Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

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.