunlight boiled in, blistering the flesh of her arm. Neferata’s hand snapped out, grabbing the blade before it could retract. She gave it a yank, heedless of the way the edge shredded her palm. She dragged the swordsman inside the palanquin and Rasha and Anmar fell on him, growling. His screams echoed across the street, mingling with those of the market day crowd. Through the curtain, Neferata could see more men approaching.
‘That treacherous dog,’ Neferata said, half admiringly. Al-Khattab was an opponent of the cult and the commander of the city’s Kontoi. He had the caliph’s ear, a situation that Khaled was attempting to rectify. She hadn’t thought him capable of even contemplating outright assassination, but here they were. His men were clad in insignia-less armour, but they moved with training and speed. And the sun stood strong in the sky.
Men surrounded the palanquin, readying their spears. ‘Come out, priestess of the corpse-king,’ someone called. ‘We will make your death as swift as that of that fool princeling…’
‘Khaled,’ Anmar gasped. ‘No!’
Neferata snatched up the dead man’s sword and looked at her handmaidens. ‘Prepare, my daughters,’ she said. Then, with a shriek, she lunged to her feet and sliced through the curtain. As the sunlight streamed in, she leapt out to meet the assassins…
The City of Mourkain
(–550 Imperial Reckoning)
Horns blew loud enough to rattle the branches of the trees as the hunters followed the bloody trail left by their prey. Neferata leaned over the neck of her horse and tasted the wind. The musky, rotten smell of the fleeing beastmen was strong. Thirty of the beasts at least, maybe more; they had attacked a village on the northern frontier, putting it to the torch and eating the inhabitants. More and more of the creatures had been descending from the north of late. Abhorash and his men had undertaken an expedition to investigate, but that still left the mountains overrun with the cloven-hoofed vermin.
More horns blasted over the thunder of horses’ hooves and the hunters whooped and howled in the light of the torches they carried. Neferata laughed as her horse leapt over a fallen log and galloped on. She could smell the cloud of fear that clung to their prey.
The riders were mostly Strigoi. Zandor was among them, and Gashnag as well. Those two had joined Ushoran’s royal bodyguard in recent months, which Neferata had allowed. The two were cowed, more or less, and their feeble attempts to have her killed had trickled to nothing since she had not opposed their elevation to Ushoran’s clique. It made sense to leave them where she could find them. After all, according to her spies, it had been Ushoran whom they had run to in the aftermath of their abortive assassination attempt. Whether Ushoran himself had set them on her tail, or whether they’d simply been attempting to curry favour, she couldn’t, as yet, say. But she would find out eventually.
Nearby, Iona pressed close to her mistress. The henna-haired former concubine of Neferata’s predecessor flashed her fangs in a smile. ‘Volker is enjoying himself,’ she said. Neferata looked past her handmaiden towards the burly chieftain of the Draesca tribe, as he awkwardly clung to his barrel-chested Strigoi stallion. Volker was hairy and gap-toothed, but cunning. Near him rode the chieftains of the Draka and the Fennones, as well as the savage Walds. Four of the largest tribes of the western marches and northern hills, and the four most dedicated opponents to the expansion of Strigos.
It had taken her decades of patient diplomacy to even get them to the point where they would countenance accepting the hospitality of Ushoran. It never failed to amuse Neferata that she was first forced to build her enemies up before she could properly break them down. Fifty years ago, the tribes had been little better than the beastmen they now hunted. Now, however, their hill-forts dotted the hills and valleys of the badlands. Nomadic raiders had become farmers. War-chiefs had given way to hereditary kings, headmen to counts and bosses to barons.
And through it all, the Handmaidens of the Moon had whispered quiet counsel to the chieftains and their fathers and their father’s-fathers. Religion was a subtle lever and the invented ones were the subtlest of all, Neferata had found. The