Anu sat on the jetty, kicking her legs, as Alloria approached to crouch beside her. Tentatively, the woman’s hand touched Anu’s shoulder and she
turned, their eyes meeting, Anu’s face coated in slick blood. Some way off, Vashell lay, curled into a ball, weeping salt tears onto the open muscles of his face.
“Are you in pain?”
“No.” Anu shook her head, forced a smile. “Come. We must leave this place. It will attract more soldiers like moths to a lantern.” She stood, stretched, and her fangs slid away. She walked over to Vashell with Alloria trailing her, uncertain, her green eyes filled with a curious mix of fear and wonder.
“Wait,” said Queen Alloria.
“Yes?”
“Where am I? What am I doing here?”
“This is the Silva Valley—where the vachine live.”
“I have never…heard of such a place. And yet we are in the mountains, yes? The Black Pike Mountains?”
“Yes. In their heart.”
“I thought the Black Pikes were impassable. That is what the people of Falanor believe.”
Anu shook her head. “Many of your, shall we say respectable citizens, think like that. But there is a roaring blood trade by Blacklippers. They have no morals. They have no…empathy. No fear.”
“What is a Blacklipper?”
“The Halfway People. Illegal to the vachine of Silva Valley, and ostracised by the good men and women of Falanor. They are your illegals, your freaks and vagabonds, the army deserters destined to die, the deformed left to perish in low mountain passes. That is your tradition, isn’t it? With the babes who have no arms? Those of twisted limb? Those are the
Blacklippers, they are not the pretty people of a good, noble society. They are the weak. The cripples. The diseased. The underlings who you would rather imagine did not exist.” Anu took a deep breath, then looked away up the cold, flowing river. Like me, she thought. And smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m bitter. I have recently been…abused, as an outcast, something different. It’s not a pleasant feeling to be hated by those who once accepted you.” She met Alloria’s gaze. “Once, your outcasts ran to us; but the vachine, also, are filled with a primitive superiority and they turned on the Blacklippers. Now, illegally, the Blacklippers gradually feed your nation to ours. They think of it as a kind of justice. Of payback.”
“Feed?”
Anu smiled. “We have a currency in blood,” she said, and Alloria gasped, hands coming to her mouth.
“Is that why your army invaded?”
Anu nodded. “Our civilisation expands, and our needs multiply. We are losing the war in an ability to satiate our own needs. And so…” her voice trailed off, as her eyes alighted on the now silent form of Vashell. “So we must spread out, move south; to where there are many ripe, succulent pickings.”
“You talk about my people, the good people of Falanor, as if they are cattle!” snapped Alloria, eyes hard.
“They soon will be,” said Anu, her head tilting to one side. “Once the vachine roll in the Blood Refineries.”
“I don’t understand. My husband, the king, is a great warrior. He has thousands of soldiers at his
disposal; an army of unconquerable might! He will oppose any invasion with savage force, and chase your vachine people back to the mountains like the savages you undoubtedly are. Either that, or slaughter them without mercy.”
Across the clearing, Vashell started to laugh. He sat, bloody face leering at them, mangled hands in his lap, laughing in an obscene gurgle.
Anu strode to him. “Something funny, you faceless bastard?”
Vashell reclined a little, looking up at her. “My. Kradek-ka really did a fine job on you, my twisted, sweet little deformity. His technology, I admit, is superb, for never have I been bested in battle. Not by human, not by vachine.” He took a deep breath, and Anu could see the pain in his eyes; not just a physical pain, but a mental scarring. He was trying to mask this with bravado; but she knew him too well.
“I threw your face in the river,” she said, leaning close. “I didn’t think you’d be needing it again.”
Vashell shrugged. “You may do what you wish to me; but you do know they will come.”
“Who?”
“The Harvesters. I am linked. They have sensed my pain. As you sit there, on your arse, squabbling with prime succulent Falanor Queen-meat, they have already decided your fate. No longer is Kradek-ka to be brought back. I’d wager they simply need your extermination, for your threat is great; your threat, now, is terrible. If you are lucky, little Anu, you little twisted vachine experiment Anu, they will send the cankers. But if you are unlucky…”
“They will never catch us,” said Anu, and there was a tinge of panic to her voice. She feared the Harvesters. Everybody feared the Harvesters.
“If you’re unlucky, they will come themselves.”
Anu’s claws slid free. She glared down at Vashell, and even in his pain, now over the sudden shock of his ripped-off face, he mocked her. His arrogance, and loathing, had returned. “I will kill you,” she growled, her own hatred swelling.
“No,” said Alloria, grasping Anu’s arm. Anu threw Alloria to the ground, where she lay, staring up at these two alien creatures.
“I will kill you,” repeated Anu, and moved in close…
“That would be foolish. How, then, would you find your father?”
Snow was falling, and the rearing mountains were diffused. Light had started to fail, and the sky held that curious grey brightness, a cold tranquillity, only found in the mountains. A slow unrolling of mist eased in from the around the barracks, and Anu caught the silent approach from the corner of her eye. Ice prickled up and down her spine.
“Where is he?” she snapped.
“You need me,” said Vashell, his eyes burning. “Only I know where he was last seen. I have my reports. If you kill me, and believe me, I am willing to die, then he will be gone from you forever.” He snarled at her, through torn and ragged lips, from a face of rancid horror, from a face that was no longer a face.
“I will cut out your eyes,” said Anu.
“Then do it! And stop yapping like a clockwork puppy.”
The mist, cold and brilliantly white, spread across the ground, rolling out onto the river and masking the currents. It covered the corpses of the slain albino soldiers, and Vashell pushed himself up onto elbows as it rolled around him, and he sighed, and his eyes alighted on Anu and there was a glint of triumph there…
“The Harvesters move quickly,” he said, voice a lullaby, and filled with the honey of blood-oil narcotic; his system was overloading on the substance, in lieu of his savage beating. “There must have been one close by.”
Anu felt panic slam her breast. “No,” she said whirling around, eyes scanning the open spaces. She pointed at Alloria. “Get into the barge!” she snapped, and then turned back to Vashell, her claws and vampiric fangs emerging. “It is simply mountain mist!” she hissed, but her voice was cracked, there was a splinter in her heart. They both knew how savage the Harvesters were; and how strange, even to the vachine whom they deigned to help. They were creatures of the Black Pike Mountains, creatures from far beneath the stone; and they had their own esoteric agenda.
When the Harvesters drained corpses for Blood Refinement, it was suspected that they themselves received something by way of a bonus. When they husked a human, they took a little part of the soul. But no vachine ever voiced these theories; not if they valued their own life. The Harvesters were above the
gods, as far as the vachine society were concerned; and even though Anu would never voice this sentiment, she felt they were the Puppet Masters, and the vachine simply actors on another creature’s stage.
Vashell shrugged, and watched Anu closely.
“You have grown strong,” he said, voice slurring a little, so infused was his damaged system with blood-oil. “But do you think you have grown strong enough?”
There came a hiss, like snow on a forest canopy, and from the swirled ice-smoke came the Harvester. The oval face stared at Anu as it seemed to glide over the ground, and it stopped for a moment by the slain albino warriors.
“Sacrilege?” it said, voice high-pitched, merging in an odd way with its fast-paced breathing. Then it looked at Vashell, who shrugged, almost dreamily, and returned its gaze to Anu. “So. The daughter of Kradek-ka. You have discovered your gift, I see.”
“He would have killed me,” said Anu, pointing to Vashell, her finger shaking.
The Harvester drifted a little closer, head bobbing, tiny black eyes without emotion fixing hard on Anu’s soul. She felt like she was being eaten, from the inside out, by a tiny swarm of parasites. She shivered, as a feeling passed through her, and she was sure the Harvester could read her thoughts.
“I see,” said the Harvester, and she could not read the black eyes. Fear tasted copper on her tongue. She felt urine dribble between her legs. She pictured the husks of the slaughtered; men, women, vachine, children, dogs. The Harvester had no empathy, no
remorse, no understanding. It could not be negotiated with. It would do what it wanted, protected by vachine law, and practically indestructible…
“I am going to look for my father,” she said, voice trembling.
“You are going nowhere, child.”
Anu hardened her resolve, through her blanket of fear. More ice-smoke swirled around her ankles, with a biting, icy chill. This fuelled her strength. The Harvesters controlled everything…
“I will find my father,” she said, again.
“You disobey me?” said the Harvester.
She considered this, and knew she had embarked upon a path of mystery, a journey she could never have foreseen, understood, nor prophesised. She had stepped sideways from the vachine of Silva Valley; she was an outlaw, yes, and she was totally alone. She realised in a flash of understanding that things would never, could never, be the same. And if she defied this Harvester, she broke every law of the Mountain. Of the Valley. Of the Oak Testament.
“Yes,” she said, meeting the Harvester’s gaze and holding it.
Long bony fingers emerged from the robe, and the Harvester lifted its arms in a gesture at the same time a little bizarre, a little ridiculous, but containing a thrill of raw terror.
“Then you must die” he said, in a monotone.
Anu felt strength flood her. Confidence bit through fear. Pride and necessity ate her horror. She smiled at the Harvester, and flexed her claws, and
lowered her head, and snarled, “Come and take me, then, you bone-headed freak,” as she leapt to the attack.
Saark watched the axe, Ilanna, in Kell’s mighty hands; watched her sing in dark prophecy as she rushed towards his skull. And as he observed that crescent razor approach, an utter calm descended on him and he reflected on his life, his early goals, his mistakes, and on his current self-loathing; and he knew, knew life was unfair and the world took no prisoners, but that ultimately he had made his own choices, and he deserved death. He deserved the cold dark earth, the sombre tomb, worms eating his organs. He deserved to be forgotten, for in his life he had done bad things,
terrible things,
and for these he had never been punished. With his death, his end, then the world would be a cleaner place. His scourge would be removed. He smiled. It was a fitting end to be slain by a hero such as Kell; poetic, almost. Despite the irony.
The blade sliced frozen earth a hair’s-breadth from his ear, scraped the ice with a metallic shriek, then lifted into the air again and for a horrible moment Saark thought to himself, the old bastard missed! He’s pissed on whisky, and he damn well fucking
missed
!
But Kell glared at him, face sour, eyes raging, and held out his hand. “Up, lad. It’s not your time. We have a job to do.”
Saark turned, rolled, and sprang lightly to his feet, his injuries pushed aside as he watched, with Kell, Nienna, Kat and the others; watched the albino soldiers drifting from wreaths of ice-smoke.
Kell whirled on the gathered crowd. “You must run!” he bellowed. “The ice-smoke will freeze you where you stand, then they will drain you of blood. Stop standing like village idiots, run for your lives!”
A knife flashed from the darkness, and Ilanna leapt up, clattering the blade aside in a show of such consummate skill Saark found his mouth once again dry. The old boy hadn’t missed with his strike; nobody that good missed, despite half a bottle of whisky. If Kell wanted Saark dead, by the gods, he’d be dead.
Saark sidled to Kell. The advancing albinos had halted. They seemed to be waiting for something. The mist swirled, huge coils like ghostly snakes, as if gathering strength.
“What do we do, old horse?”
“We run,” said Kell. “Tell Nienna and Kat to get the horses.”
Kell stood, huge and impassable in the street as the albinos arrayed themselves before him; yet more drifted from the shadows between cottages. They wore black armour, and their crimson eyes were emotionless, insectile.
Like ants, thought Kell. Simply following their programmed instructions…
There were fifty of them, now. Off to the right a platoon of soldiers emerged, and a group of villagers attacked with swords and pitchforks. Their screams sang through the night to a musical accompaniment of steel on steel; they were butchered in less than a minute.
“Come on, come on,” muttered Kell, aware that some spell was at work here, and he growled at the albino warriors and then, realised with a jump, that they watched his axe, eyes, as one, fixed on Ilanna. He lifted the great weapon, and their eyes followed it, tracking the terrible butterfly blades.
So, he thought. You understand her, now.
“Come and enjoy her gift,” he snarled, and from their midst emerged a Harvester, and Kell nodded to himself. So. That was why they waited. For the hardcore magick to arrive…
Iron-shod hooves clattered on ice and cobbles, and Nienna and Kat rode free of the stables, the geldings sliding as they cornered and Saark whirled, leapt up behind Kat, taking the reins from her shaking fingers.
“Kell!” he bellowed.
Kell, staring at the Harvester, snarled something incomprehensible, then turned and vaulted into the saddle behind Nienna—hardly the action of an old man with rheumatism. “Yah!” he snarled and the horses galloped through the streets, churning snow and frozen mud, slamming through milling people and over the bridge and away…