Neferata Read online

  ‘We hunt,’ she hissed.

  They bounded through the snow like flickering shadows, shaking off the sluggishness of daylight torpor. The scent of blood curled and splashed through the air, teasing them on. Neferata took the lead, running wolf-swift through the trees. As she ran, she drew the short, heavy blade that was sheathed at her side.

  She had been taught the art of the blade by Abhorash himself. The champion of the City of the Dawn had been a man of few words, but he was an unparallelled swordsman and a warrior without peer. Neferata could not match him – she knew of none who could – but thanks to his teaching she was better with a blade than many hardened warriors walking the world today.

  She had not thought of Abhorash in many years. Not since his betrayal in Araby. The thought still sent a flush of rage spurting through her. They had all betrayed her, Ushoran and W’soran and Abhorash.

  Every man betrayed her, in the end. Lamashizzar had tried to take her power from her, and reduce her to an ornamental queen. Arkhan had given her immortality and then died, again, before he could share it with her. And Alcadizzar had turned on her, and turned the other great cities against Lahmia.

  A throaty laugh caused her to glance aside. Khaled had his own blade out and he was keeping pace with her, his eyes glowing with a ravenous hunger. The only man she had given the blood-kiss since Bel Aliad. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it. Neferata leapt, her sandals scraping against bark as she ran up the trunk of the tree. The others followed. There were roads open to vampires that were denied to any other creature save birds or vermin.

  She leapt from branch to branch, tasting the wind as she went. Sounds joined the smell. Weapons clashing and the screams of the dying rode the night-wind. Hairy shapes charged through the trees below, snorting and growling. Neferata stopped, perching in the crook of a branch. Her eyes narrowed.

  She had encountered the twisted beast-men only once before, but she recognised them easily enough. They were hideous amalgamations of man and beast, with the worst traits of both. They stank of a dark corruption, though their blood was palatable enough.

  The creatures spilled into a clearing, launching themselves with berserk abandon at their opponents. Neferata realised that they were seeing the final bloody moments of an ambush. She saw small, stocky forms littering the snow.

  ‘Dawi,’ Naaima hissed in answer to Neferata’s unasked question.

  Neferata peered closer at the broad bodies, nodding shallowly. Where had they come from? The dawi were dwellers in the depths. They rarely trod the open earth, and only then when it was absolutely necessary. Whatever they had been doing, wherever they had been going, they weren’t going there any more. The ambush was done.

  A large beast brayed in triumph and brandished its gore-encrusted axe at the dark ceiling of trees overhead. It was a massive creature, all simian muscle and taut sinew, with a belly like a stove and splay-hooves that ground the snow underfoot into slush. Scraps of armour and badly tanned hide struggled to contain its girth as it stooped and jerked the body of its opponent into the frosty air. All around it, similar scenes played out as its companions stooped to scavenge from the bodies that still steamed in the chill mountain air.

  The dwarfs had fought bravely, but in the end, had been too few. The beasts’ attack had been hard and wild, seemingly driven as they were by the talons of a desperate winter. Hunger gnawed at their bellies; some had already fallen to filling their gullets, slicing open the fine mail and jerkins worn by the dwarfs and burying their snouts in the tough flesh beneath. Others fought one another over the scraps and silver trinkets scoured from the bodies.

  Wolf-teeth snapped behind goatish lips as the pack-leader drove back those who drew too close; it swung its axe wildly, and stamped its hooves as it tried to keep the body of its most recent opponent for itself.

  The dwarf coughed and blood spattered his beard. Nonetheless, he grabbed the hand that held him and squeezed. Chaos-born bone popped and cracked and the beast screamed in shock and pain, releasing its hold. The dwarf fell heavily, his armour clattering. Blindly, he groped through the snow for a weapon. Talons speared through his hair and sank into his scalp and he was jerked backwards and sent hurtling spine-first into a crooked tree.

  The dwarf groaned as he collapsed into the snow. Dwarfs were harder than most creatures, but even stone cracked if you hit it hard enough. He coughed again and tried to push himself upright. Blood drenched the dwarf’s limbs and stained his armour, and the heady scent of it filled Neferata’s nostrils as she looked down. The beastman stalked forwards, cradling its broken hand and swiping at the air with its axe. The others crowded around it, baying like eager hounds.

  ‘Come on then,’ the dwarf spat hoarsely, jerking upright, a rock in his hand. Pushing himself onto his feet, he hefted the rock. ‘I’ll match you stone for stone,’ he said weakly. It was an empty boast, Neferata knew. The dwarf was dying on his feet, and his blood had turned the snow pink. The beastman roared and launched itself into an awkward charge, its axe cocked back for a skull-crushing blow.

  Neferata moved.

  She struck the tree above the dwarf’s head and catapulted towards the beastman. Steel flashed and the beastman stumbled to a stop, blinking quizzically. Behind it, Neferata had landed in a crouch. One arm was stretched out, the crude steel sword held tight in her pale fingers. She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes met the dwarf’s. The moment was broken by the hiss of hot blood sliding off the tip of the sword to plop into the snow. The dwarf’s eyes rolled up into his head and he pitched forwards, unconscious at last.

  The beastman made a curious sound as its head rolled off its shoulders to land in the snow near the unconscious dwarf. The other creatures drew back, whining and growling. Neferata rose smoothly to her feet, her arm still extended. She swept her gaze across the gathered beastmen and smiled. ‘Take them,’ she breathed.

  A large beastman howled and lunged for her, swinging a spiked club. Something crashed down atop its head and shoulders, driving it snout-first into the snow inches from Neferata. Khaled rose, wrenching his sword from the pulverised skull of the twitching beastman. Black-haired and bearded, his hawk-like features twisted into a fierce expression as he gave a bark of laughter.

  The remaining beastmen hesitated, their nostrils flaring. Snow drifted down from the branches above. A beast screeched as a figure dropped down beside it, cleaving through its shoulder and chest. Naaima spun, jerking her sword free of the dying beast and bringing it crashing around into the neck of another. She danced among them for a moment, leaving carnage in her wake, before she sprang to Neferata’s side, blood coating her bare, pale arms to the shoulders.

  ‘They smell foul and taste worse, I’d wager,’ she hissed, her dark eyes narrowing.

  ‘Needs must, when the gods demand, Naaima,’ Neferata said, bringing her blade up and letting it extend in front of her. She grasped the hilt with both hands and chuckled. ‘Their blood is red enough, regardless.’

  ‘It’s not the bottle, it’s the vintage, Lady Neferata,’ Khaled said, stepping to join them as the beasts pawed the snow and gathered their courage. He flung off his furs, revealing a tight cuirass of banded and beaten metal over a jerkin of thin, brightly coloured silk. He spun his sword with a flick of his wrist, his eyes meeting those of each of the beastmen in turn.

  ‘And what vintage would these abominations be, Khaled?’ Naaima said.

  ‘Something unsubtle and northern,’ Khaled said, grinning insouciantly at her.

  ‘Silence,’ Neferata said, and the pair fell quiet. She ran a finger along the thin runnel cut into the length of her blade, where the blood had collected. Delicately she licked the tip of her finger and grimaced. ‘Sour,’ she said.

  ‘Needs must, Neferata,’ Naaima murmured, her tone only vaguely teasing.

  Neferata shot a glare at Naaima and then swung the sword, splattering the nearest beastmen with blood.
‘Needs must,’ she said. ‘Twelve left.’

  The beastmen had got over their confusion. They started forwards in a howling, stamping mass, drawing courage from numbers. Something snarled and sprang from the snow to the side, bringing down a squalling, goat-headed monster. The desert-leopard’s fiery coat stood out in the snow as it shrieked a challenge at the beastmen before it casually bit the top of the goat-thing’s head off.

  ‘Ha! Cheat!’ Stregga snarled, springing from a tree to wrap her long arms around a simian brute’s head. She gave it a vicious twist as her feet touched the snow, snapping the creature’s spine and nearly jerking it from its back. She finished the job with all the efficiency of a fish-wife and shook the bloody spinal column at the leopard. ‘Cheat, Rasha! No points for you!’ she said, and the leopard snarled in reply. Neferata smiled slightly at the sight of the beast. The changing of skins came less easily to those who had accepted her blood-kiss than it did herself or Naaima. It had taken Rasha almost a century to learn how to do it without agony or mistake, and only because Neferata had tutored her relentlessly in the practice. The others still couldn’t; not even Khaled, quick study that he was. He might learn in time, if he survived.

  A beastman spun and swung a crude hammer at Stregga’s head. With a wild cry, Anmar interposed herself. Her sword pierced the hammer-wielder’s gut and lifted it off its cloven feet, hurling it backwards where it landed limply near the leopard. Anmar panted slightly, her body shaking from blood-hunger and exertion.

  ‘Nine now I think you’ll find, my queen,’ Khaled said, looking at Neferata, who said nothing. She and the others glided forwards. The six vampires surrounded the nine beasts, closing in on them from all sides. The battle that followed was brief and bloody. In moments, every beast was dead and their foul blood warmed the bellies of their killers.

  ‘Tastes like goat,’ Stregga said, sucking blood from a dollop of hairy flesh. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or like what I recall goat tasting like.’

  ‘It tastes foul enough without you adding to it,’ Rasha, now returned to her own shape, snapped, letting a beastman fall from her grip to thump into the pink-stained snow. She wiped the back of her hand across her jaw, smearing more blood than she removed.

  ‘Needs must, children,’ Neferata said, looking down at the crumpled form of the dwarf. He was breathing shallowly, and his blood smelled strangely acrid, like hot metal on a forge fire. She prodded his body with her sword, and he groaned.

  ‘Tough little creature,’ Khaled murmured, sidling up beside her. He cleaned his blade with a hank of beard torn from one of the dead dwarfs. ‘Still… he won’t last long out here, not like that.’

  ‘No,’ Neferata said, not looking at him. She prodded the dwarf again. The dawi had not been a common sight in Nehekhara. Indeed, she had not seen one at all until many years later, in Araby. And that one had been dead and stuffed as part of a caliph’s trophy room. This one did not seem much healthier.

  ‘Kill him,’ Naaima said as she handed Neferata the top of a beastman’s skull, stripped free of flesh, inverted and filled with blood. Neferata drank deeply, emptying the makeshift bowl in moments. She made a face as she handed the bowl back to Naaima.

  The Cathayan vampire had strung up several of the bodies and was systematically draining them of every drop of their filthy blood, and collecting it in upturned shields and helmets collected from the dwarf dead. Anmar was busy filling the heretofore-empty water-skins the group had brought. Blood congealed quickly, especially in the cold, but a few stones properly heated and dropped into the skins would bring the blood back to something approaching edibility. It was a stop-gap measure at best – drinking old blood could be as debilitating as going too long without fresh blood.

  Still, there was no telling how long they would be in these mountains. Neferata sighed and looked at Naaima. ‘It seems a waste,’ she said.

  ‘We cannot drink from one of his kind,’ Naaima said.

  ‘That we know of,’ Khaled said, squatting beside the dwarf. Naaima glared at him. He returned her glare with a raised eyebrow. ‘Have we ever tried?’ he said.

  ‘Feel free, brother,’ Anmar said. ‘Show us whether your bravery extends to your stomach.’

  Khaled grimaced as the others laughed. Neferata sank gracefully to her haunches. ‘Enough. We must go. I will deal with him.’

  She raised her sword in both hands and pressed the tip of the blade to the point where the dwarf’s skull met his spine. It would be a merciful act – quick and clean. He groaned again, and muttered something in the language of his people. The words crashed together like rocks in a basket, unintelligible and meaningless.

  All save one.

  She did not understand it. Could not, for she did not know what it meant or to what it might refer. Nonetheless, it strummed a chord within her, and her spirit shuddered in its sheath of cold flesh.

  Neferata rose smoothly to her feet, her face stiff and expressionless. She turned north, and the black sun blazed as if in answer to the question that swam to the surface of her mind. The others fell silent, sensing her disquiet.

  ‘What are you?’ she muttered, half expecting an answer. As usual, none was forthcoming.

  ‘Neferata,’ Naaima asked, reaching out to touch her mistress’s shoulder. ‘What is it? What did he say?’

  ‘Mourkain,’ Neferata said, repeating the dwarf’s word. She said it again, tasting the dark edges of it. ‘Mourkain,’ she whispered. And the black sun blazed with darkling joy.

  TWO

  The Shark Straits

  (–1163 Imperial Reckoning)

  The storm lashed the sea with whips of lightning. The sea, in its turn, did its best to return the favour, heaving and thrusting ever higher. The ship rode the thrashing waves as best as it could, but the hull groaned with something like agony and the sails were ragged strips of cloth.

  The captain pressed his back to the mast and extended his sword. Rain pounded down, swamping the ship. It ran down his arm and across the blade, joining the ankle-deep water that splashed across the deck. The helm was unmanned, but he had other concerns. Namely, the two slim shapes that swayed easily across the deck despite the pitch and yaw. Eyes like dark lamps fixed on him hungrily and he swiped the sword through the rain, trying to force them back.

  ‘Your service is to be commended, captain, but the time has come for a parting of ways,’ Neferata said, glaring at the last living man on the ship through a veil of stringy, soaked hair. Blood stained her arms to the elbow and her pale shape was marred by the filth of the lower decks. The captain, a Cathayan, shouted something defiant. Neferata’s eyes flickered to the side.

  ‘He is damning us to the six hells,’ Naaima said.

  ‘That’s what I thought he said,’ Neferata said. She was pleased in an almost child-like fashion with her facility with languages, but the Cathayan tongue was more complex than any she had ever encountered. ‘Well, he’s a bit late for that,’ she said, snapping her fangs together.

  The ship was bound for Araby, loaded down with silks and steel to trade for spices and slaves. In the years since her flight from Lahmia, Neferata had done well in Cathay. Too well, in fact. The powers entrenched there had not taken kindly to the former queen’s predatory attentions.

  If there was one thing that her final confrontation with Alcadizzar had taught her, it was when to become the memory of a thorn, rather than the thorn itself. The subtle politics of the east, as compared to those she had employed in Nehekhara, had been eye-opening. The great bureaucracy was composed of rings of power, each smaller than the next, spider-webs of steel influence and precision. Any man could be king, but to be the one who controlled the king – who controlled all kings – that was true power.

  Unfortunately, those lessons had come too late to do her much good in the lands of the Dragon-Emperor. Now she was fleeing again, a fact which rubbed at her soul like a bit of grit caught beneath armour. St
ill, needs must…

  The first absent crew member had been blamed on the sea and a sudden swell. The second had been blamed on the same, with the addition of drunkenness to explain such misfortune occurring twice in one voyage. By the third, the crew had been stalking the holds, weapons clutched in their sweaty hands. They had heard the stories of the gangshi – the stiff corpses that walked – that had come out of the capital in the preceding years, and like all sailors, were superstitious enough to believe those stories.

  Neferata idly stroked the still healing spot on her belly where a bilge-hook had entered as she slept. The storm had been a gift from the gods, blacking the sky and setting the crew’s minds to other, more pressing dangers. The Shark Straits were visible, and the storm seemed determined to drive the ship right into their jagged teeth.

  ‘A parting of ways,’ Naaima echoed. Her face was as expressionless as a porcelain mask. Neferata knew her handmaiden well enough to see the storm of emotions hidden beneath the mask. As practical as she was, as ruthless as she could be, she lacked the stomach for slaughter. Killing had never sat well with Naaima. She preferred to sup in moderation, taking gentle nourishment from suitably docile partners or pets. Neferata recognised the inherent longevity of such a practice, but something wilder stirred in her at times, as now.

  It was not quite hunger. Rather, it was a savage frenzy, a slaughter-lust that bubbled beneath her calm façade for months or years and then suddenly erupted. It was not only blood that she required; she needed death and pain and the screams of her prey as she clutched their throats between her teeth.

  With a wildcat scream, she lunged through the sheets of rain that separated her from the Cathayan captain. With a yell he swung his sword, but Naaima was there, smashing his sword-arm to the mast and pinning it there. Neferata crashed against him, his armour digging into her flesh as her fingertips dug into his. He thrashed in a pleasing manner as she grabbed his topknot and yanked his head back, exposing his throat. She purred in pleasure as her fangs sank into his unshaven throat. Blood exploded into her mouth and the purr turned to a snarl as she gulped at the hot flow. His body gave a spasm and she stepped back, gesturing imperiously for Naaima to take her place at the still-gushing spigot.