Soul Stealers Page 6

  "They brought war and chaos to Falanor. I would like to return the favour with the blade of my sword." "A task for another day." "You would save Nienna over Falanor?"

  "I would save her over the world," rumbled Kell. Seeing the look of incredulity in Saark's face, Kell shrugged and said, "Let me quantify it thus – Graal and his soldiers are searching for us, all of us. And those Blood Refineries are their life-blood. They will be guarded more heavily than any sparkling gems, than any royal blood. To go there, Saark, is folly. And what would you do? Gather information? For whom? Which army will use your military intelligence? No, Saark, we must travel north. When I have Nienna, when I hold her safe in my arms, then we will turn our gaze on Graal and these white-skinned bastards."

  Saark considered this. "That could, taken the wrong way, look simply like you're putting your own needs first." "Maybe I am, lad, maybe I am. But without me, you'll never conquer these bastards. I am your lynch pin. And I have been poisoned, and even as we stand debating what to do, the toxic venom pulses through my veins. Or had you forgotten this? Without me, you will fail." "Your arrogance astounds me."

  "It is the truth." Saark sighed, and turned his back on the giant, distant machines. "You say you have seen these Refineries working. I assume they do not bode well for the people of Falanor?"

  "The battle was horrific, yes? Leanoric's slaughter devastating?"

  "Yes."

  "The battle was just a prologue for what is to come. Trust me, Saark, when I say we need to use cunning, use our brains; charging back into that enemy camp is the last thing we should do."

  "You will not?"

  "I will not. But I admire your bravado, lad. Come. We will head north. This is a battle for another day." Saark hung his head, and they moved back into heavy woodland, tracking along in parallel with the Great North Road.

  They walked all day, and Kell muttered about pains in his knees. The landscape was beautiful, with hidden hollows filled with virgin snow, woodland branches, stark and bare, pointing white-peppered fingers at the bleak, blue-grey sky. Heavy swathes of conifer forest clutched the contours of the land like a lover. Streams lay frozen like snakes of diamond. The air was crisp, cold and fresh.

  Kell marched ahead often, eyes scanning the landscape for signs of enemy activity. At every hilltop he would drop and approach on his belly, so as not to silhouette himself to scouts. His keen eyes tracked the lay of the land, the contours of forest and river, of hillside and mossy nooks, of boulder fields and silent farmhouses.

  At one point before midday Kell spent a full half hour watching a farmhouse; no smoke curled from the chimney, and there was no sign of life. They approached warily, driven by hunger and cold, to find the farm hastily abandoned. As they walked across a cobbled yard chickens clucked in a nearby coop. Kell gestured. "Kill them, and bag them up. Fresh meat will do us the world of good."

  Saark stared at Kell's back. "What?"

  Kell stopped, and turned. "Kill the chickens. I will find us furs, woollen cloaks, dried beef. Go on, lad." "You kill the chickens," snapped Saark. "Is there a problem here?"

  "Only peasants kill chickens! I am used to my fresh meat served on silver platters, garnished with butter, herbs and new potatoes, a little salt, not too much pepper, and brought to me by a plump serving wench with breasts bigger than the bloody bird she's serving! Kell stared hard at Saark; the swelling in his beaten face had subsided, but he was still bruised, his lips cut, his skin scratched, and he looked a thousand leagues from the well-dressed dandy Kell had met in the tannery back in Jalder. "Well," said Kell, considering his position, "here, and now Saark, you're a peasant. You look like a peasant, and you stink like a peasant. So kill the damn chickens." "I will not kill the chickens. I am no serf!"

  'You will kill the chickens or go hungry," snapped Kell, and stormed off into the farmhouse, kicking open the door and leading the way with the gleaming blades of his axe.

  Saark stood for a moment, staring at the empty doorway and muttering curses. A hand touched him lightly on the arm, and Skanda grinned up at him. "It's all right, Pretty One, I'll kill them. Despite my appearance, I have a talent for it."

  "Are you sure?" muttered Saark, eyes dark, lips pouting.

  "Leave it to me." Skanda carried a rough bronze dagger, which he placed carefully between his teeth. He moved towards the coop and the clucking hens within.

  "I'll just… find some firewood. Or something." Saark waved to Skanda, then turned and started rooting around. "What we really need are horses," he said, and crossed to the stables, knowing there would be no beasts there – in times of flight, who would leave a horse? – but willing to search all the same. As he approached, the stables were dark, and silent. Rubbing his chin, he threw open the doors to reveal a total lack of thoroughbred stallion. "Hmm," he muttered, cursing his luck. Would it have hurt, for just this once, to give them a bit of good fortune? For a change? Instead of the gods throwing soldiers and deranged creatures into the battle at every damn pissing turn?

  Saark turned, leant his back against the stable door, and heard a strangled cluck. He winced. He had been truthful, in that his food was normally served on a silver platter by a wench whose breasts would suffocate three men, never mind one; but the reality of the matter, and something that shamed him, was that his life of high society had ill-prepared him for chicken slaughter. He had no idea how one slaughtered a chicken; nor any inclination to find out.

  Another deranged cluck emerged from the coop, and Saark winced again, almost in sympathy. A sympathy overwhelmed only by his ravenous hunger. Then, suddenly, behind him something went clack in the gloom of the dingy stable interior. He whirled about, slim rapier drawn, eyes narrowed.

  "Is there somebody there?" he snapped. "Show yourself! Don't make me come in there after you!" Nothing. No reply. No movement. No sound.

  Saark glanced back to the farmhouse, but there was no sign of Kell, and anyway, Saark resented being made to look a fool over something as ridiculous as the murder of a chicken. He pushed into the stable and lowered his head, as if this movement might somehow aid his night vision. He walked along the stalls, nose wrinkled at the stench of old dung and damp straw. The place reeked as bad as a rancid corpse. "Come out, now, before I lose my temper!" he said, voice raised, and as he neared the end stall he slowed his pace. Whoever it was, they had to be in there.

  Saark leapt the last few feet, rapier outstretched, and blinked. There, huddled in the stall, was a donkey. Saark and the donkey stared at one another for a while, and Saark finally relaxed. The donkey gave a husky bray, and tilted its head, observing the tall, lithe swordsman. "Damn it, they left you! You poor little thing." Saark opened the door, and finding a lead on the wall, spent several minutes attaching a halter and then leading the donkey out through the stables. Kell was just appearing from the farmhouse with a collection of items wrapped in a blanket as Saark emerged into wintry sunlight. They both stopped, staring at one another.

  "You found a donkey. Well done," said Kell.

  "The miserable whoresons left her! What a horrible thing to do; they could have at least set her free. Well, she can come with us, carry our provisions. I'm sure I saw a basket somewhere."

  "Well," said Kell, thoughtfully, dumping the blanket on the snow-peppered ground. "I've certainly no objections to taking a donkey with us. It's a long journey, and many a donkey has surely proved its worth during my lifetime." "Good," said Saark, rubbing the donkey's muzzle. "I think this beast has had enough mistreatment for one year."

  "Yes. And I reckon there's good eating on a donkey," said Kell.

  There came a long pause. "So, you'd eat the donkey?" Saark said.

  "Saark, if I was starving lad, I'd eat your very arse cheeks. Now get this stuff in the basket. Did you kill those chickens?"

  Skanda emerged at that moment with five birds tied together by the throat. He handed them to Kell, who took the dead chickens and glanced sideways at Saark. "What?" snapped the swordsman.

  "For sham
e, Saark. Getting the boy to do a man's job. Your job, in fact. You!"

  "He offered," said Saark, miserably, and returned to the stables to find the basket.

  They moved fast for the rest of the day, only stopping early evening to have a cold meal of dried beef and hard oatcakes. Saark led the donkey, which he'd named Mary – to a rising of Kell's eyebrows, and an unreadable expression. Saark shrugged off the implied criticism, and walked slightly ahead of the group. But on one thing they all agreed. Mary did indeed lighten their load, and the farmhouse had been a store of many provisions, from bread, cheese, a side of ham, dried beef, oats, sugar and salt, and even a little chocolate. Kell found a bottle of unlabelled whiskey, which he stowed deep in the basket. He thought it best not to let Saark know, for the last time Kell drank an excess of whiskey it had ended in a savage brawl, with Saark taking a beating under Kell's mighty fists. But, obviously, Kell had no intentions of drinking any whiskey now. He was off the whiskey. It was for medicinal purposes only, he convinced himself. The sky stretched out, streaked with grey and black. What blue remained was thin, like a bleak watercolour portrait, and just as night began to fall they breached a hill and Kell pointed to a long, low, abandoned building made of black bricks. It had several squat chimneys, and by its overgrown look, gates hanging off hinges, missing bricks and smashed windows, had been empty for a considerable amount of time. "You knew this was here?" said Saark.

  "Aye," nodded Kell. "Camped here a few times. It's an old armoury; rumoured, or so I've heard it told, to have made the finest weapons, helmets and breastplates in Falanor!"

  "Safe?"

  "As safe as anywhere else during the invasion of a wicked enemy army. I'll scout ahead, you wait here with, ahh, Mary."

  Saark watched Kell descend a steep bank of tangled branches smothered in snow. The huge warrior stopped at the bottom, scanning, searching for footprints. Then, wary and with Ilanna drawn, he disappeared from view. He returned a few minutes later and waved them down, and both Saark and Skanda were more than happy to leave the biting chill of the wind behind. Despite new woollen jackets and leather-lined cloaks from the farmhouse, the cold still crept easily through to the depths of their bones. Falanor in winter was not the best place to travel, nor camp.

  They slid down the snowy hill, the donkey's hooves digging in deep, and Saark tied Mary up outside the deserted armoury and ducked through the doorway, closely followed by Skanda.

  Kell stood, hands on hips, looking around. They were

  in a huge, long, low-ceilinged workshop; benches lined the walls, set out in L-shapes at regular intervals, perhaps fifty in all stretching off into the gloom. Also ranged around the black, fire-damaged walls were curious iron ovens, and other machines with handles and tubes and strange gears, all black iron, many now rusted into solid blocks.

  "Been empty a while," said Saark, whispering, but not realising why he whispered.

  "Aye," nodded Kell. "Come on, it's too cold in this room, but there's lots of side rooms. I think this place has been used by travellers for nearly two decades now. Hopefully, somebody has laid a fire."

  Saark and Skanda followed Kell through the huge chamber, and their eyes wandered to abandoned benches where ancient tools rested on work surfaces. "It's like they left in a hurry," said Saark, eyes following contours of rusted tools. There were hammers and tongs, files and pincers, and other tools in curious shapes Saark had never before seen; but then, he was a swordsman, not an armourer.

  Kell approached one room to the side; the door closed, and he suddenly stopped. He turned and stared at Saark, features hidden in the gloom; then he seemed to win some internal debate, and stepped forward, pushing open the door–

  The black longsword slashed for his throat and Kell swayed back with incredible speed, axe slamming up, the spike at its tip carving a long groove of channelled flesh up the albino soldier's face. His chin and nose disappeared like molten wax in a spray of milk white blood, and he screamed, and Kell brought back his gleaming axe, eyes narrowed, and yelled, "It's a trap! They saw us coming! Be ready!" He stepped forward with a mighty swing, halving the soldier's head, and then turning his back on the small room.

  "They?" said Saark, drawing his slender rapier, and gaped with open flapping mouth as a flood of albino warriors raced through the gloomy old armoury; there were no war cries, no shouts, no screams of battle; only an eerie silence and thudding of boots.

  A soldier fell on Saark and he parried the blow with a clash of steel, batting the ineffectual sword strike aside and drawing his blade across the man's throat. Flesh opened, parted, without blood – like slicing the throat of a corpse, thought Saark sourly – but all other images were slammed from him at the sheer number of soldiers in the armoury. Kell had been right, it was a set-up, a trap; they'd been waiting. Saark parried another blow, slammed his blade back in a shower of sparks, and exchanged several strikes before piercing his blade through the soldier's eye. Beside him, Kell's axe swung, but was hampered by the close confines fighting. He glimpsed the great blades behead an albino in a flail of long hair and gristle, and Saark shifted as the great Ilanna hummed past his own face.

  'Kell!' screamed Saark, his face thunder, and he skipped to the side to give the old man more killing space. He spun low under a warrior's blade, and shoved his own sword up, brutally, into the soldier's groin. The albino screamed and fell, slipping on his own unspooling entrails, and Saark spun to shout at Skanda to run – but the boy had vanished. Good, breathed Saark as he prepared himself. The armoury was full of the enemy, so many he couldn't count them; what had it been? A platoon? Twenty men? Or… Saark paled, even in the gloom. If a company waited, there'd be damn near a hundred soldiers. And even Kell could not battle such odds. There were seven down, now, and outside the sun dipped below the horizon. Darkness flooded the room. Swords gleamed. Boots stamped. The only light was a surreal glow, the sun's dying rays reflected off smashed glass; more soldiers ran at Kell and Saark, and the men defended themselves with skill, sword and axe rising and falling, deflecting blades and cutting into flesh with savage, sodden thumps. More albino warriors fell, and Kell slapped Saark's shoulder and pointed. They backed away across the chamber, only to hear boots thudding outside a short corridor. They were surrounded! Saark tasted fear. At the end of the day Saark was a swordsman, and an incredibly skilled one – once, he had been the King's Sword Champion, and although Saark had fought in battles before, he much preferred the consummate test of skill during one-on-one combat. In war, he hated the randomness, the chaos, the unpredictability; the threat of an axe in the back of the head when you least expected it. No, for Saark the honour and prestige was in single combat – where the victor took the spoils, wine, gold, women. But here, now… this was fast turning into a charnel house. It was out of control.

  The soldiers hung back, wary. Saark could just make out their ghost-white faces in the gloom. He reckoned on about thirty, but that didn't include those coming round behind.

  Thirty! If Kell and Saark had been caught on open ground, they would have been slaughtered. Surrounded and butchered like dogs. But the albino soldiers, perhaps knowing the inherent skill of their quarries, had sought subterfuge and covert attack; this had backfired, for close quarters combat meant Saark and Kell could fight a tight battle and not easily be surrounded. "They're coming in," snapped Kell through gritted teeth. His face and beard were covered once more in blood and gore, only this time white, and glistening in what little ambient light remained. Ilanna filled his terrible hands, the edges of the butterfly blades glimmering. "You cover this side, I'll–" but his words were left unfinished, as a blast of blackness, of energy, a series of pulses in concentric circles like the spreading ripples in a lake after heavy impact cannoned through the confines of the armoury, and Kell and Saark were picked up amidst a surging charge of debris, old hammers, bits of battered armour, tools and dirt and even an anvil, and they seemed to hang for a moment before being accelerated in a swirling chaos across the room to hit the wall
. Saark felt like his head was turned inside out, his teeth rattled in his skull, strings of bowels ripped out through his arse-hole. Kell groaned, and staggered to his feet with blood pouring from his nose. He lifted Ilanna, teeth grinding as the wall of albinos advanced… and at their core there was a tiny, ragged albino woman, with straggly white hair and bright crimson eyes and a face that was ancient, and lined, and haggard, and Kell knew upon what he looked for this this was an albino shamathe, a dreaded white magicker, and Kell shook his head and knew he had to kill her fast and put her down in an instant for her magick was awesome, potent, a product of earth and fire and blood and raw wild dark energy–

  Ilanna slammed up, blades gleaming, but the second energy impact picked Kell up and pulped him against the wall, where the entire brickwork buckled and collapsed outwards in a shower of rubble and dust and broken beams. The armoury croaked and sagged, walls groaning, and Kell was half-buried under a pile of bricks as the air around him and an unconscious Saark rippled and surged and then was seemingly sucked back into normality like a rubber band returning to its original shape.

  The albino shamathe cackled, and capered forward like a jester, but a tall soldier stepped to the fore, placed a hand on her cavorting shoulder and calmed the witch. "Well done, Lilliath," he spoke, words gentle, and drew a long black blade. "But… I will finish this." Lilliath nodded, hair wild and wavering.