Soul Stealers

by Andy Remic

  The first of the Refineries was being hauled up the main cobbled street, its darkness, and angularity, seeming to block out pink pastel light from a winter sun. Graal turned to Dagon, deep in thought.

  "You know it is said this man, Kell, is blessed by the gods," said Dagon, slowly, looking sideways at Graal.

  "That is not so," said Graal. "He is mortal, like the rest of you… with your feeble human shells."

  "No," said Dagon, and his voice held a splinter of triumph. "He is Kell. He is the Legend. He carries the mighty Ilanna. He may not be a part of your culture, but he is certainly a part of ours."

  "You know something else?" Graal strode in fury to the cowering man, and hoisted him into the air by the throat. Dagon's legs kicked and he choked, and slowly Graal released the iron in his grip.

  "No, I swear!"

  "Speak, or I'll rip out your windpipe and eat it before your fucking eyes!"

  "All I know is what Leanoric told me! He said Kell was a Vachine Hunter, way back, years ago for the old Battle King. He roamed the Black Pike Mountains, slaying rogue vachine who troubled our borders. We did not know, back then, that these were outcast, the impure, the damaged, the unholy. We did not know there was a civilisation! We did not realise vachine were a discrete species, an entire race! If we had known, we would have sent our armies!"

  Graal dropped Dagon to the polished, wooden floor. He moved back to the window.

  "Kell is a special man. He has special knowledge."

  "He knows how to kill vachine," said Dagon, rubbing his throat.

  "Soon he will learn to die," said Graal without emotion, as he watched soldiers loading Blood Refineries with the first of the frozen corpses from the ravaged city of Vor.

  CHAPTER 10

  Echoes of a Childhood Dream

  As Saark crawled towards Kell, towards his pulsing blood-stench, the hunger deep in his veins and soul, so a new devastating pain lashed through him in waves. Saark hit the ground, hard, and lay there panting, face pressing the snow, and feeling as though he was being beaten with helves. He looked up, strained to see if Kell had noticed, and then wrenched at his own face as the fangs – having made their presence known to him – retreated back into his skull. Saark screamed a silent scream of pure agony, then rolled onto his back and allowed the cold night to claim him.

  At dawn, Saark awoke to Kell's whistling. He was covered by a thick blanket, and warm soup bubbled over a fire. With aching limbs, Saark stood and tested himself. Numbly, he realised there was no longer any pain. Whatever had poisoned him, blood-oil Kell called it; well, it had gone. And he still had his head, which he shook in disbelief; and that meant nothing had given him away to Kell.

  Approaching the fire, he slumped down and Kell

  smiled. "If you sleep out in the snow like that, lad, you'll catch your death."

  "It was the fight. In Creggan. It took a lot out of me."

  "Aye," said Kell. "Well, let's eat fast then saddle up. We have a long day through enemy-infested country ahead of us. And I dare say, those two bitches from the Bone Fields will be somewhere behind, sniffing on our stinking trail."

  "Do you… do you feel all right?" said Saark, softly, not quite meeting Kell's gaze.

  "I feel as powerful as ten men," growled Kell. "Come on. I want to find Nienna."

  The canker stood in the shadow of the ancient oak woodland on the summit of Hangman's Hill, a natural chameleon on the outskirts of the desecrated, crumbling monastery. Snow fell, drifting in light diagonal flurries and adding a fuzzy edge to reality. The canker was huge, the size of a lion, but there the similarity ended. Muscles writhed like the coils of a massive serpent beneath waxen white skin, the smooth surface broken occasionally by tufts of grey and white fur, and by open, weeping wounds where tiny cogs and wheels of twisted clockwork broke free, ticking, spinning, minute gears stepping up and down, tiny levers adjusting and clicking neatly into place. Only here, in this canker, in this abnormal vachine, the movements were not so neat – because every aspect of the canker's clockwork was a deviation, an aberration of flesh and engineering and religion; the canker was outcast. Impure. Unholy.

  As evening spread swiftly towards night, the sky streaked with purple bruises and jagged saw-blades of cloud, so the canker watched two men progress, like distant avatars, making their way gradually across the snowy plain. The small entourage zig-zagged between stands of lightning-blasted conifers and ancient, pointed stones, one stocky man leading two horses, the second, more slender and effete, master of a laden donkey. The canker shifted its bulk, aware it was invisible to the men, blending as it did with the ancient tumble of fallen stones and thick woodland of thousand year oaks, and doubly hidden by the haze of wind-whipped snow. It turned, superior clockwork eyes observing the trees, their gnarled trunks and branches full of protrusions, whorls and nubs of elderly bark. A product of ancient vegetative inter-breeding, a meshing of woodland technologies – of nature, and soul, and spirit. Like me, thought the canker, and smiled as far as such a bestial, twisted, corrupted creation could smile; for its mouth was five times the size of a human mouth, the jaw jacked wide open, lips pulled high and wrenched upwards over the skull with eyes displaced to the side of its head. Huge fangs, twisted and bent in awkward directions, glistened with saliva and… blood-oil. Blood-oil. And blood-oil magick. The basis for an entire vachine civilisation; the nectar of the machine vampires.

  The canker smiled again, a bitter smile as it remembered its long past, as it remembered the pretty man, and this time the thoughts behind the grimace were as equally twisted. For the canker was deviant, unholy, cast out by the Engineer Episcopate, and however conversely, employed by the very vachine Engineers who had condemned it. The canker could hunt. And it could kill. And in some small way attempt to find a token retribution, some faith, some hope for that entwining symbiotic battle of flesh and clockwork which had twisted the canker since shortly after its meeting with… Graal. When clockwork had been introduced to fresh human flesh.

  Graal. Now, there was a man to hate.

  The canker was obedient. It had been bribed with a future promise of returned and retuned flesh, of fresh new mortality, of assimilation into a purebreed human where it could return to a life of normality; without the eternal internal pain of battling machinery.

  I can do it, thought the monster. I can find out.

  And if not? Well, the instruction had been complicit.

  I must kill, it thought.

  For it is the only way to be sane.

  The canker watched the two men dwindling into twilight, drifting ghosts, and even from this great distance it could smell the oil on their weapons, the sweat in their clothes, the unrefined blood in their veins. Hunger pulsed in the canker's brain, amidst a turmoil of gears and cogs and painful memories, so painful; brainmesh, it was called. And it hurt worse than acid.

  In eerie silence the canker stood, stretched powerful muscles, and padded down the hill between elderly gnarled oaks.

  "I thought you said there was a fortified town out this way?" grumbled Kell, stopping and leaning on his axe with a weary sigh. Snow swirled around his boots, and the huge tangled bearskin across his broad shoulders sat crusted with rimes of ice, shining silver. The two geldings halted behind him, and one pawed the frozen earth with a heavy, iron-shod hoof. "It'll be night soon; I could dearly do with some hot food and three hours in a soft bed, away from this bastard snow."

  "Ah, Kell old horse, you are so narrow-minded in your basic warrior's vision!" Saark grinned at the old soldier. As the day had advanced, he had begun to feel better and better, more fit and healthy than he had for years. It was a miracle, he realised, with a dark, grim, bitter humour. "A plate of simple peasant vegetables? Surely that cannot be your only lust? What of the warm inviting thighs of some generously proportioned innkeeper's daughter? What of her eager lips? Her fastrising bosom? Her peasant's need to please?"

  Kell hawked and spat, and focused on the dandy. "Saark mate, you misunderstand m
e. Exhaustion is the first thing on my mind; followed by an ale, and then a need to get to Nienna before something bad happens. And look at you! I cannot believe you bought such ridiculous clothes back in Creggan. You should have been born a woman, mate. Too much pompous lace and courtside extravagance. It's enough to make an honest woodsman puke."

  "But Kell, Kell, dear Kell – born a woman, you say?" Saark smiled, his perfectly symmetrical teeth displaying a boyish humour that had broken many a woman's heart. "Is that because you find me secretly attractive? Through all our battles, all our triumphs, the mighty Kell, grizzled old warrior, hero of Kell's Legend, superior in strength and violence to all his many enemies… secretly, all along, he was a boy-fancier and lusted after a slice of Saark's pork pie!"

  "You go too far!" stormed Kell, and lurched forward, mighty axe Ilanna held in one hefty fist, face crimson with embarrassment and sudden rage. "Don't be smear ing me with your own backward deviant wants. You might enjoy a roll with a man; I do not. The only use I have for a man," he hoisted his axe purposefully, "is to detach his head from his fucking shoulders."

  Saark took a step back, hand on sword-hilt. His smile was still there, but mistrust shone in his eyes. He knew Kell to be a good friend, and a mighty foe; honourable, powerful, but ultimately compromised by a bad streak of temper made worse by even the smallest drop of whiskey. "Kell, old boy," his words were more clipped now, for the stress of the journey – and the hunt for Nienna – was wearing hard on both men. "Calm down. I was only jesting. Soon, we will find a tavern. Hopefully, one without vachine bitches and Blacklipper raiders. And then, then you can satiate your own personal lust."

  "What's that supposed to mean, lad?"

  "I'm sure they'll have a drop or ten of Falanor's Finest Malt."

  Kell made a growling sound, more animal than human, and took another step closer. Saark, to his credit, stood his ground. He may have looked like a rampant peacock loose and horny in the midst of a silk market, but he had been King Leanoric's Sword Champion. Many times, he had been underestimated – usually at the expense of somebody's life.

  "You in the mood for a fight, lad?" snapped Kell.

  Saark held up one hand, shaking his head, eyes lowered to the snowy ground. "No, no, you misunderstand." He gazed up then, reading Kell's pain. Nienna had been gone far too long, and their quest to find her seemed as hopeless now as it had when the land of Falanor was overrun by the albino Army of Iron.

  Ultimately, Kell's missing granddaughter was a thorn in this great lion's paw; but one nobody could easily extract. Only Kell could do that. And the chances were, the search and rescue would be carried high on the back of mutilation, murder and annihilation. Kell was not a forgiving man.

  "My friend, you are worse than any irate vachine. Calm down! I was just trying to lighten the mood, old horse."

  "I'll lighten your bowels," growled Kell.

  "You really are a cantankerous and stinking donkey."

  "And you are a feathered popinjay, too damn fond of your own song. Shut your mouth, Saark—I can't say it any plainer—before I carve you a second smile."

  Saark nodded, and they understood one another, and they moved on through the now heavily falling snow.

  "There's the town," said Saark. "It's called Kettleskull Creek. Fortified with high walls. Brilliant. We might get an uninterrupted sleep! And it looks like the Army of Iron did not pass this way; probably too eager to get to Jalder, and the ripe harvest found there."

  "Kettleskull Creek? What an odd name."

  "It's fine, Kell. They know me."

  "By the way you say 'know me', do you mean there are fifteen bastard children?"

  Saark tilted his head. "You know, Kell, for you that's pretty good. No. I have only four bastard children I know of, although I'm sure there are many more in the provinces." He gave a wry smile, eyes distant, as if reliving a catalogue of pretty women. "I did a lot of travelling in the name of the king. So many beautiful ladies. So little time."

  But Kell wasn't listening. He had turned, was looking down their back trail. In the distance huge brooding hills blackened the sky through the twilight snow. Kell searched from left to right, both hands clasped on Ilanna. "Let's get to the town," he said.

  "A problem?"

  "We're being followed."

  "You sure?"

  Kell turned, and the look in his eyes chilled Saark to the marrow. "Your skill is wooing unsuspecting ladies, lad. Mine is killing those creatures who need to be dead. Trust me. We are being followed. We need to move now… unless you relish a fight in the dark? In the ice?"

  "Understood," muttered Saark, and led the way towards the high walls of the stocky timber barricade.

  Saark had spoken the truth, the villagers knew him, and they lifted the bars on the twenty foot high gates and allowed the two men entry. As Saark turned, smiling, he faced a porcupine of steady, unsheathed swords.

  "What's the matter, lads? Did I say something to offend?"

  "Gambling debts," muttered one man with strange, black tattoos on his teeth. He was tall and rangy, with dark looks and bushy brows that met at the centre of his forehead. "Let's just say that last time you was here Saark… well mate, you made a swift exit."

  Saark gave an easy laugh, resting back on one hip, his hand held out, lace cuff puffed towards the ranger. "My man, you have read my very honourable intention. I have indeed decided to return in order to pay off my substantial gambling debts." Saark moved to his saddlebag, fished out several coins, and tossed them over with an air of arrogance. The tall man grunted, catching the coins, fumbling for a moment, then examining the gold carefully. Slowly, the swords were sheathed one by one. Saark gave a chuckle. "Peasant gold," he said, head high, eyes twinkling as they challenged the group of men. Several went again for their weapons, but the tall man stopped them, and waved Saark on.

  "Go on, about your business. But don't be causing any trouble. There's enough in Kettleskull who have cause to challenge you, King's Man."

  "No longer King's Man, I think you'll find."

  "As you wish."

  They strode down the frozen road, and Kell muttered, "'Peasant's Gold'?"

  Saark gave a thin smile. "It does one no harm to be occasionally reminded of one's place."

  "Surely you meant 'Stolen Gold'?"

  "That as well," smiled Saark, sardonically.

  The main inn, The Spit-Roasted Pig, squatted beside a huge, warehouse-type building, dark and foreboding, set back from the road and piled high with snow. Kell stared up at the structure, then dismissed it. He followed Saark towards the inn.

  "Remember," rumbled Kell, grabbing Saark's shoulder and pulling him rudely back. "Keep a low profile in here. We restock, refuel, then we're off again to find Nienna. No funny business. No women. No drinking. You understand? "

  "Of course!" scowled Saark, and held apart his hands, face a platter of innocence. "As if I would do anything else!"

  Kell stared at the half-full bottle of whiskey as Myriam's poison began to eat him again. The bottle squatted on the bar, filled with an amber delight, a sugary nectar which was sweet, oh so sweet, and it called to him like a woman, called to him with honeyed words of promise. Taste me. Drink me. Absorb me into your blood, and we can be one, we can be whole. I will take away the poison, Kell. I will take away your pain.

  Around Kell the noise of the inn blurred, and fell into a tumbling swirling spiral of downward descent. Only him, and the whiskey, existed and he could taste it, taste her on his tongue and she was delight, summer flowers, fresh honey, a virgin's smile, and how could Kell possibly say no to such an innocent invitation? How could he refuse?

  Slowly, he reached out and grabbed the bottle. It was aged twenty years in oak vats. It had cost a pretty penny of gold, but the gold in his saddlebags was stolen from the albino army, the invading Army of Iron; and Kell cared nothing for their loss.

  "I'm going to my room," said Kell, tongue thick, mind swirling, focus dead.

  "There's a good lad,"
said Saark, eyes glittering with a different distraction, and watched the old warrior depart.

  Saark loved many things in life. In fact, there were so many pleasures that in his humble opinion made life worth living, he doubted he could list them all. A child's laughter. Sunlight. The clink of gold on gold. The soft kiss of a woman's lips. The velvet skin on the curve of a hip. The slick handful of an eager quim. Liquor. Bawdy company. Bad jokes. Gambling…

  Saark coughed, innocent and unaware, eyes on a buxom wench across the tavern who'd caught his eye. She had long red hair and a cheeky smile. Then the heavy blow knocked him from his feet. He hit the ground, confusion his mistress, and he swam through treacle and felt himself being dragged. Another two blows sent him spinning into darkness. When he came round, groggy and stunned, a cold wind caressed his skin, but it felt good, good against the swellings on his face, tortured flesh battered and bruised after a pounding of helves. What happened? he thought, dazed. Just what the fuck happened?