‘Sofia? What are you doing?’ demanded Kurt. ‘You need to get on the Trinovante.’
‘I can’t find Miska,’ she said. ‘She ran away.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know!’ snapped Sofia. ‘Miska!’
Then she saw the girl, thin arms wrapped around the Tzarina’s neck as she wept into her shoulder. Sofia’s heart broke to see such sorrow, feeling a splinter lodge in her own heart as she realised what the Ice Queen must be telling Miska.
Tzarina Katarin looked up and met Sofia’s gaze, and her eyes were filled with icy tears. Sofia forged a path towards the Ice Queen, who tilted Miska’s head back and lifted a blue pendant hung around her neck.
Sofia recognised the silver chain and wire-wrapped stone. How could she not? It was hers. Why was Miska wearing it? The Tzarina kissed the blue stone and smiled, whispering in the young girl’s ear.
‘My queen,’ began Sofia. ‘I…’
‘Katarin,’ said the Tzarina, gently prising the sobbing girl from her neck. ‘No more titles.’
She passed Miska to Sofia, who held her tight as Wrodzik, Tey-Muraz and Urska Pysanka rode up. Their faces were more alive and their eyes wilder than Sofia had yet seen them.
The Ice Queen nodded and mounted her frost-white steed.
She looked to Sofia and her grief at this parting was almost too much to bear. ‘Promise me you will keep that little one safe.’
‘I will,’ sobbed Sofia as the queen nodded and turned her horse. Tey-Muraz yelled an ancient Ungol war-shout before circling Sofia with his teeth bared and topknot unbound.
He hammered a fist against his chest and said, ‘Be sure Master Tsarev tells a grand tale of our ending.’
Sofia nodded, her throat too choked to speak.
‘Yha!’ shouted Tey-Muraz and the lancers followed the icy beacon of the Tzarina’s glittering sword. Their wild whoops, glorious laughter and shrieking wing banners dared the wind and rain to drown them out.
Kislev’s last warriors rode across the river towards the rocky peak bearing Tor’s temple at its summit.
What better place was there to meet the gods?
‘Where in Sigmar’s name are they going?’ cried Kurt, watching the Tzarina’s warriors ride over the bridge. ‘The ship is leaving and we need to be on it.’
Sofia held Miska tight and swallowed her tears as she ran towards the Trinovante. She didn’t look back, didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Sofia, what’s going on?’ asked Kurt, easily catching up to her on his horse. ‘The Trinovante is leaving! The Tzarina needs to get aboard.’
‘She’s not going to the Empire,’ said Sofia, between sobs.
‘What? Where else is there to go?’
‘She’s not going anywhere,’ said Sofia, finally reaching the gangway. Captain Zwitzer and Ryurik were waiting at the gunwale, urging them to board. Lines of handgunners stood on the foredeck and the crack of their black powder weapons made Sofia flinch. Miska sobbed and held tighter at the gunfire.
‘She’s staying?’ said Kurt. ‘Why?’
‘Because she must,’ said Sofia.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘And you never will, Empire man!’ snapped Sofia, unwilling to even look at him.
‘Kurt, Sofia!’ cried Ryurik. ‘Quickly! Get aboard!’
The gangway stretched out before her, but she couldn’t place her foot on it. To flee Erengrad would be admitting her homeland was gone, that all she loved of Kislev was dead.
‘I can’t do it,’ said Sofia.
Miska lifted her head from Sofia’s shoulder, her face now that of a frightened child with the palest grey eyes.
‘You promised you’d keep me safe,’ she said and Sofia’s resolve hardened in the face that simple truth.
‘You’re right, little one,’ she said. ‘I did. And I will.’
Sofia climbed the gangway, each step feeling like a betrayal, until she reached the Trinovante’s deck. Ryurik’s arms enfolded her as Kurt followed her aboard, leading Pavel by the reins.
Zwitzer’s men kicked the gangway into the sea and the ship’s sails boomed as the ropes holding them to the bridge were cut. The ship lurched from the wharf as packs of frenzied beasts hurled themselves into the ocean in a futile attempt to catch the departing vessel.
Kurt strode to the opposite side of the ship, looking up towards Tor’s high temple. Sofia saw him struggle with grief and the horror of what was to come.
‘They are all going to die,’ he said, watching the tide of beasts surround the peak upon which the Tzarina’s warriors prepared for one last, glorious charge. ‘And for what? There was never a fight here to win!’
‘Because she’ll die if she leaves,’ said Sofia.
‘Die? There isn’t a wound on her.’
Sofia shook her head.
‘Your Emperor is elected,’ she said. ‘He is a man, chosen by other men. That is not Kislev’s way. Here, the land chooses who will rule. The land has chosen her and so she must stay.’
‘That makes no sense. Kislev is gone.’
‘She knows that,’ said Sofia. ‘And yet she stays.’
‘But the Empire endures,’ said Kurt. ‘Imagine the boost to morale had the Ice Queen stepped onto the Altdorf docks! Think of the hope such news might have brought. And with her power allied to the Supreme Patriarch’s, the Auric Bastion would have endured for a thousand years.’
‘All you say is true,’ said Sofia, knowing Kurt would never understand what abandoning Kislev would have done to its queen. ‘But it does not change anything.’
Kurt’s head sank to his chest. ‘Then all hope is gone.’
‘No,’ said Miska, holding fast to a wire-wrapped pendant of glittering frost-blue. ‘Not all hope.’
Katarin watched the Trinovante clear the wreckage choking the harbour, and let out a mist of breath that froze the rain. That at least some of her people would live beyond her own death was a comfort.
Tey-Muraz drank from a skin of koumiss, watching the thousands of grunting beasts massing at the base of the hill. Beneath the walnut of his skin, the Ungol horseman was ashen at the sight of so many beasts.
Katarin felt the monsters’ hate and returned it tenfold.
She looked down at her fingers, the skin pale to the point of translucency. The magic was still within her, but Kislev was all but dead. And as the land died, so she weakened.
She saw Tey-Muraz looking at her and said, ‘I think I might need some of that.’
Tey-Muraz grinned, exposing yellowed teeth, and tossed the skin to her. She drank a mouthful, letting the milky spirit core a burning line down her gullet.
‘From my own herd,’ said Tey-Muraz proudly.
‘You have any more?’ asked Wrodzik as Katarin passed it to Urska Pysanka. ‘I don’t want to my face death sober.’
‘That’s the last one,’ said Tey-Muraz sadly. ‘The last one there will ever be in the world.’
Wrodzik spat a mouthful of brackish rainwater.
‘Ach, is of no matter.’
Urska Pysanka said, ‘Yha, you never faced life sober, so why be any different with death?’
‘What son of Kislev ever fought sober?’ demanded Wrodzik, draining the last of the koumiss and dropping the skin to the waterlogged earth.
‘None of mine,’ said Tey-Muraz, his voice choked with emotion. ‘All six were lost at Starovoiora. They died bravely and drunk as Tileans.’
‘Two of my sons fell at Mazhorod,’ said Urska, her jaw set tight. ‘Another at Chernozavtra.’
‘No daughters?’ asked Katarin.
‘Just one,’ said Urska, and a tear rolled down her cheek, quickly lost in the rain. ‘Praag took her while I nursed her in swaddling clothes.’