In the City Square, a huge pile of corpses burned, their drained, angular figures like wooden stickmen seen through flames. Meshwar's eyes drifted impassively over the thousand or so unfortunates, their clothing, skin and bones turning to ash as fire roared and crackled like feeding demons, illuminating the palace with an orange glow.
What Graal had begun so many weeks earlier with his ice-smoke and blood-oil magick, with his invasion of Vor by the Army of Iron – well, now Meshwar was finishing the task.
The Army of Iron were camped out of the city. All vachine camped alongside them had been taken into the forest and executed. Some vachine had put up a fight, several bands even escaping into the woods; but Meshwar sent squads of vampire killers after them, hunting them down, ripping out throats and clockwork hearts, spilling gears and cogs to the forest undergrowth,
Now, though, now it was all his. And the worm Graal was the problem of Bhu Vanesh. Slowly, through Meshwar's mind eased a thought web, for he did not think like normal mortals. This multi-threaded strand held ideas of death and destruction for Graal, but also amusement for it would annoy Bhu Vanesh. It would not be long, decided Meshwar, until Graal died a horrible death, despite his misplaced loyalty in their Summoning. To Meshwar, Graal was an imposter. A twisted impure. A melding of that which they sought to stamp out…
Meshwar's eyes surveyed Vor once again, then again, and again, taking in the destruction, the rampage, the violence. There, the Five Pillars of Agrioth had been chained and pulled to the ground by teams of horses and cattle. Five thousand years of history destroyed, because it was the history of the Ancient, the history of the Ankarok , and they were a pestilence long dead and better ground into the dirt, into dust, even moreso than the vachine.
The Great Library had first been ransacked, the books burned, then the ancient building itself set alight. That had been a particularly pleasing night's work, Meshwar nodded, smoke-filled mouth forming a smile, skin changing and shifting like a chameleon, and the image of the violence flashed across his flesh like moving, animated tattoos on smoke. On Meshwar's skin, the other slaves could see the re-enactment of the Great Destruction, as it would come to be known. Even after fires had died in the Great Library, leaving the teetering blackened walls smoking and charred, stinking and unstable, so Meshwar had personally led a team of vampires in pulling down the remaining walls until only rubble remained.
'No man should read,' emerged Meshwar's guttural voice, as around him his vampires bowed and nodded and wondered when they would be fed. 'He does not have the ability to utilise any such knowledge with wisdom and clarity. The only use for a human, is that of a slave.'
Now, Meshwar watched the Three Temples of Salamna-shar burn, huge shooting flames of orange and yellow roaring at the night sky illuminating the huge piles of rubble and snow throughout the city on all three sites. Fireflies danced over the once magnificent domes, towers and crystal spires. And Meshwar smiled again. Kuradek the Unholy would have liked this moment. This utter destruction of Falanor religion. The annihilation of man's petty gods and their base vanities. After all, the only religion now would be of their own making… worship of the Vampire Warlords.
Meshwar moved to the high iron gates of the Rose Palace. He reached out, touching the ancient, pitted iron, and looked up at the incredible artistry thousands of years old. Then he glanced back to the Rose Palace, in all its glory, and violence flooded his brain but he calmed himself, with small breaths, as a man would calm himself before ejaculation. 'No. Not yet.' He would destroy the Rose Palace, but it was the single largest symbol of freedom and the Royal spirit of Falanor. It would have to die last. But die it would.
Meshwar pointed at a young vampire girl, and she padded over to him. His talons caressed her face, then he lifted her from her feet and clamped fangs over her throat, and bit, and fed, her arms and legs kicking spasmodically as he fast-drained her to a husk. He allowed her skin-filled bones to drop with clacks, and rattle off untidily down the steps.
Meshwar turned, fast, to see the Harvester watching him with a smile on his curious, blank face. Small black eyes were fixed on Meshwar and his own blood-red gaze narrowed.
'You want something, Vishniriak?'
'My clan master would speak with you, Meshwar, great Warlord. It is most urgent.'
'I will speak with him when I am good and ready. Not now. Not tonight. I have much work to… attend.'
Vishniriak nodded, but the Harvester did not break the connection. Despite looking odd, with his tall angular frame, pale oval face, small black eyes and perfectly white robes embroidered with fine gold wire – despite the filth, and smoke, and fire filling the city of Vor – Vishniriak still carried an air of power, and an air of authority. The Vampire Warlords considered themselves superior to the Harvesters; but the Harvesters did not share the same sentiment.
'It's about the cankers. They have gone.'
'I thought they were destroyed? Like all vachine filth?'
'No. There was a leader amongst them. And, against all odds, he has rallied the cankers and they have fled together, north, it is believed.'
Meshwar considered this. 'I did not think they had it in them; their bestiality is too far removed from any logical thought. Who commands them?'
Vishniriak smiled, head tilting to one side. 'He is one of General Graal's impromptu clockwork creations. A second-hand canker impurity with far too many slices of humanity remaining. His name is Elias, once the Sword Champion of King Leanoric. Now, ahh, a much altered beast.'
'Send a hundred slaves. Hunt them down. Kill them all.'
'Yes, Master.' Vishniriak bowed his head, an inch away from actually showing respect, turned with a billowing of white robes and disappeared towards the Rose Palace.
Meshwar scowled, face swirling with images of rape and torture and murder in the smoke. Then he relaxed, and decided what violence to inflict on Vor that night.
It was past midnight. General Graal sat at the table, staring into the solitary flame of a candle and thinking of Bhu Vanesh, thinking of Helltop and the Summoning of the Vampire Warlords. So much effort. So much blood-oil magick. So many dead. And all for what?
Graal smiled a crooked smile, and mocked himself. He had harboured such plans! He had thought he, and Kradek-ka, could rule the Vampire Warlords, use them as puppets to build an army and take control of the world! And yet things had turned out different. Things had become… distorted. And now, they were as much slaves as those poor lost souls turned down on the streets below.
The door opened, and a draught drifted in like plague. Wood slammed with a rattle, and Kradek-ka sat down opposite Graal and glared at the man, at the albino, at the vachine.
'I cannot believe it's fucking come to this! ' he snarled, and bit the top from the bottle with a crunch of breaking glass. 'I sacrifice my own fucking daughter, I sacrifice the vachine civilisation of Silva Valley, and here we are, locked in a tower like two old men waiting to die.'
Kradek-ka poured two generous glasses of brandy, taken from the looted and ravaged city below. Even now, at this late hour, they could hear the hammering of ship-builders. Frantic work on the new navy continued. And the ships' skeletons were growing. Slowly, imperceptibly, but they were growing.
'We should kill Bhu Vanesh,' said Graal, drinking the brandy. It glistened on his pale lips; glistened against his brass fangs. 'We should kill him. It. Now. Tonight.' He glanced up, and Kradek-ka was staring at him. 'We should send the fucker back to the Chaos Halls.'
'We tried. We failed.'
'We should try again!'
'We only get one more chance.' Kradek-ka smiled weakly. 'You know how to do this, and not die in the process?'
'I have an idea.'
'Blood-oil magick?'
General Graal nodded, and drank more. 'When we opened the gate to the Halls they followed a path between that place and this; every path has a resonance. A bond, if you like. The Vampire Warlords were bound to the Chaos Halls; being here is an unnatural balance. All we need do is give them a push, and they'll be dragged back, kicking and screaming. I think. I believe a killing blow will do this.'
'Bhu Vanesh is mighty indeed,' said Kradek-ka, with fear etched into his face and voice.
'We must attack when he is at his weakest.'
'Which is?'
