Frays In The Weave

Setting the farm on fire had been an accident. Sloppy ambush, but they were in a hurry now. Rumours spread faster than they killed, and she needed to be done with this region before those rumours grew into knowledge. The real problems would start when they began killing north of the forest. Any hope of a local killing spree would vanish then.

The smoke stung in her nose. Even halfmen would feel it, but for her it was painful. An acute sense of smell carried a backside as well.

She ran on and laughed. Mirth sounded like roars to halfmen who didn"t know humans, and she wanted them to run heedlessly into the waiting ambush. It was only suiting they should run from the last show of joy they were ever going to experience. The irony appealed to her, as did the justice.

Cattle and chicken fled from her as she charged on. From time to time she released small bursts from her glands. It was involuntarily. She could avoid it while hunting just as much as she could avoid breathing.

Ahead of her the tree line quickly grew until it dissolved into individual trunks and branches and at that time she heard the screams when her prey understood they"d run into a trap.

Metal clashed against metal and suddenly one man staggered back into the field. She fell on him from behind but he managed to turn and face her just as she clawed into him. A flicker of horror and recognition reached her from his face, then surprise as she tore his chest open.

There would be very little pain. She knew that, and his face only displayed resignation when his bowels spilled onto the ground. Then life fled him.

The man caught between the trees lasted little longer, and Karia came out in the open.

"Are we done here?" he asked. He seemed strangely subdued as he wiped his dagger clean. Something ate him from the inside.

"We are," Gring answered. "Khar Escha waits with Harbend. He"s promised to jump us close to our next prey before dusk."

Karia threw a glance behind him as the others emerged from the trees. "He"s tired, isn"t he?"

Gring nodded in the halfman way of affirmation. "He is. I could not balance such amounts of the gift. I don"t understand how he does."

They started on their way back to the horses as soon as Karia"s men reached them.

"I"ve heard rumours about Khanati," Gring said.

Karia grinned. "So have I. They say it never snows there."

"I"ve heard that as well, but I was thinking about their khars. Those not strong enough either die or are forced to become battlemages."

"I didn"t know." Karia kicked away at a small stone and swore. It was only the tip of a larger one. Nursing his foot, he fell behind. "The khars in Ira are even stronger I"ve heard," he said from behind her.

"Stronger than Khar Escha? I doubt that. A golden, and perhaps not just any golden maybe."

"Maybe so," Karia agreed. "Just heard that Ira makes more khars and stronger khars than Khanati."

Gring didn"t answer. Karia was right, to a degree.

"I wonder what it takes to be a khar?" Karia continued.

"The spark, and an education," Gring said and growled.

Karia laughed and gave her a shamefaced grin. "You would know," he said and laughed again. Then he became serous again, and they continued in silence. Only Karia"s men kept up the small chatter men are p.r.o.ne to do after a fight, even one as one sided as this had been.

Gring veered away from the burning farm. The smoke stung too much. Three dead lay inside. One of the oddities of Ri Khi. One farm for five unmarried men. Royal mercenaries paid with even more hard work.

She felt an urge to rush inside and drag their bodies out. Killing without feeding was wrong. It grated in her. She forced the want away. Karia would never understand. His kind never ate their enemies, and she had to respect him with peculiar taboos, customs and all he"d grown up with.

She looked at him. Once again he pretended this was just a mission like any other. She could smell that pretence, but she knew, and it worried her. The mindwalker in her called and warned her about the danger. Sooner or later she would have to release him from what they were doing or he would become twisted from the horrors.

The warrior in her told her to be silent and kill more. That voice had grown stronger, and she realized that Karia wasn"t the only one she needed to be worried about. No mindwalkers were warriors. Warriors relied on their external senses only. Walking the mind of a prey while killing it was walking the path to madness.

They reached the horses. Gring watched Harbend"s grim satisfaction as he watched the fire consume the farm only to be halted at the fields. Late in summer it would have spread across them. Late in summer they"d never been noticed during their approach, so maybe the farm would still be standing. She left the world of ifs, gave her warrior voice a hard mental kick and headed for the well behind the burning buildings.

She washed herself clean from blood and drank a bucket of water as well. Thankful that the well lay upwind from the smoke she started on her armour and weapons. She barely noticed how Karia"s men joined her, and they worked silently side by side.

The second boon of being upwind was that she didn"t have to feel the stench of burning flesh, and she knew it would have made her hungry rather than nauseous.

By the time they finished birds of prey circled above them and carrion eaters had already gathered at the tree line. The sun glared down on its last rise and they left the ruins behind them.

Gring didn"t mind eating among the dead, but the other, used to death as they were, still showed unease at the silent company. She allowed that insight of differences between humans and halfmen to bounce around among the others she had taken to heart since she took up company with the taleweaver that day half a year earlier. And one thought cut her short. She had promised not to think of Karia and his men as halfmen. They had deserved that she kept her promise.

Fixed in that resolve she once again let her thoughts come and go as they made their way into the forest, and not until they paused to make a hasty meal did she focus her mind on the task ahead.

More killing, but this time it wouldn"t be as easy as it had, or at least the second target would be harder to get at. They still had the advantage of surprise when they move away from the capital for the first time. When Escha jumped them away from the capital in a way few other living mages would have been able to, she corrected herself.

She thanked Karia when he handed her a strip of dried meat, and most of the bones from the pig they"d slaughtered a day earlier. She could crush the bones with her teeth and the marrow was fresh food for her. The others didn"t like it much.

The dried meat was but a trifle, but she accepted it for the gesture as well. Karia really wanted her to feel like one among them. He went to great lengths to show that in actions as well as words. If the thought hadn"t been so hilarious it almost was as if he pampered her.

The leaves wrapped around pork fat was another matter though. She gulped the package down, leaves and all. She needed a lot of energy to keep her body moving. More than the difference in weight could account for. Tapping into the gift almost continuously drained her, but she was their eyes and ears watching far beyond where mundane senses reached. She could starve herself to death without never knowing if she wasn"t careful.

The meal was over far too soon, and she made herself ready among the grim men around her.

Escha looked at each of them in turn and nodded. Then he looked north, eyes fixed in concentration and she could feel the maelstrom of power gathering as he brought swirling threads of power around them. Strange words, more shouts than speech left his mouth, and even if she knew them for the tricks of concentration they really were, there was never a doubt about how rumours about mages and their words of power were born.

Then she felt the nexus closing in and they reached a crossing point of two lines of communications between sleeping G.o.ds, and another one, and yet another one. Escha moved between the lines, forced them together and unleashed the power when he had managed to tie five of them together in a single point. The rush of power filled her and she left the world and re-emerged on it—somewhere else.