by Remic, Andy
"They killed everybody in Jalder," said Kell, voice cold and hard. "I was there. I saw it."
"No, Kell. They killed many in Jalder. But men are more resilient than you give them credit. They hid. In cellars and attics and warehouses. In the sewer systems, in the shit cauldrons of the tanneries. Kell, many survived, trust me. Kuradek knows this, and he will hunt them down, turn them into his vampire slaves. Into parasitical puppets he can control."
Kell took a deep breath. He thought of his few friends in Jalder, old men, old warriors from back at Crake's Wall, Jangir Field, the Siege of Drennach, and the Battle of Valantrium Moor. If any could have survived the ice smoke, then surely these were the men?
"I don't know," said Kell, slowly. "It was a miracle I survived the invasion. If it had not been for Ilanna…"
"This is what Graal told Kuradek. This is what I heard."
Kell nodded. "And what of the other two bastards? They going to set up a nursery and wean baby vampires with bottles of blood?"
"No, Kell. Meshwar the Violent will head south, rule Falanor's capital, the city of Vor. There, Graal believes even more rebels survived the ice-smoke invasion. There are thousands of tunnels beneath the city, a huge and sprawling complex. When Graal's invasion began, many fled into the tunnel and sewer network. Many hid. And Vor is vast, as you well know. It is Meshwar's job to hunt down these people, weed them out, turn them into his vampire horde."
"And the third?"
"Bhu Vanesh. The Eater in the Dark. He is a hunter, from the old days," said Myriam, and she rubbed at her eyes, weary now despite her vachine blood. Terror edged her words, and Kell noticed a slight tremor to her hand. If she was faking her fear, then she was a very good actress. But then, Kell had met many a good actress in his years of battle across Falanor. He'd killed a few, as well; on stage, and off.
"And what is his wonderful plan?"
"He will seek to take control of the Port of Gollothrim."
"Ship building?" said Kell darkly, brow furrowed. "He would seek to expand their dirty little empire west? He wants transport for his army, doesn't he, Myriam?"
"Yes. His albino slaves and vampires will take the existing navy, and also build him an extended fleet of ships. With this new, mammoth navy they will head west across the Salarl Ocean – expand their Vampire Dominion across the world!"
"What of Graal?"
"He will go with Bhu Vanesh. Oversee the ship-building. One could say he has been… demoted. Graal thought he could control the Vampire Warlords. But they are all-powerful. They have other plans."
"Graal always was an arrogant bastard. And I didn't get to carve my name on his arse with my axe. Not yet, anyways. Still, l at least carved him a new cheek flap."
"Graal was less than complimentary about that," said Myriam, flashing a dark smile. Her eyes met Kell's. "You understand what all this means, axeman? You do understand?"
Kell sighed. It was a sigh from deep down in a dark place weary of carrying the weight of the world. "I'm a retired soldier," he said. "I'm a simple man, a man of bread and cheese, of coarse wine and nostalgic memories of battle. It was never meant to be this way. I was supposed to live out my final years in Jalder, see this young lady through university, maybe travel the Black Pikes one last time before dotage crushed my rotten teeth in his fist, and watched my mind dribble out my ears."
"We have to stop them," said Nienna, who had been listening, quietly, head to one side. Her eyes flashed dark.
"We cannot," said Kell.
"You can!" snapped Nienna. "If anybody can halt this madness, Kell the Legend can!" Hope was bright in her eyes. Her hands and lips trembled. Her focus was complete.
Kell shook his head. "I'm an old man, Nienna," he said gently. "My back hurts in the cold. My knees hurt on stairs. My shoulder is an agony every time I lift the damned axe. And, and this will amuse you, Myriam, for it is your damn fault… the poison is still in my bloodstream. The poison you put there. Lingering, like a maggot under a rock."
"I gave you the antidote," said Myriam, her lips narrowing.
"Which does not always work?" Kell raised his eyebrows. Myriam remained silent, chewing her lip. "I thought not. With your eagerness to become a vachine, you killed me, woman, as sure as putting a dagger through my heart. Your antidote bought me time. But the evil liquor is still there: in my veins, in my organs, in my bones. I can feel it. Eating me, slow and hot, like an apothecary's acid."
"I am so, so sorry about that," said Myriam, but knew her words meant nothing. She had been dying, from a cancer riddling her every bone. To coerce Kell into helping her, she poisoned him with a rare toxin from a breed of Trickla flowers found far out west beyond the Salarl Ocean. Her antidote, however, had not been enough; or maybe the poison had been rampant in Kell's system for too long. What did he have now? Weeks? Months? A year? By saving herself, Myriam had effectively condemned Falanor's greatest hope. Falanor's last true hero. Myriam felt this irony slide through her like honey through a sponge, and she smiled a dry smile, a bitter smile. By her actions, Myriam may have condemned the world.
"I do not believe it," said Nienna finally, placing hands on hips. Her eyes were narrowed, brows dark with thunder. "Are you sure, grandfather? Sure about all this? I watched you fight those Soul Stealers. You killed them! Like they were children!"
Kell laughed sharply. "Oh, how the young do so romanticise. They almost had me, girl; if it had not been for Skanda's help, I would be slaughtered horse-meat on a butcher's worn wooden slab." His gaze transferred to Myriam. "You came here for help. To help yourself, yes, through fear of your new masters; but to help Falanor was an after-thought. I am sorry, Myriam. Battle weighs heavy on my old body, and my twisted mind. There is nothing I can do. For once, Falanor must help Herself."
Myriam bowed her head. Tears lay like silk on her cheeks. "So be it, Kell," she whispered.
They travelled for hours down narrow tunnels barely wide enough to accommodate Nienna. Eventually, when exhaustion crept upon Myriam, the hardy and seemingly tireless vachine, and Nienna was like the walking dead, they called a stop in a small alcove. It was cold, and damp, but then so were all the tunnels under Skaringa Dak.
Nienna lay, wrapped in a thin blanket, her finger stump throbbing. After an albino soldier amputated her finger in retaliation for Kell's defiance after they had been taken prisoner, events had moved so fast, so frantic, she had barely a moment to consider her new severance. But now. Now, despite her exhaustion, sleep would not come. Her eyes moved through the darkness lit by strange mineral lodes, and came to rest first on Kell, snoring, lost in the realms of distant dreams and memories and battles; then on to Myriam, breath hissing past her small, pointed fangs. Vampire fangs. Vachine fangs. Nienna rubbed at her finger, and winced as pain flared up her hand, up her arm. Kell had expertly stitched the wound, the amputation, slicing a flap of skin and pulling it over the neatly cut bone. He had tears in his eyes. Tears of sorrow, but also of guilt. He blamed himself. He felt completely responsible. And Nienna supposed he was, to a large extent; but then, if he was to blame for the loss of Nienna's little finger, he was also to blame for saving her life time after time after time. She could forgive him one small mistake, if mistake it was. She grimaced. In war, they all had to make sacrifices. And at least she was still alive.
Nienna rubbed her finger. It had been the most painful moment of her life, and the act of butchery, the look on the albino soldier's face – well, it was something she would never forget. Just like Kat's murder was something she would never forget. The vachine, the cankers, the soldiers, the battles – her grandfather striding with axe in hand, with Ilanna in hand, and turning from an affectionate old soldier, a retired old soldier, white-haired, funny, loving, ruffling her hair, cooking vegetable soup, polishing her boots with spit and polish and hard elbow grease, chastising her for neglecting her studies, nagging at her to smarten up her clothes, eat better food, be nice to her mother even when her mother shouted at her, neglected her, allowed her to s
tarve. Nienna laughed bitterly. Oh yes. Her mother. A good strong woman, everybody said. A religious woman. Pious. When she died, she had earned a place in the Bright Halls. But Nienna remembered a different aspect to her character. Nienna's mother, Kell's daughter – Sara, the daughter who had disowned Kell and swore never to speak to him again. Well, to Nienna she was a cold woman. A hard woman. A woman of iron principles. A woman who made Nienna's flesh creep, made her hackles rise, a woman who'd made her life a misery with constant religious studies, muttered prayers and the eternal, submissive worshipping of the bloody gods!
Damn the gods, thought Nienna.
Let them burn in the furnaces of the Blood Void!
Let them rot in the Chaos Halls!
Yes. Kell might be a hard man, a drinker of whiskey, a pugilist, he might be a butcher and all the other things people called him – and what she had seen. But he had a core of goodness, Nienna knew. He had a kind heart. A kinder soul. And to her, no matter how others tried to deviate matters, he was still a hero. He was Kell. Kell, the Legend.
Sleep finally came.
And with it came a dream, a dark dream, a dream in which Bhu Vanesh hunted her, panting and giggling through a dark, deserted city, through empty streets and temples and cathedrals, running over slick greasy cobbles. And as he caught her, his fangs gleamed and he reached for her succulent throat…
As Nienna tossed and turned in her sleep, so Myriam's eyes flickered open. She uncurled, like a snake unfurling from the base of an apple tree. Myriam stood, and stretched, revelling in the feel of new muscles, new bones, and the death of the cancer within. How could cancer survive in a being which was itself a predator? A cancer on civilisation? How could cancer cells eat her own, when her new vachine cells were far more aggressive and vicious and violent than anything Nature could possibly conjure? Where Nature had failed, man had stepped forward. Myriam's eyes narrowed. In her opinion, the vachine were the pinnacle of evolution. It could get no better than this.
Gently, she reached down. Beneath Kell's arm was sheathed his Svian, his reserve blade for when Ilanna was lost. It was also, according to ancient, esoteric legends (although Kell would never admit it as such), a ritual suicide blade. For when times got bad. Real bad.
Myriam withdrew the Svian. The pattern of Kell's snoring altered, then he snorted and relaxed again, and she toyed with the blade for a few moments, running her finger up and down the razor edge. A bead of blood appeared on her pale white finger. She licked it clear, tongue stained berry-red for just an instant. Then it was gone, the blood-oil was gone, and she gave a little shiver.
Inside Myriam, something went click. She felt the rhythm of springs and counter-weights. She felt the spin of gears. She felt the stepping of advanced clockwork mechanisms, entwined with her flesh, her bones, her organs. And Myriam revelled in her advanced evolution.
Could she let anything get in the way of her vachine existence?
Could she let Kell get in the way?
Of course not.
And something pulsed deep in her mind. In her heart. In her clockwork.
She felt the need growing. Growing strong. And Myriam did so need to feed. It burned her, like a brand. Like birth. Like death. Like existence. Existence.
Myriam lifted the Svian blade. It glinted in the reflected luminescence of the mineral-layered walls.
Her eyes shifted to Kell.
And her smile was a cruel, bloodless slit…
CHAPTER 2
Warlords
General Graal was sucked through the blood-magick lines, and it felt like dying, and felt like being born, and eventually he was lying on a cold tile floor in a kitchen, staring up at the smoke-stained, wood-beamed ceiling in the High Fortress at Port of Gollothrim. The High Fortress. He smiled a sickly smile. It was also known locally as Warlord's Tower.
The world was a blur for Graal. First, he could smell woodsmoke. Then he could smell the sea, a distant tang of salt, the taste of fresh sea breeze. Stunned, for the blood-oil magick sending was like being punched into the earth by the fist of a giant, Graal gradually fought for his senses to return. He heard distraught sobbing. He breathed, breathed deep, and inside him clockwork went tick, tick, tick.
Graal moved his head to the left. Kradek-ka lay unconscious, blood leaking from his eyes. His flesh was pale and waxen, and at first Graal thought he was dead – until he heard a tiny stepping of gears, witnessed the gentle rising of Kradek-ka's chest. Then Graal looked right, and jumped at the savagery of the sight…
Bhu Vanesh was there, seven feet tall, narrow, smoke-filled, long arms and legs crooked. One hand held a limp figure, a plump woman bent over backwards, blood dripping freely from where her throat had been entirely ripped out. Her eyes, dead glass eyes, were staring straight at Graal. He shivered. Bhu Vanesh turned a little, as if sensing Graal's return to consciousness. Blood-slit eyes regarded him, but Bhu Vanesh did not break from his task: the task of feeding. His second hand held another woman, this time slim, petite almost, and wearing the white apron of a kitchen attendant. She had long blonde hair, very fine, like silk, which spilled back from her tight entrapment revealing her throat, pale and punctured and quivering.
As Bhu Vanesh sucked vigorously on the plump woman, his eyes watched Graal. Graal stared back. Then Graal's gaze shifted to the slim blonde woman's eyes, and they were frightened, face contorted in pain. Her hands were clenching and unclenching, and for a moment Graal felt sympathy which was instantly dashed against the jagged towering shoreline of his cruelty.
Graal stood, and watched, and knew with a malicious joy that Bhu Vanesh was weak. Weak from the Chaos Halls. Weak from travelling the lines of blood-oil magick; the Lines of the Land.
Eventually, the plump woman closed her eyes. She shuddered. She died. Bhu Vanesh withdrew his fangs with squelches, and dropping the plump kitchen woman with a newly slashed throat, he lay the blonde on the kitchen tiles, and slit his own wrist with a talon. The black and grey smoke coiled back, and a thick syrup oozed free. He allowed this to drop into the slim blonde's mouth, and then knelt back on haunches and watched. Graal said nothing. There was nothing to say.
The blonde started to writhe and contort, her body spasming, trembling, muscles growing taut then slack, taut then slack. Black oil seemed to bubble at her mouth, then flowed out of her eyes and ears and quim, staining her white uniform and pooling under her body.
Graal looked left, out through a narrow window. He was uncomfortable watching the vampire change. It reminded him too much of his youth, and some very bad times. Bad times which had been excised from his memories – until now.
Graal observed the dawn, a wintry grey-blue sky. Distantly, he could make out the sea, and a phalanx of seagulls crying as they swept past his vision. Gollothrim. The Port of Gollothrim. The Fortress. Was it still occupied? Graal shivered. They'd soon find out…
Returning his gaze, he saw the transformation was complete. The blonde woman stood, and seemed uneasy in her shell. Her eyes were now black – jet black, and unnaturally glossy as if filled with a cankerous honey. This, this was the sign of a Vampire Warlord's servant. Graal remembered, now, his thoughts flowing back through a long history, a longer deviation.
"You." Graal was snapped back to the living, the present, and realised Bhu Vanesh was pointing at him. Graal stared for a moment, then glanced at the woman. She was smiling, showing her own vampire fangs. Dead, but alive. The undead. Not like the sophisticated clockwork vachine at all…
"Yes?" snapped Graal, anger flooding him. Anger, and bitterness, and regret. What had he done? He glanced down at the waxen figure of Kradek-ka. What had they done?
"Take Lorna to the Division General's quarters. He is here. I can smell his fear. Lorna will begin my recruitment. She is the First."
"Yes."
"And Graal?" Bhu Vanesh's voice was a low, low rumble. Those red eyes cut through Graal's nerve like an assassin's garrotte.
"Yes, Warlord?"
"Forget your manners again,
and I will cut off your head and suck out your brains."
Graal paled. He bowed his head a fraction. "Yes, Warlord."
A winter sea breeze caressed the stone corridors of Port Gollothrim's High Fortress as Graal led Lorna, this newly baptised and transformed vampire, towards the central control point of this south-western Falanor city. Prior to the Vampire Warlords' resurrection, Graal's Army of Iron had not made it this far; which meant, in theory, the population of the city was sound. Those, that is, who had not fled after Vor was sundered.
Graal paused, and stared from a high window. Below, the city appeared deserted. And then he saw them, a group of rough-looking men down by the seafront. Huge walls lined the front, presumably to halt high tides or violent storms. Graal's eyes strayed, and he saw a woman, further down. She carried a babe in her arms, and walked quickly, nervously, looking often over her shoulder. She reached a small line of cottages and ducked quickly into a doorway. So. Port Gollothrim was still home to… Graal smiled. Fresh meat. Templates. Vampire templates. But where were the soldiers? Called away to fight his Army of Iron, in Vor? Possibly.