Vampire Warlords

CHAPTER 2

General Graal was sucked through the blood-magick lines, and it felt like dying, and felt like being born, and eventually he was lying on a cold tile floor in a kitchen, staring up at the smoke-stained, wood-beamed ceiling in the High Fortress at Port of Gollothrim. The High Fortress. He smiled a sickly smile. It was also known locally as Warlord's Tower.

The world was a blur for Graal. First, he could smell woodsmoke. Then he could smell the sea, a distant tang of salt, the taste of fresh sea breeze. Stunned, for the blood-oil magick sending was like being punched into the earth by the fist of a giant, Graal gradually fought for his senses to return. He heard distraught sobbing. He breathed, breathed deep, and inside him clockwork went tick, tick, tick.

Graal moved his head to the left. Kradek-ka lay unconscious, blood leaking from his eyes. His flesh was pale and waxen, and at first Graal thought he was dead – until he heard a tiny stepping of gears, witnessed the gentle rising of Kradek-ka's chest. Then Graal looked right, and jumped at the savagery of the sight…

Bhu Vanesh was there, seven feet tall, narrow, smoke-filled, long arms and legs crooked. One hand held a limp figure, a plump woman bent over backwards, blood dripping freely from where her throat had been entirely ripped out. Her eyes, dead glass eyes, were staring straight at Graal. He shivered. Bhu Vanesh turned a little, as if sensing Graal's return to consciousness. Blood-slit eyes regarded him, but Bhu Vanesh did not break from his task: the task of feeding. His second hand held another woman, this time slim, petite almost, and wearing the white apron of a kitchen attendant. She had long blonde hair, very fine, like silk, which spilled back from her tight entrapment revealing her throat, pale and punctured and quivering.

As Bhu Vanesh sucked vigorously on the plump woman, his eyes watched Graal. Graal stared back. Then Graal's gaze shifted to the slim blonde woman's eyes, and they were frightened, face contorted in pain. Her hands were clenching and unclenching, and for a moment Graal felt sympathy which was instantly dashed against the jagged towering shoreline of his cruelty.

Graal stood, and watched, and knew with a malicious joy that Bhu Vanesh was weak. Weak from the Chaos Halls. Weak from travelling the lines of blood-oil magick; the Lines of the Land.

Eventually, the plump woman closed her eyes. She shuddered. She died. Bhu Vanesh withdrew his fangs with squelches, and dropping the plump kitchen woman with a newly slashed throat, he lay the blonde on the kitchen tiles, and slit his own wrist with a talon. The black and grey smoke coiled back, and a thick syrup oozed free. He allowed this to drop into the slim blonde's mouth, and then knelt back on haunches and watched. Graal said nothing. There was nothing to say.

The blonde started to writhe and contort, her body spasming, trembling, muscles growing taut then slack, taut then slack. Black oil seemed to bubble at her mouth, then flowed out of her eyes and ears and quim, staining her white uniform and pooling under her body.

Graal looked left, out through a narrow window. He was uncomfortable watching the vampire change. It reminded him too much of his youth, and some very bad times. Bad times which had been excised from his memories – until now.

Graal observed the dawn, a wintry grey-blue sky. Distantly, he could make out the sea, and a phalanx of seagulls crying as they swept past his vision. Gollothrim. The Port of Gollothrim. The Fortress. Was it still occupied? Graal shivered. They'd soon find out…

Returning his gaze, he saw the transformation was complete. The blonde woman stood, and seemed uneasy in her shell. Her eyes were now black – jet black, and unnaturally glossy as if filled with a cankerous honey. This, this was the sign of a Vampire Warlord's servant. Graal remembered, now, his thoughts flowing back through a long history, a longer deviation.

"You." Graal was snapped back to the living, the present, and realised Bhu Vanesh was pointing at him. Graal stared for a moment, then glanced at the woman. She was smiling, showing her own vampire fangs. Dead, but alive. The undead. Not like the sophisticated clockwork vachine at all…

"Yes?" snapped Graal, anger flooding him. Anger, and bitterness, and regret. What had he done? He glanced down at the waxen figure of Kradek-ka. What had they done?

"Take Lorna to the Division General's quarters. He is here. I can smell his fear. Lorna will begin my recruitment. She is the First."

"Yes."

"And Graal?" Bhu Vanesh's voice was a low, low rumble. Those red eyes cut through Graal's nerve like an assassin's garrotte.

"Yes, Warlord?"

"Forget your manners again, and I will cut off your head and suck out your brains."

Graal paled. He bowed his head a fraction. "Yes, Warlord."

A winter sea breeze caressed the stone corridors of Port Gollothrim's High Fortress as Graal led Lorna, this newly baptised and transformed vampire, towards the central control point of this south-western Falanor city. Prior to the Vampire Warlords' resurrection, Graal's Army of Iron had not made it this far; which meant, in theory, the population of the city was sound. Those, that is, who had not fled after Vor was sundered.

Graal paused, and stared from a high window. Below, the city appeared deserted. And then he saw them, a group of rough-looking men down by the seafront. Huge walls lined the front, presumably to halt high tides or violent storms. Graal's eyes strayed, and he saw a woman, further down. She carried a babe in her arms, and walked quickly, nervously, looking often over her shoulder. She reached a small line of cottages and ducked quickly into a doorway. So. Port Gollothrim was still home to… Graal smiled. Fresh meat. Templates. Vampire templates. But where were the soldiers? Called away to fight his Army of Iron, in Vor? Possibly.

Graal rubbed his chin. His torn cheek was stinging, but even now he could feel accelerated vachine flesh knitting together. He would be healed by the next morning.

He felt Lorna's eyes on him. He turned. "What are you looking at?"

"A nervous man."

Graal stared, hard, then smiled a cold thin-lipped smile. "So, Lorna, bitch, Bhu Vanesh's First, born straight into our world of horror by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You think you are so powerful? Let us see you perform. Perform, like a dancing monkey jerking on the puppeteer's strings."

Lorna's head tilted, and she observed Graal, and he felt the clockwork of his heart accelerate a little. Then she turned, and Graal led her no more. She moved fast, bare feet padding the cold stone flags, white kitchen apron stained with blood and the black gore from Bhu Vanesh's veins. Her neck showed the twin bites of the vampire. Her skin glowed in an ironic mockery of life.

Now, Graal followed. Lorna needed no guidance.

She accelerated, and Graal had to jog to keep up. Down long corridors, up steps, until they burst into the Division General's chambers and surprised the five men there. Division General Dekull stood beside a large polished oak table, with four other men; all wore military uniforms of black and silver bearing the Falanor crest. The table was filled with maps, and several glasses of half-drained wine.

Dekull, a large man with bull-neck and over-red complexion, thinning brown hair and large hands, stared for a moment in abject confusion. "Who the hell are you?" he growled, red-face forming into the frown of a man who did not take interruptions lightly. Then Lorna squealed in sudden bloodlust, real blood lust, and a burst of energy fired her and leapt at him, fastening arms and legs around him, teeth lusting for his jugular. He staggered back, knocking the table over. Wine spilled across maps. He tried to grapple with the newborn vampire, but there came a sudden crack as she snapped his arm like tinder, and Division General Dekull screamed, highpitched and animal, and this slammed the other men into action. They drew swords and charged as Graal watched impassively from the doorway.

Four swords slashed at Lorna in quick succession, as her knees came up, bare feet on Dekull's chest and she kicked up and backwards, through a somersault, landing behind one soldier. Swords clanged together in discord. Lorna's fist punched into one man, and through him, bursting free of his chest in a splatter of blood. She stood, holding his jiggling body upright, then let him fall as the three remaining men leapt back, faces uncertain, eyes narrowed. Lorna took a long lick of slick blood from her elbow to her still-clenched fist. Her black eyes gleamed.

"Come on," she growled, voice feral and husky.

One man screamed and charged, and she deflected his sword blow on her left arm where the razor-edge peeled her skin back like flesh from soft-braised pork. Her right hand dropped, grabbed his crotch, and ripped back hard detaching chainmail trews, penis and testes in one mangled lump. The other two men edged towards the door, then one, Command Sergeant Wood, turned and kicked his way savagely through the leaded window. He climbed out onto a high ledge and disappeared from view. The final man dropped his sword with a clatter. Division General Dekull was kneeling, blood pooled around him, nursing his broken arm. Bone protruded from flesh, a savage break, a sharp stick pointing at the roof.

Lorna strode to the surrendered soldier, and knelt before him. She seemed almost tender. The man, a young commissioned officer named Shurin, trembled as urine leaked down his legs and pooled around his feet. It stank bad.

"I didn't mean it," Shurin whispered, eyes imploring. "I beg forgiveness."

"There is no forgiveness," said Lorna, and he was on his knees before her and she took his face in her hands, a palm against each cheek and she was smiling and Shurin's piss gurgled as it swilled around them, and she pulled his face towards her, as if they were parted lovers returned for a final kiss; then she lowered her fangs, and they sank into his flesh, and he screamed and began to kick, to struggle savagely in the nature of any trapped beast and the piss-stink of the coward. Lorna sucked Shurin, and drank him hard, and left his deflated corpse like a limp doll on the flagstones.

Lorna stood. She licked blood from her lips. She radiated power.

Graal was examining his fingernails, his air one of debonair cool, his eyes detached from the bloody scene before him. He knew the situation; understood it inherently. Until Lorna killed, and fed, she was not true vampire. Now, with this fresh intake of blood, she was almost there. Almost. Now, in the same way the vachine used clockwork to finalise their victims' transformation to vachine, Lorna had to make her own slave; her own ghoul. It was the Law of the Vampire. One of the Old Laws. For the vampires were a race of the enslaved…

Lorna was advancing on the barely conscious figure of Division General Dekull. His broken arm cast odd shadows against the wall. Outside, the winter sun was a copper pan pushed into the sky.

"You missed one."

"What?" Lorna's head snapped round.

Graal looked up. Gestured to the window. "You missed one. Sloppy."

"I saw no help from you," she snarled, blood still slick on her fangs and causing her frail blonde hair to clump in rat tails around her face.

"This is not my freakshow," smiled Graal, coolly, and turned his back, departing the chamber to look for Kradek-ka. Behind him, he heard Lorna's soothing words. First, he heard the crack as Lorna put Dekull's arm back in line. His scream shook the rafters. Then she fed, and fed him her blood, and in so doing spread the black blood of Bhu Vanesh, from killer to victim. She spread the disease. Spread the curse.

It was night.

Graal sat in his large, almost regal sleeping chambers, nursing a glass of port at a smooth-waxed redwood table. Across from him sat Kradek-ka, face still battered from his collision with a jagged mountain wall. He looked far from his usual composed, serene self.

Outside, a large pale moon hung in the sky like a pancreas cut free by a drunk surgeon. Yellow light filtered into the sleeping chamber, and tumbled lazily across Graal and Kradek-ka's sombre features.

"So it is done," said Kradek-ka, and took a drink from his glass. Graal nodded, and rubbed his eyes. Bhu Vanesh's vampiric plague had swept through the High Fortress in less than a day. Now, he had a hundred and fifty vampire slaves, a jagged hierarchy ruled over by Lorna and Division General Dekull. Dekull had shown himself to be a formidable taker to the cause; and of course, once he was under Bhu Vanesh's control, the Vampire Warlord instantly had access to Dekull's emotions, his thoughts and, more importantly, memories. The instant Bhu Vanesh's blood was in Dekull's veins, they shared a hive mind. Bhu Vanesh knew the layout of the High Fortress, the Port of Gollothrim, the details of Falanor army units, and everything else of military interest. He had absorbed the Division General's mind. This was one of his talents.

And now, night had come.

Bhu Vanesh lifted the portcullis, and with the baleful yellow moon glaring down like a disapproving eye of the gods, had pointed out into the city. Before him, arranged on a cobbled courtyard, were a hundred and fifty vampires. They were soldiers, stablehands, cooks and cleaners. Each wore twin marks at their throat. Each had gloss black eyes. Each could smell fresh blood. Out there, in the city, in the world…

"Expand my slaves," said Bhu Vanesh, stalking back from the portcullis, head bobbing a little, legs working with curious joints and making him even less than human. Not that it took much imagination. In the gloom, the flowing smoke of his flesh was even more pronounced.

Silently, the flood of newborn vampires headed into the night, spreading out, disseminating, each on a personal mission of feeding and violent coercion.

"It's done," agreed Graal. Bitterness was in his mind, on his tongue, in his soul. He licked his own vampire fangs. The feeling from Bhu Vanesh was tangible. He hated not just humans, but the albinos and the vachine. His arrogance was total. To Bhu Vanesh, everything that walked or crawled was inferior. A slave. There to be used, toyed with, and ultimately consumed as food.

"We must take him. Take them all! Send them back to the Chaos Halls!" Kradek-ka had the light of madness in his dark vachine eyes. He was a Watchmaker! A Royal Engineer of Silva Valley! He was not used to being a slave…

"Sh!" snapped Graal. He glanced around the chamber. He gave a narrow smile. "I think our elite brethren are the kind to employ many, many ears. Let us just say I understand your frustration, and I agree with your train of thought. What we must do is strike when he is at his weakest."

"With each new slave, he grows stronger. With each drop of fresh blood, he grows more ferocious! You know the legends as well as I, Graal. What I want to know is why the magick failed us? Why, by all the gods, did we lose control?"

Graal shook his head. "It was a cheap dice-trick. A card con, like the sailors pull down on the docks. Who wrote the ancient texts? The servants of the Warlords. They wove betrayal into the narrative, after all, who would summon them back without believing in their own mastery? What incentive in being a slave? A puppet? We were cheated, Kradek-ka. And our arrogance, and greed, allowed us to be cheated. Without our efforts, without our lust for power, the vachine would have remained in Silva Valley. We were kings of a small pond; now we are fucking slaves, just like the rest of them."

" 'Thus how thee mightye are crushed lyke shelles againste thyr throynes,' " misquoted Kradek-ka, and poured himself another glass from the crystal decanter. The port glimmered, like blood, in his glass. Somewhere, out in the city, a human gave a terrible scream. Several cracking sounds followed. Then a deep silence flooded back in.

Graal and Kradek-ka's eyes met.

"How do we solve this, and still remain dominant?" said Kradek-ka.

"Our first step is to kill Bhu Vanesh."

Kradek-ka nodded, and nursed his drink, and listened to the vicious hunting far out in the darkness.

Command Sergeant Wood sat on the roof of the High Fortress, the Warlord's Tower, and brooded. His short sword sat across his knees, and he squatted, huddled beneath his thick army shirt, shivering uncontrollably. Not just from the cold, the wind, the ice, but from everything he had witnessed. And more. The things he could see unfolding in the city beneath him. Horrible things. Nightmare things.

King Leanoric was dead. That was news he handled well. Even the invasion, the Army of Iron – unbeatable, invincible! – as a soldier, this was information which he could grit his teeth and try to plan for. Bloodoil magick. Ice smoke. Cankers. All these things Command Sergeant Wood had witnessed, and fought, and after Leanoric was smashed at the Battle of Old Skulkra, Command Sergeant Wood – with several platoons of elite men – had headed south to warn his superiors. But their way south had been blocked by hundreds of cankers, snarling, roaming free. It took Wood and his men three days to circle the beasts, and they had two encounters which lost Wood six men. It had been a grim time. But still, a time Wood could fight with fist and sword and mace. But now? Now this… abomination.

Command Sergeant Wood observed the city below. The Port of Gollothrim. The city of his childhood. A city he loved with all his heart, all his soul. As a boy he had run riot through the narrow cobbled streets, stealing from market traders, organising other orphans and vagabonds into a tight unit that preyed on rich merchants and dealers in silks, spices and diamonds. He was caught at the age of sixteen after robbing a spice magnate, who died from a heart attack during the robbery, and Wood was sentenced to hang. But he'd been rescued from the gallows by a kindly old Captain, Captain Brook, and afterwards joined Brook's Company as a helper, sharpening swords, oiling armour, cooking for the men. Now, here, Command Sergeant Wood had risen as far through the non-commissioned ranks as a soldier could go. He was tough as an old boot left for months in the desert sun, harder than the thick steel nails which held together the Falanor Royal Fleet. But Wood had a soft spot for his men, and even more so, his city. The Port of Gollothrim. His fucking city! Which was under attack from within…

Command Sergeant Wood had fought cankers and vachine, so he was not averse to surprises. The speed with which the High Fortress was taken was hard for Wood to comprehend, and to accept. But even more so, was the changing of people into these… creatures.

Wood spat on the high roof, and his eyes tracked a vampire through the distant streets below. There came a tinkling, the smash of glass, and the vampire entered through the window. Wood heard screams. He shook in rage, his fists clenched, eyes narrowed. Then, silence flooded up to him through the icy darkness.

"You were a hard one to find," said Lorna, and Wood uncurled smoothly from his crouch on the edge of the High Fortress roof. His eyes moved beyond her, but she was alone.

Despite his size, his barrel chest, his large hands powerful enough to crush the spine of any man he'd fought, Wood leapt nimbly down to the flat roof, slick with damp and ice, and slashed his sword several times through the air.

"You come here for me to teach you a lesson, girl?"

She laughed at that. A pretty, tinkling sound. She ran a hand through her fine blonde hair, and her claws lengthened, her fangs gleaming under the baleful yellow moon.

"I think it's the other way round, Command Sergeant Wood."

"So you know my name."

"You will make an extremely useful addition to our ranks. After I play with you. After I suck you." She grinned at him, eyes mischievous, and he reddened. Wood was not a man comfortable with sex. Never had been, never would be.

He smiled grimly. Join your ranks? I'd rather die first. Rather cut my own throat with a rusty fucking razor. Rather string myself up by the balls! But… Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

She attacked, fast, in the blink of an eye – and came up short, almost impaling herself on the point of Wood's sword. She back-flipped way, then moved sideways, and Wood tracked her.

"You move fast for a fat man," she said.

"Come closer, girl. I'll show you a little bit more."

She snarled, and her gloss black eyes narrowed. Then she charged, in a series of bounds, and leapt ducking under Wood's slashing sword, but he slammed a left hook that pounded her head, knocking her sideways into a straight right that spread her nose across her face. Wood's boot smashed her head, and even as she hit the stone he stamped on her chest, then her face. She lay stunned, and Wood moved swiftly, picking her lithe, seemingly frail body up and lifting it high above his head. He leapt onto the battlements edging the roof of the High Fortress, and gazed down to the distant cobbles of the courtyard.

"Bhu Vanesh will kill you for this!" Lorna mumbled through broken teeth. Her shattered, swollen cheeks changed the shape of her face. Wood gave a short nod.

"He should come find me himself, then," snapped the old soldier, in the same military bark that had sent hundreds of men scuttling across many a desolate parade ground. His powerful shoulders bunched and he launched Lorna into the air. He watched her fall with interest, and when she hit the cobbles it was with a sickening crack. Wood fetched his sword, then returned to the edge of the roof. Glancing down, he watched Lorna start to move, her broken, snapped shape starting to writhe, beginning to squirm. Somebody ran to her, and she gradually climbed disjointedly to her feet and glared up at him.

"Hell's balls!" Wood snapped, and ran for the far end of the roof. Here, he knew, there was a tunnel he could use to escape. But what to do? Where to go? How could he fight such creatures? How could they die?

And it came, in a flash of brilliance. Of inspiration.

He would travel the city, and gather to him those who still lived. The criminals, the smiths, the soldiers, the market traders. And they would arm themselves.

And they would fight this scourge.

With a new objective, a military objective, Command Sergeant Wood loped off into the darkness.

Jalder was Falanor's major northern city and once a trading post connecting east, south and west military supply routes, known as the Northern T. Sitting just south of the formidable Black Pike Mountains, and separated by the Iron Forest, Jalder had been the first city hit when the vachine invaded south from the mountains and their stronghold, Silva Valley, and using their albino ranks, the Army of Iron.

Since that invasion, where General Graal had used a mixture of blood-oil magick and cunning, first to take out the northern scouts and guards, then to infiltrate Jalder's Northern Garrison and slay the entire regiment based there with not a single loss of life to his own army – since those days, months earlier, since the flooding of magick summoned ice-smoke which chilled and killed, and allowed soldiers to run riot capturing and murdering the vast majority of Jalder citizens – well, for those that remained, life had been unbearably hard.

It could have been expected that all would die, such was the hardship in Jalder. The ice-smoke froze people in their beds, froze traders selling wares at market stalls, murdered children playing in the street. And those not killed had been rounded up by the Army of Iron, and even worse, many were eaten when a unit of rogue cankers broke free and rampaged through the streets, ripping out throats and snapping off heads.

The Army of Iron had moved south, leaving behind a token garrison of three hundred albino warriors and five ethereal, ghostly Harvesters in order to patrol the deserted city of Jalder, mopping up stragglers and warning Graal of any military activity behind his advancing lines.

Twelve weeks had passed.

And incredibly, some people had survived.

They lived in sewers, and attics, in the tanneries and deserted fish-stores, they scuttled like cockroaches beneath the floorboards of once-rich, proud dwellings, they hid in the towers of Jalder University, in the dungeons of Jalder's Marble Palace, in the Dazoon Clocktower and the old guild spice-houses. They scrabbled for food like vermin, dressed in rags, their weapons rusted. But they survived. They existed. And slowly, warily, they began to fight back.

The resistance was led by a small, narrow-faced man known simply as Ferret. He was slim, wiry, but incredibly strong for his size after a life of hardship as a thief, a pit-fighter, and later in His Majesty's Prisons, including a stint in the terribly harsh Black Pike Mines. What Ferret lacked in brawn he made up for with speed and accuracy, dirty-fighting and the ability to use his mind. In those first days when the ice-smoke rolled through Jalder, he had been safe in the dungeons – until two albino soldiers went through the cells systematically killing all prisoners. When they came to Ferret, he'd been curled in a ball in the corner of his cell, crying, begging for his life, covered in snot and sores. The two soldiers opened the cell, and one studied his nails whilst the second moved in for the kill – gurgling as Ferret leapt forward, out-stretched fingers punching through and into the soldier's throat. He took the dying warrior's sword, hefted it thoughtfully, and split the second albino's skull straight down the middle with a single blow. Turning back to the first man, with finger-holes through his oesophagus pouring white blood, Ferret took hold of his hair and hacked free his head.

Three months ago.

Three months!

How things had changed. How life in Jalder had changed for those poor unfortunates still left. The Harvesters roamed the streets, directing the patrols. Many of the humans remaining were soon killed… killed and harvested. The old, frail, weak, scared. The children had proved resilient; good at hiding, and learning quickly to kill in packs with youthful ferocity, and without remorse.

And gradually, they had all come to Ferret. This small man, this skinny man, with his lank brown hair and pockmarked features like the arse of a pig. He was one of the downtrodden, one of the underdogs. But hell, Ferret had come good. Ferret had shown that it was all about the mind. All about planning, and thinking, and instruction. Not simply violence, but the planning of violence.

Ferret gathered those stray and directionless men and women and children to him; he organised them into groups, the children into food foraging parties, the woman into units who practised with swords and bows during the day, and mended armour and fashioned arrows by night. They discovered underground tunnels near the river, and set nets to catch fish thus providing fresh food and protein. They used the old furnace chambers of the tanneries to cook their food, so that smoke and fumes would be carried up high brick chimneys and away on distant winds. They slept, huddled together under old furs and blankets the children found in rich merchants' houses, and always with weapons to hand. Once, a unit of five albino soldiers found a sleeping pit – the battle had been fierce, but short, with twenty people slaughtered including one of Ferret's trusted "Generals", as he liked to call those he promoted and put in charge.

In those first days, the resistance had numbered maybe five hundred: the strays in the sewers, those hiding in attics and cellars, shivering in the cold dark places. Now, they were no more than two hundred. Slowly, systematically, they had been rooted out and killed. It depressed Ferret more than he could ever admit, and now, as he sat in his little control centre deep within an old tannery building, cold, silent, the huge cauldrons empty, the fires gone out, he waited with three of his Generals for his best weapon, his most trusted ally, his most vicious soldier – a twelve year-old girl they called Rose. Beautiful on the outside, but sharp with thorns beneath.

Rose was a slim, quiet thing. But she had proved herself time and again as the most capable soldier in Ferret's resistance. She was superb at gathering intelligence: where albino soldiers would patrol, if there would be Harvesters, what was happening in the outside world. She had her own routes through the city, and Ferret did not ask. Her results were what counted, and Ferret did not need to know the details.

All he knew about Rose was that her parents had been killed when she was young, maybe four or five years, and she had survived in the city from that early age on her wits and intelligence and intuition. She was a born killer, despite her angelic appearance. She was dangerous beyond compare.

Her tiny bare feet pattered down the corridor, and Rose glided into view; warily, for she was always wary; but with an easy and confident manner. She was a girl in tune with this odd underground environment.

"Hello, Rose."

"Ferret," she said, her dark eyes glancing to the Generals, then around the room. "Nice hideout."

"You have information?"

"Of course. You have payment?"

"Yes." Ferret smiled, his narrow face breaking into genuine humour. Never trust anybody who did something for free, he thought. With Rose, he had to buy her information. Usually with precious stones, which he had children through the city scouring rich merchants' deserted houses to find so he could keep this particular human gem in active service.

Ferret tossed her a small velvet bag of rubies. "Here you go."

Rose snatched the bag from the air, and looked around suspiciously. She frowned, then seemed to relax. Ferret tuned in to her senses; he had never seen her frown. Was there something wrong? Had she seen, or sensed, something he had not?

Ferret felt his alertness kick up a few degrees. He loosened his sword and knife at his belt, but kept the smile on his face for Rose. He glanced to the three Generals; all huge men and proven warriors, despite their soiled garb. It was hard to keep clean fighting from the sewers. They stunk like three-week-dead dogs. All except Rose, that is. She was perfectly clean, her simple black clothes fresh as virgin snowfall, her shoulderlength black hair neatly brushed. Nothing about her indicated a covert lifestyle of information gathering, and the secret murder of albino soldiers.

Rose tipped the rubies onto her small, white hand. They looked wrong, somehow, sitting there in the girl's palm. Then, in one swift movement she ate them, swallowing with a grimace, and glancing up to Ferret. She allowed the velvet bag to drop to the stone floor.

"The albinos know where you are," said Rose.

Ferret felt a thrill of fear course through him, tugging his senses like drugsmoke, pounding through his head, flowing like molten lead through his veins.

"What? This place? They know about this place?"

"Yes," said Rose, and glanced around. As if nervous. Ferret had never seen her do that before; never seen her portray anything but the utmost calm, secure in her knowledge that she was unobserved, had not been followed. Now. Now she was different. She was out of character. Ferret grimaced, as he realised the emotion she carried like raw guilt. Rose was scared. "They are coming for you," she added, almost as an afterthought.

"Tonight?"

"No. Now. Now!"

Even as the words brushed past her lips on a warm exhalation of air, so there came a scream of bricks and torn steel, and a shower of rubble cascaded into the underground chamber. Bricks clattered in the control centre, dust billowed, and Ferret and his generals had drawn weapons, were standing ready, as one of the vampires leapt snarling from the dust, so fast it was a blur, hitting one general in the chest and bearing him to the ground with talons slashing open his throat. The large man convulsed, started to thrash, choking on his own blood, on geysers of blood as he flopped around, arms and legs kicking, but pinioned to the ground as if the vampire was a heavy weight.

Ferret licked dust-rimed lips. The vampire was tall, thin, with white skin and a near-bald head. Long ears swept back, and it turned a narrow, elongated face towards him, eyes red, fangs poking over its lips and with a start, with a jump that nearly kicked his balls through his belly, Ferret realised this was Old Terrag, once a butcher down on the markets by the Selenau River, an expert with a cleaver by all accounts, and now an integral part of the resistance in Jalder. Old Terrag was one of Ferret's most trusted men. Now, he had changed…

The vampire snarled, lowering its head as the cutopen general slowly ceased his thrashing, blood dropping from fountain to bubbling brook, and with a blink the huge war hammer hit the vampire in the face, sending it catapulting in a flurry of limbs across the room. Ferret glanced at Blaker, and gave a nod. The huge general had kept his wits about him and crept through the billowing dust. Even when Ferret had not. Shit. That won't happen again. Well, over my dead body. Especially over my dead body!

Ferret glanced back to Rose, but the young girl had gone. "Damn," he snarled, as the vampire hit him in the back and his face smacked the stone floor, hard. Stars flashed through his skull, and he was blinded. He could hear scuffling, hissing, snarling, and Ferret jacked himself up and began to crawl. There came a crack, like wood breaking, and a terrible scream. This was finished off with a gurgle. Ferret searched around for his sword, and as his vision cleared his fingers curled around the short, sturdy blade. He found a wall, and realised most of the lanterns had gone out. Smashed. Only one weak flame burned, and Ferret scrambled around until his back was to the wall, and he crouched there, sword touching the ground, looking, listening. Use your brain, damn you! Think!

Three generals. Two definitely dead. And a hammer blow to the face for the attacking bastard. A blow which should have cracked the vampire's skull in two like a fruit on a chopping block, had simply stalled it for seconds. What have they done to you, Old Terrag? What did they make you? But Ferret knew. He'd read the stories. He'd heard the old tales, warped and twisted fantasies passed down through generations. Old Terrag was a vampire. And much, much stronger than the albino soldiers who patrolled the streets of Jalder making Ferret's life miserable.

There came a roar, and Dandig attacked with his axe. Ferret squinted, saw something squirm through the dust and still spilling rubble from the hole in the roof. The two figures clashed, one a huge bear of a man, his neck as wide as Ferret's thigh, his biceps not much thinner, a black-hearted bastard of a killer who only obeyed Ferret because he didn't know where the gold was kept – or in fact, that there was no gold at all. The axe swept for Old Terrag, who swayed back, changing direction, leaping, bouncing from the wall and launching at Dandig from above. Clawed hands took hold of Dandig's head, as the axe on its return sweep made a humming noise lashing under Old Terrag's elongated, stretched out body. And whilst still airborne, the vampire twisted Dandig's head, and Ferret waited for the snap of breaking neck but it was worse, much worse as the vampire kept on twisting and tendons crackled and popped and the head came clean off. Blood fountained. Dandig's confused body collapsed like a sack of sloppy shit.

Ferret tried to lick his lips, but could not. Fear had drained him of spit.

Old Terrag straightened, damn, he'd always been a tall bastard, and stared for a while at the pumping body on the floor. The head had rolled off into the shadows, and Ferret knew the man would have been completely pissed off. Dandig wasn't a man used to losing.

Ferret fought down the urge to splutter a histrionic giggle.

Old Terrag turned that blood gaze on Ferret and his balls retracted to pips. "Your turn, Ferret," hissed the vampire and Ferret was frozen, a statue, a carving from ice, and the vampire launched at him and he wanted to scream and curl up in a ball, to crawl away to some dark recess and lie there until he decomposed. There there, Fador, soothed his mother and tucked him under the thick sheep-wool blanket but the dark was all around, those tales from Uncle Grimmer still vivid and bright in his child's colourful imagination, the clockwork vampires and clockwork werebeasts creeping through the dark with talons longer than a man's forearm… prowling… ready to strike…

He blinked, and Old Terrag was on him, flying at him, arms outstretched and he jerked up his sword in sheer panic, no timing, no skill, just a flurry of scrabbling and movement and the blade flashed and Old Terrag impaled himself on the blade. Ferret heard steel bite through flesh, through bone, through muscle, sliding through Old Terrag's chest, through his heart, to exit on shards of spine.

They squatted there, together, like lovers, and Old Terrag's outstretched clawed fingers took hold of Ferret's face and their eyes met. Ferret licked his lips. The vampire was shivering on the sword, impaled, and Ferret could see the tip of his blade on the other side of the vampire's body. Old Terrag trembled, and hatred etched the drawn back skin of his face, its face. Ferret thought he was dead, then. It still had the strength to twist off his head. Like it did with Dandig. Shit.

Then Old Terrag closed his eyes, and smiled, and died.

Ferret waited for a minute, waited to see what would happen. Then he scrambled from underneath the body and put his boot on the vampire's chest, withdrawing the short sword. Its heart. He had pierced its heart!

He leant against the wall for a few moments, breathing heavily, then wiped sweat mixed with brick-dust from his brow, leaving a muddy red smear on his sleeve.

"You can cut off their heads, as well," came the gentle voice of Rose, as she emerged from the dust.

Ferret coughed, and snorted snot to the ground. "You've seen them killed?"

"A few," she said. "The eastern quarter of the city is all but overrun. All your rebels." She smiled, sadly. "All of them… changed."

"How are they changed? With magick?"

"With a bite. To the neck. Then they seem to die, and they come back to life and are quick, and strong, and hard to kill. As you saw." She glanced at the three twisted corpses of Ferret's Generals; three hardy men, grim men, men who had slaughtered albino soldiers for fun. But one vampire had killed all three. And would have killed Ferret, if not for a twist of fate. Of luck.

"Shit. We have gone to the Bone Graveyard!"

"No. We are in Jalder. You must tell your people. They will listen to you. You must tell them how to fight. How to kill…" She glanced at the corpse of Old Terrag. Already, it had gone black, crinkled as if cooked, and the stench was unbearable. "How to kill these creatures."

"I will," said Ferret. "Come with me, Rose."

"No."

"It's death out there!"

"I know." She smiled. "But I have things I must do."

His name was Vishniriak. He was a Harvester. He was a leader amongst the Harvesters. He came from under the Black Pike Mountains and was tall, wearing thin white robes embroidered with gold religious symbols and threads. His face was flat and oval, his head hairless, his nose tiny slits which hissed when he breathed. And eyes… small black eyes without emotion, but glittering with a feral intelligence.

He stood on the battlements overlooking the city of Jalder, and the wind howled, and his robes flapped and whipped, snapping viciously. He turned to his left, and stared at Kuradek the Vampire Warlord with tiny black eyes.

Hate flowed through him.

Vishniriak, and the Harvesters, hated the Vampire Warlords. But he knew they were tools. And a good workman uses the best of tools.

To the Harvesters, the Vampire Warlords were the best of tools.

"Send them," said Kuradek, his flesh swirling, flowing, and Vishniriak knew that one day there would be a reckoning, and one day they would fight; but now. Now they were allies. With a single goal.

Vishniriak looked down into the courtyard, the same place where months earlier a flood of albino soldiers, the Army of Iron, had marched down into the city of Jalder under cover of ice-smoke and slaughtered most of the population, corpses ready for the Harvest.

Now, there were nearly a hundred vampires, pickings from the hardiest men and women and children who had stood against the albino soldiers still active in the city. But not now. Not now.

It had been fascinating for Vishniriak to watch, and no matter how much he hated the vampires in principle the domino effect of their transformation had been stunning and swift. Kuradek had found three humans, infecting them, making them his primaries, his ghouls, then sent them out to find and infect others. Like a plague they swept through the eastern quarter of Jalder. Until none were left.

It had taken two nights.

Now, they would ease out into the city like a brass medical needle penetrating a succulent vein.

And they would hunt. They would convert. They would feed.

Until no humans remained.