Vampire Warlords: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles (9 page)

  "Still." He pursed his lips. "She hardly looks seaworthy."

  "
She
is
not
a bloody galleon," snarled Kell, hands on hips, his fury still rising.

  "And I can bloody see that!" said Saark. "To be honest, I think I might take my chances with the soldiers and demons. If we try and ride the river on
that thing,
we are sure to die."

  Kell stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Suit yourself. You coming, Myriam?"

  "I'm coming," said Myriam, flashing Saark a weak smile. She grabbed one edge, and with Kell they dragged the makeshift raft down to the water's edge, where the water tugged eagerly.

  Saark shuffled after them, and stopped, shifting from one foot to the other. "This is starting to feel like a military training camp," he muttered, as he watched Kell making last minute adjustments, pulling several of the binding ropes tight. The timber creaked in protest under Kell's exerted pressure.

  "Meaning?"

  "Well, we did all sorts of horse shit like this during training. Carry rocks and logs, build rafts, work as a team to get across the river, make stepping stones, swing from high trees, climb like monkeys up pointless walls of rock, run through the mountains, navigate blizzards, that sort of thing. Hah! What a chamber pot of rotting turds that whole thing turned out to be!"

  "So, you've built a raft before?" Kell glanced up as he worked.

  "Sort of."

  "How can you 'sort of' build a raft? You either do or you don't."

  "I directed their actions, like a good captain should."

  "You mean you let others do the real graft, whilst you sat on your arse thinking about women?"

  "Of course," smirked Saark, failing to grasp even the subtlest strand of sarcasm. "That's the way it should be. Royalty and people of breeding doing the commanding, whilst, ahem, no offence meant, but peasants work their fingers to the bone."

  "So I'm a peasant, eh lad?" Kell straightened, and rubbed his hands on his jerkin. The skin of his hands was ingrained with dirt. His fingernails were mostly black from impacts during battle. His huge hands wore the hardy skin of sixty years of toil.

  "Of course you are!" said Saark brightly. He grinned, and slapped Kell on the back. "But don't worry, old horse! I won't hold it against you! As you say, I've worked with worse tools."

  Kell lifted Nienna onto the bobbing wooden raft, and then held out his hand for Myriam, who stepped lightly aboard. The raft bobbed. It looked far from safe. Kell glanced at Saark's beaming face, then stepped on himself. It took his weight, and he placed a hand on the low, makeshift tiller he'd fashioned from the lid of an old cherrywood chest. The raft began to drift from the shore.

  "Hey, what about me?" snapped Saark, suddenly. His eyes went wide.

  "Better jump for it, laddie."

  "Hey, wait, I thought, I mean…"

  "Didn't think you'd want to touch my dirty peasant's paws," grinned Kell. The gap was two feet distant now, and the current started to turn the raft. "Better be quick, when the current gets us you'll never make it."

  Saark took a step back, and with an inelegant squawk, leapt for the raft. He hit the edge, and scrabbled for a moment, one leg sinking into the ice-chilled waters to the thigh. Then Myriam grabbed him, and hauled him onto the rough-lashed planks where he lay, gazing up, panting.

  "You would have left me," he said.

  "Don't be silly," smiled Kell.

  "You would. I know you would."

  "Well, maybe one day you'll learn your lesson," said Kell.

  Saark pushed himself up. "And what lesson's that?"

  "You never bite the hand that feeds."

  The current caught the raft, and with a rapid acceleration they were slammed along the cavern and disappeared rapidly into a narrow, blackened tunnel. To Saark, it felt as though they were being sucked down into the Chaos Halls themselves…

  Cold air hit them. They were plunged into total darkness. The raft moved forward swiftly, rocking occasionally, and Saark found himself sitting very, very still. Fear of water was not something that had ever really occurred to him; he had only ever
really
been on the Royal Barge on Lake Katashinka, and even then he'd always been drunk. Now, however, a cold sobriety had him in its fist and every little rock, or shift, every turn and dip and rise made his stomach flip over, and injected him with a sudden nausea and need to be sick. A white pallor invaded his face, but because of the gloom nobody realised his fear.

  They seemed to slow for a while, travelling down narrow tunnels, and then emerged into a huge cavern. Fluorescent lodes glinted in the walls, lighting their way, and ice gleamed on rocks and stalagmites.

  They plunged into darkness again.

  "Does anybody feel sick?" said Saark in a small voice.

  "You big girl," snapped Kell. He was concentrating hard, attempting to
feel
the flow of the river, to anticipate – in the Stygian black – whether they were being pulled toward the rows of harsh, jagged rocks, like gnashing teeth, which lined the way.

  "No, no, really, I feel incredibly queasy."

  "It'll be your wound," said Myriam, not unkindly. She crossed to Saark, and took his hands. "Here. Let me soothe you."

  "Yeah, I bet you will," said Nienna, voice small.

  "No, honestly, I feel really…" Saark scrambled to the edge of the raft, and threw up noisily over the side. He vomited for a while, and there was an embarrassed silence, and finally Saark sat up.

  "How you feeling?" growled Kell.

  "That was your fault."

  "
My fault?
How, in the name of Bhu Vanesh's
bollocks,
did you come to that conclusion?"

  "It's your boat control, isn't it? You're all over the place, man!" He turned to Nienna and Myriam, little more than ethereal white blobs in the dark. "I'm sorry, ladies, to lose my equilibrium in such a way. I'm sure you must feel queasy as well."

  "Not I," said Myriam.

  "Nor I," said Nienna, eyes flashing daggers. "Maybe you've been sucking on something you shouldn't?" She flashed a glance to Myriam, but it was lost in the gloom, in the surge and sway of the raft.

  "Something's coming," said Kell.

  "What do you mean, 'something's coming'? What can possibly 'be coming' out here?" But even as Saark was spouting his vomit-stinking words, they hit a sudden dip and the raft fell several feet, splashing with a slap onto a swirl of churning water; Kell fought with the makeshift tiller, which gave a
crack
and came off in his hands. He stared at Myriam.

  "That's not good," she said.

  "You idiot!" screamed Saark. "You're supposed to be steering the damn thing! Now you've broken it! You bloody idiot! What the hell are you doing?"

  "I'm not doing anything," snapped Kell. "This whole game is out of my damn control. But I'll tell you what I
will
do if you keep blaming me for freaks of nature, you freak of nature, I'll be steering your big fat stupid face into the current of my fucking
fist
."

  "No need to be like that," said Saark primly – as they hit another sudden dip, and the raft tipped madly and Saark rolled towards the edge, squawking like an infant. "Wah!" he screamed, and Myriam launched after him, grabbing hold and dragging him back without ceremony.

  "Get hold of something!" she hissed, and retracted her claws. Then the pain hit Saark, as he realised her
vachine claws
had saved him by hooking into his thigh muscle.

  He screamed again. "You punctured me! You grabbed my bloody
muscle!
Are you addled on
Fisher's Weed
? Devoid of your better judgement? Are you insane? Look, I'm bleeding, I've got blood all over my pants, there's blood everywhere, on my pants, and everything!"

  "There'll be more soon," muttered Kell. But they hit another drop, and as water washed over them and they clung to the raft for dear life, so it began to turn and rock, and drop into choppy troughs flecked white with foam. A roaring came to their senses. It was loud, and vicious sounding.

  "That sounds like a waterfall," said Saark, carefully.

  "So it does, lad," snapped Kell.

  "You know that shack back there? You remember how it was never used?"

  "I suppose I understand, now," said Kell.

  Saark turned his moaning on Myriam. "I thought
you
said you
knew
this path?"

  "No. I said I could guide us out."

  "What, and dropping us off an underground waterfall is getting us out, is it? Am I truly surrounded by idiots?"

  Myriam gripped him. Her vachine fangs flashed. "Listen, Saark, I never said I'd been this way before. Only that I knew of tunnels which led out from the Black Pike Mountains. If you're so damn perfect, you paddle us back up the fucking river!"

  "Wait," said Nienna, and her voice was soft. She held up a hand. "Listen."

  They listened, and heard the roar of fast-approaching falls.

  "I hear my imminent death approaching," whimpered Saark, eventually.

  "Can't you hear the cracking?"

  "Great! A rock-fall as well! Wonders will never cease!"

  "No. It's ice," said Nienna.

  "Well," beamed Saark, "that's just fine and dandy. Helps us out of our predicament nicely, and with all manner of– HOLY JANGIR FIELDS LOOK AT THAT BASTARD!" It was a black band of nothing and it was scrolling swiftly towards the adventurers on the raft, rimed with an edge of sparkling white ice and dropping
dropping
into a cold vast nothingness filled with blackness and steam…

CHAPTER 4

Wildlands

Kell fell, air rushed past him, and he prayed the hefty raft didn't hit him in the back of the skull. Rocks smashed to his left and right, and clutching Ilanna to his chest he managed to angle his body into a dive. He dreaded the impact with ice-chill water, dreaded that harsh impact slam to face and body and soul. He knew it was enough to kill a man, and he knew armour and weapons could drag a man to his death – he'd seen it before, several times, watched warships settle into the ocean like dying dragons, watched men flail and scream, panic invading them as quickly as any ice waters, only to be sucked under heaving green waves and never return. But Kell would never give up Ilanna. He would never give up the Sister of his Soul. Not even if his life depended on it…

  Saark screamed like a woman, flapped like a chicken, and did not care that the world could and would mock him. He hit the water with a gasp, went under deep and surfaced flailing like a man on the end of a swinging noose – only to see something huge and black and terribly ominous tumbling toward him – and he realised in the blink of an eye it was the raft
the fucking raft
and he leapt back and twisted, swimming down,
down
, and something made a deep sonic
thump
above and Saark
knew
the bastard would hit him, push him down, drown him without any emotion and he swam, bitterly, secure in the knowledge that he was cursed and he was a pawn and the whole bloody world was an evil gameboard designed
just
for him. Bubbles scattered around like black petals, and eventually, as pain lacerated his lungs and bright lights danced like flitting fish, he struck for the surface, gasping as he emerged in a burst. He bobbed there for a while, in the gloom, listening to the roar of the waterfall, and then his eyes adjusted and he saw Kell, Myriam and Nienna on the raft, dripping, frowning, and staring at him. He scowled.

  "Come on, lad," urged Kell. "What you waiting for?"

  "What happened, did you all nail yourselves to the bastard thing?" spat Saark, and struck out through the undulating water.

  "No," said Kell, taking Saark's wrist and hauling the man onto the raft, which bobbed violently. "
You
simply spent too much time paddling down there with the fairies. What were you doing, man? We thought you'd drowned!"

  "Hah. I was simply counting my money." Saark looked up. They'd fallen a considerable way, and behind them the base of the waterfall churned. Steam rose, and ice crackled on rocks. Saark shivered, and then realised he wasn't dying from the cold. "Wait. Something's wrong," he said.

  "It's a geyser," said Myriam. "The water here is heated from thermal springs deep below Skaringa Dak."

  Saark scowled. "It smells odd."

  "Sulphur," said Kell. "You should be thankful for the bath, mate. You were beginning to stink."

  "Amusing, Kell. If you didn't have that big axe I'd put you across my knee and spank you. And we all know how you'd enjoy that!"

  Kell stared at him. Hard.

  "I take it back," said Saark, and watched Kell deflate. "Was only a little joke. At least we're not dead." He brightened. "So many women! And so few days left on this world!"

  Kell handed him a broken plank. Saark stared at it.

  "What's this?"

  "I meant to say. Don't get too happy. It's time to paddle."

  "You want me to paddle?"

  "Yes, Saark. Paddle. Before we get sucked back into the waterfall's undertow, and dragged down to a real watery grave."

  Swallowing, Saark began to paddle. His efforts did not draw comment, although they probably should have.

They sailed through more darkness, a deep and velvet black that brought back childhood nightmares of vulnerability and despair; and the tunnels soon turned chill again, making all four shiver and regret leaving the warmth of the underground spring. After more peaks and troughs, the sailing started to become rough.

  "We're vibrating," said Saark. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  There was ambient light again from mineral deposits, and it outlined Saark in stark silver making him appear as a ghost. He was shivering uncontrollably, thin clothing sticking to him like a second skin.

  "It means we're in for a rough ride," said Kell. "Get a good hold onto something. And for your own sake, Saark, do not let go."