"How long will you be?" said Saark, in what bordered on a useless puppy whine.
"A week, I reckon," said Kell, and glanced back. "Don't let me down on this, Saark. You understand?"
"Yes, Kell."
"And Saark?"
"Yeah?"
"Watch out for Sara. She's a wily bitch. I think she communes with Kuradek, so I'd limit what she can see, hear and do. She can spy bloody everything from that cell you put her in."
"Perhaps you'd like me to put a bag over her head?"
"A brilliant idea! Just don't get too close to her claws."
"Yes," said Saark, weakly.
"And Saark?"
"Go on." He sighed. "What now?"
"Don't touch Nienna."
"Like I would dream!"
"I know all about your fucking dreams, lad. If you do it again, the next fight we have, vampire invasion or no, you'll be wearing your feet as souvenirs round your pretty slit throat."
"Any other advice?"
"Keep the men well fed, but work them hard."
Saark put his hands on his hips. "Any more fucking advice? Why the fuck are you leaving? Maybe you should write me a, y'know, short manuscript on the art of running a fucking soldier-camp full of scumbag convicts – no offence meant -"
"None taken," smiled Grak menacingly.
"- or maybe you should just do it yourself!"
"See you in a week."
Saark scowled as Kell and Jagor moved to the horses, the finest war chargers from Governor Myrtax's stables. Huge beasts of nineteen hands, one was a sable brown gelding, the other charcoal black. Kell mounted the black beast, which reared for a moment and silhouetted Kell against the weak winter sun.
Saark stared in wonder.
Kell calmed the gelding, patting its neck and whispering into its ear, and ducking low over the horse's neck, galloped off through the gates of the Black Pike Mines and out onto the snowy fields beyond, closely followed by the hulking figure of Jagor Mad dressed in bulky furs and standing in his stirrups, giving a final, menacing, backward glance.
"I hope he knows what he's doing," said Saark.
"I hope you do," said Grak, staring at him.
The gates closed on well-oiled hinges, and Saark glared at Grak with open hatred. "I'm going for a bath," he said.
Grak nodded, and watched the peacock strut away, hand on scabbard, a stray sausage stuck to the back of his silk leggings. Grak sighed, and stared up at the sky.
"The gods do like to challenge," he said, and headed for the barracks.
Kell and Jagor rode in silence for a long time. West they travelled, along a low line of foothills before the rearing, dark, ominous Black Pike Mountains. Both horses carried generous packs of provisions, and for a while Kell brooded on his last conversation with Nienna.
"I'll miss you, grandfather."
"And I you, little Nienna."
"I am little no longer," she laughed.
"You will always be a child to me."
He sensed, more than saw, her shift in mood.
"That's the problem, isn't it? You control. I heard what mother said, heard some of the things she accused you of; and I have seen you raise your hand to me on several occasions! You need to learn, grandfather, you need to get in tune with the modern way of thinking! I am a little girl no longer! Understand?"
"When I was a boy," said Kell, "a woman could not… meet with a man until she was twenty-five summers! You hear that? Twenty-five years old! And you are seventeen, a suckling child barely weaned from her mother's tit and still lusting after the stink of hot milk."
"How dare you! I can have children! I can drink whiskey! I am a woman, and men find me attractive. Who the hell are you to lecture me on keeping myself to myself? I worked it out, Kell. I'm not stupid. You were twenty when you sired my mother; and she was eighteen. Barely older than me! And I bet that wasn't the first time your child-maker had a bit of fun with her…"
Kell glared, and lifted Ilanna threateningly. "You need to learn to hold your tongue."
"Or what? You'll cut it out?"
Kell frowned now, as a cold wind full of snow whipped down from the mountains and blasted him with more ferocity than his memories allowed for. Or had he simply been tougher, during his youth? As the years passed, had he simply grown weak? More pampered? Relying more on his reputation than any real skill in battle?
Kell was troubled by Nienna, but aware that events were overtaking him fast. He knew Saark would destroy any training he hoped to give his fledgling army. And anyway – an army of bloody convicts? Kell would laugh so hard he would puke, if he could summon the stamina.
And just to make his life more miserable, filled with hardship, filled with pain, the poison injected into him by Myriam was starting to make its presence felt once more. It was a tingling in his bones. Especially the joints of his ankles, knees, elbows and wrists. "Damn that vachine bitch," he muttered.
"Are you well, old man? You look fit and ready to topple from the bloody saddle!" Jagor was grinning, but there was menace behind that grin. A low-level hatred.
"I'll last longer than you," grunted Kell, staring sideways at Jagor. "And don't be getting any fancy ideas. I ain't as fucking weak, nor as old, as you think."
Jagor held up both hands, as his horse picked its way through snowy tufts of grass. "Hey, I'm not complaining, Kell. Thing is, I wanted you dead so much – so bad. So bad it burned me like a horse-brand. Tasted like sour acid in my mouth. But when I was hanging by the throat, all I could see were bright lights and hear the voice of my little girl singing in the meadow. I knew I was going to die. I knew I would never see her again. And that hurt, Kell. Hurt more than any fucking noose. But then you cut me down, and saved me. And although that burned me in a different way, I have to concede you spared me. You kept me alive. And one day, if we're not massacred in the Valleys of the Moon, I might get to see that little girl again."
"I didn't know you had a little girl."
"Why would you?"
"I thought it might have come out at the trial."
Jagor Mad laughed. "I told them bastards nothing, you hear? Nothing. If they'd found out, they would have arrested Eilsha. The Bone Halls only know where my little one would have ended up. At least I spared them the pain of imprisonment."
Kell considered this, turning his head to the left as more snow whipped him, making him smart, and his eyes water. "I am confused, Jagor. You were part of a syndicate that used to kidnap children, and sell them into slavery? Yes? How could you do that, when you have your own little one?"
Jagor's face went hard. "We had to eat," he said, scowling.
"Would you have liked it, if another slaver took your girl?"
"That's different. I would have cut out his liver."
"And so now, you have the right to hang on to yours?"
"I didn't say what I did was right, Kell, and believe me as I lay in my cell night after night, week after week, year after bloody year, I cursed you for catching me, yes, but I cursed myself for my poor decisions in life. Once, I believe I was immoral. Above all those weak and petty emotions. Now, I have changed. At least a little." He gave a grim smile.
"I don't believe men change," said Kell, bitterly.
"So you're the same as during the Days of Blood?" Kell's head snapped up, eyes blazing. "Oh yes, Kell, I have heard of your slaughter. You are legend amongst the Blacklippers – for all the wrong reasons."
Kell sighed, his anger leaving him as fast as it came. "You are right. And by my own logic, I am still a bloodthirsty, murdering savage. Maybe I am. I don't know. You can be the judge of that when we head into battle; for believe me when I say we have many a fight to come."
The night was drawing close, and they made a rough camp in the lee of a huge collection of boulders at the foot of the Black Pikes. Kell stretched a tarpaulin over them as a makeshift roof, which was fortunate as thick snow fell in the night.