Soul Stealers

by Andy Remic

  The thing burst through the circle of stones and stopped, stunned, when it saw the Graverobber. Jageraw half leapt, but checked himself and twisted in mid air, landing lightly, on all fours, like a cat. Jageraw stared suspiciously at what could only be described as a thing in his very own circle of stones. Surely, Le'annath Moorkelth had never been witness to such a creature? But then, Jageraw had never seen a canker, and certainly nothing as twisted with clockwork and golden wire as this specimen.

  "Help me!" growled the bulky, deviant, clockwork creature. It struggled to form the words, for its mouth was wrenched back, jaws five times wider than any normal mortal man's. Thick golden wires were wound around and in its flesh. Every single breathing moment looked like an agony of pain and suffering.

  The Graverobber's head tilted, and he moved lithely forward, pacing, like a cat. He stopped by the edge of the stones; there was a myth that he could not, or would not, pass beyond. But it was simply a myth; Jageraw could do what the hell he liked, especially when searching for food and a sliver of kidney which tasted so fine and slick on its way down his throat, yum yum.

  The soldiers were toiling up the hill under snow; but there were many. Quickly, Jageraw counted. At least a hundred. He turned, eyes narrowing at the deformed creature in his circle his damnfire circle of stones! his home! and he had two choices; kill the creature, or hide it. If the soldiers saw him, and they looked well armed and trained and not liable to put up the weak comedy fight of the average villager with screams and skirts and pitchfork; if they saw Jageraw, they might decide he was on the military cleansing agenda.

  The Graverobber turned, slowly, and eyed the canker. Damn. That would take some killing, he realised.

  So, instead, he leapt, cannoning into the shocked warped creature and in a flash of connection and integration and blood-oil magick they stepped sideways through time; skipped, simply, a few seconds forward. Making Jageraw and the hunted canker, effectively invisible.

  The world had been, or at least seemed, young and wild and violent, to General Graal. Wild Warlords ruled the land with gauntlets of spiked steel and fangs of brass, and nobody, nobody questioned their authority. Theirs was an authority of fang and claw, steel and fire; of impalement and decapitation, where the only rule was that there were no rules: and humans were truly the despicable cattle of legend.

  Graal dreamed. And in his dream, he lived…

  Graal rode the six legged stallion through tall crimson grass towards the marshes, where blue flamingos squawked and flapped heavily into the night sky, bright by the light of the moon, recognising his inherent threat upon approach. Flamingos had far better, more primal, instincts than men. He cursed, wishing he had his power lance; he would have speared a bird for supper. He grinned at that, blue eyes narrowing, fangs ejecting, and turned his mount and rode for the nearest village. This was a new area, new settlements, and they did not know him; at the gates he leapt from his mount, head high, eighteen years of life stark on his cruel, narrow face. When they saw him, his eyes, his fangs, his talons, the five men on the gate shouted and started to heave closed the heavy timber portal but Graal strode forward, slamming a hand through the thick timbers with crunches of destruction. The men screamed, shouting for help, two grabbing long spears of black ebony and steel. Graal stepped in, batted aside a spear, pulled the man towards him and snapped his neck like tinder. He lifted the man, mouth cracking open, and plunged his fangs into the flesh, rooting for the jugular. Blood fountained, coated his pale skin, soaking his white hair, and he laughed as he drank for the blood was nectar and the high took him in gossamer wings and flew him through velvet heavens–

  Pain slammed him, and he stared down at the spear protruding from his chest. Near the heart. Too damn near the heart! Graal dropped the ragdoll corpse, cursing himself, his youth, his naivety, his greed, his addiction to blood and the high which brought recklessness to feeding. He had forgotten the second man with the spear. Such a simple omission; to assume he had fled in fear and panic.

  Graal grabbed the spear, embedded in his own flesh and bubbling with black blood through his fine white silk shirt; he swung it, knocking the panic-stricken guard from his feet, then snapped the haft and strode forward, towering over the man. "You want to impale me, little creature? Like this?" Graal plunged the broken spear down, into the man's eye, and he screamed and gurgled and kicked for a while, blood a fountain, gore bubbling. Graal stood, and pulled free the broken splinter of wood, a stake he realised, from his breast. An inch. An inch away!

  Graal brayed at the moon, a howl long and mournful, and when he lowered his head it was to see the line of villagers approaching. There were thirty of them, dressed like peasants, stinking of woodsmoke and shit and piss, their faces bubbled with toxic disease, their hair lank, eyes lifeless, and could they not see his sheen, could they not read the supremacy in his very fucking skin tone?

  They carried weapons, and coolly Graal slicked back his hair, full of fresh blood and its heady scent, and surveyed the array of swords, daggers, sharpened stakes, and even a few pitchforks (oh, the fools!). One woman carried a bundle in outstretched, shaking hands and Graal nearly vomited with laughter. Garlic. For the love of the Bone Halls, garlic? How pure and most beautifully ridiculous! Did she not realise? Did they not realise? Graal adored garlic. Most vampires did. It helped take away the breath of the dead…

  Graal pushed back his shoulders, stepped away from the two corpses, and grinned. This seemed to shock the villagers; maybe they were expecting him to flee. Instead Graal moved fast, fast into them, a fist through a chest there plucking free a beating heart, ducking a sword strike by a clumsy village idiot with no teeth, his index finger driving into a woman's eye and beyond, into the brain, taking a longsword from another man and cutting his legs free in a single stroke and then Graal was into his stride, and into the slaughter, and the sword sang and slew, cutting heads from shoulders, hands from arms, arms from torsos, and Graal took particular delight in slicing a pregnant woman in two from the crown of her head, straight through fat chest and pumping spasming heart and belly and child, right down to her groin. A twin murder with a single sweep. Beautiful! Economical! Damn, in fact it was sheer Art.

  Within a few heartbeats of human duration, Graal had killed all the villagers. He heard a cough, from beyond the gates, and kneeling, Graal pulled free a heart with a wrenching tear of clinging tendons and strands of muscle, then strode to the gates, where he surveyed the five stocky vampires, all mounted, all staring down at him.

  "Yes?" said Graal, head high, arrogance shining in his eyes despite his youth. He bit the heart like an apple, and savoured the texture, savoured the warm slick muscle in his mouth and throat, and then squeezed the warm organ like a fruit, draining the remaining blood off into his mouth. "You caught me during a moment of indulgence. May I be of service?"

  "Mount up. There's work to be done."

  "Slaughter?" Graal's eyes twinkled.

  "Is there any other kind?"

  Graal sat, watching the Refineries, the dripping pipes, listening to the churn of clockwork machinery. All gone, he thought. Long dead, and gone. Just like his mother, the queen, and his father, the king. Killed. Murdered! Slaughtered like human cattle. Graal's lips drew back, making his face incredibly ugly, a baring of the vampire within him, trapped within his now weak flesh, the flesh of the combination, the pathetic shell of the vachine.

  We will be free again, he nodded.

  We will be free.

  He stood, and stretched his back, and rolled his neck, and gazed around. Behind him, the war camp was running smoothly; the albino soldiers ran like – he laughed, a little – like clockwork. They cooked and cleaned, oiled weapons and armour, sharpened blades, tended to prisoners and the cankers; they needed very little organisation from Graal, for they were like insects, workers in the hive, busy with their own little jobs and all part of the Great Wheel.

  Graal turned back to the Refineries and waited, patiently, until in the blink of an eye th
e Harvesters oozed from metal walls, pulling free as if from a thick liquid. They moved before Graal, a triumvirate of consummate evil. Graal smiled. Evil was something he could work with.

  "It is complete?"

  "As you wish. The blood-oil is refined. Do you not feel the rise in energy? The surge of usable power?"

  "No. It will come to me later, in the dark hours."

  The Harvesters reared up, long fingers of bone stretching out, and to an onlooker if would have appeared – for just an instant – as if the Harvesters were about to attack Graal, slice his head from his shoulders, peel the skin from his vachine bones. But they did not. They prostrated before him in a low bow, faces pressing the earth in an almost unprecedented show, and one they would certainly never have replicated before any other vachine. The Harvesters accepted Graal as Master. He smiled, controlling his urges of madness and almost panic-fuelled hysterics, for these creatures were so awesomely powerful that what Graal was actually witnessing was an acknowledgement of what he was about to achieve; what was to come, not what had passed.

  The Vampire Warlords.

  The Harvesters stood. One said, "What of the Soul Gems?"

  "Kradek-ka is searching for the one remaining Gem; the other two are… safe, for now. But he knows where to look. We had… help."

  "Will he hold strong?"

  "Yes, despite his madness."

  "And yet, there is still a thorn to be plucked?"

  Graal nodded. "Kell. The Black Axeman of Drennach. I know this."

  "What will you do?"

  "I have sent the Soul Stealers," he said. "Kell is a dead man."

  CHAPTER 4

  Echoes of a Distant Age

  A blur slammed past Kell, whose eyes were fastened on the dark blade descending for his unprotected throat, and Kell knew he would die there, half buried by rubble, head pounding from the force of shamathe magic and he had never felt anything like it, so odd, but the blur came from the edges of his vision and connected with Jekkron, the tall albino warrior, and with a blink Kell realised it was Skanda the skinny little boy, and Skanda's arms and legs were wide and wrapped around Jekkron who took a step back, his face frowning in annoyance at this interruption to murder. Jekkron raised a hand, as if to slap down the annoying boy who clung to him. And then he started to scream, and he started to scream high, and loud, like a woman peeled, like an animal skewered… Skanda hadn't just wrapped around Jekkron, he was burrowing into the man, his head snapping left and right and chewing and tearing flesh, and his hands and feet had claws and they tore into the albino soldier, who staggered now, dropping his sword, both fists beating down at Skanda who eased inside Jekkron by just a few inches, and with a terrible force of magick, ripped Jekkron's skin and muscle from his chest, belly and thighs. Skanda landed, carrying the skin and muscle like a thick white cloak, and Jekkron hit the ground unconscious, seconds from death. His blood flushed out as if from an overturned cauldron.

  In the sudden confusion, only Lilliath saw what happened, the rest of the soldiers simply witnessed their leader going crazy and slapping at himself; Lilliath capered to one side, over a pile of rubble, to see a donkey staring at her. Lilliath stopped, crazy hair wavering, and Mary the donkey turned slowly around, and with a vicious bray, planted both hooves in the shamathe's face, sending her tumbling back over the pile of collapsed bricks.

  As Jekkron, conscious again and gasping like a fish, struggled to rise with his lack of albino flesh, so Kell grunted and hauled himself to his feet. Skanda stood before him, staring at the gathered soldiers with a face less than human, his black teeth glinting with Jekkron's white blood, and hands lifted up and held like comedy claws. Except the joke was no longer funny.

  Skanda fell on the dying soldier, and ripped out his throat with his teeth, and used claws to slice down Jekkron's ribs and pull free internal organs, which he held up for the soldiers to see. Then Skanda bounded forward, and in a sudden wave of fear the albino soldiers scattered, as Skanda screeched and screamed after them, and suddenly Kell and Saark were left alone.

  Kell limped to Saark, who was just regaining consciousness. Blood leaked from his ears, making his long, dark curls glossy. Both men stood, and leaned on one another weakly, and Saark gazed down at the terribly savaged, torn-apart body of Jekkron. His eyes fastened on glinting pools of milk blood, nestling in hollows and peppered with drifting brick dust.

  "Did you do that to him?" coughed Saark.

  "It was the boy."

  "Skanda? No! No way could a small child…"

  "He is not a small child," said Kell, and with a grunt heaved himself upright and gazed across to the unconscious body of the shamathe. Her face was black and purple. "Your mule has a fine aim."

  "Mary did that? Great! And by the way, she's a donkey, not a mule."

  "Same difference," muttered Kell. "Come on, we need horses. We need to put leagues between us and them."

  "What about Skanda?"

  "I have a feeling," said Kell, voice hard, unforgiving, "that the boy can look after himself."

  Kell lifted Ilanna, and gazed down at Lilliath. He hefted the axe high, and suddenly Saark was there, hands held up. "Whoa, Big Man, what are you doing?"

  Kell scowled. "She tried to kill us, Saark. You surely don't want her following? Doing that to us in our sleep?"

  "You can't kill her, Kell. She's an old woman. She's unconscious! For the love of the gods!"

  "She's a white magicker, and she deserves to die."

  Saark planted himself between Kell and the unconscious shamathe. "No. I won't let you! It is immoral. If you kill her, Kell, then you are as bad as the enemy; can't you see?"

  Kell gave a great and weary sigh. "Very well," he said, eyes narrowed, face pale from dust. "But if she comes near us again, you can sort the bitch out. Let's find some horses."

  They moved around the exterior of the deserted armoury, Saark leading Mary by her halter, and indeed found horses tethered. Distant screams echoed through the forest. Whatever Skanda was doing to the albino soldiers, he was keeping them occupied – and their minds far away from their mounts.

  There were six beasts tethered here, all seventeenhand geldings, and Kell and Saark raided saddlebags for provisions and coin, then picked the most powerful looking horses. Saark tied Mary's lead to his mount's tail, and the men mounted the beasts under moonlight and cantered up a nearby slope, and away, into woodland, into the drifting, falling snow.

  They did not speak.

  They were simply glad to be alive.

  They rode for an hour. Several times Saark suggested pausing, and waiting for Skanda. Kell simply gave Saark a sour, evil look, and Saark closed his mouth, aware he would not get far with Kell when the old warrior was in such a stubborn temper.

  Finally, they made a cold camp, wary of lighting a fire lest it attract more unwanted military attention. Saark, in particular, was in a bad way. Whilst Kell was seemingly strong as an ox, Saark had suffered several beatings, and a loss of blood from the knife wound at the hands of Myriam; whilst better than he had been, stronger and a little more clear-headed, the constant battering was taking its toll on the man. He had deep, dark rings around his eyes, and his face was drawn and gaunt with exhaustion and pain.

  "This is wrong," said Saark, as they stretched out an army tarpaulin between two trees to give them a little shelter. To their backs was a wall of rock from several huge, cubic boulders which must have tumbled from the nearby hills hundreds of years before, and this left only a single entrance from which the wind and snow could intrude.

  "Which bit is wrong? Pull it, Saark, don't bloody tickle it."

  "I'm pulling it, man, I'm pulling! I simply have a reduced mobility due to the wound in my side; or maybe you hadn't bloody noticed me getting stabbed?"

  "I'll notice you getting stabbed in a minute, if you don't help erect this damn shelter," growled Kell. "My hands are turning blue with the cold! So go on, what's wrong, man?"

  "Running away, leaving Skanda to face the s
oldiers, demons, and whatever else fills this magickhaunted forest."

  Kell tightened a strap, and sat on a rock, rummaging in a saddlebag. Nearby, Mary brayed, and Kell scowled at the donkey. "Listen, Saark. You didn't see what I saw – the boy, he ripped that soldier's skin and muscle from his body like a rug from a floor. Peeled it off, complete! Then bit out the soldier's throat and cut out his organs. Don't start moaning to me about leaving a little boy in the woods; Skanda is no boy like I have ever seen."