He began to shiver again, and wondered if some of the poison from his blades had got into the stag’s bloodstream. His stomach began to cramp, and he curled over, coiled up next to the corpse of the stag in a bizarrely tender embrace. A curtain of shadow fell across his eyes. The shaking got worse. He tried to still his teeth’s chattering, and failed.
So cold.
His eyes fluttered closed, his fists balled, his neck-cords strained. Cradled amid the limbs of the beast he had killed, Sevekai screamed. Then he screamed again.
It was hard to tell how long the screaming lasted. He nearly blacked out from it, but when the spasms finally eased he found he could lift his head. Lines of saliva hung, trembling, from his bloody chin.
Ahead of him, no more than ten paces distant, a crow was perched on a briar. It stared at him just as the stag had done, eerily unmoving.
Sevekai looked at it for a long time. Then, without quite knowing why, he held up his hand. The crow flapped across, alighting on his wrist and digging its talons in.
‘Well met, crow,’ said Sevekai, his voice cracked and hoarse. It sounded like someone else’s.
The crow nodded its sleek head. Then, unconcerned, it began to preen.
Sevekai got to his feet. His head was light but the worst of the blood-agony had passed. He stood for a while, looking down into the valley, holding the crow like a falconer holds his hunting-bird.
For the first time, perhaps, in many years, something like certainty descended over him.
‘It has changed,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘Blood of Khaine, everything has changed.’
Chapter Eleven
The chamber was dark, lit only by a few wall-mounted candles. Four bare walls enclosed an empty stone floor, a single door served as entrance and exit, and there were no windows.
Liandra waited impatiently. It was hard to resist the urge to pace up and down, like some prisoner in a cell. It wasn’t just her current surroundings; ever since arriving at Tor Alessi she had felt confined. The huge city bore down on her, shutting her in, cramping her movement. Every so often she had fled the walls for a short time, taking Vranesh out on the sudden, vigorous flights the dragon loved. They had circled high up, going as far east as they dared, hoping against hope to see the first glimpse of the dwarf army marching through the forest.
But she could not always be on the wing. Membership of the Council brought duties with it: fresh troops arriving at the harbourside every day, and every shipful needing to be garrisoned and supplied.
It had initially been exhilarating to see the huge strength of the asur legions being landed at Tor Alessi. It had felt for a time as if the real power she had craved for so long had finally fallen into her lap.
That feeling had not lasted. She was not in command, not truly; Imladrik gave the orders, locked away in his isolated tower overlooking the sea, taking no advice and heeding no requests for fresh Council meetings. The enormous strength at his disposal was kept behind the walls. No armies were sent out into the wilds. No regiments were spared for outlying fortresses such as her own Kor Vanaeth.
For a long time she had held her tongue, biding her time. Surely, she reasoned, Imladrik would come to her. As the long days passed, however, it became clear that he would not.
Liandra had almost gone to the tower herself. She had walked halfway there, rehearsing what arguments she would make to him.
‘Kor Vanaeth can be defended,’ she had planned to say. ‘Give leave for two regiments, that is all – two regiments and a battery of bolt throwers. The rest I can manage.’
She had never made it. As she had walked, her pride had got the better of her. Liandra had never begged, not even to him. Her father, still in Ulthuan fighting the druchii, had taught her that. If Imladrik had softened and turned away from the sacred savagery of his calling, then that was his loss; she would play no part in it.
Since then she had made no fresh attempt to contact him. She had festered, her frustration with enforced inaction growing with every wasted day. At times it felt like her heart was hammering at her ribcage, inflamed by imprisonment.
If he had not come back we would be marching by now, she thought, watching the candles burn low. If he had not come back, the battles would have started.
She heard a noise outside the door. Boots shuffled for a moment, then a key rattled in the lock. The door opened, exposing a cowled silhouette.
‘Did anyone mark you?’ asked Liandra.
‘What do you take me for?’ replied Salendor, slipping inside and closing the door. He pushed the cowl back, revealing coarse, battle-scarred features.
‘As yet, I don’t know,’ said Liandra irritably. She hadn’t wanted a meeting with him, not outside the confines of the Council and certainly not in the city, but Salendor was not an easy person to delay for long.
‘I know your mind, Liandra,’ he said, leaning against the wall. ‘You and me, we are spirits of the same temper.’
‘So you believe.’
‘I can see it in your face. You chafe here. You’ve fought the dawi, just as I have, and you know what must be done.’
‘And if I do?’ Liandra stared at him defiantly. ‘What does it matter? We have our orders.’
Salendor laughed. ‘You care nothing for orders.’
Liandra bristled. It was tiresome to have a reputation for impetuosity, forever likely to tear off on some reckless charge into danger. Doubly so when it was true.
‘Dragon riders,’ Salendor went on casually. ‘Gluttons for bloodshed, the lot of you. All but him. Why is that?’
‘He is capable of it,’ said Liandra.
‘So they tell me, but I’ve seen no evidence. If not for his bloodline, I might suspect he had no stomach for a fight.’
‘Then you would
