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.