Soul Stealers

by Andy Remic

  Kell sat up. He spat. He noticed Saark watching him and scowled. "What you looking at?"

  "A grumpy old stoat?"

  "Fuck off."

  "You did ask."

  "You didn't need to answer."

  "What are you thinking about?"

  "Rescuing Nienna."

  "What about the poison in your veins?"

  "DAMN THE POISON IN MY VEINS!" Kell screamed, face almost purple with rage, and then he realised he was standing, axe in hands, glowering down at Saark who had leant back, hands out, face open in shock. "Calm down," said Saark, eventually, as Kell subsided.

  "I am… sorry," said the big man.

  "You need to learn to lighten up a little."

  "You can always fu… Yes, yes, I see." Kell made a growling noise. "I am sorry. I will attempt to be more amenable. I will talk with you, Saark, and I will be a gentleman." He gave a rough cough, and pain shivered through his features.

  "You are dying," said Saark, gently.

  "Yes. It grows unbearable. Excuse my rage."

  "We need to find this Myriam bitch."

  "Yes," sighed Kell, weary with the world.

  "I am looking forward to some payback," said Saark, with a narrow smile.

  They rode for hours. The clouds dissipated, and the sun, although weak, was warm and pleasing on their skin. On this morning, heading north, the world seemed a much happier, warmer place.

  "Talk to me," said Saark, after a while, hunched over his saddle, face lost in distant dreams.

  "About what?" grunted Kell.

  "Anything."

  "I'm not in the mood for talking."

  "I need you to take my mind off… something."

  Kell stared at Saark, hard. But said nothing.

  "I'll begin then," coughed Saark, and thought for a moment. "Don't you think," he paused, contemplating a myriad montage of memories in his laconical mind, "that's there's nothing sweeter in this world than a ripe, eager quim?"

  Kell considered this. "Meaning?" he growled.

  "It means what it says."

  "Meaning?"

  "Come on Kell, talk to me, confide in me, I'm bloody bored, mate, and you need some cheering up. I nearly died back there at the fangs of Shanna or whatever the shit she was called, and I want some fun. I want some philosophising. I want some banter, my man – it's what I thrive on! I want some life!"

  Kell stared at him. He cleared his throat. "After all we've been through, after all the things we've seen, after all the battles we've endured; how can you be bored?"

  Saark spread his arms wide, and grinned. His humour had returned. Pain no longer seemed to trouble him. He was bright as a button; brighter, in fact. So bright he shone. "Hey," he said, "you know me. I am a hedonist. Drink. Women. Gambling. Fighting. Thievery. Debauchery. It's a dull day when the Bone Underworld shuts its gates."

  Kell coughed again, and looked away to distant mountains. Then he returned his stare to Saark. "Do you not think," he said, slowly, one great hand holding the reins of his horse, the other nestled almost unconsciously on the saddle-stashed Ilanna, "do you not think I, also, enjoy such things?"

  Saark considered this. "Pah! You are Kell the Hero. Kell the Legend. You're idea of a good time is rescuing fair damsels in distress, hunting down vagabonds and returning stolen monies to the authorities, hell, you probably even clean your teeth before you go to bed."

  "You met my granddaughter, yes?"

  "Of course, a fine fillet of female flesh, she was." He coughed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "If you don't mind me saying so."

  "I do, as a matter of fact," said Kell, voice hard. But he let it pass. "Obviously, I have a granddaughter. So then, where did she come from?"

  "Your daughter would be the logical conclusion," said Saark, smugly.

  "Yes. My daughter. Proof of my prowess, surely?" "Ha. I am sure I have many daughters! One is not proof of prowess, simply a proof of simple, common luck."

  "Meaning?" Kell's voice was cold.

  "All I'm saying is that ale has a lot to answer for."

  "And your meaning?"

  "Well," said Saark, losing a little of his comfort zone, "I know many an ugly bastard who's sired a child. The Royal Court wine is strong, and when drank in plentiful consumption can lead, shall we say, to amorous connections best left to the annals of dreams." He considered this, as if through experience, his mouth twisting a little. "Or maybe nightmare."

  Kell coughed, eyes glittering with a dangerous shine. "You trying to say something, lad?"

  "Only that alcohol has sired many children. One daughter, and hence granddaughter, is no display of excellence in the art of amorous seduction."

  "I'm not talking about seduction. I'm talking about love… no, no I'm not." Kell frowned, rubbing his beard. "I always was rough around talk of such things. What I mean to say is, I obviously had a wife."

  "Yes?" Saark smiled politely. There were many responses he could have made, but wisely chose to utter none.

  "Well," struggled on Kell, "I had a wife, and I was married, and we had a child. A girl. A little angel. I loved her with all my heart, and I was a brute I know, but it was the first time in my life I realised I would kill for somebody, and I would also die for somebody. That was a new one on me. That was something unique."

  "I have heard it is a magical experience," said Saark, a little stiffly. "Although I have never experienced it firsthand, myself. Despite being a father many times over."

  Kell grinned, and it looked wrong on his face, Saark observed. Where was the scowl? The hatred? The fury?

  "Well lad, you missed out on a rare experience, for all your talk of hedonism. For nothing beats a high like childbirth – and I should know," his voice dropped to a dark realm, "I've taken every bastard drug in Falanor."

  They rode in silence for a while, whilst Saark digested this information. Well, he thought, there's more life in the old donkey than I realised! "Go on," he said, finally. "What happened to your wife?"

  "How did you know I was treading that particular territory?"

  "I have spent an eternity in courts, with nobility, and royalty, and peasants who thought they were nobility. One thing they always want to speak about is their wives. Too fat, too thin, small tits, tits like a pig's bladder, carping, harping, moaning, whining, legs always open, legs always shut. It's all water off a greased duck's back." Saark smiled. "So, what's your story?"

  "I was illustrating a point," growled Kell with a nasty look.

  "Am I supposed to understand the point? Or does that bit come later?"

  "Just listen," growled Kell. "The point is, I am no longer with my wife. She is not dead. We separated. It was the best option."

  "What did you do?" asked Saark, voice a little more understanding now.

  "I was a bad man," said Kell, words so soft they were almost lost in the sigh of the wind. "I was the toughest, meanest fucker you ever did meet. I maimed, I hurt, I tortured, I killed. I was infamous. My name was feared throughout Falanor. And I… I revelled in it, in the notoriety. Many a time we would stop at an inn, and I would leave my wife in the room and come down to the drinking bar, and drink whiskey, drink far too much whiskey, and as the night progressed so I would lie on the bar, bare-chested, laughing off challenges as a host of women rubbed ale into my hairy chest, or drank fine wine and passed it by mouth to my mouth, and then, when I was ready, I would pick out the biggest, meanest, hardest village bastard and take him outside and humiliate him. I'd never kill him, no, I was not a complete animal – although nearly, lad, nearly. But I'd always leave him with something to remember me by. Once, I punched a man so hard, when he came round he snorted two teeth out of his nose. Another time, I indented my knuckles on a man's skull; damn lucky I didn't kill him. He was unconscious for five weeks."

  "And you waited by him for his recovery? Surely that was, at least, a fine and noble gesture! You showed that you had some modicum of honour. You cared enough to find out the result."

  "Nonsen
se!" thundered Kell, filled with rage for a moment. "I met him, ten years later, when I was drunk. He showed me my knuckle imprints on his skull. Said he'd been a pit fighter for nigh twenty years, and never known a man punch as hard as I had."

  "Well, your infamy was well placed, then," said Saark, coldly.

  "You're missing the point, lad. The point is, I was a bastard to my wife. No. The point is, I was a hedonist, much like you; I disrespected my wife, I wallowed in violence, and ale, and whiskey, and the women threw themselves at me in those days, when I was the hardest fucker in the tavern and willing to take on any man in the village or town or city – and beat them all! The women were mine, they were at my disposal, they were there to be used and I used them. And my wife left me. And my daughter hated me. And I am lucky to have even a simple contact with Nienna. I am lucky to have my granddaughter."

  Kell fell into a brooding hunch, and his eyes were hooded, his face dark.

  "And the outcome of your sermon is?" said Saark brightly.

  "Appreciate what you've got," snarled Kell, bitterness at the forefront of his mind. "I was like you, Saark, although you have only a limited intelligence to realise it; I was a mad man, a bad man, and I took no prisoners. Ale, whiskey, drugs, women, I took it all with both hands. But it did me no good. Ultimately, it left me hollow and brittle and broken."

  "You look far from broken to me," said Saark, voice soft.

  "You only see the shell," snapped Kell. "You don't see the empty cancerous holes inside. Now, be as you will, boy, do what you will with no respect for others; but I swear, one day, when you're old, and your time is spent, and you are riddled with arthritis and have no children to weep your passing, and no grandchildren to sit on your bouncing knee and ask with bright wide eyes, aye," he laughed, "they'll ask for stories of your travels with Kell the Legend; well, Saark, my lad, if you have been nothing but a dishonourable fellow – one day, one day you'll realise that your bloody time ran out. And you'll die, sad, and unloved, and alone. Even more alone than me." Kell smiled then, and kicked his horse forward, breaking free of the snow-laden forest and looking out and on to the looming Black Pike Mountains.

  Saark scowled. Kell had touched a nerve, and his thoughts swirled like a winter storm. "You miserable, miserable old bastard," he muttered, and cantered after the old warrior, hands tight on the high pommel of his gelding's saddle.

  Saark called a halt, and they sat under snow-heavy conifers, staring across a bleak landscape. Distantly, the Black Pike Mountains mocked them. They were getting close. As Kell grew weak, so they were getting close. And he knew Nienna was out there, just as he knew thousands of enemies were out there. Kell raged inside, and wanted to tear out his beard and his hair. It was a bad situation; a bitter situation! The world had become a savage place. But then, wasn't that what his victims thought as his great axe, his great demon-possessed axe, clove them from crown to crotch? You are an old man, and yet you walk with demons. You are an old man, and you converse with evil. You stalked the streets of Kalipher during the Days of Blood…

  "Do you hate all vachine," said Saark, suddenly, looking back to Kell.

  Kell grunted. "Eh?"

  "No. Really. Do you hate them?"

  "I hate what they stand for."

  "Which is?"

  Kell considered this. "They are not of this world by choice. They merge with machines, and in doing so, drink the refined blood narcotic of those they have slain. I reckon that's an unhealthy place to be, don't you, lad?"

  "What happens when a vachine bites you?" said Saark, voice soft, but Kell, preoccupied with his own pain from the poison in his bones, and thoughts of finding Nienna, missed any subtleties or nuances which may have emerged from Saark's voice or facial expression.

  "Well lad, it starts to turn you," said Kell.

  "What does that mean? Turn you?"

  Kell shrugged. "They give you blood-oil, and take your fresh blood. It's, not a poison exactly, but more a chemical that works in harmony with the clockwork machines inside any clockwork vampire. Without the clockwork…"

  "Yes?"

  "You suffer. Suffer long and hard. Until you beg for the clockwork to be inside you."

  "Great. And how do you get this damn clockwork?" scowled Saark.

  "You either visit Silva Valley, or a skilled Vachine Engineer. It's a religion, apparently." Kell barked a laugh, and slapped Saark on the back. "Why lad, not been bit, have you?" He roared suddenly, at his own incredible witticism, his own great humour.

  "Of course not," said Saark, face straight. "Because then I'd be a vachine, and you'd want to cut off my head."

  "Nonsense," boomed Kell, his mood seemingly lightened. He leaned in close. "I like you. You're my friend. For you, maybe I'd cut out only one lung."

  Kell cantered ahead.

  Saark frowned, a heavy dark frown like the thunder of worlds. "Wonderful," he muttered. "A vachine killer with a sense of humour."

  Snow fell heavy, drifting in great veils across the world. Wrapped heavy in furs, they rode through day and partly through night, before finding a shallow place amongst rocks to camp. They built a fire, abandoning their subterfuge for the simple act of wanting to stay alive. Mary and the horses huddled together for warmth, and Saark sat now, face illuminated by flames, watching Kell sleep. Saark did not feel tired. He could feel his blood pulsing through his veins. Eventually the snow stopped, and the sky brightened, and looking upwards the moon seemed so incredibly bright. Saark smiled, and welcomed the cold.

  He drifted for a long time, analysing his life and wondering, again, why sleep would not come. Was it the blood-oil working through his veins? Creeping through his organs? He smiled as intuition nagged him. Of course it was. He was changing, just as Kell had predicted in his summary of what happened after a vachine bit. And that meant? He had to imbibe clockwork of some sort? Saark frowned. That sounded like a bucket of horseshit. Surely Kell was wrong.

  Then the pain arrived, a distant, nagging pain which grew brighter and sharper and keener with every passing heartbeat. And then twin stings shot through his mouth and Saark might have cried out, he wasn't sure, but he fell to the snowy ground and smelled crushed ice and the trees and the woodland and a rabbit shivering in a burrow and the stench of Kell, his sweat, bits of food in his bushed beard, stale whiskey on his jerkin. Saark looked up, from the snow, shivering, looked up at the moon. Again, the pain stabbed through his jaws and his teeth seemed to rattle in his skull. The pain was incredible, like nothing he'd ever felt, far surpassing the stabbing at the hands of Myriam; far outweighing the feeling of any blade which had ever pierced his flesh. He wanted to scream, but the pain swamped him, and it was a strange pain, a honey pain, thick and sweet and sickly and almost welcoming… almost.

  Saark heard the sounds, then, as if from a great distance. Crunches of tearing flesh and snapping bone rattled through him, and with horror he rocked back onto his arse and touched his face, touched his teeth where long incisors had pushed through his upper jaw. He touched the fangs, felt their incredible, razor sharpness; he sliced his thumb, watched blood roll down his frozen moonlit-pale flesh, and his eyes went wide. His nostrils twitched. The smell of blood awoke something animal within him; no, not something animal, something deeper, something more feral, base, primitive, something which he could not explain.

  "What is happening to me?" he said, his words thick and slurred, his head spinning. Then his head slammed right. His eyes narrowed. He fixed on Kell. Not only could he smell the detritus of human stench; now, he could smell Kell's blood.

  Saark moved onto his hands and knees, and crouched, and stopped, his eyes focused on Kell, the smell of Kell's blood in his nostrils. He could smell every droplet. Every ounce. It pulsed sluggishly through Kell's veins and to Saark, here, now, the world receded, changed, and the only thing in the entirety of existence was this group of rocks, this campfire, this snow-filled moment with Kell, asleep, head back, snoring, throat exposed. Saark could see the pulse in Kell's neck. It w
ent beyond enticement, through lust and need and into another realm which meant more than life and death. Saark wanted blood. Saark needed blood. If he did not drink Kell's blood he would surely die; he would surely explode into a billion fragments of pain only to be reformed again and torn apart again over and over for ever and ever and ever unto eternity.

  Slowly, Saark crawled across the snow.

  Under waxen moonlight, Kell slept on.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Harvest

  The wolves crept into the cave, and Alloria stood frozen with fear, her eyes locked to the lead wolf, huge, black, yellow, baleful. "Stand back," came Vashell's voice, and Alloria turned, slowly, as if fearful the moment she presented her back it would be leapt upon, huge jaws fastening over her head and ripping it easily from her shoulders.