After the pain of her sisters’ deaths had faded, and the anger, she had felt a moment of pure joy; there was no strategy now, no scheme, only war. In war, Nitocris was supreme. She had cunning enough, and could plan, but it was only in the red moment that she could truly show her worth to the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle.
She would smash Lybaras. She would smash Rasetra and Mahrak, claim Lahmia and weather the wrath of the other tomb-cities, as she had weathered the wrath of the lizards and the jungle tribes. She would deliver an empire to her queen, as she had sworn. She would earn her future, in her own way. She would not return to the Temple of Skulls. If any of her handmaidens had survived, they would join her, or not, as they wished. All that mattered was the war ahead, the struggle to come.
She would need to find a new necromancer, however. That thought gave her pause. She felt a flicker of something that might have been sadness, or disappointment. She had not felt the necromancer’s death, but she had assumed that the woman had met her end nonetheless. To think otherwise was inconceivable. If Andraste was behind it, then Octavia was certainly dead. And if it had been Octavia… Well, she would need another necromancer regardless.
She had not spoken to Steyr yet. She looked forwards to telling him, if he survived the coming battle. If she could not enjoy Octavia’s company, she would enjoy the pain her absence caused her brother. She giggled, and looked around. Below, the battle was being joined. The numberless dead of the Southlands were stumbling towards the great walls of Lybaras, and the army that was arrayed before it. Awakened kings bedecked in their finest war-panoply stood aloof on the backs of chariots, surrounded by their tomb-guard. Legions of archers waited, arrows nocked and pointed upwards. Skeletal warriors crouched behind a line of locked shields, spears levelled at the approaching horde. And in the centre of the line was a mound of skulls and bone that had burst from the earth the moment the first zombie had come into sight of the walls.
A dais of bone surmounted the mound, and upon the dais sat a heavy casket, inscribed with eye-searing hieroglyphs. Behind the casket stood the liche-priest her spies had named as Djubti, and his harsh, croaking voice thundered across the field of battle, impossibly loud. He gesticulated with a staff and a curved knife, and even from as high above as she was, she could feel the power building in the air about him.
As armies went, Nitocris had seen few that were more impressive. As the horde drew near, the drumbeat started up and the front ranks began to march to meet the coming enemy. Chariots rumbled forward, flanked by knots of skeletal horsemen and swiftly trotting ushabti. The latter easily kept pace with the cavalry and chariots.
Nitocris saw no sign of any larger constructs – no great war-sphinxes or titan statuary. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t there. She looked away from the walls, towards the harbour. The galleys of Lybaras were still at anchor. A heavy fog rolled in towards the city, and within that fog was her fleet. Whether Lybaras would launch their galleys before her fleet reached the shore, she couldn’t say. If not, Talia had orders to lead the dead aboard her vessels into Lybaras and fight her way towards the gates.
Nitocris jerked on the terrorgheist’s exposed neck muscles, forcing the beast to pull in its expansive wings and drop from the sky towards the walls of Lybaras. It shrieked as it plummeted, and she screamed with it. She enjoyed the rush of wind past her face and the hiss of the arrows slicing up to meet her. There was a joy to be found in battle that outstripped even the taste of fear-seasoned blood, and she intended to indulge herself to the fullest, now that there was no reason not to.
As the terrorgheist plunged down through the cloud of arrows and catapult-fire that had rushed up to envelop them, she reached across herself and drew her blade. She spun the sword in her hand, eager to smash bone and chop through withered, mummified muscle. A fusillade of fiery, screaming skulls, trailing eerie tails of green fire, arced past her.
She could hear the thin shrieks and ululating howls of those of her handmaidens who had acquired winged mounts for themselves as they joined her in the attack. She smiled, pleased at their display of courage. A screaming skull struck one of her handmaidens, and the sky was filled with a blaze of green for a moment, then the vampire and her mount plummeted past, wreathed in flame. She leaned forwards over her mount’s neck as they smashed through another volley of arrows. She slashed out, chopping a number of them into splinters. Others punched into her arms, legs and shoulders, but she gave them no more than a cursory glance. Pain was an old friend, and she welcomed the stings of the arrows.
The terrorgheist bellowed as arrows tore through its tattered wings and hairy body, and screaming skulls struck its bony snout and bounced away. The cry was as instinctual as the beast’s impulse to flap its wings. It felt no pain, and flew now through magical means rather than by its own muscle. The screams of the sorcerous catapult ammunition bothered it no more than flea bites.
The walls seemed to expand as they drew ever closer, and she could easily discern the individual skeleton archers who sought to bring her down. In life, it was said that the gods of Nehekhara never took the forms of flying beasts near Lybaras, for the archers of Asaph’s city could fell any target, large or small, flying, running or swimming, divine or daemonic. An arrow gouged a red canyon from the corner of her mouth to her ear, and a whistling hiss escaped from between her clenched fangs. She felt the wound rip and spread as she opened her mouth and howled.
The terrorgheist pulled up at the last moment, the stiff, filthy hairs on its belly scraping the stone parapet. Its wings snapped out, catching an updraught and smashing aside skeletons in the process. Nitocris leapt from its back with a roar, decapitating an archer as her feet touched the stone. As the gigantic bat hurtled skywards, Nitocris was moving. Her dusky form slithered through the packed ranks of skeletal archers quicker even than their sorcerous sight could follow, her blade licking out to smash through spines and send skulls spinning from neck bones. She kicked a skeleton from its feet and raised her blade, ready to shatter the dead man as she had his fellows, but a hastily interposed shield caught her blow and deflected it. Before she could recover, a heavy war-mace smashed into her belly. The force of the blow nearly sent her flying from the parapet.
‘Are you the queen of witches, or merely an acolyte?’ a rough voice croaked. Nitocris scrambled backwards as the small statured tomb-king stepped in front of his fallen warrior and smashed his mace into his shield. ‘Bah, do not answer. I would not sully my ears with your words. I am Rhupesh, the Tiger of the High Wall, and I welcome you to my jungle,’ he said, gesturing to the parapet.
He was a thing of heavy bones and bronze armour, with a golden death mask. He motioned for the gathering skeletons to retreat, which they did with all haste. Nitocris saw the terrorgheist crash into the parapet behind Rhupesh, and the giant bat tore a catapult apart, as she had planned. While she kept the troops on the wall occupied, her mount would destroy the enemy artillery.
‘Tiger,’ Nitocris hissed. ‘More like toad.’ She lunged. Rhupesh was swifter than she’d given him credit for and her blade skidded across the curve of his shield. His mace looped out, and she ducked aside. The mace smashed down, cracking the parapet.
‘Insults are for dockside trollops,’ Rhupesh said as he sliced at her with the edge of his shield. She flipped backwards as the razor-sharp rim of bronze hissed through the space she’d been occupying. ‘I’m told you call yourself a queen.’
‘More queen than you are king, bag of bones,’ Nitocris snarled, springing to the top of the parapet and sprinting past Rhupesh. As he turned, she vaulted over him. Her blade hummed down, scoring the back of his hauberk, and sending scales of bronze and leather flying. Rhupesh roared and whirled. His mace caught her in the hip and she was sent sliding the length of the parapet.
‘Ha,’ Rhupesh said. He stalked after her. ‘And which of us is on their knees,’ he growled, as she dragged herself upright. Her hip had been shattere
d by his blow, but the bone was already knitting itself back together within the torn flesh. She extended her sword to keep him from getting too close.
‘Not me,’ she hissed, ‘never me. Queens do not kneel, not even to kings.’ She shoved herself to her feet and came at him so quickly her form was nothing more than a blur. Even hampered by a still-lame leg, she was faster than Rhupesh. Her sword shivered in her grip as it hammered at his shield, denting and gouging the ancient metal. She drove him back, step by step. The tomb-king retreated before her, hunkering behind his shield. Even so, her blade struck his death mask and bare bones more than once.
Behind her, she heard the scrape of her handmaidens at last joining the fray. They had engaged the remainder of the skeletons on the parapet. ‘Do you hear them? Do you hear my sisters?’ she said. ‘We shall throw down your walls ourselves, if this is all that you can muster against us.’ She struck him again and again. ‘Where are your mighty champions, Lybaras? Where are your heroes? Must I dig their mouldering bones out of their tombs myself?’
Her sword smashed down on the rim of Rhupesh’s shield, nearly splitting it in half. He twisted it, trapping her sword, and with a wrench, sent shield and sword both flying. Weaponless, she dived on him, her talons scratching at his armour. Rhupesh caught her in mid-leap, his mace rising to meet her. She flipped head over heels, her jaw blazing with agony. She crashed down heavily and he stumped towards her. ‘I built these walls, woman. I built the defences which have kept Lybaras safe for thousands of years. I will not let some mewling jungle cat stomp her paws and send the work of ages tumbling down. The Son of Ox and Serpent says nay to thee, and he will add your bones to the mortar of his great works.’
Nitocris rolled aside as his mace came down. She bobbed to her feet with serpentine grace and drove her fists into his chest. Rhupesh, caught by surprise, was lifted off his feet and sent tumbling backwards. ‘My bones are mine, as is this city and everything in it,’ Nitocris snarled, ‘even if I must tear it apart, stone by stone, with my bare hands to claim it.’
She crouched, readying herself to spring on the prone tomb-king, but a shouted command caused her to hesitate.
A moment later, the air was filled with arrows. Nitocris bent and whirled, evading the majority of the missiles with inhuman agility, but some struck home and she was sent staggering back, rivulets of black blood running down her flesh from where the arrows had pierced her. She swept the shafts from her with a growl, but did not lunge forward again.
The false queen had come forth at last. Nitocris examined the regal figure who stood amongst the archers.
Khalida was relaxed, as if she were strolling in a garden, rather than leading a counterattack. Nevertheless, she gazed at Nitocris with interest. She extended her staff and used it to gently push aside the arrows that her warriors had nocked, ready to fire. ‘You are the one who claims the title of Serpent Queen,’ she said, in a sepulchral voice.
‘Yes,’ Nitocris said as she rose to her feet. She flexed her claws. ‘It is meet we should know one another, Khalida.’
‘You speak as if we are equals, blood-drinker. You speak as if you were something other than a mad pawn on a game board.’ Khalida drew her khopesh with her free hand. ‘We are not equals. I am a queen and you are but a puppet, a shadow cast upon a wall by familiar hands.’ She extended her staff and blade to either side of her, and waited. ‘Come, puppet. Come and show me how you dance.’
Nitocris tensed. Her rage had built to a fevered peak as Khalida spoke, and for a white-hot instant, she considered throwing herself at her enemy. Then, abruptly, she calmed. She smiled and took a step back. ‘I am a puppet. And so are you, queen of bones and sand. Our battle is but a game of destiny, mine against yours. Let us see who triumphs, come the dawn!’
She whirled about and sprang from the wall. Her terrorgheist swooped beneath her, and as she settled into her seat, it rose skywards, leaving behind a cry to mark its passing. Her handmaidens had followed suit, climbing back onto their mounts and retreating back into the sky, pursued by arrows and catapult-fire. The terrorgheist had managed to destroy a number of the catapults, but not all of them, more was the pity. She wondered if Steyr had had more luck. She hoped he’d survive the battle to come. With his sister dead, she would need another to guide her in the kingdoms of the north.
Steyr wept tears of blood as he led his ghouls behind the concealing ranks of zombies. He’d felt Octavia’s death, though he knew not how, or why. The connection of blood, perhaps, or maybe simply the closeness of siblings; regardless, he knew that she was dead. He was the last. And if he wasn’t careful, he’d follow her and his brothers into the dark. He paused, letting his ghouls shuffle past, and peered through a gap in the line, towards the enemy.
Drums thudded heavily, and the air tasted of sorcery. His eyes sought the strange formation of bone that occupied the centre of the enemy line, and the sarcophagus that now rested upon it. The air congealed about it, and he fancied he could see writhing, hazy shapes that put him in mind of the ghosts that had followed Octavia around like dogs. Whatever it was, he intended to destroy it. Octavia had taught him enough about sorcery to know that whatever that thing was, its presence wasn’t going to be beneficial to Nitocris’s forces. He would have to destroy it, and swiftly.
He swiped blood out of his eyes. It had been Felix. He’d hoped – no, assumed – that Octavia would be able to deal with Jaeger and his stunted companion, but he’d been wrong. He’d underestimated the poet in the Mangrove Port, and apparently Octavia had as well, unless Andraste had simply taken advantage of the situation, and made her move while his sister was otherwise distracted. He snarled softly. You had best be dead, Jaeger, or I’ll make you wish you were, he thought.
He would make the man pay for Octavia’s death, whether he was personally responsible or not. He cursed the day he’d saved Felix from the ghouls, and he cursed himself for not setting his corpse-eaters on them when he’d seen them in the jungle. Octavia had been right – he wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was, and she’d paid the price for his foolish attempt at cunning. He closed his eyes, and ground his fangs together. He’d spent his life trying to keep them all alive and together. That had been in vain, it seemed. Now all that was left was to avenge his siblings. Lybaras first, Jaeger second and then… Then, Nitocris. I’ll take your head and mount it on a post in your precious Lahmia. He snapped his fangs together, startling a ghoul.
He heard a thunderous shriek and looked up. Nitocris was beginning her attack on the walls. It was time to move. Throughout the semi-organised horde of corpses, wights clashed axes and swords against crude shields, and zombie drummers began to beat out a slow rhythm. Dead saurians roared hollowly as they trudged forwards, and dead animals growled, barked, moaned and hissed as they slithered through the feet of the bipedal dead.
The vast majority of the dead were unarmoured, but amongst them were mouldy skeletons clad in bronze and rusty iron. These formed the core of the horde, and maintained mindless discipline amidst the chaotic sea of rotting flesh that flowed about them. Horsemen, culled from the nomad tribes of the Great Desert as well as from the sunken fleets of Cathayans and Bretonnians, trotted on the flanks, waiting for the signal to engage the enemy cavalry. Rotting banners flapped and curled in a sour breeze.
Steyr hefted Nitocris’s standard, and, with a snarl to summon his ghouls, led the flesh-eaters out in front of the zombies. He unfurled the banner and held it aloft, so that the enemy could see it clearly. Then he sank the standard into the ground, and faced the enemy army. He drew his sword, threw back his head, and shrieked. The army surged into motion around him. Dead horses galloped forward, zombies lurched and skeletons marched.
The battle for Lybaras had begun.
Chapter 22
‘The crow-bait queen promised me a doom, and by Grimnir, she’s delivered,’ Gotrek roared, slapping the side of the chariot as if to urge the skeletal horses to great
er speed. While Felix saw no reason to be so enthusiastic, he couldn’t disagree with Gotrek’s assessment. The chariot had carried them across the desert to Lybaras in a single day, the undead horses never flagging or slowing. Now the pale walls of the City of Asaph rose before them, and the army that laid siege to it as well.
The latter hadn’t been a surprise, but that didn’t make the prospect of crashing through the numberless hordes of walking corpses any more tolerable. But the sun was beginning to dip, and there was only a single brief night between him and an untimely and altogether unfair death. ‘Any chance of putting on a bit of speed?’ Felix asked. He fought to keep his voice calm. They’d heard the sounds of the battle from miles away, and seen the cloud of dust thrown up by the two opposing armies.
The battle had, to all appearances, been going on for several hours, and bodies littered the wide expanse of sandy ground before the city walls, or lay in twitching heaps. Broken skeletons pulled themselves across the ground towards crippled zombies. Undead horsemen clashed in whirling duels and scaly monsters, their hides sloughing from them as they moved, tore at unmoving phalanxes of tomb-guard and were peppered with arrows from the walls.
‘They’re going as fast as they can,’ Zabbai said. ‘They’re already losing their vigour. We’re too far from the crater, and those who pulled them from death.’ Snapping the reins, Zabbai urged the skeletal horses on. Felix could see that their bones were trembling in their traces, and starting to pull away from one another.
The army of the undead spread out ahead of them, moving towards the pale walls of Lybaras with single-minded intent. The sun overhead was blotted out by a swirling cloud of bats, which seemed to stretch from the mountains to the coast. He could also see the fleet that approached the city from the Bitter Sea, the tattered sails of the shattered ships rippling in a sorcerous breeze. Lybaras was under siege from all points – the land, the air and the water.
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