by Andy Remic
With light came an abatement of the storm, and the mournful howling reduced to nothing more than occasional, scattered shrieks. Snow flurries decorated the cave mouth, random snaps of hail and gusts of icechilled wind.
Alloria sat, nearer the fire now, arms wrapped around her legs, hugging herself in a need for heat. Terrible icy draughts entered the cave, and she could feel her teeth chattering, jarring her skull. She had never experienced such savage weather in the warm southlands of Falanor. She looked over to where Vashell slept, and envied him his peace. His scarred face seemed strangely calm, his breathing regular.
What have I got myself into? thought Alloria, and gave a deep, bitter sigh. How violently her world had changed in a few short weeks. From her rape and abduction at the whim of General Graal in an effort to subdue King Leanoric, through to a nightmare journey through Falanor, and secret subterranean tunnels under the mountains, to her final accidental rescue by the vachine Anukis, Alloria's life had become a journey of insanity and confusion. Abused, both physically, sexually and mentally, she knew she teetered on the edge of breaking. And yet… and yet her country, Falanor, needed her. King Leanoric used to say: I am the Land, and the Land is me. Now, Falanor had no King and Alloria was – as far as she could ascertain – the only living member of royalty. Sourly, this led to her boys and she sank deeper into depression.
What did life matter now if her babes were dead?
Why did anything matter?
And she thought back, further. Images of betrayal flittered through her skull. She could picture a gem. A small, dark gem. With a sour taste in her mouth, she refused the memories, and pushed them away, feeling pain at simple understanding. Betrayal, echoed the halls of her memory. Betrayal.
Smoothly, Vashell rolled to his feet. He glanced at Alloria. "Somebody is coming."
"Who?"
Vashell ignored her and drew his knife, staring at the cave entrance. A few moments later, like a ghost from the snow, came a figure. He was tall, athletic and broadshouldered. He moved warily into the cave with short-sword drawn, then stopped, staring at Vashell.
"Llaran!" exclaimed Vashell, and took a step forward, then paused, and lowered his face. When he glanced up, his eyes were bright with tears. Llaran lowered his sword, and his face softened.
"Vash? Is that you?"
"Llaran, little brother, it's been a hard fight."
Llaran moved closer. Icicles clung to his hair and heavy furs. His boots were crusted with ice. He stopped, staring at Vashell, his handsome face shocked, his mouth open. Llaran flexed his golden claws, and his vachine fangs ejected.
"They took your face, brother." His voice hardened a little, but then in a flurry of movement he lowered his sword and stepped in close and held Vashell. Vashell felt tears on the scars of his cheeks. The salt stung his tattered flesh.
"Aye, they took my face. But not my honour! Not my dignity! I am still more violent than you could believe possible! I am still vachine at heart, at soul!"
"I don't doubt that," laughed Llaran, releasing his older brother and moving towards the fire with an easy, relaxed, rolling gait. He stopped beside the head of the Harvester, looking down in open wonder, then with a sudden movement he slashed his sword across the Harvester's face, toppling the head into the fire. The Harvester's eyes snapped open and it began to scream, a terrible high pitched sound as flames curled around skin and licked into eyes and scorched flesh. A stench filled the cave. Vashell surged forward, but Llaran's sword came up – a swift movement. Suddenly, his eyes seemed hard and the smile had gone from his face. Noisily, and still screaming, Fiddion's head burned.
"What have you done?" shouted Vashell.
There came a clatter of noise from the mouth of the cave, and three vachine stood there, swords drawn, the bulk of their armour and furs blocking out the cold snow-light.
"We've been hunting this traitor for weeks," said Llaran, lips a narrow line of bloodless ice. "Now, as you can see, his fate is sealed. But you, dear sweet brother, you are a bonus I did not expect!"
Llaran turned to the three vachine warriors, who slid out claws and fangs in readiness for battle. Llaran stepped back towards the wall of the cave, and in a voice full of malice as he stared at his older brother, said, "Kill him. And kill the woman, too."
General Graal rode his steed to the top of the hill, hooves crunching snow and dead leaves, and scattered woodland detritus. He dismounted and calmed the beast, feeding it a handful of oats from his saddlebag. The night sky was a patchwork of black and grey clouds, and moonlight shimmered in shafts illuminating a vast city landscape below. Graal's eyes narrowed, as he watched ten thousand albino soldiers – the Army of Iron – moving into position with the precision of…
Graal smiled.
Why, with the precision of clockwork.
Silently the ranks of albino infantry assembled. To the rear, hidden by woodland, Graal knew the cankers had been released from their cages. However, hopefully they wouldn't be needed for the sleeping, unwary populace of Vor – Falanor's Capital City. The main problem with cankers was they were too vicious, too bloodthirsty, too brutal; they savaged a corpse without refinement allowing precious blood to pump free during frenzy and savagery. No. The trick was an ice-death using ice-smoke. Freeze the bodies of human cattle, encase them in ice – so that the Harvesters could reap the Harvest at their leisure.
Graal turned, eyes narrowing, checking the distant shapes on the Great North Road. The huge black outlines of the Refineries loomed, rumbling gently as they were dragged by teams of horses. This time, everything would come together neatly with no surprises. This time, the mission – cause and effect – would slot neatly into place. There would be no… wastage.
Graal returned his eyes to the waiting Army of Iron. Moonlight glinted on dull black armour, on unsheathed swords, on matt helmets. Special soldiers had been sent ahead to hunt down and silence any sentries, any woodsman, any stragglers who might alert the population of Vor to their impending slaughter – to their impending harvest. Graal smiled a narrow smile. After all, he didn't want to waste precious time hunting down the terrified. Not when ice-smoke could make a neat kill in the first place.
Below, Harvesters were assembling, drifting eerily, like wood-spirits, through the ranks of motionless soldiers. Graal's chest swelled with pride at his men, his albino ghosts. Graal's blue eyes sparkled, and his head tilted, and he acknowledged the irony of the phrase. Albino was not quite correct.
At the head of the infantry now, the Harvesters stopped. Their chanting was low, a monotone, little more than sighs on a winter wind. Their hands, with long bone fingers, lifted towards the sky and Graal felt a pulse of magick thump through the ground, passing beneath his boots and on down, down the steep hillside, through gullies and streams and rocks, through narrow channels of peat bog and patches of sparse woodland until it met the Harvesters and from their feet, from the soil, rose the ice-smoke. It billowed, thick wreaths and coils, like ice-snakes under the precise control of their masters. The ice-smoke grew, rising, obscuring the Harvesters and the infantry and Graal felt a stab of pleasure as he knew, knew this mission would be successful, and with its success came the total subjugation of Falanor. After that, only one thing remained.
The mammoth clouds of ice-smoke were huge, now, and Graal watched impassively as they rolled out, flowing down hills to encompass and swallow the first of the buildings on the outskirts of Falanor's capital city; there were no screams, no shouts of alarm, and this, Graal acknowledged, was the beauty of such an attack. It was clean. Silent. Efficient. There was no wastage.
The ice-smoke flooded across cottages, tenements, factories, bridges, rivers, parks, a writhing coiling turbulence of freezing cold with a motionless army of killers waiting behind. This was not a battle, not an invasion; this was simple butchery. And Graal revelled in it.
Finally, there came a scream. But by then, the icesmoke was moving fast as if accelerating with the downward slope. It spread like a flood, and wit
hin a few short minutes the entire city was bathed in white, as if a huge blanket of mist had settled gently in the early morning darkness. Only this time, the mist was deadly.
Graal turned to his horse, and from an oiled leather sheath removed a slender, black battle-horn. It was said it was made from the thigh-bone of a god, but Graal smiled grimly at this nonsense. The horn was made from something much, much worse.
He placed the horn to his lips, and blew a long, single ululation which echoed mournfully across the sea of icesmoke. With unity and proud synchronisation, the Army of Iron moved forward into the sleeping city streets.
And the slaughter began.
The weak winter sun had risen in a raped sky. Purple bruised clouds lay scattered, the welt-marks of the abuser. The ice-smoke had nearly dissipated, but still long coils, like dying ice-snakes, writhed in the streets. Graal rode his mount, hooves clattering cobbles, and he surveyed his handiwork. Corpses lay in piles to either side of every alley where he looked. Men, women, children, all white and blue and purple, frozen in sleep, frozen in the act of running, their bodies motionless. Some, he knew, were still alive, the ice-smoke purposefully not killing them, just seeking to retain every precious drop of blood. However, death was usually a realistic consequence. Except for those of incredibly strong disposition.
Graal rode his horse down the main thoroughfare, a wide cobbled street lined with baskets of winter flowers and where once King Leanoric, and his queen, Alloria, had ridden carriages in procession, the streets lined with cheering people, happy people, good people, unaware of the fate shortly to befall their land, their country, their species.
Graal halted before the Rose Palace, and it was a wonderful site to behold. Huge iron gates were skilfully melded into a battle scene, and protected long lawns, now piled with corpses, Graal noted, those of servants and retainers, and the King's Royal Guard, their red jackets frosted with ice. The building itself was staggeringly beautiful. Commissioned seven hundred years previously, it was built from white stone, marble and obsidian, and the mortar was mixed with silver which glinted, even now, in this weak winter sunshine. Graal cantered across a frozen lawn, hooves crunching grass, and he dismounted by the wide, flowing marble steps. A Harvester, Tetrakall, was waiting for him.
"You did well," said Graal, removing his gauntlets.
"Lambs to the slaughter," replied Tetrakall with a shrug of his elongated, bony shoulders.
"Still. Your magick is something which impresses. And I am not an easy man to impress."
"You should see the magick of my homeland," said Tetrakall, taking a bobbing step forward, his head lowering a little, his blank eyes staring into Graal's. "We weave dreams, we weave magick, we harvest souls and use them for… things I cannot vocalise, things you would never understand."
"One day, I will visit," said Graal, voice low, and he meant it. The Harvesters thrilled him in a way he found hard to express. They did not scare him – well, maybe a little – but the only thing he truly understood was that they were from an ancient time, a time before the Vampire Warlords. And this in itself was something of which to be wary. Still. They had a pact; a symbiotic agreement. The vachine got the blood for their refineries. And the Harvesters… well, they took something else.
Graal moved past Tetrakall, and Dagon Trelltongue was waiting for him. The man, once trusted advisor to King Leanoric, a man who had betrayed the people of Falanor for his own life, betrayed his king and queen, gave a deep bow and fear was etched deeply into his face as if by carefully applied drops of acid. He had aged since Graal had last seen him. He had aged considerably. Grey streaked his hair, fear squatted in his eyes like black toads, and his mouth was a trembling line of persistent terror.
"You have conquered," said Dagon, his bow lowering further, the tone of his voice unreadable. He had seen what cankers could do first hand; he did not want to be their next victim.
"Yes. And you, also, did well Trelltongue. You have–" Graal smiled. "Why, my man, you have slaughtered your own people. How does that feel, pray tell?" Graal moved close. Could smell Dagon's terror. He reached out, and stroked the man's hair, his long finger tracing a line down Dagon's jaw. "You are responsible for the ease of my success, you are responsible for perfectly traced plans, responsible for the fall of Falanor. I wonder, little man, if you sleep soundly in your bed at night?"
Dagon looked up, then, a sharp movement. "Alcohol helps," he said, smoothly. And there was a spark in his eyes, but Graal held his gaze and the flame died to be replaced by cold dread. A knowledge that every waking day he would have to live with the guilt of betraying a nation.
"Come with me!" snapped Graal, and led Dagon across the Welcome Hall with its gold and silver mosaics depicting the Trials of Gerannorkin, through several long chambers still resplendent with huge oak tables filled with baskets of winter flowers from the South Woods, then right, down more corridors to a huge library. Graal was sure of his path. To Dagon, it appeared Graal had been there before. Many times.
In the ancient library, wood gleamed and stunk of rich wax and polish. The smell of well-tended books invaded Dagon's nostrils, and a stab of recognition and nostalgia pierced his mind; he had sat here with King Leanoric on many occasions, as they shared coffee and brandy and discussed affairs of state. Now, the place seemed cold and dead, as cold and dead as the king. And whilst it could not be said Dagon Trelltongue was directly responsible for the invasion of Falanor – it would have happened with or without his input, his revealing of tactics and military positions, and his betrayal, his information, had certainly made the life of General Graal and the Army of Iron easier.
Dagon noticed a bag in the General's hand, and they moved to the centre of the library. Towering bookcases reared around them, and Graal gestured to a series of low leather reading couches. Dagon sat, on the edge of a couch, as if he might flee at any moment. Graal smiled at this.
From the bag he took a small mirror and placed this flat on a table. Then he seated himself, and stared down at the silver glass. Softly, he whispered three words of power, and the glass misted black, then swirled with sparkles of gold and amber. Then a face materialised and Graal smiled. It was his daughter. One of the Soul Stealers.
"Tashmaniok."
"Father."
"Did you find them?"
"We found them."
"Did you kill them?"
"No, father."
Graal disguised his annoyance well, with only a tightening of muscles in his jaw betraying the fact he did not appreciate such news. "What happened?"
"Kell, the old warrior, turned out more resourceful than we anticipated. He was bloodbond. But more. There was something else about him, father; something we do not understand."
"He is mortal, like the rest of them," spat Graal, suddenly losing his cool. "You must destroy him!"
"Is this pride speaking, father?" She smiled a cold smile, and Graal knew, then, he had raised her well.
"Not pride." He was cool. "Necessity. What of the other? Saark? Did he have that which we seek?"
"We could not ascertain."
"You were fought off?"
"Saark had help."
"From whom?"
"A little boy summoned insects from the wood, the floors, the air. His name was Skanda. I have read about him, in your Book of Legends, and in your Granite Throne Lore."
Graal frowned. "Impossible. Skanda is dead! The whole Ankarok race are dead! The Warlords saw to that, millennia past!"
Tashmaniok turned from the mirror, then returned to gaze at her father with unnerving, crimson eyes. Her gaze was cold; unforgiving. "Still," she said, smoothly, unperturbed. "Skanda was able to toss Shanna aside as if she were a simple village girl. And he carried a scorpion."
"Did it… have two tails? Two stings?"
"It did," said Tash. "Now do you believe us?"
"I believe there is dark magick at play," scowled General Graal. "Where are you?"
"Heading north," said Tashmaniok. "We picked up their
trail leading away from the burning town. It's a long story. However, Skanda no longer travels with the two men. There is little between here and the Black Pike Mountains; we can only assume they head for the Cailleach Fortress."
"I will send some help. Something special," said Graal.
"Yes. We underestimated these men. It will not happen again. No more mistakes. We will peel the skin from their bones."
"Do it. And Tash?"
"Yes, father?"
Graal blinked, slow and lazy, like a reptile. "I love you, girls. Don't ever forget that."
"We never forget it, father."
The mirror returned to a shimmer of silver and Graal stood, stretching his spine. He moved to a narrow window in the library wall, more of an archer's slit than a true window, which had been filled with lead-lined glass. He looked down from the Rose Palace, over the vision below.