Shanna leapt again, and blocked three fast punches. She grabbed his throat and groin in one swift movement, and hurled Saark across the room where he hit the wall, hard, and landed in a heap, wheezing, head spinning, and then she was there, kneeling beside him, and she took hold of his long fine oiled curls and snapped back his head in a vicious movement. From the corner of his eye he saw her fangs extend that little bit more. They gleamed, like brass.
'You're going to taste so sweet, my love,' she smiled, completely aware of the irony.
'No,' he croaked… as her fangs dropped for his throat.
Kell marched through the snow, boots crunching, the glass of the whiskey bottle cold against his skin under heavy jerkin. He stopped at a narrow crossroads, and looked about. The village was quiet, eerie, dusted with mist and falling snow, most houses sporting lights subdued behind heavy curtains. The villagers knew what would happen if soldiers from the Army of Iron discovered their little safe haven, tucked away between low hills; and they guarded their anonymity with jealous fear and an understanding of a savage retribution if discovered. Wise, he thought. Very wise.
Kell looked up and down the twisting lanes, his breath steaming. He took out the whiskey bottle. He took a long drink. Honey eased into his veins. He thought of Nienna, he felt bad, and he knew if he got drunk he was doing nobody any favours, least of all his poor, kidnapped granddaughter. He knew, then, what he really should do was hurl the bottle down the street and go and get his horse and ride after her to the Cailleach Fortress. But he did not. He felt his mind crumbling, disintegrating, like a mud wall before a spring flood.
He started off down a narrow street, unsure of where he was going. The whiskey tasted good on his lips, hot in his throat, and he craved more. Much more. He knew, as did all drinkers, that he could use the excuse of the poison in his veins; however, deep in his heart he realised he was only cheating himself. He needed no whiskey to cover that pain. The pain he could live with. He had lived with worse; much worse. The reality was: he needed the whiskey, because he needed the fucking whiskey. It was that simple.
Kell stopped. Squinted. 'It cannot be,' he muttered and moved to the end of the street. He barked a short laugh, and ran his hand through his beard, and then through his shaggy grey-streaked hair. 'Well, I'll be damned.' And he recognised the beautiful irony. If the poison went too far through his veins, seeped into his organs and heart, then he really would be damned.
It was a distillery, a long, low building built with its back against a wall of rough-hewn rock carved from a steep hillside. The windows were dark, like torn out eye-sockets. Several were smashed. Behind, in what Kell presumed was a courtyard, squatted the old boilerhouse chimney, appearing far from the best of health. Kell assumed the distillery was long out of use. His eyes gleamed. I wonder if they left any casks behind? he mused, and laughed. Of course they didn't. Only a madman would do that.
Kell moved to the door, and forced it open. He placed his half-empty whiskey bottle in the long pocket of his jerkin, and with Ilanna in both hands, stepped inside.
It was gloomy, but a little starlight from shattered clouds filtered through a broken roof, a cold silver light which emphasised shapes without giving any real form or sense of solidity. Kell squinted, and his eyes adjusted, and he smiled. He was in the tun-room, and as he walked forward realised the distillery building dropped beneath him allowing for a double-height interior, but nestled in what appeared a single-storey shell. It was housed in an excavation. Kell stopped, boots rasping, and peered down from the walkway on which he stood. Beneath, he could see large, solid lids for the circular wash-backs. His eyes moved, counting. There were six below ground level, and six above, surrounded by an iron frame and timber gantries. Kell tested the handrail, and it crumbled beneath his powerful fingers. He grunted.
'What a waste! Letting a fine building like this rot and die.'
He walked between the wash-backs and stopped, warily, beside a rail which overlooked a lower section of the distillery reached by twin sets of iron stairs. His eyes took in the wash chargers and wash-stills, with their odd copper shapes which looked as if they'd half melted, the metal sloping towards the floor like molten candle-wax, only to harden again. They look like garlic bulbs, he thought, and took another drain of whiskey. He grunted at the continued irony. The only bloody whiskey in this entire place was the cheap, nasty blend he carried in his paws.
'Damn it. What I'd give for a single malt.'
Outside, the world seemed to flood into darkness. Clouds, passing over the stars and moon. Kell squinted, for despite having incredibly acute vision, he knew age was getting the better of him and his eyesight was not as good as it once was. 'I can still pin a wolf to a tree at fifty paces with my axe,' he muttered, and stared down at the steps. They looked far too dangerous to descend. But beyond, he knew, was the warehouse. Would it have barrels of whiskey? He doubted it. But if there was some nectar stored there, it called to him, taunting, drawing him as if down some invisible umbilical.
No.
'No.'
Kell took a deep breath. His fists clenched, and he stared at the bottle in his hands. It was poison, he decided. And it would kill him faster than Myriam's injected toxin.
You used to have strength, he realised.
You used to have willpower.
Once, you could have stopped. Once, you would have cast away the piss. Once, you would have been a man. A man who ruled the bottle, instead of the bottle ruling his world.
Kell hurled the whiskey bottle out over the spiritstills, and there came a mighty boom followed by a clattering, skittering sound. Then silence rushed back in, like the ocean filling a hole.
'Interesting,' came a gentle, feminine voice.
Kell did not turn. His senses screamed. The hairs across the back of his neck prickled, and he forced a grin between tight teeth. He reached up, and slowly rubbed his beard. 'The fact that I chose to launch the bottle, or the fact that you were sneaking through the dark?'
'Neither,' she said. 'I was told you were dangerous, and I was simply pondering the best way to kill a fat old man.'
Kell turned, Ilanna in both hands now. His eyes narrowed, and he took in the tall, lithe albino woman, her crimson eyes, her brass fangs, the silver sword sheathed at her hip. She moved elegantly, and stopped, one hip pushed forward slightly giving her an arrogant, defiant stance. She had a gaunt face, and cropped white hair. She was pretty. Dake's Balls, thought Kell, she was beautiful – but maybe forty years his junior. He grinned. 'I don't die that easy,' he rumbled, rolling his shoulders almost imperceptibly to loosen the muscles.
'But I'm sure that you do,' she smiled, and drew her sword.
'That's what the other vachines said,' he soothed, head dropping a little, eyes now pools of blackness. He was pleased to note the annoyance in her expression; not just at his recognition, and knowledge, but at his tone of voice. His was not a sermon of arrogance; his was the voice of a known truth.
'Do you want to know my name?' she purred stepping forward. Beneath her, the gantry creaked and Kell looked warily to one side.
'Not really,' he said. 'You fucking vachine all smell the same to me; decayed flesh, hot oil, and mangled clockwork.'
She snarled, a bestial sound far from human. Her fangs slid out yet more, with tiny crunches. 'My name is Tashmaniok. I am going to sup your blood, Kell. I'm going to savour it running down my throat. I am going to taste your most intimate dreams. I am going to drink your soul. I will lead you to the brink of despair, to a razor-edge of desolation, and you will teeter there like a maggot on a hook and then, only then, when you beg for death, when you plead with me for release… only then will I show you real pain.'
Kell grunted. 'Stop talking. Show me.' But even as the words left on a hot exhalation of air she leapt, a sudden striking blur, and Kell's axe lifted deflecting the sword blow with only a hair's breadth between life and death. He stepped forward, mighty axe swinging, to deflect a second, then third blow – and as sparks flew, so the axe twisted, reversed, and swept close to Tashmaniok's face causing her to leap back.
Kell grinned at her. 'You're quick, pretty one, I'll grant you that. But you talk a whole bucket of clockwork shit. Be careful, lest I spill your ticking gears over the gantry.'
Tash said nothing, but lowered her head and attacked, her sword flickering in a stunning series of frenetic bursts, showing dazzling skill and a precision Kell had rarely met in a human. But then, Tashmaniok was far from
