The Serpent Queen Read online

  Andraste watched the others with a sour expression. She was visibly annoyed, though whether because of envy or impatience, Nitocris couldn’t say. ‘As soon as we’ve marched, bring the sword to Octavia,’ she said, catching Andraste’s attention. ‘We should be outside of Lybaras’s walls by the time she’s finished the ritual. When she’s done, you will bring her and march what remains of our forces from this place to join us.’ She saw the unspoken question in Andraste’s face and added, ‘Kill the slaves. Have Octavia raise them up. We shall use them to the last drop.’

  ‘I can do that easily enough,’ Andraste said dismissively. Her fingers plucked at the strand of rotten silk that fluttered from the curious ring-shaped pommel of her blade. ‘We should kill her, when she has completed the ritual.’ A murmur of agreement swept through the others. None of them cared for the necromancer, though most were wise enough not to give voice to that distaste so openly.

  ‘No,’ Nitocris said. ‘She has uses yet.’

  ‘We cannot trust her,’ Andraste said. ‘Or him, for that matter.’ She flung out a hand to indicate the kneeling figure of Steyr nearby. He’d been on his knees for a day and a night, as punishment for his attack on Andraste. Seeping burns, already healing, marked his face and hands, but he’d uttered no sound of pain. Nitocris was pleased, though she hadn’t shown it. Her handmaidens had ignored him, and he them.

  ‘Necessity and trust are often mutually exclusive,’ Nitocris said. She clapped her hands, and those dressing her stepped back. ‘You will safeguard her, Andraste, or I will have your fangs for my standard pole. Do you understand?’

  ‘As my queen wishes,’ Andraste said, bowing low.

  ‘Yes,’ Nitocris said. ‘You would all do well to remember that.’ She let her gaze meet that of each of her handmaidens, daring them to challenge her. One by one, they all looked away. She was content to let them scheme in the chambers of their own minds and hearts, as long as they acknowledged her superiority at the end of the day. ‘Now come, I have a gift for you.’

  She moved through the crowd and they fell in behind her, following her from her chambers and down the steps of the ziggurat. Her bodyguards, ancient wights raised from the graves of kings and heroes of old, kept pace with the group, moving as smoothly as they had in life. They were hardy creatures, and wore the best armour and carried the best weapons she had to hand. The wights were an army unto themselves, and more than one enemy had broken themselves on the shields of the dead men.

  The temple complex resounded with activity. No longer were her forces preparing for war. Now they were readying themselves to march. The rotting dead culled from the swamps and jungles were organised into shambling legions, a third of which would be carried to Lybaras aboard the makeshift fleet now docked in the river quay. As they reached the bottom of the ziggurat, grey-fleshed shapes loped to meet them.

  These were the chieftains or pack-leaders of the more organised ghoul-tribes. There were a hundred such tribes on the coast, the degenerate descendants of those that Nitocris, or her ancestors, had broken and driven from the jungles and hills. The largest and most organised now paid her fealty, and their chieftains scampered forwards to receive her blessing. The ghouls were large for their kind, heavy with muscle and covered in scars earned in their rise to control of their monstrous tribes. They wore armour and rags scavenged from shipwrecks, and their rough flesh had been daubed with crude war paint. They set up a caterwaul of greeting as Nitocris approached them, and she held out her hands. They slunk towards her like contrite leopards. With her thumbnails, she sliced the flesh of her palms. She held out her bloody hands to them, and the ghouls nuzzled her skin, licking and nipping. They growled and shoved one another for the chance to taste a single drop of her blood.

  When she had judged that they had had enough, she jerked her hands away and snarled. The ghouls stiffened and cringed back from her, licking their chops. ‘Steyr,’ she said.

  ‘My queen,’ Steyr said.

  ‘These will be your captains. Allow them to taste of you, so that they might know your scent, and serve your command as they would mine.’

  Steyr made a face, but did as she asked. He stretched out his arms and she grabbed his wrists, forced his hands around, palms up, and bent over them. She sank her fangs into his flesh and tore it open with a jerk of her head. Steyr yelped in shock. She forced him forwards, and gave a snarl. The ghouls sprang towards him greedily and fastened their mouths on Steyr’s wounds. He hissed in disgust at their touch. Behind her, Nitocris heard Andraste and the others tittering in amusement. Finally, she yanked Steyr away from his new followers and hurled him aside. She gave a final snarl, and the ghouls loped away, to rouse their packs and ready themselves for war. Steyr cradled his wounded hands to his chest and glared daggers at her.

  Nitocris ignored him and led the group away from the ziggurat and into the city. The dead clustered thickly along the ancient streets and avenues. If they had been living men, they might have cheered to see her. But the silence was a cheer of sorts, to Nitocris’s way of thinking. It was proof of her power. She led her handmaidens through the silent masses and to where the slaves were kept.

  As with the ghouls, she had broken the human tribes of the Southlands to her will. Those who had not fallen in battle and been bound to her service had been taken captive and were forced to serve her in other ways. They worked to arm her warriors and patch the vessels hauled from the sea and shallows. They were a source of nourishment for her and her handmaidens too, when they required it. And when they were not at work, the slaves were kept in the pits, where they could cause no mischief.

  A number of ancient wells dotted the temple complex. Great circular apertures that stank of mould and centuries of damp, the wells went deeper than Nitocris had bothered to explore, and were wide enough to swallow one of the smaller ziggurats that lined the edges of the complex. Strange carvings covered their interiors, stretching all the way down past where the sun or torchlight would reach. With a bit of work, they had been made fit for purpose.

  Heavy stakes had been hammered around the circumference of each well, and to each stake, a thick rope composed of interwoven jungle vines had been tied. The ropes stretched from the stake down into the wells, and at the other end of each was a large, heavy globe comprised of bent branches, flotsam and more vines. And inside each globe were a number of slaves. More than a dozen, in some cases, packed into their pen elbows to knees, barely able to breathe or move. Then, given how weak most of them were, they didn’t move all that much.

  When the slaves were not at work – and there was always work to be done – they were here. Once a day, slop made from crushed plants, animal leavings and the smashed remains of those corpses not fit to serve as soldiers was rained down on the globes to feed those inside, and the rainwater which collected in the cracked and leaking buckets that dangled from the sides and bottom of each globe assuaged their thirst.

  At the top of each well, a group of corpses, in various states of decay, waited silently for orders. When the slaves died, Nitocris had them dragged back to their feet. Work did not end with death. She set their mindless corpses to hauling up their fellows, when required.

  Each well had its own overseer, in the form of one of the temple’s previous inhabitants – wights, clad in crude armour and ragged leopard skins. The wights were armed as they had been in life, with their clawed gauntlets, and their war-clubs and blocky shields.

  At the sight of Nitocris and her entourage, the wight in charge of this particular well stepped forward, as if to challenge them. Nitocris gestured sharply and the wight stepped aside, lowering its club. She felt the featherlight scrape of its mind against hers, a feeble flicker of will that pulsed once, like a fading heartbeat. She had broken the leopard-cult in war, and she had broken them beyond the veil, tearing their foul souls from the bosom of their murder-god. She had not done so because she needed them, particularly. She had wights aplenty, r
aised from burial places of chieftains and heroes. No, she had done it for spite, and for the humour of it. They had fought savagely to defend the temple from her in life, and now, in death, they would guard it for her with equal vigour.

  Nitocris stalked forwards and motioned to the closest rope. ‘That one,’ she said. ‘Bring it up.’ The wight turned and raised its club. At its signal, the zombies that squatted near the rope lurched to their feet and grasped the rope in their flabby, rotten hands. The zombies staggered forwards, hauling the spherical pen out of the well. The slaves inside the sphere moaned and screamed as they were hauled out of the dankness and into the moonlight, the wood of their cage scraping as it struck stone. They had been slaves long enough to recognise the meaning behind a moonlight retrieval. It was rare that slaves were rousted between dusk and dawn, and when they were, it was inevitably because their mistresses had decided that their usefulness had ended.

  Then, that depended entirely on how one defined use, Nitocris supposed. She extended a hand, and her handmaidens leapt forwards with a communal snarl. They tore the cage apart with commendable speed, and snatched out those mewling slaves who were too slow, or too weak to avoid their clutches. Nitocris watched with maternal pride as her sisters glutted themselves. It was rare that she allowed them to do so, outside of battle, and they made the most of it, shrieking and hissing at one another as blood splashed black across the moonstruck stones. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. She inhaled the smells of sudden death and violently spilled blood, savouring the hunger it awoke within her. Hunger had ever been her ally. Hunger fired her ambition, her drive to conquer.

  Hunger drove her to heights undreamt of by her mother, or her mother’s mother. Hunger had made her a queen, and hunger would make her an empress, in time. She had thought it often, in her most private moments – an idle whim, a daydream. When she sat upon Lahmia’s ivory throne, when she had done as her queen had asked, would she be content to stop there? Would she accept her reward, and shed the scales of the conqueror and move on to loftier battlefields? That was what she wanted. But would she be able to do it? Or would the song of hunger compel her to make use of the empire she had built?

  Nitocris shivered at the thought, and her tongue ran gently across her fangs. She loved her queen, and feared her, but at the same time, some small part of her longed to challenge the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle. That part rarely stirred, save as now on the eve of battle. A frisson of hunger, not for blood, but for the challenge of the thing, pulsed through her black veins. If her mother had lived, and had not fallen beneath an enemy’s axe, Nitocris would have been expected to challenge her for leadership of the tribe, when she came of age. Could she do the same to the woman who had raised her up from a mortal, and made her a demigod?

  Maybe the Queen of Mysteries expected it of her. Maybe all of this was a test of Nitocris’s worthiness. The thought warmed her. She thought she was worthy. After humbling the dry dead of the desert, would the rest of the world prove any more challenging? The living were more fragile than the dead. She frowned as she thought of burning cities. Cities she dreamed of seeing, of experiencing, torn down by bony hands. Her eyes opened. Her arm flashed out, knocking Steyr from his feet.

  He had not lunged forwards with the others, justifiably wary of the ferocity of her handmaidens. No, he had waited and slunk about the edges of the feeding frenzy, like the snivelling jackal he was. Seeing an opportunity, he had begun to inch forwards.

  Nitocris whirled and pinned him to the ground with her foot. She glared down at him. ‘You will wait,’ she hissed.

  Steyr writhed beneath her, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Of course, of course, patience personified, that’s me,’ he said. He tried for an ingratiating smile, but it came out a fearful snarl.

  Nitocris glanced over her shoulder at her handmaidens, watching them feed for a moment. Then she looked back down at Steyr. She sank to her haunches, her feet planted on either side of his chest, and her hands dangling between her knees. She ran her fingers across his chest and throat, tracing the faded double-headed eagle on the battered breastplate he now wore. He’d filched from the dead, assembling something approaching a full set of armour, though each piece had a different place of origin. It was scavenger’s armour, fit for a ghoul or a grave-robber, and Nitocris thought it suited him perfectly. He had a sword on his hip, a western blade. She tapped the pommel, and then drew the sword and placed the tip beneath his chin. ‘Do you know why I spared you, jackal?’

  ‘Sigmund,’ he said.

  She cocked her head. She pressed the blade gently against his throat. ‘Jackal suits you better, I think,’ she murmured.

  ‘Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought so myself,’ he said. ‘Jackal it is. Delightful, I’ve wanted a new name for ages now.’

  ‘You are a coward,’ she said.

  ‘I prefer to think I’m strategically self-aware,’ Steyr said, licking his lips.

  ‘Answer my question,’ she said. Behind her, she could hear the sound of cracking bones and tearing flesh. Her sisters were ensuring that none of their blood had got into the slaves by opening them up and emptying them of everything that might pump or carry a stray bit of blood. Zombies didn’t need working organs. They had learned from the incident that created Steyr and his brothers. They needed no more accidental vampires dogging their tracks. ‘Why did I spare you?’

  ‘I’m a hostage to fortune,’ Steyr said. He met her gaze steadily, which surprised her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She traced his cheek with the tip of his blade. ‘And because I require a herald. Do you know what a herald is?’

  ‘A champion,’ he said hesitantly.

  ‘Of sorts,’ she said, leaning close to him. ‘A sacrifice would be a more appropriate definition. A sacrifice to the gods, the whim of fortune made flesh. A victorious herald shows that the gods approve. A fallen herald shows that the gods have turned their eyes from you. That is what the Nehekharans believed. But I prefer my heralds to be messengers, to carry word of my coming to my enemies. You will be my herald, jackal. You will lead forth the speediest elements of my army, the cannibals and four-legged dead, and strike my enemy with speed.’

  Steyr swallowed. ‘I’ve never been fond of suicide,’ he said.

  ‘Not suicide,’ she said. She took hold of his jaw. ‘Opportunity. I will need a man of the lands beyond the mountains to be my herald to those vibrant lands, to Ostland and Reikland and the Moot.’

  ‘No one wants to go to the Moot. People travel through Sylvania to avoid the Moot,’ Steyr said. ‘People lash themselves to logs and float down the river just to avoid the barest edge of the Moot.’

  ‘I want to go to the Moot. I want to go to Marienburg and Middenheim. I want to see the white snows of Kislev, and the mountains of the far north. I want to see it all, jackal.’ She squeezed his jaw and leaned forwards to lick a bit of blood from the shallow cut she’d made on his cheek with the sword. ‘You will be my guide.’

  ‘And what about my sister?’ he asked.

  Nitocris sat up. She released him and pushed herself to her feet with his sword. ‘Your sister will be by my side. She will be my companion, in our travels. I must have someone to teach me how a woman of your lands comports herself, after all.’

  ‘And will she be alive, while she is serving you in this capacity?’ he asked, looking up at her. She swung the sword and tapped his breastplate with the flat of the blade.

  ‘Do you not wish for her to be as you – as we – are?’

  He hesitated. ‘I wish for her to be safe.’

  ‘Safety is no longer an option, jackal. There are only varying degrees of danger.’ She smiled. ‘She will join us, she will join my sisterhood, and we shall see all that there is to see – if you survive, and do as I command.’ She reversed the sword and drove it down into the stones beside his head with a single, forceful thrust.
‘Disappoint me, and she will have to do without you.’

  Without waiting for him to reply, she gestured. One of her bodyguards stepped forwards, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. It was a heavy standard pole, looted from a previous encounter with the legions of the Land of the Dead. The standard was crudely stitched from sailcloth and animal skin, and had been splashed with blood in the shape of a great serpent. From its crosspiece dangled trophies of battles past: hundreds of rattling greenskin tusks tied together with twine and hair, golden plaques taken from the cities of the lizards, the skulls of men and ratkin, and strips of hide taken from the great lizards of the jungle. The standard was topped by the beast-helm of the warrior who had taken her mother’s life.

  ‘As my herald, you will carry my standard into war,’ Nitocris said, as the wight handed the standard to Steyr, who had scrambled to his feet. He held it gingerly.

  ‘You will plant my flag before the walls of Lybaras and make claim of the lands which I will own in due course.’ Steyr hesitated. Then he nodded. Nitocris stroked his cheek. ‘Good. I knew you would make your sister proud, my jackal.’

  She turned away from him and raised her hand. Her handmaidens slunk away from the wreckage of the spherical cage, dragging aside the dead or dying bodies of those they’d fed on. There were several survivors, huddled back against the bars of the cage. Nitocris approached the trembling, blank-eyed slaves with the grace of a tiger circling a tethered goat.

  ‘I thirst,’ she said, softly.

  Then, with a shriek worthy of the carnosaurs of the deep jungle, she leapt upon them, her jaw opening inhumanly wide and her claws extended. She tore through them without hesitation, snapping bones and ripping flesh with savage exultation. She drank greedily from geysering stumps and was soon covered head to foot in blood. It pulsed through her cold, crooked veins, and it caused red explosions behind her eyelids as she glutted herself on stolen lives. Power such as she had rarely felt flooded her limbs, and the night seemed alive with infinite sights, sounds and smells.