Frays in the Weave

Vengenance, part one

"It is done."

Karia sat down in the grass. He was tired beyond reasoning. When was the last time he had eaten? They slept whenever they had a chance but without food sleep helped less than he would have thought. Fighting in the mountains was never this bad. Long days of waiting followed by moments of frantic fighting, but never the endless hunt before the killing began. Executions more than fights.

He rose and swept the plains for more prey. None to be seen, none left. They had kept count. Not a single man lived to brag about rape and murder. Wherever she went after death Nakora was avenged.

Strange then that he should only feel tired. When they started the strange game of predator and prey he had hoped for satisfaction, but that emotion never emerged. Somewhere he understood that they had become even less than animals, because only an unthinking avenger could have managed the eightdays of horrors they had brought upon the hunted as well as themselves.

"Gring, we're done. What now?"

She walked back from the last corpse, trampling grass ahead of her. "Don't know. We created honour, but I feel dirty, and we're not done yet. More dirt will cling to me before we are finished."

Karia looked at her. Taller than any of his sworn men, tusks red with blood after she ripped the throat out of the last of the murderers and more human than most he had ever known. Maybe she was right about humanity after all.

"Then what?" he asked. "Ri Khi, to bring vengeance to their very homes?"

"Ri Khi," she confirmed. "This must be paid in full. Honour demands it. We are but tools."

There it was. She liked this even less than he. Too much killing. More than he'd been involved in during years of campaigns against his enemies. Khraga like Gring.

"So be it. Could we at least rest, feed and wash. My men follow me out of loyalty, but I have forced them far beyond that border. It is not fair. I," he faltered. "I would dishonour them otherwise," he finished when he realized what he wanted said.

Gring nodded. "You are right. I apologize. We rest."

Karia turned and went through the high grass in search of his men. Blood everywhere. The last they found had crawled and begged. Two even weapon less. It never mattered. The very last, the one Gring killed with her tusks, tried to flee with only his hands. He couldn't walk with two shattered legs.

Karia wondered what made someone using the very last of his body that way. They must have known the end was coming, and still.

"Aphitus, make camp upwind. We're finished here," he said when he saw one of his riders. We're finished, and so are my men. Seven alive. Twelve dead. Why did we have to run into those nomads?

He walked to his horse and dug for some scrap of food he knew he wouldn't find. It graced while he searched his pack. Searching was more important than finding. It gave him something to do. Something to occupy his mind with.

They would rest for a day or two. Hunt perhaps and then west. Trailing the caravan, he guessed. If they could even find its tracks. The hunt had taken them far, far out into the Sea of Grass, and he no longer knew where they were. Gring did. She always did.

***

Gring wiped her tusks with grass, spat some out and swallowed some. She would throw it all up later, but she had a need to clean her throat as well.