Mist sensed the approach of yet more newcomers. She was pacing before her throne, hands clasped behind her back, wondering on the mystery of this untimely chill flowing down from the north like an unwelcome breath. Had these pathetic invaders caused more trouble than she’d imagined?

Who, she wondered, would dare approach now in the mid-day? None of the horns had sounded announcing landing vessels; and she was certain none of her people would neglect that. Still, in the past, some parties had arrived overland, harrowing though the passage might be. She turned to the rear of the great meeting hall, calling: ‘Anger! Wrath! Rouse yourselves, you sodden wineskins! We have unannounced guests.’ Deep basso grumblings answered her from the dark.

She sat on the wooden seat, arranged the long trailing tag-ends of her gown, and summoned her sorcery. It was a melding she had crafted over the centuries of her innate access to Omtose Phellack and such lesser portals to power as were available in these southern lands.

Shadows moved in the light streaming in through the open way, out beyond the entrance hall. The flickering light pulled her gaze and she paused, bemused by what she sensed there. Something unfamiliar, yet also teasingly recognizable; like something she had sensed recently. Something she hadn’t liked.

Her magery now swirled about her in gossamer filaments and ribbons, spreading out to enmesh the entire hall in readiness. She turned her attention to the figures now entering the hall and the twitching tag-ends of coalesced fog, together with the scarves of vapour, all flinched as one.

Creatures out of legend. The threat so long predicted she’d long since laughed it away. The unrelenting, undying hunters. The Army of Dust and Bone.

The lead figure wore a cloak of stiff hide on which only a few sad patches of what was once perhaps white fur still remained. The eyeless head of the beast rode atop a mummified mien hardly any better preserved. A forest of bear claws rattled and clattered at his hollow chest. Ragged tattered pelts and skins wrapped a torso of flesh hard to differentiate from the leathers. A blade of pale brown flint, its grip wrapped in a leather strip, rode at a belt of woven leather.

The next one was in even worse shape, could that be possible. She, for Mist intuited that the dried cadaver had been female, had obviously been driven through by many savage blows. The cured leather of her hides hung in shreds. Wide tannin-stained cheekbones seemed to elongate the empty orbits of the eyes. Upper canines glinted copper-sheathed.

Behind these two leaders more of the undying entered, spreading out across the hall. Bony feet slid and clacked on the stone flags of the floor, dry hides brushed and rubbed. Mist imagined she could almost hear their joints creak and grate as the hoary ancients swung their heads to regard her.