The small depression reeked of death and magic. Tagrun had never known magic had a smell to it, until he had found his hunting partner. At the bottom, the body lay spread out and carved up, head to the south, arms aimed at the rising and setting points of the sun and moons. Hathrad's entrails were in a circle around him counter to the sun's movements, running west to east as they passed his head. The man's eyes had been gouged out and set on his feet, the brains removed some way to lay between his friend's thighs. The liver was cut in half, stuffed into his ruined mouth, and his tongue was on a staff stuck through the splayed open torso. From that staff also dangled other organs, from within and without his body.
The smell was horrid, even the shaman who studied the mess now from the rim, an old man who had seen everything, Tagrun had thought, was fighting down his stomach. The body and rot were normal smells to one of the Grasslands, but the magic smell was not. Tagrun could not figure it out, it was like the smell of a close lightning strike, but layered with a thick scent that was dusty and fouler than the smell of decay. It burned the nose and throat, and left one feeling like they were dying themselves.
The sun was still only two hands above the ridge of hills to the east, and glinted off the beads of the young hunter's clothing and traces of tears on his face as he looked to the sun, begging that the heart be found soon. His father had taken the trail of the killer down the sloping prairies, to the wide and slow moving Aqi Kensorthi shining in the distance.
The river was the natural escape route, but something told Tagrun this destroyer of men was not normal, or one to follow the instincts one expected in a human. This killer was more like the tusk cats when the foaming disease claimed them. It would hunt for flesh of men, women, children, until it was slain.
Tagrun scanned the lands, thinking in ways he normally only did when hunting such a beast. The grass and occasional tanner tree spoke to him, in ways few even in a tribe of hunters and warrior would understand. He also felt the pull of the killer on the part of him that hunted. The warpath was something he understood well, tracking the men of other tribes, stealing their goods, making the brave's rush to touch an enemy first. All were things he knew. But this man, woman, or beast, he would not touch save with a weapon. It deserved no honor from being deemed worthy to live.
Diashaya, the old woman of the tribe was watching him, he knew. The weight of her gaze pounded on his back like a stick on the drums around the ceremonial fires of the seasons. He could not tell yet by that beat if she wanted him to leave or stay put. The way of the tribe was the pairing of hunters, and he now had no partner to hunt with. But the prey the young clansman desired to seek would not be found by two, he knew. Only one would face this foul thing. One with courage to claim vengeance and return the missing heart of Hathrad.
A hand touched his left shoulder, where the kenrai hold a spear in its talons was. The eagle bearing the hunter's tool, that marked his clan and position as procurer of meats. It was Diashaya's aged hand, bearing bronzed skin loosely over the bones, as the years of the joint pains she suffered swelled those bends, twisting her fingers into talons, like those of the clan's totem. It was the touch of one who knew of loss, as she had outlived her mate and children, even some of her children's children. The touch was light, but firm still in its grasp.
"You will come to me today, after you look over this trail, and we will let the sands fall under the sky, to give you the guidance of the Kenrai in this. But you will leave to hunt this thing. That I already know." The young man turned to look down to her weathered face, knowing each wrinkle marked some wisdom gained in her pains. Tears followed those creases, as Hathrad was now one of the ones she had lived beyond.
"Yes, shala, I will come to you, and listen to the sands poured over the feathers, but I fear the Kenrai will not be enough to find and slay this one." His voice was broken, as he had yet to go to his half-sister and confirm to her what she knew last night when they heard the screams. That her mate was dead, and her child would not have its father's spirit free to watch over it.
With the care of the follower of beasts he had learned from his father, he walked over to the trail the older hunter had followed. But unlike his father, he moved considerably slower, letting the grass and trees speak to him, tasting the air, and reading the ground not just of the traces he followed, but all over. His own eyes, golden like those of the clan's totem, were never still for more than five beats of his heart. The wind tossed the loose strands of his sun-bleached red hair around his head, hair he had no time to make a warrior's braid of yet this day. The black dyed leathers he had worn were becoming warm in the sunlight, but not enough to take the chill of the death magic he had seen the remains of from his soul.
He reached the first of two poles, five hands of spear throws from the body of his partner, and what was on it chilled him more, eliciting a wince, and protective move of his hands, despite the danger not being there anymore. To do this to a man, it was like poisoning the springs one drank from. It said his seed was not worthy of being shared, or that the other cared not for the woman whose needs he would not be able to fulfill again.
Tagrun pressed on, stepping wide around the staff and ground, to save any thing he may need to look at again on the way back up. Each step was made with care, not just for the trail, but the other dangers of the Grasslands. The snakes, deadly spiders and sword grass were common as he walked, this being the time those were sunning, still hunting or disguised by the dew that made all the grass silvery green, not just the sharp shin ripping stuff. But twice he held as the tail of a stone scorpion moved at the top of the knee high sward. The deep grey insects were about the size of a wolf, and twice as vicious. One sting would turn flesh to rock in less than three days, and there were none of the plants nearby needed to make a poultice to draw out the deadly toxin before a man would die.
The hunter paused once for what he thought was a grartagrun, the tusk cats he was named for. But gusts of wind laid the grass over too much for anything to be there, as the sun fired up the morning dew shakers as his people called the breezes after sunrise. He had almost taken a step when he noticed it, the stems of grass that were broken and beaten down in a very narrow path. Tagrun froze, his eyes now steady on that line, as it started about the distance a strong man could leap from the one to the river. Lips curled up in satisfaction. He set his own spear point first into the earth by it, and used it to vault over the traces he had found. The spear he left, to mark the spot.
As he staggered to stop, having slid in a patch of still wet undergrowth of the taller stems, he noted his father looking at him, then the spear, and nodding as he stood two hands and a finger of throws further on by the next pole. This one had the ears and scalp of Hathrad, and another scalp as well. Ignoring all but the dangers and the trail now, the younger hunter joined his teacher.
"Back and leap?" Drix Kenrai was a man of few words, and very somber, in dark haired looks as well as demeanor. His hazel eyes were still on the spear in the grass.
"Yes. This person is good. Used that small spur to hide the grass. I thought there was a grartagrun there, so I was looking closer than before." The hunter was amazed at how different his voice was from the deeper bass of his father. His was higher, softer, and less rough. He still wondered if his voice would deepen more as he aged. It would be good if something of his father besides the nose and chin were evident in him.
The lead hunter merely nodded and went back to studying the pole, and its burden. Two members of the clan were missing, Hathrad had the north patrol the night before, Grarmal had the west. It had been young Grarmal's first watch on his own, having come of age this winter and being offered the chance now to be a man of the clan taking watches in camp and a patrol from time to time with others before this. But the scalp was not the black hair most of the tribe, save a few like Tagrun, had. The hair was brown and grey mixed, shorter, thinner in coverage yet thicker in the hair itself. Like the bristles of a spine pig. Or one of the short folk from the mountains across the river. The ones called dwarves by others.
Eyes met over the horror between them. Taking a scalp was something the Kensori clans did only when riled, as the clan would be by these atrocities. But to take a dwarf's scalp, that was forbidden. Bloody wars in the past had ensued over such actions. There were two taller posts on each side of the Aqi. Tagrun did not need to look closely to tell there was more bad things to see yet. Father and son walked to the river, still looking over the trail, making hand gestures from time to time, noting the trail, and the occasional boot print. Smaller feet, but wide, not the narrow feet of a woman. A piece of black cloth shot with red threads torn from a well worn cloak caught on the branch of a wild rose, another piece of the same cloth on a briar tree's hanging branch near the river, at what was about three quarters of a spear's length height, or mid bicep on the young hunter.
At the river, it was not a good thing they found. Grarmal had been impaled, and across the river, there was a cross, not a pole. A cross inhabited by a still dying dwarf, with a patrol of them below him, trying to take it down, and failing as some force held it up in the air, with a stench that Tagrun recognized on the now westerly breeze crossing the flow of the waters. More magic to taint a soul, or claim more lives. The young hunter remembered the many tales of magic told by the sages from distant Thogras who passed the camps from time to time. Tales of traps of magical powers set on bodies and things. He tried to get a warning yell out, but was too late.
The crucified dwarf and his cross exploded like the fat of a roast on a spit, spreading fire over all there. Tagrun was moving before the screams began, to cross the long ford and save any he could..
(2B Continued..)
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