Kell's Legend

child.
    “Generals!” bellowed Leanoric, taking a deep breath and stepping forward. “To me! Captains—organise your companies, now!” Leanoric’s men quickly fell into ranks, reorganised into battle squares, as they had done so many times on the training field. Leanoric felt pride swell his chest in the freezing dawn chill, for the men of Falanor showed no fear, and moved with a practised agility and professionalism.
    Then his eyes fell to the enemy.
    The Army of Iron had halted, weapons bristling. They looked formidable, and eerily silent, pale faces hazy through distance, and through a light mist that curled across the ground.
    “They look invincible,” said Leanoric, voice quiet.
    “They die like any other bastard,” growled Kell. “I have seen this. I have done this.” He turned, and grasped Leanoric’s arm. “So you’re going to draw them back into the city? That is your strategy?”
    “If it starts to go badly, aye,” said Leanoric. He gave a crooked smile. “If they try to use blood-oil magick. I have a few surprises in store in Old Skulkra.”
    The enemy ranks across the virgin battlefield parted, and several figures drifted forward between heavily armoured troops, even as Leanoric’s captains organised battle squares before the fragmented walls of Old Skulkra. The figures were impossibly tall for men, and wore white robes embroidered in fine gold. They had flat, oval, hairless faces, small black eyes, and slits where the nose should have been. As they advanced before the Army of Iron, they stopped and surveyed Leanoric’s divisions.
    “Harvesters,” said Kell, his voice soft, eyes hard.
    And then a howling rent the air, followed by snarls and growls and the enemy ranks parted further as cankers were brought forward, devoid of protective cages, all now on leashes and many held by five, or even ten soldiers. They pulled at their leashes, twisted open faces drawn back, saliva and blood pooling around savage fangs as they snapped and growled, whined and roared, slashing at one another and squabbling as they arraigned their mighty, heavily-muscled, leonine bodies before the infantry squares in a huge, ragged, barely-controlled line.
    Leanoric paled, and swallowed. He felt a chill fear sweep his soldiers. “Angerak never spoke of thesebeasts,” he said, voice impossibly low, eyes fixed on the living nightmare cohort of the snarling, thrashing cankers…
    They heard a distant command echo over the brittle, chill plain.
    The cankers were suddenly unleashed with a jerk of chains, and with cacophonous howls of unbidden joy and bloodlust, a thousand heavily muscled beasts, of deviated flesh and perverted clockwork, charged and surged and galloped forward with snarls and rampant glee…towards the fear-filled ranks of Leanoric’s barely organised army.

FOURTEEN
Inner Sanctum
    Anu snarled, leaping at the Harvester which made an almost lazy, slow-motion gesture which nevertheless swept Anu aside with an invisible blow. She rolled fast, came up snarling, and circled the Harvester with more care. The Harvester flexed bone fingers, and lowered its head, black eyes glowing, as behind the creature, Alloria backed away, towards the crumpled figure of Vashell and some strangely perceived safety.
    More ice-smoke swirled.
    Anu attacked, and the Harvester moved fast, arms coming up as Anu’s claws slashed down. The Harvester swiped at her, but she ducked, rolled fast, and her claws cut its robe and the pale flesh within. Skin and muscle parted, but no blood emerged.
    Anu rolled free, and her eyes were gleaming, feral now, all humanity, even vachine intelligence gone as something else took over her soul and she reverted to the primitive.
    “She cut it,” whispered Vashell, his eyes wide. Never had he seen such a thing.
    The Harvester shrugged off its robe, to reveal a naked, sexless, pale white body sporting occasional clumps of thick black hairs, like a spider’s. Its legs were long and jointed the wrong way, like a goat’s, and narrow taut muscles writhed under translucent flesh.
    The Harvester moved fast, attacking Anu in loping strides, bone fingers slashing the air with a whistle. Anu rolled back, came up with her fangs hissing, then leapt again to be punched from her feet, sliding along frozen grass and almost pitching into the sluggish flow of the Silva River. Immediately she was up, charging, and rolled under swiping bone fingers, reversing her charge to leap on the Harvester’s back. It