Pettrus stood straight, as if to attention on a parade square. He held his sword, and ignored the blood, and with proud whiskers quivering, said, 'I'm not going to let some dirty blood-sucking youngsters ruin my city. We need to get to the Black Barracks. That's where all the old soldiers know to go in times of crisis. The Black Barracks! And when we've got a few of the old boys together, well, Command Sergeant Wood…'
'Yes?'
'We'll give these damn vampires a bloody nose to remember,' he grinned.
Graal sat in the high stone tower, head in his hands, mind pounding. It was the worst headache he'd ever had, a flowing river of thumping tribal drums that seemed linked to his clockwork, to his inner gears and cogs, a rhythm in tune with the tick-tock of his twisted clockwork heart.
Reaching out, Graal took a glass of brandy and drank deep. He had started to drink more and more, usually just before he was required to see Bhu Vanesh and give the Vampire Warlord an update on progress. Certainly, he drank after every meeting. Because, and he knew this to be true, General Graal was now little more than a slave. He had worked so hard to summon the Warlords, with the mistaken belief he would be in control… when in reality they were so powerful as to be beyond physical retribution.
Graal had tried to kill Bhu Vanesh. Just the once.
On the second night, he had crept to the darkened bedchambers where Bhu Vanesh slumbered. The room was filled with blacks, and purples, and crimson colours, candles burned stinking of human fat and corpses littered the floor at the bottom of the bed – evidence of Bhu Vanesh's supper.
Normally, Lorna and Division General Dekull would be standing in attendance; but Graal had witnessed them leave the chamber, and decided it was time to strike.
He drew his thin black sword, and with blue eyes glinting in his pale, white face, Graal stepped daintily over husked corpses, their flesh shrunken and shrivelled over grotesque twisted skeletons thinking all the time how this reminded him of the Harvesters, and the way they drained the blood for the Refineries… his mind snapped to the present. Bhu Vanesh reclined on black satin sheets, stained with pools of dark, dried blood. He slept, breathing rhythmical, body still coiling and twisting, each limb fashioned from dark smoke, red eyes closed in dreams of… what did a Vampire Warlord dream of? World domination? World slaughter? An end to fear of imprisonment? Graal had grinned, then, a slightly manic grin. Remove the head, and the body dies. Such was the vampire mantra.
He crept with all the agility and silence he knew he possessed. His sword lifted, so gentle a butterfly could have landed on its razor edge and not been disturbed by its fluid movement. Then, it slashed down, angle and force perfect for removing a head, and Graal watched in lazy-time slow-motion as if through a shimmering wall of treacle and the air felt suddenly muzzy with a discharge of magick and Graal realised too late the charms which surrounded this ancient creature. His blade struck Bhu Vanesh and simply stayed there, a hair's-breadth from severing his neck, and slowly Bhu Vanesh rose from the bed in one rigid arc of movement and his red eyes opened and he stared down at General Graal as his sword thumped to the satin sheets.
'You had one chance,' said Bhu Vanesh, his voice a portal to the Chaos Halls, smoke oozing from the terrible orifice as he spoke. 'That is now gone. Betray me again, and I will suck your bones. Go now.'
Graal turned, shaking, and walked past Lorna and Dekull who stood either side of the door, fangs gleaming, red eyes watching him with hunger. He returned to his tower with a panicked tick tick tick in his ears as he acknowledged he was vachine, and he was weak, and he was a slave, and he did not know what to do.
There came a knock at the door. Graal drank the brandy and placed the solid glass down with a clack.
'Enter.'
The man was small, stocky, with thick black hair, shaggy eyebrows, frightened eyes. Once, Graal would have relished the terror in this little man, but not now, not today, not in this life; because Graal was subject to the same rules and the same slavery. He was shackled by fear. Strangled by power. Bhu Vanesh was Warlord. Graal was a worm.
'What is it?' snapped the General.
'I… I've been sent here, because of the ideas I had, I'm a designer, an engineer. I… I…'
'If you stutter again, I'll rip out your throat and eat your spine. Now. Continue.'
Graal focused on the man, watched him swallow, could smell the ooze of piss in his pants, could hear the rumbling of his churning guts, smell the acid of his fearfilled reflux. That made Graal smile. To add a razor edge to any conversation always filled Graal with an almost sexual delight. To put the pressure of death on a simple exchange of words made Graal feel strong again, powerful, in control. Ha! But he knew it was a false feeling, the imitation of an imitation. So… the feeling of elation dropped like an avalanche from his soul.
'You are building new ships?'
'No, I have a thousand carpenters and riggers carving piss-pots. Of course we are building ships.'
'I have a new design.'
'I have hundreds of designs. They work well. We have corvettes, frigates, galleons and merchant hulks. We have everything we need, armed with the biggest damn crossbows I've ever seen and capable of punching a hole the size of my whole body through the side of an enemy vessel. What could you possibly offer me?' sneered Graal, and poured himself another large glass of brandy. Below, the shipwrights, caulkers and carpenters worked on, their noise adding to Graal's pounding head and rising temper. Who was this little man? Why did he plague Graal so? And what fucking idiot had sent him up? Graal would kill this fucker, then make sure whoever was responsible got to clean out the sewers for the next year.
'I can build you a metal ship,' said the man.
'Ridiculous! It would sink.'
The man watched Graal carefully, then shook his head. 'No. I have designs, and I have made models. A metal ship will not burn, and is armoured by natural design; it will be smaller and more manoeuvrable than any war galleon you care to pitch against it.'
Graal considered this. 'What is your name?'
'Erallier, sir. Just think, if I can do this for you, if I and my family are looked after, and not turned into…' He shuddered. Then composed himself. 'You will please your,' he considered his words carefully, 'your master, yes? You will have an incredible warship the like of which has never been seen.'
Graal nodded. 'Yes. You have a month to deliver plans and begin work. See Grannash below, he will issue you with coin and a… mark.'
'A mark?'
'A ward. To protect you, like those out there,' Graal waved a hand in the general direction of the thousands of workmen on the docks. 'We can't be having all our workers changed, can we? How then would the ships be built? Now. Go. Please me, and I will personally guarantee your family's safety.'
'Yes, General. Thank you, General.'
Erallier departed, and Graal considered the proposal. A metal ship. The greatest warship ever! Enough to beat the Vampire Warlords? Graal shrugged, and stood, and stretched his back, and stared out at the Port of Gollothrim. Beyond the docks, the navy of Falanor was being gradually recalled. Now, four hundred vessels lay at anchor along the docks and for as far as the eye could see; and to the south in the city's shipyards, another two hundred skeleton vessels were in building progress. Graal had been given a year. One year to build up the navy. And then the Vampire Warlords would seek to… expand. They would travel. And they would conquer. They would take their plague to every corner of the modern world. They would build a new empire!
Graal smiled. And sighed. And pondered. And waited for news. And plotted against Bhu Vanesh. One day, you fucker, I'm going to eat your heart and take your place. One day. One day!
To the north of Falanor, where the Selenau River flowed through the Iron Forest and entered the vast realms of the Black Pike Mountains, there was a wall of rock, a half-league wide, jagged and black, sheer and vast. Impassable, and yet beyond there was a road, a black road, a wide road, built over a hundred years by the White Warriors, the soldiers of the vachine, the soldiers of the Harvesters, a secret road from whence the Army of Iron arrived at Falanor's northern borders and thence to the city of Jalder, and beyond.
This mammoth wall of towering rock was a barrier, a shield of sorts, between the world of men and the world of albino soldiers. Between men and Harvesters. Men and vachine.
Snow fell from a bruised sky. The wind howled mournfully from the edge of the Iron Forest, and whipped up in little dancing eddies, creating complex patterns in the snow before scattering and merging once more with undulating fields of white.
Everything was still, and calm – a perfect watercolour of serenity.
