and meeting Graal’s gaze. “How is it, lad, that you have the face and skin and hair of these albino bastards around you…and yet your eyes are blue?” Kell scratched at his whiskers. “I see you have the fangs of the vachine, and yet the vachine are tall, most dark haired, not like these effeminate soldiers behind you. What are you, Graal? Some kind of half-breed?”
“On the contrary,” said Graal, taking another step closer. His eyes had gone hard, the mocking humour dropped from his face, and Saark realised Kell had touched some deep nerve with his words. “I am pureblood,” said Graal. “I am Engineer. I am Watchmaker. But more than this-” He leapt, arms smashing down, but Kell moved fast and blocked the blow, taking a step back. “I am one of the first vachine; the three from which all others stem.”
Kell grinned. “I thought I could smell something rotten.”
Graal snarled, and lashed out again, but Kell ducked the blow, moving inhumanly fast, and delivered a right hook that shook Graal. The general whirled, rolling with the blow, taking Kell’s arm and slamming him over to smash the ground. Kell rolled, as Graal’s boots hit the frozen earth where his face had been. Kell rose into a crouch and launched himself, grappling Graal around the waist and powering him to the soil. Atop Graal, Kell slammed his fists down with power, speed, accuracy, three blows, four five six seven, his knuckles lacerated and bleeding and Graal twisted, suddenly, throwing Kell to the ground where he grunted, and came up. They leapt at one another with a crunch, and suddenly locked, heaving, a match for one another in strength, heads clashing, and Saark who had been eyeing the five albino soldiers uneasily saw long fangs eject from Graal’s mouth and screamed, “Kell, his teeth!” and Kell twisted, following Graal’s head with a mighty blow that sent Graal reeling to the ground. Kell stood, chest heaving, blood on his face and his fists.
Graal climbed to his feet and stood, and smiled through his blood. “Your strength is prodigious,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Too prodigious. Nothing human can stand before me; and yet you have done so.”
“I’ve had lots of practise,” said Kell, fists clenching, head lowering. “Once, I worked in the Black Pike Mountains. I was part of a squad sent there by King Searlan to hunt down the vachine; to kill your kind. We did well. We were there for four years…four long, bitter, hard years…it was hard learning, Graal, but we learnt well. I think, even now, I am referred to as Legend by your perverse kind.”
“You!” snarled Graal, eyes widening. “The Vachine Hunter! It cannot be! He was slaughtered in the Fires of Karrakesh!”
“It is I,” said Kell, “and that is why you could never speak with my bloodbond axe, my Ilanna…for she is anathema to your kind; she is poison to your blood: she is the sworn vachine nemesis.”
There came a snarl, high-pitched and terrible, and something cannoned from the darkness, hitting Graal in a flurry of slashing claws and frothing fangs. It was big, a cross between human and lion, obviously a canker and yet twisted strangely, different from the other cankers under Graal’s command. The head was long and narrow, and wrapped around with hundreds of strands of fine golden wire so that only glimpses of eyes and nose and mouth could be seen. Slashes covered the tufted, half-furred muscular body, but again muscles, biceps and thighs and abdomen were all wound about with tight golden wire, and sections of clockwork could be seen outside the flesh, half embedded, clicking and whirring furiously, as if this body, this canker, was having some kind of furious internal battle with the very machinery which now, undoubtedly, kept it alive…
They fought in the gloom of the usurped camp, Graal and this twisted canker nightmare, a flurry of insane blows, writhing and wrestling and twisting in the mud, thumps echoing out, claws and teeth slashing. Graal had exposed his full vachine toolset; was biting and rending, face lost in a mask of raw primal savagery that had nothing to do with the human. They spun and punched and slashed in the mud, both opening huge wounds down the other’s flanks, sparks flying from crumpled clockwork, grunting and growling and the canker’s fist punched Graal’s face, slamming his head back into the mud and the canker glanced up, eyes masked by the wires circling its head but they fixed,