Soul Stealers Read online

  "Styx!" shouted Myriam, moving swiftly forward. She stopped, looked left at Jex, who simply shrugged. The small tattooed tribesman was not in charge of Styx; Styx was a free agent. He could do what he liked. Or so Jex's simple philosophy ran.

  "She bit me!" snarled Styx. "This bitch has been nothing but trouble! Now I'm going to teach her a lesson." His free hand dropped down Nienna's side, to her hips, where he started to tug at her skirt. Nienna struggled wildly, and the knife bit her throat allowing a trickle of blood to run free.

  "No, Styx," said Myriam. "This is not the way."

  His head came up, black lips curling back over the

  blackened stumps of his drug-rotted teeth. His dark eye glittered like a jewel. "She's trouble, Mirry, I'm telling you! What I have in store for her will break her spirit; you'll see, it'll bring her back to the real world. Either that, or one of us will wake up with a knife in the heart."

  "Put the girl down," said Myriam, voice deadly calm.

  "And what if I don't?"

  Myriam lifted her bow and sighted down the arrow. It was aimed at Styx's one remaining good eye, and Styx knew she was a good enough shot to pull it off, despite the illness which troubled her aim.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Exerting my authority."

  "You're being a fool, Myriam. We've been through some shit together, girl, and now you'd turn on me? I don't bloody understand! This little bitch needs taming; you've watched me rape a hundred women before, young, old, fit, fat, diseased, what's the fucking problem with you now?" He gave a nasty grin, teeth like a fireravaged forest of stumps. "It's not like you haven't tasted a bit of screaming young pussy yourself. You always said the bigger the fight, the better the bite."

  Myriam stared at him, and she knew she was willing to see him die. Because if he harmed Nienna and Kell went berserk then she would never make it to Silva Valley, where the vachine technology could make her whole again, make her well again; turn her into a woman again. And also, only if she admitted it to herself, she was a little frightened of Kell. If they abused Nienna he would never stop till they were dead; as it was, they walked a fine line between angering the old warrior, and turning him into a permanent merciless enemy, one that would hunt them to the ends of the earth.

  "If you hurt the girl, Kell won't help us reach Silva. If we don't reach Silva, then you won't get your Blacklipper contacts; remember? The ones that will make you rich. The ones that will lead you to the three kings of the Blacklippers and all that precious gold beyond."

  That stopped Styx. His eyes narrowed. In a voice like mist in a tombyard, he said, "What do you know of the three Kings?"

  "I know enough," said Myriam, her arrow still aimed for Styx's face. Nienna had stilled in his arms, but the blade rested against her throat, a very real threat. A bead of sweat broke out on Myriam's brow, and her elbow gave a tiny tremble.

  Styx saw this. He smiled.

  With a whoosh, Myriam released the shaft which slammed through the air, piercing the lobe of Styx's ear and rattling off through the trees. He yelped, hand coming up to his lobe, and in doing so released Nienna. She ran to Myriam, cowering behind the tall woman's legs, and when Styx looked up she had another arrow notched, ready, steel point aimed at his face. There was a snarl on Styx's face; but worse, there was hatred in his eye, deep and glittering, and although Myriam had seen that look before a thousand times, she had never seen it directed at her. It chilled her. Styx was a very dangerous man; and not an enemy she wished to invoke. However. If Nienna was damaged in anyway, then it compromised her situation with Kell, finding the vachine, and living to see the next winter. For she knew, as certain as water flowed downhill, that these were her last few months on earth.

  "I think you just made a big mistake," growled Styx. He held up his hands, his knife glinting a little with traces of Nienna's blood. "But don't worry. Don't panic, little Myriam; I am no danger to you. I value the Blacklipper contacts and their great wealth more than I value killing you in your sleep." He glanced at Nienna. "Or tasting her foul juice."

  Styx lowered his hands, and walked past Myriam and the cowering form of Nienna; he disappeared into the woodland, and Myriam released a long breath. She glanced at Jex.

  "Not such a good idea," said Jex, eyes fixed on Myriam.

  "You think I don't know that? You think I'm a village idiot?"

  "No," said the tribesman, carefully. "But I do think you should have let him have his fun with the girl; it would have kept him happy, not harmed her too much, and as he says – it would have tamed her spirit just a little." He shrugged. "Now you have to watch your back. From both fucking directions."

  "You can watch it as well," smiled Myriam.

  Jex did not return the smile. "Some things in life, we do alone," he said, and moved off through the trees.

  Myriam finally lowered her bow, and placed the arrow in her sheath. Nienna moved around to face Myriam, and her hands were shaking. She looked up, and at first Myriam wouldn't meet her gaze.

  Then their eyes locked, and Myriam studied the tall girl before her. She was pretty, with a rounded and slightly plump face. Her hair was a luscious brown down to her shoulders, and her eyes bright green, dazzling with youth and vitality. For a long moment Myriam hated her, despised her, was jealous to an insane degree of her youth, and beauty, and strength, and health, whilst she was slowly being eaten from the inside out, turning into a husk of degenerative cells. Hate flooded Myriam, fuelled by envy, and she wanted to smash Nienna's face open with a rock; split her head and watch the brains come spilling out. But Myriam breathed deeply, controlled herself, and fought the evil in her veins, in her soul. She forced a smile to her face.

  "Thank you," said Nienna.

  "Don't be too grateful," grunted Myriam. "You're still my prisoner… until the mighty Kell arrives, and shows us a way through the mountains."

  "Still – Styx would have…" she shuddered.

  Myriam smiled. "Don't think about it. He's a bad man, aye, but at least it's nothing personal. He hates all women. Come to think of it, he hates all men." Myriam turned, and started back through the trees with Nienna close behind. Nienna was still shivering.

  "Why do you travel with such hateful creatures?" said Nienna, her voice low, almost conspiratorial. "It must darken your soul to see such evil at every turn. To witness such horror, and do nothing to halt it."

  Myriam stopped, suddenly, and Nienna almost crashed into her. "I saved you, didn't I, little Nienna?" Her tone was mocking, her eyes flashing angry. "Darken my soul? Child, you know nothing of me, or my life, of my horrors and pain and suffering. Don't think because of one little moment, one tiny lapse in my self-control that I'm suddenly a mother figure. You're here for a reason, and that's to draw Kell. That's why I helped you. I care nothing for your suffering. In fact, I wish I'd let Styx rape you – he was right. It would have taught you to shut your bastard mouth."

  She stalked off ahead, leaving a confused and now terrified Nienna behind. Nienna trotted after her, tears on her cheeks, and filled with a complete and devastating misery.

  Kell managed an hour's sleep. In it, he dreamed. He dreamed of Ilanna, his axe; he dreamed of murder; he dreamed of the Days of Blood. He stood, muscles bulging, tensed as if pumped on drugs and violence, and his whole body quivered, and his mind flitted and could not settle on a single thought, like some butterfly caught in a raging storm. Blood smeared his face and arms and he glanced down, and Kell was naked, naked and proud and bulging with sexual arousal. His entire body was smeared with blood, and blue and green whorls of paint which were intricately complex and he frowned for he did not remember being painted, or tattooed, but then they did not matter for they were an irrelevancy… Kell leapt down from the stone wall and stood in the street, Ilanna in his hands, a snarl on his face, and refugees were streaming past him, sobbing, faces blackened with soot as behind the city burned, huge towers of fire screaming up into the skies. Kell watched the men and women and children stream past him, an
d Ilanna said something in his mind with a soothing caress and she sang, and Kell twitched and a head rolled, and blood fountained and Kell moved and allowed the twitching body to spray lifeblood over the butterfly blades of the great axe…

  "Ugh!" Kell sat up, shivering, and pain washed through him like honey through a sieve; slowly, an ooze, spreading gently through limbs and veins and muscles and organs and into… into his bones.

  It's the poison, he told himself.

  It's getting worse.

  He pulled his cloak tightly about him. The wind

  howled. Kell licked his lips. What he'd give for a drink. Gods, he'd kill for a drink. And then he smiled, face black in the moonlight, eyes glittering like some dark devil's, and he remembered the unlabelled bottle of whiskey deep in the basket on Mary's back.

  It was a matter of moments to get the bottle and retire back to the phantom warmth of his cloak; the wind stirred eerily through the trees. Kell pulled out the cork with his teeth and an odour of sour, cheap, nasty whiskey filled him. He did not care. He breathed in the scent like drugsmoke; he revelled in its base oil consistency, in its hints at raw energy and amateur production. This was a whiskey made by unskilled peasants. This was a whiskey in which Kell could identify, not like the rich honeyed slop the aristocracy of Saark's social circle enjoyed. This was fire water, and Kell drank it.

  He took several gulps, and it burned his throat.

  He took several more, and a haze filled his mind.

  The pain of the poison left him.

  And Kell slept, whiskey bottle cradled like a small, adopted child.

  The moon was high in a cold, crystal sky. Nienna sat, wrapped in blankets, listening to the soft snoring of Myriam by her side. The woman turned in her sleep, stretching out long legs. For a moment – a fleeting moment – Nienna considered running. She had tried twice before; the second time, Myriam had caught her and explained, using the back of her hand, what she would do the next time Nienna ran. Now, Nienna slept with her ankles bound so tight her feet would be blue by morning. And anyway, she had seen Myriam operate her bow. She was a lethal, very deadly young woman… who could kill over great distance. It made Nienna shiver in horror and anticipation.

  Nienna drifted in and out of sleep, as she had done since her kidnapping. Such a simple word, and yet it embodied day after day of a living hell. Riding in front of Styx, and then Jex, they had shared her burden, swapping her often so as not to tire the horses with extra weight; they had ridden north, fast, as if Myriam feared Kell would take up immediate chase. Nienna knew Saark wasn't going to take chase; she had watched him beaten and then stabbed with a long, sharp dagger. Even now, Nienna was sure Saark must be dead and she shuddered, on the edges of sleep, once again picturing the beating, hearing every crunch, every slap of impact in her nightmares. Even now, she could see the blade slide so easily into his soft flesh, and thought no, it cannot be, cannot be happening, cannot be true, but blood poured from Saark and it was true and Myriam had come to them and they had ridden away into the snow, without a backward glance…

  Nienna thought back. Back to Kat. Katrina. Her friend. Now dead. Now a corpse, rotting in the cold bunkhouse where she'd been nailed to the wall by Styx's Widowmaker. Nienna thought about that weapon. Thought about it a lot. With a weapon like that, she could really even the odds – no matter that she was a thin, physically weak, and hardly able to lift a longsword. With a Widowmaker she could punch a hole through Styx's face and run for the woods…

  No. She would have to kill all three if she expected to escape.

  But Kell! Kell would come and rescue her! Surely?

  Maybe Kell was dead, spoke a dark side of her soul. He went into battle with King Leanoric – against the albino army. Maybe now he was just another corpse on the battlefield, crows eating his eyes, rats gnawing his intestines. She shivered, and gritted her teeth. No! Kell was alive. She knew it. Knew it deep in her heart.

  And if Kell was alive, then he would come for her.

  Nienna drifted off into sleep; coldness ate the edges of her flesh where skin poked from behind the blankets. She snuggled down as far as she could go, and her eyes suddenly clicked open. What was it? What had woken her? She was instantly wide awake – totally awake – and adrenaline surged through her system.

  Nienna sat up. Her eyes searched the darkness. She turned to her right, and looked down at Myriam; the lithe woman snored softly, face lost in a haze of tranquillity that softened her features, made her more feminine. Nienna realised that when Myriam was awake her face was a constant scowl, as if she hated the world and every waking moment upon it.

  Nienna turned to her left, and nearly leapt from her skin at the face mere inches from her. She felt the edge of the Widowmaker crossbow prod her under the blankets, and she nodded quickly as if to say, "I understand". Styx moved his mouth to her ear and whispered, "Scream, and I'll blow a hole through you, then I'll slaughter Myriam in her sleep and make my own way to Silva Valley."

  "I won't scream," panted Nienna, fear a bright hot poker in her brain.

  Styx pulled free the blankets, and lifted Nienna up by her elbow. Her eyes fell, and locked on that wood, brass and clockwork weapon. She was sure she could hear a tiny tick tick tick from within the stock. As if it was somehow powered by clockwork.

  "What do you want?" she whispered.

  Styx ignored the question, and eased her away from Myriam. Nienna gazed back at the sleeping woman, confused; it had been Myriam who, on both of Nienna's escape attempts, had heard the flight. Myriam slept light, like a dozing feline. Now, however, she continued to snore.

  "Don't worry about her. I drugged her soup. She'll not be troubling nobody tonight."

  Nienna felt icy fingers claw her heart. Realisation sank from her brain to her feet. Styx meant to rape her. Tonight. Now. And there was nothing she could do about it; not a thing on earth.

  Styx marched Nienna through the woods, and he was panting hard, and he stunk of sweat and… something else. Liquor? Gin, like they used to sell in the Gin Palaces of Jalder?

  Nienna was numb, not from the cold, but from fear. She allowed herself to be manhandled through the woods, stumbling. She did not complain. She could not complain. Fear had become her Master. Fear had stolen her tongue, and seemingly, her recent will to fight.

  Finding a spot, Styx threw her to the ground. She landed heavy, a tree root slamming her spine and making her cry out. Even this was not enough to snap her from her cold embrace. She watched, with a mixture of horror and revulsion as Styx struggled from his leggings, one hand still holding the Widowmaker pointed loosely at her prostrate form.

  Then, with the lower half of his body naked, he grinned at her and she hated him, there and then; she wanted him dead like she had wanted no other person dead in the world, ever. This man had killed her best friend. And now, this man sought to remove her chastity by force.

  "If you touch me, I will kill you," she said. She wanted her words to come out strong and proud, like a sneer of contempt for this petty hateful specimen. But her words dribbled out, a mewling from a kitten, the slurred and feeble trickle of the wanton inebriate. Kell will come, she thought with tears in her eyes. Kell will rescue me!

  But he didn't come. Here, and now, Nienna was on her own.

  Styx dropped his Widowmaker to the frozen woodland carpet, and pulled out a knife. The blade gleamed. He smiled, showing stubby black teeth. "I think it's time we got to know each other a bit better, pretty one," he said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Dark Vision

  In the hills above Old Skulkra a small squad hunkered behind rocks. One, the tallest of the men, a soldier with broad shoulders and narrow hips, held a long tube filled with a series of finely shaped lenses to his eye. The delicate mechanism glittered when it caught the dying rays of the winter sun.

  "Can you see him?" asked Beja.

  "Yes. He returns," said Cardinal Walgrishnacht. His voice was even, devoid of emotion, but his dark vachine eyes shone. He watched,
apparently impassive, as the scout approached. The man bowed low, as befitted somebody as exalted and dangerous as Walgrishnacht.

  "You saw what happened?" snapped the Warrior Engineer.

  "Yes," said the scout, eyes lowered to the snow. "General Graal called out his daughters, the Soul Stealers. Our Princess was…" he swallowed, then lifted his head and met Walgrishnacht's powerful clockwork gaze. "She was beheaded," he said.

  Walgrishnacht stood, stunned, and when he looked around there were tears in his eyes, tears staining his pale cheeks. Never, in twenty years of combat and murder, had Walgrishnacht cried.

  Beja watched the Cardinal of the Vachine Warrior Engineers, that specially chosen and infinitely deadly elite squad who had followed – secretly, in reserve – in order to protect Princess Jaranis should events turn sour. A violent blizzard had separated the two groups, and stubbornly the proud Princess pushed on regardless, no doubt eager to observe General Graal's progress and report back to the High Engineers instead of making textbook camp until the storm broke.