'Wonderful!'
'Take the grin off your powdered mug before I damn well knock it clear. Things are about to get serious, and you need to know what to do.'
'Go on, then. Stun me with the geometry of your tactician's mind.'
'I'm going to win over the criminals here, and we'll form them into a fighting unit, into an army, and march on the Vampire Warlords! We will take the battle to the enemy. We will attack, first Jalder, then Gollothrim, then Vor. We will kill the Vampire Warlords. We will stop the vampire plague.'
There was a long silence. Outside, somewhere high in the mountains, an avalanche boomed. Crashing echoes reverberated from on high, a deafening and terrifying sound which gradually faded into drifting echoes, like a scattering of loose snow.
'Kell, even for you that's madder than a mad dog's dinner.'
'Meaning?'
'Well, where do I begin? For a start, all the bastards here hate you and want your blood and spleen. The Vampire Warlords are, er, indestructible. How can you train an army out of scum? What sorry fool will do the training? And even more importantly, even if, and this is a big if, you persuaded three thousand hardened criminals to join your cause, what would stop them being criminals the minute we set foot back in the real world? They'd be straight back to killing and raping, I'd wager.'
'Yeah. But we have the upper hand.'
'Which is?'
'They have no idea what's happening, out there, in Falanor. They saw the Army of Iron passing through, they rebelled against Governor Myrtax and took over the fortress. They have no idea about Jalder being overrun, or Vor or the gods only know how many other damn cities. They know nothing of King Leanoric dying in battle, or of the cankers or the destruction of Silva Valley.'
Saark snorted. 'And they don't fucking care, Kell! Don't you understand? We're dealing with criminal scum here, the freaks of the country, the bastards who are bastards to their own mother's bastards. They don't deserve to live, and they won't fucking help you, I'm fucking telling you, I am.'
'Ha, that's so much horse shit,' snapped Kell. 'You, with your southern queer dandy ways, you have no fucking idea what these men are like.' Kell moved close, his voice dropping a little. 'You don't get how life works, do you, Saark? You've had silver platters and boiled eggs all your life. You've had your face in so many rich bouncing tits, licking the arse-crumbs from oh so many perfume-stinking nobles' cracks, that you have no connection with reality. Most of these men, they're not bad men, not evil men, there are shades of grey, Saark, and we all make mistakes. It's nice to see you're so fucking perfect! In a different world, you would have lost your head a long time ago!'
Saark snorted again. 'What the hell am I hearing? You put hundreds of these bastards in here! Listen to the last of the great hypocrites! You hunted them down, Kell, you killed a lot, and you dragged many back to Vor for trial. And now you want them to fight for you? Now you want them to die for you? I've met some mad skunks in my time, heard some crazy bloody plans, but this takes the ridiculous plum straight from the mouth of the insane rich. They'll never follow you, Kell, Legend or no. They'd rather shit on your grave.'
'You'll see,' rumbled Kell.
'And what you going to do? Kill the new governors?' Saark laughed.
'That's the idea.'
'What with? Your left thumb?'
'If I have to. Now stop your prattling, I'm trying to think and you're carping on like a fishwife on a fish stall selling buckets of fish to rank stinking fishermen.'
'What? What? Is that an example of how you're going to win over the crowd? Ha ha, Kell, you've got some serious lessons to learn in life. You're about to throw yourself to the wolves.'
'We'll see,' said Kell, eyes glowing. 'We'll just see.'
As the day progressed, Kell and Saark watched a hundred or so men sawing wood and putting together some kind of framed structure. Kell brooded in silence, wincing occasionally at his damaged shoulder, and sat with his knees pulled up under his chin, arms wrapped around his legs, wondering how to get out of this mess. Nobody came to their cell, and they were given no food or water. Occasionally, they saw one of the new Black Pike Governors wandering around the frantic building work, and as a hefty softwood frame took shape, Saark put his head on one side.
'Looks like a stage,' he said, at last. 'Why are they building a stage? Are they going to treat us to a performance of Dog's Treason, or maybe a sequence of sonnet recitals based around the life of that great lover, Cassiandra? I know! I've got it! They're going to perform The Saga of Kell's Legend just for your bloody benefit!'
'It's a gallows, idiot. That's why the centre has extra vertical struts. There's going to be a hole through which somebody drops.'
'Somebody?'
'I take a lot of killing,' said Kell, voice low, eyes narrowed. 'Look, there's Jagor Mad. He really is a big, dumb fool. I thought he would have learnt his lesson last time I brought him in. Evidently not.'
'What did he do?'
'Aah,' Kell shook his head, then lowered his face to stare at the rocky floor of the cave. He kicked his boot against one of the pitted iron bars. 'Jagor came from a city called Gilrak, to the west of Vor. All those who wanted to live in Vor, but couldn't afford to live in the capital, well they lived in Gilrak, and what a sorry heap of shit it was. Like a scum overflow. A sewer outlet. Now, the thing about Gilrak was that it was a new city, with the old one, Old Gilrak, lying a half-league southwest. But what few people knew was that the two were connected by old tunnels. So Jagor and a few of his friends came up with a wonderful money-making scheme. They'd kidnap children, take them through the tunnels – so that when a search went out there was no chance of finding the bastards – take them through the tunnels to the deserted city of Old Gilrak, fast horses, down to the coast where bad men from across the sea were waiting on Crake's Beach with boats.'
'So he took children and sold them?'
'Yes. Sold them to bad men, for a lot of gold, men who would use them for, shall we say, unspeakable acts. Things a child should never have to go through.' Kell's eyes were gleaming.
'Not a happy end for a child?' ventured Saark.
'No. King Leanoric had three genius spies, who eventually uncovered what was going on. Then they passed the information over to me, and the King charged me with stopping the trade. He gave me limitless funds, and the pick of his men. Well. I work fast, and alone, but Jagor had forty men working his trade so I picked out five of Leanoric's best killers. Not swordsmen, mind, not soldiers, but killers. Men I'd seen in battle, men with real stomach for the job.'
'And the job was?'
'Extermination,' said Kell, glancing up at Saark. 'I've seen the way the justice courts worked in Vor.' He spat. 'I've watched good men hang, and I watched bad men walk free. I wasn't about to let this little fish escape the pond.'
'So what happened?'
'First, we found one of Jagor's scouts. We tortured him, broke his fingers and toes, cut off his balls, held him screaming in a cellar before cutting his throat. The vermin. Well, he told us where the next targets were; where the next children were. And Jagor's kidnappers were getting greedy; they were going to take ten children that night, all under the age of ten. One of my killers took the place of Jagor's scout, and we waited, let them sneak in and take the girl from her little town house in the poor part of the city, then we followed those fuckers back to their camp in the woods, and the place they'd dug down and smashed through into the old tunnel network leading to Old Gilrak.'
'What happened next?'
Kell shrugged. 'We came on them in the night. Fucking slaughtered them, six of us there were with rage in our eyes and blood on our swords and axes. We massacred them, men and women alike, no mercy. Five escaped into the tunnels, including Jagor Mad. I'd gone in for the kill, we fought and I hit him so hard I put a dent in his skull, broke three bones in my hand but it was worth it. But then somebody jumped on my back, I rammed back my head, ended up with half his teeth stuck in my scalp, but it gave Jagor time to flee. Down through the tunnels.'
