knife.'
'Cat?'
'I caught a small snow panther. Or rather, it attacked me in a frenzy of hunger. Without a sword, it was difficult; but my dagger eventually made a good job of it, although I would rather have used vachine fang and claw.' He dropped into a silence of brooding, and Alloria felt it wise to remain quiet.
She moved, and rummaged through his pack, pulling out strips of dried meat and the knife. As she turned, she saw Vashell had taken the Harvester's head and stood it on a rock. The spinal column had curled around the bloodless stump like a snake around a staff. Alloria shivered.
'It almost looks alive,' she said.
'I am,' came a faint, drifting, almost unheard voice from the Harvester's mouth. 'Fetch me some water.'
Alloria stood, frozen, but Vashell carried a small bottle to the creature's lips and poured. The Harvester spluttered, and wetted its mouth, and Alloria watched in absolute disgust as the water leaked from the creature's severed neck stump.
'But it's dead!' she cried, finally, moving to Vashell as if for protection; but he knelt before the head, and Alloria found herself doing the same thing, her eyes locked on those tiny black orbs, almost fascinated now as a tongue licked necrotic lips.
'Thank the gods you came,' hissed the Harvester. 'I thought I would spend an eternity in that beast's stinking maw.'
'How can you still live?' said Alloria, stunned into gawping stupidity.
'Hold your tongue woman. He has limited strength.' Vashell's brow was narrowed, but he did not show the surprise he ought to. Which meant he had seen this kind of thing before.
'They are immortal?' whispered Alloria.
'Not immortal,' said Vashell. 'Have you ever seen a cockroach?'
'Yes, once they infested the palace stores; we lost much food, and it took the servants an age to sort the problem. What of them?'
'If you take a knife, and cut off a cockroach's head, it takes the tough little bastard a week to die. And the only reason it dies? Because it can no longer eat and sustain its body as a complete entity. Harvesters are the same. Decapitation can sometimes be the end; but not always.'
'That's unbelievable.'
'Believe what you like, woman. But I have seen this before, once, when I was a child. Hunting snow lions with other vachine royalty; I was along for the ride, with my father. We had a Harvester with us, a tracker named Graslek. The lion surprised us in a circle of rocks, and as we fought a hasty retreat it bit off Graslek's head. My father carried the severed head back to the other Harvesters, who returned it to their world. I do not know what happened then, all I know is that the head talked the entire journey back. Gave me nightmares for months. My mother had to calm me with a strong blood-oil infusion.'
'What happened to the snow lion?'
'Regrettably, it survived. Loped off into the peaks with half of a Harvester's body for a prize. Ruined the hunting trip.'
Vashell sat down, cross-legged before the head. A tongue wetted lips, and at its request Vashell poured a little more water onto its eager, questing tongue. Five times more he did this, and gradually the Harvester's eyes grew bright, its features more relaxed.
'What is your name, Harvester?'
'Fiddion.'
'How long ago were you…'
'Killed?' The Harvester chuckled, a low and nasty sound. 'I have become arrogant, it would seem. I was performing a religious rite. I was secure in my own observation skills; I did not see, nor sense, that wolf approach. But then, maybe the Nonterrazake have removed some of my skills. In their eyes, I would deserve such a humiliating punishment.'
'You have been cast out?' said Vashell, eyes wide in shock. It was the greatest show of emotion Alloria had ever witnessed from the vachine, but hard to read on his scarred features.
'Yes. And although it shames me, their treatment of me burns with hate. I would avenge myself on those who did this; I would bury their whole world under fire and ash!'
'What did you do?' asked Alloria, in awe, and Fiddion's small black eyes turned on her.
'You dare ask that of me, child? Begone! Away! I am not here to lay my soul bare before humans. That would be base and pathetic. But what I would seek…' he paused, small eyes blinking in a long, slow movement more to do with thought than anything else. 'Yes. I would seek to give you information.'
'Why?' snapped Vashell, feeling uneasy. Everything in his vachine world spoke of honour and loyalty to the Engineer Religion, to the Episcopate and Watchmakers; and they in turn, the vachine as a whole, trusted the Harvesters implicitly. They had fought wars together. They had died together. Whatever information Fiddion wished to share, it was born from bitterness, resentment and a need for revenge. And for Vashell, this sat worse than any ten year cancer.
'I would give you information,' said the Harvester, 'you can make an informed choice. Would you save your race, Vashell? Would you nurture the vachine into a new millennium?'
'We can do that without your help,' said Vashell, quietly, but his eyes flickered with nervousness, almost like the orbs of a hunted creature. He knew he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear; he knew, instinctively, it would change his life forever.
Fiddion laughed. Quite a feat for a severed head. His spinal column seemed to relax and contract with delicate slithering sounds, like snake scales gliding over rock.
'Listen, vachine,' he said, and his black eyes glowed like the outer reaches of space. 'Your whole race, your whole religion, your whole world is threatened. By the Harvesters. By Kradek-ka. By General Graal and his stinking Army of Iron. They work together, can't you see?'
'To do what?' snorted Vashell.
'To bring about the return of the three Vampire Warlords. They are like Dark Gods, and once they walked these lands with a malice and depravity you could never comprehend. The world shivered when they awoke; and it breathed again when they died.'
'They are legend,' said Vashell, head tilted, one side of his scarred face illuminated by the flickering fire. Wood crackled, and woodsmoke twitched his nostrils. Outside, the wind howled mournfully and Vashell felt a great emptiness, a bleakness, in his soul. 'Even if they did return, they would do us no harm. We are of the same blood. We are allies!' But even as he spoke the words, he could see the twisted logic of his own argument. They were not of the same blood. That was the whole point. The vachine were a hybrid clockwork deviation.
'No,' said Fiddion, almost sadly, although Vashell was sure sadness was an emotion denied the Harvesters. 'You are vachine. You are a dilution, my friend, of the feral wild Vampire Warlords; the vampires of old. Your clockwork is anathema to everything they believed in. Your race would be an abomination to everything they stood for; alien to their very essence.
Vashell shook his head. 'We are mighty,' he said. 'We would fight them! We would destroy them!'
'No, because you will already be dead.'
'What?' mocked Vashell. 'The entire vachine civilisation? Don't be ridiculous.'
'And do not be so arrogant,' snapped Fiddion. 'That is your curse!'
'And how would this miracle occur?'
Fiddion went silent for a while, face impassive, but then he licked at narrow lips showing his pointed teeth. 'I do not know,' he said, finally. 'It was not introduced to our One Mind. All I know is that it involves Graal, and his army, his recent invasion of Falanor and the rivers of blood-oil now being gathered for the great magick required to resurrect the Vampire Warlords.'
'You are forgetting one thing. Graal invaded Falanor on our instruction; on the command of the Engineers, and the Watchmakers.'
'Yes. But why?'
Vashell frowned. 'Because we run dry of blood-oil.'
'But why, Vashel? Use your intellect, use your mind, don't allow the stagnant mental decadence of a
