Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > Neferata: Blood of Nagash > Status Update

‘I’m offering you mercy, King Borri. I am offering you the lives of those of your people who survive. And all I ask is that you–’ she said, bewildered.
‘The living do not serve the dead,’ Borri said.
‘You dwarfs do nothing but serve your dead,’ Neferata spat. ‘This whole place is nothing but a tomb! It’s a monument to a failed race!’
‘Then let it be our tomb,’ Borri said simply.

‘Neferata,’ Khalida of Lybaras said in a voice like the rustling of ancient silk. Her slim form was bound tight by the ceremonial wrappings and her proud head still wore her funerary head-dress and the mortuary mask that hid the ravages that death had made upon her once beautiful face. ‘In the darkness I dreamt of you, cousin.’
‘I dreamed of you as well, little hawk,’ Neferata said, rising slowly to face her cousin.

Naaima caught up with Neferata. ‘You have a plan, I trust,’ she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the forges and the cries of the charging dwarfs.
‘Oh yes!’ Neferata said, laughing. ‘We will make them afraid of the dark.’

Regardless of the size of the attackers’ force, there was no way to lay siege to a dwarf hold. A mountain could no more be surrounded than it could be levelled by conventional means. It must be inundated and worn down from within as well as without. Both could take years.
She had months.

As they made their way out of Nagashizzar, the whispers began again, stronger, as if the touch of dark magic had given them a strength they had previously been lacking.
‘I am coming,’ Neferata hissed in reply. And somewhere, in the darkness, something cried out in triumph.

It would make the world strong. She smiled softly at the thought, knowing even as she did so that the thought was not hers. Some small part of her rebelled then, angry. She would not do as Ushoran had done. There would be no aristocracy of the night, battening fat on the blood of mortals. That way lay stagnation and cessation. That way lay rebellion and danger.

Then the moment passed and she stood alone, drenched in blood. The survivors squatted around her, stinking of fear, their yellow gazes riveted on her. It was ever the way with the corpse-eaters; simply kill enough of them and they worshipped you. If only men were so easy.

The instant was washed away by visions of a great city, not quite Mourkain or Lahmia, but a blending of both. It was a city of possibilities, a city of could-be and will-be; a city ruled forever by a night-hearted aristocracy, where she would sup on the blood of princes and kings as all the rulers of the world bowed at her sandalled feet, and on her brow, a crown.

Layla was, if anything, even more vicious than the other vampire. Her flesh rippled, sprouting a coat of thick, dark hair, and her skull elongated into something more vulpine than human as she crashed into the orcs, singing a Strigoi death-song. Her claws raked out, gutting a goblin even as she cut an orc in two at the waist with her blade.

She grinned insouciantly and tossed her honey-coloured hair. Like Neferata, she preferred to fight bare-headed.
Neferata chuckled and turned in her saddle. ‘We need to ride out, while we still have the cover of the night,’ she said to Vorag. ‘We need to get in position.’
‘More beautiful words were never spoken,’ Vorag rumbled, patting his horse’s neck.