The Serpent Queen

by Josh Reynolds

  Arrows, hundreds of them, fell in a graceful arc, descending with a communal whistle that split the air more effectively than any rumble of thunder. Felix closed his eyes. The vampires crouched over him screamed and thrashed as they were perforated by multiple arrows. Felix’s eyes sprang open as he realised that death had, for the moment, passed him by yet again.

  He sat up, and saw that most of the vampires were down, arrows sticking from them. Some had been struck so many times that they resembled overlarge hedgehogs rather than blood-drinking monsters. He twisted, and saw Gotrek standing nearby, panting. The Slayer was paying no attention to the surviving vampires. Instead, his eye was riveted on the water. Felix turned and felt his heart sink.

  A galley of bronze and bone nosed its way to shore, pulled aground by a number of skeletons clad in archaic bronze armour, with large shields strapped to their backs. The skeletons hauled the galley to the shore by use of great lengths of chain that extended from runnels set along the curve of the prow. The galley, big as it was, brushed aside the boats and ships in its path, gouging holes in their hulls or simply crashing through them in a nigh-continuous cataclysm of shattering wood. On the high deck of the galley, a number of skeletons armed with bows readied themselves to unleash another volley of arrows.

  Vampires, it seemed, were not the only dead men on the Shifting Mangrove Coast. ‘Gotrek,’ Felix began, as the skeletal warriors on the shore dropped their chains and retrieved their shields and the khopesh each had sheathed on one bony hip. They drew their curved sickle-swords with a communal hiss of bronze escaping leather and presented their shields as one. Then, with a rattle of bones, they began to march forwards together.

  ‘Aye, manling,’ Gotrek said, happily. ‘Now it’s a fight.’

  Chapter 6

  The dry dead, their bones bleached or brown, marched forwards, their steps so smooth and precise that Felix thought their discipline, even while alive, would have been the envy of the armies of Karl Franz. They came to a halt some distance from the galley and spread out in a line, locking their shields rim-to-rim.

  They wore helms topped by open-mouthed asps, and more snakes decorated the front of their shields. Felix’s eyes strayed past them to the galley they had hauled ashore. Its bronze-plated prow was engraved with Nehekharan hieroglyphs, depicting great battles, or perhaps the conflicts of the gods themselves. The sails sagged and billowed in the damp air, causing the asp depicted on them to undulate in sinister fashion. The oars had been raised, though he could see no sign of the rowers. He wondered, in a detached fashion, if this was the same galley that had torn Bolinas’s ship in half, and if so, whether it had come back to finish the job.

  From the galley, a heavy drumbeat began to echo. Felix could feel the rhythm of each strike in his chest. He could see the same withered shapes as he’d glimpsed during the wrecking of the Orfeo pounding on the drums, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in fear. The archers on the high deck had raised their bows, and now, bones gleaming in the weak light that dappled the waters, held arrows ready to be unleashed. The warriors on the shore waited as well, their sword arms cocked as if to deliver a chopping blow.

  For long moments, the only sound was the boom-boom-boom of the drum. Then the tap of bone on wood echoed beneath the drumbeat. A lone figure appeared at the front of the galley having exited some unseen cabin, Felix guessed. Ancient, crackling linen bandages, yellow and stiff with the grime of unguessed ages, clung to a form that had, in life, been that of a voluptuous woman. She was tall, and wide of shoulder and hip. Thin robes of aged muslin draped long limbs, and golden bracers and greaves hid her forearms and shins. She wore an ornately wrought and elegantly engraved cuirass, edged in gold and set with turquoise.

  A golden deathmask hid her ravaged features, and a headdress made from the spotted hide of some great desert cat obscured the back of her head and neck. The features of the mask were beautiful, but chilling: at once lifelike and yet empty of life.

  The dead woman carried a wide-bladed stabbing spear in one hand, and a long-hafted, single-bladed bronze axe in the other. She raised her spear. ‘You have been judged,’ a voice like shifting sands said. Felix started. It was her voice, he realised. It seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere as she spoke, and her words pulsed in time to the drumbeat. ‘You have been found wanting. By the command of the Beloved of Asaph, Daughter of the Asp-Goddess and High Queen of Lybaras and Mistress of the Bitter Seas, this place is to be scoured from the bosom of Ptra, and you are condemned to the dark of Usirian’s wastes, there to howl and lament for all eternity.’

  Then, in a crackle of linen, the great spear was slicing through the air. Felix flinched as it whistled past him, narrowly missing him. A scream snapped at his ears. He spun and saw Pieter fly backwards. The vampire had been caught in mid-leap. The spear had pierced his chest and ripped his black heart from its housing. Even as he hurtled back and struck the inside wall of the palisade, his slim form was shrivelling and rotting on the bone.

  ‘Pieter,’ Steyr howled. Gregory and the other vampires pelted forwards, roaring and shrieking like wild beasts. The dry dead met them, shield to fang and sword to claw. Gotrek whirled as a vampire leapt past him, and planted his axe firmly in the creature’s gut, chopping it nearly in two with a single blow.

  Through the rain of gore, Gotrek met Felix’s eyes and said, ‘Well? Get stuck in, manling, before those blasted bone-bags kill them all!’

  ‘Yes, do get stuck in,’ Steyr snarled, nearly bowling Gotrek over as he rushed towards Felix. ‘You did this! Pieter is dead because of you!’ The vampire deftly avoided Gotrek’s blow and pounced on Felix, bearing him to the ground. Felix caught Steyr’s gut with his boots and sent him tumbling away. The vampire was on his feet in a moment, Pieter’s sword in his hand. Felix grunted as he narrowly parried a savage thrust.

  Nearby, Gotrek bellowed and hacked at the few vampires not occupied fighting the new arrivals. Felix knew the Slayer would be no help. Luckily, Steyr was obviously a better archer than he was a swordsman. He was stronger, and faster, but not as skilful. Felix stepped back, extending his blade in a langort or ‘long point’ stance. Steyr hesitated.

  Behind them, Gregory howled as he crashed into the armoured dead. Over Steyr’s shoulder, Felix could see the big vampire smash aside a skeleton with a sweep of his arm and wrench the blade from the grip of another. He cursed and stamped on a skull, shattering it to powder. Arrows sprouted from him, and he wailed. Steyr jerked around, concern for his remaining brother momentarily distracting him. Felix lunged, executing a perfect stechen thrust, straight from the manuals of the Altdorf school of fencing. Only Steyr’s speed saved him from being spitted, and he jumped back like a startled cat.

  The vampire hissed and slapped aside Felix’s next blow hard enough to make Karaghul quiver in his grip. Felix staggered and Steyr darted forwards. He grabbed Felix by the throat and flung him down. As Felix tried to scramble upright, Steyr kicked him in the chest, flattening him. He stamped on Felix’s sword hand, and then placed a boot on Felix’s chest. ‘Time to bring this ridiculous farce to an end, I think,’ Steyr said. He raised his weapon in both hands over Felix.

  ‘Says the man who likes Tarradasch,’ Felix said, snatching his dagger from its sheath and driving it through the ankle of the foot that held him pinned. Steyr yelped and fell back. Before he could recover himself, Gotrek’s axe sprouted from his side, crunching through the metal of the vampire’s cuirass and the body beneath. Steyr whirled, but his flailing blow passed completely over the dwarf’s head.

  Gotrek tore his axe free in a welter of dark gore, and sent it smashing home into Steyr’s belly, lifting the vampire off of his feet. Steyr staggered away, his arms pressed tight to his gut. The vampire sank to his knees and toppled over. Gotrek stalked towards him, clearly intent on taking his head.

  But the Slayer was sent flying as Gregory smashed into him. The vampire struck the Slayer
so hard that Felix’s teeth twitched in sympathy, and Gotrek hit the ground some distance away, digging furrows in the soft soil, cursing the entire while. A man’s weight in arrows jutted from the big vampire’s frame, but it hadn’t slowed him down. Felix snatched up his sword as Gregory made to snatch up his wounded brother, but an ear-splitting caterwaul caused them both to turn.

  Felix saw the golden-masked woman spring from the deck of the galley, her axe in her hand. The long-hafted weapon slid through her grip as her feet touched solid ground, and she spun, catching a vampire beneath his chin with the curve of the axe and sending him flying, his head cleft from teeth to pate.

  She danced through the blood-drinkers, moving more swiftly and gracefully than a corpse ought, her axe flashing and spinning in her grip to weave a tapestry of sour blood and foul innards about her. Not a drop of the ichors touched her as she sped towards Gregory, who spun to meet her, his stolen khopesh in his hand.

  ‘You have been judged and found wanting, cursed one. The black blood of Lahmia the Damned seeps from your pores and you stink of pauper’s earth,’ the woman hissed as she approached. ‘You cannot flee. Wherever you go, whatever hiding place you creep into, be it city, swamp or oasis, Zabbai of Lybaras shall drag you forth in chains of blood and fire to face the judgement of Asaph. Run and be damned, or face me and be destroyed.’

  Gregory let loose a blistering torrent of oaths and charged towards her. Whatever else he was, Felix supposed, no one could call him a coward. As the big vampire moved, his flesh rippled and split, disgorging stiff, wiry hair, and his skull cracked and shifted beneath the flesh of his face, becoming something long and lean. His jaws thrust forward in a lupine fashion, his gums exceeding the edges of his mouth and stretching out, even as a briar patch of cruelly curved fangs sprouted from their piebald surface. He knuckled the ground like an ape from Ind, propelling himself along with a surge of his swelling shoulder muscles.

  The beast-thing that flung itself at the golden-masked woman resembled a hideous amalgamation of simian and lupine characteristics, with something of the stoat and the bat and rat thrown in. Gregory shrieked as she leapt to meet him in midair. Her axe flashed. But it did not meet flesh. Instead, it carved through the canvas ‘roof’ that the vampires had stretched across the port. Deftly, Zabbai avoided Gregory’s lunge and instead tore an entire section of the canvas down. She landed in a crouch as the vampire crashed to earth, writhing in the sudden glare of the Southlands sun.

  She raised her axe. ‘Fire arrows,’ she said. She did not shout; nonetheless, the archers on the galley heard her and fired, not at the brawling vampires, but instead at the buildings and the protective sheeting that kept the glare of the sun from their pale flesh.

  As Felix watched, flaming arrows struck the sails and sheets, setting them alight. More burning arrows found the ruined and rotting hulks in the quay, or the buildings closest to shore. Still more sizzled past him to bite into the hard wood of the palisade. Despite the damp and rot, the fires caught somehow. The Mangrove Port was burning.

  Gregory, caught full by the sunlight, shrieked in agony. The vampire clawed at his blistering, blackening flesh and rolled about, as if trying to snuff the flames. Wreathed in fire, he lunged to his feet and staggered blindly towards Felix. Gregory shrieked and gibbered as his flesh sloughed from his bones in sizzling dollops.

  His eyes boiled in his sockets, and steam and greasy trails of smoke rose from him as he swiped at Felix. He snapped his jaws mindlessly as he threw himself forwards. Felix stumbled back, barely getting his sword between them in time. Gregory spitted himself on the blade.

  Clawed hands grasped the sword, and the vampire began to pull himself along the blade, twitching and moaning, his jaws clicking as he bit blindly at the air. Felix tried to jerk Karaghul free, but the sword was lodged in bone. Heat washed over him as Gregory’s talons clasped the crosspiece of the sword.

  Then, an axe flashed and the vampire’s head went spinning from his shoulders. It struck the ground and exploded into fragments of charred bone and ash. Zabbai used the curve of her axe to hook the already disintegrating body and drag it away from Felix. He stared at his reflection in the polished surface of her mask, unsure of what to say. Close as she was he could see that the face the mask had been carved to represent was beautiful, and that she was taller than he. In life, she would have been imposing. In death, she was terrifying. ‘He lives, then,’ she said. Her voice was at once hoarse, yet smooth, like sand pouring through an hourglass.

  Behind her, he could see that the battle was over. Without the Steyr brothers to lead them, the vampires had retreated, or died. Some would likely escape, and continue to plague these shores, but not many. The thought gave him no pleasure. He had come too close to joining their ranks to feel anything but relief.

  ‘As I said he would,’ Gotrek said. He tore his axe free from a squirming vampire and let it drop onto the creature’s neck, severing its head. He spat and kicked the body aside. He frowned and looked at the dead woman. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘It is not for your gratitude that we have spared you, stunted one,’ Zabbai said, resting her axe across her shoulder. It was a peculiar sort of gesture, Felix thought, for a dead woman. Then, these were a peculiar sort of undead, from all that he had seen. They were as different from the vampires and ghouls as day from night.

  Anger flared in Gotrek’s single eye, and his lip curled. ‘You didn’t “spare” anyone, crow-bait. I choose when it is time for me to die and no one else!’

  ‘Then you chose wisely,’ Zabbai said, looking down at Gotrek. She turned and started back towards the galley. ‘Come. It is time for you to uphold your part of our bargain.’

  ‘Bargain,’ Felix said. He looked down at Gotrek. ‘What bargain?’

  ‘Come on, manling. I’m tired of all these trees.’ Gotrek stomped after Zabbai.

  ‘What bargain is she talking about?’ Felix said, hurrying after the Slayer. Behind him, he heard a roar as flames began to consume the palisade.

  ‘None of your concern,’ Gotrek snapped. He didn’t look at Felix.

  ‘I’d say it is,’ Felix insisted. ‘What’s going on, Gotrek?’

  Gotrek paused. He didn’t turn around. ‘I thought you were dead, manling.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I expected you to follow me, when I leapt aboard the galley. It would have been a glorious death.’ Gotrek shifted slightly, glaring at Felix over his shoulder. ‘But you weren’t there. At the moment of glory, my Rememberer was nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘I was knocked overboard,’ Felix said. Realisation struck him. ‘Did you call a truce with them, just to find me?’ Gotrek glared at him silently. ‘How was that even possible? What benefit was it to them?’ Gotrek turned and stalked away. Felix began to press the point, but he stopped short when he saw the way the veins in Gotrek’s neck were bulging. That was a sure sign that the Slayer was growing angry. He sighed and followed Gotrek towards the galley. His head was full of questions.

  He had never truly considered himself to be that important to Gotrek’s quest for self-immolation. He had thought that the dwarf merely regarded him as an appendage, or a tool to be replaced, when necessary. He had met other Slayers, and they had, without fail, regarded their Rememberers as interchangeable. Then, over the course of their years together, Felix had come to learn that Gotrek was anything but a normal Slayer, if such a thing could even be said to exist. The fire that burned within him seemed to feed less on shame than ego, and it burned twice as hot because of that.

  The warriors formed up around them with a clatter. They swung their shields onto their backs and sheathed their blades as they trooped into the water. Felix realised that they were going to shove the galley back into the water, and he hesitated. ‘Are we really going with them?’

  ‘Unless you’d rather stay here,’ Gotrek said, without stopping.

  �
��Frankly, yes,’ Felix said. Nonetheless, he followed Gotrek up the boarding plank that had been lowered from the galley. Zabbai led them to the high deck.

  As he stepped aboard, Felix could see down to the lower decks, where the rowers sat. Like the warriors, they too were bone, bleached by the sun. They wore rags and tatters left over from life, and waited silently for the order to begin rowing. No wonder these galleys move so fast, he thought. Dead men never grew tired, and they had magic in place of muscle.

  The galley shuddered, and Felix stumbled against one of the crew. He jerked back hastily as the skeleton turned to examine him with an empty gaze. ‘I – ah – sorry,’ Felix said with his hands raised in a placatory gesture. The skeleton seemed to shrug as it turned back to its duties. Felix turned. Everywhere he looked, dead men went about their business as briskly as their living counterparts might have.

  Zabbai stood on the high deck, surrounded by her archers. Gotrek stood beside her, his axe cradled in the crook of his arm. Felix joined them. He was surprised but gratified that they had been allowed to keep their weapons. Then, it wasn’t as if they would do them much good, should events take a turn for the worse. He kept his palm on Karaghul’s pommel. The galley began to move forwards, and behind him, the drums began to sound again as the rowers set to. The warriors who had pushed them out of the shallows climbed back onto the boat in a display of agility that Felix found somewhat off-putting. He was used to dead men who stumbled and staggered. Shuffling zombies and jerky skeletons, pried from filthy, root-encrusted barrows. But these moved cleanly, and smoothly, as if in death they had been shorn of all physical weakness.

  ‘You are bleeding,’ Zabbai said. Felix blinked, startled. He touched his arm, and hissed in pain. All of a sudden, he felt every ache and pain acquired in his recent travails.