down on all and distributed his rewards. He was feared and hated, but his favour was sought out as the ultimate source of power. It was not a pleasant system, Dorian thought, but it worked. And it worked because at the end of the day Malekith was fair.
He was proof of that. He had started off as a common soldier, or as common as any soldier ever was in his elite unit. His family had provided him with his weapons and his basic training. He had learned the hard craft of raiding and slaving along the coasts of the Old World for himself.
He had earned his rewards and the respect of his warriors. When the warhorns summoned the dark elves to battle against the hordes of Chaos, his retinue had proven themselves against the tattooed marauders with whose distant descendants they were currently allied. He had distinguished himself in raids on the slann lands of Lustria, and acquired much gold as part of the plunder.
On the greater battlefields he had come under the eye of Malekith himself and by a combination of ferocity, fearlessness and fighting skill he had attracted the Witch King’s attention. He had risen eventually to become an honoured general in the armies of Naggaroth, being rewarded with the lands of fallen rivals, building his wealth on his share of the plunder.
Yes, Dorian thought, he had done well under the Witch King. But he was not sure about this invasion at all. Oh, there was nothing wrong with seeking to reclaim the lost lands of Ulthuan. The spoils would be immense, ancient estates would be restituted, new ones earned. Many slaves would be taken and the most hated enemies of the druchii would be humbled. He had no problem with any of this. In truth, he looked forward to it.
It was not that he resented the vast use of magic instead of force of arms either. Sorcery was an integral part of the way the dark elves fought their wars, part of the strength of their nation, one of those things that made them superior to all other races. He appreciated both the tactical and strategic uses of wizardry and he knew that both Malekith and his divine mother were masters of it.
It was this business of relying on Malekith’s bound daemon and travelling through the mystical gates it summoned that troubled him. There was something about these pathways that made his elven senses scream at the peril. He sensed the presence of daemonic things very close by.
What if something went wrong?
He glanced across at Cassandra. His sorceress lover looked calm, but he knew her well enough to spot the small signs of nervousness: the way she kept toying with the rune-inscribed ring on her left hand, for example. She claimed they were passing through the realms of Chaos when they went through these portals and, if that was the case, terrifying, ancient horrors were close, separated from them by a barrier thinner than the skin of a bubble. Even more than their lives, their souls were at risk.
And that was not the only disturbing thing about this business. Cassandra had whispered other things in his ear at night as they lay in their sleeping silks, spent from their wild lovemaking.
She claimed that the Witch King’s new pet was a creature whose strength might conceivably be greater than Malekith’s and which might break free at any moment. Of course, Cassandra was Morathi’s creature, and he suspected that at this moment the Hag Queen was not best pleased with her son, but that did not mean she was wrong. If N’Kari truly was what Malekith claimed, it was one of the greatest enemies of his people in history, if not the greatest.
It made him fear that after all these long millennia, the Witch King’s sanity had finally cracked, that this expedition might be doomed by that alone. Worse was the thought that such a powerful, malign and barely controllable being was the one opening these gates and leading them through these hellish realms. The possibilities for disaster were enormous. The lives of all his troops were in the hands of a creature that could and would, if given the opportunity, snuff them out on a whim.
But what could he do? Rebellion against the Witch King was near unthinkable at the best of times, and this was a time of war, when any disaffection in the army could be disastrous. And there were other things to be considered.