“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
“He was trying to rape Kat,” said Kell, eyes refusing to meet his granddaughter’s.
“I was doing no such thing,” snapped Saark, crawling to his knees, then climbing to his feet. “She needed no persuasion, Kell, you old fool. Have you no eyes in your head? She was lusting after me, even back in the tannery. You just can’t stand the thought of a young woman desiring a man like me…”
Kell growled something, not words, just primal sounds of anger, and a continually rising rage, and Nienna stepped forward, slapping both hands against his chest. “No!” she yelled, voice strong, eyes boring into her grandfather. “I said NO!”
Viciously, Kell grabbed Nienna and threw her to one side. She stumbled, went down in the snow with a gasp, then rolled over to stare in disbelief at the man she had known for seventeen years, from babe to womanhood, a man she irrefutably knew would never lay a hand on her, would never pluck a hair from her head.
“That’s it!” laughed Saark, voice rising a little as he saw the inevitability of battle, of destruction, of death rising towards him like a tidal wave. “Take it out on a young girl, go on Kell, what a fucking man you are.” His voice rose in volume, tinged by panic. “Is this really the hero of Jangir Field? Is this truly the mighty warrior who battled Dake the Axeman, for two days and two nights and took his decapitated head back to the king? Go on Kell, why don’t you just kick the girl whilst she’s on the ground…after all, you wouldn’t like her to fight back now, would you, bloody coward? You’re a fucking lie, old man…the Black Axeman of Drennach?” Saark laughed, blood drooling down his chin as Kell stopped, and unloosed his axe from his back. The old man’s eyes were hard, harder than granite Saark realised as a terrifying certainty flooded his heart. “I spit on you! I bet you cowered in the cellars during the Siege of Drennach, listened to the War Lions raging above tearing men limb from limb…whilst the real men did the fighting.”
Kell lifted his axe. His face was terror. His eyes black holes. His visage the bleakness of corpse-strewn battlefields. He was no longer an aged, retired warrior with arthritis. He was Kell. The Legend.
“Go on,” snarled Saark, hatred fuelling him now, spittle riming his lips, “do it, kill me, end my fucking suffering, you think I don’t hate myself a thousand times more than you ever could? Go on, bastard…kill me, you spineless gutless cowering heap of horse-cock.”
“No!” screamed Nienna.
“You speak too much,” said Kell, his voice terribly, dangerously low. “Here, let me help you.” He hefted Ilanna, huge muscles bunching, and only then did Saark glimpse, from the corner of his eye, a tendril of white mist drifting across the street. His head twitched, turned, and he watched ice-smoke pour from a narrow alleyway, to be joined by another from a different alley, and yet another from a third…like questing tendrils, wavering tentacles of some great, solidifying mist-monster…
“The albino soldiers!” hissed Nienna, eyes wide as Kat skidded around the corner, face flustered, dress hitched up in her hands. “They’re here! Kell, they’re here!”
Kell lifted Ilanna, face impassive. His body flexed, and twisted, and the mighty axe sang as she slammed in a glittering arc towards Saark’s head.
ELEVEN
A Secret Rage
Anu revelled in the cold air gusting from mountain passes as Vashell led her on her chain through the town. As they walked down metal cobbles towards the Engineer’s Docks, many vachine stopped to stare, eyes wide at this utterly humiliating and degrading treatment. Anu grinned at them, sometimes hissed, and once, when a young man protruded his fangs she snarled, “Stare as much as you like, bastard, I’ll be back to rip out your throat!”
Vashell tugged her tight, then, and she fought the chain for a few moments until Vashell back-handed her across the face, and she hit the ground. She looked up, eyes narrowed in hatred, and Vashell lifted his fist to strike another blow…
“Stop!” It was a little girl, a baby vachine, who ran across the metal cobbles, clogs clattering, long blonde hair fluttering, and she placed herself between Anu and the enraged Engineer. “Have you no shame, Engineer Priest?” she said in her tiny child’s voice.
Vashell glowered at the girl, no more than eight or nine years old, in a rage born of arrogance. She turned her back on him, reached down, and took Anukis’s hand. She smiled, a sweet smile, and her eyes were full of love. Inside her, Anu heard the tick tick of clockwork. Inside the girl, the vampire machine was growing.
“Thank you.” Anu stood. She reached out, ruffled the girl’s hair. “Thank you for being the only one in the whole valley to show me kindness.”
“Everybody is scared of you,” said the girl. “They’re scared you’ll bring down the wrath of the Engineers.”
“And we call this a free society?” mocked Anu, casting a sideways glance at Vashell. He snarled something, tugged her lead, and Anu followed obediently…but strange thoughts of her father flowed through her blood and flashed in her mind, and she felt, deep inside her own twisted and failed clockwork, the very thing which made her impure, the very thing which made her different to the vachine around her and unable to take in the gift of blood-oil which kept them alive and fed their cravings and lubricated their clockwork…she felt a tiny, subtle twist. Something clicked in her breast, and she felt nauseous, the world spinning violently, and she glanced back and saw the little girl watching her, a curious look on her face, and Anu tilted her head unable to place that look, unable to decipher what it actually meant…
A cold wind blew, peppered with snow.
Huge, perfectly sculpted buildings flowed past, and the vachine population continued to stare as Vashell strode proudly down the centre of the street with his dominated, subdued prize. Above, beyond, to either side, the devastatingly huge Black Pike Mountains reared, black and grey and capped with white, and splashed down low on their mighty flanks with occasional scatterings of colourful green pine forest.
I know what that look meant, realised Anu. Snow whipped her, and she shivered.
It was a look of friendship, of memory, of a link. She knows me, thought Anu, but I do not know her. How is this possible? What does it mean? Where does she come from?
The cobbled street was immensely steep, down to the Engineer’s Docks. Distantly, she heard the Silva River slapping the dockside, and Vashell unconsciously accelerated due to the gradient. Anu moved faster, to keep up with the cruel Engineer’s long stride, still puzzling over the golden haired child and her curious recognition…
Another puzzle, she thought.
Another conundrum.
Inside her, her clockwork continued to do strange things. She felt odd whirring sensations, the spinning and stepping of gears, like nothing she had ever before felt. Maybe I’m dying, she laughed to herself. Maybe I’ve been booby-trapped? Whatever, the process made her sick to her vachine core.
They reached the dockside, which was bustling with activity. Brass barges were being loaded and unloaded up and down the river, and Vashell led Anu to a long, sleek vessel. They climbed a narrow plank, went aboard, stood on deck for a moment and then dropped into a plush cabin as befit an Engineer. Vashell tied Anu’s lead to a hook, and locked a clasp in place with a click. Anu felt a bubble of rage flood her; she felt like a dog.
“Don’t want you attempting escape,” said Vashell, voice low.
“Go to hell.”
Vashell shrugged, and moved away, into the front of the brass barge. After a few moments Anu felt the rhythmical, pendulous hum of the clockwork engine and the barge slid away from the Engineer’s Docks, away onto the smooth platform of the Silva River.
Anu sighed, and looked out of a circular portal, watching the Silva River drift by, glinting with ice as Vashell guided them through chunks and small, choppy waves. The noises of the docks drifted away behind them, until only the hum of the engine could be heard and the barge turned north, then northeast, past the opening for the Deshi Caves which seemed to tug at them with unseen currents, with honeyed promises. Come to me, the caves seemed to call. Come and explore my long, winding tunnels. I promise you riches, and glory, and immortality. That, and death, thought Anu.
