Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

Kell blinked.

The canker was on him, fangs an inch from his throat and his eyes met the mad crimson gaze and he dropped Ilanna between them, and thrust her up and out, blades punching a huge hole up through the beast's great, cavernous chest, and Kell's legs braced and his teeth ground, and he stood there, strong, a powerhouse, with the impaled canker kicking on the end of his axe and with neck muscles and arm and shoulder and chest muscles bulging, his face purple with effort, and he lifted the kicking squealing canker up, high up into the air and stood there, feeling a wonderful power flooding through him, feeling strength and godliness teasing through flesh like a divine orgasm. Ilanna began to sing and the canker kicked, like a lizard on the end of a spear. Kell jerked the axe, blades cutting deeper into the huge beast, fully twice his size, great equine head thrashing with teeth gnawing invisible bones, and Kell thrust forward again, the blades so deep now that thick gore flowed out, over his head and torso, drenching him in entirety. With a final thrust Ilanna severed the canker's spine. It went suddenly still on the end of the axe. With a mighty scream, Kell wrenched Ilanna sideways, half severing the dying canker's body into two discrete pieces, which flopped with slaps of thick dead meat. Bloody clockwork components scattered, many tumbling down the mountain's flanks, clattering, brass and crimson gears still stepping, wheels spinning, cogs shifting. Kell lifted Ilanna in the air, one-handed, as the mist parted and the Soul Stealers locked eyes to him and he grinned, grinned through his mask of canker blood and Ilanna began to sing. She sang a high beautiful song, which rang out across the mountains and valleys, echoed across snowfields and frozen tarns. It was long and eerie and mournful, a song about murder, a song about death. And as she sang, so the Soul Stealers paused, and they stood for a long time listening as the dead canker slowly shifted, and slipped from the mountain ridge, vanished into the abyss. Eventually, Kell lowered Ilanna. The Soul Stealers turned, and disappeared into the swirling white vapour.

"Grandfather!" came Nienna's shout. They were far across the ridgeline now, Saark guiding the young woman. Kell turned, moved away from the canker's blood pools and stopped. Gazing down where Myriam had fallen, he tried to differentiate her corpse from the distant slopes and jagged rocks. He could not.

"Damn it," he snarled, then loped across the ridge at great speed, showing no fear of heights, showing no worry at the vast slopes veering off to either side. For Kell, vertigo was something that happened to other people.

Saark and Nienna moved on, through the eddying haze, and Kell eventually caught them up as they climbed towards the next mountain top. As they breached a rise, a savage steep scramble which did its best to cast all three back down the mountainside, so a wind snapped around them and the mist cleared, and the world of the Black Pike Mountains opened like God peeling the top off the world.

"Stunning," said Nienna, simply.

Kell grunted.

Saark helped the old warrior up the last scree of rocks, and they stood in silence staring at the black granite wilderness, and the sweeping fields of snow. It was quite light where they stood, although the wind bit into them like ice knives.

"You did well," said Saark.

"I reverted," said Kell.

"Meaning?"

"Something happened to me. Something happened to Ilanna. Something bad."

"I don't understand."

"I think only Ilanna understands. I think, sometimes, she plays her own game, Saark. She sang to the Soul Stealers – there was a connection there, what kind of connection I am not sure. But they retreated. They fled."

"You killed the canker. Maybe they were scared of you?"

"No," grunted Kell, rubbing his beard and leaning on the axe. Her blades gleamed black in the harsh winter light. "No, they were frightened of Ilanna. I think."

"Where do we go next?" asked Nienna, hunkering down in her clothing. Her face was drawn, ashen, her eyes red from crying. The death of Myriam had stunned her.

Kell pointed, to where a huge mountain reared high above the others. It was formidable, even at this distance, with twin horns of overhanging rock rearing near the summit and spreading out, so the beast in its entirety resembled the skull of a ram.

"Skaringa Dak," he said. "Otherwise known as Warlord's Peak."

"That's one ugly mountain," said Saark. "And it's big. Too big, Kell. Look at the distance we have to cover! We can't be dragging Nienna all that way."

"We must. But rest assured, we go through the mountain, not over the top."

"Kell, that's Silva Valley you're talking about. It's an entire civilisation, by all the balls of the gods! You cannot fight the world, old friend."

"One step at a time," said Kell.

Saark sighed, and Nienna moved to him, hugged him. "I can't believe Myriam is gone," she said. Saark nodded, but said nothing. It did not surprise him, and he had to admit, he had wanted her dead. However, now the deed was done, guilt stabbed him like a tiny knife in the belly. She had been a victim of the cancers eating her body, her bones. She had given in to madness to chase an impossible dream. And her only reward now was lying dead and broken, a smashed doll, at the foot of the terrible Black Pikes.

"Yes," he said, finally, and hugged Nienna tight. It was a simple connection, a simple sharing of warmth and humanity. And in this dark place of stone and ice, it felt necessary.

"Come on," said Kell. "We have a long way to go."

"You're mad, old man."

"Maybe," he said, face dark. "Let's get moving, before those bitches forget Ilanna's song and come back."

She swam through darkness, and at last there was no pain. It had happened so suddenly. The arrow in her throat, rolling from the high ledge, then… a long, rattling descent. She hit rocks, and was conscious for a while of great darkness hanging over her like a guillotine blade waiting to drop. Then, she supposed, she died. There was a long period of nothing. And then fire seemed to rage through her veins, potent and raw, the most powerful injection of energy she had ever, ever felt. She felt something cold against her chest, and with a jerk she shuddered in huge lungfuls of cold mountain air. Only then did she feel the pain at her neck, and everything came rushing back and she opened her mouth to scream but a hand clamped over her face, muffling her. She thrashed for a while, arms and legs kicking in chaos, but something immeasurably strong pinned her down, holding her still, and she felt the fire raging through her and it hurt, hurt so bad, hurt worse than anything she'd ever felt and seemed to rage for a million years. Then her eyes flickered open and she stared into a gaunt, pale, beautiful face. The face of the Soul Stealer. She tried to struggle in sudden panic, but Shanna held her tight and smiled a hollow smile and showed her fangs, which were stained with blood.

"Be still, child," she hissed. "It will not take long."

She looked to the left and Tashmaniok came into Myriam's plane of vision. She carried something and Myriam frowned. Then another punch of pain spun through her and she convulsed, unable to breathe, her heart filled with pure white agony as she slammed into cardiac arrest.

"Now," said Shanna.

Tash knelt, and in her hand was a tiny device, a cross between the innards of a watch and an insect made from gold wire. It scampered from Tash's hands, and moved across Myriam's skin as she stared down at it, pain slapping her in waves, her eyes following the tiny clockwork machine in terror. "This is the latest technology," came Tash's soothing voice, as the clockwork spider paused over Myriam's spasming, fractured heart, lifted a leg, and with a high-pitched screeching drilled a hole through her breastbone.