history, a longer deviation.
'You.' Graal was snapped back to the living, the present, and realised Bhu Vanesh was pointing at him. Graal stared for a moment, then glanced at the woman. She was smiling, showing her own vampire fangs. Dead, but alive. The undead. Not like the sophisticated clockwork vachine at all…
'Yes?' snapped Graal, anger flooding him. Anger, and bitterness, and regret. What had he done? He glanced down at the waxen figure of Kradek-ka. What had they done?
'Take Lorna to the Division General's quarters. He is here. I can smell his fear. Lorna will begin my recruitment. She is the First.'
'Yes.'
'And Graal?' Bhu Vanesh's voice was a low, low rumble. Those red eyes cut through Graal's nerve like an assassin's garrotte.
'Yes, Warlord?'
'Forget your manners again, and I will cut off your head and suck out your brains.'
Graal paled. He bowed his head a fraction. 'Yes, Warlord.'
A winter sea breeze caressed the stone corridors of Port Gollothrim's High Fortress as Graal led Lorna, this newly baptised and transformed vampire, towards the central control point of this south-western Falanor city. Prior to the Vampire Warlords' resurrection, Graal's Army of Iron had not made it this far; which meant, in theory, the population of the city was sound. Those, that is, who had not fled after Vor was sundered.
Graal paused, and stared from a high window. Below, the city appeared deserted. And then he saw them, a group of rough-looking men down by the seafront. Huge walls lined the front, presumably to halt high tides or violent storms. Graal's eyes strayed, and he saw a woman, further down. She carried a babe in her arms, and walked quickly, nervously, looking often over her shoulder. She reached a small line of cottages and ducked quickly into a doorway. So. Port Gollothrim was still home to… Graal smiled. Fresh meat. Templates. Vampire templates. But where were the soldiers? Called away to fight his Army of Iron, in Vor? Possibly.
Graal rubbed his chin. His torn cheek was stinging, but even now he could feel accelerated vachine flesh knitting together. He would be healed by the next morning.
He felt Lorna's eyes on him. He turned. 'What are you looking at?'
'A nervous man.'
Graal stared, hard, then smiled a cold thin-lipped smile. 'So, Lorna, bitch, Bhu Vanesh's First, born straight into our world of horror by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You think you are so powerful? Let us see you perform. Perform, like a dancing monkey jerking on the puppeteer's strings.'
Lorna's head tilted, and she observed Graal, and he felt the clockwork of his heart accelerate a little. Then she turned, and Graal led her no more. She moved fast, bare feet padding the cold stone flags, white kitchen apron stained with blood and the black gore from Bhu Vanesh's veins. Her neck showed the twin bites of the vampire. Her skin glowed in an ironic mockery of life.
Now, Graal followed. Lorna needed no guidance.
She accelerated, and Graal had to jog to keep up. Down long corridors, up steps, until they burst into the Division General's chambers and surprised the five men there. Division General Dekull stood beside a large polished oak table, with four other men; all wore military uniforms of black and silver bearing the Falanor crest. The table was filled with maps, and several glasses of half-drained wine.
Dekull, a large man with bull-neck and over-red complexion, thinning brown hair and large hands, stared for a moment in abject confusion. 'Who the hell are you?' he growled, red-face forming into the frown of a man who did not take interruptions lightly. Then Lorna squealed in sudden bloodlust, real blood lust, and a burst of energy fired her and leapt at him, fastening arms and legs around him, teeth lusting for his jugular. He staggered back, knocking the table over. Wine spilled across maps. He tried to grapple with the newborn vampire, but there came a sudden crack as she snapped his arm like tinder, and Division General Dekull screamed, highpitched and animal, and this slammed the other men into action. They drew swords and charged as Graal watched impassively from the doorway.
Four swords slashed at Lorna in quick succession, as her knees came up, bare feet on Dekull's chest and she kicked up and backwards, through a somersault, landing behind one soldier. Swords clanged together in discord. Lorna's fist punched into one man, and through him, bursting free of his chest in a splatter of blood. She stood, holding his jiggling body upright, then let him fall as the three remaining men leapt back, faces uncertain, eyes narrowed. Lorna took a long lick of slick blood from her elbow to her still-clenched fist. Her black eyes gleamed.
'Come on,' she growled, voice feral and husky.
One man screamed and charged, and she deflected his sword blow on her left arm where the razor-edge peeled her skin back like flesh from soft-braised pork. Her right hand dropped, grabbed his crotch, and ripped back hard detaching chainmail trews, penis and testes in one mangled lump. The other two men edged towards the door, then one, Command Sergeant Wood, turned and kicked his way savagely through the leaded window. He climbed out onto a high ledge and disappeared from view. The final man dropped his sword with a clatter. Division General Dekull was kneeling, blood pooled around him, nursing his broken arm. Bone protruded from flesh, a savage break, a sharp stick pointing at the roof.
Lorna strode to the surrendered soldier, and knelt before him. She seemed almost tender. The man, a young commissioned officer named Shurin, trembled as urine leaked down his legs and pooled around his feet. It stank bad.
'I didn't mean it,' Shurin whispered, eyes imploring. 'I beg forgiveness.'
'There is no forgiveness,' said Lorna, and he was on his knees before her and she took his face in her hands, a palm against each cheek and she was smiling and Shurin's piss gurgled as it swilled around them, and she pulled his face towards her, as if they were parted lovers returned for a final kiss; then she lowered her fangs, and they sank into his flesh, and he screamed and began to kick, to struggle savagely in the nature of any trapped beast and the piss-stink of the coward. Lorna sucked Shurin, and drank him hard, and left his deflated corpse like a limp doll on the flagstones.
Lorna stood. She licked blood from her lips. She radiated power.
Graal was examining his fingernails, his air one of debonair cool, his eyes detached from the bloody scene before him. He knew the situation; understood it inherently. Until Lorna killed, and fed, she was not true vampire. Now, with this fresh intake of blood, she was almost there. Almost. Now, in the same way the vachine used clockwork to finalise their victims' transformation to vachine, Lorna had to make her own slave; her own ghoul. It was the Law of the Vampire. One of the Old Laws. For the vampires were a race of the enslaved…
Lorna was advancing on the barely conscious figure of Division General Dekull. His broken arm cast odd shadows against the wall. Outside, the winter sun was a copper pan pushed into the sky.
'You missed one.'
'What?' Lorna's head snapped round.
Graal looked up. Gestured to the window. 'You missed one. Sloppy.'
'I saw no help from you,' she snarled, blood still slick on her fangs and causing her frail blonde hair to clump in rat tails around her face.
'This is not my freakshow,' smiled Graal, coolly, and turned his back, departing the chamber to look for Kradek-ka. Behind him, he heard Lorna's soothing words. First, he heard the crack as Lorna put Dekull's arm back in line. His scream shook the rafters. Then she fed, and fed him her blood, and in so doing spread the black blood of Bhu Vanesh, from killer to victim. She spread the disease. Spread the curse.
It was night.
Graal sat in his large, almost regal sleeping chambers, nursing a glass of port at a smooth-waxed redwood table. Across from him sat Kradek-ka, face still battered from his collision with a jagged mountain wall. He looked far from his usual composed, serene self.
Outside, a large pale moon hung in the sky like a pancreas cut free by a drunk surgeon. Yellow light filtered into the sleeping chamber, and tumbled lazily across Graal and Kradek-ka's sombre features.
'So it is done,' said Kradek-ka, and took a drink from his glass. Graal nodded, and rubbed his eyes. Bhu Vanesh's vampiric plague had swept through the High Fortress in less than a day. Now, he had a hundred and fifty vampire slaves, a jagged hierarchy ruled over by Lorna and Division General Dekull. Dekull had shown himself to be a formidable taker to the cause; and of course, once he was under Bhu Vanesh's control, the Vampire Warlord
