Kell's Legend (10 page)

“A brandy?”

“No, I shouldn’t,” came Dagon’s rich voice. He was a born orator, but here, in this company, he felt like a child. All his richly rehearsed speeches crumbled in the air like the stench of warm cabbage.

“I appreciate the, ah, ice-smoke is not to everybody’s liking. It chills the bones. Go on, Dagon, you have made a long journey to visit, a long journey to…” he laughed softly, “save your life. A little brandy cannot hurt. It is distilled from peaches from the King Leanoric’s own orchards, I believe.”

Dagon took a glass, and his eyes reflected in Leanoric’s crest carved skilfully into the faceted crystal surface. He drank deep, and observed Graal watching his trembling fingers, his nervous tongue, and he
finished the brandy, felt warmth flood him, felt alcohol tingle his brain giving him just a little courage.

“So you will tell me everything?” said Graal, sipping at his own drink. Dagon saw the man’s fingers were long, tapered, even the finger-nails white. His gaze moved up to blue eyes fixed on him. Strange, that they were blue, thought Dagon. He watched. Graal did not blink.

“Yes,” croaked Dagon, eventually, feeling weak at the knees, full in the bladder, frightened to his very core.

“Numbers of infantry, cavalry, archers, pikemen? Where the divisions are stationed? The names of their division generals? Brigadier generals? Numbers of horses, supply chains, military routes through Falanor, everything?”

“Yes.”

“And of course,” said Graal, moving to Dagon, stooping a little to peer closer into the official’s eyes, “Leanoric. They say he is a great battle king. That he cannot be beaten on the field. He has shown, endlessly, that he has a brilliant mind, a tactician without compare. He is strong, handsome, commands respect and honour from his soldiers. Is all this correct?”

“It is…my lord.”

“I am a general, not a lord,” snapped Graal, crushing his crystal glass. It shattered, long jagged shards slicing Graal’s hand, thick brandy flowing over the wounds and dripping, mixed with normal red blood into the carpet. Graal did not flinch, did not even look at the wound, but retained his connection with Dagon.

“Yes, general,” whispered Dagon.

“There is one more thing.”

“General?” Dagon’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Alloria. Leanoric’s queen. The mother of his two boys. She is his backbone, is she not? His love, his life, his strength. I want to know where she is, where she travels in the winter, who her maids of honour are, and which hand she uses to wipe her arse.”

“Alloria? But…I agreed to instruct you in armies, military strategy, and to speak of Leanoric…”

Graal’s hand snapped out, taking Dagon by the throat. Shards of crystal, embedded in Graal’s flesh, pierced Dagon’s skin and he squealed, legs kicking as Graal lifted him off the ground. “You will tell me everything. Leanoric is a worthy adversary; but if I remove his reason for life, diverge his thoughts by taking his queen then I have a powerful bartering tool, I have, shall we say, a strategy our tactician will appreciate. I cannot afford to lose time on this…” he smiled, almost sardonically, “invasion. You understand, Trelltongue?”

“Ye-es,” he managed, throat weeping blood.

Graal dropped Dagon to the carpet, turned, and languorously poured himself another brandy. His head came up as something drifted through the doorway, and Dagon’s breath caught in his throat as he watched the Harvester approach. He had seen them at work, seen them drain the corpses of women, and children. These creatures filled him with a terror straight from a deep primeval pit; a terror so awesome he could barely vocalise.

“Hestalt. There is a problem?”

The Harvester nodded, black eyes turning on Dagon and burning through the king’s advisor. Graal waved his lacerated hand, “Don’t mind him, he is of no consequence.” Graal began picking shards from his flesh, some as long as two inches. He did not wince. “What’s wrong?”

“The man. The
hero.
Kell.”

“He still lives?”

“More than that. He has been a…thorn, in my side. He has escaped.”

“Send a squad. They’ll catch up with one old man.”

“No, Graal. He is more dangerous than you could comprehend…and it stems from his axe. I know a bloodbond weapon when I see one. Graal, he must be dealt with immediately. You understand?”

Graal rubbed at his chin, eyes distant. “He was there? During the Days of Blood? If he is in possession of a bloodbond weapon he must surely have experienced those days; one way or another.” Graal’s eyes glittered. His splintered hand was forgotten. “There is immense power in such a weapon. Power we can use, yes?”

The Harvester nodded. “Send a canker.”

Graal frowned. “A little excessive, my friend.”

“I want him stopped. His life extinguished. Now!”

Graal gave a single nod. It was rare he’d seen a Harvester so ruffled. He walked to the window, wondering if there was some unwritten bond here; some information to which he was not privy. Graal signalled to an albino soldier, who disappeared. Dagon Trelltongue used the time to pull himself to his feet,
removing a tissue from one pocket and dabbing at his bleeding throat. He could feel the flesh, bruised, swollen, punctured, and he knew he would struggle to speak for the next few days.

Distantly, there came a sound, savage, brutal, a snarling like a big cat only this noise was twisted, and merged with metal. Dagon shivered involuntarily, and found General Graal’s eyes locked to him again. The general was smiling, and gestured idly to the doorway. “A canker,” he said, by way of explanation, as six soldiers pushed a cage through high, ornately-carved double-doors.

Dagon felt piss running down his legs as his eyes fastened on the cage, and he was unable to tear his gaze free from the vision.

It was big, the size of a lion, but there the resemblance ended. Once, it had been human. Now it raged on all fours, pale white skin bulging with muscle and tufts of white and grey fur. Its forehead stretched right back, mouth five times the size of a human maw, the skull opened right up, split horizontal like a melon and with huge curved fangs dropping down below the chin like razor-spikes. Everywhere across the creature’s body lay open wounds, crimson, rimmed with yellow fat, like the open, frozen flesh of the necrotic, and inside Dagon could see tiny wheels spinning, gears meshing, shafts moving and shifting like, like…

Like clockwork, he realised.

Dagon blinked, and tried to swallow. He could not.

The creature snarled, shrieked and launched at the cage wall. Huge bars squealed, one rattling, and the creature sat back on its haunches with its strange open
head, its twisted high-set eyes, one higher than the other, staring at Dagon for a moment and sending a spear of ice straight to his heart. Inside that skull he saw more clockwork, gears and levers stepping up and down, tiny wheels spinning. He fancied, if he listened carefully, he could hear the gentle, background
tick tick tick
of a clock.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“A canker,” repeated Graal, moving over to the cage and putting his hand inside. Dagon wanted to scream
Don’t do that, it’ll rip your fucking hand off!
But he did not. He stared, in a terrible, dazed silence. “When vachine are young, little more than babes, they go to the Engineer’s Palace for certain, necessary, modifications. However, the vachine flesh is occasionally temperamental, and suffers, shall we say, a set-back. The muscle, bone and clockwork do not meld, do not integrate, and as the vachine grows so it loses humanity, loses emotions, loses empathy, and becomes something less than vachine. It twists, its body corrupting, its growth becoming an eternal battle between flesh and clockwork, each component vying for supremacy, each internal war filling the new-grown canker with awesome pain, and hatred, and, sadly, insanity. Eventually, one or the other—the flesh, or the clockwork—will win the battle and the canker will die. Until that point, we use them for hunting impure vachine. The Heretics, the Blasphemers, and the Blacklippers. “

Graal turned, then. His words had been soft, a recounting of Engineer Council Lore, the Oak Testament, and he blinked as if awaking from a dream. “This is Zalherion. Once, he was my brother.
The vachine process was good to me. But not, I fear, to him.”

The canker moved forward, and licked at Graal’s hand like a dog would its master. The canker growled, then, head turning, its eyes fixed again on Dagon and Graal gave a laugh, a sweet sound, his blue eyes sparkling. “No, not him, Zal. We have another one for you.” The canker growled, a distorted lion-sound, and with a squeal of bolts Graal opened the cage.

The canker leapt out, brass claws gouging rich carpets. It moved with an awesome power and feline grace despite its twisted frame and open wounds, towering over the men, even the Harvester, and gazing down at Graal with something akin to love.

Graal’s head turned, and the Harvester moved forward, eyes closing, five bone fingers reaching out towards the canker. It growled, backed away a step, hunkered down. Then a moment later, it stood and sprinted from the room leaving grooves in the stone.

“What did you do?” whispered Dagon, aware that if he survived this encounter, and the one soon to follow, it would be a miracle of life over insanity; of luck over probability.

“The Harvester imprinted an image of Kell inside the canker’s mind. Now, Zal will not stop until Kell is dead.”

Dagon lowered his head. Tears ran down his cheeks.

The small boat sped down the river, but eventually the banks widened and the urgency and violent rocking slowed. Nienna sat, stunned, huddled close to Kat for warmth, and also the mental strength of friendship.
She had watched her grandpa, Old Kell, fight the Harvester in something like a dream state, aware at any moment that the creature might smash him from existence, suck the life from his shell with those long razor bone fingers…and yet it was like she was watching a play on a stage, because, to see her grandpa fight was unreal, surreal, something that just wasn’t right. He was an old man. He cooked soup. He told her stories. He moaned about his back. He moaned about the price of fish at the market. It wasn’t right.

“Are you well?” asked Kat, hugging her briefly.

Nienna looked up into Kat’s blood-spattered, toxin-splashed face, and nodded, giving a little smile. She took a deep breath. “Yes, Kat. I think. Just. Everything has been crazy. Wild! I can’t believe Grandpa is so…deadly.”

Kat, remembering her perceived savagery back in the tunnel, her cold realisation that Kell would leave her to die, said nothing, simply nodded. An ice-veil dropped over her heart, smothering another little piece of her humanity with bitter cynicism.

“We’ll be all right,” said Nienna, mistaking Kat’s inner turmoil and total fear—not at the world outside, but at the man in the boat. “We’ll get through this, you’ll see. We’ll go to university. Everything will be all right.”

Kat gave a small, bitter laugh. “Yeah, Nienna? You, with your sheltered upbringing, your loving mother, your doting grandpa, all caring for you and holding you and being there for you. I never had any of that.” Her voice was astringent. Filled with acid. “I’ve been
alone in this world, alone, for such a very long time, sweet little pampered Nienna. I fought every step of the way just to gain entry to Jalder University; I lied, I cheated, I stole, in order to try and crawl up from the stinking gutter, to make a better life for myself, a better future. Nobody has ever been there for me, Nienna.”

“What about your aunt? The one who raised you after you parents died? The one who baked you bread, and washed your clothes, and braided your hair with beads?”

Kat gave another laugh, and gazed off along the frozen river banks. The trees were full of snow, the air full of mist from the fields, and they were leaving the city fast behind, the Selanau River carrying them south. “My aunt? She never existed. I used to live in taverns, haylofts, anywhere I could find. I would sneak into merchant’s houses and use their baths, steal clothes from servants, steal bread from the ovens and soup from bubbling pans. I was a ghost. A thief. An expert thief.” She laughed again, tears running down her cheeks. “I’ve always been alone, Nienna. Always been a fighter. Now…it’s gone, isn’t it? The university? Life in Jalder? All I fought to build, it has been taken away with a click of some dictator’s scabby fingers.”

“I’m there for you, now,” said Nienna, voice small, and hugged Kat.

“Everybody leaves me in the end,” she said.

“No! I will be there for you. Forever! Until we die.”

“Until we die?”

Nienna squeezed her friend, took her hands, pressed her cold skin, her frozen fingers, and hugged
her like the sister she’d never had. “I swear on my soul,” she whispered.

The boat ride had slowed, and within a couple of hours they finally left the clinging veils of ice-smoke and mist behind. A new world opened before them, fresh and bright as they drifted from wreaths of haze into a landscape of rolling fields crisp with frost and patches of snow. Large hills lined the horizon, many thick with great scars of conifer forest, junipers, yews and blue spruce, great green and white swathes that stretched in crescents across the undulating hillsides peppered with teeth of rock and littered with pink and magenta winter heather giving bright splashes of colour.

Eventually Kell guided the boat to the banks of the river lined with towering silver fir, and they cruised for a while in silence, each huddled in their own damp clothing, stinking from the tannery, lost in thought at the recent, savage events that had overtaken Jalder.

“There,” said Saark, pointing.

Kell nodded, spotting the small stone cottage backed by yews, and guided the boat towards a shingle beach where he leapt out into the shallows and dragged the boat up the shingle with a grunt. He stood, axe in pink chilled hands, as the others jumped free and Saark joined him, rapier out, searching for any possible enemy.

“You think they’ll follow us here?” said Saark.

“Have you
ever
seen a creature like that Harvester?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I’ve no idea what they’ll do, my friend. But for now, at least, we’ve put a good twenty miles
between us and the…madness in Jalder.” At his words, he saw Nienna shudder and he moved to her, placing his arm around her shoulders. “Come on, Nienna. We’ll build a fire.” He hugged her.