Vampire Warlords: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles (2 page)

  "So we go to war?" said Meshwar, and his voice held excitement, anticipation and… something else. It took little for Meshwar to become aroused.

  "Yes. War. Against all those deviants, lacking in vampire purity!"

CHAPTER 1

Underwurlde

Events were a blur for Saark, the rich dandy, the flamboyant womaniser, for all that interested him in life was fine wine and raucous sex, silver platters of finely carved pig-meat, juicy eyeballs soaked in thin apple sauce from the figarall fish caught in iron traps under the Salarl Ocean. He was obsessed with pleasure, with joy, his own unstoppable and unquenchable
lust
; Saark was a hedonist, a narcissist, a nihilist, and unashamed of his open succulent fire. And yet now, now it was a blur. His life was a blur, and everything in it filled with a dreamlike quality, a haze of misunderstanding, of confusion – and more importantly, of–

  Pain.

  The knife cut into his chest and he may have screamed, his kicking limbs lurching in epileptic spasms. The knife was burning hot then ice cold, burning, burning as the tip skewered his skin, and his muscle, and sawed rhythmically and with razor-eagerness through his breast-bone leaving him gasping, teeth clacking repeatedly, fingers flexing as he begged
begged
to make it stop make it stop, but the face over him was hard and brutal, the face of the vachine Watchmaker, Kradek-ka and Saark's blood flushed down his chest, his belly, and he felt something removed from him.

  Saark lay there, gasping, flopped like a fish on the Granite Throne and black snow fell and a cold wind whistled, disturbing his long black curls. The wind smelled good, smelled of ice and freedom beyond the mountains, beyond this imprisonment of the blade which had sundered his pale weak brittle flesh. The mountains. The Black Pike Mountains. Skaringa Dak. Helltop.

  These names were distant, now, tails of smoke, and his blood pounded in his veins and he was different. Saark had been infected by the bite of the Soul Stealer, her venom pumping round his veins and infusing him with the
toxin
of the vachine, the vampires, a secondrate disease for a second-rate hero… Saark laughed. Blood bubbled around his lips from punctured lungs. He felt like he was dying. And he knew: surely he was.

  Saark could ascertain noises, shouting, the clash of weapons, but they were all gone and lost to him. Consciousness fled like a startled kitten, and when he awoke the cool granite of Helltop was pressing his face like a lover. He heard more shouts, and sobbing, and one eye could see the dark sky filled with a
portal
into the Chaos Halls, the Blood Void, the Bone Graveyard, and a fist of fear punched through Saark as he listened to the steady
thump thump
of his heart, open to the world, and slowly his hand crawled across the ground. His fingers crawled across his own slick flesh, slick and cold, drenched in iced blood, and he found a hole gaping over his heart, and his fingers could feel the trembling of his
heart
within because he was open to the world, carved up like a pig on a slab, and that was so sweet, so ironic, so frightening.

  A hand soothed his brow. Beyond, he could feel a terrible presence, of death and hatred and omniscient rage. The Vampire Warlords had arrived. And Saark, even in his disorientated state, knew desolation.

  "It will be all right," soothed a voice in his ear, and he recognised Nienna and he smiled, and her hands were stroking his face. He could see fear in her eyes, though, and knew then he would die. What could she see? How could she save him?

  Saark tried to speak, but could not.

  Saark tried to move, but could not.

  Distantly, through a mesh of fractured thoughts, words came to him, all tangled, interlaced, like the stranded threads of cotton his mother used to repair his trews.
We must go. We must! We cannot! He's dead. Bring Saark. Bring Saark. He's dead.
They echoed backwards and forwards, reverberating as if they were a drunk's uneven song in the bottom of a sediment-layered tankard.
Bring Saark! Bring him!
A woman's shriek. Oh how he longed for a woman's shriek, but that was a different world, a different age.

  Movement. Ice. Cold. Wind. And then–

  Plummeting. A feeling of weightlessness. And Saark remembered no more.

On the icy plateau of Helltop, with the Vampire Warlords solid and real behind him, newborn demons and dark gods and
vampires
from the Chaos Halls, Kell, with Saark over one shoulder and dragging Nienna behind him, his mighty axe
Ilanna
in one huge fist and rage and fear pumping through his breast like molten hate, Kell leapt for the hole in the mountain's summit, leapt for the vertical tunnel so recently brimming with waters which spilled out, were
forced out
under awesome pressure to flood Silva Valley and drown the vachine living within…

  Kell's logic was simple. Leap down the vertical tunnel.
Escape!
It had water, down there, somewhere, spoke his desperate mind; and that would cushion their fall. If not? Well, a grim side of Kell's soul decided, if
not
then sudden impact, sudden death, it would be better than living as slaves to the vampires.

  Kell blinked. General Graal was in his way.

  Nothing stood in Kell's way.

  In reflex, Ilanna flashed up, smashing Graal's sword aside as if wielded by a tottering toddler, and in the same movement singing blades sliced Graal's left cheek apart as if paring tender braised beef from bone. Graal stumbled back with a shriek, and Kell and Saark and Nienna tumbled into the hole, into the ancient tunnel worn through rock by a million years of probing meltwater. In that instant, Kell glimpsed three figures on the Granite Thrones. They were fashioned from black smoke. Their eyes were blood red. And they were watching him.

  Gravity caught Kell in its fist and pulled him downwards, separating him from his companions. All thoughts and fear were smashed aside like a blow from a helve. Acceleration became his mistress, fear glued his teeth shut, and Kell fell into a headlong dive that seemed to last forever…

  The tunnel was long. White. Images flashed and blurred before Kell's eyes. He tumbled occasionally, hitting the sides of the vast tunnel wall but they were smooth, worn by floods and ice and a raging torrent. His hair and beard streamed behind him. Tears eased from old eyes. He dragged Ilanna, his axe, his sweetheart, to his chest and lowered his chin and waited for a terrible impact…

  It never came. Gently, the tunnel curved and Kell was sliding, then free again and falling, diving, and he heard a distant scream but could do nothing. He glanced back, and saw only darkness. Again, he was cradled by a curve in the tunnel, and friction slowed him, burning the flesh of his hands and he yelped, in surprise, in shock at sudden raw agony but it told him one thing, one certainty: it hurt like a bastard, and that meant he was alive. This was no dream. Kell narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth and fell through Skaringa Dak – dived, through the heart of the mountain.

  Tunnels flashed past. Some lit with mineral deposits. Some were huge, caverns dissecting the tunnel through which Kell fell and he thought,
where is all the water?
And he realised,
a flood, a flood of magick, drowning Silva Valley, drowning the vachine civilisation
… and then he hit another curve, which slowed him, and he was sent tumbling through air and darkness and plunged into water so cold he gasped, ice-needles driving through his eyeballs and brain and numbing him. He was deep under, and he clung to Ilanna.
I will not let you go, I will not lose you, my love
. With a sudden spurt of anger Kell punched upwards, powerful legs kicking, and he broke the surface with a splutter and desperate intake of air. He went under again, but fought upwards and as he gasped and breathed, he saw the nearby glow and kicked out for it, his strokes urgent, cold battering through his old bones.

  It was a beach, of sorts. Kell kicked and struggled, then flopped uselessly onto his back, great chest heaving. Kell had never been one for swimming, and he hated the water with a vengeance.

  Pain and fear ran rampant through his blood, and Kell pushed himself to an upright position and cleared his nostrils with snorts, head spinning. He heard something then, a crying, a thrashing in the underground lake.
Nienna!

  Dropping his axe, Kell surged back towards the freezing lake. "Nienna!" he boomed, and his voice reverberated back a hundred times more powerful, a cackling of demons.

  "Grandfather!" shrieked the young woman, "I've got Saark, help, he's dragging me under!"

  Kell kicked off his boots, muttering darkly, and with the surreal and ghostly glow behind, leapt back in to the freezing waters, powering over to Nienna and taking the dead-weight of Saark's body from struggling hands. Kell struck back for the shore, Nienna following, and they lay there on the black sand panting, exhausted, shivering with core-biting cold, and Kell rolled Saark to one side and growled and said, "You should have let him sink. What sense, Nienna, in rescuing a corpse?"

  "He's not dead," panted Nienna.

  "I watched them carve out his heart!" snapped Kell, weary now, and crawled and stood, and rubbed his hands together. "Of course he's dead! Now we need a fire, girl, or we'll also die in but a few short hours."

  "But…"

  "Nienna! Stand up! Get moving. Keep moving."

  She stood, and they looked around. The shore of the vast underground lake seemed to stretch off for eternity. The cavern was vast, endless, and the glow came from eerie stalactites and stalagmites which sat cloaked in some kind of fungus. Kell moved to one, and peeled back a little. He sniffed it. He touched it to his tongue. "I hope it burns. Because," he gazed around, long grey hair plastered to his shivering scalp, "if it doesn't, we're going to die down here."

  The beach was littered with stones and rocks, of a million different descriptions, all washed up over millennia. Kell set Nienna to gathering the glowing fungi, and he found several rocks, striking them together until he found a combination that gave a spark. Back from the water, near a cluster of flowstone and stalagmites, Nienna piled the scraped fungus and Kell knelt, feeling foolish, shivering violently. He struck sparks in the fungus, and on the fourth attempt it glowed, and flames flickered. An odd-smelling smoke rose and heat blossomed from glowing flame-petals. Kell glanced up. "Get more," he said.

  "Bring Saark to the fire," said Nienna.

  Kell ground his teeth in annoyance, but gave a nod. He moved back down to the lapping shore. He bent, and lifted the dandy, and retrieved his axe. He carried both back to this odd subterranean campsite and threw down the axe. He laid Saark out. Saark's eyes opened.

  "Thanks, old man," he said, voice a hoarse whisper. "Thought you were going to leave me out there to die."

  "Saark! Gods, man! You tough little cockroach!" Kell moved Saark closer to the flames, and stared in awe at the savage chest wound. He could see Saark's heart beating within, pulsating with very, very slow thumps. Kell shivered. Saark was a hair's-breadth from death.

  Nienna returned, and they piled more fungus on the fire. Flames roared and within minutes steam was rising from their sodden clothes. Saark's eyes had closed, and Kell gestured to Nienna. They stepped away from the fire.

  "There is nothing I can do for him," he said, sadness buried in his eyes, in his voice. "I wish there was, Nienna, truly I do. It is a miracle he has lasted this long. He must have lost a lot of blood."

  "Can you not stitch him? I've seen you sew wounds before!"

  "No, Little One. It is too wide. It's straight through the bone. We must… sit with him. But when it is time to move on, well…" Kell gripped his axe tight, trying to convey understanding through gesture.

  Nienna understood clearly, and she punched Kell on the arm. "No!" she hissed. "You're not going to kill him! I won't let you."

  "We cannot take him with us, girl. Look around you! I doubt very much we will survive. How foolish, to try and drag a guaranteed corpse."

  "He may be a guaranteed corpse to you," said Nienna, eyes cold, voice in the tombworld, "but he's a fine friend to me, and I will not leave him. You go if you wish,
grandfather
. But I will find a way to get Saark back to the sunshine."

  Kell sighed, and watched Nienna return to Saark. He ground his teeth, and rubbed at his temples, and moved back to the fire as the chill of the underground cavern bit him with tiny fangs.
She has the stubbornness of her mother in her,
he thought bitterly, but that only led to further painful memories, of ancient days, and Sara, and Kell closed that door with a violent shove.

Saark moaned, and his eyes fluttered open. "Where am I?" he murmured.

  "You should be dead," growled Kell.

  "Nice to see you, too, you old bastard."

  "I'm simply being honest," prickled the aged axeman.

  Saark coughed, and Kell rubbed at his beard. "I reckon we'll need to be moving soon. Don't want those Vampire Warlords ramming claws up my arse."

  "How long have we been stranded?"

  "A day, maybe."

  "If they wanted us, they would have found us," said Saark, voice a croak, eyes watering. "Is there anything to eat?"

  "No."

  "Anything to drink?"

  "Just brackish, oily water. At least the lake will sustain us."

  Saark laughed, then grimaced in pain. "You bring me to the finest places, Kell."

  "Yeah, well, we ain't married yet, are we?"

  "At least you acknowledge there might still be time. Ha!"

  "Not whilst I'm breathing, lad."

  "Where's Nienna?"

  "Gathering more fungus. It burns well, but with a strange smell."

  "I recognise that smell, Kell. It's drugsmoke. You're keeping us all high. Well done, that man. I thought my pain had receded; it's because I've been inhaling a natural narcotic for the last few hours. Don't you feel the buzz?"