The Serpent Queen

by Josh Reynolds

  He looked at her. ‘This spell of yours, what is it?’

  ‘The Chains of Usirian,’ Octavia said. She made a fist. ‘That’s what those old Arabayan tomes I found in Copher called it. It will bind an unbound soul, and free the dead from the tyranny of will.’ She smiled. ‘All I need is a bit of blood, shed at the moment of death. Nitocris swears that the blood on that ancient blade is that of Khalida, High Queen of Lybaras. With it, I can bring her and the legions that follow her, to heel.’

  ‘Really,’ Steyr murmured.

  Octavia heard the amusement in his voice. She fixed her brother with a glare. ‘What are you thinking, brother?’

  She could practically hear the gears turning in his head. He was cunning, and brave and resourceful, but subtlety was not one of his virtues.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said. He paused. Then, ‘If you control Khalida and the forces at her disposal, would we need that blood-swilling leopardess and her stringy-haired vassals?’ He leaned close to her. ‘To get to Lahmia, I mean. That is still your goal, sister, is it not? To plunder the secrets of that dead kingdom, and bring this empire of bones to heel, eh?’

  He enfolded her in his cloak, as he had done so often when they were children. But now, rather than warming her with the heat of his body, she felt only the cold radiating from him.

  He leaned his chin on her shoulder and murmured, ‘Kill Andraste, sweet sister-mine, and then cast your spell. And once that has been done, destroy the Serpent Queen once and for all.’

  Chapter 12

  Felix cursed as the soft soil crumbled under his foot, and his leg sank to the knee in it. He flailed helplessly for a moment, before Gotrek knotted a hand in his cloak and hauled him up and out of the sinkhole. ‘Careful, manling,’ the Slayer growled. ‘These tunnels are as soft as an elf-man’s hair. One wrong step and you’ll be swallowed whole.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Felix said testily.

  The tunnels, or as the Nehekharans called them ‘qanats’, had, Felix had been told, carried water in the time when Nehekhara still lived. The well-like shafts, and the gently sloping tunnels that they were connected to, had provided a reliable supply of water for irrigation and drinking in the more arid regions of the Great Land. Now, most were as dry and crumbling as everything else in the Land of the Dead.

  Felix was somewhat grateful for that fact. It was bad enough tramping through the damp confines of a qanat without having to worry about the poisonous and rotten-smelling waters of the stagnant rivers that crossed the desert like the collapsed veins of a corpse. The tunnels were big enough that he could stand upright, and here and there, the roof above his head was pierced by shafts of sunlight, which dropped through what he assumed were collapsed wells. There were enough of these that the tunnels were, while not well-lit, not dark either. If Felix squinted, and was careful, he could see well enough.

  Dry as it was, though, the tunnel still stank. The smell grew worse whenever they passed what remained of the entrances to the collapsed sections of the tunnel network. Sometimes he fancied he could hear water sloshing on the other side of the tunnel wall, and other times he swore that he heard what could only be movement. When he made mention of the latter, Zabbai said, ‘The dead are not alone in Nehekhara, especially this close to the jungles and the mountains. Keep close, my little barbarian. I would not like for some hungry sand-devil to gobble you up.’

  The tunnels ran beneath the entire stretch of land from the Devil’s Backbone to the jungles, and they provided a quick, safe route to the edge of the latter. It had, much to Felix’s relief, only taken them a day to get to this point from Lybaras, and he was feeling confident that in the six days left to him, they could complete the journey.

  Taking the tunnels would allow them to avoid the patrols from Mahrak and Rasetra as well, neither of whom would take kindly to a group of armed warriors trespassing on territory they considered theirs. Zabbai was with them, as was a group of twelve warriors, each one armed with shield, khopesh and bow. They also carried supplies for Felix and Gotrek, though where they’d found food and water fit for living consumption, Felix was afraid to ask.

  Djubti had conferred extensively with Zabbai before they left, and Felix had noted the strange amulet that the liche-priest had pressed upon the herald. If it was anything like the bracelet they’d forced upon him, Felix considered her welcome to it. Antar led the way, complaining loudly and at length the entire time. Felix wondered if that was the prince’s default state, when he wasn’t boasting about his battle prowess or, more disturbingly, the size, shape and comeliness of the bones of his concubines. Death, Felix fancied, had likely not changed Antar a bit. His ego was too strong to succumb to the morose numbness that accompanied undeath. In a way, it was heartening. In another, altogether more apparent way, it was annoying.

  ‘I’m going to rip his jawbone off and crack his skull with it, if he keeps blathering,’ Gotrek said, eyeing the prince with a calculating gaze. They had come to an intersection in the sloping tunnels, and had stopped to allow Felix to rest. They had moved quickly, and between Gotrek’s steady, downhill boulder pace and the swiftness of the dead, Felix’s legs felt like lead weights. He was used to keeping up with Gotrek, however, and after a few minutes, he’d regained his breath. ‘I doubt that would shut him up,’ Felix said, fiddling with the bracelet.

  Gotrek eyed the bracelet. ‘Worse comes to worst, manling, I can just have your arm off at the elbow,’ he said. ‘That’s not your scribbling hand, is it? No matter, we’ll get you a replacement. My folk have the art of such things.’ He patted Felix companionably on the shoulder.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Felix said morosely. He shoved himself to his feet. ‘Let’s call that Plan B, shall we?’ They continued on, moving through ever-more cramped and twisting tunnels. Felix was reminded more than once of the ratruns of the skaven, and the crude tunnels of the goblins.

  The walls of the qanat had been worn smooth by water long ago, but he could imagine greenskins or the vile ratkin moving through them now, in their numberless hordes. He didn’t comment on it. Gotrek would only get distracted, and that was the last thing he wanted at the moment. He glanced down at his wrist again and then resolutely looked away, examining the warriors that Zabbai had brought with her.

  They were not the linen-shrouded honour guard from the throne room, nor were they the bare-boned skeleton archers he’d seen on the galley. Instead, they wore the remains of what looked like cuirasses made from reptile hide, and bone and feather decorations dangling from their arms and around their necks. The shields they carried were made from the armoured plates of what he could only assume was some great insect, and the khopesh each had sheathed on its bony hip had a pommel in the shape of a scorpion’s sting. The bows they carried were stout things, intricately carved and maintained, despite the general air of decay that clung to their owners, and the arrows in their quivers were fletched with black feathers. Upon the skull of each warrior was carved a coiling pattern, which stretched from crown to jaw. They moved in loose formation, maintaining a swift, ground-eating trot, until an abrupt command from Zabbai brought them to a halt.

  He’d tried to make their acquaintance more than once since they’d departed, more out of curiosity than any real desire to speak to the dead, but none seemed capable of speech. They stared at him blankly, or turned away when he spoke to them, and after a few hours of feeling insulted, Felix had come to wonder whether they even knew that he was there. So engrossed was he in studying the silent warriors, that Felix nearly collided with Gotrek. The Slayer planted a palm on his chest and said, ‘Stand still, manling.’

  ‘What is it,’ Felix said. He grasped his sword’s hilt and looked around warily, his ears open. As he listened, he could hear the same scrabbling noises as before, but louder this time, and closer.

  A crack suddenly formed in the closest wall. The crack spread upwards and outwards in a radiating spider-web of crumbling sand and soft
rock. The surface of the wall bulged at the edges of the crack. The wall exploded outwards. Felix staggered back as chunks of hardened sand and old mud struck him. As dust filled the tunnel, he heard the click of bones. The dust cleared and Felix saw a wave of tiny bodies flood into the tunnel. The dried husks of thousands of scorpions, scarabs and countless other insects and small creatures swept against the opposite wall, and splashed back towards Felix and the others in a dusty, clattering wave.

  Gotrek grabbed him and shoved him away. ‘Go, manling! Run!’ Felix began to run, joining Zabbai and the others, who were moving swiftly away from the encroaching swarm.

  ‘Run where?’ Felix shouted. ‘They’re filling the tunnel.’ And they were. The horde of clicking, scrabbling bodies pulsed forwards like some hideous tide, crawling across the floor, the walls and the ceiling, as well as each other. They filled the tunnel from top to bottom as they crashed forwards, like sausage being squeezed through a grinder.

  ‘There,’ Zabbai said, pointing towards a shaft of light ahead of them. ‘We’ll go up.’

  She reached the light first and sprang up, catching the edge of the hole and scrambling up with the peculiar agility of the animated dead.

  Even as Felix reached the light, Zabbai’s warriors followed her up, Antar not far behind. Felix didn’t pause. As he hit the light, he leapt straight up, flailing wildly for something to hold on to. Bony hands seized his wrists and he was hauled upwards by the skeletal warriors, passed hand over hand until Zabbai grabbed the neck of his chain shirt. She dragged him up and out into the open air without effort. ‘Where is the dwarf?’ she said, looking down as she deposited Felix on the ground. He looked around. The top of the well was a crumbling circle of awkwardly balanced stones, which shifted alarmingly beneath even Zabbai’s slight weight.

  ‘He’s too short to make the jump,’ Antar said, peering into the well. He sounded amused. ‘The messengers of Usirian shall claim him, as is obviously the god’s will. Goodbye, ape,’ he shouted down into the well.

  ‘Out of the way,’ Felix snapped, elbowing Antar aside as he stripped off his cloak. ‘We’ve done this before,’ he said, whirling his cloak into a tight length and knotting it loosely. Without hesitation, he dropped it into the waiting hands of Zabbai’s warriors, who grasped his intent immediately, and lowered it down to Gotrek. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted, ‘grab my cloak!’

  ‘About time, manling,’ Gotrek bellowed, as he was hauled up. ‘I was wondering whether you would remember that some of us are not built for leaping about like prancing elves.’

  ‘After Miragliano, I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon,’ Felix said. Gotrek tossed his cloak back to him as he scrambled out of the well and onto solid ground. ‘What in the name of Sigmar’s hammer was that?’

  ‘A tomb swarm,’ Zabbai said. She and her warriors quickly collapsed the well, filling the aperture. ‘They are drawn to the sorcery that animates us. They flock to it in great numbers. If Djubti were here, he could easily control them, but we lack the skill, or will, to do so,’ she added, tossing a glance at Antar as she said the last part.

  Antar made a dismissive gesture. ‘Antar, the King of the Beautiful Moment, has no need of mindless insects. Besides which, the bugs are also drawn to the smell of living flesh and blood. It is not Antar’s fault that the fleshy ones are draped in useless meat and filled with unnecessary juices.’

  ‘You were once human yourself,’ Felix said, insulted.

  ‘Vile slander,’ Antar said sharply. ‘Antar was divinity made flesh! His body was composed of the air, the soil, and the sweetest waters of the River of Life! His intelligence, that of the great stones which form the bedrock of our world. Antar, Mightiest of Mortal Immortals, Antar Who Once Rode His Chariot across the Sea, was never as you, puny meatling!’

  Felix looked past the gesticulating tomb-prince to Zabbai. ‘Where are we?’ He saw slumped obelisks and weather-worn Nehekharan mausoleums all around, arranged along lines that he suspected had once been marked by streets, but were now simply rubble-strewn paths. There were broken statues as well, giant legs that extended up from square daises to non-existent bodies.

  It was far from the well-tended necropolis of Lybaras. ‘The Great Southern Necropolis,’ she said, and gestured. ‘These ancient vaults were shattered and pillaged during the Usurper’s invasion. The spells and rites that clung to the stones were overthrown or twisted into new, more deadly shapes,’ Zabbai murmured. Felix looked around. The stone obelisks and mausoleums rose out of the patch of muddy, weed-choked ground that marked the place where the mountains and desert they had bypassed through the qanats gave way to the swamp. They stretched as far as his eye could see.

  So too did the swamp. Crooked trees, with leprous boles and mossy limbs, had invaded the necropolis’s southern edge, and Felix could see where a number of tombs had been inundated by thick tangles of roots, where they weren’t completely swallowed. Sand had become mud and the flat stretches of barren ground were separated by runnels of bitter-looking water. The Land of the Dead wasn’t all desert, though none of it – sand-strewn or otherwise – was particularly pleasant looking.

  ‘The vaults and tombs stretch from the Gulf of Fear to the Devil’s Backbone,’ Antar said. His normal boisterousness had become subdued. ‘They say these stones and what lies beneath once protected the borders of Lybaras from the encroachment of the Doom Glade Swamp, which grows and creeps like a thing alive.’ As he spoke, birds burst from the tree line that marked the swamp, croaking loudly. Felix hoped they were birds, at least. ‘The swamp is cursed,’ Antar added. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Felix said. He rubbed at his wrist beneath the bracelet, trying to ease the soreness of the latter’s clutch. It was loose enough to allow sand and grit to get between the gold and his flesh, but tight enough that his forearm felt as if it were caught in an engineer’s vice. He’d tried threading a length of cloth between his skin and the metal soon after they’d put it on, but there was simply no room. The bracelet seemed to swell or shrink as necessary, for maximum annoyance.

  ‘Cursed or not, it’s the most direct route,’ Zabbai said. ‘We should go.’

  ‘No,’ Gotrek said.

  ‘What,’ Felix said, turning to look at him.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Gotrek rumbled. The Slayer sank into a crouch and pressed one big hand to the damp earth. He dug his fingers in and his eye flickered about, as if searching for something.

  ‘Gotrek, what are you talking about?’ Felix said, hurrying towards him. ‘Is that swarm returning?’ The thought of a cloud of stinging, biting, clawing undead insects bursting through the ground to envelop them wasn’t a happy one.

  ‘Stay back, manling!’ Gotrek roared, rising to his feet. Felix froze where he was.

  Antar drew his khopesh and crowed, ‘So Antar’s silent foreseeing of which he chose not to make you aware has been proven truthful! The stunted monkey cannot be trusted! He is a jug of lies and his smell is that of deceitful pony!’

  ‘Quiet!’ Zabbai said. She raised her axe. Her warriors grew still, arrows notched. She turned her head slowly. ‘The dwarf is right. No one move.’

  ‘What is it?’ Felix said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re being stalked,’ Gotrek said, grimly. ‘Now be silent, while those of us without puny human ears try to listen.’

  Felix swallowed thickly and tried to remain as still as possible. His hand inched towards the hilt of his sword as he scanned the empty tombs and fallen obelisks. Something nagged at him, something Antar had said, only moments ago – These stones and what lies beneath… Even as Felix thought it, he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble, as if something massive were moving below him. ‘Gotrek,’ he hissed.

  ‘I hear it, manling,’ the Slayer said, raising a hand to silence him. ‘They’re circling us.’

  They, Felix thought, with a sinking sensati
on, as in, more than one. ‘Wonderful,’ he muttered. He looked around. The crooked length of a toppled obelisk rested nearby. It wasn’t much, but it would get him off the ground. He’d learned much in his time at Gotrek’s side, and one of the more important lessons had been the higher the ground, the more work your enemy had to do to get to you. He tensed, preparing to make a run for it.

  As if reading his thoughts, Gotrek said, ‘Don’t move, manling. Not until I give the word.’ The Slayer raised his head to look at the others. ‘That goes for all of you.’

  ‘It is cowardice you speak of! Antar, Mighty Lion Cub, Raised by Falcons, runs from nothing!’ Antar blustered, swiping at the air with his saw-toothed khopesh. He stamped on the ground and struck a fallen stone with his blade. ‘Come out, cowardly skulkers! Face the Will of Heaven Made Glorious Manifest!’

  The damp, soft soil exploded upwards in a spray of browns and greys as several horrifying serpentine forms burst from the ground around Antar. A trio of ancient and ornate blade-topped staves hissed out from three different directions, and Antar was forced to drop down beneath them and leap aside, spluttering and cursing. Felix caught a hint of snakelike bodies and manlike torsos before their attackers had vanished beneath the ground as quickly as they’d come.

  ‘Sepulchral Stalkers,’ Zabbai said, gesturing for her warriors to seek higher ground. ‘Head for the stones, and stay off the ground.’

  She backed towards a bisected tomb, her axe spinning slowly between her hands. Felix hurried towards the toppled obelisk he’d spotted earlier. He drew Karaghul as he moved. He felt the ground shift beneath him, and as he drew his sword, he caught the reflection of a dark shape heaving into sight behind him. He didn’t turn, or stop, but instead sprang for the obelisk with every ounce of lift his legs could muster. He hit the tumbled stone hard and rolled off the other side, Karaghul quivering in his hands as the blade struck rock. The dark, serpentine shape of the Sepulchral Stalker lunged after him, raising its staff for a slicing blow.