Saark sighed. "Well, that depends on my reward." He winked.
Myriam tilted her head. Her eyes shone, but before she could answer Kell butted in, voice harsh. "You'll get the back of my hand if you don't, lad," he growled.
"Ahh, but I know you love me truly," smiled Saark, making Kell's scowl deepen further. Grabbing his sheathed rapier, he trotted off down the fast darkening path. "How far?" he shouted back.
"Ten minutes' walk," replied Myriam.
Saark nodded, and was gone. A ghost, vanished into the angular, bent trunks of the Iron Forest.
"Will he be all right?" said Nienna, face a mask of worry.
"The glib fool can look after himself," snorted Kell, returning to skinning the hare.
Saark trotted along, quite happy, vachine eyesight vivid in the darkness. He pondered the gift of the bite from Shanna, one of the Soul Stealers sent, not to kill him, as he had at first thought, but to bring him to Skaringa Dak for the resurrection – or summoning – of the Vampire Warlords. What had Myriam said? He'd been injected with blood-oil, which partially turned him into a vampire. Gave him many of the benefits, but without clockwork to make him truly vachine, then he would die. Saark snorted. He felt far from dead. In fact, he felt more alive than ever! Stronger, faster, tougher, with a higher tolerance to pain and an amazing rate of healing. Saark wondered what sort of match he would be for somebody like… Kell.
He grinned. No. Kell would still kick him down into the Bone Graveyard. After all, Kell was something special.
Saark stopped. He'd wandered a little off the trail, and rotated himself, eyes narrowing. There it was. In his meandering thoughts, he'd started through the twisted trunks of the Iron Forest.
"Damn."
The Iron Forest sprawled for perhaps ten or fifteen leagues, a haunted barrier between Jalder and the Black Pikes. This reputedly haunted stretch of woods was made up from ancient towering conifers, spruce and red pine, birch and blue sarl, and huge sprawls dominated by even more ancient oaks, perhaps five or six hundred years old, crooked and black as if their ancient trunks had been burned in savage forest fires. But the trees still managed to live on, in twisted blackened husks.
This woodland was the reason Jalder's walls had never spread far north. And it had also been one reason the Army of Iron, led by General Graal, had managed to covertly approach the city's northern defences without detection.
Saark shivered, suddenly looking around. It was a damned creepy place.
Even though the winter sky was still filled with witch-light, the forest was black. Long shadows and branch-filtered gloom did little to brighten the path. Saark shivered again, picking his way to the trail from which he had so foolishly strayed. He hated forests. And he especially hated forests at night. Saark was a creature of Palace Courts, of feasts and banquets, of jesters and music, laughing and dancing, long silk clothes and powdered wigs, thick white make-up, rouged lips, pungent perfume and slick eager quims. Saark's world was one of money and liquor, and endless long nights of drunken debauchery. Woods were for woodsmen. Forests were for peasants. The whole of the outdoors, in fact, the more Saark considered it, were a peasant's playground. How could one enjoy life grubbing for potatoes? Chopping wood? Slaughtering chickens? He shivered. Surely, that was a life worse than death? But here he was, ironically, stinking like a pauper and probably looking as bad as any vagrant who wandered the back-street gutters of Vor. Saark didn't dare look in a reflective pool; he was afraid of what he might see. Afraid of how far he'd fallen.
Reaching the path, Saark stopped. To his left, he heard a crack . He froze.
Horse shit, he thought. There's something there!
An animal? Or a man? He gave a little involuntary shiver, which tickled up and down his spine. He drew his rapier, and the steel shone cold in what trickles of light leaked through the forest canopy.
Saark breathed, a stream of chilled smoke.
Or… was it something worse?
A soldier. An albino soldier. Or maybe even a vachine. Maybe even a canker.
"Double horse shit," he muttered, his own unexpected utterance startling him. To his right, a clump of snow fell from slumped branches. It crunched through the woods in a subdued way, echoes bouncing back and forth from ancient gnarled trunks.
Saark swished his blade. Well, whatever it was, it'd better stay away from him! He'd gut it like a fish! Carve it like a duckling!
Saark looked left, and right. He decided wild mushrooms weren't such a culinary necessity after all, and what he really needed to do right at this moment in time was hurry back to the security and light of the campfire.
Above, snow started to fall.
Darkness finally drew a veil across the sky.
"You old bastard," he muttered, and began to pick his way back down the trail. Something moved, in the undergrowth to his right. It was something large, ponderous, and as Saark stopped, so the thing stopped.
It has to be a canker, thought Saark. His imagination flitted back, to those towering, powerful, snarling evil creatures, huge huge wounds in their flanks showing the twisted corrupted clockwork of their deviant manufacture. Kell had killed a fair few, the mighty Ilanna ripping through towering flesh and muscle and gears and cogs. But Saark? With his pretty little rapier? Against such a creature he was less than effective.
Saark began to creep. In the darkness, something stomped and changed direction, heading for the path. With a start of horror Saark realised it would cut him off. He broke into a panicked run, but ahead something huge loomed out of the darkness, stepping menacingly onto the trail, and its bulk was terrifying, its eyes demonic orbs in the gloom, a swathe of black fur running across its shadowed equine flanks, and Saark screamed, turning, slipping suddenly on iced roots and hitting the ground hard with his elbow, then his skull. Dazed for a moment, he realised he'd dropped his rapier and his right hand scrabbled blindly for the weapon as the great beast moved up the path towards him, looming over him like a terrible huge smoky demon, and Saark opened his mouth to scream as terrifying huge fangs descended for his throat…
"Eeyore," said the demon, and a long hairy muzzle dropped and nuzzled against Saark's chin, leaving a long slimy path of hot saliva across his stubble and wellgroomed moustache. Donkey breath washed over him. The donkey stepped back, and there came an unmistakable and unterrifying clop of donkey hooves.
"I… I just don't bloody believe it!"
Saark sat back on his arse, found his rapier, and with shaking fingers levered himself up from the icy trail. He stood, and stared at the donkey in the gloom.
"Eeyore," brayed the donkey.
Saark squinted. Then he rubbed his chin. Then he squinted again. He moved alongside the affable beast, and looked at the basket on its back. He rubbed his chin again. "And now I just don't bloody believe it! Mary! It's you, Mary! You came back over the mountains! It's me, Saark, your faithful owner, oh I'm so pleased to see you, so pleased you got away from those cankers and Soul Stealers, you must have come back through the Cailleach Fortress, then headed south down through the Iron Forest, following the trails until, by sheer coincidence, we were reunited! Joy!"
Saark stopped. He realised he was standing in the woods, talking to a donkey.
He rubbed her snout, and Mary nuzzled him. "Still. It's damn good to see you again, old friend." He grinned, and taking her loose dangling rope, led her on the trail back towards the adventurers' makeshift camp.
Stew was bubbling over the fire when Saark stepped triumphantly from the tunnel of trees. "Look, everyone!" he cried. "I found Mary in the woods! My faithful old donkey! She's come back to me from over the mountains! What a coincidence! It's a miracle!"