Neferata struck out, her sword sinking to the hilt in the flesh of its forearm. It shrieked and reached for her with its good hand. She danced back and the claws closed on empty air. The others had joined the fray by then, circling the beast and striking at it like wolves bringing down a stag. Their swords left ragged bloody wounds on its thick, porous flesh and it grunted and howled, furiously lashing out at them.

Khaled had got to his feet and met the first of the creatures that had followed the big one through the trees. The goat-headed abomination chopped at him with a stone axe. Khaled ducked and weaved around its blows, toying with it for a few moments. Then, bored, he circled it too quickly for it to follow, grabbed one of its horns and kicked it in the small of the back, snapping its neck and spine with one jerk. More creatures boiled out of the dark trees and howling snow like ants. Several loped towards the dwarf, who lay unconscious and unawares on his litter.

‘Khaled, Anmar, keep him alive,’ Neferata said, avoiding an awkward blow from the dying giant. She stepped past it, leaving it to Naaima and the others.

‘Do as she says,’ Khaled said to his sister. He lunged after Neferata, sword flashing through a hairy throat. Anmar made to call out to him, but she was soon too busy defending the dwarf to make any sound save an enraged snarl as her thin blade lopped off the crooked limbs that reached for her.

Neferata prowled among the monsters, letting her bloodlust have free rein and leaving bodies in her wake. There were dozens of the beasts, and she wondered where they had all come from. Had they inadvertently stumbled into the creatures’ territory? Perhaps it was simply hunger. They all had the starveling look, with hairy hides shrunk tight to malformed bones.

‘Look to your side, my lady,’ Khaled said, sliding past her and bisecting a beast with a single graceful twist of his blade. Neferata glared at him.

‘I told you to defend the dwarf!’ she hissed.

Khaled didn’t meet her eyes. He caught a heavy blow on his blade, turned it aside and grunted, shoving his opponent back. The creatures were stronger than men, and starvation had driven them to a frenzy that made them stronger still.

Neferata stretched past him, pinning the creature to a tree. ‘Go back, fool,’ she said. ‘I need that stunted creature alive.’

‘But—’ Khaled began.

Before Neferata could reply, an arrow took a nearby beast in the neck, spinning it around. Hooves thumped on the snow. More arrows hissed between the trees. Neferata caught the sharp whiff of oil and leather and horse-sweat, and beneath that, the tang of blood rushing and pulsing in strong veins as she spun around a wailing beast, driving her sword up through its back. Still moving, she chopped an arrow from the air. She slid to a halt in a cloud of snow, nostrils flaring. Her eyes sank to slits and she tasted the air, her hunger stirring anew. It was not beast blood she smelled — this was human!

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Khaled whispered. His face was weasel-thin with feral hunger. His fangs splayed like the thorns of a rose.

‘Back to the others,’ Neferata snapped, struggling to contain her own sudden surge of ravenous need. The shapes of a score of riders became visible, weaving through the trees in a sure-footed gallop. The horses were smaller and hairier than those she had ridden in Araby and stocky by comparison, more like ponies than true horses. The men were equally stocky, with broad shoulders and wide jaws. Their hair was greased and bound in scalplocks, much like those worn by the warriors of Nehekhara. Their gear was rough and utilitarian — they wore furs over banded leather cuirasses and each man had a wide-bladed sword on his hip. Most of them had short bows in their hands and these buzzed like hornets as the men, knees tight on their mounts’ barrel chests, fired as they rode with practised swiftness.

They gave brutal yells as they rode through the mass of beastmen, leaving trampled bodies in their wake. Neferata and Khaled retreated, leaving the beasts to the newcomers. Whoever they were, they were welcome to the creatures.

‘If the dwarf is dead, Khaled, I will make you wish that you had never accepted my gift,’ Neferata said.

‘He’ll only be dead if my sister is as well,’ Khaled said tightly. Neferata looked at him. Vampires did not feel emotion as humans did, but certain bonds could not be broken, even by death and what followed. She thought briefly of Naaima, and then confronted the possibility of Anmar’s death. Khaled was not the only one who would miss the girl.

Neferata moved more quickly, outpacing Khaled. She burst back to where she had left the others. A small surge of relief filled her as she saw Anmar standing amidst a number of contorted bodies. The girl was covered in blood, and she used her tongue to clean thick ropes of it from her blade.

‘Greedy,’ Khaled murmured. His relief was evident.

Beastmen lay everywhere and their corpses fouled the crisp purity of the snow and the air alike. ‘I smell horses,’ Naaima said, stepping over the body of the bull-headed giant. She looked at Neferata and sheathed her sword.

‘We have guests to dinner,’ Khaled said, striding towards his sister.

‘Horsemen,’ Neferata said. ‘More than a dozen of them,’ she added.

‘Men, as in humans,’ Stregga said, glancing at Rasha, who inhaled the air, her eyes mere slits. ‘As in something other than the nasty juices of these hairy sacks,’ the Sartosan went on, kicking one of the bodies.

‘No,’ Neferata said, slicing her sword through the air.

Stregga gave her a mutinous look, but held her tongue. The others hid their feelings better, even Khaled. Neferata smiled slightly and sheathed her blade. Horsemen meant civilisation. And Razek had said that the only civilisation nearby was Mourkain. She was close now. She could feel the heat of the dead black sun on her skin, but she didn’t turn to see if it had risen.

Horses snorted. Snow crunched beneath heavy hooves. Neferata stepped towards the trees, her hands held away from her sides. Horses eased through the trees, the wary eyes of the riders taking her and her followers in. A voice barked what sounded like a command.

And the command was in Nehekharan.

Not true Nehekharan, but a debased cousin, a garbled brute-tongue that perhaps shared an ancient root with the language of home. Neferata hissed in satisfaction. It had been more than a century since Nehekhara had truly become a land of the dead. Had some of her people managed to escape the Great Dying?

Was that what this Mourkain was? Some last remnant of her people? Perhaps that was why she was being drawn there. The thought was a heady one: a new kingdom to rule, a new people to mould once more into a great empire.

A rider edged out of the trees. He was a big man, bigger than the others and even paler. His skin was the colour of a fish’s belly and unlike the others he wore no furs, only a cuirass of boiled leather and brass discs, and his muscular arms were bare to the cold. Those arms were covered in looping scars, and a greased scalplock coiled around his neck. A wide, spade-shaped beard flared out from a jutting jaw. There was no light in him, no warmth.

‘Neferata—’ Naaima began.

‘I know,’ Neferata said. He was as dead and as cold as she was, though he was not like her. There was a grave-mould stink to him that offended her nose and she hissed as the stench invaded her nostrils.

The rider was a vampire. And as they recognised him for what he was, he recognised them. Neferata’s nostrils flared and a glint of recognition sparked somewhere deep in her head. The smell of the warrior was familiar, though she had never seen him before. ‘Well… what are you, eh?’ she said loudly.

‘Vorag,’ the warrior barked. ‘Vorag Bloodytooth, witch,’ he continued in his crudely accented Nehekharan. ‘Champion of Strigos,’ he bellowed, thumping his chest with a fist.