Kell's Legend

him to kill these magick-cursed men. Allow? Kell smiled a bitter smile. Hell, she would encourage it.
    Now. Where would Nienna be? The dormitories?
    If under attack, where would she run?
    Kell, following instinct, following a call of blood, eased through long corridors and halls of the university building, past corpses and several times past soldiers intent on their search. Up to the second floor, Kell found piles of bodies, all frozen, all arranged as if awaiting…what? What the hell do they want?, wondered his confused mind.
    A scream. Above.
    Kell broke into a run, past lines of bodies laid out with arms by sides, faces serene in cold and death. His hands were tight on Ilanna, his breathing ragged and harsh, and he could sense his granddaughter close by. Up more steps, growing reckless the more he grew frantic with rising fear. Through a dormitory, beds neatly made, wooden chests unopened, and up another tight spiral staircase, taking the steps two at a time, his old legs groaning at him, muscles on fire, joints stabbing him with pain, but all this waswashed aside by a surge of adrenalin as Kell slammed into the room-
    There were four dead girls, lying on the floor, with long hair seeming to float behind pale chilled faces. Nienna and two others stood, armed with ornamental pikes they’d dragged from the walls during their flight. Before them stood three albino warriors with long white hair, all carrying short swords, their black armour a gleaming contrast to porcelain skin.
    The soldiers turned as one, as Kell burst in. With a scream he leapt at them, axe slamming left in a whirr that severed one soldier’s sword-arm and left him kneeling, stump spewing milk blood. Nienna leapt forward, thrusting her commandeered pike into an albino’s throat but he moved fast, grabbing the weapon and twisting it viciously from Nienna’s grip. She stumbled back nursing injured wrists, and watched with mouth open as the skewered albino stubbornly refused to die.
    “Magick!” she hissed.
    The albino nodded, smiling a smile which disintegrated as Kell’s axe cleaved down the centre of his skull and dropped him in an instant. The third soldier turned to flee, but Ilanna sang, smashing through his clavicle. The second strike severed his head with a savage diagonal stroke.
    The world froze in sudden impact.
    Kell, chest heaving, moved forward. “Are you hurt?”
    “Grandpa!” She fell into his arms, her friends coming up close behind, their faces drawn in fear, etchedwith terror. “It’s awful! They stormed the university, started to kill everybody with swords and…and…”
    “And magick,” whispered a young woman, with short red hair and topaz eyes. “I’m Katrina. Kat to my friends. You are Kell. I’ve read everything about you, sir, your history, your exploits…your adventures! You are a hero! The hero of Kell’s Legend!”
    “We’ve not time for this,” growled Kell. “We have to get out of the city. The soldiers are killing everyone.!”
    Katrina stooped, and hoisted one of the albino’s swords. “Normal weapons won’t kill them, right?”
    Kell nodded. “You catch on fast, girl. The soldiers are blessed—or maybe cursed—with blood-oil magick. Only a suitably blessed and holy weapon can slay them. Either that, or remove their heads.”
    “Will this kill them?”
    “There’s only one way to find out.”
    Nienna and the third young woman, Volga, armed themselves with the dead soldiers’ swords. Kell led them to the spiral stairs, moving cat-like, wary, his senses alert, his aches and pains, arthritis and lumbago all gone. He could sense the women’s fear, and that was bad; something dark flitted across his soul, something pure evil settling in Kell’s mind. He didn’t want the responsibility of these women. They were nothing to him. An inconvenience. He wanted simply to save Nienna. The other two? The other two women could…
    I can kill them, if you like.
    The thought came not so much as words, as primitive, primal images, drifting like a shroud across histhoughts. For a decade she had remained silent. But with fresh blood, fresh magick, fresh death, Ilanna had found new life…
    “No!”
    They halted, and Nienna touched his arm gingerly. “Are you well, Grandpa?”
    “Yes,” came his strangled reply; and for a moment he gazed at his bloodbond axe with unfathomable horror. The Ilanna was powerful, and evil, and yet—yet he knew without her he would not survive this day. Would not survive