'It will take time. It was not finished. You will see.'
'You are age-old enemies? The Ankarok, and the vachine?'
'Yes. But we are coming back, Saark. We have been called. And there is nothing they can do.'
'You can help us!' hissed Saark, suddenly. 'Help us drive the albinos back, beyond the Pikes!'
'We have something more radical in mind,' said Skanda, and then the small boy whirled about, and was gone, and Saark was confused but through his confusion he knew one thing was certain: this was a parting of the ways, as if Saark and Kell had brought him far enough, and now Skanda was strong enough to travel and fight alone, and Saark was reeling, and vomiting, kneeling there amidst broken shards of glass and the crushed shells of a hundred insects, vomiting onto the floor of the room.
Finally, he gained his feet, and found his rapier, and sheathed it on the third attempt. He staggered to the jagged window. Outside, chaos rampaged through the streets. The Blacklippers, the vagabonds from the Black Pike Mountains, were on a raid. Fire savaged the town. Saark smiled a very bitter smile; the villagers had done everything to evade the searching eyes of the Army of Iron – and in so doing, had left themselves open for a closer, just as evil, threat.
As Saark watched, he saw a great figure striding down the street. He had a full beard and wore a bearskin jerkin which made him look even larger than his natural size, which was huge enough to begin. Saark saw two Blacklippers charge Kell, swords out, glittering, and Saark wanted to shout 'Watch out!' but the words stuck in his throat like vomit and Kell turned at the last moment and his eyes were dark death and his axe swept up, cutting one man from groin to sternum in a spray of entrails and half-digested slurry, and bone shards glimmered white in the glow of the burning houses, then the axe twisted and cut sideways and a Blacklipper's head rolled, black dead lips tasting frozen mud. But then Saark fell to his knees, neck pulsing, blood pulsing, his veins burning from the inside out, and on a blanket of glass and crushed insects, he passed into a realm of blissful unconsciousness.
Saark coughed, and floated in honey, and the world was perfect and he was perfect. He sat up. His vision swam. And then the world seemed – so clear. He stood, crunching glass, and pain jabbed him in the neck and he remembered the bite but even as he remembered it, so it started to fade, as if the memory was a drift of smoke. He had heard stories of the savage marshes to the east of Falanor, where tiny blood-sucking creatures swam the waters. They attached themselves to a man, or to a stricken donkey or cow, and injected a local anaesthetic before beginning a long, hard feast, gorging on the creature's blood. The man, or animal, unaware of anything amiss, was bled dry by the blood-suckers; if three or four attached, then weakness, porphyria, vertigo and death would occur. What struck Saark now now was that he felt as if a blood-sucking little bastard had attached to him; but he did not realise it. And even as the thought entered his mind, so it became clouded, and vanished, and he could see Kell outside and he checked his rapier and ran to the stairs and out through the deserted tavern.
'Where's Skanda?' snarled Kell, upon seeing Saark.
'I'm very well, thank you,' snapped Saark, eyes flashing with anger.
'Where's the boy?'
'He's gone,' said Saark, suddenly weary. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Around him, fire roared and Kell grimaced at three Blacklippers, who saw his gorestained axe and thought better of attack. 'I was – ambushed, by a vachine. Skanda helped me, cast some weird ancient magick shit, and all these insects came from nowhere. I got a feeling he no longer needed us. He left.'
Kell nodded. 'We need our horses.'
'And the donkey,' said Saark.
Kell gave him a sour, twisted look. 'And the donkey,' he said.
In the shadows of a church tower, Jageraw watched it all. As snow fell, he'd seen the fat old warrior with the terrifying axe which spoke to him, which knew him, and he watched the slick dandy and the two death-cold Soul Stealers… oh how he knew them, knew them from Graal, Graal the bad man the wicked man!
Jageraw rubbed his chest, rubbed the burning there, and it was getting more urgent and it would never stop until he reached his destination. But that was a long way a terrible way, no pretty there, no pretty at all!
For hours he watched the Blacklipper raiders finishing up, and only when the cold dawn arrived and the town was deserted except for corpses did Jageraw climb steadily from the old church tower. He crept through the streets with his bag, pulling free a heart here, a kidney there, a spleen here, and some tasty precious lungs there.
Then, with his sack full of organs, full to the brim with squelching delights, he slung it over his shoulder and headed for the forests and trails no longer used by man.
It was hours later, and it was dark, and cold. Kell and Saark had rode hard for what seemed an eternity, until the blazing cottages and the vachine killers and the danger seemed, at least for now, far behind. It was Kell who finally pulled rein, and they sat on a low wooded hilltop, the distant fires obscured by snowfall and the haze of a welcome distance. Finally, Saark said, 'How are you, Kell, old boy?' There was no mockery in his voice. Only concern.
'I have felt better. Much better.'
'Back at that town, one came after you? A vachine, I mean?'
'Yes.'
'Me also. She… scraped out my emotions like offal from a sack, and left them glistening on the road like so many spilled entrails. I feel unclean, Kell. I feel like she polluted my soul.'
Kell turned to Saark. 'They were sent by Graal, and the bastard wants us dead. Or he wants… something. Something else, although I cannot figure what.' He lowered his head, and for long moments looked like nothing but a weary old man. He rubbed at his eyes, his cheeks, his beard. He sighed, and in so sighing gave in to decades of weariness, to decades of a hard life, and a harder fight.
'Are you injured?' said Saark, at last.
'Only my ego, lad. She was fast, by all the gods.' He grinned then. 'But if I am to be slain, then let it be by one so beautiful! She was stunning beyond belief!'
'Mine also. She hooked me like a fish. I fear I am becoming predictable.' He sighed, and touched unconsciously at the collar of his cloak, beneath which lay the indelible fang-marks. He could feel them, burning. 'Once, even such a beauty would have made me snarl and pucker, and flirt and push away; make her work for the privilege, you understand? Now, I fear, I am a slave to my trade.'
'And what trade's that, boy?'
Saark smiled, and rubbed again at his neck. 'The trade of dishonesty,' he said.
They made a rough camp before nightfall, deep in the woods, and Kell risked a fire. With little food between them they ate sparsely, but took comfort in the flames.
Kell fell into a brooding silence, and winced occasionally. Saark realised it was the poison in his veins, in his organs, in his bones, and he made no comment; instead, he fell into his own weird and deviated brooding.
As Kell fell asleep, watching the fire, so Saark took a little time to move away from the camp seeking solitude. His side was still incredibly sore where Myriam had stabbed him, a bitter event which still filled his mind with dark fury and images of an almost sexual revenge. His fingers traced across the dried blood mask which caked his skin. He winced, and pulled up his shirt. His fingers traced the contours of the wound and he jumped, eyes growing wide, then narrowing. The wound had healed. Completely. There was not even the ridge of a fresh scar.
Saark fumbled in the darkness for a while, trying to see the wound, but he could not. And fear touched him, then. Shanna had bitten him. His fingers came up to his neck, and he realised these two wounds, also, had gone. What had she done top him? What strange vachine magick had she poured into his veins?
Saark returned to the camp, and wrapped himself in a fur-lined cloak, and watched the fire and tried to sleep, but he was infused with a strange bubbling energy and sleep would not come. So, instead he watched Kell snoring by the fire, and wondered what powered the man: blood and gristle, like the rest of humanity? He smiled grimly. Or maybe Kell, too, was an esoteric meshing of flesh and clockwork?
Kell dreamed of Nienna. She was seated beneath the arch of the Cailleach Fortress. Strange rocks littered the ground. The Black Pike Mountains grumbled in the background, like an angry father. 'I am sorry,' said Kell, walking towards her, both hands outstretched, but she opened her eyes and they were blood red, and she opened her mouth and it was a vachine abomination, and her fangs crunched free and she hissed the bestial hiss of the vampire… and leapt for him, and he batted her aside, watched her roll in the dirt and dust, cracking her head against a rock. Blood flowed, but instantly healed, blood rolling backwards up her flesh as skin and bone melded, hot wax running together. 'What are you?' he screamed at his granddaughter, 'What the hell are you?' and she
