‘Not you. You never liked him to begin with.’
‘Nothing good comes from men like that.’
‘Nothing good comes from men,’ Neferata corrected. ‘Lamashizzar, Alcadizzar, W’soran, Ushoran, Abhorash… Nagash.’ The last name was said in a bitter snarl. ‘All of them men and all fools and monsters. They seek to bind us to their destinies, as if we have none of our own. As if we should be thankful.’ She spat the last word. She looked at the river, her eyes dark and far away. ‘Our destiny is here, Naaima. Here in these cold stones. The dawi worship death, even as the people of the Great Land did, before Nagash — before we — perverted it. There is old death, old strength in the bones of the mountain and it is upon that strength that I shall build…’ She trailed off.
‘Build what?’ Naaima said.
Neferata spun. ‘How many wolves did we bring?’
‘What?’
The bullet took Naaima in the shoulder, crunching through her pauldron and shoulder joint alike and spinning her around and off her feet. Neferata made to grab her, but too late. Naaima plummeted off the bluff. The ice shattered at the point of impact and the vampire slipped into the dark water.
The wolves she had seen before had shed their reeking skins, revealing the squat shapes of a number of dwarfs, who’d been wearing them. One was recognisable, even at a distance and with his beard turned silver. Orc tusks and rat skulls still dangled in his beard, though more than the last time she had seen the ranger called Ratcatcher. He grinned at her and tossed aside a long-barrelled fire-stick to one of his men as another was shoved into his hand. He took aim and fired even as Neferata leapt from the bluff after Naaima.
The rangers had been waiting for them. That was the only thing that made sense. They had been waiting for them to eventually stumble across the river. Days, weeks, months — she knew that none of it would have mattered to the taciturn and eccentric Ratcatcher. There was no guarantee that the rangers had even been in the mountain when they’d attacked.
Neferata hit the water not far from where Naaima had crashed through. She plunged into all-encompassing darkness. The cold wreathed her bones, and though it did not bother her, she could feel it. The blood pumping through her limbs turned sluggish and she caught the sharp, familiar tang of Naaima’s blood floating on the current. Like a shark, Neferata arrowed downwards, following the scent of her handmaiden.
Even for one who could see in complete darkness, the depths of the river were near impenetrable. Neferata was forced to rely on her other senses. When she felt the brush of a flailing hand, she latched on to the attached wrist and began to swim for the surface. It was an instinct, to seek succour on the surface. Neither she nor Naaima had a need to breathe, nor did the glacial current hamper them. Regardless, Naaima’s body was dead weight.
Neferata hauled Naaima up until they collided with the ice. Neferata punched through it with a single blow, driving her fist up into the open air. Using her shoulder and elbow, she widened the hole and forced an opening big enough to accommodate them both. Naaima gasped like a beached fish, and blood spurted and sizzled in the hole in her shoulder. A foul-smelling steam issued from the wound and Neferata gagged. ‘What—’ she began.
‘Burns,’ Naaima gasped. ‘It burns!’
Neferata drove her fingers into the wound and shrieked as something as hot as any fire caressed her fingertips. Steeling herself, she plucked the offending object from the wound. It was a lead ball, shot through with veins of silver. She growled and hurled it away.
‘Silver, blood-hag,’ a voice called out. She looked up and saw a firing line of dwarfs trudging across the ice towards them. All carried the long fire-sticks and had great two-handed axes strapped to their backs. Ratcatcher was chewing on a lit fuse, and a stinking tendril of smoke wafted up around his head. ‘You can thank Grund for that, the sad bastard. He saw how you blood-drinkers shrivelled around it. And if there’s one thing the Karaz has plenty of, it’s a pretty bit o’ shine.’ Ratcatcher let the fire-stick swing off his shoulder and he dipped his head, touching the hissing fuse clenched between his blackened teeth to its back.
The fire-stick roared and Neferata was hit by a hammer-blow that took her off her feet. She landed on her back on the ice and heard it crack beneath her. The silver-threaded ball burned through her arm and she gasped as she tore at the wound. The ball fell out and rolled across the ice, steaming and bloody.
The dwarfs had stopped some distance away. Ratcatcher was unhurriedly reloading, even as he continued to speak. ‘The engineers call ’em handguns. Don’t trust them myself, but I must admit they’re a mite handy when it comes to this sort of thing.’ He looked at her. ‘Quite a few dead ones you brought with you. They might have made a mess if they’d got in. Lucky we figured you’d try this eventually.’ He chuckled. ‘We’ve got a bit of a surprise waiting for them, don’t you worry. You won’t go into the darkness alone.’
Neferata heaved herself to her feet. She heard a sound like the growling of a pack of leopards and Ratcatcher made a gesture like a man hearing a familiar melody. ‘The boys got a bit eager there, but no matter.’ He tapped the side of his hooked nose. ‘Artillery crews are like beardlings — give ’em a target and they just can’t resist firing.’
His eyes narrowed to cruel slits. ‘You shouldn’t have killed Razek, blood-drinker. He was my friend. And you definitely shouldn’t have tried to take my mountain.’ He aimed his handgun. ‘Back to the shadows with you, witch.’
‘Why don’t we go together, ranger?’ Neferata said. Still crouched, she raised her fists and smashed them down with every ounce of strength her immortal frame possessed. The crack was small at first, but then the ice ripped with a sound like a melon being chopped in half. Cracks spread outwards from the point of her fists’ impact, zigzagging across the surface of the frozen river. The rangers scattered in surprise, but they could not outrun the cracks.
Neferata pulled Naaima to her feet as the ice slipped and shifted beneath them. Together, the two vampires dived into the freezing waters. Neferata arrowed herself towards the struggling dwarfs, who were sinking like stones. With her teeth bared she swam downwards towards Ratcatcher, who sank in a cloud of bubbles. He saw her coming and his eyes widened. His movements were slow and awkward as he clawed for a weapon, his eyes bulging.
She hit him like a bolt thrown from a ballista and tore him in two. The dwarf spun aside in two directions, leaving a cloud of blood in both wakes. She pushed herself around, watching Naaima dart around the other dwarfs like an eel, tearing out throats or opening bellies with every graceful pass. The water became thick with dark clouds and Neferata inhaled the heady brew before pushing herself towards the surface.
‘What now?’ Naaima said, rubbing her chest. The wound had healed, but she still looked pained. The sound of artillery had fallen silent. Whether that implied that the dwarfs had blown her forces back to whatever hell had spawned them or that they themselves had fallen, she couldn’t say. Nor, in truth, did she care. She looked back at the river and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Now we follow the river,’ Neferata said. ‘But first, we gather the others.’
When they rejoined the others, it became obvious that the dwarf ambush had been unsurprisingly effective for all that it had been a suicide mission. Layla trotted towards them, dragging a dying dwarf by his foot and leaving a trail of red across the snow. ‘This wasn’t the only ambush,’ she said. ‘Not according to this one,’ she added, tossing the dwarf at Neferata’s feet.
The dwarf glared at them blankly, pink bubbles gathering on his lips as snow collected on his twitching form. Neferata kicked him over onto his face and sighed. ‘How many of you survived?’