Vampire Warlords: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles (45 page)

  It did not take long to reach Gollothrim, and they stood in a darkened alley on the outskirts, listening to the sounds of horror reverberating through the streets. Many fights were erupting in the distance. Vampires screamed. Men screamed. Flames roared. The city had erupted into chaos.

  "This is a
bad
idea," muttered Saark.

  "To the tower, you said?"

  "That's what Kell told me," muttered Saark, feeling like a down and dirty traitor, like his tongue would turn black and fall out of his burning mouth. He moved to Nienna, touched her shoulder. "
Please
. Let's turn back. This is not the time for us. Not the place."

  "I am a child no longer," said Nienna, eyes hard.

  Footsteps padded at the end of the alleyway, and a figure stopped, and turned. It was a woman. A vampire. She hissed, eyes glowing red, and extended her claws.

  "Great," muttered Saark, drawing his sword, and turning, watched a second vampire casually close off the end of the alleyway. Two women, two vampires, working together as a small unit. To trap the unwary. To slaughter. To drink fresh blood…

  Nienna had drawn her own short sword, and backed towards Saark. "There's two of them," she muttered, glancing up along the rooftops to make sure no more dropped from above.

  "You reckon?" he snapped, eyes flickering between the two. They were advancing. Fluid. Too fluid. Graceful, like cats. Saark had seen vampires move like that before. These were the true predators of the pack. Deadly and swift. "Remember," he hissed, "eyes, throat and heart. Strike hard and fast, and keep hitting till the fucker's down," but there was no more time for words as the vampires shifted into a sprint and ran fast down the alley to leap at Saark and Nienna, who stood grim, blades glittering…

Grak shoved his sword into a vampire's open mouth, snapping fangs as claws scrabbled against his breastplate and slashed viciously across the steel band around his throat. But it saved him. The steel saved him.

  "There's too many!" screamed Dekkar through the fighting throng. Their units of twenty-five men had been decimated, carved up, and backed together in a disorganised mass. They stood, panting, as vampires cir cled them on the wide main thoroughfare of Gollothrim. Occasionally, one would dart out but a spear would jab, and it would retreat. Grak looked frantically about. There were maybe twenty of them left, out of fifty. Most had lost shields, now. Most barely carried weapons. Dead vampires surrounded their boots. What happened to the other units? Fighting in their own shit, Grak reckoned. Down streets and alleyways. In buildings. What had he said? Stick to the main wide road, where each unit could help defend the other units. And what had they gone and done? Gone bloody running off in every bloody direction like horny young virgins at the sniff of a brothel! Grak the Bastard hawked and spat. Bloody undisciplined soldiers, was what they were. Bloody untrained, that was their curse! But… of course they were. They were never born for a life in the army.

  Dekkar backed to him, and Grak stood side by side next to the Blacklipper giant. Grak glanced up.

  "It's been an honour to fight alongside you, brother," he said.

  Dekkar looked down. "You too. It's a shame it takes something like
war
to unite us."

  Grak nodded. "You see how many there are? You have a slight height advantage over me."

  "I reckon three hundred," said Dekkar, voice bitter.

  "So, it's time," said Grak, and thought back past all the bad things he'd done. Would he go to the Golden Halls? The Halls of Heroes? He hawked, and spat again. After all the bad things he'd done? This hardly counted. No. He'd go to the Chaos Halls. With the Keepers. But at least one thing was sure and damn well guaranteed… he'd take as many fucking vampires with him as humanly possible…

  "COME ON, YOU WHORESONS!" he screamed, and waved his sword, beating it against his breastplate and chanting and snarling. The others around him did the same, and their noise rolled out over the snarling vampire hordes which jostled and shifted like some huge live thing, some organic vampire snake.

  Then a high-pitched squeal rent the air, and the vampires screamed, their noise rising up in waves as their claws extended, their fangs gleamed in the darkness, and with a unity uncharacteristic of their unholy race, they charged the men of Falanor…

Command Sergeant Wood snarled, and his head smashed forward, forehead slamming Lorna's nose and making her squeal, and as her head slapped back so he sank his teeth into
her
throat in a beautiful, ironic reversal. He bit and he chewed, his head thrashing, his teeth gnashing, and he chewed out her windpipe and bit through her skin and muscle and tendon, and Lorna's claws raked at his back but they were pinned together by the sword, and he bit and he chewed, he ripped through her flesh as hard and as fast as he could, and black glistening blood ran down his throat and it tasted foul, like decay, like death, like eternity. They fell to the side, rolled onto the stone flags which lined the circumference of the Green Church roof, and Lorna went suddenly still. Wood, in a crazed panic, in a fit of hatred and loathing, continued to bite and chew, not believing she was dead until his teeth clacked against her
spine
. He had chewed out her entire throat. Wood squeezed his hands between them, and pushed himself from the sword point with a cry of pain which rent the night skies like a lightning strike. Then he lay there, shivering, and with gritted teeth he grabbed the stone crenellations and yanked himself to his feet, bleeding and ragged, pain his total mistress. He gazed out across the old soldiers, but they had out-thought the vampires. Whereas the vampires had surrounded the hidden men of the Black Barracks, so this had simply been a
decoy…
to draw them out, into the open. Hundreds had risen from secondary hiding places, and as the vampires attacked so hundreds of iron-tipped arrows slashed through the night, through the snow, piercing eyes and throats, hearts and groins. Wood watched, saw hundreds of arrows slashing through gloom and darkness, watched vampires pierced and screaming and punctured, rolling down slates and tiles, toppling from rooftops to pile like plague victims in the alleys below.

  Then eyes turned, and looked up towards
him
. Wood gave a single wave of his hand as he swayed, wheezing, blood dribbling from his jaws with strings of vampire flesh, and he watched the old soldiers moving across the icy rooftops. Despite their age, they were iron. They were ruthless. They were unstoppable. It filled Wood with a little bit of shame at his own moaning. After all – he was still alive. He gritted his teeth, and ignored the hole in his chest, he regained his sword, tugging it from the vampire corpse. But as he turned to leave… he glanced down at Lorna's face. Her eyes were shining. She was watching him. She was
still alive…

  Her hand moved. Slow, like a white worm in the moonlight. At first Wood thought she was pointing at him, but she made a motion across the gaping hole where her throat had been. It was clear and simple. She wanted him to finish her.

  "Not sure you deserve it, girl," he grunted, but lifted the short stout blade anyway. Their eyes met, and there was a curious moment of connection. Strangely, Wood felt like Lorna was thanking him. Thanking him – for removing the plague curse.

  The sword slammed down, and cut her head from her torso.

  Lorna's eyes closed, and she was at peace.

  Wood checked Fat Bill, but he was a fast-cooling corpse on the snowy roof. Wood closed the man's eyes, and wincing like a man with a sword wound in his chest, limped from the roof to join the old soldiers in the alley below.

  From there, they headed for the docks…

Saark's sword slammed down. The vampire dodged. "Help me, Saark!" squealed Nienna, and Saark speared his rapier through the vampire's eye and kicked off from her chest, somersaulting backwards to kick the second vampire in the back of the head. She went down on one knee, Saark going down with her and his hand came back – paused for a moment – then scooped out her throat with his
vachine
claws. She thrashed for a while on ice-slick cobbles, then lay still, eyes glassy, blood puke on her chin and soaking her chest and belly.

  Saark's head came up. He glared at Nienna. "Now we turn back."

  "No. Now we go on." She frowned at him, stubborn as ever.

  "You will take us to our doom!"

  "Then that's the path I choose," she snapped.

  "By all the gods, I can see you carry Kell's blood."

  "Better the blood of Kell than the blood of a whining coward!"

  "Me? I just saved your life!"

  "Yes, that's physical skill! What I'm talking about is
determination
. Now come on!"

  Nienna stalked down the cobbles, stepping on a vampire corpse as she passed. Saark followed, head hung a little low, wishing he was back in the Royal Palace like it used to be, dancing to fine tunes, swigging fine wines, fucking fine succulent wenches. Saark had come from the gutters, worked his way swiftly to a place of eminence – and then the damn royal rug had been pulled from under his lacquered boots in an instant!

  "I must have been a bad man, in a former life," he muttered.

  
You've been a pretty lowly shit in this one, too
, replied his mocking conscience.

  Nienna led the way, almost by intuition. Certainly she seemed linked to her grandfather. As if by a miracle they slid between groups of vampires, eased between units and squads. Many times they heard fighting, and saw glimpses of armoured units, the brave criminals and Blacklippers of Falanor, battling ferociously against groups of screeching vampires. Swords and spears slammed out, piercing hearts and throats. Swords hacked and cut. Men fell to the ice and mud, screaming and gurgling on blood and entrails.

  At one point they spied Grak and Dekkar, back to back, from the confines of a narrow alley. Their sorrowful collection of remaining soldiers were surrounded. Saark tugged to move forward, but Nienna grabbed his arm, holding him back.

  "No, Saark,
no!
" she hissed. "Kell may need us! We have to focus!"

  Saark glared at her, but allowed himself to be drawn along, feeling like a back-stabber all the way but knowing, deep down, bedded in reality, that the greater mission was the destruction of the Vampire Warlords. And Bhu Vanesh, in particular… the leader. The
Prime.

  Through alleys they crept, in gutters filled with corpses. They moved through desecrated houses, across dead people's furniture and belongings, their flesh creeping, their breathing ragged. Closer and closer they got to the Warlord's Tower, and only as they came through a long, low house, and stopped by the smashed doorway filled with the splintered remnants of a battered door, did they peer out onto the courtyard and see the hundred-strong horde of vampires lounging around, lethargic, almost decadent in their casual manner.

  "What now?" muttered Saark.

  "We have to get past them."

  "Using what blood-oil magick, I ask?"

  "We must find Kell."

  "Well he's not in there," snorted Saark. "He couldn't have got through this hornet's nest without stirring up a whole bucket full of maggot shit. No. He's somewhere close, though. He'll be looking for another way in, I'd wager, the canny old donkey."

  Even as they watched, the vampires started to take interest in something above. Something beyond Saark and Nienna's field of vision; a couple fetched bows, and languorously began to fire arrows at some high target…

  "That has to be Kell up there," said Nienna, almost desperate with a need to leave their safe confines. "Come on. We must stop them!"

  Saark took hold of Nienna, and shook her. He shook her hard. "We die as easy as the next man," he growled. "You need to use your brain, girl, or you'll get us both killed. You hear me?" He let go of her, and caught a glimpse of hatred in her eyes. Saark licked his lips. Suddenly, he realised what was wrong – Nienna was skirting along a razor edge of sanity. She had lost her touch with reality. Maybe it had been losing her mother to the vampires, maybe it was simply the act of growing up way too fast; she'd been through enough horror to last any man or woman a lifetime. But the fact remained – she was fast becoming a danger. To Saark, to Kell, and to herself.

  Distantly, there came a sudden, deafening roar. There were more bangs, and clatters, and an undercurrent of strange violent crackling sounds. Saark moved to another window in the ransacked town house and stared off across the wide courtyard. The edges of the city glowed orange. Fire was raging along the docks.

  Outside, the vampires had seen the fire as well. Screeches and wails echoed through their ranks, language that was guttural, feral, and definitely inhuman. With Kell forgotten, they moved as a mass of figures, running, leaping, and within seconds were gone, a flood raging out through the night… and leaving the route to the tower entrance undefended.

  "They did it!" hissed Saark. "Grak's men must have reached the docks! They've torched the ships!" he beamed, misunderstanding. "The vampires are starting to panic, they need…" He turned, but Nienna had gone. He peered out of the window, and saw her disappear into the tower across the courtyard. Saark frowned. "You silly, silly little girl," he snapped, and with rapier clasped tight in his sweating fist and vachine fangs gleaming under errant strands of moonlight, Saark surged across the iced cobbles after his entrusted ward.

Wood and a group of old soldiers watched fire dance along the ships, from timber to rigging, from sails to masts. On the docks beside one vessel a store of oil had caught, a hundred barrels of flammable fish oil, and gone up with a terrible, mammoth explosion which Wood felt tremble beneath his boots like an earthquake. Flames shot out, destroying dockside buildings, smashing through four or five ships and spreading streamers of fire high into the night sky. Flames roared. Night turned to an orange, smoke-filled day. Embers fluttered on the wind, igniting yet more ships – many of which were soaked in lantern oil from casks hurled by the old soldiers of the Black Barracks. When the vampires arrived, in a pushing, heaving horde, it was too late to save their new navy, and indeed, their
old
navy. Even ships moored a good way out soon came under fire. Drifting sparks and glowing sections of sail, carried high on heated currents of air, drifted far and wide, igniting yet more sails which spread to masts and rigging, planks and timbers and barrels of oil in storage. More explosions rocked the ocean. The whole dockside became an inferno. After a while, even the ocean itself seemed to burn.