He smiled as he remembered how Liandra had replied when he’d first suggested that, years ago. He’d never been able to repeat what she said in front of his four children, but the sight of her with eyes blazing, cheeks scarlet and spittle flying remained seared on his memory. She hadn’t agreed.
Given all of that, it had been a disappointment when she’d accepted the summons at last to go to Tor Alessi. Right up until the end he had hoped she’d find a way to ignore it, but then Alviar supposed that it was hard to resist the Council for long.
She’d been torn about it, at least, which boded well for her return.
‘I will come back,’ she had promised him.
‘I know you will, lady,’ he had replied.
‘And I will bring reinforcements too. It’s long past time Tor Alessi released some of its defenders – they can hardly house the troops they’ve got.’
‘That would be good, my lady.’
Then she had gone, taking wing on that flame-red dragon of hers. Alviar had watched her go, wondering if anything she’d promised would be delivered.
Since then, nothing. Vague reports had reached them of dwarf armies on the move again, but all had been from the north. Alviar had done what he could in the meantime: overseeing the last of the repairs to the walls, ensuring the soldiers he did possess were in a good state of readiness for whatever might come. They knew that attack was likely, particularly if the dwarf forces started to splinter as they had done so many times in the past, so he’d sent messages to Tor Alessi warning of the imminent danger, despite little faith they would be received.
He looked up at the citadel ahead of him. It rose from the patchwork of houses like a tree-stump from the soil, streaked black from old fires. If all failed, the entire population could retreat to that redoubt, the only part of the old fortress that had remained intact after the dwarf attacks.
Alviar narrowed his eyes, running his gaze along the battle-ments. He thought he should really send someone up to ensure the ballistae were all in perfect condition and safely stowed before the next storm came in.
He was about to turn away, making a note to himself to have a word with the watch commander, when something else caught his eye. It was high up in the eastern sky – a lone bird with a strange, halting flight.
He paused, wondering for a moment what it was. Then, as the speck of darkness grew larger, his heart missed a beat. For all its ungainliness it was coming at them fast. Far, far too fast.
‘Sound the alarm!’ he shouted, breaking into a run. ‘Man the walls!’
He made it as far as the citadel gates before it hit them. The stench was incredible – a rolling wash of hot putrescence, like a boiled corpse. He staggered, losing his footing and colliding heavily with the stone doorframe. From behind him he heard screams as others looked up into the skies and saw what was bearing down on them.
Hands trembling, Alviar pushed his way through the citadel doors and scrambled up the spiral stairway beyond. As he raced up the steps they seemed to shiver underneath him.
He reached the bell tower and caught hold of the long chain, yanking it frantically. That was the signal – it should bring the soldiers to their stations on the walls and summon everyone else to the sanctuary of the citadel.
Alviar rang it furiously for a few seconds longer, his heart pounding and his pulse racing.
It had been huge. Huge, and… wrong.
Then he tore out of the chamber and up to the citadel’s summit. As he ran he started praying that the ballistae were manned and that they’d managed to get a few bolts away. He didn’t know whether anything they had would do much against that monster, but they should at least attempt a defence.
He burst out into the open at the top of the stairwell, slamming the wooden door back on its hinges as he emerged on to the wide, flat rooftop. He was instantly reassured – several dozen guards were already there on the ramparts, hauling the heavy ballistae and bolt throwers into firing angles and shouting furiously at one another. The wind whipped across him, as hot as a desert sandstorm and flecked with eerie snarls of flame.
‘Where is it?’ he yelled, twisting around as he ran, his neck craned up into the skies.
It was a superfluous question. The black dragon headed straight at them, less than a hundred feet away and tearing towards the citadel’s summit. Green and purple energies laced around it, dripping like molten metal from its outstretched maw. Alviar caught a blurred impression of massive jaws pulled wide and a pair of silver eyes blazing with madness before he threw himself on to the stone and covered his head with his hands.
He heard a throttling roar that made the stone beneath his chest judder, then felt a sudden rush of air being inhaled into massive lungs. The stink intensified – a foul mix of mortuary scraps and magic. Amid all the roaring and the terror he thought he caught a woman’s voice, screaming out words that he couldn’t understand but that somehow amplified the paralysing dread that gripped him tight.
That, though, was the last of Alviar’s fear-fractured impressions. A second later the jets of flame came, tempests of addled fire that crashed across the citadel’s battlements like breakers against a prow, immolating everything like the vengeance of Khaine and sealing, for a second time, the doom of Kor Vanaeth.
The doors were barred with spiked iron bands and weighed the same
