a roll as Ilanna sang a finger's breadth from her throat. Shanna attacked, sword slashing, claws trying to gouge Kell's eyes. He stumbled back, and she came on, snarling and spitting and Kell was forced further back until the rock wall halted him and he fought a short, furious battle, axe and blurring sword flickering to a discordant song-clash of steel. Kell ducked a sword strike, jabbed with his axe but Shanna shifted, avoiding the blow. Tashmaniok came in on Kell's right, and sweating now, slowing, the old warrior back-handed an axe strike at her face which she easily avoided.

'You're getting slow, old man,' taunted Tash.

'You're going to die, old man,' laughed Shanna.

'Then we'll eat your granddaughter,' said Tashmaniok, all humour gone. She was neither sweating, nor panting; she showed no signs of exertion. Kell, on the other hand, was a sack of shit. He was covered in his own blood, in lacerations from the tight cutting wires, and his sweat was stinging his many wounds and fuelling his fury. But the vachine killers were right; he was old, and he was tired, and he was tiring. Fury and rage could only last so long. Kell had only minutes… seconds… to live. They knew it. And he knew it.

'Catch,' said Skanda, from between the two Soul Stealers, and he threw the twin-tailed scorpion and Kell tried to dodge but the scorpion landed lightly on his chest, just under his throat, and before he could do anything both tails flexed and struck like the twin heads of a striking snake. The scorpion stung Kell, who yelled in surprise as the Soul Stealers turned on Skanda for a moment, distracted, swords a blur as they frantically attempted to kill this boy of the Ankarok, but he danced, tantalisingly, forlornly, between their blades. Then there came a sharp crack, and Skanda smiled an ancient blood-oil magick smile and watched as time cracked and Kell stepped in two, and looked at himself, looked at his twin, his clone, his double, one a few steps out of time meaning he was not one, but two. The Kells stared at each other, stunned into silence, and the Soul Stealers stood still with mouths hung agape. The two Kells turned, like a mirror image, and with roars that shook the air launched themselves at the Soul Stealers, twin Ilanna axes singing a curious humming chorus of axe-blade death. Swords and axes shrieked, and now that each Kell fought only one enemy his confidence and speed and agility returned, and with savage necessity the original Kell forced Shanna back against a wall, his axe strikes accelerating as she grew more and more frantic, and she called out for help, 'Tash!' a shriek of the condemned as Ilanna batted aside her sword blade for one last time and with a mighty roar, a bestial battle-scream Kell lifted the butterfly blades of his bloodbond axe and they came down in a savage vertical strike that cut Shanna from skull to quim, and slopped her bowels and clockwork components to the Helltop plateau. 'No!' wailed Tash, distracted by her twin's destruction, and Kell's axe cut through her neck, sending her head rolling along the stone ground, slapping slowly to a halt by Graal's boots.

Skanda smiled, and clapped, and the twin-tailed scorpion ran onto his hand and up his arm. He clapped again, and there was a second crack. The air felt greasy, full of smoke, and the second Kell disappeared as time jigged into synchronisation, into a linear snap of reality.

'Don't ever do that again!' snarled Kell, turning in rage, his head pounding as if struck by a mallet, but Skanda had gone. He ran to Nienna, and Graal was shouting orders to the soldiers surrounding the Granite Thrones. Even now, dark smoke was coalescing on all three Thrones, and Kell shook Nienna, dragging her away from Saark's body. 'We must go,' he growled, eyes wild.

'Bring Saark.'

'I reckon he's dead!'

'Bring him!' she shrieked.

Kell grabbed the limp body of Saark, grunting as he slung him over his shoulder for the dandy was heavier than he looked, then dragging Nienna behind, he sprinted for the only exit available – the empty pool, the hole, sitting stagnant before the three Granite Thrones. Graal had drawn his sword, and as Kell charged so he turned and his face was death, his eyes twinkling sapphires, and the sword came up and Kell screamed and hurtled towards him, axe coming up and smashing Graal's sword aside as Ilanna cut a long streak down Graal's left cheek, peeling his face open like a fruit, and Kell's last glimpse before they were swallowed by the hole was that of three tall, smoke-filled figures seated on the Granite Thrones. Their eyes were blood red, and they were watching him. Kell, Nienna and Saark fell into the chute, into the vertical tunnel below, and in the blink of an eye vanished from Helltop.

They fell.

Fell, towards the distant, booming Vrekken.

On a high peak above the flooded Silva Valley sat four Vachine Warrior Engineers and two Watchmakers. Walgrishnacht's eyes were bleak, his face drawn and haggard as he surveyed the destruction of Silva Valley below. Their escape had been a miracle. Many had died following.

'Nobody could have predicted this,' said Sa, voice gentle.

Tagor-tel placed his arm around her shoulders, and they sat for a while, thinking of the thousands who had died, smashed and drowned below them in the echoing caverns of the Vrekken.

'We must call what remains of the vachine armies,' said Walgrishnacht, standing, and he turned and stared at the distant peak of Skaringa Dak. Above it, blackness swirled like evil personified. 'We must summon the Ferals.'

'It is too late!' wailed Sa. 'Can you not feel it? Can you not feel them?'

'I do not understand,' frowned the Cardinal.

'Graal has summoned the three Vampire Warlords,' said Sa, tears running down her cheeks. 'With or without our armies, this means the end of our civilisation.'

Walgrishnacht drew his sword, which gleamed black in the moonlight. 'Only when I am dead, and my proud blood-oil stains the battlefield, will I believe this is so,' he said, and gestured to the few remaining members of his massacred platoon. 'Let's move out,' he said, brass fangs gleaming.

The wind crooned across the peak of Skaringa Dak. Graal, pushing his peeled cheek back into place with a squelch, turned and faced the Vampire Warlords. They were huge, and dark, their skin swirling smoke, their eyes raging blood, and they stood – in unity, as one – and first Kradek-ka knelt, and then, slowly, General Graal knelt and a chill terror flooded him like nothing he had ever felt. For the Vampire Warlords were terrible, and they were death, and they had changed and brought something else back with them from the Chaos Fields, from the Blood Void, from the Halls of Bone. All around the platform soldiers knelt to show terrified obeisance, and Myriam and Alloria knelt also, the wave of total fear washing over them and making piss run down their legs.

'General Graal,' said Bhu Vanesh, the Eater in the Dark, and blood eyes tilted in a smoke face to survey his subordinate, to survey his slave, and Graal nodded, unable to speak, the terror like thick flowing ash in his mouth and his brain and he was a child again – how had he thought they could control these ancient, bestial, primitive Warlords?

Kuradek stood on the Granite Throne, and peered off across the desolation of Silva Valley. He smiled, face swirling gently, every feature a blur, every breath a rattle of chaos. 'Silva Valley is destroyed.'

'Yes,' managed Graal, forcing words between clenched teeth.

'You have done well, slaves.'

'Yes,' forced Graal.

Meshwar the Violent stepped away from the Granite Throne, and for a moment Graal thought he might disappear; like this whole Summoning was a bad nightmare, and the magick which had brought the Warlords back might restrict them to the Thrones. But it did not.

'Gather your soldiers,' said Meshwar, surveying the warriors from the Army of Iron, heads bowed, fear and chaos worms in their rotten, spinning brains. Meshwar's gaze was bleak. His voice was an intonation from a different realm. From a world of chaos. 'Gather them all. Now is time. Now we go to war.'

'Against whom?' trembled Graal.

Blood eyes glowed. 'Against everyone,' he said.

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