Gring made her mind up the following morning. Not because killing young offspring was evil or wrong, because it wasn"t, but because she finally accepted what she had suspected for some time now. Harbend was broken beyond healing. The man she had grown to respect, and in some ways even like, was gone forever. Inside the sh.e.l.l that was Harbend de Garak only a splinter of humanity resided. The true man had died, probably died the moment she killed him by revealing what had happened to Nakora. She had no allegiances to the monster behind those eyes, but she owned a lifetime of repentance to the man she had murdered. A debt she"d never be able to repay, and she felt remorse as well as regret.She didn"t know what do about those feelings. They never came easy to one of her kind. She regretted that last thought, even resented it. It took a strong person to admit such faults. Human, golden or halfman probably mattered little. For all she knew even dragonlings had feelings, even though she had never walked the mind of one.
Unable to postpone the inevitable any longer she gathered her few belongings and strode away. She was as craven as the rest. Escha would have to tell Harbend she had gone as well. Oddly enough it didn"t discomfort her. Harbend was dead. She owed nothing to the demon she left behind. Karia should have known that, but he wasn"t a mindwalker, so maybe she was unfair.
It took only half a day for her to catch up with Karia and his sworn men. One mission left. They hadn"t even told Harbend, but there was one killing left to be done, and neither she, nor Karia and his men felt any regrets about that one. Someone in the royal castle had paid for the ****. That much she had gleaned from one she killed. Not for the killing but for the preceding ****. To halfmen that was a crime some held worse than killing, and they would extract a price in return.
Ri Nachi lay due south, and so they marched north-east as fast as Karia"s men were able to ride. The royal castle was far beyond what they could hope to breach, even beyond Escha"s abilities as it had been built with jump mages in mind.
North-east lay Ri Kordari, and there a tribe of humans lived. If what she had heard was correct they valued halfmen ethics higher than their own, and she might be able to convince them to join her cause before they killed her. She was from Gaz after all, and anything Cor was anathema to Gaz.
The presence of sworn men from Braka would help of course. Especially if led by a lordling like Karia. He represented the kind of heroics idolized in Ri Kordar and Gaz alike.
With that thought firmly in mind she walked on until they reached the eastern forests. A few days trekking would take them to the mountains, and from there she could only guess. She didn"t know exactly where the tribe lived, only that it was somewhere in rocky Ri Kordari.
#
Harbend spat in disgust. Betrayed, and by those he would once have called friends. Only Escha stood by his word, but Harbend wondered for how much longer. It mattered little. The two of them couldn"t finish what needed doing. For the first time in his life he would resort to asking for help from home. Without Escha that would have been a laughable idea. Home lay an entire continent to the south. It would have taken him years to get there and back again. With the help of Escha it was but a moment of the monstrous strength the khar mastered.
They waited, or rather Harbend waited. Escha slept. He was worn thin from eightdays of continuous abuse of the gift. Even Harbend was able to see how much it cost him, but he was relentless. If necessary, he would pay Escha more than he had demanded.
A trace of a protest grew in his mind. Escha was a friend, not a mercenary to be paid and discarded. Harbend killed that thought. He couldn"t afford thoughts like those. There were still people alive who needed to be killed, and he hadn"t even begun with the relatives of those responsible.