by Andy Remic
Nienna was staring into the fire, lost in thought, holding the binding on her severed finger. Myriam moved and sat beside her. "Do you want me to look at that? It should be ready for a fresh dressing."
Nienna sighed, and nodded. "Yes. Thank you."
As Myriam unwound the bandage from Nienna's hand, examined the stitched flesh above the cut finger, and applied fresh herbs to the wound, Nienna found herself looking away, face stony.
The albino soldier under Skaringa Dak had taken her finger to punish Kell for an escape attempt. Now, she felt she was less than a full woman. No longer beautiful. No longer whole. Nienna looked down, and flexed her hand, wincing as pain shot up the edge of her hand and arm.
"Still hurts, yes?" smiled Myriam.
"Like a bitch," said Nienna.
"And you've met a few of those, right?"
Nienna laughed. "I didn't mean you."
"I did," said Myriam. She sighed. "I've done… questionable things." She stroked her own cheek, then rubbed at her eyes. "I'm tired of doing bad things. I have been given a gift. A second chance. I am strong now, and fit, and although in the eyes of the people of Falanor I am…"
"Outcast?" said Kell, softly.
They looked up. He was reclined, his body a shadowy bulk in the gloom of fast approaching night. Firelight glinted in his beard, in his glittering eyes. He may have looked like a big friendly bear, ensconced as he was in his tatty battered tufted old jerkin, but this was a big friendly bear that could turn nasty and insane in the blink of an eye.
"Yes. An outcast. Alien. The enemy." Myriam smiled at Kell, and shrugged. She turned back to Nienna. "Once this is all done, once this game is played out, I will be hunted to my death in Falanor. By every man with a bow or knife. The vachine are seen as evil. I cannot change that."
"They drink the blood of others," said Kell, voice still soft.
"And you eat the flesh of beasts," said Myriam.
"Not human flesh," said Kell.
"To the east, past Valantrium Moor, past Drennach, past the Tetragim Marshes, there are tribes who eat the flesh of men. They see it as no different to cow, or dog, or pig. It's just meat."
"They, too, are evil."
"Why so?"
"It goes against the teachings of the Church. Human flesh is sacred."
Myriam shrugged. "So you mean to tell me if you were ever put in a position where you were going to die of starvation, and human flesh was on the menu, you absolutely would not eat? Not even to save your own life? To save the lives of your children?"
"I would not," lied Kell, throat dry, remembering the Days of Blood, where he had indeed eaten human flesh, and much more, and much worse. "I would rather die," he said, voice husky, eyes hidden.
"Well that's where we differ, then," snapped Myriam, voice hard. "But you should not judge so readily, Kell. I guided you and Nienna and Saark out from that bastard mountain; I saved your lives. This time."
"Lucky for us," nodded Kell, dark eyes glinting in the firelight. And now he didn't look like such a friendly bear. Now he looked far more dangerous. "But enough talk. What are your plans now, Myriam?"
"I will attempt to kill the Vampire Warlords."
This was met with momentary silence. The wind hissed through the trees, and it sounded like the roll of the ocean against a beach. It was hypnotic. Somewhere, snow clumped from high branches. Conifers creaked and sighed.
"Why?" said Kell, eventually, head tilted to one side. It was such a simple question, Myriam was speechless for a few moments as she composed her thoughts.
"It is the right thing to do," she said, eventually, and looked into the fire, refusing to meet his gaze.
"You will die, then," he said.
"So be it."
Kell growled. "This thing is too big for you," he snapped. Graal's Army of Iron is invincible; you know how they took Jalder, and Vor, and the gods only know which other Falanor cities. And I was there at Old Skulkra when the Army of Iron came from the Great North Road, came from Vorgeth Forest like ghosts." He spat, and rubbed his beard viciously, as if angry with himself. "Those bastard Harvesters cast their ice-smoke magick. No soldier could stand against them!"
"But you still live," said Myriam, softly.
"I am different," snapped Kell.
"Yes, you have your magick axe," she said, halfmocking.
"There is nothing magick about this axe. And before you say it, no, she is possessed by no demon; let us just say Ilanna has an attribute none of you could ever guess."
"So you will not help?"
"I cannot fight Falanor's battles forever," he said.
"It looks like you've stopped fighting full stop," said Saark.
Kell looked at him, and pointed with a powerful finger. "Don't you bloody start," he said.
"Well," scoffed Saark, "look at you, look at everything we've been through, all the fights and the murder and the bloodshed. And the mighty Kell would turn his back now? Just as things got worse? The time he is needed the most!"
"That's the point, lad. We made things worse. Don't you see? We're pawns in another man's game. Every step we've taken since meeting up in Jalder in that cursed tannery has seen us step closer and closer to the resurrection of the Vampire Warlords. We made it happen, Saark. We fucking made it happen."
Saark shook his head. "That's so much horse shit Kell, and you know it. If it hadn't happened the way it did, it would have occurred another way. Yes, maybe we were set up to some extent – because Alloria had that Soul Gem implanted near my heart by the dark gods only know what deep and ancient magick. But the outcome was always written in stone, written in blood. Now we have to stop it."
"No." Kell ground his teeth.
"Why not?" said Saark. "I don't believe the mighty Kell has given up. Or maybe he's just turned soft, heart turned to butter, muscles to jellied jam, maybe the mighty Kell's dick has finally gone limp and he can no longer fuck young boys. But you still suck, don't you Kell?" Saark stood. Kell's head was down. "Is that all you want from life now, you dirty old bastard? To suck horse dick and bury your head in the ground? Wallow in self pity?" Saark sang, and his voice was a beautiful, haunting lullaby:
" He dreamt of the slaughter at Valantrium Moor,
A thousand dead foes, there could not be a cure
Of low evil ways and bright terrible deeds,
Of men turned bad, he'd harvest the weeds,
His mighty axe hummed, Ilanna by name,
Twin sharp blades of steel, without any shame
For the deeds she did do, the men she did slay,
Every living bright-eyed creature was legitimate prey."
Saark laughed then. His eyes glittered like jewels in the gloom of the snow-enslaved forest. "What a load of old donkey shit. You should complain. You've been misrepresented in legend…"
Kell slowly stood, boots crunching old pine needles. His eyes burned with fury. With killing rage. His fingers were curled around Ilanna's steel shaft and he lifted her, almost imperceptibly. "You better be careful what you spout, laddie," he growled, and he was gone from the world of humans, he was teetering along a razor blade looking down into a valley of madness. "Somebody might just cut out your tongue."
"What? For speaking the truth? If you don't help us, Kell, if you leave us to face the Vampire Warlords alone, then we will die. And the problem still remains."
"I SAID NO!" thundered the old warrior.
"ARE YOU MAD YET?" screamed Saark suddenly, stepping forward.
Ilanna swept up, a blur, and stopped a hair's breadth under Saark's chin. The dandy grinned. "You good and mad now, old bear?" he said, voice a little calmer.
"Yeah, I'm fucking mad," snarled Kell.
"Then let's go and kill these Vampire Warlords before they do any more damage!"
Kell stared into Saark's eyes for a long minute. Then he seemed to deflate a little. "I will not put Nienna at risk," he said.
"What, I am the reason for all of this?" snapped Nienna. The stump of her finge
r had been neatly bound, and she was sat, rubbing it thoughtfully. "You wish to protect me? Well, you'd better come with us then. Because I'm going with Saark."
"No, you are not," growled Kell.
"Yes, I bloody am. I am a woman. I have my own mind. You do not control me. Or is that what this is all about? It's not about me. Now, I'm your surrogate daughter… but you couldn't control your real daughter, oh no, and she went wild and now you seek to pass off your impotence and lack of control and lack of fatherhood on me. Well, I won't have it, grandfather. I am my own person, and to stop me you'll have to kill me."
Kell sat down by the fire, and stared into the flames, chin on his fist. Firelight glittered in his eyes and Myriam, Saark and Nienna exchanged glances.
Finally, Kell looked up, and stared at each of his companions in turn. Slowly, one by one, he met their gazes, and they stared back, defiant, heads high, proud. "I simply want to save Nienna," he said.
Nienna knelt by his side. "To do that, grandfather, you'll have to help us. This thing is wrong, and you know it. We have to do the right thing. We have to kill this evil. I was there, on Helltop; I saw them brought back from the Chaos Halls, just like you, and the terror nearly ripped me in two. These Warlords have not come to Falanor so they can go sleep in comfy beds and have sweet sugary dreams. They are here for blood and death."
"Just like the vachine," said Kell, sharply.
"Yes," said Saark. "Just like the vachine. But I fear we are in the middle of something far more complex than we could ever understand; we are in the middle of some ancient feud. Unfortunately, we're the bastards being persecuted, used as pawns, and I cannot sit by and watch good people slaughtered."
"It will be a hard fight," said Kell, looking around at their faces.
"Is there any other kind?" grinned Saark.
"We may all die," said Kell.
"As I pointed out, you're ever the happy face of optimism. But we're used to you now, Kell. We can put up with your strange ways."
"You'll have to do what you're told, lad," Kell snapped, pointing with a stubby rough finger. "You hear me?"
Saark spread his hands, face filled with pain and hurt. "Do I ever do anything else?"
"Hmph," said Kell, and rubbed his beard, then his eyes, then the back of his neck. "I will regret this. I know it. But if you want to bring down the Vampire Warlords, if you want to spread their ashes to the wind, all of you," again he fixed Saark, Myriam and finally Nienna, with a little shake of his head, fixed them all with a deadly stare, "all of you must do exactly what I say."
Saark shrugged. "Whatever you say, old horse. You have something in mind, then?"
Kell stared at him. And he gave an evil smile which had nothing to do with humour. "Yes. I have a plan," he said.
They rode for two days, both Kell and Myriam realising that they had emerged northeast of Jalder, quite close to the huge dark woodland known as the Iron Forest. The Iron Forest was a natural northern barrier which separated Jalder from the Black Pike Mountains, and rife with stories of rogue Blacklippers, evil brigands and ghosts. Kell waved this idea aside when Saark brought it up one evening, just before dusk.
"Pah," said Kell, the skinning knife between his teeth as he ripped flesh from a hare brought down by the skill of Myriam's archery. Now, as a vachine, she was even more deadly accurate with the weapon. What the cancer had taken away, vachine technology had improved with clockwork. "There's nothing as dangerous in the Iron Forest as me, lad. So stop quivering like a lost little girl who's pissed in her pants."
"Little girl? Piss? Me?" Saark placed a hand to his chest, and winced a little. The wound from Helltop at the hands of Kradek-ka, now nearly fully healed, still stung him occasionally. "I think you'll find that when brigands avoid you, it's nothing to do with your notoriety, nor your mythical axe. It's to do with the great stench of your unwashed armpits which precedes you."
"Boys, boys," said Myriam, holding up her hand. "Please. Stop. Enough." Nienna giggled. Since the pain in her hand had receded, partially due to the natural healing process, partially due to herbs which Myriam mixed into a creamy broth every night and which eased pain and gave sweet, beautiful dreams filled with vivid colours, she had found herself mellowing incredibly. Imminent danger was far ahead, the travelling not so hectic, and she found she was a far different girl from the slightly plump and naive creature who'd been about to enter the academic world of Jalder University. Now, Nienna's muscles had hardened, toned from weeks of marching and climbing, even fighting; her hands were calloused from chopping wood and gathering branches, and there was a toughness about her eyes. This was a girl who had witnessed death, observed horrors beyond the ken of most Falanor nobility. The experiences had strengthened her. Built her in character and resolve. Turned her from girl, to woman.
Kell snorted. "You're a dandy peacock bastard."
"You're a stinking old goat with a prolapse." Saark laughed, his laughter the decadent peal of raucous enjoyment found at any hedonistic Palace Feast.
Myriam shook her head again, somewhat in despair. "Saark! Stop! Listen, we passed some wild mushrooms back down the trail. Please please please, stop arguing, go back there and collect them for me. It would add a great deal to the meal."
Saark sighed. "Well, that depends on my reward." He winked.
Myriam tilted her head. Her eyes shone, but before she could answer Kell butted in, voice harsh. "You'll get the back of my hand if you don't, lad," he growled.
"Ahh, but I know you love me truly," smiled Saark, making Kell's scowl deepen further. Grabbing his sheathed rapier, he trotted off down the fast darkening path. "How far?" he shouted back.
"Ten minutes' walk," replied Myriam.
Saark nodded, and was gone. A ghost, vanished into the angular, bent trunks of the Iron Forest.
"Will he be all right?" said Nienna, face a mask of worry.
"The glib fool can look after himself," snorted Kell, returning to skinning the hare.
Saark trotted along, quite happy, vachine eyesight vivid in the darkness. He pondered the gift of the bite from Shanna, one of the Soul Stealers sent, not to kill him, as he had at first thought, but to bring him to Skaringa Dak for the resurrection – or summoning – of the Vampire Warlords. What had Myriam said? He'd been injected with blood-oil, which partially turned him into a vampire. Gave him many of the benefits, but without clockwork to make him truly vachine, then he would die. Saark snorted. He felt far from dead. In fact, he felt more alive than ever! Stronger, faster, tougher, with a higher tolerance to pain and an amazing rate of healing. Saark wondered what sort of match he would be for somebody like… Kell.
He grinned. No. Kell would still kick him down into the Bone Graveyard. After all, Kell was something special.
Saark stopped. He'd wandered a little off the trail, and rotated himself, eyes narrowing. There it was. In his meandering thoughts, he'd started through the twisted trunks of the Iron Forest.
"Damn."
The Iron Forest sprawled for perhaps ten or fifteen leagues, a haunted barrier between Jalder and the Black Pikes. This reputedly haunted stretch of woods was made up from ancient towering conifers, spruce and red pine, birch and blue sarl, and huge sprawls dominated by even more ancient oaks, perhaps five or six hundred years old, crooked and black as if their ancient trunks had been burned in savage forest fires. But the trees still managed to live on, in twisted blackened husks.
This woodland was the reason Jalder's walls had never spread far north. And it had also been one reason the Army of Iron, led by General Graal, had managed to covertly approach the city's northern defences without detection.
Saark shivered, suddenly looking around. It was a damned creepy place.
Even though the winter sky was still filled with witch-light, the forest was black. Long shadows and branch-filtered gloom did little to brighten the path. Saark shivered again, picking his way to the trail from which he had so foolishly strayed. He hated forests. And he especially hated forests at night. Sa
ark was a creature of Palace Courts, of feasts and banquets, of jesters and music, laughing and dancing, long silk clothes and powdered wigs, thick white make-up, rouged lips, pungent perfume and slick eager quims. Saark's world was one of money and liquor, and endless long nights of drunken debauchery. Woods were for woodsmen. Forests were for peasants. The whole of the outdoors, in fact, the more Saark considered it, were a peasant's playground. How could one enjoy life grubbing for potatoes? Chopping wood? Slaughtering chickens? He shivered. Surely, that was a life worse than death? But here he was, ironically, stinking like a pauper and probably looking as bad as any vagrant who wandered the back-street gutters of Vor. Saark didn't dare look in a reflective pool; he was afraid of what he might see. Afraid of how far he'd fallen.
Reaching the path, Saark stopped. To his left, he heard a crack . He froze.
Horse shit, he thought. There's something there!
An animal? Or a man? He gave a little involuntary shiver, which tickled up and down his spine. He drew his rapier, and the steel shone cold in what trickles of light leaked through the forest canopy.
Saark breathed, a stream of chilled smoke.
Or… was it something worse?
A soldier. An albino soldier. Or maybe even a vachine. Maybe even a canker.
"Double horse shit," he muttered, his own unexpected utterance startling him. To his right, a clump of snow fell from slumped branches. It crunched through the woods in a subdued way, echoes bouncing back and forth from ancient gnarled trunks.
Saark swished his blade. Well, whatever it was, it'd better stay away from him! He'd gut it like a fish! Carve it like a duckling!
Saark looked left, and right. He decided wild mushrooms weren't such a culinary necessity after all, and what he really needed to do right at this moment in time was hurry back to the security and light of the campfire.
Above, snow started to fall.
Darkness finally drew a veil across the sky.