Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

However, persuading them? That would be a different matter.

Fear flashed through her, then, and she licked dry lips. Her mouth tasted bad. Tasted like cancer. She grimaced, and her belly cramped in pain and she brought herself back to the present with a jolt; they had not eaten for two days. And the sparse woodland in the low foothills leading to the great feet of the Black Pike Mountains contained little game. She would have to work hard if she wanted supper.

Myriam was a skilled hunter. Before her affliction, she had won the Golden Bow three times in a row at the Vor Summer Festival. Now, the cancer ate her, and had sapped her strength, made her aim less true. But she was still a devastating archer, nonetheless.

Myriam crept through the woods, her boots treading softly on hard soil and patches of snow. She picked every footfall with care and stopped often, looking around with slow, fluid movements, her ears twitching, listening, her mind falling in tune with the winter trees.

There!

She saw the doe, a young one, rooting for food. Were there any parents close by? The last thing Myriam needed was a battle with an enraged stag; if nothing else, it made the meat damn tough.

She saw nothing, and eased herself to her knees, allowing her breathing to normalise, to regulate, as she notched the arrow to the bowstring and with a slow slow slow measured ease, drew back the string, taking the tension with her ever-so-slightly trembling muscles.

The arrow flashed through the woodland, striking the doe from behind, between the shoulder blades, and punching down into lungs and heart. It was a clean kill, instant, and the doe dropped. Myriam felt a burst of joy, of pride at her skill; then she stood, and the smile fell from her face like melting ice under sunshine.

Death. She shivered. Death.

Myriam crossed the forest floor and drew a long knife; expertly she sliced the best cuts of meat and placed them in a sack, blood oozing between her fingers. Then she stood, looked around, eyes narrowing. Something felt wrong, but she couldn't place her finger on it; however, Myriam trusted her senses, they were fine honed and reliable. If the element which felt out of key wasn't here, it must be back at camp. Her jaw tightened.

Myriam moved like a ghost through the trees. The world was silent, filled with snow and ice, and occasionally snow clumped from trees with a tumbling rhythm.

She approached the makeshift camp, trees thinning where huge fists of rock punched upwards at the sky, dominating her vision. Myriam felt her throat dry for a moment, for the Black Pike Mountains were a panorama indeed, a line of domineering peaks that lined her sight from the edge of the world to the edge of the world. Each peak she could see reared black and unforgiving into the sky, many damn near ten thousand feet. And beyond, she knew, they got much bigger, much more terrifying, and much more savage.

Myriam stopped, head tilting. The camp was quiet. Too quiet. Her eyes scanned right, where they could see the narrow trail which led from the Great North Road to the gawping maw of the Cailleach Pass; it was along this, she knew, Kell would finally come, head hung low, poison eating him, begging her for the antidote, for her to relieve his pain, for her to slit his throat and end his torment. Only Kell would not; he would be thinking of Nienna, and her suffering, and how he could save her instead.

A cold wind blew, and Myriam shivered. Snow fell from the trees behind her, making her jump, and she realised she had dropped the sack of meat and had notched an arrow to her bow without even realising it. Kell, the wind seemed to whisper. Kell. He will gut you like a fish. He will cut out your liver. He will drink your blood, bitch!

Scowling, Myriam grabbed the sack and stalked into their small camp, where the men, Styx and Jex, had built an arched screen of timber and evergreen fronds, for protection against the wind. Within this semi-circle they'd dragged logs for seats, and built a fire in a square of rocks. The fire burned low. Again, Myriam's eyes narrowed. To let the fire go out was foolish indeed; here, in this place, it meant the difference between life and death.

"Styx?" she said, voice little more than a murmur. Then louder. "Styx? Jex? Where are you?"

The camp was deserted. Myriam's eyes looked to where Nienna, their young prisoner, had been seated; there were deep marks in the snow created by her boots. A struggle?

"Damn it."

Myriam left the sack at camp, and followed tracks through the woods, kneeling once to examine a confusion of marks. She cursed; they had been using the camp for nearly a week now, and there were too many contradicting signs. Something rattled nearby. Myriam's head came up. She broke into a run, arrow notched, and skidded to a halt before a series of huge trees swathed in ivy, creating an ivy wall on two sides like a corridor; against this backdrop Nienna struggled, and even as Myriam watched Styx, squat, black-lipped Styx, with pockmarked skin and his left eye, uncovered, nothing more than a red, inflamed socket – she watched him push the blade to Nienna's throat and snarl something incomprehensible on a stream of foul spittle down her ear.

"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?"