‘What is it?’ hissed Ashniel, fear and anger warring for supremacy on her face.
Malchior could only stare at the dissipating smoke, caught on the breeze and borne away to nothing. Four blood-slick skulls stared back, grinning.
Drutheira didn’t answer. She rose wearily, leaving her cohorts in the ruined outhouse. Snow was falling, peeling off the mountains. It shawled her dark cloak in a fur of ice as she crossed the open, heading towards a shattered building that had once been a stables. Frost crusted her robe where she’d been sat on the ground.
Sevekai was inside, making a fire.
‘More riders are coming, my dear,’ he said without looking up as the sorceress approached.
The other shades were absent, keeping watch at the edges of the settlement. No more than one night at a time, then they had to move on.
‘Hunting us, hunting for them–’ he nodded towards the headless corpses of the reavers, ‘–it doesn’t matter. We have to leave soon.’
‘Leave?’ said Drutheira. ‘I can barely walk.’
Sevekai looked up at her.
‘Then you’ll be captured, and likely killed. The asur have our scent, and war or not they are coming.’
Drutheira stared for a moment, her eyes dead and cold.
‘Malekith has abandoned us,’ she said simply. ‘We are alone, Sevekai.’
Sevekai returned to his fire, coaxing the embers to greater vigour. ‘We have always been alone.’
‘How long can we stay here?’
‘A night, no more than that.’
‘I once had a tower, a manse and slaves to do my bidding,‘ she muttered bitterly.
‘I thought I was your slave.’
There was a glint in Sevekai’s eye that Drutheira didn’t care for, but she didn’t rise to his goading.
‘You said you had a ship,’ she said instead, ‘south across the mountains at the Sour Sea?‘
‘There’s no way we’re going south now, too many dwarfs march that way.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘Because I skulk in shadows and listen. Armies of dwarfs move north and south towards Tor Alessi.’
‘Then what do you suggest? You are the scout, guide us!’ she snapped.
‘We lay low, find a way to restore your strength and that of your lackeys.’ He looked up again, a question in his eyes. ‘I suppose you lack the craft to open up a gate right back into Naggaroth, yes?’
Drutheira scowled.
Shrugging Sevekai said, ‘Thought so,’ and prodded the fire with a shaft of broken roof beam. Then out of nothing he asked, ‘What did you mean in the valley, when the dragon rider was close?’
‘About what?’ Despite herself, Drutheira came down to sit next to him, warming her hands on the fire.
‘Kaitar. You said he was not druchii.’
Ever since their reunion, Drutheira and the other sorcerers had kept their distance from the enigmatic shade. He seemed to prefer that too, often scouting ahead, sometimes gone for more than a day at a time.
‘He feels… empty, I suppose. Like a vessel of flesh into which something has crept and spread itself out.’
‘That is meaningless,’ said Sevekai.
‘Perhaps, but I can explain it in no other way.’
The shade considered that for a moment before saying, ‘I’ll admit he has caused me some disquiet. At first I thought he was an assassin, a true servant of Khaine, taken on Death Night and inveigled into my ranks to kill us when our mission was done with.’
‘And that has changed?’
‘No. I still think he means to kill us, which is why I need your help to kill him first.’
Malice and desire contorted Drutheira’s face, and Sevekai revelled in both expressions. Embers thought long extinguished rekindled and flared.
‘Kill the shade and the rider,’ she purred, creeping closer, her hand straying onto Sevekai’s thigh, then further…
‘Kill them all,’ he murmured, pulling her down and into his embrace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Against the Glittering Host
Snorri’s feet were aching. Even in his boots, robust as they were and made from dwarf leather, the frost-bitten ground had taken a toll. Declining the offer of a palanquin, a throne and bearers to carry him, the prince had joined the ranks at the head of the army. Better they see him that way, as one of them, a dwarf warrior first and a prince second.
‘I thought marching in winter was only something mad or desperate generals did?’ groaned Morgrim, whose bunions were the size of chestnuts. He and several hearthguard from Everpeak protected the prince’s right flank and strode in lockstep with him.
‘Who’s to say I am not one or both?’ Snorri replied. ‘Although, if anyone asks I’ll say you convinced me do it.’
They shared a fraternal grin, something that had been lacking in their relationship of late but had oddly warmed with the onset of winter.
‘We are close, Snorri,’ uttered Drogor, on the prince’s left amongst a second cadre of hearthguard. Now a thane with holdings in Everpeak come the end of the war, Drogor also carried the army standard after the prince’s last bearer was slain by an elven scout during a previous skirmish. It was little more than a raid, the enemy gauging their numbers, but Bron had lost his life as he sounded the alarm.
So many had died already in similar meaningless circumstances. Snorri kept his thoughts on the matter to himself; not even Morgrim or Drogor would know them. It would hurt morale if his kith and kin thought his resolve was wavering.
‘Signal a halt,’ ordered the prince, and Drogor raised the banner.
Horns blared across the marching ranks, which stopped immediately to the clattering discord of settling shields, armour and weapons. Some of the mules brayed before their skinners quietened them with soothing words. The creaking wheels of wagons, carrying provisions, quarrels, spare shields and helms, were the last sound to abate. Some of the larger beasts towed machineries and these were marshalled by engineers and their crew, smothered in tarps for now but ready to be deployed at the prince’s command.
Looking back over his shoulder, beyond the hulking hearthguard, Snorri saw sappers, warriors from over fifty different clans, grey-haired longbeards, quarrellers and rangers, the heavily armoured cohorts of ironbreakers and
