The Serpent Queen

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘Yes, it’s almost as if they have something valuable to protect,’ Felix said. He rubbed the asp bracelet and looked at Zabbai. ‘I don’t suppose your warriors have enough arrows to clear that mess out there?’

  ‘Not even if we could get them all to stand single file in several densely packed lines,’ Zabbai said. She crouched amongst her remaining warriors, her axe across her knees. Antar stood nearby, impatiently swinging his flail.

  ‘Antar, Hero of a Hundred and One Epics, does not fear the cold clutch of the bound dead.’ He looked at Felix. ‘Let us carve a mighty corridor through these maggot-stuffed flesh-sacks and take the High Queen’s prize. Antar the Most High and Glorious grows impatient.’

  ‘The bag of bones has the right idea,’ Gotrek said, still staring through the crack. ‘The direct route is the quickest.’

  ‘Gotrek, I really think we should–’ Felix began, not looking at the dwarf.

  ‘Too late,’ Zabbai said. Felix heard the clatter of metal on stone and turned in time to see Gotrek’s feet disappear over the top of the wall.

  He shot to his feet, all of the blood draining from his face. ‘Oh, by the gods,’ he snarled, and followed suit. He was swinging himself over the top of the wall before he had a chance to consider that it was, as ideas went, a fairly terrible one. He dropped down on the other side even as Gotrek gave a triumphant cry and bounded across the vine-covered plaza with a speed and buoyancy that Felix would have found funny had the situation not been so desperate. The Slayer’s axe licked out and a zombie’s head went flying. More limbs followed suit as the dwarf waded into the dead men.

  Felix hurried after the Slayer. He parried an awkward slash from an axe-wielding corpse and sent it staggering into its fellows with his shoulder. ‘Gotrek, where are you going? You don’t have the least idea where that blade is!’

  ‘It’s at the top of the pyramid, manling, obviously,’ Gotrek shouted, over his shoulder. He grabbed a zombie’s entrails in his free hand, knotted them about his knuckles and jerked the dead man’s head down to crack against his own. The zombie went down as if it had been struck with an axe.

  Felix looked around. They were surrounded by the strange, jagged ziggurats.

  Each was composed of flat platforms of stone that grew smaller as they ascended and had a stepped appearance, with steep staircases on each side. ‘Those are ziggurats, Gotrek. And there are dozens of them,’ Felix protested. A zombie slumped against him, gnawing toothlessly at his shoulder. Felix kicked its legs out from under it and ducked under a wild swipe from one of its fellows. He drove his arm and shoulder into the latter’s gut, and as he rose, he flipped the soggy corpse over his back.

  ‘Aye, and it’ll be in the biggest one, manling. It’s always the biggest one,’ Gotrek said as he backhanded a zombie and sent its bottom jaw bouncing across the plaza. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention?’

  ‘I’ve been a bit busy, what with the trying not to die and all,’ Felix muttered. Rotting hands snagged his cape and he was jerked off balance. Zombies crashed into him from all sides. Gotrek’s attack had opened a momentary island in the sea of bodies, but the dead were closing ranks around them now. A zombie lurched towards Felix when an arrow popped its skull as if it were a particularly noxious boil.

  More arrows struck the dead men closest to him, picking them up off their feet or dropping them where they stood, depending on how much was left of the corpse in question. With a rattling whoop, Antar and Zabbai joined Felix. Antar, much like Gotrek, fought with determined abandon, and Felix wondered whether he had been as reckless when he was alive. Zabbai, as ever, fought without wasted motion. Her axe spun and bit, scattering the dead before her like broken branches.

  A vampire appeared on the steps of one of the ziggurats. She tilted her head and uttered a shriek, before bounding towards the fight, her sword at the ready. ‘That’s torn it,’ Felix muttered. The vampire crashed into Antar, who spun about and flung the creature to the ground with his stone hand. She was up a moment later, and her sword smashed against Antar’s khopesh. The two of them whirled about, knocking aside zombies heedlessly in their duel. Antar bellowed imprecations at the vampire, who shrieked and cursed in reply.

  Felix stumbled away from a lurching zombie and nearly slipped into a yawning pit that he hadn’t noticed before, thanks to the press of bodies. He looked down, and froze. ‘Sigmar,’ he hissed. He saw the dangling cages, and their human contents, and suddenly, an unasked question was answered. Anger roiled through him, burning away fear and worry in a single white-hot moment. Eyes empty of hope, of fear, of anything save grim resignation to a fate worse than death met his own through the wooden slats of the closest of the spherical cages, and he hacked at a zombie, shoving it back into its fellows in frustration. His eyes followed the rope that connected the cages to the stakes thrust into the stones. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted, ‘help me!’ All thought of urgency or the poison bracelet that threatened his life had faded the moment the eyes of the slaves had met his own. All he could think of now was freeing them as quickly as possible. He shouted again for Gotrek.

  ‘What are you on about, manling?’ Gotrek snarled, bulling towards Felix.

  ‘Help me pull up these cages!’

  ‘What – why?’ Gotrek said. He peered down into the pit and his eye narrowed. He cursed in Khazalid and buried his axe in the stones. No further explanation or urging was required. ‘One side, manling, this requires more muscle than you’ve got in those weak arms of yours.’ Gotrek spat into his palms and rubbed them together before grabbing the closest rope. Felix stepped back and sent a zombie tumbling into the pit with his elbow.

  Arrows hissed past, catching a wight in mid-leap, its clawed gauntlets mere inches from Felix’s neck. As the dead man fell, Felix drove an overhand blow down on top of its head. Karaghul struck stone and the wight’s skull collapsed in on itself. He jerked the blade free and turned as a flash of bone caught his eye. He halted his instinctive lunge as he recognised Zabbai. She had cleared the area around the edge of the pit and was staring in evident confusion at Gotrek. ‘What is he doing?’

  ‘There are people down there. Living ones,’ Felix said, taking a moment to recover his strength. The stench of the dead was nearly unbearable, and he coughed as he sucked in a lungful of air. ‘Slaves, maybe – or livestock,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but why are you bothering with them? They’re just slaves, and time is of the essence,’ Zabbai said.

  Felix looked at her. ‘You were just a slave, once,’ he said.

  Zabbai twitched. Then she nodded, just once, and briskly. ‘Make it fast. We cannot hold the bound dead back for long.’

  Felix sheathed his sword and moved to help Gotrek roll the cage over the lip of the pit. The Slayer had hauled it all the way up with little sign of effort. He grabbed his axe and moved towards the next rope as Felix set to cutting the cords and ropes that held the cage together. The prisoners had been stirred by the sight of their rescuers, and now they spoke in a variety of languages and dialects, few of which Felix recognised. Hands grabbed at him as he cut them free, and when the cage came apart, they spilled out into the plaza. Some ran immediately, staggering for freedom through the crowd of zombies. Others snatched up weapons and set to, chopping and hacking at the dead in a seeming frenzy. They were weak and near death themselves, but the chance for freedom seemed to lend them strength.

  A man grabbed Felix and tugged on his arm, pointing across the plaza. Felix could see what looked like similar pits, and more ropes in them. The man said something in a tongue Felix didn’t understand. He was emaciated and clad in rags, his bare flesh covered in badly healed cuts and crooked scars. Though he couldn’t understand him, Felix knew what he was saying easily enough. There were more to be freed, perhaps hundreds. Felix turned to see Gotrek hauling up the second cage. The dwarf left it, as newly freed prisoners began tearing the cage open and extricating their fellows. Others w
ere busily hauling up the remaining cages. ‘Gotrek, there are more pits,’ Felix shouted. ‘We have to get to them.’

  ‘We’ll take care of them,’ Zabbai said, before Gotrek could reply. She shoved Felix forwards. ‘We will free who we can, while we can. You two go and do as you must. Get our queen’s sword back, as she commanded.’

  Felix hesitated. Gotrek grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, manling, leave her to it. We’ve done what we could, and now we must do what we came here for.’ Reluctantly, Felix allowed Gotrek to pull him away from the fight and towards the immense skull-topped ziggurat. As they began to climb, Felix saw that the spaces between steps were stuffed with skulls and other bones, most of them human.

  Gotrek took the steps more slowly than Felix, but given his head start, Felix was forced to run up them two at a time in order to catch up. There were no corpses on the ziggurat, but they didn’t make it more than halfway up before Felix caught sight of several women racing down the stairs to meet them. That they were vampires was obvious, given the mouthful of fangs each had on display, and the stark black veins that stretched across their pallid flesh. They moved as swiftly as the assassins in Khalida’s throne room had, growing closer with every eye blink.

  The Slayer neither slowed his ascent nor hesitated as the first vampire reached him. The woman wore a leather hauberk with rusty steel rings, and her hair was in thick, worm-like plaits. She leapt from the steps and fell towards Gotrek, her blade held in two hands and angled downwards. Gotrek casually smashed the sword aside. The power of his blow sent the vampire sprawling. Felix hurdled her tumbling form as two more closed in on the Slayer.

  He intercepted one, interposing his blade between Gotrek’s head and her axe. She hissed and forced him aside. Felix snatched his dagger free of its sheath and stabbed at her heart. She caught his wrist and they turned in an awkward pirouette, before Gotrek’s axe removed her head from her shoulders. Felix blinked blood out of his eyes as the body slumped.

  ‘Stop playing around, manling. I thought you said we were in a hurry,’ Gotrek rumbled. Felix wiped blood out of his face. Gotrek had dispatched the other vampire in a similar fashion. The one he’d swatted aside had got to her feet, and she started up towards them, only hesitating when she realised that both of her companions were dead. Gotrek, thick frame covered in blood and grime, smiled widely at her and held out a hand in a beckoning gesture. ‘Come on, lass. If you hurry, you can catch your friends before they get wherever cursed souls go,’ he said, mock-gently.

  The vampire wavered, hissed and turned, sprinting down the steps towards the battle below. Gotrek grunted in disappointment. ‘I hate it when they run away,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Felix said, wilting slightly in relief. He turned and peered up at the top of the ziggurat. He could see the source of the steady, throbbing drums above – a number of bloated corpses, pounding away at heavy skin-drums with the yellowed bones in their flabby hands from atop the square structure that occupied the pinnacle of the ziggurat. ‘Let’s get up there before she changes her mind, shall we?’

  Below them, the battle was spreading across the plaza. The freed slaves who weren’t hacking at the zombies with stolen weapons or pulping their skulls with loose stones were doing their best to pass the favour along to those who were still trapped in the pits. With the wights and zombies occupied by Antar and Zabbai’s warriors, more and more starving, abused wretches joined the fray to vent gods alone knew how much frustration on their unloving captors. Felix knew that many of them wouldn’t survive the melee, especially given their state of deprivation, but better a death in battle than a slow tumble into oblivion in captivity. Or so he told himself as he followed Gotrek to the top of the ziggurat. Nonetheless, he felt ill, using them so. He hadn’t intended it, but the slaves were proving to be just the sort of distraction they needed.

  He pushed the guilt aside as they reached the top. There were no more guards, but he could hear chanting from within. A smell like a lion’s den wafted out of the opening – the abattoir stench of old blood and savaged flesh. He exchanged glances with Gotrek. ‘Well, manling?’ the Slayer said.

  ‘After you, I insist,’ Felix said.

  Gotrek guffawed and stepped through the archway. After a moment of hesitation, Felix followed him into the darkness.

  Chapter 18

  Nitocris sat upon her monstrous steed and considered the army marching slowly beneath her. The wind whipped through her hair and caressed her flesh, and she could feel the terrorgheist’s dead muscles pulsing as it flapped its ragged wings and cut through the sky, riding the air currents. Even from her present height, she could tell that the army below was a hodgepodge, without cohesion, formation or organization. Such things didn’t bother her, though she had learned their value early in life. When your army could simply be reconstituted or revived with but a careful thought, there was little reason to waste time on battle lines or grand strategy.

  The army was encountering its first signs of resistance below, but she paid it little heed. If her new herald and the ghoul-tribes couldn’t deal with a few constructs then it was better that they died here, and were raised up as something more useful.

  She narrowed her eyes and peered at the horizon. The sun was coming up. Bats clustered thickly above and around her, blocking out the harmful rays. If the bats proved not to be enough, a sandstorm could be summoned to cover their advance. The terrorgheist shifted beneath her and it gave a grunt of warning.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw the other giant bats that were following the terrorgheist in loose formation. They weren’t as large as her mount, but they were large enough to carry a number of her handmaidens. They were the bravest of her sisters, those who sought to emulate her in her abandon and battle-lust: the ones who had been the champions of their tribes, or the mistresses of their harems, and in whom subtlety was yoked by the hunger for glory – just like poor Andraste, she thought. The thought of her lieutenant brought a wan smile to her face. So much ambition but so little wit to use it properly.

  Most of those she had chosen for her handmaidens were as loyal as any warrior staggering beneath her banner. They served her as she served her mistress. If they contemplated treachery, they kept it to themselves. But there were some who schemed far too openly, or served too faithfully, with an obsequiousness that was as suspicious as resentment. Andraste was of the latter camp. She was as stolid and as brusque as a good lieutenant ought to be, but in her heart lurked a savage ambition.

  Like Nitocris, she had been the child of nobility, and though she had pledged to serve her new queen, she had ever thought that Nitocris’s title was hers by right. Nitocris had kept her close for centuries, never giving her an opportunity to exercise that ambition. Andraste made for a wonderful lightning rod, attracting those of her handmaidens who whispered of coups. She had gathered together the like-minded and weak-willed. A few of them had even tentatively struck out at Nitocris, emboldened by Andraste. Those she had dealt with accordingly, and had made an object lesson of them.

  And Nitocris had duly shucked them all. She had left all of them behind, where they could not threaten this final advance, save by destroying themselves in the process. Andraste knew as well as she that to disrupt Octavia’s spell was to call down the wrath of the Tomb Kings upon them. Nitocris would be destroyed, but there would be no place Andraste could hide from the stalking bones of the desert.

  She wondered when Andraste would make her move. It would not come once Octavia had completed her spell, she thought. Andraste would not risk that. No, she would strike at the final moment, and claim that Octavia had expired from her sorceries. Unless Octavia proved as capable as Nitocris suspected. The necromancer served two purposes – the spell, and dealing with those of Nitocris’s followers who had outlived their usefulness. If Octavia survived, then she deserved to receive the same gift that had been erroneously given to her jackal of a brother, whether she wanted to accept it or not. />
  Contemplating her loyal lieutenant’s inevitable betrayal was a pleasant way to pass the time as they coursed through the air towards Lybaras. Treachery was as inherent in her kind as the thirst for blood. It had been a part of them since the beginning. Or so she had been told.

  Her queen had tutored her in the history of their sisterhood personally. She had crouched with Nitocris on rough stools before the fire in her war-camp, speaking to her of her travels and travails, painting her a picture of the world that lay beyond the jungles, mountains and deserts that Nitocris had known. Of wars fought not with spears and muscle, but with gold and words, of cities not of mud and wood, but of grey stone, of white snows and cool forests. The Mistress of the Silver Pinnacle had seduced Nitocris with stories. She had seduced her and set her on her path.

  In a way, Nitocris was nothing more than a weapon. It was a belated realisation, but not an unpleasant one. Nitocris thought of her enemy, of the false serpent, Khalida, who had tried to strangle the sisterhood in its infancy, and then hounded them from the cradle of their birth and into the wild lands. Khalida, who stood sentry over Lahmia, and who had thwarted many of her mistress’s schemes and plans. She was an obstacle that had to be removed for the good of the future of the sisterhood, even as her queen had done all those centuries ago when she’d sheathed her blade in Khalida’s belly.

  That was what Nitocris had been told, and that was what she knew, after all these long years of building her forces and bringing the Southlands to heel. The jungles and swamps ran red with blood, and she controlled the whole of it, but it was worth nothing if it did not gain her this victory. All that she had achieved hinged on this war. Her future, her ambitions, her dreams – all of them would be dust on the wind if she failed to do as she had been tasked. She would right the wrongs of the past. The dead would bow to their rightful queen, even if she had to topple their tomb-cities one by one.