bitter tang of the orc’s blood. ‘Did you send riders?’ she said. Her wounds had healed, though the ghost-ache of bones broken earlier lingered.
‘Yes and the stunted ones are ready. We should be able to – there!’ Vorag gestured. The brass-banded dragon-horns of the dwarfs harrowed the frosty dawn air from their position far down in the valley. The orcs no longer had the numbers to beat the throng; they would be annihilated. Vorag rubbed his hands together. ‘Should I take my riders down there, just in case?’ he asked eagerly.
‘No,’ Neferata said. ‘I want you to stay put. We’ll need you and your riders fresh for the morrow.’
‘Why, what’s tomorrow?’
‘The dwarfs don’t pursue beaten foes. The orcs will flee. We need to grind them up and ensure that it takes generations for them to ever prove a threat again.’ Neferata kicked a dead orc and glared down into its slack features. ‘It may take days or months, but we need them beaten.’
‘But–’ Vorag began. Neferata looked at him. The other vampire grimaced and looked away, unwilling to match her gaze. ‘Fine,’ he grunted. ‘What now?’
‘We wait,’ Neferata said. ‘We let the dwarfs wet their axes as we promised. We’ll need to send a rider to Ushoran, to let him know how we’ve fared here.’ She smiled slightly at the look on Vorag’s face. ‘He will become suspicious, otherwise. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?’ Her smile grew wider and she added, ‘At least, not until it’s too late.’
ELEVEN
The City of Bel Aliad
(–1149 Imperial Reckoning)
The dead fought in silence, their weapons rising and falling with monotonous ferocity. They hacked their way through the living warriors of Bel Aliad without slowing or stopping, and those that fell were replaced by their victims in time.
Arkhan the Black watched it all from the roof of the temple of the ghoul-god, and found it good. Or so Neferata assumed. The withered liche-thing barely resembled the man she had once known and… What? She pushed the thought aside. That was in the dim past and this was the present and here and now, Arkhan endangered everything she had built.
‘You can’t do this,’ she said, approaching him.
‘Neferata,’ Arkhan said in his hollow voice. ‘You still live.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘No,’ Arkhan said. Bones rustled as he turned, his glowing gaze sweeping over her without apparent emotion. ‘Does this city hold some special place in your heart?’
‘No,’ Neferata said. Her armour hung from her body in ragged scraps; it had been battered and torn by Arkhan’s bodyguards as she had killed them. In the ruins of her once great temple, her followers battled his, even as her enemies battled the dead in the streets. It was a war on three fronts, fought by three armies. She raised the notched and dull khopesh she held and pointed it at him. ‘But it is mine nonetheless. You will not take it from me.’
‘Would you match your strength against mine?’ Arkhan said. ‘You ran from Nagash. Am I so much less fearsome?’
‘Infinitely,’ she said.
‘Nagash is dead,’ Arkhan said suddenly.
Neferata hesitated. ‘What?’
‘He is dead.’
‘Did you–’
Arkhan made a rasping, wheezing noise she took to be laughter. ‘No. And neither did your old friend W’soran.’ The glowing eyes dulled slightly. ‘It was Alcadizzar.’
Neferata closed her eyes, just for a moment. The pain was faint now, but it was there. She swallowed it down. ‘Is he...?’
‘I know not. Nor, in truth, do I care,’ Arkhan said. ‘Nagash is gone and I have been driven from Khemri. I need a new fortress, a new place to rebuild my strength before my opponents follow me.’
‘Your opponents – who were they? Nagash killed everyone!’ Neferata said. She knew even as she asked what the answer would be. She had known since that night where the sky turned green and the dead had grown restless in the burial vaults.
‘The Great Land is a land of the dead now. They rule it in the darkness even as they did beneath the sun.’ Arkhan used two fingers to push aside her blade. ‘The tombs of the mighty gape wide and the war-chariots of Settra rumble to war.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Yes, he brought them back. All of them unto the first generation,’ Arkhan intoned. ‘And they are angry, Neferata. They curse my name even as they curse Nagash’s… and yours.’
‘What?’ Neferata said, shaken.
Arkhan lunged, swatting aside her sword and grabbing her wrist. He pulled her to him, his skull pressed close to her face. ‘They hate you. All of the dead of