Kell's Legend

brass and copper at her throat and quite suddenly…
    She died.
    Kat slumped, hung there, limp and bloodied, a pinned ragdoll, her legs twisted at odd angles.
    “No!” screamed Nienna, dragging free her own sword in a clumsy, obstructed action. “No!” She charged.

THIRTEEN
Insanity Engine
    General Graal, Engineer and Watchmaker of the vachine, stood on the hilltop and surveyed the two divisions below him, each comprising 4800 albino soldiers, mainly infantry; they glittered like dark insects in the moonlight, nearly ten thousand armoured men, one half of the Army of Iron, standing silent and disciplined in ranks awaiting his command. The second half of his army were north, pitched to the southwest of Jalder, different battalions guarding northern passes and other routes leading through the Black Pike Mountains; in effect, guarding the route back to the Silva Valley, home of the vachine. Graal did not want the enemy, despite their apparent ignorance, mounting a counter-attack on his homeland whilst he invaded. But…was Graal making a mistake, taking only half his army south? He smiled, knowing in his heart it was not arrogance that fuelled his decision, but a trust in technology. With the Harvesters, and the power of blood-oil magick, the Army of Iron were…invincible! Even against a foe of far greater numbers; and Falanor barely had that.
    Invincible!
    And he also had his cankers.
    A noise echoed across the valley, and Graal turned, and with acute eyesight aided by clockwork picked out the many canker cages used for more volatile beasts. The less insane were tied up like horses; seemingly docile for the moment. Until they smelt blood. Until they felt the thrill of the kill. Graal watched, licking thin lips, eyes fixing on the huge, stocky beasts which he knew linked so very closely to the vachine soul…
    Occasionally, claws would eject and slash at the belly of another canker with snarls and hisses; but other than this, they could be safely tethered. Graal was in possession of just over a thousand cankers; the rejects of vachine society. But more were coming. Many more. Graal went cold inside, as he considered their tenuous position with the Blood Refineries. He thought of Kradek-ka, and his heart went colder still, the gears in his heart stepping up, cogs whirring as he grimaced and in a moment of rare anger bared his teeth and swept his gaze over the land before him. Moonlight glittered on armour. Beyond, lay Vorgeth Forest, and angling down he would march on Vor.
    Mine! he snarled, an internal diatribe of hate. These people would suffer, they would fall, and his army would feed!
    Graal calmed himself, for it was not seemly to show temper—an effective loss of control. And especially not before the inferior albino clans from under the mountain. No. Graal took a deep breath. No. A Watchmaker should have charm, and stability, cold logic andcontrol. They were the superior race. Superior by birth, genetics and ultimately, superior by clockwork.
    Frangeth was a platoon lieutenant, and with sword drawn he led his twenty men through the trees under moonlight. An entire battalion had divided, spread out, and from different points north were advancing as scouting parties, ahead of the great General Graal himself. Frangeth was proud to be a part of this operation, and would happily give his life. For too long he had felt the hate of the southerners, their irrational ill-educated fear, and how their culture and art depicted his albino race as monsters, little more than insect workers worthy of nothing more than a swift execution. He had read many Falanor texts, with titles like Northern Ethics, On Execution, and the hate-fuelled Black Pike Diaries about a group of hardcore mercenaries who had travelled the aforementioned mountains, searching out “rogue albino scum” and slaughtering them without mercy.
    Frangeth had been part of an elite squad under the command of the legendary Darius Deall, and they had infiltrated Falanor—a decade gone, now—to the far western city of Gollothrim. There, under cover of darkness, they had found the remains of the mercenary squad, and in particular, the authors of the Black Pike Diaries. Drunk, and rutting in whorehouses on the proceeds of their hateful tome, the five men had been captured, harshly beaten, and driven by ox-cart to the outskirts of Vorgeth Forest where lawlessness was a given. Here, in an abandoned barn previously scouted, old, deserted, with cracked timbers and