"Finished your game?" he growled.
"No game," said Myriam.
"I wondered if you'd try."
"Maybe I'm not that foolish," she said, and winced as the grip tightened, forcing her to drop the blade – which Kell took from her, neatly, and sheathed it with a whisper of oiled steel on leather.
"Maybe you are," he said, sitting up and releasing her. She rubbed her pale flesh, glancing at the angry-red welts where his fingers had crushed her.
"You're still strong, for an old man."
"Better believe it," he grunted, and stood. He kicked Saark, who opened an eye to observe Kell like a lizard from a hot rock.
"Come on, dandy," he growled. "We're moving out."
"You could have just told me."
"I find a boot up the arse infinitely more persuasive."
"I was having such sweet dreams, of a buxom young tavern wench I once entertained. She could do amazing things with fresh cream and cracked eggs. You should have seen the foam!"
Kell stared at him. "So then, even your new vachine blood has done nothing to kill your wayward libido?"
"If anything, Kell, it has made me more rampant!" Saark stood, and smiled, and stretched himself, muscles aching from an uncomfortable, cramping sleep. But at least he could stand. At least he could stretch. "Now, my old and bedraggled friend, I can do it all night." He touched his chest, tenderly, remembering the savage wound and his near-death experience. He cast it from his mind. It no longer mattered; he was not dead. He was alive. And he was going to drink deep from the cup of hedonistic fulfilment.
"Yes." Kell coughed. "Well. Be careful where you stick it. You've gotten in enough bloody trouble already."
"Like I always prophesied," announced Saark, brightly, "you are the miserable, moaning voice of doom! You should learn to lighten up, Kell. Look at me, heroically skipping along the jaws of death and you don't hear me whining like a little girl with a broke skipping rope. But you, Kell, Kell the mighty Legend, after all we've been through and lived and endured, still you're bleating like a lamb on a cliff ledge without its mama. It's like adventuring with my fucking grandma. What next? A stick? Incontinence trews? Senility? Oh, but you're already holding hands with that old goat." He winked.
Kell snorted, and scowled, but did not reply. Saark was right, but Kell could not help but have dark thoughts. It was simply the way he was built. With age came great wisdom. It also came with a great amount of moaning. Kell snorted again, and cursed the day he'd met the dandy.
Nienna moved to Saark, and touched his breast lightly. "How do you feel? How's the wound now?"
"Healing," said Saark, and pressed his own hand to the chest-wound. "Myriam's drugs helped me sleep." His eyes moved to the now-beautiful vachine, with her long dark curls and flashing, dangerous eyes. She stepped out into the tunnel, surveying the route ahead. Her hips were wide, legs powerful, waist narrow, breasts full beneath a tight leather jerkin. Saark licked his lips. "I had very sweet dreams," he said, finger lifting to touch his tongue, and then dropping to touch his chest unconsciously.
Nienna saw the look and gesture, and said nothing, but frowned, and turned away. Back to Kell. "Do you trust Myriam?" Her voice was quiet, and she watched Saark move down the tunnel towards the newly changed vachine. She felt a sudden bitterness then, for they had a connection now; a bonding. They were both newly changed, both a different breed to the human. Myriam and Saark were vachine. Whereas she, Nienna, was human. Human, and young, and weak. Too young for Saark. Her eyes narrowed again. For a fleeting moment she wished Shanna and Tashmaniok, the Soul Stealers, had bitten her, changed her into vachine. Shared their blood-oil. Shared their clockwork. Infected her with their disease. Then Saark would have shared with her. He would have looked at her in a different light. Nienna's eyes gleamed.
Kell rubbed his neck, and rolled his shoulders, then his hips, groaning as he worked at the stiffness which came after sleep. "I trust her as much as I've always trusted the conniving bitch. Which is to say, not at all. But what option do we have? She says she can guide us from this place. If she lies, well then, I'll cut her head from her vachine shoulders and we'll make our own way out."
"That would be… interesting," said Nienna.
"So you want her dead, now?"
"Not dead. Just out of the picture." Nienna crossed to Saark, and touched his arm. He turned to her, lightly, a laugh on his handsome face. The gaunt look of the near-dead was fading. His accelerated vachine healing was kicking in fast. He no longer looked like a walking corpse; health and strength had returned. He took Nienna's hand, but was still talking to Myriam.
Kell watched all this, and growled a low growl as realisation struck him. There was something there, between Nienna and Saark. Or at least, there was something there from Nienna. Previously, Kell had always focused on the dandy and his machinations towards Kat, Nienna's older friend, for that had been the obvious flirtation. It had taken his eye from the more subtle approaches of his granddaughter.
"Horse shit," said Kell, and spat on the tunnel floor. "Come on!" His voice was loud and brash. "Let's get moving. You sure it's this way, Myriam, my sweet little angel?"
Myriam gave him a strange look. Her lips curled into half-smile, half-grimace. There was a question in her eyes but Kell stared back, a hard look, a dark look. The same look Dake the Axeman got shortly before his head was cut from his mighty, heroic shoulders.
Myriam shrugged. "Yes. Two days, by my reckoning. Although I'm not sure what we'll do when we get there, the river is too fast to swim, although there are some albino storerooms nearby. Let's hope they're not full of soldiers, hey?"
"Makes no odds to me," grunted Kell. "One way or another, we'll be passing through." He lifted Ilanna, and his meaning was obvious. Myriam did not miss the inherent threat.
"Let's move, then," she said.
When they stopped for the night, it was warmer, and Myriam found some shards of crate for a fire. "It'll be smelt for miles around," muttered Kell unhelpfully, but did not stop her lighting it. They all needed heat. More. They needed the light and morale-boost of a good fire. There was something about the tunnels which invaded a person, chewed its way down into a person's internals… and sucked out their life and guts and soul. The tunnels, indeed, Skaringa Dak itself, was a huge tomb. Being inside the mountain was like being buried alive. Being inside the mountain was like being dead and buried.
Nienna found herself a quiet corner, and using a thin blanket given to her by Myriam, tried as best she could to make herself comfortable. Saark approached and knelt beside her, offering her a cup of water. "Myriam found it, down yonder. A pool which doesn't taste of sulphur and shit. It's fresh. Try it!"
"Such small pleasures in life," said Nienna, "that we are reduced to this. Thankful and rejoicing for a simple taste of fresh water."
"Yes, hardly beats the honeyed wine and whorehouses of Vor!" grinned Saark, then looked immediately contrite. He glanced at Kell. "Sorry," he said. "I was forgetting your youth. And my big mouth."
Nienna touched his arm. "I'm not as young as you think," she said.
Saark's eyes glittered. They were dark and entrancing, and Nienna gazed into their rich depths. "Too young, my sweetness, I think," he said with an easy, disarming, friendly smile. And under his breath, "Far too dangerous."