Kell's Legend

towering stone walls surrounding him. It was cold. His breath streamed. Icicles mixed with the old blood of battle frozen in his beard.
    “Get up behind me,” said Saark, reaching forward to take Kell’s arm. But his own horse reared at that moment, and he somersaulted backwards from the creature, landing in a crouch, rapier drawn, face white with pain. The horse bolted, was gone in seconds between the towering walls of ancient stone.
    “Neat trick,” growled Kell, rubbing at his own bruised elbow and shoulder.
    “I’ll show you sometime,” Saark grimaced.
    The sounds of pursuing cankers grew louder.
    “This is bad,” said Saark, battered face full of fear, eyes haunted.
    “We need somewhere to defend. A stairwell, somewhere narrow.” Kell pointed with Ilanna. “There. That tower block.”
    The edifice was huge, the walls jigged and displaced, full of cracks and mis-aligned stones. A cold wind howled through the block, bringing with it a sour, sulphuric stench.
    “I’m not going in there,” said Saark.
    “Well die out here, then,” snapped Kell and started forward.
    The cankers rounded a corner. There were a hundred of them, snarling, slashing at one another with claws, and they came in a horde down the narrow street, pushing and jostling, fighting to be first to feed on fresh, sweet meat. Kell ran for the tower, beneath an empty doorway and through a sweeping entrance hall littered with debris, old fires, stones and twisted sections of iron rusted out of shape and purpose; he stopped, looking hurriedly about. “There,” he snapped. Saark was close behind him. Too close.
    “We’re going to die,” said Saark, ever the voice of doom.
    “Shut up, laddie, or I’ll kill you myself.”
    They ran, skidding to a halt by a narrow sweep of steps. Kell looked up, and could see the sky far far above, perhaps twenty storeys, straight up. The tower block had no roof, and snow-clouds swirled. The steps spiralled up, wide enough for two men, and with a shaky, flaked, mostly rotted iron handrail the only barrier between the steps and a long fall to hard impact. Kell started up, thankful the stairwell was built from stone. Saark followed. They powered up in grim silence, followed by cackles and growls. It was only when Kell ventured too close to the edge that therecame a crack, and stones tumbled away taking a quarter section of the staircase with it. Kell leapt back, almost sucked away in the sudden fall.
    Saark stared at Kell, sweat on his swollen face, but said nothing.
    “Keep to the wall,” advised Kell.
    “I’d already worked that one out, old horse.”
    Below, the cankers found the stairwell. They started up, jostling and snarling. Saark glanced down, but Kell powered ahead, face grim, beard frozen with ice-blood, eyes dark, mind working furiously.
    The cankers ascended fast, claws scrabbling on icy steps. Panting and drenched with sweat, the two men reached a landing halfway up—ten storeys in height, halfway to the tower block’s summit—before the first canker appeared, a huge shaggy beast with tufts of reddish fur and green eyes. Kell’s axe clove into its head and Saark’s rapier sliced into its belly, and the beast fell back, spitting lumps of clockwork and spewing blood. The two men ran across the landing and onto the next set of steps, as a crowd of cankers surged onto the narrow platform and Kell screamed, ‘Run!’ to Saark, and stopped on the steps, turning with his axe, the snarling heaving mass only a few feet away as cracks and booms filled the tower. Kell lifted his axe, and struck at the landing, again and again, and the whole floor was shaking under the weight of the cankers and the impact from the axe, and they were there, in his face, fetid breath in his throat as a huge crack echoed through the tower block and the landing fell away, with a whole storey section of steps, fell and tumbled away carryingtwenty cankers scrabbling and clawing down the centre of the spiralling stairwell and leaving Kell teetering on the edge of oblivion. He swayed for a moment, and something grabbed him, pulled him back and he fell to his arse, turned, and grinned at Saark.
    “Thanks, lad.”
    “No problem, Kell. Shall we ascend?”
    “After you.”
    They started up, hearing growls and snarls fall away behind as two cankers attempted to leap the chasm, and bounced from walls, dropping away clawing and snarling to be lost in dust and ice and debris. There were booms as they impacted with the