'You will die, then,' he said.
'So be it.'
Kell growled. 'This thing is too big for you,' he snapped. Graal's Army of Iron is invincible; you know how they took Jalder, and Vor, and the gods only know which other Falanor cities. And I was there at Old Skulkra when the Army of Iron came from the Great North Road, came from Vorgeth Forest like ghosts.' He spat, and rubbed his beard viciously, as if angry with himself. 'Those bastard Harvesters cast their ice-smoke magick. No soldier could stand against them!'
'But you still live,' said Myriam, softly.
'I am different,' snapped Kell.
'Yes, you have your magick axe,' she said, halfmocking.
'There is nothing magick about this axe. And before you say it, no, she is possessed by no demon; let us just say Ilanna has an attribute none of you could ever guess.'
'So you will not help?'
'I cannot fight Falanor's battles forever,' he said.
'It looks like you've stopped fighting full stop,' said Saark.
Kell looked at him, and pointed with a powerful finger. 'Don't you bloody start,' he said.
'Well,' scoffed Saark, 'look at you, look at everything we've been through, all the fights and the murder and the bloodshed. And the mighty Kell would turn his back now? Just as things got worse? The time he is needed the most!'
'That's the point, lad. We made things worse. Don't you see? We're pawns in another man's game. Every step we've taken since meeting up in Jalder in that cursed tannery has seen us step closer and closer to the resurrection of the Vampire Warlords. We made it happen, Saark. We fucking made it happen.'
Saark shook his head. 'That's so much horse shit Kell, and you know it. If it hadn't happened the way it did, it would have occurred another way. Yes, maybe we were set up to some extent – because Alloria had that Soul Gem implanted near my heart by the dark gods only know what deep and ancient magick. But the outcome was always written in stone, written in blood. Now we have to stop it.'
'No.' Kell ground his teeth.
'Why not?' said Saark. 'I don't believe the mighty Kell has given up. Or maybe he's just turned soft, heart turned to butter, muscles to jellied jam, maybe the mighty Kell's dick has finally gone limp and he can no longer fuck young boys. But you still suck, don't you Kell?' Saark stood. Kell's head was down. 'Is that all you want from life now, you dirty old bastard? To suck horse dick and bury your head in the ground? Wallow in self pity?' Saark sang, and his voice was a beautiful, haunting lullaby:
' He dreamt of the slaughter at Valantrium Moor,
A thousand dead foes, there could not be a cure
Of low evil ways and bright terrible deeds,
Of men turned bad, he'd harvest the weeds,
His mighty axe hummed, Ilanna by name,
Twin sharp blades of steel, without any shame
For the deeds she did do, the men she did slay,
Every living bright-eyed creature was legitimate prey.'
Saark laughed then. His eyes glittered like jewels in the gloom of the snow-enslaved forest. 'What a load of old donkey shit. You should complain. You've been misrepresented in legend…'
Kell slowly stood, boots crunching old pine needles. His eyes burned with fury. With killing rage. His fingers were curled around Ilanna's steel shaft and he lifted her, almost imperceptibly. 'You better be careful what you spout, laddie,' he growled, and he was gone from the world of humans, he was teetering along a razor blade looking down into a valley of madness. 'Somebody might just cut out your tongue.'
'What? For speaking the truth? If you don't help us, Kell, if you leave us to face the Vampire Warlords alone, then we will die. And the problem still remains.'
'I SAID NO!' thundered the old warrior.
'ARE YOU MAD YET?' screamed Saark suddenly, stepping forward.
Ilanna swept up, a blur, and stopped a hair's breadth under Saark's chin. The dandy grinned. 'You good and mad now, old bear?' he said, voice a little calmer.
'Yeah, I'm fucking mad,' snarled Kell.
'Then let's go and kill these Vampire Warlords before they do any more damage!'
Kell stared into Saark's eyes for a long minute. Then he seemed to deflate a little. 'I will not put Nienna at risk,' he said.
'What, I am the reason for all of this?' snapped Nienna. The stump of her finger had been neatly bound, and she was sat, rubbing it thoughtfully. 'You wish to protect me? Well, you'd better come with us then. Because I'm going with Saark.'
'No, you are not,' growled Kell.
'Yes, I bloody am. I am a woman. I have my own mind. You do not control me. Or is that what this is all about? It's not about me. Now, I'm your surrogate daughter… but you couldn't control your real daughter, oh no, and she went wild and now you seek to pass off your impotence and lack of control and lack of fatherhood on me. Well, I won't have it, grandfather. I am my own person, and to stop me you'll have to kill me.'
Kell sat down by the fire, and stared into the flames, chin on his fist. Firelight glittered in his eyes and Myriam, Saark and Nienna exchanged glances.
Finally, Kell looked up, and stared at each of his companions in turn. Slowly, one by one, he met their gazes, and they stared back, defiant, heads high, proud. 'I simply want to save Nienna,' he said.
Nienna knelt by his side. 'To do that, grandfather, you'll have to help us. This thing is wrong, and you know it. We have to do the right thing. We have to kill this evil. I was there, on Helltop; I saw them brought back from the Chaos Halls, just like you, and the terror nearly ripped me in two. These Warlords have not come to Falanor so they can go sleep in comfy beds and have sweet sugary dreams. They are here for blood and death.'
'Just like the vachine,' said Kell, sharply.
'Yes,' said Saark. 'Just like the vachine. But I fear we are in the middle of something far more complex than we could ever understand; we are in the middle of some ancient feud. Unfortunately, we're the bastards being persecuted, used as pawns, and I cannot sit by and watch good people slaughtered.'
'It will be a hard fight,' said Kell, looking around at their faces.
'Is there any other kind?' grinned Saark.
'We may all die,' said Kell.
'As I pointed out, you're ever the happy face of optimism. But we're used to you now, Kell. We can put up with your strange ways.'
'You'll have to do what you're told, lad,' Kell snapped, pointing with a stubby rough finger. 'You hear me?'
Saark spread his hands, face filled with pain and hurt. 'Do I ever do anything else?'
'Hmph,' said Kell, and rubbed his beard, then his eyes, then the back of his neck. 'I will regret this. I know it. But if you want to bring down the Vampire Warlords, if you want to spread their ashes to the wind, all of you,' again he fixed Saark, Myriam and finally Nienna, with a little shake of his head, fixed them all with a deadly stare, 'all of you must do exactly what I say.'
Saark shrugged. 'Whatever you say, old horse. You have something in mind, then?'
Kell stared at him. And he gave an evil smile which had nothing to do with humour. 'Yes. I have a plan,' he said.
They rode for two days, both Kell and Myriam realising that they had emerged northeast of Jalder, quite close to the huge dark woodland known as the Iron Forest. The Iron Forest was a natural northern barrier which separated Jalder from the Black Pike Mountains, and rife with stories of rogue Blacklippers, evil brigands and ghosts. Kell waved this idea aside when Saark brought it up one evening, just before dusk.
'Pah,' said Kell, the skinning knife between his teeth as he ripped flesh from a hare brought down by the skill of Myriam's archery. Now, as a vachine, she was even more deadly accurate with the weapon. What the cancer had taken away, vachine technology had improved with clockwork. 'There's nothing as dangerous in the Iron Forest as me, lad. So stop quivering like a lost little girl who's pissed in her pants.'
