to keep any but the most fearless of adventurers away. It was said the city carried plague close to its heart, and that to walk there killed a man within days. It was said ghosts drifted through the mist-filled streets, and that dark blood-oil creatures lived in the abandoned machinery, awaiting fresh prey.
Kell and Saark had little option. Either ride through a camp of ten thousand soldiers intent on their annihilation; or brave the deserted streets of Old Skulkra. It was hardly a choice.
They passed the forty-foot defensive walls, corners and carved pillars crumbling under the ravages of time. Huge green and grey stains ran down what had once been elegantly carved pillars. Despite their flight, Saark looked around in wonder. “By the gods, this place is huge.”
“And dangerous,” growled Kell.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Not by choice,” said Kell, and left it at that.
They swept down a wide central avenue, lined by blackened, twisted trees, arms skeletal and vast. Beyond were enormous palaces and huge temples, every wall cracked and jigged and displaced. Even the flagstones were cracked and buckled, as if the city of Old Skulkra had been victim of violent earth upheavals and storms.
The horses’ hooves rang on black steel cobbles. The world seemed to drift down into silence. Mist coagulated on street corners. Saark shivered, and turned to look back at the broken gates through which they’d entered. The mist made the vision hazy, obscure. But he could have sworn he saw at least a hundred albino soldiers, clustering there, swords drawn but…refusing to step past the threshold.
They’re frightened, he thought.
Or they know something we don’t.
“They won’t follow us here,” said Saark, and his voice rang out, echoing around the ancient, damp place. It echoed back from crumbling buildings, from towers once majestic, now decayed.
“Good,” snapped Kell. “Listen. If we can get through the city, we can head northeast, up through Stone Lion Woods. Then we can follow the Selenau River up to Jalder, then further up towards the Black Pike Mountains…”
“She’s safe,” said Saark, staring at Kell. “They won’t harm her. Myriam has too much to lose by angering you further. She knows Nienna is the only bartering tool she has.”
Kell nodded, but his eyes were dark, hooded, brooding. He could feel the sluggish pulse of poison in his system, running alongside the bloodbond of Ilanna. It was a curious feeling, and even now made his head clouded, his thoughts unclear. Weakness swept over him. Kell gritted his teeth, and pushed on.
They rode for a half hour at speed, the horses nervous, ears laid back against skulls, eyes rolling. It took great horsemanship to calm them; especially without reins.
And then, they heard the growls.
Kell cursed.
Saark frowned. “What is it?”
“The bastards wouldn’t come in on their own. Oh no.”
“So what is it?” urged Saark.
“The cankers. They’ve unleashed the cankers.”
Saark paled, and he allowed a breath to ease from his panicked, pain-wracked frame. “That’s not good, my friend,” he said, finally.
Kell urged his horse on, and they galloped down wide streets, angling north and east. The mist thickened, and the streets became more narrow, more industrial. The buildings changed to factories and stone tower blocks, vast and cold, all windows gone, all doors rotted and vanished an age past. The horses became increasingly agitated, and the occasional growls and snarls of pursuing cankers grew louder, echoing, more pronounced.
“We’re not going to make it,” said Saark, eyes wide, his tension building.
“Shut up.”
They slowed the horses, which were verging on the uncontrollable, until Kell’s mount reared, whinnying in terror, and threw him. He landed with a thud, rolling on steel cobbles, and came up with his axe in huge hands, eyes glowering, but there was nothing there. Darkness seemed to creep in. Mist swirled. The horse galloped off, and was lost in shadows.
There came a distant slunch, a whinny of agony; then silence.
Kell spun around, looking up at the towering stone walls surrounding him. It was cold. His breath streamed. Icicles mixed with the old blood of battle frozen in his beard.
“Get up behind me,” said Saark, reaching forward to take Kell’s arm. But his own horse reared at that moment, and he somersaulted backwards from the creature, landing in a crouch, rapier drawn, face white with pain. The horse bolted, was gone in seconds between the towering walls of ancient stone.
“Neat trick,” growled Kell, rubbing at his own bruised elbow and shoulder.
“I’ll show you sometime,” Saark grimaced.
The sounds of pursuing cankers grew louder.
“This is bad,” said Saark, battered face full of fear, eyes haunted.
“We need somewhere to defend. A stairwell, somewhere narrow.” Kell pointed with Ilanna. “There. That tower block.”
The edifice was huge, the walls jigged and displaced, full of cracks and mis-aligned stones. A cold wind howled through the block, bringing with it a sour, sulphuric stench.
“I’m not going in there,” said Saark.
“Well die out here, then,” snapped Kell and started forward.
The cankers rounded a corner. There were a hundred of them, snarling, slashing at one another with claws, and they came in a horde down the narrow street, pushing and jostling, fighting to be first to feed on fresh, sweet meat. Kell ran for the tower, beneath an empty doorway and through a sweeping entrance hall littered with debris, old fires, stones and twisted sections of iron rusted out of shape and purpose; he stopped, looking hurriedly about. “There,” he snapped. Saark was close behind him. Too close.
“We’re going to die,” said Saark, ever the voice of doom.
“Shut up, laddie, or I’ll kill you myself.”
They ran, skidding to a halt by a narrow sweep of steps. Kell looked up, and could see the sky far far above, perhaps twenty storeys, straight up. The tower block had no roof, and snow-clouds swirled. The steps spiralled up, wide enough for two men, and with a shaky, flaked, mostly rotted iron handrail the only barrier between the steps and a long fall to hard impact. Kell started up, thankful the stairwell was built from stone. Saark followed. They powered up in grim silence, followed by cackles and growls. It was only when Kell ventured too close to the edge that there came a crack, and stones tumbled away taking a quarter section of the staircase with it. Kell leapt back, almost sucked away in the sudden fall.
Saark stared at Kell, sweat on his swollen face, but said nothing.
“Keep to the wall,” advised Kell.
“I’d already worked that one out, old horse.”
Below, the cankers found the stairwell. They started up, jostling and snarling. Saark glanced down, but Kell powered ahead, face grim, beard frozen with ice-blood, eyes dark, mind working furiously.
The cankers ascended fast, claws scrabbling on icy steps. Panting and drenched with sweat, the two men reached a landing halfway up-ten storeys in height, halfway to the tower block’s summit-before the first canker appeared, a huge shaggy beast with tufts of reddish fur and green eyes. Kell’s axe clove into its head and Saark’s rapier sliced into its belly, and the beast fell back, spitting lumps of clockwork and spewing blood. The two men ran across the landing and onto the next set of steps, as a crowd of cankers surged onto the narrow platform and Kell screamed, ‘Run!’ to Saark, and stopped on the steps, turning with his axe, the snarling heaving mass only a few feet away as cracks and booms filled the tower. Kell lifted his axe, and struck at the landing, again and again, and the whole floor was shaking under the weight of the cankers and the impact from the axe, and they were there, in his face, fetid breath in his throat as a huge crack echoed through the tower block and the landing fell away, with a whole storey section of steps, fell and tumbled away carrying twenty cankers scrabbling and clawing down the centre of the spiralling stairwell and leaving Kell teetering on the edge of oblivion. He swayed for a moment, and something grabbed him, pulled him back and he fell to his arse, turned, and grinned at Saark.
“Thanks, lad.”
“No problem, Kell. Shall we ascend?”
