Kell's mind was spinning and he could taste silver – just like during the Days of Blood. Poison pulsed through his veins, through his organs, through his system, pulsed with the steady beat of his heart and the whiskey was negated, and he was sober again, and she was kneeling above him, beautiful, stunning, deadly, with her bright silver sword and bright fangs gleaming that vampire gleam in the starlight. This burned Kell. Burned him with shame. The king was there, old, serious, his eyes boring into Kell and the other warriors as they made the bloodpact, and blood pulsed from the wounds in their wrists, mingling in the golden bowl and flowing down channels, seeping down narrow tubes to infuse the weapons which seemed to glow with an inner black light. Kell stooped, lifting Ilanna, and with this dark blessing she was his and she whispered, It will never be the same again, and, I will be with you forever, and I will never let you down, Kell, trust me, I will never leave you and this touched a chord, touched every tingling nerve in his strung out, drug-infused body for she had left his bed, left his house, left his life, despite their vows and their promises and there and then Kell wrenched free the wedding ring and tossed it away in the darkness of the cellar beneath the temple in Vor. 'I will never be a slave again,' he whispered, unaware of the irony of his promise even as he spoke the words, for to become bloodbond with a weapon, to follow the Old Lore and the sap veins in the Oak Testament, a man ensured he was a slave for eternity.
'No,' hissed Kell, back in the present, and he was young and strong and immortal once again, and he twisted fast, a blur, a subtle shift and Tashmaniok's sword scored a bright fire line down his cheek and struck the floor with a grinding squeal and Kell reached almost leisurely beneath his arm, drawing out his slightly curved blade, his Svian, and he thrust it up into Tashmaniok's groin and she gasped, and went rigid, and he held her there impaled on his knife and slowly crawled from beneath her straddle, so that his bearded face came level with hers. Her sword slashed at him, but he batted it aside and jerked the Svian knife, and Tash gasped again, for eight inches of steel were deep inside her flesh, deep inside her womb and holding her tight to Kell in an embrace. Her fangs gleamed. Kell smiled. 'I was born in the Days of Blood,' he hissed, and stood, and Tash rose with him for she had no option, and her vachine blood-oil ran down her legs and Kell's free hand grasped her throat and squeezed and her face, beautiful and pale and with eyes wide, crimson wide and fixed on Kell with a mixture of hate and admiration, they narrowed and Kell lifted her above his head, suspended by blade and throat, and her sword clattered to the ground, and her blood pattered like falling rain and with a scream Kell hurled the vachine across the chamber and she bounced from the wall, fell and landed like a cat, on all fours, then in a blur she was gone into the darkness; through the wall with a crash of buckling timber, and away into the night.
Kell staggered, then righted himself, and took several deep rushing breaths. He moved to Ilanna, aware she had saved him again and it felt bitter in the back of his mind; like an old betrayal.
He took up the great axe, and moved to Tashmaniok's spilled blood. She was a strong one, he realised. One of the strongest he had ever faced. And yet there was something else there; something more subtle. An element of the ancient.
'Saark,' Kell breathed, suddenly realising his danger, and he rushed to the broken boards where Tash had made her exit, out into the snow. What greeted Kell's vision was a confused tableau, a scene from a tapestry of nightmare. Fire roared through the town. Men charged with swords. People ran, screaming. Everything seemed a sudden chaos. Kell's eyes narrowed. These were no albino warriors, no Army of Iron; these were Blacklippers, the amoral – no, the immoral criminals who once kept the trade of Karakan Red flowing into the vachine empire in Silva Valley. This, Kell knew. But why attack this village? Why now?
Starvation, realised Kell. The Army of Iron had invaded. Power politics had shifted. The Blacklippers could no longer ply the same trade; and they were criminals at heart, the diseased, the outcast, the toxic. Would they sit back and wait for a new harvest? Or would they flood from the Black Pike Mountains in their hundreds and take what they could?
Fire roared. Sparks glimmered in snow-heavy skies. Chaos roamed the streets. Violence stalked, screaming, on legs of iron, and arrows whistled through the gloom, punching villagers from their feet, hands clawing at fletches.
Kell squeezed from the hole, and ignoring Tashmaniok's footprints in the snow leading away, out into the forests, out into the wilderness where, within a short distance the blood droplets from her punctured wounded body ceased… instead, Kell moved forward into the chaos of the village, face grim, fire shining in his eyes, and with the Days of Blood reverberating in his soul like… a blood echo.
Saark screamed like a girl as Shanna's fangs descended for his throat, and he kicked and struggled and punched at her face but she held him in an impossible grip, a vice of steel, and a terrible vulnerability flooded Saark and he went suddenly limp, submissive, accepting his fate.
Fangs touched his neck. They were impossibly cold. Like ice.
'No,' he whispered.
'Yes,' she said, and her breath tickled his flesh.
Subliminally, he heard the door open. Kell! he thought, in a sudden triumph, with a desperate surge of energy which rushed his system like an emetic. His eyes flickered open, and Shanna's fangs sank deep, through skin, through muscle, and Saark screamed and started to struggle once more, a fish on a hook, unwilling to give up and die and a voice, a cool cold young voice spoke.
'Put him down,' said Skanda, in little more than a whisper.
With a snarl, Shanna hurled Saark across the room and dropped to a crouch, blood on her fangs, on her chin, on her talons, and her eyes were narrowed and she hissed, 'You!'
Saark hit the wall, hit the floor in a heap, moaning. His fingers came to his throat, saw his blood, and he whimpered. Outside, there came a roar, and a whoosh of flames. Armed men charged down the streets, and the sounds of battle swept through Creggan. Saark was confused, his mind swirling. Something pulsed in his neck like a second heartbeat. He imagined he heard a tiny tick tock, tick tock, like the smallest of mechanical engines. He shivered in premonition.
Skanda moved into a half-crouch, and he circled Shanna, the vachine snarling at him, Saark's blood on her teeth. She licked it, delicately, until it was gone. 'You should have died a long time ago,' hissed Shanna.
'We are back,' said Skanda, the young boy looking out of place, sounding out of place, as the sudden battle raged outside the tavern and people screamed in the street below. Metal clashed on metal. More fire snarled through lantern-oil soaked thatch.
'You will die again,' pointed Shanna, her claw bloodied, her face more feral than human, now.
'Whatever you say, Soul Stealer, daughter of Graal,' smiled Skanda with full understanding. And he clapped, and with the clap came a sound like thunder, and from beneath the floorboards flooded a surge of insects, of beetles and lice, of worms and maggots and weevils, and they spread across the floorboards as the window was suddenly battered by flies and wasps, by crawling things and flying things and spiders and hornets and the room was suddenly alive as cockroaches swept the floor and walls like a tide erupting from the dark places of the filthy town, and this surge of insects swept around Skanda's feet, swirling like a fluid, a fluid of carapace shells and wings and claws and legs and fangs and Skanda pointed at Shanna whose face was drawn in horror, in revulsion, and the tide of insects flowed to her and up her legs and she turned and screamed and leapt for the window, crashing through glass which splintered and drove into her flesh in long jagged shards, and the insects stung her and bit her and she fell, landing heavily, glass daggers driving deep into her body so that blood gurgled at her mouth and she groaned, and yet still she stood, and ran, dodging through the battling influx of Blacklippers who fought a cruel battle with villagers in the streets.
Skanda moved to the broken window, and tasted her blood, wiping a smear down his tongue. Then, as the sudden calling of insects began to dissipate, crawling into walls and back under floors and squeezing above rafters, heading back for the shadows and the damp places, places of rotting food and rotting flesh, so Skanda moved to Saark and helped the man to his feet. Skanda touched his fingers to Saark's throat, where twin puncture marks glowed like molten metal.
Their eyes met.
'You have a long life ahead of you,' said Skanda, voice sour.
'I understand,' said Saark.
'I do not think that you do.'
'I am still human,' said Saark, fear in his eyes, in his voice, as if by voicing the fact he could somehow make it real. He touched his neck again, self-consciously.
Skanda nodded, features dark and hooded. 'For a little while, at least,' he said.
'What will happen to me?'
