flippantly with Ilanna, eyes watching, and perceived the canker's understanding.
Snarls and growls echoed up and down the line, and Kell knew these unholy beasts could comprehend. They were intelligent, and that frightened Kell more than any display of corruption. It was when this huge, dominant creature suddenly spoke that Kell took a step back, boots thumping the concrete beams, surprised despite himself; although he fought well not to show it. 'I am Nesh,' said the canker, forming its words with care; despite impedance from curved fangs, its accent was Iopian, and that shouldn't have been possible. The whole mass of corrupted flesh and clockwork shouldn't have been possible. It was nightmare made real. 'My General, the Warlord Graal, requires the honour of your presence. Indeed, he grants you life in exchange for your cooperation. You may agree now, little man.' The canker grinned, more saliva pooling to the shattered, ancient beams of the high roof.
Kell took another step back. Saark was beside him, and Kell glanced at his friend with hooded eyes. He muttered, 'Have you found an escape route yet?
'There's no way off this roof!' said Saark. 'We're trapped!'
'We're going to have to fight our way free, then.'
Saark eyed the twenty or so cankers, and could see the shadows and hear the snarls of more on the stairwell below. He shuddered, fear a dry dead rat in his throat, a snake of lard in his intestines, a fist of iron in his belly. Saark, ever the dandy, a lover of life, women, wine and any narcotic that could swell the hedonistic experience of all three, knew deep down in his darkest most terrible nightmares that he was going to die here, knew he was to be ripped apart by those huge fangs, torn into flesh shreds, into streamers of muscle and skin spaghetti, and there was nothing he could do to avert this fate. 'You're joking, right?'
Kell threw him a dark glance, and growled, 'I never joke when it comes to killing. Now! Follow my lead! You understand, boy?'
Saark nodded, sweating, hands gripping his rapier tight. Nesh, growing impatient, moved its angry red gaze from one warrior to the other, then back. Kell moved his own eyes over the waxy, pale flesh; he shivered. The creature had hints of humanity in its twisted corruption of skin and bone, but there, any similarity ended. It was a distortion, not just of humanity, but of albino and vachine; a creature of no place, despised by all. Strangely, a thread of sympathy wormed into Kell's mind. He cut it savagely with a mental blade. This beast would show no mercy, nor compassion. It was here to kill. 'So, man? Will you come?' growled Nesh, and Kell could see other cankers straining at the leash; they could smell blood, and fear, and even remnants of Saark's distant flowery perfume. Kell grinned, baring his teeth as his face screwed into a ball of hostility. 'Tell Graal he can shove my axe up his arse!'
Saark groaned… and readied himself for attack…
Winter had finally come to Falanor.
Snow fell in blankets from iron clouds beneath a pale, albino sun. Violent storms flung folds of white to cover Falanor's valleys and rolling hills, her forests and rivers and ragged, towering mountains. From the savage flanks of the Black Pikes to the north, down through recently conquered cities, from Jalder to Skulkra, Vorgeth, Fawkrin and the southern capital of Vor, winter knew no obstacle and arrived early, with a ferocity not seen in the world for two centuries. Within three days all northern passes were blocked; an ideal situation in the normal running of the country, for it meant many of the brigands, deviants and Blacklipper smugglers who oft troubled northern towns were trapped like bears in their mountain hideouts until the following spring.
It also meant General Graal, and his albino Army of Iron, were trapped in Falanor, blockaded far from their homeland in the heart of the Black Pike Mountains, severed from the vachine civilisation occupying Silva Valley, seat of power for the High Engineer Episcopate and Engineer Council, the Engineer's Palace and revered resting place for the Oak Testament. Graal had successfully brought his vachine-sponsored army of albino subordinates south, seizing the cities of Falanor, kidnapping Queen Alloria, murdering the heroic Battle King, Leanoric, and routing his armies, including the previously unconquered Eagle Divisions. He had done this using cunning and a merciless swift descent. And by utilising blood-oil magick.
In the wake of the successful invasion, and within hours of snow blocking the Black Pike Mountain passes, Graal's Harvesters had brought forth the Blood Refineries: huge angular machines not unlike siege engines, pulled by teams of horses and cankers and using, in a twist of final irony, of calculated mockery, the fine, wide roads built by King Leanoric for transportation of his own military divisions. Graal camped his army outside Old Skulkra, and the great blood refineries had come to rest on the plain before the deserted city just hours before heavy falls of snow rendered further transport from the north impossible.
Graal sat in his war tent, cross-legged before a low table of ivory and marble, a scatter of parchments laid out before his weary eyes. The tent flap opened allowing a swirl of snow to intrude, and a Harvester stooped low to enter. For a moment Graal stared, the uniqueness of this race never failing to occupy and twist his curious mind; he watched the tall, heavily robed figure of the Harvester with its flat, oval, hairless face, nose nothing more than vertical slits, fingers not so much fingers as long slender needles of bone used for the delicate extraction of blood from a human carcass… he watched the Harvester settle down in a complicated ritual. Satisfied, the Harvester finally lifted tiny, black eyes to focus on Graal.
'The roads are closed. We are severed from the vachine,' spoke the Harvester, voice a sibilant hissing. Graal nodded, and returned his gaze to his parchments, reports detailing the final military approach on Vor by three of his albino Divisions. 'Then we have months before they discover the… reality of the situation. Yes?' 'Yes, general.'
'Has the vachine-bred Engineer Princess Jaranis managed to cross the mountains south in order to inspect our situation? Although, what she expects to find other than a jewelled dagger in her guts I have no idea.' 'She arrived, general. An hour ago, in fact, with her military entourage. That is why I am here.'
'Entourage?' He showed interest, now. 'How many?' The Harvester chuckled, a disturbing noise deep in its long, quivering throat. 'As I previously made clear, the vachine in all their pious arrogance are wholly trusting of your endeavour. Jaranis, damn her clockwork, travelled with ten men only, a unit commanded by a lowly engineer- priest. I have taken the liberty of immediate slaughter, and even now their corpses have been added to the frozen pyres of recent battle. Even now,' he paused, black eyes glinting, 'their clockwork halts. However. With regard to Jaranis herself… I thought it wise to allow you counsel with this twisted princess. After all, despite her pretty skin and innocent ways, she may have an inkling of our plans.' 'Summon her,' said Graal, without looking up from his papers.
After a few minutes there came a sudden commotion outside the war tent, and two albino warriors dragged a shackled woman into the cosy interior. Although, upon closer inspection, it was clear she was not entirely human for she sported the tiny brass fangs of the vachine – the machine vampires of Silva Valley. The vachine were a blending of human and advanced miniature clockwork, a technological advancement of watchmaking skills evolved and developed and refined over the centuries until flesh and clockwork merged into a beautiful, superior whole. The vachine relied on the narcotic of blood-oil, a concoction of refined blood, in order to keep their internal clockwork mechanisms running smoothly. Without blood, and more importantly, blood oil, a vachine's clockwork would seize; and they would die. Hence the necessity of vampiric feeding.
Jaranis was thrown to the ground, where she spat up at Graal, eyes blazing with fury and shocked disbelief. Her fangs ejected with a tiny pneumatic hissing. She climbed smoothly to her feet. She was tall, elegant, with a shower of golden curls. She was beautiful beyond the human, and as she spoke Graal could see the tiny clockwork mechanisms in her throat, miniature gears and cogs and pistons working in a harmony of flesh and clockwork. Like a well-timed vampire machine. A vachine. Graal smiled, some curious emotion not unlike lust passing through his mind; through his soul. 'Graal, you excel yourself with stupidity and arrogance!' snapped Princess Jaranis. 'What, in the name of the Oak Testament, are you doing?'
Graal smiled, slowly, and stood. He stretched himself and gave an exaggerated, almost theatrical, yawn. Then his cold eyes focused on Jaranis and she could see there was anything but pantomime in that shadowed, brutal gaze.
'I admit, O princess, that it has been considerable time since I sought to pride myself on the baser concept of… stupidity,' said Graal, handling the word like an abortion, and as he spoke he moved smoothly to a rack of armour and began to buckle on breastplate and forearm greaves fashioned from dull black steel. 'Rather, my sweetness, I seek to pride myself on the twin lusts of betrayal and dominion.'
'You would betray the vachine?' whispered Jaranis, stunned. 'A society you helped build from a mewling wreckage of primal carnage and bestial evolution?' Graal smiled, and halted midway through buckling a greave. His
