Kell's Legend

Selenau River. Occasionally vertical venting tunnels, narrow fist-wide apertures, rose up through brick and stone and promised tantalising glimpses of the outside world.
    Kat screamed, suddenly going down on one knee. Slop rose up to her chin and she spluttered, eyes closed, face twisted in disgust. “Nienna,” she wailed, but Kell surged back to her, pushing Nienna up ahead to Saark, who was muttering dark oaths, his face smeared with guts and old blood. It was even stronger than Saark’s perfume.
    “What’s wrong?” snapped Kell.
    “I twisted my ankle.”
    “Can you walk?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Walk or die,” said Kell, voice low, eyes glittering.
    Kat forced herself up, wincing, and leaning on Kell’s shoulder she limped after Nienna and Saark. She was stunned by the iron in the old man’s muscles, but equally stunned by the icy turn of his attitude.
    Would he have left me? she thought.
    The Hero of Jangir Field?
    The Black Axeman of Drennach?
    She ground her teeth, thinking of her life, of the bitterness, of the failures, of the people who had left, and more importantly, the people who had returned. Of course he would leave her, she thought, and a particular lode of bitterness ran through her heart. That’s why he came back, instead of letting Nienna help her friend. If she’d broken her ankle, slowed them down, made excessive noise…she looked up at his grey beard, the wide, stocky set of his shoulders, the huge bearskin which made him seem more animal than human. Well, she thought. She was pretty sure his long knife would have slid through her ribs, ending the problem, negating the threat.
    She shivered, as a chill breeze caressed her soul.
    And for the first time she looked at Kell not as an old man; but as a killer.
    Saark had stopped, hand held out towards the others. He turned, eyes meeting Kell’s. “It’s the river,” he said.
    Kell nodded, pushing to the front. The noise of fast flowing water invaded the tunnel egress, and he watched the circle of light, drifting with ice-smoke, for quite some time. He edged forward, took a good grip on his axe, and peered outside.
    Slop and effluence dropped down through a series of concrete channels, and fell under a timber platform and into the Selenau River. Here, the river took a tight turn, narrowing between two rock walls and raging over several clumps of stone, white and frothing, and charging off through the city. The timber platform was based on rock, then edged out on stilts over the river, the wood dark and oil-slick with preservative. Severaldrums and barrels stood at one end, and a small, calm off-shoot of concrete-hemmed water housed five small boats on a simulated canal.
    Saark was beside him. “We take a boat?”
    “Seems like a good idea, lad.”
    “Let’s do it.”
    “Wait.” Kell placed a hand on Saark’s chest. “That…thing, a Harvester it’s called; it was keen to suck our blood, yes?”
    Saark nodded.
    “Chances are, it’s out there. We need to move fast, Saark. No mistakes. Be ready with that pretty little sword.”
    Again, Saark nodded, and the group waded out into grey light, the sky filled with wisps and curls of ice-smoke, thinner now, but still reducing visibility over a hundred yard range. Kell was scanning left and right as they scrambled down icy concrete ramps, past where the sludge from the tannery pipes fell. Then his boots hit the wooden platform with a thud, and he stood, a huge bear, arms high, axe held before his chest as his gaze swept the world.
    Nienna and Kat slid down the concrete ramps on their bottoms, followed by Saark, his poise perfect, fine clothing ruined by dyes and shit. His sword was in his fist, and his eyes were narrowed, focused, searching…
    Kell moved to a boat, and hacked through the knot with his axe blade. Taking the rope in one fist, he ushered the girls and Saark, who had turned, towards the end of the timber platform lost in mist—from which drifted the Harvester, eyes glowing, five bony fingers pointing towards the group.
    “Get in,” growled Kell.
    Saark took the girls, and they leapt into the boat, cracking ice around the vessel in the still-water channel. The currents tugged, and Saark leaned forward, grasping the platform. “Get in, Kell,” he snapped. But Kell had turned, and rolled his mighty shoulders as the Harvester accelerated, frame bobbing as it moved fast towards him, a high-pitched keening coming from its flat, oval nostrils. Kell sprinted, and