by Andy Remic
Graal paused, and stared from a high window. Below, the city appeared deserted. And then he saw them, a group of rough-looking men down by the seafront. Huge walls lined the front, presumably to halt high tides or violent storms. Graal's eyes strayed, and he saw a woman, further down. She carried a babe in her arms, and walked quickly, nervously, looking often over her shoulder. She reached a small line of cottages and ducked quickly into a doorway. So. Port Gollothrim was still home to… Graal smiled. Fresh meat. Templates. Vampire templates. But where were the soldiers? Called away to fight his Army of Iron, in Vor? Possibly.
Graal rubbed his chin. His torn cheek was stinging, but even now he could feel accelerated vachine flesh knitting together. He would be healed by the next morning.
He felt Lorna's eyes on him. He turned. "What are you looking at?"
"A nervous man."
Graal stared, hard, then smiled a cold thin-lipped smile. "So, Lorna, bitch, Bhu Vanesh's First, born straight into our world of horror by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You think you are so powerful? Let us see you perform. Perform, like a dancing monkey jerking on the puppeteer's strings."
Lorna's head tilted, and she observed Graal, and he felt the clockwork of his heart accelerate a little. Then she turned, and Graal led her no more. She moved fast, bare feet padding the cold stone flags, white kitchen apron stained with blood and the black gore from Bhu Vanesh's veins. Her neck showed the twin bites of the vampire. Her skin glowed in an ironic mockery of life.
Now, Graal followed. Lorna needed no guidance.
She accelerated, and Graal had to jog to keep up. Down long corridors, up steps, until they burst into the Division General's chambers and surprised the five men there. Division General Dekull stood beside a large polished oak table, with four other men; all wore military uniforms of black and silver bearing the Falanor crest. The table was filled with maps, and several glasses of half-drained wine.
Dekull, a large man with bull-neck and over-red complexion, thinning brown hair and large hands, stared for a moment in abject confusion. "Who the hell are you?" he growled, red-face forming into the frown of a man who did not take interruptions lightly. Then Lorna squealed in sudden bloodlust, real blood lust, and a burst of energy fired her and leapt at him, fastening arms and legs around him, teeth lusting for his jugular. He staggered back, knocking the table over. Wine spilled across maps. He tried to grapple with the newborn vampire, but there came a sudden crack as she snapped his arm like tinder, and Division General Dekull screamed, highpitched and animal, and this slammed the other men into action. They drew swords and charged as Graal watched impassively from the doorway.
Four swords slashed at Lorna in quick succession, as her knees came up, bare feet on Dekull's chest and she kicked up and backwards, through a somersault, landing behind one soldier. Swords clanged together in discord. Lorna's fist punched into one man, and through him, bursting free of his chest in a splatter of blood. She stood, holding his jiggling body upright, then let him fall as the three remaining men leapt back, faces uncertain, eyes narrowed. Lorna took a long lick of slick blood from her elbow to her still-clenched fist. Her black eyes gleamed.
"Come on," she growled, voice feral and husky.
One man screamed and charged, and she deflected his sword blow on her left arm where the razor-edge peeled her skin back like flesh from soft-braised pork. Her right hand dropped, grabbed his crotch, and ripped back hard detaching chainmail trews, penis and testes in one mangled lump. The other two men edged towards the door, then one, Command Sergeant Wood, turned and kicked his way savagely through the leaded window. He climbed out onto a high ledge and disappeared from view. The final man dropped his sword with a clatter. Division General Dekull was kneeling, blood pooled around him, nursing his broken arm. Bone protruded from flesh, a savage break, a sharp stick pointing at the roof.
Lorna strode to the surrendered soldier, and knelt before him. She seemed almost tender. The man, a young commissioned officer named Shurin, trembled as urine leaked down his legs and pooled around his feet. It stank bad.
"I didn't mean it," Shurin whispered, eyes imploring. "I beg forgiveness."
"There is no forgiveness," said Lorna, and he was on his knees before her and she took his face in her hands, a palm against each cheek and she was smiling and Shurin's piss gurgled as it swilled around them, and she pulled his face towards her, as if they were parted lovers returned for a final kiss; then she lowered her fangs, and they sank into his flesh, and he screamed and began to kick, to struggle savagely in the nature of any trapped beast and the piss-stink of the coward. Lorna sucked Shurin, and drank him hard, and left his deflated corpse like a limp doll on the flagstones.
Lorna stood. She licked blood from her lips. She radiated power.
Graal was examining his fingernails, his air one of debonair cool, his eyes detached from the bloody scene before him. He knew the situation; understood it inherently. Until Lorna killed, and fed, she was not true vampire. Now, with this fresh intake of blood, she was almost there. Almost. Now, in the same way the vachine used clockwork to finalise their victims' transformation to vachine, Lorna had to make her own slave; her own ghoul. It was the Law of the Vampire. One of the Old Laws. For the vampires were a race of the enslaved…
Lorna was advancing on the barely conscious figure of Division General Dekull. His broken arm cast odd shadows against the wall. Outside, the winter sun was a copper pan pushed into the sky.
"You missed one."
"What?" Lorna's head snapped round.
Graal looked up. Gestured to the window. "You missed one. Sloppy."
"I saw no help from you," she snarled, blood still slick on her fangs and causing her frail blonde hair to clump in rat tails around her face.
"This is not my freakshow," smiled Graal, coolly, and turned his back, departing the chamber to look for Kradek-ka. Behind him, he heard Lorna's soothing words. First, he heard the crack as Lorna put Dekull's arm back in line. His scream shook the rafters. Then she fed, and fed him her blood, and in so doing spread the black blood of Bhu Vanesh, from killer to victim. She spread the disease. Spread the curse.
It was night.
Graal sat in his large, almost regal sleeping chambers, nursing a glass of port at a smooth-waxed redwood table. Across from him sat Kradek-ka, face still battered from his collision with a jagged mountain wall. He looked far from his usual composed, serene self.
Outside, a large pale moon hung in the sky like a pancreas cut free by a drunk surgeon. Yellow light filtered into the sleeping chamber, and tumbled lazily across Graal and Kradek-ka's sombre features.
"So it is done," said Kradek-ka, and took a drink from his glass. Graal nodded, and rubbed his eyes. Bhu Vanesh's vampiric plague had swept through the High Fortress in less than a day. Now, he had a hundred and fifty vampire slaves, a jagged hierarchy ruled over by Lorna and Division General Dekull. Dekull had shown himself to be a formidable taker to the cause; and of course, once he was under Bhu Vanesh's control, the Vampire Warlord instantly had access to Dekull's emotions, his thoughts and, more importantly, memories. The instant Bhu Vanesh's blood was in Dekull's veins, they shared a hive mind. Bhu Vanesh knew the layout of the High Fortress, the Port of Gollothrim, the details of Falanor army units, and everything else of military interest. He had absorbed the Division General's mind. This was one of his talents.
And now, night had come.
Bhu Vanesh lifted the portcullis, and with the baleful yellow moon glaring down like a disapproving eye of the gods, had pointed out into the city. Before him, arranged on a cobbled courtyard, were a hundred and fifty vampires. They were soldiers, stablehands, cooks and cleaners. Each wore twin marks at their throat. Each had gloss black eyes. Each could smell fresh blood. Out there, in the city, in the world…
"Expand my slaves," said Bhu Vanesh, stalking back from the portcullis, head bobbing a little, legs working with curious joints and making him even less than human. Not that it took m
uch imagination. In the gloom, the flowing smoke of his flesh was even more pronounced.
Silently, the flood of newborn vampires headed into the night, spreading out, disseminating, each on a personal mission of feeding and violent coercion.
"It's done," agreed Graal. Bitterness was in his mind, on his tongue, in his soul. He licked his own vampire fangs. The feeling from Bhu Vanesh was tangible. He hated not just humans, but the albinos and the vachine. His arrogance was total. To Bhu Vanesh, everything that walked or crawled was inferior. A slave. There to be used, toyed with, and ultimately consumed as food.
"We must take him. Take them all! Send them back to the Chaos Halls!" Kradek-ka had the light of madness in his dark vachine eyes. He was a Watchmaker! A Royal Engineer of Silva Valley! He was not used to being a slave…
"Sh!" snapped Graal. He glanced around the chamber. He gave a narrow smile. "I think our elite brethren are the kind to employ many, many ears. Let us just say I understand your frustration, and I agree with your train of thought. What we must do is strike when he is at his weakest."
"With each new slave, he grows stronger. With each drop of fresh blood, he grows more ferocious! You know the legends as well as I, Graal. What I want to know is why the magick failed us? Why, by all the gods, did we lose control?"
Graal shook his head. "It was a cheap dice-trick. A card con, like the sailors pull down on the docks. Who wrote the ancient texts? The servants of the Warlords. They wove betrayal into the narrative, after all, who would summon them back without believing in their own mastery? What incentive in being a slave? A puppet? We were cheated, Kradek-ka. And our arrogance, and greed, allowed us to be cheated. Without our efforts, without our lust for power, the vachine would have remained in Silva Valley. We were kings of a small pond; now we are fucking slaves, just like the rest of them."
"'Thus how thee mightye are crushed lyke shelles againste thyr throynes,'" misquoted Kradek-ka, and poured himself another glass from the crystal decanter. The port glimmered, like blood, in his glass. Somewhere, out in the city, a human gave a terrible scream. Several cracking sounds followed. Then a deep silence flooded back in.
Graal and Kradek-ka's eyes met.
"How do we solve this, and still remain dominant?" said Kradek-ka.
"Our first step is to kill Bhu Vanesh."
Kradek-ka nodded, and nursed his drink, and listened to the vicious hunting far out in the darkness.
Command Sergeant Wood sat on the roof of the High Fortress, the Warlord's Tower, and brooded. His short sword sat across his knees, and he squatted, huddled beneath his thick army shirt, shivering uncontrollably. Not just from the cold, the wind, the ice, but from everything he had witnessed. And more. The things he could see unfolding in the city beneath him. Horrible things. Nightmare things.
King Leanoric was dead. That was news he handled well. Even the invasion, the Army of Iron – unbeatable, invincible! – as a soldier, this was information which he could grit his teeth and try to plan for. Bloodoil magick. Ice smoke. Cankers. All these things Command Sergeant Wood had witnessed, and fought, and after Leanoric was smashed at the Battle of Old Skulkra, Command Sergeant Wood – with several platoons of elite men – had headed south to warn his superiors. But their way south had been blocked by hundreds of cankers, snarling, roaming free. It took Wood and his men three days to circle the beasts, and they had two encounters which lost Wood six men. It had been a grim time. But still, a time Wood could fight with fist and sword and mace. But now? Now this… abomination.
Command Sergeant Wood observed the city below. The Port of Gollothrim. The city of his childhood. A city he loved with all his heart, all his soul. As a boy he had run riot through the narrow cobbled streets, stealing from market traders, organising other orphans and vagabonds into a tight unit that preyed on rich merchants and dealers in silks, spices and diamonds. He was caught at the age of sixteen after robbing a spice magnate, who died from a heart attack during the robbery, and Wood was sentenced to hang. But he'd been rescued from the gallows by a kindly old Captain, Captain Brook, and afterwards joined Brook's Company as a helper, sharpening swords, oiling armour, cooking for the men. Now, here, Command Sergeant Wood had risen as far through the non-commissioned ranks as a soldier could go. He was tough as an old boot left for months in the desert sun, harder than the thick steel nails which held together the Falanor Royal Fleet. But Wood had a soft spot for his men, and even more so, his city. The Port of Gollothrim. His fucking city! Which was under attack from within…
Command Sergeant Wood had fought cankers and vachine, so he was not averse to surprises. The speed with which the High Fortress was taken was hard for Wood to comprehend, and to accept. But even more so, was the changing of people into these… creatures.
Wood spat on the high roof, and his eyes tracked a vampire through the distant streets below. There came a tinkling, the smash of glass, and the vampire entered through the window. Wood heard screams. He shook in rage, his fists clenched, eyes narrowed. Then, silence flooded up to him through the icy darkness.
"You were a hard one to find," said Lorna, and Wood uncurled smoothly from his crouch on the edge of the High Fortress roof. His eyes moved beyond her, but she was alone.
Despite his size, his barrel chest, his large hands powerful enough to crush the spine of any man he'd fought, Wood leapt nimbly down to the flat roof, slick with damp and ice, and slashed his sword several times through the air.
"You come here for me to teach you a lesson, girl?"
She laughed at that. A pretty, tinkling sound. She ran a hand through her fine blonde hair, and her claws lengthened, her fangs gleaming under the baleful yellow moon.
"I think it's the other way round, Command Sergeant Wood."
"So you know my name."
"You will make an extremely useful addition to our ranks. After I play with you. After I suck you." She grinned at him, eyes mischievous, and he reddened. Wood was not a man comfortable with sex. Never had been, never would be.
He smiled grimly. Join your ranks? I'd rather die first. Rather cut my own throat with a rusty fucking razor. Rather string myself up by the balls! But… Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.
She attacked, fast, in the blink of an eye – and came up short, almost impaling herself on the point of Wood's sword. She back-flipped way, then moved sideways, and Wood tracked her.
"You move fast for a fat man," she said.
"Come closer, girl. I'll show you a little bit more."
She snarled, and her gloss black eyes narrowed. Then she charged, in a series of bounds, and leapt ducking under Wood's slashing sword, but he slammed a left hook that pounded her head, knocking her sideways into a straight right that spread her nose across her face. Wood's boot smashed her head, and even as she hit the stone he stamped on her chest, then her face. She lay stunned, and Wood moved swiftly, picking her lithe, seemingly frail body up and lifting it high above his head. He leapt onto the battlements edging the roof of the High Fortress, and gazed down to the distant cobbles of the courtyard.
"Bhu Vanesh will kill you for this!" Lorna mumbled through broken teeth. Her shattered, swollen cheeks changed the shape of her face. Wood gave a short nod.
"He should come find me himself, then," snapped the old soldier, in the same military bark that had sent hundreds of men scuttling across many a desolate parade ground. His powerful shoulders bunched and he launched Lorna into the air. He watched her fall with interest, and when she hit the cobbles it was with a sickening crack. Wood fetched his sword, then returned to the edge of the roof. Glancing down, he watched Lorna start to move, her broken, snapped shape starting to writhe, beginning to squirm. Somebody ran to her, and she gradually climbed disjointedly to her feet and glared up at him.
"Hell's balls!" Wood snapped, and ran for the far end of the roof. Here, he knew, there was a tunnel he could use to escape. But what to do? Where to go? How could he fight such creatures? How could they die?
And it came, in a flash of
brilliance. Of inspiration.
He would travel the city, and gather to him those who still lived. The criminals, the smiths, the soldiers, the market traders. And they would arm themselves.
And they would fight this scourge.
With a new objective, a military objective, Command Sergeant Wood loped off into the darkness.
Jalder was Falanor's major northern city and once a trading post connecting east, south and west military supply routes, known as the Northern T. Sitting just south of the formidable Black Pike Mountains, and separated by the Iron Forest, Jalder had been the first city hit when the vachine invaded south from the mountains and their stronghold, Silva Valley, and using their albino ranks, the Army of Iron.
Since that invasion, where General Graal had used a mixture of blood-oil magick and cunning, first to take out the northern scouts and guards, then to infiltrate Jalder's Northern Garrison and slay the entire regiment based there with not a single loss of life to his own army – since those days, months earlier, since the flooding of magick summoned ice-smoke which chilled and killed, and allowed soldiers to run riot capturing and murdering the vast majority of Jalder citizens – well, for those that remained, life had been unbearably hard.