The Serpent Queen

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘And where were you lot?’ Felix demanded, looking at Zabbai and the others. She and her warriors were making ready to move, as if there hadn’t been a giant snake slithering through the camp.

  ‘Antar, Most Inquisitive of Princes, was wondering how long it would take for you to wake up once the snake started to swallow you,’ Antar said. ‘The dwarf insisted you’d wake up before your boots were in its mouth. Antar thought it would be longer, due to your laziness and general air of weakness.’

  ‘You bet on how long it would take for the snake to eat me,’ Felix said, in disbelief.

  ‘No, manling, just on how far it’d get before you woke up,’ Gotrek said. ‘I wouldn’t have let it finish.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ Felix said acidly.

  Gotrek nodded agreeably. He either hadn’t noticed Felix’s tone or he didn’t care. ‘I told them you’d be fine with it. Poets have a great sense of humour.’

  Felix looked about him helplessly. ‘I knew you’d wake up before it got done tasting you,’ Zabbai said. ‘Here.’ She shoved a pair of fat, hairy carcasses into his arms. Felix gagged and looked down into the twin fixed rictus of two dead animals very much like wharf rats, albeit more muscular and unpleasant looking, despite the puncture wound each had in its head. ‘I procured you a fine, fat pair of swamp rats for your breakfast, barbarian. You need to keep your strength up.’

  Felix grimaced as he shifted the muddy, bloody bodies in his grip. ‘I think I’d rather eat the snake.’

  ‘And she cooks as well,’ Gotrek said, snatching one of the rats from Felix’s unresisting grip. He eyed the carcass hungrily for a moment before leering at Felix. ‘Pledge your troth, manling, before someone else does.’

  ‘Quiet, Doom-Seeker,’ Zabbai said. She nudged Gotrek’s shoulder with her axe. ‘Or I’ll be forced to remind you that I won our bet.’

  Gotrek gave her a sour glare, and slapped the rat back into Felix’s arms. ‘Stir the fire, manling. My belly believes my throat has been cut,’ he growled.

  After they’d breakfasted, they moved on. Their pace wasn’t quite as quick as before, given the dangers and terrain of the swamp. Felix saw more huge snakes, sliding through the water, and even larger shapes crashing through the trees. The latter were invariably obscured by the mists that rose from the waters and the close-packed nature of the swamp, for which Felix was quietly grateful. If he couldn’t see the creatures that were stalking the swamp, then they likely couldn’t see him, which suited Felix.

  Gotrek complained, of course, until Felix reminded him that he’d already fought and killed one of the great lizards, plus a giant snake and Sigmar alone knew what other beasts between the wreck of the Orfeo and the battle with the vampires at the Mangrove Port. The Slayer had been mollified, somewhat.

  Felix had scavenged a compass from the wreck of the Orfeo, and whenever they paused, he took careful notes as to their position in his journal. The latter was looking exceedingly worse for wear, despite being nestled in its usual spot between his armour and his chest, and wrapped in oilskin. The leather cover he used to protect the pages was covered in stains, and the pages themselves had been dunked into the water once too often. Nonetheless, he dutifully made his notations with the flat bit of charcoal he’d retrieved from the campfire.

  There were a dozen such notebooks stashed in various cities and towns, left with friends, allies and, in one case, a sworn enemy of Gotrek’s, who had nonetheless seemed quite pleasant when he’d invited Felix to lunch while he and the Slayer were in Magritta. Each one was dated and numbered, as best he could manage. Some, he knew, had found their way into his brother Otto’s hands. Others were resting undisturbed in strongboxes and safes, or hidden at the bottom of desk drawers. While Gotrek had been busy littering the world with bodies, Felix had been littering it with hastily bound sheaves of crudely squared paper.

  He knew that he’d never compile an official history of his travels with Gotrek. Too many things had happened, too much blood had been spilled; some of his notebooks had likely gone missing, or he and Gotrek were unable or unlikely to return to where a particular journal had been stashed. He could only hope that someone would eventually read them. Most of them, at any rate; some of them he’d be just as happy if they never resurfaced – the incident at the Imperial zoo, for one, or Gotrek’s aborted attempt to wrest the secret of the Jade Monkey from its cadaverous owner.

  Felix closed his notebook with a snap. It was late afternoon. The sun was a weak haze of light splashed across the cloud-laden sky. The air was murky and humid and smelt of a coming rain, and the waters of the swamp were beginning to give way to more solid terrain. He could still smell water on the air, however; they were following a river, he thought. It made sense, at least to him. Most cities were built on or near a water source of some description, unless the inhabitants were dwarfs. Zabbai had mentioned that the river ran through the Temple of Skulls, and that it had something approaching a primitive natural quay, though to her knowledge it had never been used as such.

  The jungles of the Southlands were even as he had imagined them – thick, tree-choked and filled with noise and life, most of the latter of the insect variety. Idly, he scratched at the welts he’d accrued and hoped he wouldn’t get some form of swamp-fever on top of everything else.

  The Southlands were a striking contrast to the Land of the Dead. Everything was green and vibrant, rather than brown, sun-scorched and dead. Birds filled the trees, and the noise of them marked the day even as the roar of carnosaurs and other predators marked the night. Felix mopped at his face with the hem of his cloak. The close-packed trees and the thickly clustered branches overhead seemed to hold in the heat. Sometimes it was like sitting in a boiling pot. He shook the hand with the bracelet, trying to get some small thread of air to circulate between the golden asp and the sweat-slick skin of his forearm. Between the sand and the grime of the jungle, he was getting a rash, and his skin was turning red and itchy.

  He was perched on an upright stone that greatly resembled one of the boundary markers indicating when one province gave way to another in the Empire. The surface of the stone had seen the touch of tools, but whatever had been carved upon it had been long since worn away by the weather, or covered by the thick, tangled vines that clung to everything.

  More stones dotted the clearing they’d stopped in to give him a moment to catch his breath, and beneath the vines, roots and moss that covered the ground, Felix could make out what might have once been flat paving stones. There were even oblong lengths of stone that resembled the remains of walls. Antar had claimed that the spot had been a ruin even when he’d been a living man, and Zabbai tacitly agreed.

  The jungle had covered it, even then, according to the Nehekharans. Just who had built it, and what it had been, neither could say. Gotrek, for his part, had his own theories.

  ‘Definitely the work of my people, manling,’ the Slayer said. He’d pried one of the paving stones up and was examining it intensely. ‘You can tell, because your folk are incapable of producing stones this smooth without our help.’ He weighed it on his palm. ‘It’s so smooth you could use it as a pillow.’

  ‘Maybe you could,’ Felix muttered.

  ‘What was that, manling?’

  ‘I said maybe it was made by elves. It is said that their outposts once dotted the world. Maybe this was one of them,’ Felix said.

  ‘Elves – bah,’ Gotrek spat. ‘This isn’t elven work.’ He sneered. ‘Elves don’t use good stone like this. They choose their building materials based on looks, rather than strength. I could kill a charging knight with a good chunk of rock like this.’ His sneer twisted into a sharp smile. ‘And I have. Or don’t you remember, manling?’

  Felix looked away. ‘Then you think this is some dwarf outpost,’ he said, hurriedly changing the subject. ‘Some lost watch-post of Karak Zorn’s?’ He gestured to the ruins around them.

&n
bsp; Gotrek frowned. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘Far from the mountains, though. My folk aren’t forest-dwellers.’

  ‘This is a jungle,’ Felix said helpfully.

  ‘If it has trees and beasts, it’s a forest,’ Gotrek said dismissively. He eyed the rock suspiciously. ‘Close to a river, though, and the coast, which means it could have been a trading outpost.’ He tossed the rock over his shoulder. Something gave a yelp of surprise. The sound was loud, and Felix had the impression of something large moving very swiftly away from them. Gotrek’s casually tossed missile had obviously startled something. Felix tensed, waiting for the creature to make an appearance, or worse, to attack. Instead, the sounds of clumsy flight faded. Felix let out the breath he had been holding.

  ‘Finally,’ he said, ‘something that doesn’t want to eat us.’

  A roar split the air. Birds sprang upwards in desperate flight, screaming. Zabbai whirled, her axe raised. ‘The Death-that-Stalks,’ she said.

  ‘What,’ Felix said, dropping from his perch and drawing Karaghul. He stuffed his journal beneath his chain shirt. ‘What was that?’ The trees creaked, as if something that was even larger than the last something was prowling about. Felix smelt a metallic musk that reminded him of a snake’s den.

  ‘It’s a big lizard, manling,’ Gotrek said, peering about lazily. ‘It walks on two legs, and eats everything that crosses its path. The scale-folk sometimes use them as mounts, I’ve heard tell.’

  Felix froze. ‘Lizardmen,’ he said. He recalled the shapes he’d seen in the fog when he’d been with the brothers Steyr. He’d spent enough evenings in filthy taverns, sharing drinks with the more disreputable sort of mercenary to know a little about that mysterious race said to haunt the far shores of Lustria. ‘Then there are lizard-folk here.’ The thought filled him with wonder. A part of him, the same part that had stared at the Nehekharan papyrus in his father’s study, had long held the desire to visit the mysterious cities of that far land, where golden walls rose from the green jungle. The wonder faded, drowned beneath a sudden rush of fear. Lizardmen were said to be as dangerous in their way as the Nehekharans. They were jungle-shadows, striking hard without warning, and fading away into the night.

  Gotrek spat and said, ‘I doubt that, manling.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Zabbai said. ‘More likely the Doom-Seeker scared off whatever the carnosaur was hunting, and now it’s trying to decide whether we’re a suitable replacement.’ She looked at Gotrek. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you did that on purpose, dwarf.’

  Gotrek ignored her, his good eye riveted on the wall. ‘Maybe it won’t attack,’ Felix said. ‘Maybe it’ll just leave.’

  The carnosaur sprang to the top of the ancient stone wall and roared out a challenge. It wasn’t as big as Felix had feared, but it was big enough to give him pause.

  Black and emerald scales covered a heavy, low-slung form. It had a wedge-shaped head, covered in bony encrustations, and its wide, powerful looking jaws sagged in anticipation of snapping tight on flesh. Clawed not-quite hands clenched and relaxed spasmodically at the ends of muscular forelegs as it eyed them hungrily.

  The carnosaur roared again and Gotrek answered its challenge with a roar of his own. He said, ‘It’s smaller than the one that tried to eat me earlier, but that won‘t save it.’ He shook his axe at the beast. ‘Come on then, you overgrown newt! I’ve long wanted a cloak of scales like the King of Karak Kadrin wears, and I find your hue appealing. Come to Gotrek and get skinned!’

  Felix glanced at the asp bracelet on his arm. The gold scales caught the setting sun and he blinked. For a moment, it looked as if the asp were coiling more tightly about his arm, though he felt nothing but the incessant itching. Four days, he thought. Once the sun set, he’d only have four days left. ‘Gotrek, I don’t think we have time to fight a giant carnivorous lizard, let alone skin it.’

  ‘Plenty of time, manling,’ Gotrek said.

  ‘Gotrek, I only have four days left!’

  ‘Five,’ Gotrek said flatly, ‘the sun hasn’t set yet. Put on your gruntaz and stiffen your spine. Here he comes.’ The carnosaur dropped from the wall and loped forwards, its heavy body held low to the ground and its tail undulating behind it. It shrieked like the boiler of a steam tank as it came, and its ape-like arms propelled it along. Teeth like spear blades clashed together, and its yellow eyes rolled beneath their shelves of bone and scale.

  Felix and Gotrek dived aside as it charged past them. The beast turned far more quickly than Felix had estimated, and he only just avoided its snapping jaws. Gotrek charged between its legs and swung up at its throat with his axe. The blade sank into its tough hide, and the carnosaur shrieked. It reared up, hauling Gotrek into the air.

  As it jerked to the side, Gotrek lost his grip on his axe and was flung up over its head. Its jaws gaped and Gotrek fell obligingly into its mouth. The jaws slammed shut, cutting off the Slayer in mid-curse. Felix cursed and charged towards the beast, whipping Karaghul around and slashing at its leg. It stumbled aside and clawed at him. He ducked aside and brought his blade in a wide arc, slicing at its knee. The carnosaur grumbled and curled around, catching him between its body and its tail. Then Zabbai was there, climbing its broad back, using her axe as a makeshift piton.

  Arrows hissed through the air as her warriors fired at the creature. The carnosaur thrashed about, trying to fling her off its back as arrows sprouted from its muzzle and shoulders. Antar leapt over its wildly twisting tail and chopped at its other leg with his khopesh. ‘Return Antar’s foul-smelling and argumentative companion, overlarge reptile, or the Most Beloved Son of the Hawk and the Serpent shall condemn thy bestial soul to roam the lonely wastes of Usirian!’ he bellowed.

  Felix saved his breath for hewing at the twisting and stomping limb before him. The carnosaur hadn’t opened its mouth since swallowing Gotrek, and between that and its seeming distraction Felix felt a faint glimmer of hope. That hope was rewarded when the carnosaur reared back and gave a querulous grunt. Slowly, its jaws parted. Gotrek’s face appeared, flushed with effort. Veins stood out on his neck and skull, and he spat rapid-fire curses in Khazalid. He’d got a grip on the carnosaur’s top and bottom jaw and was slowly but surely pushing them apart. As Felix watched, Gotrek set his feet on the creature’s bottom jaw and slammed both palms against its upper and, with a grunt of effort, began to force the beast’s jaws wider. He realised that Gotrek wasn’t attempting to escape.

  Gotrek’s eye bulged and his lips had peeled back from his teeth. Sweat popped and rolled down his face. Bands of thick muscle bunched at the corners of the carnosaur’s jaw as it fought against Gotrek’s efforts. Gotrek slumped and his knees bent. The carnosaur hunched forwards.

  Gotrek’s swollen musculature seemed to vibrate with effort, and slowly the jaw began to rise again. Then, Gotrek’s shoulders bunched and there was a loud crack as the carnosaur’s jaw snapped.

  The creature toppled over with a rattling sigh. Zabbai leapt clear and Felix and Antar scrambled aside as the body crashed to the ground in a twitching heap. Gotrek shoved his way out of now-loose jaws and tore his axe free from its chest. He was covered in blood, bile and spittle, and his barrel chest rose and fell with exertion.

  He scraped blood out of his beard and looked at Felix. ‘See, manling? Plenty of time,’ he said.

  Chapter 15

  Nitocris extended her arms out from her body and allowed her handmaidens to dress her. Quick, strong fingers slid her armour on and tied it in place. She had awoken in a good mood. There was a charnel wind blowing through the jungle. Everything had come down to a single moment. There were no more decisions to be made or questions to ponder, only the work to be done. She looked around the chamber. Her senior handmaidens were arrayed about her, awaiting their final orders before the die was cast.

  ‘Talia, you will take command of our fleet,’ she said to a broad, muscular woman with a shorn scalp and
a scar that exposed the fangs on one side of her face. Talia had had that scar before Nitocris had claimed her, and wore it even now as a badge of honour – a sign that she had been blooded in battle. It was the scar that had convinced Nitocris of her worthiness to join her sisterhood. ‘Make straight for the coast, and avoid open battle, where possible. If the servants of the false serpent wish to control the empty seas, let them. You will take three others with you – you may choose who – to help control the fleet. It will be no easy task, but it must be done. We will need those troops when we reach Lybaras.’

  Talia, whose people had done their share of raiding along the Arabayan coast, nodded silently. Nitocris turned to a short woman, smaller than the rest of the handmaidens, and slight. She wore no armour, save for animal hides and a chest-piece of rattling bone. Golden trinkets, lifted from the cities of the two-legged lizards, dangled from her hair, arms and neck. There was an air of the feral about her, more so than her sisters, as if her flesh were but a mask for the beast within. ‘Yamina, you will take your pack and support the cannibal tribes that have flocked to our banner. Harry them, and keep them moving towards Lybaras. They will be our shock-troops, and I would have them full of fear and fury when they reach the enemy.’ Yamina exposed her fangs in a grin.

  Nitocris gave the rest of them their orders. She had enough sisters that they could control the unruly horde at her disposal, but she needed to ensure that they all moved as one. Otherwise the legions of Lybaras would carve them to pieces. She let her gaze pass over the eager faces of her sisters and wondered how many of them would survive to see the glories of lost Lahmia. How many would join her, in the lands beyond the desert? How many wanted to? Her eyes flickered to her lieutenant.