Kell’s Legend cvc-1

by Andy Remic

  “Wait!” said Saark.

  Kell lurched forward, kicking Saark in the head, stunning the man who fell back to the hay. He turned to Kat, face sour. “Get your clothes on, bitch. You’ll be having no fun tonight.”

  “Oh yes? Why? Haven’t you a hard enough cock yourself?”

  Kell raised his hand to strike her, then stared hard, glancing at his huge splayed fingers; like the claws of a rabid bear. He lowered his hand, instead grabbing Saark by the collar and dragging him through the hay, back out onto the street and throwing him down.

  “What did I tell you?” he snarled, and kicked Saark in the ribs. Saark rolled through the snow, grunting, to lie still, staring at snowfall. He gave a deep, wracking cough.

  “Wait,” Saark managed, lifting his hand.

  Kell strode forward, rage rushing through him, an uncontrollable drug. Deep down, he knew it was fuelled by whisky. Whisky was the product of the devil, and it made him behave in savage, evil ways, ways he could not control…

  “You would abuse a young, innocent girl?” he screamed, and swung a boot at Saark’s face. Saark rolled, catching Kell’s leg and twisting it; Kell stumbled back, and Saark crawled to his feet, still stunned by the blows, his face twisted as he spat out blood.

  “Kell, what are you doing?” he shouted.

  “You went too far,” raged Kell, squaring up to Saark. “I’m going to give you a thrashing you’ll never forget.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, old man.”

  “Don’t call me old man!” Kell charged, and Saark side-stepped but a whirring fist cracked the side of his head. He spun, and returned two punches which Kell blocked easily, as if fending off a child. Kell charged again, and the men clashed violently, punches hammering at one another in a blur of pounding. They staggered apart, both with bloodied faces, and every atom of Saark’s good humour disintegrated.

  “This is crazy,” he yelled, dabbing at his broken lips. “She’s eighteen years old! She knows what she wants!”

  “No. She knows what you tell her! You’re a womaniser and a cur, and I swear I’m going to beat it out of you.”

  They clashed again, and Kell clubbed a right hook to Saark’s head, stunning him. Saark ducked a second blow, smashed a straight to Kell’s jaw, a second to his nose, a hook to his temple, and a straight to his chin. Kell took a step back, eyes narrowed, and Saark realised a lesser man would have fallen. In fact, a great man would have been out in the mud. Saark may have come across as an effeminate dandy, with a poison tongue and love of female sport and hedonism, but once, long ago, he had been a warrior; he knew he could punch harder than most men. Kell should have gone down. Kell should have been out.

  Kell coughed, spat on the snow with a splatter of blood, and lifted his fists, eyes raging. “Come on, you dandy bastard. Is that all you’ve got?” He grinned, and Saark suddenly realised Kell was playing with him. He had allowed Saark the advantage. But Kell’s face turned dark. “Let’s see what you’re fucking made of,” he said.

  Saark started to retreat, his head pounding, his face numb from the blows, but Kell charged, was on him and he ducked a punch, spun away from a second, leapt back from a third. He held out his hands. “I apologise!” he said, eyes pleading.

  “Too late,” growled Kell, and slammed a hook that twisted Saark into the air, spinning him up and over, to land with a grunt on the snow, tangled. He coughed, and decided it was wise to stay down for a few moments.

  “Get up,” said Kell.

  “I’m fine just here,” said Saark.

  “Grandfather!” Nienna was standing in the inn’s doorway, sobered by the spectacle, and surrounded by others from the inn who jostled to watch. She ran down the steps, silk shoes flapping, and placed herself before the fallen Saark and the enraged figure of Kell.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked.

  “He was trying to rape Kat,” said Kell, eyes refusing to meet his granddaughter’s.

  “I was doing no such thing,” snapped Saark, crawling to his knees, then climbing to his feet. “She needed no persuasion, Kell, you old fool. Have you no eyes in your head? She was lusting after me, even back in the tannery. You just can’t stand the thought of a young woman desiring a man like me…”

  Kell growled something, not words, just primal sounds of anger, and a continually rising rage, and Nienna stepped forward, slapping both hands against his chest. “No!” she yelled, voice strong, eyes boring into her grandfather. “I said NO!”

  Viciously, Kell grabbed Nienna and threw her to one side. She stumbled, went down in the snow with a gasp, then rolled over to stare in disbelief at the man she had known for seventeen years, from babe to womanhood, a man she irrefutably knew would never lay a hand on her, would never pluck a hair from her head.

  “That’s it!” laughed Saark, voice rising a little as he saw the inevitability of battle, of destruction, of death rising towards him like a tidal wave. “Take it out on a young girl, go on Kell, what a fucking man you are.” His voice rose in volume, tinged by panic. “Is this really the hero of Jangir Field? Is this truly the mighty warrior who battled Dake the Axeman, for two days and two nights and took his decapitated head back to the king? Go on Kell, why don’t you just kick the girl whilst she’s on the ground…after all, you wouldn’t like her to fight back now, would you, bloody coward? You’re a fucking lie, old man…the Black Axeman of Drennach?” Saark laughed, blood drooling down his chin as Kell stopped, and unloosed his axe from his back. The old man’s eyes were hard, harder than granite Saark realised as a terrifying certainty flooded his heart. “I spit on you! I bet you cowered in the cellars during the Siege of Drennach, listened to the War Lions raging above tearing men limb from limb…whilst the real men did the fighting.”

  Kell lifted his axe. His face was terror. His eyes black holes. His visage the bleakness of corpse-strewn battlefields. He was no longer an aged, retired warrior with arthritis. He was Kell. The Legend.

  “Go on,” snarled Saark, hatred fuelling him now, spittle riming his lips, “do it, kill me, end my fucking suffering, you think I don’t hate myself a thousand times more than you ever could? Go on, bastard…kill me, you spineless gutless cowering heap of horse-cock.”

  “No!” screamed Nienna.

  “You speak too much,” said Kell, his voice terribly, dangerously low. “Here, let me help you.” He hefted Ilanna, huge muscles bunching, and only then did Saark glimpse, from the corner of his eye, a tendril of white mist drifting across the street. His head twitched, turned, and he watched ice-smoke pour from a narrow alleyway, to be joined by another from a different alley, and yet another from a third…like questing tendrils, wavering tentacles of some great, solidifying mist-monster…

  “The albino soldiers!” hissed Nienna, eyes wide as Kat skidded around the corner, face flustered, dress hitched up in her hands. “They’re here! Kell, they’re here!”

  Kell lifted Ilanna, face impassive. His body flexed, and twisted, and the mighty axe sang as she slammed in a glittering arc towards Saark’s head.

  ELEVEN

  A Secret Rage

  Anu revelled in the cold air gusting from mountain passes as Vashell led her on her chain through the town. As they walked down metal cobbles towards the Engineer’s Docks, many vachine stopped to stare, eyes wide at this utterly humiliating and degrading treatment. Anu grinned at them, sometimes hissed, and once, when a young man protruded his fangs she snarled, “Stare as much as you like, bastard, I’ll be back to rip out your throat!”

  Vashell tugged her tight, then, and she fought the chain for a few moments until Vashell back-handed her across the face, and she hit the ground. She looked up, eyes narrowed in hatred, and Vashell lifted his fist to strike another blow…

  “Stop!” It was a little girl, a baby vachine, who ran across the metal cobbles, clogs clattering, long blonde hair fluttering, and she placed herself between Anu and the enraged Engineer. “Have you no shame, Engineer Priest?” she said in her tiny child’s voice.


  Vashell glowered at the girl, no more than eight or nine years old, in a rage born of arrogance. She turned her back on him, reached down, and took Anukis’s hand. She smiled, a sweet smile, and her eyes were full of love. Inside her, Anu heard the tick tick of clockwork. Inside the girl, the vampire machine was growing.

  “Thank you.” Anu stood. She reached out, ruffled the girl’s hair. “Thank you for being the only one in the whole valley to show me kindness.”

  “Everybody is scared of you,” said the girl. “They’re scared you’ll bring down the wrath of the Engineers.”

  “And we call this a free society?” mocked Anu, casting a sideways glance at Vashell. He snarled something, tugged her lead, and Anu followed obediently…but strange thoughts of her father flowed through her blood and flashed in her mind, and she felt, deep inside her own twisted and failed clockwork, the very thing which made her impure, the very thing which made her different to the vachine around her and unable to take in the gift of blood-oil which kept them alive and fed their cravings and lubricated their clockwork…she felt a tiny, subtle twist. Something clicked in her breast, and she felt nauseous, the world spinning violently, and she glanced back and saw the little girl watching her, a curious look on her face, and Anu tilted her head unable to place that look, unable to decipher what it actually meant…

  A cold wind blew, peppered with snow.

  Huge, perfectly sculpted buildings flowed past, and the vachine population continued to stare as Vashell strode proudly down the centre of the street with his dominated, subdued prize. Above, beyond, to either side, the devastatingly huge Black Pike Mountains reared, black and grey and capped with white, and splashed down low on their mighty flanks with occasional scatterings of colourful green pine forest.

  I know what that look meant, realised Anu. Snow whipped her, and she shivered.

  It was a look of friendship, of memory, of a link. She knows me, thought Anu, but I do not know her. How is this possible? What does it mean? Where does she come from?

  The cobbled street was immensely steep, down to the Engineer’s Docks. Distantly, she heard the Silva River slapping the dockside, and Vashell unconsciously accelerated due to the gradient. Anu moved faster, to keep up with the cruel Engineer’s long stride, still puzzling over the golden haired child and her curious recognition…

  Another puzzle, she thought.

  Another conundrum.

  Inside her, her clockwork continued to do strange things. She felt odd whirring sensations, the spinning and stepping of gears, like nothing she had ever before felt. Maybe I’m dying, she laughed to herself. Maybe I’ve been booby-trapped? Whatever, the process made her sick to her vachine core.

  They reached the dockside, which was bustling with activity. Brass barges were being loaded and unloaded up and down the river, and Vashell led Anu to a long, sleek vessel. They climbed a narrow plank, went aboard, stood on deck for a moment and then dropped into a plush cabin as befit an Engineer. Vashell tied Anu’s lead to a hook, and locked a clasp in place with a click. Anu felt a bubble of rage flood her; she felt like a dog.

  “Don’t want you attempting escape,” said Vashell, voice low.

  “Go to hell.”

  Vashell shrugged, and moved away, into the front of the brass barge. After a few moments Anu felt the rhythmical, pendulous hum of the clockwork engine and the barge slid away from the Engineer’s Docks, away onto the smooth platform of the Silva River.

  Anu sighed, and looked out of a circular portal, watching the Silva River drift by, glinting with ice as Vashell guided them through chunks and small, choppy waves. The noises of the docks drifted away behind them, until only the hum of the engine could be heard and the barge turned north, then northeast, past the opening for the Deshi Caves which seemed to tug at them with unseen currents, with honeyed promises. Come to me, the caves seemed to call. Come and explore my long, winding tunnels. I promise you riches, and glory, and immortality. That, and death, thought Anu.

  Vashell picked up a narrow tributary, and guided the barge between silent mountain sentinels. Sheer walls of rock scrolled past, black and rugged grey, with a few sparse and twisted trees clinging for survival. It seemed cold, and gloomy, and snow whipped through the air. The barge hummed on, rocking, and Anu, exhausted with pain, fear, humiliation, and the still-present nagging sensation in her body core, felt sleep creep upon her and she leaned to the side, eyes closing, and for once she truly welcomed the deep dark oblivion of sleep.

  “Wake up.”

  Vashell was shaking her. Anu yawned, and sat up. Her mouth tasted of metal, of copper, and brass, and something else.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’ve stopped at the Ranger Barracks. I’ve been waved ashore; you will come with me, but no trouble, Anu-or I’ll cut the head from your body. Understand?”

  “Why don’t you leave me here? I am exhausted.”

  Vashell grinned, eyes twinkling. “What? And have you pull some clever trick, and the next moment the barge is cruising into the Black Pikes without me? No. You never leave my sight…not until the day I die.”

  Anu was too tired to argue. Conversely, she was more weary than before her sleep, and checking the barge’s clock, she saw she’d had six hours. What was the matter with her? Again, she tasted metal…almost a liquid metal, and her tongue explored the weird interior of her mouth. She was not right. Something was changing inside her.

  Vashell unlocked her chain, took it in his fist and climbed the steps into cold, bleak sunlight. A bitter wind blew scattered snow from surrounding cliffs, causing the weird effect of sunlight filtering through a snowstorm. Anu followed, shading her eyes, and saw a rough wooden jetty and barracks beyond, with enough accommodation for perhaps two hundred soldiers. The barracks seemed deserted, although she could have been wrong. There was a long, low building, also constructed from rough timber, and a door opened and three albino warriors stepped out, their matt black armour gleaming in the sunlight as they shaded eyes. They hated sunlight, she knew; as did the vachine. It caused them a certain amount of pain, and in really strong light caused their clockwork to slow down, overheat, and in some extreme cases even kill the host through mechanical failure. No. Vachine preferred the cold, and the dark; their albino slaves even more so.

  Anu stared at the warriors, and behind them saw a woman, tousled and battered, blood dried on her face and arms, her clothing rimed in filth. She looked little more than a vagabond and Anu’s heart went out to her immediately; here was somebody mistreated, beaten, abused, as was she. There was a common link: the humiliation of the victim.

  Anu studied the woman carefully, and her gaze was met by a proud, green-eyed stare, returned with a ferocity and attitude which had no doubt earned her endless pain. And, despite her recent beating, and old beatings by the look of her; despite torn clothing, naked feet covered in scabs and sores, despite her matted mane of hair, Anu saw through the agony and attitude, saw a strong woman, tall, elegant, it was in her bearing, in her manner, in her very spirit. And that had not been broken.

  “The bitch is a hard one to crack,” laughed one of the albino soldiers, gesturing to the woman.

  “You have been instructed to treat her thus?” Vashell seemed…vexed. Anu considered his deviated sense of righteousness.

  “Yes,” replied a second soldier. “By Graal himself. He told us the more we beat and raped her, the more we abused her, the more we broke her-as long as we didn’t kill the royal bitch, then it would be a good tool in subjugating her husband.”

  “Any news on Leanoric’s military progress?”

  “I will leave those matters for discussion between you and General Graal,” said the soldier, who Anu realised was a captain of some sort, although she didn’t understand the complexities of the Army of Iron’s ranking system. “I was simply instructed to bring her here and await an Engineer’s Barge. We thought that was why you had come.”

  “Coincidence,” said Vashel. “I have…another mission.”


  Vashell tugged the chain, and Anu stumbled, and uttered a guttural growl. The three albino soldiers looked on, amused, laughter smiles touching their lips.

  “A wild one, is she?”

  Vashell looked back. “One of the wildest,” he said, licking his lips, and smiling with narrowed eyes.

  “Isn’t she Anukis, Kradek-ka’s daughter?” said one soldier, peering a little closer, his humour evaporating.

  Vashell changed, his manner becoming more professional-more superior-in an instant. “Mind your own business, captain. We are on direct orders from the Watchmakers; I suggest you return to your…little lady, there, and continue with your petty sport. She’s looking at you with the longing eyes of a bitch on heat…and trust me well when I say my business does not concern you.”

  Anu and Alloria’s eyes met. Understanding flowed between. This was the Queen of Falanor. A bartering tool for the Engineers, and for The Army of Iron in the fast escalating conflict, the accelerating invasion. “Help me,” mouthed Alloria, and Anu saw then, saw the swirl of madness deep at Alloria’s core. She was putting on a proud front; but they had nearly destroyed her. There was only so much a human mind could endure.

  Anu coughed, and again something changed inside her. She felt as if about to vomit, and instead, heard a heavy thunk. Part of her machinery changed. What was wrong with her? What had the bastards done to her?

  She looked up. The world seemed…different. Almost black and white, and diffused, as if seen through a fine shattered mirror. She felt strength flood her system, like nothing she had felt before. She felt iron wires merge through her muscles, felt her heart swell, felt new claws springs from her fingertips, delicate and gleaming with silver. Silver fangs flowed through her hollow jaws, molten at first but solidifying, and new vampire fangs sprouted from her teeth, replacing the holes where her fake vachine fangs had been forcibly removed. Everything became acute; she could hear the snowfall, the distant flutter of birds in pine, the creak of rock in the Black Pike Mountains, distant avalanche falls, and she could smell the albinos, a certain metallic stink like that of insects, and Vashell reeked of sweat and shit and piss, and Queen Alloria even more so, and she could smell the resin in the timber jetty and the oil on the albino soldier’s swords, she could see the hairs in their nostrils, taste their sweat oils in the air…and Anu smiled.