The ungor bobbed its heads up and down. ‘Better be not wrong. Outcast kill you if you wrong.’
Khar-zagor shrugged as words tumbled from his throat, words he had last spoken as a man.
‘Is of no matter,’ he said.
Together they ventured into the ruins of the ataman’s hall, where a single warrior armoured in brazen plates of darkest cobalt knelt before an altar wrought in bone and rock. A short cloak of raven feathers hung from one spiked shoulder guard; stiffened skin flayed from the backs of mothers yet to birth draped the other. A pallasz taller than either of the ungors was slung across the warrior’s back.
Khar-zagor spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm. Just being near the blade made him sick, as though it was killing him just by looking at it.
‘Why do you disturb my devotions to Tchar?’ asked the Outcast, rising to his feet and turning to face the cringing ungors. His bulk was enormous, the equal of Magok the Stone Horn, and the burning eyes beneath his raven-winged helm were a hard, empty blue.
Ungrol Four-horn’s heads bowed so low they scraped the scorched floor of the hall. He licked traces of curdled fat from the flagstones.
‘Ravager pack dead,’ he grunted. ‘Human riders with wings and with spears kill them.’
‘Lancers? This far west?’ said the warrior. ‘That seems unlikely. We killed the last of the lancers at Praag.’
‘Khar-zagor say so and Khar-zagor never wrong.’
The warrior turned his pitiless gaze on Khar-zagor. ‘You truly saw winged lancers?’
Khar-zagor nodded, his mouth dry and his belly aflame with fear. The gods were watching through the Outcast’s eyes, and though the human wallowed in disgrace with the beasts, his dominance could not be challenged.
‘Does it speak?’ asked the Outcast.
Ungrol Four-horn butted him with his nearest head, and Khar-zagor squealed in pain as the sharpened iron tip of the horn sliced open his arm.
‘Tell what told me,’ ordered Four-horn.
‘Saw she-champion too,’ said Khar-zagor.
‘The Ice Queen?’ snapped the Outcast. ‘You saw her? She lives? You are sure of this?’
‘Khar-zagor never wrong,’ he said.
‘How far from here?’
‘Half a day run for beasts,’ said Khar-zagor.
The Outcast threw back his head and laughed, his clawed gauntlets bunching to fists. ‘Tchar sends me a mighty gift! Sound the horns and rouse your beasts to war, I’ll have the cold bitch’s head on a horn by nightfall!’
The warrior’s excitement made Khar-zagor bold.
‘Why you so need to make she-champion dead?’ he asked.
‘Because many years ago, I killed her father,’ said the warrior once known as Hetzar Feydaj. ‘And while the last of the Tzar’s line yet lives, his white daemon will never rest until it kills me.’
Morrslieb hung low on the horizon, its outline crisp in the cold, cloudless night. Katarin felt its malign influence deep in her bones, like an oncoming sickness no amount of sweet tisane could keep at bay. She stood alone at the opening of the gully, letting the soft emptiness of the night enfold her.
She heard the muffled curses of her kossar guards as they hacked at the wall of ice she’d raised behind her. Nightfall had brought a craving for solitude, not the company of armed men. Queen or not, Wrodzik, Tey-Muraz and Urska Pysanka would berate her for such wilful behaviour.
She closed her eyes and listened to the wind howl over the steppe, a mournful sound freighted with all the pain and fear benighting her realm.
‘So many dead,’ whispered Katarin, turning her gaze southwards. ‘So many yet to die.’
Katarin’s thoughts turned to the last remnants of her people below, clinging to life in the face of utter extinction. She wished she had hope that those who’d fled south at the first signs of the tribal warhosts still lived. Perhaps they had crossed the enchanted barrier the Empire’s wizards had wrought. Perhaps a tiny enclave of Kislev’s people yet lived beyond its borders, but she doubted it.
The Emperor’s soldiers would allow nothing to enter their lands. Karl Franz was a man unafraid of hard decisions, and if the choice was to risk the Empire or let Kislev’s people die, then it was no choice at all.
Katarin wanted to feel anger toward the Emperor. Kislev’s sons had fought and died for centuries to keep the northern reaches of the Empire safe, but had geography reversed their roles, she knew she would do the same.
Like a gangrenous limb cut away to save the body, her realm had been forsaken. This fog-bound gully might very well be the last scrap of land that could rightfully be called Kislev.
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
‘Kislev is land, and land is Kislev,’ she whispered.
Until now, she’d thought that was what made her strong.
Her land was no more. Fell powers corrupted the steppe and its cities were corpse-choked abattoirs ruled by daemons.
Katarin thought of her childhood around the enormous hearth-fire in the Bokha Palace, where her father and his boyarin had spun fiery tales of Kislev’s legendary bogatyr. These brave warriors from ancient times were said to slumber in forgotten tombs until the land needed them once more.
She had been thrilled to tales of Magda Raizin, Dobrynya of the Axe, Kudeyar the Cursed, Vadim the Bold, Babette the Bloody and a hundred others. In every story, the hero would rise to fight alongside their people in the last great battle, finally laying to rest the evil that threatened the world.
The killing fields of Starovoiora, Praag and Kalyazin, of Erengrad and Kislev, were bloody testament to the conspicuousness of the absence of those heroes now.
When legends of the past failed to rise, her people had turned to the gods for deliverance. They prayed for Ursun to bestride the world and rend the northmen with his mighty claws, for Tor to cleave the heavens with his axe and rain down lightning, for Dhaz to send forth his eternal fires.
But the gods were not listening.
‘Where are you, Ursun?’ she cried, sinking to her knees in despair. ‘And Sigmar, where are you? I saw your comet, the twin-tailed herald of your return, so where are you, damn you? Why do you all forsake us?’
Katarin rose to her feet, looking to the uncaring stars with the purest hate at their indifference. What did they care that her land was lost and her people dead? Would they weep at her passing? In a thousand years, would anyone even remember there had once been a land called Kislev, where a proud and noble people had lived and loved, fought and died?
She wondered what it might be like to just walk away, to lose herself in the darkness and let the night take her. Death would take her people one way or another, whether she stood with them or not.
‘Is of no matter,’ she said, taking a single faltering step, then another.
‘Why are you out here on your own?’ asked a small voice.
Katarin spun and drew Fearfrost, reaching inside for what little magic remained to her, but stilled the ice as she saw only a young girl with hair the colour of embers.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ said Katarin, lowering her glimmering blade and looking over the girl’s shoulder to the wall of ice blocking the gully. ‘How did you get here?’
The girl shrugged, as if that was answer enough.
‘You came in with Mistress Valencik. You are her daughter?’
The girl said, ‘My name is Miska.’
‘The first khan-queen.’
Miska smiled. ‘That’s what my mamochka said, but you didn’t answer my question.’
‘What question?’
‘Why you’re out here on your own.’
No easy answer presented itself.
‘I find the quiet of the darkness comforting,’ said Katarin, all too aware of how ridiculous that sounded. Darkness in the Old World was a time to fear more than any other.