“I can’t crawl in there!” wailed Nienna.
“You’ll have to, chipmunk,” said Saark, flashing Nienna a smile she did not understand, and jumped in, shit and chemicals splashing up his leggings, staining his silk shirt, mixing with blood, and vomit and rendering his dandy imagery a bad comedy. The opening wasn’t as wide as it first looked, and Kell leapt in, splashing forward, with the girls following reluctantly. They stooped, squeezing into the waste pipe, Kell leading and Saark taking up the rear, his rapier out, his eyes dark.
The Harvester stopped, making a soft keening sound. Ice-smoke drifted from the cuffs of its robe, and it watched the four people vanish. In silence it turned and stalked from the tannery.
The waste pipe led down, beneath the tannery and into a narrow black-brick sewer filled with waste. Kell dropped in, scratching the skin of his hands and shins and belly, then helped Nienna and Kat to climb down the rugged, crumbling brickwork. He turned, squinting at distant light, as a cursing Saark dropped down beside him.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, tone openly sardonic.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Damn! Would you look at this silk shirt? I’ll never be able to get it clean. Do you know how much it cost? It’s the finest weave, from the Silk-Blenders of Vor…they wear these in Leanoric’s Court!”
“There are more important things than silk shirts, Saark.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how many women this shirt has wooed? How many tapered fingers have stroked its flank? It’s like a magick key. First it unlocks the heart; then it unlocks the chastity belt.”
“Grandpa, what’s a chastity belt?” came Nienna’s voice from the gloom.
Kell threw Saark a dark look. “Nothing, don’t listen to the pampered shit-streaked fool. Follow me. We need to move fast.”
They splashed through thick, swirling waste, trying hard not to think about the guts and offal, dyes and dogshit which made up the slurry. At one point Nienna brushed against a dead cat, half-submerged, and she screamed, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. Her body heaved, frail frame wracking with disgust, and Kat comforted her, holding her close, as they continued to wade forward. There wasn’t time to stop; no time for weakness. The Harvester might be waiting at the other end of the tunnel.
The tunnel was long, dropping at several stages on its way down to the Selenau River. Occasionally vertical venting tunnels, narrow fist-wide apertures, rose up through brick and stone and promised tantalising glimpses of the outside world.
Kat screamed, suddenly going down on one knee. Slop rose up to her chin and she spluttered, eyes closed, face twisted in disgust. “Nienna,” she wailed, but Kell surged back to her, pushing Nienna up ahead to Saark, who was muttering dark oaths, his face smeared with guts and old blood. It was even stronger than Saark’s perfume.
“What’s wrong?” snapped Kell.
“I twisted my ankle.”
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.”
“Walk or die,” said Kell, voice low, eyes glittering.
Kat forced herself up, wincing, and leaning on Kell’s shoulder she limped after Nienna and Saark. She was stunned by the iron in the old man’s muscles, but equally stunned by the icy turn of his attitude.
Would he have left me? she thought.
The Hero of Jangir Field?
The Black Axeman of Drennach?
She ground her teeth, thinking of her life, of the bitterness, of the failures, of the people who had left, and more importantly, the people who had returned. Of course he would leave her, she thought, and a particular lode of bitterness ran through her heart. That’s why he came back, instead of letting Nienna help her friend. If she’d broken her ankle, slowed them down, made excessive noise…she looked up at his grey beard, the wide, stocky set of his shoulders, the huge bearskin which made him seem more animal than human. Well, she thought. She was pretty sure his long knife would have slid through her ribs, ending the problem, negating the threat.
She shivered, as a chill breeze caressed her soul.
And for the first time she looked at Kell not as an old man; but as a killer.
Saark had stopped, hand held out towards the others. He turned, eyes meeting Kell’s. “It’s the river,” he said.
Kell nodded, pushing to the front. The noise of fast flowing water invaded the tunnel egress, and he watched the circle of light, drifting with ice-smoke, for quite some time. He edged forward, took a good grip on his axe, and peered outside.
Slop and effluence dropped down through a series of concrete channels, and fell under a timber platform and into the Selenau River. Here, the river took a tight turn, narrowing between two rock walls and raging over several clumps of stone, white and frothing, and charging off through the city. The timber platform was based on rock, then edged out on stilts over the river, the wood dark and oil-slick with preservative. Several drums and barrels stood at one end, and a small, calm off-shoot of concrete-hemmed water housed five small boats on a simulated canal.
Saark was beside him. “We take a boat?”
“Seems like a good idea, lad.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Wait.” Kell placed a hand on Saark’s chest. “That…thing, a Harvester it’s called; it was keen to suck our blood, yes?”
Saark nodded.
“Chances are, it’s out there. We need to move fast, Saark. No mistakes. Be ready with that pretty little sword.”
Again, Saark nodded, and the group waded out into grey light, the sky filled with wisps and curls of ice- smoke, thinner now, but still reducing visibility over a hundred yard range. Kell was scanning left and right as they scrambled down icy concrete ramps, past where the sludge from the tannery pipes fell. Then his boots hit the wooden platform with a thud, and he stood, a huge bear, arms high, axe held before his chest as his gaze swept the world.
Nienna and Kat slid down the concrete ramps on their bottoms, followed by Saark, his poise perfect, fine clothing ruined by dyes and shit. His sword was in his fist, and his eyes were narrowed, focused, searching…
Kell moved to a boat, and hacked through the knot with his axe blade. Taking the rope in one fist, he ushered the girls and Saark, who had turned, towards the end of the timber platform lost in mist-from which drifted the Harvester, eyes glowing, five bony fingers pointing towards the group.
“Get in,” growled Kell.
Saark took the girls, and they leapt into the boat, cracking ice around the vessel in the still-water channel. The currents tugged, and Saark leaned forward, grasping the platform. “Get in, Kell,” he snapped. But Kell had turned, and rolled his mighty shoulders as the Harvester accelerated, frame bobbing as it moved fast towards him, a high-pitched keening coming from its flat, oval nostrils. Kell sprinted, and leapt, axe lashing out but the Harvester moved, fast, rolling away from the blades, bony fingers lashing out. Kell’s axe cut back on a reverse stroke, slamming the arm away, and he skidded on icy wood, righting himself. The Harvester lowered its head towards him.
“You will die a long, painful death, little man.”
“Show me, laddie,” snarled Kell, head low, shoulders lifted, powerful, as the Harvester attacked. His axe lashed out, was knocked aside but he ducked, whirled a low circle with Ilanna singing through cold air to slam fast at the Harvester’s legs…it stepped back and the axe turned, coming up over Kell’s head in a glittering arc as he stepped in, and the blades smashed down at the Harvester’s shoulders. There came a sound, like snapping wood, the blades were savagely deflected to the right dragging Kell off-balance. A fist hit Kell in the ribs, and he hit the ground on the way down. The Harvester’s fingers slammed at his heart, but he rolled, Ilanna cutting an arc to smash the extended fingers, trapping them in the wood, embedding both bony fingers and axe in the platform.
Kell climbed to his feet, clutching his ribs, and the Harvester tugged at its trapped fingers, making a low but high-pitched growling sound. Its head snapped up, black eyes scowling at Kell who reached under his jerkin and pulled out his Svian knife. He leapt forward, knife slashing for the Harvester’s throat, blade cutting white flesh that
