Kell and Saark paused. Blood dribbled from the edge of Saark's mouth, and one of his brass vachine fangs had snapped. Kell had a blackened eye and blood coming from his nose. He looked superbly pissed off.
Kell gave a sudden laugh, a bark, and lowered his fists. "Whatever you say, granddaughter. I think I gave this popinjay a pasting."
"You think so, old man?" scowled Saark. "I've had grandmothers give me harder blow jobs."
Kell lifted his fists again.
"STOP!" screamed Nienna. "What is wrong with you? Saark, you idiot, stop provoking him! And Kell, what's your problem? One sniff of whiskey and you turn into an uncontrollable beast."
That stopped Kell in his tracks, and he rubbed his beard, and lowered his head, a little in shame, a little in guilt. "Yes," he mumbled, and then looked up again. "Give me the axe."
"Why?"
"Because she is mine."
Nienna chewed her lip. She nearly spoke. Nearly said it – that Ilanna had talked to her. But part of her thought it was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by stress, or lack of sleep; part of her thought that maybe she was a little crazy.
Nienna stepped forward, and Kell took the huge weapon. He stared at it thoughtfully, then over at Saark. Saark slowly lowered his fists, paling. Kell wasn't called a vachine hunter for nothing.
"Now wait a minute, Big Man," he said.
"Ach, calm yourself, dickhead. If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead." He gestured with Ilanna, pointing towards Saark's chest with the blade tips. His voice lowered to a bestial rumble. "But I promise you this, lad. If you lay another finger on Nienna, I'll cut your dirty vachine head from your fucking vachine neck. Understand?"
"I understand."
"And this time, it's a fucking promise, lad."
"Acknowledged."
Kell lowered the weapon, strode to Saark, and threw his arm around the man's shoulders. "But by all the gods, you've got bloody handier with those clockwork fists, so you have! I haven't had a black eye in thirty years!"
"Wonderful," said Saark, mouth dry.
"This calls for a drink! Nienna, bring out the flagons."
"Over my dead body," said Nienna, scowling.
Kell shrugged. "Was only a suggestion, was all. Let's have some soup, then – and talk about happier times gone by!"
"I remember my father hanging himself," said Saark, voice cold, testing his broken brass fang with his thumb and wincing.
"You always know how to put a pisser on it, don't you lad?" He slapped him, hard. "Come on. I'll tell you about when I lost my first bout of single combat."
"You lost in single combat?" said Saark, raising his eyebrows.
"No lad, of course I didn't. I'm just trying to cheer you up."
"It's big," said Saark, lying on his belly and staring down into the valley. "No. I'll rephrase that. It's a monster."
The Black Pike Mines.
Originally built by King Searlan to house the worst and most violent criminals in Falanor, it also became a repository for the Blacklipper smugglers – who, by definition, had probably caused murder in order to get their casks of Karakan Red.
There was a gap in the mountains, and the Black Pike Mines had been built into the gap, the front wall merging seamlessly with near-vertical walls of jagged mountain rock. However, to simply call it a mine or a prison was misleading; this was a fortress. The staggered front walls were a sort of keep, and the prison stepped back into the V of an inaccessible, impregnable mountain valley. There was no back door, and only sheer smooth black granite walls for those who wanted to get in – or out. It would take an army to enter the prison mine, and that was the idea. When King Searlan built a prison, he intended his criminals to stay put.
Behind the defendable battlement walls were rows of cells carved into the mountain itself, fitted with black iron bars. Further back, where Saark and Nienna could not spy, Kell informed them, was the Hole. The Hole, or the mine itself, was the place where so many thousands of criminals had been worked to death in the name of rehabilitation.
"It looks like a prison," said Saark.
"It is."
"I know. I'm just saying."
"Searlan wanted his bastards to stay put. That's what they called themselves, back in the bad old days. Searlan's Bastards."
"I expect you put a few good men away there as well, did you?"
"No."
"No?"
"No good men. Only scum."
"How many?"
"What does it matter?" Kell's eyes gleamed. More snow was falling, and the gloom made him look eerie; a giant amongst men, bear-like, with his looming, threatening mass, his bearskin, his huge paws. It was easy to forget he was over sixty years old.
"I'm just contemplating, right, what happens if we get inside that place and a few of the old prisoners recognise you? You understand? Old fuckers carrying some twenty year pent-up grudge. After all, I've known you but a few sparse months, and I already want you dead."
"Thanks very much."
"I'm just being honest."
"Listen, Saark. I must have put over a hundred men in there. And if they cross me again, they'll have a short sharp conversation with Ilanna. You understand?"
"You can't kill a hundred men, Kell. Be reasonable."
"Fucking watch me," he growled. "Come on. Get your shit. I know the Governor, a man called Myrtax. He's a good man, a fair man. As long as he kept those gates shut, even the Army of Iron would have struggled to breach the defences; and I doubt very much this pipe in the arsehole of Hell was high on Graal's invasion agenda."
They moved down a narrow track which led to a wide open, bleak killing field. As they moved across barren rock and snow, Kell pointed to four high towers.
"Each tower can take fifty archers. That's two hundred arrow men raining down sudden death. And out here," he opened his arms wide, "there's nowhere to hide."
"You fill me with a happy confidence," said Saark, voice dry.
"I try, lad. I try."
They moved warily across the killing ground, heads lifted, eyes watching the towers for signs of archers, or indeed, any military activity. But they were bare. Silent. The whole place reeked of desertion.
They drew closer. A cold wind blew, whipping snow viciously and slapping it into exposed faces. Nienna gasped frequently, her breath snapped away, an ice shock sending shivers down her spine.
Eventually, they were in shouting distance and Kell halted, Ilanna thunking to the snow, Kell stroking his beard as he surveyed the formidable wall and massive gates before him.
"IS ANYBODY THERE?" he rumbled, deep voice rolling out across the bleak prison fortress. Echoes sang back at him from the walls, from the vertical mountain flanks, from the slick, ice-rimed rocks. The wind howled, an eerie, high-pitched ululation.
Silence followed. A long, haunting silence.
"There's nobody here, Kell."
"I don't understand. Why would Myrtax give up his castle? He was a brave man. Loyal to the King."
"The King is dead," said Saark, weary now, sighing.
"Hmm."
There came a crack, and a head appeared over the icy crenellations. "By all the gods, Kell, is that you?"
"Governor Myrtax?"
"It's been a long time. Wait there, I'll come down and open the gate."
"Where are the prisoners?" frowned Kell, hand on his axe.
"Gone, Kell. All gone. Wait there. I'll be but a few moments; I have warm stew, a fire, and hot blankets inside. You must have travelled far."
Kell nodded, and rubbed once more at his frosted beard.
"Wonderful!" beamed Saark. "A little bit of civilisation, at last! I'd wager he has some fine ale in there as well, and all we need to make the evening complete is a couple of buxom happy daughters, and…"
"Saark!" snapped Nienna.