Half a moon had passed. The Nomazan clan had introduced him to the Beavers, or Yarocha. As they had been preyed upon by his target, more so than the Wolf clan had thought, and for quite some time before any had known, there was no trouble in entering their claim of the grass. The members of that tribe told him which of the slower streams hosted the leeches, on both sides of Calvert's River and the Slow Water to the south of their lands. The killings had started more than two turnings of the seasons before. And the Yarocha wanted this person dead. They had been happy, when the killings stopped seven greater moons before. Now, the killer was back.
Their hunters had seen the red sailed fishing ship come up the river just three suns before. And the bodies of those fed to the leeches were appearing again. Further, they told him of more of the cult of the leech, who drained the power of the victim into the leech, and then the leech was eaten raw to take in that power, without drinking the blood. The shala of the clan, the old woman who held the medicines and magics of the Yarocha, had told him that there was a magic of foulness, that allowed the soul of the victim to be taken during that feeding.
Now, as he crossed the southern most of the three great rivers of the Grasslands, the Slow Water, entering the hilly lands of the Volt Peninsula, Scorpio became more cautious in his movements. The lands of the Duhn clan were just along the first tiers of hills, filled with pastures and a very few vineyards and orchards, and even a few lowland or bench farms run by the Parvi, the folk that were even smaller than dwarves, and very happy just being farmers. By every tale Codi had told him of his homeland, the few times he had spoken of things not of the hunt, the Parvi were very loyal to the Hill Barons, who let them live freely and protected them.
The Slow Water was running shallow for this time of year, there had been few rains, and the Yarocha blamed the lack of rain on the killing sorceress. Normally he would have needed to go to a ferry up or down stream from the place he crossed, but this trip, there was only two deep channels the horse had to swim across. Most years this whole valley was under water, turning it merely a maze of channels, sandbars and islands. Tagrun was fading from his mind as he left the grass, yet deep inside the young hunter of beasts still lived. as when his old friend Hathrad's death when he made his first hunt of a man, the rage at those who used magic to steal life raged in his heart.
The shala had made him a medicine pouch, to guard his soul from being stolen, so he could fight the evil he sought. While the civilized part of him was scoffing at such enchantments still being used, his heart had been lifted at the gift. The ways of the Grasslands were still in him, deeply buried, and on this hunt they surprised him at their rising up to the surface.
Then again, this hunt was in the open, in the grasses and hills, like he had done with beasts before leaving the Kenrai. Several times, when hunting the great auroch or the tusk beasts with the long noses, the prey had turned upon him, and tried to hunt him. Once a tusked cat had managed to hunt him back to the camps, and terrorized the people for a week until he and his father had managed to kill it. This time he could not afford such risks. The leech witch would run when he came, he was sure. She would set traps, and try to fight him by subterfuge and trickery, but not openly.
Scorpio had seen the husks she had left of the Nomazan children, impaled on spears at the north bank of the Calvert River. It had sickened him. They looked like they had been lain out in the desert lands to west for years. Dried up husks, marked with the bites of leeches all over their bodies. And this time, she had taken their hearts, making it impossible for them to seek the heavens and hunt among the stars.
The Scorpion took hold as he emerged from the lower valley onto the first bench. There was a small gathering of huts of the Parvi here, with posts around it marking the place as under the Duhn barony. And each post bore several corpses of the Parvi, dried husks like the ones of the Wolf clan children.
Rage climbed up in the chest of the hunter again. She had taken the final step, and become like those of the lands to the north and east, a death mage. She was feeding off those she was supposed to protect. These were left as a message to him, that she was gathering her power, to destroy him if he tried to kill her. The hunter sighed, ans spoke softly to the dead, promising them he would avenge them, and try to set their souls free.
The hunter walked through the small hamlet slowly, observing the ground for tracks, the sides of the doors for threads and hairs he could use to track her. He was careful to leave as little of a trace as possible of his own presence, more out of respect for the dead than fear of any reprisals. Winnet the Wily was becoming sloppy. In Cosarali, he had found only a few traces of her at the scenes of her killings, and only in the emplaces she had been sure no one would come to on the islet. Here, she was leaving her mark for any to read.
At the edge of the small village, he found her trail, which led deeper into her home territory in the hills. Scorpio rubbed down his mount and walked beside the stallion on the road that wound up the succession of old river benches left by ages of erosion. As he did so, over the sea to the west now, he could see towers of white and black clouds rising up in promise of storms that night. He just hoped they held off until he was certain of her destination.
Her eyes narrowed as Winnet the Wily looked back down the hills and saw the silly plainsman following her. She had made the breakthrough in her magic at last, and tasted the souls of her victims as they died. It had turned out to be even sweeter that she had been told by the mage who had corrupted her flesh and spirit years ago. Then she had been raped and tortured by the mage, much as she did others now. Until at last her chance had come to escape him. But rather than kill him and leave, she had tried to carve marks on his flesh and pull the pieces of her soul he had taken back.
The old mage of the lands to the northeast had laughed as she tried, then turned her attempted casting back upon her, to bind her even more deeply to evil. And it was evil. She knew she was bad, but anything that made her feel good, and kept her young forever, it had to be perfect for her, and the hells with the souls of any sacrificed for her power and beauty. He had taught her the secret of the leech, to stay young, beautiful, and strong, at the cost of the lives of others to be sure, but what did any who could not defend themselves deserve of life anyhow.
She stood on the ramparts of the family's keep, wishing that she could have made the leap in power to take more than joy and a little taste of power before those two children from the barbarians of the plains. She took a leech from the barrels she had enchanted the minds of the Parvi servants to bring into the keep, and stroked it lovingly. Soon, though, the hunter would be the hunted, and she would take this pesky plainsman's soul and knowledge into herself. It would be easier, had she been able take her Uncle's skills and knowledge in that pathetic excuse for a town she had been cast off to for so long.
Winnet smiled as the thought came to her, it was in that town that she learned what her master had not taught her. How to form the link to the leech and take not just blood, but life, soul and knowledge.
Now her beguiled father, Brule the Strong, knelt before her. She needed the strength that could wrestle with the Ogres, and beat them in bare handed contests, so he had to be sacrificed. He no longer wanted to protect her anyway, thinking she was a beast of some kind now. One needing to be put down like a rabid dog before it slew or infected the herds. She cooed in joy, as she placed the first leech of many onto his sternum, to paralyze him beyond the enthrallment she had cast upon him.
It would take most of the day, but soon the strength of her foolish father, his knowledge of the lands he ruled, and his soul and strength would be in her flesh. For her to use as she wished. A wicked smile creased her perfect face, marring the beauty with its evil intent. Soon he had leeches on his temples, over his navel, on the great muscles of his thighs and arms, along his spine, and many other places.
Winnet saved the most thrilling for last. Now she lowered the one to the base of his massive neck and skull. As it connected and she could feel the connections burning to release his power to her, she shivered. All the other kinsmen she had slain or turned to living dead ghouls to roam the land and bring terror to those she had yet to claim. She reached out at last, and claimed her father's life and soul, draining him of all but the faintest spark of life, creating yet another great ghoul to ravage the land he once protected. She chanted the spells that transferred the souls of her father to sustain her as eternally young, eternally strong, eternally evil.
It had been a long, harsh day of climbing and descending hills on the trail of the prey. Twice he had found deadly traps she had left for him, just breaths before entering them. He also was getting to know her much better. The hunter always came to understand his prey somewhat better as he tracked it, but this time, he was realizing he might never come to think the way Winnet was thinking. He had found another hamlet, one that served the vineyard that had the marks civilized people made, the ones called letters. This was the property of his mentor, Codi Duhn, a vineyard he had spoken of those times he had spoken of home, the one he had planned to retire to in a few years. It was there that the hunter found his first living person since entering the Hill Baronies. By his clothing, he was a Baron himself or in line for one. He turned as Scorpio entered the small gathering of huts and homes, sword drawn, ready to fight, with a wild terror in his eyes.
"Halt, stranger. There is evil here, and strangers always bear evil." The man's eyes said it all, the horrors had driven him to a rage of killing anything that could be responsible. His voice was hoarse, as he tried to keep from howling in sadness and horror at what Winnet had done in this village. The leeches had been left on the body, as lifeless as the corpses they had fed upon.
Again, the hunter took the red knife from his belt, sheath and all, and held it before him. "This evil came from here, Kiltyen. I seek it to end it. Do not stand in my way, I am here to end a life. One that has no right left to live." Scorpio's voice was even, cultured and precise. He had no desire to kill this man, but would if he had to.
The crimson of the sheath caught a moment of sun as the clouds of the night before's rains parted. The black onyx dagger inlays that marked the blade as being a tool of the Allegiance stood out starkly, almost screaming the purpose and power of the knife. It delivered its message even into the mind of one nearly deranged by what he had seen in the once neat villa.
The sword was lowered, as the warrior spoke. "A red dagger. Then it happened, the Assassin's at last got word of the girl that was taken and twisted by that mage seven years ago." Tears streamed down his face, whether in relief or sorrow for the horrors he had seen, the hunter did not care to know. "When she came back to us, she was twisted, torturing animals, hurting servants. I know she had killed here, her family sent her away, to the west, hoping to find a kindly wizard or priest to wash away the evil in her." He shook his head, in misery at the loss, not just of life now, but innocence of a child.
The hunter now understood the fears and hopes of the old woman of the Yarocha. The medicine pouch around his neck weighed heavy with everything she could put into it to protect a Kensori clansman, regardless of clan, against the evil he now stalked. She had seen what he was hunting in her dreams, known it had returned stronger than when it had left. The totems had spoken to her, he now was sure. He hoped the totems would protect one who had walked so long outside the ways of the Grasslands.
Scorpio looked around, and nearly became sick to his stomach. She had taken their souls for certain, Winnet was also trying to suck in more and more of their powers and abilities now. He was not dealing with the simple killer he had started out hunting. She had grown, becoming somewhere, either at the islet or since, a true necromancer. The memories of his own first hunt kept coming back to haunt him, time and time again. That time, the hunter had been just learning his trade, seeking to track those who desired to be found only when they were ready to be. He had made many more mistakes that time, but Scorpio was disgusted with himself that he had not seen that he was hunting was an emerging death mage, like the one he had sought before.
That time too, he had carried a blade, given to him by his mother's brother, a member of the Allegiance, who had died in the hunt. That blade, and the ability of the hunter to find the killer had gained him entrance to the guild of the assassins, even though the prey had escaped in the end. Now he was the one who carried the blade, he did not have the option of recruiting a successor. This time, though, he had what must be an invaluable source of information. This Kiltyen had information he could use in his hunt. It would be worth losing the trail for a time, just to learn more of what he hunted. For the hunter was sure Winnet the Wily was no longer truly human, at least not as they defined it in the Grasslands
He walked forward, keeping the red sheathed blade in the view of the Kiltyen to focus him on who and what the man faced. "So, Winnet was taken by a Necromancer and twisted into the beast I hunt." His voice was soft, reassuring the full human that the half elf was not going to kill him, though he had the capacity and authority to do so. "Tell me more, warrior. Tell me the tale of this child who has become what stole her. Tell me all you remember, if you value your life."
The grimness that entered the voice jerked the warriors eyes off the blade, and he noted the tattoos on the arms of the Kenrai hunter. An eagle on the left, a scorpion on the right, which told him he faced a growing legend. Even the Kiltyen had heard of the hunter of the grasslands who worked from Cosarali. And the Wily had been exiled to that distant place. The horror they had thrown out had returned, as he knew from the bodies. The blade told him that the Kiltyen would not have good relations with any folk when this tale spread.
So he told the hunter all he knew. All the while praying for his own soul and life to be spared.
She sat on her father's great chair, reveling in being the lady of the manor. Winnet the Wily smiled at the servants, each one drained of all but a spark of life to keep their bodies as zombies in her service. Already the heat of the summer was making their flesh rot as the essence of life that had sustained life was no longer strong enough to keep them hale. But still, the girl thought, they were useful. Behind her, the body of her father stood, still powerful yet not living any more than the others in the hall. It had taken all she had learned until now from her dark master and the books she had gained in Cosarali, to turn him into a ghoul. The blood of the feast he had just finished, that of her mother's still living body, decorated his grey beard and face, as did bits of his wife's flesh. His eyes glowed red, and he was ready to do any bidding his mistress gave him.
Other types of undead also walked the hall. Skeletons of her grandparents, and other ancestors danced to entertain her, zombies to serve her, and several other ghouls, mostly younger members of her family and the children of some of the servants, feasting on the flesh of a priest who had foolishly tried to exorcise the demons he thought had inhabited her flesh. He had been a fool. Demons cannot be driven from bodies they do not inhabit, but only corrupt.
As she stood, the young woman thought hard on her name, it was not sinister enough for her new status. And Winnet had died under the torture and tutelage of the dark master. Perhaps it was time to take a new name, and claim her lands for the source of all her power. Yet she knew that until she had ended being hunted by that foolish barbarian from the grasslands, she could not take that step. He was her great test. If she could slay, or better yet corrupt that man, the power and glory she would attain would be incredible. She could even perhaps challenge the mistress of her master.
She thought hard on her plans, as she looked out over the rolling hills of her newly gained domain. She know knew more about the land here than anyone else. She understood every fold those she had slain or enslaved had walked, every boulder, every spring and stream. Now she just had to use that knowledge to end the hunter's career on a sour note. She smiled, as the memories of others gave her the place he would come. She clapped her hands, ending the actions of all her puppets. With a snap of her fingers, and a gesture, the creatures animated now only through her will shambled out of the hall, to the place she had chosen to turn on her stalker.
Hurlan the brave had left the small villa, and the hunter, swiftly, seeking the safety of the grasslands across the Slow Water. He bore one of the feathers from the hair braid of the Kenrai hunter as a token of news. Scorpio cared not that without the feather he had no safety on his left side under the beliefs of the people he had been raised amongst. There were times when no amount of protection would matter, save that of vigilance.
The clansman had spent the time since thinking and cleaning up the corpses of the victims. The stench of rotting flesh had made him have to seek a strip of cloth soaked in water to keep the odors from overwhelming him. By the cresting of the sun's flight across the sky, he had all the bodies he could find in pile between two of the neat little log huts.
A little lamp oil and a torch later, all the town was burning, sending a vast column of smoke into the sky. It was a challenge to the killer he sought, to come out and seek him. He was sure from what he had learned of the girl Winnet had been, that she would try to trap him in some place along the way to the keep. But the hunter had done his own research, both in Cosarali and with the discussion he had with Hurlan before sending him away to safety. This was his challenge to her, to come to him. To hunt him as he had trailed her.
Others would also see the smoke, and either come running, into the mess that Scorpio intended, or flee if the rumors had reached them. She would come, he was sure. The thing that once was Winnet the Wily, and before that, Winnet the Sweet, would hunt him on the hills. And he would let her herd him to the spot that so many times was used to kill foes by her clan. Once there, the hunter would again take on his prey.
He walked out of the villa, setting each of the wooden buildings ablaze. Codi would understand the destruction of his inheritance. Over the years, he had come to have many of the same views of contamination that the people he had lived with did. Those of the Anakhagor Empire burned not just the dead killed by a necromancer, but the buildings they were slain in and any others that might carry some tinge of the foul magics, to break the bonds of those enchantments, and free the place to heal as a empty glade for nature to heal over time, if it could.
Hurlan had taken his horse, to make the getaway swiftly. So the hunter walked to the place he was told she would try to drive him to. Not taking the trails, but the other way, the one she would not know of, with any luck. Her downfall would come, and the hunter had taken from the dead she had made the one bane she would be broken by. He had no choice but to do what he planned. There would be repercussions, big ones, but there was no other way to slay his target.
He moved, not up the hills to the rolling low hills that marked the heights, but into one of the great draws to the west, moving across the grass in the long stride pace of one from the grasslands. He had to get to a certain place, and disappear into the lands he walked, to drive his foe insane. As he entered the draw, he found what he sought, and vanished from even the sun's hot eyes for a while.
The zombie horse she rode was already falling apart, as Winnet had not fed for several days. The column of smoke from the destruction of the vineyard on the bench had acted like a warning to her food. Many of the holder and farmers had fled, thinking the barbarians of the grasslands had invaded and were burning the towns. Now she worried the hunter had brought a raiding party with him. Fires had taken in the dried grasses that covered the hills in several places, turning her away from the other baronies when she tried to raid those for more servants and to feast on living flesh again. The day before the fires had raced along until an afternoon storm had come at last to the hills and dowse the flames.
She grunted, and looked at the sinks, the place her clan had defeated so many foes over the centuries. They were the family's great ally, the low swampy land where dozens of streams disappeared into swamps and small caves. She had at last circled the fires with her servants, and was having them drive every living thing in the hills to them. Her feast there would be great, but if the hunter eluded the drive, it would be a joyless one for her.
Sweat coated her face, as she found the effort of controlling so many servants, and over such a distance, drained her energies quicker. She worried that this was his plan, to weaken her before attacking. Luck drove several of her still living serfs into the drive, and she was able to feast on their souls, but still she was expending her power faster than gathering it. Her hair was now touched with gray, and lines were appearing around her eyes.
She had no choice now though. Once she had committed to this plan, she had to go forward. But she was running out of the special leeches, the ones from the swamps, that let her powers work. She pressed her forces forward, to finish the drive and feast on the frenzy in the swamps as the leeches attacked anything that entered their dank, stale waters. Once there, she could grab the life energies of anything that a leech was latched upon. But until then, she had to survive on the few she could gather into her hands here in the hills.
The day passed slowly, as her net tightened. Slowly the distances she was controlling servants over was reduced. But so was the number, as some lost the last spark of life that let them be animated, and others were destroyed by the animals and few beasts that tried to escape the net that turned on them. It made her control easier, but she worried that holes in the net were forming. Winnet had to catch the hunter, or start over, trying again to force him to the killing ground of her clan's past. Not for the honor and survival of the clan, she was all that was left, and her future offspring would not have a chance of returning if she failed.
At last they reached the edge of the ancient sinkhole that created the sinks. She had no idea, nor did any of the clan at where the streams went. Their legends told that the earth drank in the streams, never to release the water again. To leave the lands of stars and sun was forbidden, for below the earth lay the bane of all her people, the beasts of the eternal dark below. They had come at the same time as her people, but the tiny folk said they had been there forever.
Winnet cared not for the legends, all she knew is the beasts of the dark were foul tasting, their souls not a meal she would desire. But if she had to, she would bring the beasts of the dark out to feast upon.
She dismounted from the beast that had born her here, letting it collapse into a pile of putrid skin covering bones and decayed flesh. It had served its purpose, and she would gather another soon. As Winnet walked down the trail to the edge of the swamp, she reached out with her mind and powers to draw in the lives she had gathered. She sighed in relief and sensual overload as her body responded to the power flowing into her like the caresses of a lover. The ghoul that had been her father stood behind her, watching the sinks, to prevent the hunter from coming from the swamp to attack her.
Winnet had not anticipated that the caves were all around the edge of the sinkhole, and that many were connected to the realm of the eternal dark. At least not until the body of the ghoul was slammed to the ground, pinned to it like a butterfly in some sage's wall case by a spear marked with holy symbols. Still in the throes of the ecstasy of feeding on the lives of others, she found her own body reluctant to move, unable to stop the feeding to stop the red dagger that slammed into her heart as she at last managed to face the foe from behind.
She tried to grab the hand that held that dagger, only to find her arms reaching instead to the swamp of its own, to gather in more life to sustain her own. Winnet's eyes met the hunter's, and she realized that her life was over. There was no more life flowing from the leeches, as some terrible poison in the waters killed them as they feasted. As her life ebbed away, her left hand lifted to suck the life from her foe, and touched the medicine pouch instead. The magics of the Shala of the Yarocha was unleashed, and her arm turned to dust, blowing away on a sudden breeze.
Winnet saw no mercy in the eyes of the hunter, no pity, none of the foolish ideas she had thought him to be full of. He had not been the sentimental creature she had thought, but a hardened criminal, just like herself. She wanted to speak, to let her infection spread to his mind, and twist it as hers had been. She wished she had tried to meet and seduce him to her ways. With him at her side, she could have been a queen of the damned. But wishes were just faint echoes of hope, which her kind fed on the destruction of.
Scorpio twisted the blade, wedging it in the ribs, to ensure her death. He waited until the eyes began to loose focus and glaze over. Only when he was sure she was dead, did he let the hilt go, and allow the corpse to drop to the ground. He thanked the Totems of Eagle, Wolf, and Beaver for steering him to the old woman. He would have died if that hand reached his chest. The desire for the up close, personal kill had made him vulnerable. He had to overcome that desire in the future. As the zombies, skeletons and other undead she had created fell to the ground with her death, he knew this place would be stained beyond living things living here, and the waters that flowed through it, and out some where else, would become dead to all life.
He only hoped the sage he had gathered and spread over the swamp would survive, its seeds letting some life return someday. The journey under the earth to this place, which had taken him two days, had been worth the horrors and beasts he had faced in those chambers and tunnels. It had made Scorpio realize that only the sun kept the darkness at bay, and those who walked under it willingly.
The hunter did the last thing he had to do, picking up the girl's body, and walking out to the nearest crossroads, where the herds and traders passed often. There he crucified the corpse in the center of the crossing of trails, leaving the blade in her chest for all to see he had finished his job.
The trip back to Cosarali was uneventful, and incomplete. Scorpio had walked down the trail, then downstream to the place where Hurlan waited with his mount. He sold the stallion to the middle aged Kiltyen, knowing that he would not need a horse for a while. In that river port he found a ship that had rowed upstream to this the first ford, and was trading there with Parvi who gathered there to sell goods for trade in Cosarali and other places around the Great Water. The captain was open to a passenger, and the hunter booked passage away from these lands, even as the first travelers over the road to the crossroads arrived, with word of the body, and the disappearance of the Duhn clan.
After they had sailed down stream, and out into the sea, the vessel passed the shore that marked the south end of the grasslands his father still roamed, Scorpio decided to take his time returning. He needed to clean himself of the foulness of civilization again, as he had several times in the past. The captain was fine with losing him, for he knew that one from the Anakhagor trade port had gone east, a important person had died, and now the Anakhagor citizen returned. As long as there was no refund for the amount of full passage, he cared not, save that a killer of men was not on his ship.
Once on the sandy beach, Scorpio looked south to the ship as its boat returned to it. The galley bobbed gently on the gentle rollers of the Great Water, as if content in being at see. It was good to be away from the kelustes and whips that drove the rowers of that ship. Good to be on land, where if things went wrong, at least he could walk away. The hunter was gone for the moment, but whether it was a man or elf that stood on the shore, he was not sure. Perhaps his father had some wisdom to give him, or his grandsire, if he still lived. It had been too long since he had walked in the golden grasses of the prairies to the north of the beach.
He gathered his backpack, settling it in for the long walk ahead, and sought peace and forgiveness from the world for what had needed to be done, wishing that aspect of his profession would never again be needed. As he left the drumbeat of the rowing began behind him, the heartbeat of trade on that sea. But it soon faded away, just as his clothes allowed him to seeming melt into the brown and yellow grasslands he headed into. The Scorpion faded, becoming again just Tagrun, another of the Kenrai, the eagle clan of the Kensori folk.
But eventually, he knew, the eagle would have to land, and the scorpion would again stalk its prey.
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