Unlike before, furnace heat radiated off this manifestation that pricked the skin and brought a grimace of pain to Drutheira’s face.
‘Dark lord,’ she uttered, bowing her head in deference.
Though fashioned magically from congealed blood, her master was no less terrifying. He glowered at the coven, his malice as palpable as the gore-slicked deck beneath them.
At first his words were too thick to understand, spoken in an ancient and evil tongue Drutheira could not translate. Slowly, inexorably, it began to make sense.
‘Tell me of your progress,’ commanded the bloody effigy.
‘We cross the borders of the Sea Hold, lord and are even now headed northwards.’
‘And the dwarfs are unaware of your presence?’
‘We passed their defences undetected. The stunted swine could not tell us from the ugly noses on their faces,’ she added, allowing a pang of hubris to colour her reply.
‘Don’t underestimate them,’ the face snarled, and Drutheira recoiled from its hate and power as if struck. ‘Snorri Whitebeard was no fool, and had power. His descendants are worthy of you, sorceress.’
‘No, of course not,’ she whispered, abruptly cowed. ‘All is as you bid it, lord.’
‘An alliance must not be made between elf and dwarf. They must destroy one another utterly.’
‘It will be as you will it.’
‘See that it is.’
Rivulets were streaking down the effigy as the magical communion lost potency. Like wax before a strong flame, the blood was slowly melting back into the pool from whence it emerged.
‘What is your command, lord?’ asked Drutheira, concealing her relief at the spell’s ending.
‘Our allies are already abroad. The shade Sevekai and his band await my orders through you. Together, enact my plans I have given to you. See the asur undone by their own nature.’ As the face sloughed away, its words became slurred and indistinct. The horns had already gone, collapsed into the pool along with much of the jagged helm. Even the eyes had bled away to nothing, the head caving in shortly after until only the mouth remained. ‘Yours is but a piece of a much greater plan. Sevekai is to be your scout, your herald. Use him. Fail me and you need not return to Naggaroth…’
Like the final exhalation of breath from a corpse, the voice gurgled into nothing but the threat remained as real and immediate as a knife perpetually at her throat.
Drutheira swallowed, imagining the caress of that steel, and drew on hidden reserves of strength to speak.
I am drained, she said into the minds of her coven. Her eyes were closed. To the warriors aboard the raider ship it would appear as if she were meditating.
We all are, Ashniel replied, as precocious as ever.
Drutheira kept her annoyance at the interruption from her face.
That is why when we reach the shore we will kill every elf aboard this ship and steal the vigour from their blood.
Storm clouds billowed across the mainland, presaging the chaos to come.
At the prow of the ship, the vaulkhar snarled orders to the crew. Unbeknownst to him and his warriors, the coven shared a conspirators’ smile.
Malekith had spoken and they would enact his will or they would die.
CHAPTER SIX
Master of Dragons
A great roar echoed across the peaks. It split the storm in two like a jag of lightning cuts the sky in half and leaves a ragged tear behind it.
Sheltered beneath an overhanging spur of rock, the dwarfs kept their eyes on the heavens. Morgrim’s ached from not blinking.
‘I still don’t see anything.’ He had to shout against the wind, which had grown into a tumultuous gale. Drifts peeling off the mountains skirled through the pass and swathed the rocky clearing where they hid in grubby grey-white.
Flecks of snow clung to Snorri’s beard like ugly, malformed pearls. He spat through clenched teeth. ‘If it is a drakk, I will spill its heartblood and paint the ground red with it.’
Angular runes on his axe blade began to glow as he summoned their power with a muttered oath.
‘Two dwarfs with fate on our side against a beast that can raze entire towns with its breath and lay siege to a hold single-handed,’ said Morgrim. ‘I’d say the odds are with us, cousin.’
Snorri did not reply. His gaze was fixed, the grip around the haft of his axe like stone.
The whip of battered air drew nearer, a low and steady thwomp of vast, membranous wings driving against the gale. To maintain such a rhythm, the dragon must be incredibly strong.
Morgrim cried out as a shadow seen through cloud darkened the sky.
‘It comes!’
A crack of lighting flared behind it and framed the beast in silhouette.
‘Gods of earth and stone…’
The dragon was massive.
Snorri edged from beneath the craggy overhang, squinting against the snow hitting his face. He spat out a lump of frozen mulch and snarled, ‘I’ll turn its skin into a scale cloak…’
The dragon breached the clouds, tendrils of mist rolling off its muscled silver torso. A long, serpentine neck ended in a snout like a blade, fanged and drooling iridescent smoke. Unfurling its wings, the beast’s shadow eclipsed the dwarfs and the entire clearing where they were standing. Like two metal sails, its mighty pinions shimmered as star-fire. Talons like sword blades extended from its feet, and eyes akin to flawless onyx glittered hungrily as it saw the morsel before it.
‘Make a tankard of its hollowed out skull…’
No dwarf, however skilled, could hope to defeat such a monster.
Morgrim grabbed for Snorri to haul him back but missed. ‘Cousin, wait!’
‘Destiny calls!’ shouted Snorri and roared as he lifted his axe.
It was the single bravest and most foolish thing Morgrim had ever seen.
Thinking of all the things he had wanted to achieve and that would now be denied him, he sighed, ‘Bugrit…’ and then charged after Snorri.
Pressing against the rock, Sevekai prayed to all the dark gods that would listen.
The beast had speared through the storm like a streak of ithilmar, bellowing with such intensity it put
