"Blade of the Eagle Clansman" Ch8-two/B - The first Hunt of Scorpio Kenrai.

Moving along the trail their prey left, the signs pointed to another atrocity to be found early. Yet, even by sundown, none was found, save the implication of one to come, by the number of footsteps joining the Necromancer's tread marks. This was not a single gathering, but one marked by well spread out along his trail harvesting of bodies for something worse than before, both hunters knew. Just before sundown, they found an encampment, with fires still burning amid the tents, and knew that this night, the beast they followed would feast, unless they made haste.

Worse, Galen stared at the moons in the sky, as the sun set, knowing the night would grant the one they stalked complete darkness in the hour of dark magics, midway between dusk and dawn. Such a lack of light gave the dark arts greater power. Power enhanced more as clouds streamed north from the Great Water at a rapid pace, cloaking the stars as well.

He barely noticed the boy's sudden stop, nearly running into him, stumbling into a cluster of rattle-tails, whose seed pods gave their namesake sound loudly, drawing ire from his nephew.
"Sha!" Tagrun hissed. "Over this ridge, see it?"

Shifting carefully back to their path, Galen squinted a bit, but noted the faint yellow-orange glow indicating a fire. "Yes." The word was more breath than sound.

"He waits for something. What?" The boy's head turned slowly, taking in the surroundings, eyes glittering in the dark, seeing the land's heat and auras more than it's forms.

"Midnight. As always." Galen whispered, moving in closer to his companion. "That hour marks the zenith of the ars arcanum."

"This will be his last casting amid the Grass, then." The boy's grip tightened upon his spear's shaft, knuckles popping enough for Galen's ears to register the sound.

Hand upon the boy's shoulder, Galen moved around him. "Perhaps. Or it might be he wants us there, to feast upon our anguish as well. Think of what you will feel like if a whole tribe is consumed by his power tonight."

"The only thing I intend for him to feast upon is bile and my spear." Tagrun snarled, crouching down as he slipped past his uncle. The boy's sudden burst of energy shocked Galen, who'd thought the toll of the hunt more than it now seemed. He moved slower, but kept close, hoping to dissuade Tagrun from making a terrible error.

"Tagrun, no..." In a blink, the boy was over the ridge, and sprinting at the fire, where all looked away, facing south towards the heart of the night. The magus stood with his back to them, oblivious to all but his own rising chant, violet and purple flames dancing over his extended hands, reaching out towards the tribe held in thrall before him.

Tagrun hurled his hasta, the long spear whistling through the air, seeking his prey, even as one of the long hunting knives filled his right hand. Galen struggled to free his mace from its belt loop, forced to prance awkwardly down the rock strewn slope, stumbling twice when Nature's caltrops rolled under his steps. The elf waded into the rattle-tails, stirring pods into their namesake call.

The mage turned, eyes glowing with the violet fires necromancy fueled, a snarl creasing his face. "Fool, you cannot stop what is to come. Embrace it, join me."

Streaking through the dusk, a glint of bronze announced the flight of his sister's hasta, as Tagrun tossed his spear towards the Necromancer. The mage blocked its path with a backhanded gesture, shimmering purple field summoned out, as one of the sacrifices dropped, body crumbling to dust, leaving the spear to glance away into taller blades of grass behind him. The man thrust out his right hand, left held before him, cloaked in the field he'd summoned now, pulled in tight to his chest, unleashing a bolt tainted deep blue, almost the indigo of dusk's sky, at the charging boy.

Tagrun dove into a roll beneath it, coming up to his right, long hunter's blade slicking the Necromancer's forearm with an upward slash. The hunter of beasts stepped in, trying to lock the arm outward, but gasped as the mage splayed his fingers into Tagrun's chest, forcing the boy back, gasping for breath, a nimbus of blue static spreading over his torso, abdomen, and neck.

Using the boy's fall as a blockade, the mage snarled, grasping two of his victims, one recognizable as the elven girl, Chanti. Cursing, the mage lowered his head, as the male his right hand rested upon crumbled away to dust, and the mage and girl seemed to stretch away to the south.

Galen reached them before the distancing effect finished into vanishing, swinging his mace at the mage. One blade managed to entangle in the wide sleeves of the mage's loose robe, before a sharp crack, followed by a hollow bang announced their escape. A tendril of smoke rose from the mace's head, hot molten chablys giving the campsite an eerie light. A line that marked where once a blade, now departed with the mage, had been.

Billenius's Tale - Journey to Freedom - chapter 8 draft 9

As I had anticipated, my nephew's head was his main problem after the race. So we spent three days at the bend of the river, letting him recover. I spoke with him several times, trying to get him to accept the defeat, without admitting to the same mistake myself. It was not working. Norbanus was a bundle of nerves, and yet had his sense of humor in grim evidence during those days. I tried not to remember the one bet I had hoped to collect, but now had to forfeit. At last, I went to the packs, and pulled out the bag of tea, pouch of henbane, and my jar of honey, and made my way to his tent.

He guided me in, and had me sit, while I handed over some of the fruits of my shopping in town. As he drank his tea plain, and never smoked, I had no clue what he intended to do with the spoils of my last bet. He sat, and waited patiently for my confession.

“Okay, it was a bad idea. But it went really well until he sat up.” I admitted in a chastened tone.

Norbanus laughed a short while, then dropped his other shoe. “Your father will disown you, Pilvus bites. All of Eurus‘ offspring do. Drinius gulled you.” And with that great news, I left him to his well deserved laughter, and sought out, with Ringelius' guidance, my nephew. He was sitting out amid the rocks, staring, as I had after my loss, at the gates. Sulking, as he was wont to do.

I told Ringelius to return to camp, and took a seat carefully amid the rocks. My kin had checked for blood cobras as I approached, but there were other deadly and painful creatures in this desert as well, scorpions, spiders with deadly bites, and ants whose bites were like the burn of hot iron to the likes of us. I said nothing, just contemplating my own feelings on the race. Finally, to break the ice, I began.

“The gates were a terrible idea. I never should have thought of them.”

Furius started at the words. I had never told him of my days in Pelori, and for me to speak of them, even if not talking of the Paths, surprised him. “Your idea? You thought of having those bars that low?”

I let his question float in the air around us for a bit. This was not really all that easy for me either. “Yes,” I spoke, as time enough to settle his aura down had passed. “I had noticed that many races that were close were decided when one rider let up to celebrate before the line. I figured that the crossbars, and the cage feel would ensure riders staying in the race to the end, rather than just trying to slow down as they crossed the line.”

“Norbanus did not tell me that you designed this...contraption.” He spat that last word. I was amazed he had yet to cuss about it to me.

“Yes, I came up with the idea, some engineer built it for me, and refined the idea, like the guide in fences and corrals. Did Norbanus tell you anything about my racing days?” I had to ask, to know if this was a setup, to make me start behaving like a man crippled by his disability again.

My nephew turned away, a thing I could tell by the change in how well his voice came to me “Just that the one who designed it..” His voice trailed off

I finished the thought for him. “Fell victim to it. Its first victim, in fact. And that is why the various peoples in Pelori respect the line of Eurus over my onageri. Not that they are wrong to, but due to the foolishness of the one who breeds them.” I let it set a bit, then stood. “The headache will go away. The shame will too, if you don’t put it on an altar and worship it.” I started to tediously work my way out of the boulders, only to find Furius at my side, guiding my steps.

“So, its a family tradition then?” He said. I sputtered a moment, as he laughed. Then I joined him, in laughing, and leaving a foolish idea behind. He would race again, I was sure. And he would be wiser for this loss. We walked slowly back to the stockade, speaking in soft words of the races we had run, and our mounts. At last, the boy was becoming a man. I found myself growing a bit too. As my nephew was calling it a family tradition, I guessed my urges to burn the gates to the ground would have to be set aside.

Norbanus broke camp that afternoon, and we started to the river, still several stade to the south. As we got closer, forests of cactus pressed in around the road, which started down a steep slope of loose sands and gravels. This was a place even the engineers of the old days had not been able to create a road. The lower we went, the more things changed, as memory of this place came back to me. It would become more shady, moister, and most importantly, vegetation would be everywhere.

By mid afternoon, we were out of the desert, and headed down the broad valley of the Seranarum River, as it wound out of the Grey Desert, to empty into the Bay of Gems. It was now beyond the start of summer. There was little time left if I was to take the same route out. The spring snows had started early in the Last Mountains. Early and heavy, as the bands of moisture that marked the lifting airs of the storm band that circled the world rose north with summer’s warmth, following the sun as it climbed the sky. I may not be able to see those great cloud shrouded mountains anymore, but the sheer weight of them spoke to my mind.

Snow and rain would hound us unmercifully, from the sounds of my companions. Drinius had sent a rider with us, one I trusted only as far as he had recommended trusting, but still it was just the thirty we had left. The fourteen caligarium that we had not thinned out at Pelori for some lack of cause or proof of loyalty, nine more taken from the legion there, about whom we had only the word of the commander of that body which was passing through towards the east from home on a normal rotation of troops. That and the opinions of the Optio, my companions, Drinius agent and I.

The river was running wide, deep and swift, but would shallow out at the wide band of rocks and gravels near its bend back to the west. The Seranarum was a vital river, it and the Greyflow were the southern margin of the desert, and ran along the foothills at the base of these mighty ramparts. The next part of the journey would be dangerous, but less so than what would come later. The valley of that river is expansive, miles wider than most cuts through a range as mighty as the Last Mountains Made by the Gods. It flowed west along nearly half the chains length, then cut south for many leagues, as the homani measure distances, before turning west to find the fingers of the Bay of Gems.

It was a wilderness now, but once had been a bustling route of trade and rich farmlands, in the days well before my time, when the Rabahavi had been a province of the Old North Empire of the homani, and the Kordel still a land mostly held by my folk. This valley held many ruins, now used by bandits as hiding places, numerous lost mines of gems and metals in the hills ringing it, and many more such up in the mountains, most now the lairs of drakonis and other beasts who liked high places to live.

As the others stared at those mighty heights, I observed them, trying to see more details in their auras, to give us some clues as to whom we could trust, and whom we could not. The female who spied on me so often still rankled my nerves. Something about her aura disturbed me, though I could not pick out the details enough. She maintained a goodly distance from me this leg, but always seemed to know where I was at all times. Norbanus had his own doubts about her, even saying he mistrusted the name she gave, but had not the skill of reading folk to pick out any lies. In this day and age, leaving behind your gens to separate oneself from kin who were less than trustworthy was a common thing. Drinius himself had postulated that he might renounce his gens, just to get clear of the coming civil war fever.

For many of those with us, this was their first sight of these mountains up close, and the peaks, some of which towered beyond the level which it was easy to breath, were daunting. Just by being, they challenged some to try reaching their tops, only to take every life that tried. Among my folk, the climbing of mountains is a sport, and it seemed we had a few enthusiasts of that kind with us, by the words that reached me from a cluster of caligarium before me. Those rocky crags with their snowy mantles did grab the imagination, as I remembered from working in their shadows, so long ago. And that was at their lower, eastern terminus.

This was the rampart of the world, the true reason for the Grey Desert being dry, as their spine and ribs, nearly as tall as the central heights, wrung out all the moisture from the sea beyond them. On the other side were places beyond the dreams of we who dwelt in the arid desert and steppes of the Upper Lands. There were vast tangles of plants and broad green savannahs. They were well watered, and the streams only ran dry after decades of drought, not mere weeks.

In the mountains though, blizzards raged all year, and even the Karleekie feared to mine more than the fringes of these spires. Only on the drier, northern side when they did. South was deadly, including the land holding the last ancestors of the drakonis. To hear them see the sun’s setting rays on those peaks, turning the whites and grays to starkly contrasting glowing oranges and golds against violet and black granites, was something that made me miss my eyes more than before.

We camped that night at the West Bend, the one where the river turned to carve its passage between the thin line of the last stretches of the Angry Red Mountains and the shattered arms of the Northern Reach, a rugged and still high series of parallel ridges that just suddenly died into foothills, then the broken lines of rocky areas that scarred the gorge‘s floor before fading into the ridges of foothills before the coastal range. Norbanus had Didius and Cethegor guarding me in alternation, with Ringelius and Furius working with them both on some rotation. At night, Furius would pretend to sleep in the new tent Drinius had found us. One of the great round ones I preferred. Didius and Cethegor were staying in it as well, but that was more due to the fact that it takes up more space in the packs on the animals than the security arrangements. It was also much warmer, something those older members of the group appreciated.

Norbanus was being extra cautious this encampment. He had guards out on the perimeter, and Ringelius and Cethegor standing watch outside my tent. Given what we had been through so far, to gain that trust of the optio and the Triari as a sign of this one's integrity.

The road was clear for a change. The only signs of bandits we encountered in the valley were the burnt remains of wagons and some animal carcasses rotting in the hot sun, more often covered by the scavenger birds of this land. We made good time on the westward run, until we reached the large bowl of savannahs where the river turned south, between the round mass of the Ruby Mountains to our west, and the ramparts of the Last, still on the left side as we headed south.

This stretch of road was well used, as it was joined by the land route from the Lorsan Coastal states to the north. We moved swiftly along it, the onageri able to set a quick pace, following that mighty river south, deeper into its broad valley. The worst events we had were the crossings of the river, and a tributary from the east later. That was mostly due to my being blind. I found those holes in the fords, and took a swim. Twice.

Leave it, please. I would prefer not to say anymore about that. It was embarrassing.

***

We spent ten days from that last “bath”, as Ringelius had teased me for taking, winding westward along the narrow line of hills that lined the southern coast of the Glacier Bay, the cold arms of the Bay of Gems that spread east and west against the slowly lowering Last Mountains. Then we found the road to the pass, and Norbanus called a five day halt. We all needed rest, to repair gear, and wash our clothing. Unlike all our previous camps, this one was disorderly. All due to the spread of our gear, not the lack of discipline among the caligarium.

After that respite, we turned south and began to move towards those still intimidating heights to our south. We walked beside the onageri on the steepest climbs, and rode when we could. Rain fell several times in those days, and the last one was ugly, as we got our first snow, of the soft kind that is like a pile of the seed parachutes released by the soft gossypina trees, deep and yet little moisture in it. The northern edge of these mountains are cold, the lower parts shadowed from the sun by the spires and ridges of sharp rocky cliffs above, and never really warming. But the scent of pines was thick in the air, a difference from my last transits of this pass. I guess years passing would allow the trees destroyed in fires set by the Queen of Flames to return.

Halfway up the passes we encountered the worst thing so far. As we rounded a bend I felt a familiar illness strike me. Death is something that we who see auras can feel, for years after it occurs, especially violent and horrid deaths. We are also sensitive to the bindings of souls and animae to their bones, to prevent a being from moving on to the afterlife. And as we came to that turning of the canyon we climbed up to the pass in, my senses screamed out at both foul things. Someone had been killed here, recently. It had been done with necromancy, the dark arts that ate or bound the anima, animating flesh that was dead and rotting, rather than moving on to the next life.

Everyone was on edge, not just me. When the others caught sight of what was there, they became enraged, even the ones I suspected of being agents of the Decemviri. Furius was spitting his rage, while most were silent. Ringelius alone had the calmness to tell me what was before us.

“Consorbrinus, there are many skeletons, impaled. Of our kindred who were bound by dark magics. Its ugly. Very ugly.” His voice was choked in sorrow and anger both. Sorrow for the deaths, and anger at what had been done.

It is said that once upon a time, all my folk saw as I do now, and that was what had made our magics so great in the eldest of days. Our magics then had been subtle things, less flashy, more craftsman-like in their workings. We had striven in those days to make our magics not only to be lasting, but done so few but the most sensitive to the flows of magic could detect them and break them.

But this was not such a thing. The spells were well crafted, but blatantly so. I could see the black and gray bands of evil that fettered the spirits to their remains, woven as if they were the tendons of a new being onto the skeletons that still glowed with the echoes of life now gone from them. And the poles they were impaled upon radiated the evil done unto these poor folks. Evil so foul it had clung to the earth around them. Evil that made what was left of their souls, as the hung upon the bones that had been their flesh, relive their agonies of death.

I wanted to vomit, my stomach could not take what was washing over me. My guts knotted, as I felt the leaking pieces of the pain they had suffered. Pain that still radiated from the remains. As did images of the tortures they had suffered. It is disconcerting, to see through the eyes of the dead. It made me slide off Gerrae, shaking in fear and disgust.

Norbanus was no longer silent. I heard his cursing, and had a pretty good idea of what had happened here now. Furius was sobbing. despite his many forays with me outside the borders of our land, he had never experienced the aftermath of a necromancer’s brutality. I was sure, beyond a doubt, that he had recognized some bits of the victims to be so moved.

It was not just a display of callousness. There was a warning in it, to me. I recognized the sender’s school, if not his or her signature. Not the thick, hasty and slipshod flows of power many followers of the dark arts used. No, this was something fouler and more delicate. As I said, it bore the hallmark of old foes. The strands of the spells bindings were soft grey cobwebs, with only the bulky black bindings upon the joints, to animate them upon the trigger this rogue mage had set. Cobwebs, spidery script within the flows, and impalement. Our foul cousins were behind this, some member of the underworld elves from the distant northeast.

One who had some knowledge of me, or worked for one who did. Perhaps he had come to claim the spirits as payment for some practitioner of the dark arts I had slain or sent to the gallows in my days in the ranks of the Custodi. I cared not at that moment. I forced myself to push aside the waves of death, agony and evil, that echoed even from the trees and rocks around us, gazing with intent upon this scene of foulness.

I was both glad and disgusted that I had. Under those tainted and tortured animae, there lay a horrid web of energy on the ground. A web that screamed trap to my mind, a trap my companions were about to step blithely upon to undo what they thought was just a display of hatred for our race.

“Norbanus, stop. All of you, go no closer. Its a necromancer’s trap!” But my weak voice was neither loud enough or fast enough. Nor would Furius have stopped anyway. He was outraged, and looking for his cousin. As I would have looked for any of mine in a similar situation at his age. His foot trod onto the web of power, not able to sense what I had, triggering the disgusting trap.

The skeletons of our kinsmen, as one, moved. I knew what the motions were, only because I had seen it once when I had eyes. Every detail of that meeting had stuck in my brain. I heard the motions of dry bones rasping together, that eerie sound that made one’s spine shiver in fear of death, or in this case, undeath. Then came the rattle of the wooden spikes they were impaled upon being drawn from the ground and unwoven from their skeletal cages. I could feel the ground web spreading, desperately trying to remember how to set undead to rest, as I had been taught at the temples to do.

Norbanus began to bark commands, as the caligarium spread out before us to make a wall between me and the dead that now walked. I held my staff before me, focusing as I softly began to sing the songs of unbinding. I was hoping this orison that had long echoed in my mind, due to brooding on being blind and relegated to the temples as being imprisoned, would work. I chanted its rhythms and cadences as best I could remember, knowing I was not perfect, but in the situation, I prayed the gods were merciful.

The spells shivered, but did not weaken. That made me notice the strands radiating away from the gruesome display, to places I was sure more corpses had been stored, also with the souls and spirits of their former lives bound onto them just as foully. I watched that web, noting the strands that anchored it to similar webs around us, every single strand of those tainted power flows pulsed slowly. That dry, sick rattle came from all around us, as more bodies were activated, following the strands to fresh prey.

I hate the undead, and those who create them. It is anathema in our faith to do so, among our kind. To torture a soul so, to make it suffer even after death, just for the joy the suffering gives you, it is truly the darkest of evils. Whoever did this was irritating me. Ringelius alone retained his calm, but at the rattle of bones from a source behind us, we discovered the size of the noose. He turned, back against mine to guard me. I could sense at least six groups this trap was linked to. Even if they were less numerous than the band we faced, we would be hard pressed to get by.

Again, I tried the prayer of banishment, to send the souls and spirits away. But who ever had cast these spells had more power to waste than I could counter alone. I could hear the sounds of battle all around me. Furius was trying not to damage the remains of what must assuredly be friends and, I knew in my own despair, family. Concentrating further, trying now to banish the mind of the foul sorcerer who had cast these incantementum, was tiring me. This time I actually could feel something in the Aether and Astral Realms that pushed back.

Yes, of course, I thought, its no fun unless you see the destruction spread. It would not surprise me to find he made my kindred's remains his channels when he added crafted this foulness.

The pass echoed with Ringelius' warcry, mixed with the sounds of bones being broken. Broken, but held together by the dark energies that surely would suck at her life each time she struck them. And the lives of everyone else too. I thought hard, rewarded with an idea this time. The only reason he had been able to bind my folks spirits is he had acted before they could be sung on to their next life. I wondered if they could be freed by the Nenia.

The grim battle flowed and ebbed, but none of the weapons here could break the bonds on undead. With every finger of sand that fell from one bell of glass to the other, more of the bones cursed to walk after death arrived. And the smaller the circle around me was becoming. We were losing, unless we could do something to break the spell. If we died here, we would be added as yet another cluster of undead linked to the spell to gather more power for this necromancer to feed off of.

At that moment I heard the cry of one of the grim lupus that haunted these hills. The lupus were the beasts our legends said were the protectors of our people in the past. Even though they hunted us in these days, to thin our folk of evil ones.

For a moment, the bones stopped moving, which gave me a chance. We had none of the homani with us, so I could try my one last hope. I started not with the prayer of dismissal I had tried earlier, but now gave voice to an old prayer, the call to mercy and forgiveness. The prayer to Befana, to ask for her mercy on these poor trapped beings, to grant us the power to free their animae, and let them find rest or rebirth.

The Nenia is old, but still used by many gens as the opening of the Nenia, the songs we sing to help release the dead as we burn their bodies. Many of our caligarium, and we of the plains, were of those gens. Didius raised his voice with me, singing one of the songs of loss and mourning, as the temporary halt of the enemy’s pawns ended. He struck out only to block blows for now, singing mournfully, even as his voice became ragged with exertion.

I waded in, adding my flame weakened voice to the song, trying to make up in the power I poured into it for the volume and smoothness I lacked now. Slowly the others joined in. It was a weird sound we made. None of us tried for the volume or notes we normally would have hit. We could not have achieved such under the stress of having to fight the very corpses and skeletons we sought to release the bound spirits from.

At last after several songs, and discovering that it seemed not to have worked, I pulled the cutler, that knife dedicated to Tushna, just to have the comfort of chablys in my hand again. That was when I noticed something in the bonds, they suddenly had weakened. From where Ringelius stood now away from me, I heard him give a cry of joy, as there was a clatter of bones. I began to mentally kick myself, as the saying goes. In order to repel or release the undead, you must hold the emblem or symbol of the gods you beseech. The cutler, designed to open the bellies of animals to gain access to their entrails for reading, was the symbol of Tushna, the father of the Parcae I served, and source of all prophecy.

I stepped into a sudden gap I felt before me, holding the knife out, blade upright before me, as I moved. I was ashamed to have forgotten such a basic fact, to have made this battle go on, allowing these spirits and souls to be tortured longer than they needed to have been. But the gods appreciated shame, for it makes us humble, and that is the core of humility. I began again the orison of banishment, focusing now on the necromancer’s will that drove the skeletons to serve the enchantments he had woven. I pushed out with my mind, to create a psychic wind to free the bones of the bonds they were held together by.

It started slowly, just a few more clatters of bones collapsing into inanimate heaps, as they should have stayed in the first place. I could sense the animae riding that push I was giving to shed their bonds and escape their torture. I kept repeating the orison, chanting that prayer of release to banish what I could of the foul wizard’s will that had guided these poor victims of his hatred of all that lives. I did not have to wait long for a countering attack, as I felt a powerful cyclone in the Astral Realm, that plane of the mind. I had never truly faced an opponent in this type of combat, but I had no choice. We needed to survive, and the poor souls who had died here deserved rest.

It took but few swift beatings of my heart to find my foe, noting that only his projection was here. It made sense. Necromancers, despite hating life, still cling to it, tenaciously, rarely risking their own precious skin, at least not until they have mastered the arts of the phylactery, that allow one to live on beyond death. This one was no different. He inhabited one of the first sets of bones we had found, one of ours. Ones that had echoes of memories that were all to familiar to me engrained into them. This was my sister’s husband, or his remains, that were being desecrated.

I tried not to let my rage rise up, though I could not detach much of my own will to strangle its rise. I needed all my will to hold against the spinning vortex of the caelestis media, the heavenly medium, that was forming around that part of me that exists not just in this realm, but the one of spirit. I was buffeted, swaying wildly. I knew this by the bodies of my closely packed companions I was bumping into on the realworld. Still I tried to stand against that wind, to avoid having my animae sucked from my flesh to be bound or consumed by this foul mage whose apparition I faced. I kept up the chant, hoping that if I freed enough of the souls and spirits he had bound here, he would have to leave, lest they attack him for revenge.

It was not working. My inner vision could see the flames of those I had freed, all six of them, swirling around us all, but not trying to free others, or even looking for one to attack. It was as if they were disoriented, having no clue what was happening, or that they were dead. It was the wandering of the psychically traumatized, such as one saw after a disaster among the survivors. The stunned meandering that marked them as not all there.

Outside we again heard that howl. The call of the wild patron beast of my gods. I wished that I could smile again, that the scars of my burns had not made my face too scarred for a grin, so I could try to unnerve my foe. My rage fell away, as I spread my feet shoulder width, set my staff before me and brought the cutler to join it, blade still upright, along the staff. I called out again the orison I was chanting, rewarded by more noise from the real world, as I entered the realm of minds, to join serious combat with my opponent.

The transition to the Astral Realms is disorienting to most folks, which is why so many who try to enter it get lost, leaving behind an empty husk that their spirit and mind never return to. As you cross in, there is a moment of sensory overload. For me it was more than that, even. For in the Astral Realm, the orbs that I lost in the physical world still exist in my skull.

I had been to this realm several times, all but one accompanied by some teacher of the mental doni that let one enter it of their own free will. That other time, the last one, I had faced one of my kind who had gone wrong in a battle of wills. I had survived, but not won, but I was still not comfortable at being here. I focused hard suddenly upon accepting myself as I was, not what I once was, or could have been. One of my teachers had always spoken of that being the most crucial thing, to know who you were at the moment you entered that foggy realm of possibilities. He had said those who were lost here were looking not for who they were, but who they wanted to be, when they returned. That had led them away from their true self, and left their flesh to sit empty of guidance until it died from the lack of an inner flame.

My foe had chosen to show me only what he wished, he had crafted his image to be a skeleton with an outsized skull, wreathed in flames and smoke. Those flames were red and a violet so dark as to be nearly black. Those flames were slow burning, measured in their flickers and flows. He was confident, as I was not. To him, this was just a formality, before he tried to eat my mind and anima. A part of the rituals he had developed over his years to make this into a more powerful spell.

If he wanted ceremonies, then I would give him one in return. He had chosen to try and hide his real self from me, but as a flamen, or more specifically, an augur, I had resources he did not. Resources with more power. There was one of the Parcae who could help. Or at least I hoped so, as she was of the Parcae, she could be fickle. I chanted the orison of teaching, the call to have Devera, the Scourge of the Fates, the one who takes the broom of ritual cleansing to floors and high places, and uses it to chastise we mortals. Yet she was also the keeper and teacher of the rites we had. It was her that had come among us, to teach us of the roads to redemption, the orisons, songs and ways to cleanse our bodies and spirits. It was she who came to gather in with her broom the seers, augurs, and prophets to the gods’ will.

Needless to say, I did not have a good, close, personal relationship with this goddess, even though she was one of those I served. I could only hope that Befana could temper the anger she was notorious for, and guide her broom softly around me. As I chanted the call to learn, I felt the presence, so easily attracted here in the Realms between those of reality and the gods’ home. My foe started his own ritual, a twisted perversion of one central to the beliefs of my people’s worship. By that, I knew his gens, and origins, if not his true self.

Aranae, those who had left the land to follow the gods of the spiders, those false weavers of fates, whom my mistresses despised for the ruin to their own tapestries of destiny they had caused. Someone was about to get a rude awakening. I pitied my foe, suddenly. Not much, but a little. He came here looking for a fight. He was going to leave with a broom to his buttocks. I heard that whisking noise, of straw across the stone floors of the temples, that daily sweeping that some member of the order did three times each and every day. Realization struck me, I had gleaned some small piece of information about this foul mage, I knew his sex. I wondered what else would be revealed to me before we left this realm.

The arrogance of the mage made him unaware of his danger, until those giant bound straws rushed out of the mists, and caught him up in their movements, sweeping him away. One thing I knew more than any other, getting knocked out of the psychic realm would make his control over his incantementum weaken, letting the blessings of the gods free the souls he had enslaved.

Before I could depart, there was a woman beside me. Or more accurately a goddess. I started to kneel, and she stopped me. “We have no time for such things, kneel twice as long at your next prayers. No, make that three times as long, and do it in a temple, one properly cleansed. Now, listen, seer, for I have words for you. I have cleaned this mess only because the ones we sent to do it were to slow in acting. You will get no help from my sisters, for they have been won over by the false blandishments of those fools of the pure bloods. Know this. I cannot act until my own father allows me to. But when I do, I will cleanse the temples, the forum, all of it. It will be swept away. You may not like all that happens then.” She sighed, as if I had misunderstood her, and she knew it by my visage. “Go and set at ease the animae that this fool had bound, take their last words and warnings, then make them safe from such sacrilege forever. All will be swept clean, remember that.” She touched me with the handle of her broom, and I was back in the fight.

Normally there is a transition back to reality. Gods and goddesses can send one back more swiftly, if they choose. I got that kind of transition. I went from seeing the world, with eyes that had not been ruined, back to blindness. It was the closest I have come to irrational fear since we had set out. I nearly panicked, until I felt the Optio’s hand on my shoulder.

“Billenius. It is over, all but one collapsed. That one stands in the road still, but it seems to be waiting.” He waited a moment, the spoke very softly. “By its accoutrements, it is the body of the ambassador.”

In other words, this whole trap was here for a reason, and I was the target. I sighed. “Have everyone gather the bones, gear, weapons, everything. Build a pyre. See if you can find soulwood.” My instructions were terse. At first I feared Norbanus would argue. His hand tightened on my shoulder, then released before he walked away.

I went to the last skeleton, but what Isaid I keep to myself. It was, and still is, a family matter. I made the promises one makes normally to those dying. I would send word to our gens, ensure the safety of his son, Rufinio, and do the mission he had regarding a treaty of peace between Rahab and our land. One that included trade conditions that the Decuria would have killed him for. Or perhaps, as I still knew not the truth here, they had.

As we bore the torches to the pyres, a rider from Drinius' post service came north down the pass. We had needed five fires, even though the remains were skeletal, for as we spread out to find any other traps sites, the count of dead had risen. At least a double hundred skulls we had found. I prayed Drinius would send priests or a traveling vicar of some faith, to ensure I had not missed any who still were locked in the agony of undeath.

The rider, seeing what had come about, dismounted, took torch, and joined us. As the sun set that night, I opened the Nenia, as the only flamen, the priests of my folk, may sing the Cantare ab Animae, the song that opens the singing on of the spirits to their next life. A singing that lasted until we could no longer feel the spirits in the bones, and they had been reduced to ashes and taken up by the winds.

It snowed twice in the next hebdoma, as we crossed the pass. Then we entered the broad dry Rabahavi Plains, which in truth are a savannah. Trees dot those gently sloped plains thinly, save in a few groves planted by men to harvest as wood or for their fruits. We found the old road from the days of the fallen empires. It took only seven days to reach the environs of the city of al-Wadi, then another three to weave among the caravans and farm wagons between there and Rahab. I just hoped we could get my normal spot outside of town to camp at.

What the Re-Write of Predator's Ground was looking like... chap 1 unfinished

The streets of Dhibt- bustled with people, unlike most cities Scorpio visited, despite being past the midnight hour. Hrelgim, humans, even a few of the pale elves from the northland underworld partied, conducted business, or plied their trades. All strangely in darkness only broken a few times, when Kaljorn, the lesser moon, peeked through broken clouds above. Outnumbering the living, the walking dead and demons also prowled, seeking prey. The hunter from the Grass found himself playing such, hiding from those still stirred up by the assassination the red blade his mentor recently left in the headless body of the current lord of the city called for.
But still neither man had a clue whom the golden bladed knifes that came with the crimson one were meant for. Still puzzled, Scorpio eased the sheathed knife from his leather vest, using the faint light of Kaljorn to read again the marks, nine in total. Three marks on the Sheath. At the bottom, the seven blade star pattern that said all members and houses in the Allegiance of the Blades must aid him in all ways, near the opening, the upturned hand marking this as a rescue mission, and between, a bear skull lying upon a broken spear. The middle still puzzled him, as it marked the one he was to save.
The hilt gave three more clues in similar sigils. At the pommel, a wolf and pup were marked, near the narrow guard, a fanged skull of a man, and between them a symbol from maps, but different. Four arc marks used to show hills, three overlapping, with one beneath and to the left.
Skittering of pebbles over the cobble stones in the alley leading to their hiding place drew both Scorpio and Codi's attention. Before the walker came much closer, they heard nails scratching the baked mud walls five times. Then barely a whisper of cloth, as the tall, hyena-headed Hrelgrim called Seth-ma joined them.
"Your acts, though appreciated by the living, have stirred the hornets harshly, Codi." Seth-ma let his tongue twitch out the side of his fanged mouth, a sign of amusement. "But the boy, his acts have the whole city in a fit. Does he have to carry that damned stinger?" A three fingered hand, tipped with long, black claws gestured to Scorpio's back.
Codi Duhn grinned. "You try to get him to leave it. Besides, we all would be dead in that chamber, save for that dammed chained ball of his."
Seth-ma gave a soft bark of agreement, but still shook his head. "All now know who to seek. The Scorpion is too well known, and that stinger well feared. The city is on guard for him." The Hrelgi snarled, as a strong smell of blood tainted the air. "And trying to draw him out. Too many bards tell the tales of how he turns vicious when children are hurt."
Scorpio clenched his fist on the knife hilt, as the screams of little ones began nearby. It was his great weakness according to fellow Blades, but one he refused to set aside. And that pup beside the wolf on the hilt called to that belief that children should be protected at all costs. "Leave me if you must." He whispered.
Codi merely chuckled. "Hell, boy, draw the blade and find out if it is here we must act." His own golden knife lifted from its sheath, as the older man used another short appearance of Kaljorn to read the marks on the steel's business end. His teeth showed suddenly, as the mirth died and anger rose.
Feet padding on stones beyond the crates turned Scorpio's head to the gap, noting two shadows racing down the alley. A woman and a girl, by the hair lengths flowing atop them, but that was not sure. His own coppery mane, fallen from the traditional braids, was nearly as long. The pair slowed as they reached the crates the three assassins hid behind. Years of hunting prey, beasts and men both, let Scorpio stay still, as the two caught their breath. Kaljorn's light lit them for a few breaths, making them flinch. Both wore leather breeches, wide belts that cinched their waists and abdomens gently, and wool tunics. The woman's all deep verdant of a forest, the child's had green bodice and long red sleeves. Their leathers black, save circles etched into those girdles. There the elder sported two green circles, inscribed with black marks of a bear holding a spear, the child's were different, one like the woman's, the other very familiar to Scorpio. A Wolf holding a saber in its teeth. The same design on his mentor's own red and black leathers.
"Kiltyen." The word slipped out, leaving the clansman to star back at his companions, as the runners jumped back, distancing themselves from the crates.
"Blood drinker, you will not have my child." The woman snarled.
A foul curse in the tongue of the short folk burned the air, as Codi rose up, revealing himself. "Yania, we seek not your blood."
The woman's arm, trying to push the girl behind her, halted suddenly. "Codi?" The voice broke into sobs. "Though we were lovers, I cannot trust one of the clan that destroyed Hanval."
Codi stepped carefully from the knife and sheath where they could be seen. "Though I wear the badges of my clan, you know I am outcast for what I do, Yania. And you know what this means." The blade on the dagger was red, not gold. "Who escaped Hanval?"
The woman hesitated, trying to keep the girl behind her, but youth's curiosity overwhelmed her attempt, as the child sidestepped the arm suddenly. Snarling again, she attempted to snag the child's arm, failing. "None I know of, though Katvi was riding circuit of the farms."
"And your sister knows who to speak to amongst the clans, to buy a blade of vengeance." Codi whispered, eyes locking on the young girl, about seven walks of the stars across the sky old. "Eight years ago, the last time we met..."
Nervously silent, the woman merely nodded.
Seth-ma rose suddenly, disturbed. "Who would buy a blade that lets a killer save his own love? Who would take such coin?"
"Dzhino would." Scorpio said, softly. "And the Master of the Blades recently serviced of a blade he would offer to no others, amid the hill-baronies."
Standing up, the moon lit up the great bronze ball of the Scorpion's Sting, upon the hunter's shoulder. "It would be best we find some refuge, and other way from this place."
Seth-ma growled, turning back into the alley they'd used to reach this point, so close to the wharfs and ships that promised escape. "Stealing the fodder of the Asa-amu-mud is foolish. No paths will be left to us, save those into the Ki-Gedim-Du, and the land ghosts walk is not safe for you, Scorpion."
"Nor for the one who raises those ghosts, and owes me a debt of blood and souls." Scorpio whispered, still staring at the pair of Kiltyen females. "But if that is the path for them to be safe, we must take it." Lifting the gold dagger from his vest, he drew it finally, noting the blade was black.
Seth-ma fell silent, turning back. Blades of Vengeance and Succor were rare, never had he seen two at the same time, in all the centuries he had lived.
Along a wall, something stirred. A form rose, one of the tusked swine from the forests and plains around the city. The shoulders of the beast rose nearly to the chest of the half-elf, who stood a full spear tall. The death pig, snorted, eyes glowing a strange yellow in the moonlight. Seth-ma drew in a sharp breath. "Athalani, a namusah!" He roared, grasping a javelin from the quiver on his back. "Run, you fools."
Even as the Hrelgi moved forward, the beast rose on its hind legs, as a sickly saffron glow covered the wiry-haired hide, body twisting into something fouler. "Slayers and fodder, all caught in one grasp." Gravel marked growl sent shivers even up the spine of one used to such foes. Scorpio reached for the end of the chain of his Stinger, knowing this fight would draw more such beasts.

Renegade from the Crimson Inn {chap 4 of a complete Hunt of Scorpio Kenrai}

With the fall of night, two dozen vampires invaded Cosarali, seeking nourishment and recruits. They came crying a wailing song. They moved through town without fear, some of their numbers were former members of a squad of the guard that had been sent to the necropolis to check for the vampires three days before. Closed doors meant nothing, for the siren song of the vampire women was powerful enough to seduce men and women to willingly open them, and present their necks for feeding. Throats were torn out and not just the undead feasted, but many Blood Drinkers joined their Mistresses and Masters in the terrible libations.

Terror echoed off the town walls, as the beasts and the human servants had become nightly callers. The guards no longer even left the confines of the castle, save when one of the bushi would break and give in to the alluring call to their death or snap in rage as a family member was slain before the great gate, the insanity driving the bushi to leap off the wall, to the doom of being slain themselves. The other guards had their orders, try to subdue or incapacitate them, other wise take no chances, and shoot them in the back if they leapt, as a mercy.

The Daimyo stood on the walls with his men, tempted to sortie out and make a final attack to die in. But the Imperial Inspector had refused to allow him that option already. It was irritating to him, this retreat to allow his people to be slowly destroyed. He remembered the destruction of Kvaeg only a few years before, one of the greatest of the city-states of Domorushtuu. It had been an awful thing, when the vampires had struck there, taking over the city, and killing over three quarters of the population. The once great power of that land was now a shadow of its former self. His town could not survive such a disaster.

It was only as the lesser moon reached its zenith, barely a few turns of the glasses of sands into the dark hours, that something gave him hope. The singing ended with shrieks of rage and fear. They saw the vampires turn away, suddenly leaving the town, some flying, many running, to answer some call or summoning. The Blood Drinkers followed, though some were caught to be burned alive by their neighbors, who took heart at the flight.

The great lady was suddenly at the lord's side, a smile on her face. Tension was moving out of her stance visibly. The grin chilled the samurai lord, in a way he could not believe a woman's facial expressions could before this night.

"Good, the hunter has begun to take his prey. They will be back, but their numbers will be reduced, trust me, Sorin. Your town will survive. Now we must rest, then prepare to explain this to the Emperor, together." She sighed, her shoulders sagging. "I feared they had got him."

Behind them, a piece of the shadows stepped forward. "Not yet, but they still might, Yoritoko. When you make those decisions, please, feel free to call on those of us who will aid you. This place has become home to more that are banned than just the assassins." They turned, startled, and realized that the Mage of Shadows was there with them. The shade nodded his head, and moved to them. "And know that not all the magics of the world are evil. Some have been used to mitigate this disaster already, and before it is over, I am sure more will be."

Three sets of eyes looked to the south, where the moonlight showed the rising fogs summoned by one of the blood sucking fiends to cover their return to their sanctuary. A sanctuary they seemed to feel was no longer safe for them, as the town had seemed for the people only moment before. Gomi Sorin smiled at last, remembering a thing a seer had once told him. That in an hour of darkness, evil would leave his home.

===

The least moon had set, and only the stars and greater moon were still in the sky. The shadows of that light made things look like a strange dream world. Scorpio moved through the world, staying on the surface for now, looking for more vampires to slay. Three more had tried his skills already. And paid the price. One shot with a wolfs bane tipped crossbow bolt, one having been staked after assuming her sexual allure really could arouse him to being foolish enough to accept her embrace. The last had been tougher, another of the guards, still seeking his first feast.

The hunter bore the marks of that battle, open wounds from the beast's talons, a torn vest stained with blood from another swipe at his ribs, and a limp from an ankle twisted as Scorpio kicked the foe into the rushing floodwaters coursing through a canal. The beast had died in the water, battered by the debris, until some branch in the flow had been rammed by the storm waters through his back and finding what was left of his dead heart. It was strange to see a vampire turn into a muddy stain in the waters, not dust. Strange, but very satisfying.

The Kenrai clansman had felt the eyes of some foe on him. It was not a psychic ability, to feel a gaze, but something that anyone who spent any time out in the wilderness developed. Survival could depend upon the ability to feel your surroundings and know when some other predator was around them. One could tell by many things, the direction the other creatures were silent in, the place where the leaves or grass either moved against the wind, or did not move at all.

He tried to get a sense of who was watching him, but could not. The undead were masters of deception, and other than the guards, and a select few others, he had not made many friends in the town over his years there. Nor had he ever visited the Inn of the Crimson Tide, which made figuring if it was one of the prostitutes difficult. He knew by the lack of breath sounds, it was not a cultist. The hunter made no effort to force the watcher into a mistake. Time was on his side, if it was a vampire, the watcher would soon need to feed, and thus attack him for his blood. In the attack he would know the demon for what it once was.

Scorpio stopped, something setting his nerves on edge. There was something calling, not in a range he could make out the sound of, but still in the parts of the scales he could feel in his bones. It was the screech of rage of their queen of night, he was sure, finding his sunstone in the tomb that had been very decorated, cleared around and surrounded now by seven very dead Blood Drinkers, impaled on the rusting iron fence around the tomb. The leader of the vampires had at last realized this was not one of her cat and mouse games. This was a challenge to her skills, her power, her authority. A threat to her continued existence.

But it was not their queen who was stalking him. The hunter decided he had enough, soon the island would crawl with vampires and cultists. All seeking to kill him. He had only a finger to a hand of the stars motion across the sky to act. He pinpointed the spot the vampire watching him was at, and spun, throwing his blessed spear with a fury that required a follow through somersault to keep his feet. He rose drawing the short sword he favored for close combat since the days in Kvaeg.

The blood fiend rose up, the spear grasped in her hand. One of the whores, it seemed, though she seemed different. More primal than the others he had encountered so far. Less in control of her urges. She licked her lips and smiled at him. "I always wished you had come to us at the inn, hunter of men. Such strength and determination. Even the Mistress of the Inn could not see that in you. All any saw was the lazy boy from the prairies, sitting at the dock getting drunk all day and night. But I noticed those traits. I almost wish I had come to gather you in. But then, I would not have been able to drink in all of your soul and blood, like I will now." She spiked the weapon into the soft loam of the necropolis, and beckoned to him. "Come, let us dance, stir up that powerful blood of yours, so I may challenge the new Queen of Night and become Empress of Blood."

Scorpio gave her the one thing he rarely gave in town. That smile he reserved for his targets. No teeth showed, it was just a curling of the lips on the left side, more of a smirk than a smile. One that said, "I am better, and we both know it." Neither spoke, Scorpio just stood with his blade at the ready, low and left posture, feet spread shoulder width, knees slightly bent, and the right foot slightly ahead of his right. She in her pose of seduction, legs peeking out of the robe she wore, hands on hips and breasts thrust out. Their eyes met, and the real battle began, the one for the control of his mind.

Sarita smiled and let her gaze and powers bore into his eyes, trying to tear into his soul through its windows, and claim him for her feast. She did not toy with the idea, as her sister in blood had, of making him a slave. He was far more dangerous than any of the others believed. She had studied hard at the brothel, between the layings she had with those women of the town and travelers of like inclinations, to learn the Dark Arts that had made her kind in the first place. Now she applied all that she had learned of the darkness transmitted by the bite and blood and the powers it granted her. She willed him to become calm, forcing her thoughts into his mind, relaxing the muscles by her will over his. The tendrils of the darkness of death magic formed where she could see them between her and the hunter, like the strings of a puppet, leading from his body in many places to her hands.

Strings that refused to attach, no matter how hard she tried. The more she concentrated on the iron rich blood of her opponent, the more they slipped away. It was only at the last moment that she saw the mistake she had made, when she noted that his wounds leaked ichors that were not beautiful, lovely red, nor rich verdant green, but an unholy, to her kind, blend. Samita's body jerked as the realization hit her, that those of the mixed blood of elf and human were immune to the spells and crafting she had tried to bind him in.

The motion set off the predator she faced. With fluid steps he was upon her, swinging the blade with a speed that was unbelievable to her still stunned mind. The stroke sent her head flying into the brush she had spent so long in watching him. Her body stood for a long time, the hands still trying to find the strings to bind her slayer with, not realizing the fight was over, as it no longer had direction. Scorpio laughed harshly, wiping the sword on the body's back, making it spin wildly to seek the source of the touch. He backed away slowly, sheathing the steel grimly, and with no pleasure. Scorpio remembered his first hunt again, the day the necromancer had tried, and succeeded with that little staring trick. That he had grown enough to fight it gave him hope, but the failure and price he had paid for it in the past still haunted him.

The hunter broke a branch off a long dead tree, honed it to a point with the red knife, and slammed it home into the vampire body's chest. The cloud of dust barely slowed the hunter, who searched the brush to find the head, its mouth moving in silent screams of pain and curses. Scorpio knelt, his left arm and the scorpion tattoo on it over his raised knee. He did not smile, gloat or say anything, just reached into his pouch, and pulled out a clove of garlic, and a vial of water so clear it shone in the night sky.

Samita could only watch in horror as he poured the holy water into her mouth, shoved in the garlic and held her jaws shut. The taste of the buds of garlic burned her, but nothing like the blessed vita did. Her eyes were the last flesh left, as her head lost cohesion, and the assassin was left holding a dry brittle skull whose jaws were filled with razor sharp teeth. He ended the possibility of her being revived by lifting the skull up, and tossing it against a nearby tomb wall. He finally smiled at the explosion of dust as the gods took their due from the one who had avoided aging and death for so long.

Scorpio recovered his spear from the ground, cleaning the weapon of the vampire's ashen remains with a piece of cloth he then left on the ground. He wanted no way for them to track him as he walked back to the channel he had crossed to enter the necropolis, removed the traps on one bridge. The scorpion then moved to a place he had noted since his first reconnaissance as a good hiding spot. He then did the hardest thing there is to do in any hunt.

He waited.

Eventually, the foes would come to him. And he would meet them, on the ground he had chosen to do so on. He leaned back against some ancient device buried in the vines and trees, until what dangled above him suddenly made him stand up, his wicked smirk twitching to be released again.

The vampires would never think of this being here, he was sure. Even if they did, they would be too arrogant to think he could use such. But what did they know of his times outside the town?

===

As each of her children, adopted and made, arrived, Yariko set them to some task or patrol. She could not let this vile hunter of her kind survive the least moon's waning over the next five days. She made her preparations with a skill learned from the dead husk of a warrior at her feet, as all he had been flowed through his veins and arteries through her fangs and throat to be hers. She had discounted the theories of Samita and her books until the past few days, turning to them to increase her power only as the guards they had taken gave them the word. Knowledge she was sure those in town wanted her to have, that it was a hunter who had successfully slain more of her kind than she had already gathered once before.

The vampire born to Itazaki and Narika as Yariko, known now as Queen of the Night, wished she had gone slower. That she had taken more time to build up a force to face this foe. But when her rampage had started, which she knew now was just the blood lust, the hunter had been gone for a long time, and rumor spoke he would not return. When he had, after three days they kept him in the castel, she was sure the Daimyo had executed him for being an assassin in that time.

Then the Scorpion had been unleashed. He had killed one of her children, then ran. She knew it was a feint, but after seven days, she thought he had fled, and on the tenth day, she had been so sure, after the Daimyo's attack, that she had let her children go wild, holding only those who volunteered on the island to guard her. It had been a foolish mistake. She knew that now, with the wisdom of battle gained from the warrior. With a leather stiletto heeled boot, she kicked aside the corpse, wiping the blood from her jaw and lips with a satin gloved hand.

She was finding she needed to feed more often now that she was using the Dark Arts, which was not how they were talked about by those few books that were the gates of seduction to their path. But the power, the sheer energy, she felt like her skin was not just bloated from feeding, but straining to contain the power she had gathered this day. Her only regret was she had not found a mage or another plainsman to suck into her body. But the warrior had been with the Roshen il-Myrmithions, what many called the mercenary's guild. A member with some stature. He and a few others had landed on the eastern shore of the archipelago that was the city of the dead, only to rapidly be captured and destroyed. She had even let the blood of one particularly virile young man of that group be the feast of her cult followers, after tearing open his throat and taking the first fruits, as it were, of his vessels.

Another raft arrived, this one of cultists, as they started to walk ashore, everyone heard the distinct sound, from the west, of a catapult. Fire arced across the sky, and the luck of the hunter was still with him, as the first and only shot from the ancient catapult struck true on the raft. Fire spread with the explosion of the naphtha pot he had launched, from some old engineer of war's open air tomb.

Katlayna danced away from the spreading flames, cursing the barbarian of the prairies, and herself for not ensuring such things had not been left unguarded. The screams of those not so lucky tore the air. Once she was safely away she barked a command at one of the freshly converted guards. "Find him, engage him, but do not slay him, he is mine, understood?"

The guard, a boy barely able to shave before his conversion, bowed. "As you command." She ignored the way he left, not noticing he made noise, and in the chaos of the explosion, she failed to note he had a heartbeat, faded red hair smeared with dirt, more green blood on his clothing, and walked with a limp. He smiled as the so called queen tried to restore order, ducking behind the nearest tomb, just as the other two naphtha bombs went off. The hunter grinned, thinking that the garlic and silver nails from the coffins in the bombs should have taken a few more. He shook his head growing somber. The catapult had been luck, and one should not rely on it. Take advantage of it, yes, rely, never.

Scorpio faded into the maze of tombs and channels, leaving the barrow he had used to deliver the death with, not out of need for speed, but another trap was rigged to it. One the vampires might not appreciate.

===

In town, the rainbow of fire caught the eyes of all on the wall. Gomi Sorin nearly choked on the cup of wine he had been sipping as the fiery shot slammed home, and twin bursts of light followed saying that some one was unleashing the dogs of war on his enemies. Lady Yoritoko had been looking into the garden below, where she had committed the unforgivable sin of buying an assassination, and missed the arch of the shot, but caught the bursts of light at the ground.

"I had not realized he knew of warfare," was her only comment. They watched for a while, as the fires died on the distant maze of islands and canals, the light of the blazes showing the water a red and orange light to match the blue of the greater moon's glow.

"He has many talents. He spent a year in the army of some Dux of the Vamoi, to get to a target, or so I heard." The Daimyo sighed. "I am tempted to tell the Emperor to catch our young hunter himself, if I am sentenced to death. Let him see what walked into my town and has blossomed into someone I dare not attempt catching, lest I provoke its anger."

Word of the flares spread through the town, where a few of the Blood Drinkers still were incognito among the population, as part of the plan. They gained their careful sips of nourishing blood from victims they feigned helping, or in back rooms hidden from view. Several already were regretting their choices. Others were being ferreted out by the guards and their fellow citizens.

The bad part was that anyone not of the local races was suspect. The Kiltyens had all fled at the first sign of the troubles, knowing the Leech Witch and her actions here were too recent, her having been a member of their clans still a sore spot. The dwarves all left for the relative safety of Gyevo's Enclave across the Kasatur, and the other folk fled by ship over the last week. But a few remained, several Vamoi sailors, who many were sure actually were scouts for the pirates from the isle of Lejui, and two Chigan Roshi, or syndics, died awful deaths in the streets as the cleansing began. The guard was ordered not to leave the walls, to let the townsfolk deal with things, unless they let the fires spread too much.

Few looked to see if the guilty were really guilty, and several Blood Drinkers took advantage of the situation to turn neighbor on neighbor. The town descended into chaos, even as the real threat was being eliminated to the south.

===

Dawn was a welcome relief to Scorpio. Seventeen more vampires and servants had died this night, and if the talk he had overheard was correct, he had over double that many more in the fire attacks at the beach. It was indeed a good night, but he still had to survive the day. He knew that only three of the vampires were left, one of the Blood Drinkers, given the status as a reward for loyal service, and two of the whores. Amongst the Kenrai clan, going without sleep was common, everyone had to take turns watching the herds, patrolling against intruders of the other clans, and many other dangers. Still, this was taking its toll on the hunter, who thought he had been fit, forgetting the troubles associated with nightwalkers.

He still had not a clue as to how many normal folk were left to face him, as the Blood Drinkers were only worried about their masters, and the master-less ones were getting restless, not sure there would be enough victims of the mistresses and master to go around. It had been interesting, listening to those conversations, before he ended their lives, realizing they had no will of their own, really, anymore. He was not so much slaying living people as squashing ants. And the analogy held, as he had to get the queen to finish the job.

Walking deeper into the forest, he headed to a place he hoped would be safe, one he had visited several times over the years in the town. It was a glade, open, with a simple old fallen temple, with a great stone idol of a woman cradling air, as if there was a wounded person in her arms. For the hunter, this place was so special, the peace he felt there gave him the ability to move on each time only reluctantly.

Scorpio did not know who the lady depicted was, whether she was the saint of some ancient order, a goddess or just a heroine of the locals of those days. The temple was gone, save the stone floor, steps leading up to it, and the roof and columns around the statue. It would be safe though, for experience, and a source that might lie, but not about things like this, had told him the undead could not enter the glade easily, and avoided the shelter of the ruined fane like humans did plague ships.

It was a half day walk, and for once he was glad he had started out before the first lightening of the sky to the east. He still had a ways to go, with some of the Blood Drinker cult trailing him he was sure. He felt sorry for them, and hoped the peace of that place would not be denied to him. By now he was sure, after the killings he had done, that the vampire queen bee was angry enough over his one night destruction of her power base, that she might come for him herself. He hoped so, as in the past, cutting the head off the snake had proven a useful ploy for him. The head held the worms together as a snake, which was useful, but once the head was gone, the worms either fled to start their own collection, or fought amongst themselves to be the new head, and rule the snake that survived.

Vampires had proven no different, at least not across the sea at Kvaeg. There it had taken him weeks to identify, even with the help of Tozuru and Railesh, the leaders of the packs of vampires, and learn that slaying them was the key to saving the town. But few indeed had the opportunity to learn about the nosferatu the way he had, from outside, guided by an insider. He only hoped that Railesh did not show this time, for he knew that the bloodbath was sufficient to summon the enforcer of the nightwalker society, but not which way he would decide this time.

The clansman left the main trails with an hand of sun still to walk, losing for the time being those that trailed him. Not for long, he was sure, but holy grounds, while not perfect in protection, would give him at least some sound sleep. He trusted the presence of the lady of the place he headed. He began to move with much more care, avoiding leaving the marks of passage he would look for, but certain with nightfall, unless the afternoon rains washed away his blood spoor scent, the vampires would come to hound him down.

When he reached the glen, the fog of the night that settled here often was just lifting, leaving the open space looking like a wide, white roofed temple. He crossed the close cropped grass swiftly, trusting to the sun's rays to erase the path in the dew and lifting grass to obliterate his footsteps. Once at the stairs he stopped, resting a few moments. Still hoping the presence here would not object to the death that hung around him, the hunter opened his mind to the feel of the world. Scorpio felt no malice, but not being a sensitive type, he was not sure if he would know that feeling if he met it.

As he rested he kept a careful watch, noting the tree line, the brush, the faint trace of the long forgotten road to Rantini further west. Only after he was satisfied he had avoided detection did he walk any further up to the temple. At the top of the stairs, he set down the hand crossbow, his sword, all but three of his knives, and the pack on his back, still carrying the spear, he walked over to the columned area that protected the stone lady, and knelt in respect before entering.

"Forgive the blood and death around me, lady who's name I know not. But I have taken a blade that is just, I hope. If you wish and let me know, I will leave. I have no idea if killing vampires and their minions disturbs your peace." He waited, not knowing what sign she would give, or if someone as faint in religion as him would recognize those signs if they were not big. When nothing bad happened, he entered, and went to one knee again before the statue. "I lay this here for you to judge, lady. I only ask that you let me finish this job, to prevent the complete slaying of Cosarali by the vampires, and clean the town of all taint of the Blood Drinkers for a while."

The hunter waited, and when he got no answer he could discern, he bowed his head. He detached the assassin's blade from his belt, and left it on the cupped hand of the lady. "Take care of this for me while I sleep. If I snore, please forgive me."

He took off his vest, folded it into a pillow, and lay down under the only bench left in the structure. His sleep was sound, for the few hours he got, so he guessed the lady at least was accepting the apology.

Renegade from the Crimson Inn {chap 2 of complete Hunt of Scorpio Kenrai}

Tamiko sat in the Inn of the Crimson Tide, wondering if the time had at last come for her to end her long life. She remembered the days of the city that once sat where now only a town remained, even when the city lay a league further inland, and what all called Tarafu Lake was once the harbor, not a fishing pond slowly choking in silt and vegetation. She was sure that the time in which she could solve the town's new predator problem was over. The ancient nosferata no longer had the time to gather the power, nor the stomach to use the methods needed swiftly enough to make a difference.

Over the past two moons, since the wild child had left, four of her "daughters" had answered the nightly siren's song Yariko crooned as she stalked the citizens in the streets and even their homes. The Mistress' plea to Bloodless Keep had been answered with a call of good for her, and other insults to her honor and origins. Tamiko cried softly, knowing her hold on the children and the city was wavering, Another few nights, and those who had fed only partially would succumb to the call of the Huntress, as they had taken to calling Yariko.

And none would stand against her, not since Nariko-sana's body had been found by her now deranged husband. He and another power in the town had been drinking in the shop while the woman was brutally slain. None had seen Toruzu the knife maker since that morning. Nor would they again, Tamiko felt, at least not until most no longer remembered him, and he could return.

She sighed, and decided to use the one last card available, she would try to seek out Toruzu, where ever he had hidden himself, and ask him to make a special blade. One he must use himself. Tamiko knew a secret so dark few others who knew it were still alive. She knew the knife maker's true identity, and status in the guild of assassins who called themselves the Allegiance of the Blades. She stirred herself up to walk in the dark streets, and try to avoid destruction by her now feral daughters. But she held little hope of making it that far. Unless she had help. And only one person in town, and one without it, could stand against a pack of vampires on a rampage, surrounded by a cult of Blood Drinkers dedicated to serving their mistresses.

She stood and walked slowly so as not to allow any in the house to know she was moving to her dressing table. There she unlocked the small chest on it, and took out another locked case. She lifted an onyx stone pendant from her jewelry box, and spoke the words the one in town had taught her in his youth, before he found his own place in the spectrum of those who are dead yet still tread the earth.

In moments shadows filled the room, surrounded her, and she was gone, just as the door to her room was torn from its hinges, and two more of her creations left her service in invading her room. The Inn of the Crimson Tide would never open its doors for business again. At least not for a hundred years or more, until the source of this group of vampires was forgotten in the fog of history.

With the dawn, nineteen drained corpses littered the streets and homes of the town, and three women crucified before the inn for staying true to their Mistress screamed in agonies beyond mortal comprehension, as their bodies were turned to dust by the rising sun's first rays on their bodies.

Despite being told he was to speak to the Daimyo immediately, Scorpio was kept in the great castle of that lord for three days, as the master of the prefecture tried vainly to deal with the problem. In the end, it was the Emperor's envoy, the dreaded lady Yoritoko, who sought him in the garden he spent his days in. She walked in with a grace only age and confidence in one's power could grant. The death toll in town alone was now over two hundred souls, and each night it climbed more, as more vampires seemed to appear from the woods and far off Bloodless Keep. Not to mention the damned who lived, those who worshiped the vampires, and aided them in their hunts.

The great lady did not pretend to be anything but who she was. She came in and took a seat next to him amidst the garlic and wolfsbane planted in the garden. Her face, though still able to stir men's hearts, was lined with the cares of the days, and horrors of the nights. She motioned to her bodyguards to leave, and they did, reluctantly.

They sat there for a long time, silent as the garden itself. When she spoke at last, it was with a voice that was not doing what it was used to. It was filled with fear, loathing, and desperation, not the command he had heard her speak with on their last meeting.

"You are the last one of your guild still alive, hunter. Unless Jinatozu has again evaded death and my spies." The name spoken was legend, Jinatozu was the Grand Master of the Allegiance, every branch owed him loyalty, every local guild master obeyed him over the needs of their own people. He was the deadliest, most prolific, and longest lived assassin known. And the words implied he had been here, and might be among the dead.

The Kenrai clansman was shaken. Nor could he respond. To speak of the members of the guild to those not within it bore the penalty of the Red Knife, to be hunted and cut down in a bloody, public manner. He held still, waiting for the lady to continue her revelations, and fearing what might come next.

She waited patiently, and when the hunter at last looked at her, he found her eyes, leaking tears, awaiting his. "The good of the Empire requires I ignore the law. You may name your price when done, just end these beasts, assassin. And in the eyes and ears of the Emperor, your name will never be mentioned, nor your profession." She did not waver, despite having to blink back the tears constantly from her weakness of having to turn to an Otaku, an outcast in the eyes of her people.

"End this nightmare, as you did before, Kenrai. End it before it ends the empire." She rose, and started to walk away, stopping at the door. "This conversation never took place, hunter. Save in our dreams." She set a single coin, one of the great golden 'Lun's, the heaviest and purest of gold coins in this land on the bench by the door.

The half elven male stood, flexed his arms, and spoke at last. "I understand. What I do may cost me my life, but this town has become my home." He sighed, walked to the bench taking up the coin and spoke the one set of words that could save him, unless it proved the local guild master lived. "I have taken your coin, and agree to the commission."

Yoritoko shivered in fear at the leaden voice the hunter spoke with. He had accepted the job, even thought it might mean his own death. And there was a steel in the voice, the steel of an assassin's blade. She did not enjoy sending soldiers into battle, and this felt far too much like that to the lady who held the power of the Emperor in her words. She hoped, as the hunter, now grim faced, left the garden, to begin his hunt in earnest, would never be needed again.

She noted the guards who stood in the hall moved out of the hunter's way, saluting him as he walked away. They knew just by his face what had been said. They knew him from the hunt for the Leech Witch, when he had shown the red knife he bore to many of them, as he chased her through the town, after saving two children. And they had been the ones that morning to tell Scorpio that he had only delayed the death of the children he had saved that night, for they had been in the bodies recovered with the rising of the sun.

The room was darker than a moonless midnight, so dark it chilled even the cold undead body of the vampire known these days as Tamiko. She shivered out of an old, nearly forgotten reflex, wondering at what was happening. She had triggered the spell correctly, despite the long span of years since the one who had crafted it gave it to her. Her memory was still sharp enough, the undead woman thought, to remember such a simple spell trigger.

Then the darkness and cold parted, and she found herself in a room filled with the half-light of shadows. There was a table with a small lantern on it to cast the shadows in one corner, surrounded by hanging cloths to create the shadows. Beside the table sat the two she needed to see. The dwarven knife maker, and Davet Ciego, the mage of Shadows. The Dyermo smith looked worn and haggard, even she could see this. Davet was even more drained, his normally sharp edges frayed by the attacks of the wild pack of her children.

She took the chair that Davet indicated, trying to avoid panicking. These two together was a terrible thought. Their condition stated that perhaps she had turned to the wrong source for help against her renegade children. The two most powerful men in town, save perhaps the mage who ran the school for the magically gifted children and adults in the area, looking like they had been in fights and lost, was not a good sign.

The Mage of Shadows spoke first, his voice a whisper, and very rough compared to its normal melodic pitch. "So, this time it has happened, and you have lost control of them all. I warned you this day would come, Tamara." She shuddered at the use of the name she had been born under. "The wild urges of your kind cannot be suppressed forever. Sooner or later, the hunger for blood will force them to feed until full." He paused, as his form flickered. "And being repressed for so long, when they break free, it is as if you have unleashed a ravenous beast into the tame, unprotected flocks."

She hung her head, knowing this centuries old argument between them would now be mute. She had agreed all that time ago that if she was ever proven totally wrong, that her kind could live in groups and not go berserk in their feasts, to a judgment by this one's hand. "I admit now my error. Once a child takes the wild path, there is nothing left for the rest but to follow or at last turly die. But how can we send these on to hell where they belong? Can I get your aid in this?"

The dwarf known locally as Tozuru, but born to the name of Jinatozu laughed without humor. "Only a dedicated hunter of your kind could stand against this many of the undead, you fool. And there are none of those here. In case you did not notice, your 'daughters' have even managed to slay several knights of holy orders." He leaned back, stretching his body gingerly, and she noted the many bandages and a splint on his left calf. Tamiko swallowed harshly, realizing that the greatest assassin in the world had been taken from this fight already.

"Then I must find some holy man or woman pure enough to purge all the undead from this land." She sighed.

There followed a short silence, until the Mage of Shadows spoke again in that soft whisper that was all he could project of his voice into the real world from where ever it was that his body abided. "There might be one who could do this mission you ask. If he can be freed from the chambers I am sure the Daimyo tossed him in three days ago." He let his words settle into the mind of those he sat with, hoping they would be the first to offer to speak with one who had shown the early glimmers of being a hunter of the undead and necromancers in his recent adventures.

When it became obvious that neither of them would mention the name, the shade who had once been a man spoke the words. "He could be our weapon in this, if we can free him.."

The Dyermo cut him off, not rudely, but with information. "He is free. Yoritoko freed him. And from the rumors that reached my sources, she has already offered him the job. One I intend to confirm to him, despite his breaking the codes of silence. This is a situation the codes of my guild never anticipated. That all officers in a guild chapter would be taken out, or disabled at once, it was never conceived that a junior member would have to negoriate and accept his own contracts without help from the guild." He snorted. "But damned if he did not try to hold to the codes as best he could."

The woman suddenly knew fear. Once he knew that children had been killed, especially children he had saved during the last great challenge the town had faced, he would be furious. And her own existence would be endangered. Yet she could tell these men had no care for her continued walking the earth. They cared for the town first. Or their own followers in it. She trembled, knowing they had already made their own decision. She reached into her robes, and pulled out the pouch of monies she had.

The coins, the best and greatest of her wealth, weighed heavily in her hand. "I know you cannot control this one, once he begins to hunt. Like my children, he bears a hatred in his heart. For my kind, and those who create other undead. He will not stop this time I fear. You will both be endangered by your own walking of the edges of the dark arts."

The shade merely laughed. "Not all seek immortality and eternal youth, Tamara."

His continued use of her true name irked her. She had long ago hoped that all who knew it were dead, and forgot often that she had shared it foolishly with one she had thought to be like herself in seeking the joys of prolonged life and vigor. "Enough, we cannot hope that your magics will protect us from detection by my wild children. Or would you like your true name spoken for all to hear?"

She glared at the shade, and discovered again the futility of trying to have a staring contest with one whose eyes were no longer in this world. When she at last stopped trying, the room again fell silent, until she made her mind up. There was a clinking of the small bits of metal that held such great worth to so many, as pouch into the lap of the Grand Master of the Allegiance of Blades.

"Whatever it takes, Jinatozu, even if it costs me my continued life. They must be stopped." Her words left her empty, cold and realizing that there could indeed be an end to her rule and seeming life. Even if she could still slink in shadows after all the dust settled, she would never be able to return to her own home again.

"We accept your coin, Tamiko. And worry about yourself, not us. When our time comes, Davet and I will accept the end of our days." The voice of the assassin was heavy as granite, and echoed as if in a great cavern. Or a tomb.

In the keep he had heard enough to know that Itazaki was not going to be of use to him this time round. He knew that the man was broken, and doubted if he would even be sane when he began to function again. If he did. Now he understood more fully the hatred the man had for the undead, and why so many times he had assisted him.

Scorpio sighed, as he entered a side street, normally packed with simple craftsmen and those selling food stuffs from the farms around the town. But today it was nearly empty, and those who still dared walk even by daylight moved swiftly, and with fear in every step. His mind was moving as fast as ever before, thinking of where the vampires would be able to hide, gather with the cult of the Blood Drinkers. He had only a few of his most prized weapons left, and none of the trick ones, or spare knives, having lost or used them on his last job. That Tozuru was missing as well disturbed him deeply. He had counted on the small grey dwarf to be here for replenishing the blades he felt nearly naked without right now.

The Kenrai clansman walked into the ward where the Inn of the Crimson Tide lay, now abandoned, and exposed by all who had patronized it in an attempt to distance themselves from the vampires now. This was the less savory ward, the one he himself lived in when in town. It had always been a den of thieves, whores, conmen and the unskilled craftsmen, those whose works, while functional and often needed, lacked the artistry of the south ward's residents. This was the North Ward, the largest walled section of Cosarali inside the walls of stone, but still small compared to many villages and hamlets even out in the farmlands.

Buildings here towered up over the walls often, rising four to seven stories off the ground, many of those structures made of wood, bamboo and other flammable materials. While known for its fights and murders, more folk died in fires here started by careless fools or simple accidents than ever died at the hands of a thief or slayer. At night it was the last part of the community to grow dark and silent, if one could call the lower level of noise that passed as the predawn hours quiet.

But now, by what he heard, it was as quiet as the tombs on the south shores of the Tarafu. That thought sparked the hunter's thoughts to that place. The ancient, long abandoned necropolis, the city of tombs and graves, that sat beyond the current south shore of the lake. It was carved with low grassy areas and sloughs, once the canals dug for carrying the dead to their final resting places. It was a place few from this society ever entered, with their aversion to disturbing the dead. The local reverence for their ancestors, something that while it was done in the grasslands, went a bit further here, he had discovered over the years. Many of his friends had asked why the alcove built to hold a shrine to his ancestors still sat empty.

But that worship ended at the slowly silting up lake of Tarafu. Once they took a dead body over there, they had left the city of the dead to the dead, and not even tried over the centuries to maintain what had been built in the necropolis. Tombs, no matter how well constructed tilted and broken, the ones that survived still where the largest, some the size of great houses. Houses for the dead, hideouts for the undead.

The hunter stopped in his moccasins, and turn around to head beck to the south. As he did, he noticed the young bully leaning against an empty stall's awning post. He wore the black leathers of the so called Night Maces. It was a gang mostly of thugs and robbers, who preyed on the weak in the ward. They were not the real thieves, those felt that stealth was more important than power. The hunter merely smiled at the boy. When he had come to town, they had tried to intimidate him, to catch him and take his wealth. Once they found out he could not be intimidated, and that attacking him was both difficult and dangerous, they had given up. And the nights he had hunted them, laying a knife to neck or the night they found he had managed to penetrate their little gathering and had a knife to back of their leader had earned him some respect, as well as fear of the hunter.

This one, though, had the air of arrogance he thought indicated youth and a lack of wisdom. The hunter stopped and returned the gaze he was taking from the boy. The boy saw the tanned leathers of a vixgruy the nose horned antelopes of the plains, made into the naturally grey leather pants and vest, with a blue shirt of thin wool beneath it. The hunter saw a boy in leather pants and shirt of black, with silver, gold and bronze buckles, buttons and studs decorating it. His boots were black as well, and came well up his calves. There were stains on the arms and chest of the shirt. as well as on the boots. Brownish red residues, ones that the hunter knew well.

The youth smiled at the hunter, then spoke loudly. "Don't go out at night, gaijin, unless you want to be a dead man. Your days here are done, we rule now. Leave, and we will let you live."

Scorpio did not let any emotions show on his face, at first. then he smiled the one he always gave the Night Maces when they challenged him. He answered the challenge, loudly, and with joy, knowing he had met the enemy. "Today is a good day to die. Are you ready to move to the next world?" He raised his voice, and continued. "I see you wear the blood of your victims well, Blood Drinker. But how do you wear your own." The hunter drew his sword, and took up a stance made for close combat.

The boy's arrogance flickered to fear for a moment, as he realized that the hunter was not scared of his new status. And even more surprised at being marked as a member of the cult. Around them, the few people on the street backed away, in fear of the Blood Drinker, and more fear of catching a stray stroke. The boy knew he had to accept the challenge, but it was only that foolish hunter from the grasslands. What did he know of fighting in the city.

The boy drew his blade, and laughed as his arrogance and ignorance made him overlook the way the clansman held his sword, the position of his feet. The member of the Maces danced more than the hunter, who conserved his movements, moving as little as needed to keep his defensive position. The boy attacked first, one of the side attacks so prevalent in a society ruled by those who gave more credence to the removal of a head, than a sure and safe kill, It was the kind of move that opened one up to a short fight, but that was not what Scorpio wanted. stepped back, letting the swing take his foe around and give him a side to strike easily. A simple poke with the point of the straight short sword he used was effective enough to give the hunter first blood, but he held back from sliding his blade deep between the ribs, and risking lodging his weapon in those bones.

The clansman withdrew, stepping back to avoid the backhand slash the thug tried in rage at having already been wounded. Now his own blood began to flow onto the leather shirt, and his smile of joy was gone. The hunter was everything the others had said he was, quick, efficient, and deadly. The boy knew that others would have gone for the kill, and the motion of his counter strike would have flexed his ribcage to catch and bind the blade in his right lung. He backed out, looking again to the hunter's eyes, and not liking what he saw there. The hunter was angry, something no Mace had ever seen from him.

They sparred for a while, trading blade blocks and moves to form the dance of death. Neither of them desired to end their life here, and it would come down to who had the better skill, the stamina or luck of the moment. And while desire to live on beyond this fight was in both, a desire to live never beat skill. The clash of blades drew the guard, but they stayed back, for word had come that the hunter was not to be interfered with unless it appeared he had joined the Blood Drinkers. They took up places where they could watch, and learned something themselves. Few of them thought Scorpio had skill with any blade but a knife, being from the clans of the prairies, where swords were rare, and spears more common.

The sun continued its climb into the sky, as the two traded blows, feints and spent time just catching their breath. The boy was breathing harder, and the wound he had suffered was taking its toll. The lung had been punctured, and was slowly filling with fluids, evident by the bloody froth he spat from time to time. He was slowing, and knew it. The hunter, in his more conservative manner of fighting was wearing him down. The thug had tried taunting his foe, only to find him as silent as the samurai he had seen fighting outside the walls, or inside when accosted. This man was tougher than he or his brothers had thought, and even the strength of the bloods he had taken, or the special potions the alchemist the Night Maces had taken under their wing would not let him win.

He lowered his blade, pointing it to the ground. It was an offer of ending the battle. The reply was simple. With an underhanded stab, the boy found two feet of steel jammed into his guts, upward to pierce his heart. With a swift twist, and a rapid drawback, the blade came free, splashing the cobblestones along with some pieces of his insides. The young thug staggered back only to have all the strength leave him as if he was a puppet having his strings burnt away by a fire, slowly falling in an uneven heap.

The hunter walked forward, and found a scrap of real cloth to use on the body to wipe off his blade. He spent some time doing so, ensuring the blade had no taint of the blood of the boy left, as he walked away, between the guards, who parted, to allow him to walk by. After the saw he had left the quarter, the junior most of the guild turned to the leader, and spoke.

"So we are to just let him go? What about the body?"

Jenro chuckled, then stared down the fresh recruit from the capital. "You have to learn about Scorpio. He's really good at what he does, However, he is not very good at cleaning up the mess afterward. But we can do that. Get a corpse carrier down here to toss the body into the burn pit west of town. I don't want this one to walk the night." He snorted loudly. "He was not too bright, you do not irritate an assassin. Or disturb one at work."

The words sent a shock through the suddenly gathering crowd. One hissed louder than the others. The guard had just let an assassin go. The thoughts of many, especially those of the Blood Drinkers still hidden in the population, chilled at the idea of the Daimyo hiring an assassin to hunt them and their Mistresses. Some faded away into the crowd, others returned home. A few decided it was time to leave town, and the cult, if they could.