Krazzek
“Huh,” Krazzek said. “It's dead.”
The thief and Jajess's guardsmen stood in the ruins of Tivik staring at the stinking corpse of the giganotosaurus. Scavengers had picked at the flesh before it rotted but there was no mistaking the shape, or at least the size. It had been dead for at least three days while they'd worked on the assumption it would have returned in the direction of the plains where it normally lived. They'd only come to Tivik for supplies.
“But we can't use it dead!” Heshk complained.
“I don't think it really cares.”
“Search the area!” Heshk ordered his men. “Look for anything to tell us what happened here! That goes for you too, thief!”
“I'm not under your command anymore. My job was to bring you to where we fought the Fang. I did. It's not my fault the thing's already dead. Maybe the Birdfang got a big force together to take it out.”
“No. That much I can tell you right now. There was no force. I know battlefields well enough. The ground here is trampled, but not by human feet. There's no tracks of another large dinosaur either. And look at the way its throat is cut. Chewed at by scavengers, but the corners are too clean. That's a sword wound. A human being slew it in single combat. Or with no more than two or three men.”
“That thing!?” Krazzek choked. He'd hated the idea of taking it on with an army. One man?
“It's been done before,” Heshk pointed out.
“Sir!” one the guardsmen called out. “I've got tracks here, a minmi pulling a cart! Their tracks in are trampled by the Fang, their tracks out aren't!”
“See? No more than a cart full of people. I'm curious to meet our valiant Fang slayers. Gather up men, we're following those tracks!”
“Why? Shouldn't we be reporting to Jajess?”
“Think like a warrior for one second. Try. Strain your mind. You're a champion skilled, powerful, or lucky enough to take down a Fang. Maybe you're from the village, or from the forest tribes, or a wandering legionnaire or mercenary it doesn't matter. You win your battle and you're obviously whole enough to climb back into your cart. Now with the dying fang in front of you, what do you do?”
I catch the essence, Krazzek realized. If I know anything about infusion at all I do, anyway. And maybe take a bone or two with me as well. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Heshk seemed to see the realization in his eyes. “Essence and soul can be kept in a wineskin full of blood for days if the infuser is any good. Weeks even. Of course we couldn't risk a master infuser out here in the palm forest until we had the Fang contained so we had to capture it alive. But if you already killed it and you know an infuser, who wouldn't take the chance? The patrician might get what he wants after all.”
And I won't have to disappear. Too bad. I was almost looking forward to it.
They followed the tracks out of the village until they reached the sight of another battle. Scavengers had carried away everything this time, but there was a lot of blood at the river campsite near the crossroads. And signs that the cart had stopped. And then...
“The tracks are going to Maukra's hut!” Krazzek said.
“Who's Maukra?”
“She's a Birdfang priestess. Anyone who knows the Birdfang knows her. This is bad, Heshk. She's incredibly powerful. She's granted power from the gods, like a priestess of Maia. And she's a master infuser. She does the weapons and tattoos for the most promising Birdfang warriors. We've got to be careful. Going up against her on her home turf is...”
“Dangerous. I understand. But we're paid to be in danger.”
“You are. But I...”
“Besides, I won't start a fight if she's going to be reasonable. But you know what else I understood? Master infuser. I was right. They're making a weapon from the fang. Which was the entire point of the operation in the first place.”
Verris
“Kill it slowly,” Ballum told Verris. “It must hate you.”
Three days ago Ballum had started training Verris with the whip. Like most people Verris thought of them as a gladiator’s weapon. Flashy, impressive to look at, and maybe dangerous if you used them right but not something you'd want in an actual battle. Ballum had just shrugged.
“It doesn't matter. This is the weapon you hate with.”
He'd had a point. Every swing of the whip reminded him of Hallek, and the day Hallek ruined his life. Now he could fight with the whip in one hand and a sword in the other or—and this had seemed strange to him at the time—with a sword in one hand and the other on the handle of his whip.
That morning Ballum had handed him a whip made from the tail of a brachiosaurus. It had the same foreign runes on it as every weapon Ballum gave him, with a sharp point on the end of the handle. The tail was made of brachiosaur tendon, and it looked absolutely lethal. But it wasn't infused yet.
“This will be your weapon. The weapon of a true Kuraga. There are ceremonies.”
And then he'd brought Verris to a very familiar storehouse, where Gargez had died and he and Fylati had first made love. Lying in the spot where Gargez had been tied was a nearly infant Brachiosaur, bleeding from its tail. And Ballum told him to kill it slowly.
“You knew.”
“It was not hard to figure out,” Ballum shrugged. “Especially not since you and your woman became so publicly close. The details were harder, but I managed.”
“Why are you doing this?” Verris asked, staring at the whip. “Why give me all these weapons? Why help help train me at all?”
“I told you before I was from near the City State of Zys?” Ballum spat as he said the name, and Verris nodded. “Zys is not kind to the Kuraga. It began as a great meeting of tribes, to avoid wars. The meetings were held in a field beside a huge rock, the territory of no tribe. And then huts were built, and it became a village. Then stone buildings, and more and more, until there was a city no less great than Angelar itself. Zys means “many” in the tongue of Lost Pangaea. It was the City of Many Tribes.
“Only Kuraga saw that we were losing ourselves. Changing. Becoming something other. So Kuraga tried to stop it. For generations we bickered with the other tribes until, in my Father's time as chieftain, we finally stormed the meeting place to end the insanity. The weakness. And we lost.” Ballum clenched his fists. “But no one hates like a Kuraga. And I swear by my god's name I will crush Zys down to the very last stone.
“But for now I'm too weak. I fled to this city and found work with your father. And then I found you, and saw the heart of Kuraga inside of you. I hope you will come with me, when the time comes to crush Zys. But I don't require it. I just...I needed to have one of my own nearby. And there are so very few of us anymore, who truly understand hate. And besides...”
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“What?” Verris said.
“I had not taken a bride yet when the war was lost. If I had had a son, I would have performed these rituals with him. Now go, kill the beast.”
Verris turned away, forcing tears not to form in his eyes. He stared at the mewling brachiosaur infant and called up all the hatred he could find. And it was there as he stabbed the point of the handle into the dinosaur's neck. Hate for his father, and for Hallek, and for the city and the way people looked at him when he worked in Downwind and for anyone he'd ever thought had wronged him. It was answered from the weapon. Hate for him, from the brachiosaur he'd just killed...and others. He could feel the herd through the soul he'd taken, hating him for slaying their child. He was full of hate for everything in the entire world.
Except Ballum.
Hallek
Hallek opened his eyes to a very large pair of breasts. There was barely any sag to them at all, which was stupefying when you considered their sheer size. He could tell there was no sag because their owner, who's face he hadn't managed to look at yet, wasn't wearing any kind of top. She did wear a thick bundle of necklaces hung down low enough to cover her nipples. As he forced his eyes to look elsewhere he saw that the woman was wearing a red skirt. She was tall, with the kind of tight curved figure that comes when the naturally voluptuous build their muscles. She was also covered in tattoos, all up and down her back and her sides. Full lipped with sparkling eyes under her--
This is turning into an erotic scroll. I have to be dreaming.
“Dream?” he managed to croak. His throat felt like it was filled with crushed glass.
“No dream,” the woman said. She had a light accent of the forest tribes. Makes sense. The tattoos. “You have slept for three days. You are in my home. I am Maukra of Birdfang.”
“Dyryl's mother. Shylldra?”
“Over there,” Maukra gestured. Hallek turned his head to see Shylldra asleep on the feather mattress beside him, her hair flowing around her. The Microraptor was curled up beside her, snoring. “Neither of them has left your side. This is good. Good eyes.”
“Eyes?” Hallek said.
“You looked at me with desire,” Maukra winked. “You looked at her with concern. Good eyes. You should try to sit up.”
He managed to pull himself up and rest against the back of the bed. He was in a large bedroom with a table across from the bed. The world was spinning, but it made a lot more sense than it had since the Fang showed up.
“Oh gods. I killed that assassin woman.”
“Yes. Fighting and killing will come naturally to you now. Too naturally.”
Hallek blinked.
“You have the Fang's soul inside you now,” Maukra explained. “It killed every day, without thought. Some of that is now in you. You will have strengths from the dinosaur and strengths from yourself. You'll have to learn to balance them. Assuming, of course, your organs don't grow feathered scales and kill you.”
“And how do I avoid that?”
“We do something very dangerous. It will either fully bond you with the Fang and make you stable, or it will kill you.”
“Doesn't sound like I've got a lot of options. Where's the sword?”
There was a scraping sound from the table and Hallek knew the sword was there. He felt it, like a part of himself. And when he'd thought of it it had actually moved. Slid across the table towards him. The reminder he wasn't all the way human anymore hurt worse than his throat.
“Mmph?” Shylldra said as she opened her eyes. “Hallek!”
“I told you he would awaken sometime today,” Maukra smiled. “I will leave you two together. The ceremony will be tonight. Rest while you can.”
“He's already been asleep for three days!” Shylldra said.
“Rest and sleep are different things. He understands. I will leave you for now.”
“I'm so glad you're awake,” Shylldra said when Maukra was gone. “She kept saying you just needed time, and she kept making these weird runes on your forehead with blood. It's not that I don't trust her, she's Dyryl's mother, but you just weren't waking up...”
“I'm alright,” Hallek said. “I'm hungry.”
“I think there's stew. Tchalli was worried about you too.”
“Tchwerk!” the microraptor chirped happily.
“Tchalli?”
“Just some nonsense sounds I came up with. It looks like she's sticking around so she needed a name.” Hallek petted the microraptor on top of the head, careful not to ruffle the tiny dinosaur's feathers. “And once the ceremony is over tonight, you'll be okay.”
She said it with so much conviction he couldn't bring himself to laugh. His insides still felt like they were crawling with lightning, and he had a boiling urge to go hunt down a brontosaurus and eat it. He'd only just met Maukra but if she was as good as Dyryl said and she though it was going to be risky then there was a good chance he wouldn't live through it. But all of that would be wrong to say, so he changed the subject.
“And then what? When I'm healthy, what are you going to do?”
“I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't this whole time. Maia said to get out of the city, so I'm out. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next.”
“Sounds like bad management if you ask me. Why not just tell you what to do?”
“That's not how the gods work. Well, most of them. But even the evil gods just try to trick people. When gods started messing with free will, trying to directly control everything...that's what happens with the Twisted Gods. That's what happened to Lost Pangea. The gods will help and guide, especially Maia. Some of them will grant favors, give you a little extra boost. But they won't do everything for us.”
“Well whatever help they can spare. I can use.”
“Tchwark!” Tchalli said, rubbing her head against Hallek's side.
“I'll take it from you too, featherbrain,” he smiled.
Krazzek
Krazzek could have used some help from the gods himself. He didn't mind being the one to go and talk to Maukra, that just made sense. He was the only one who'd met her before, the only one who knew Birdfang customs. What didn't make sense was bringing Heshk along with him, because Heshk was like a triceratops in...in...your bathtub. He didn't have a good metaphor. Heshk was a problem. Maukra's house was a tall thatch roofed hut set in a clearing. He'd been inside before and knew there was a large open space inside, with a ladder up to two bedrooms on a high platform. There were two Birdfang standing outside the house, one huge and muscular the other lean and...well, beautiful. Sexy as all the hells combined. Not that he had time to think about it.
“We seek your mistress!” Heshk barked, making Krazzek wince.
“What he means,” Krazzek said loudly, stepping between Heshk and the hut, “is that we would like to talk to Maukra of the Gods of Birdfang. I am Krazzek and this is Heshk, both of the city, in the service of Patrician Jajess.”
“Norak, son of Yorix,” the big man said.
“Dyryl, Daughter of Maukra. Now what are you doing here?”
“We're looking for the man who killed the Fang that destroyed Tivik,” Heshk glanced at Norak. “Is that you?”
“And why couldn't it be me?” Dyryl asked, pulling out her knives.
“Because the fang was killed with a sword,” Krazzek cut in, glaring at Heshk. He knew having the captain here was a bad idea. “And you obviously use daggers.”
“Well look at you. I guess we know who the smart one is.”
Krazzek stopped Heshk before he barked something. “She's Maukra's daughter!” he reminded the captain. “We're trying not to make trouble, remember?”
“It was not me who slew the Fang,” Norak said. “I meant it to be, but a friend found it first. He's inside, dying.”
“Not yet, Norak.” Maukra stepped out of the house. His mind always went a little fuzzy when he saw her, probably the way the necklaces moved with her chest. “Hello Krazzek. I see you've met my daughter and her brother.”
“Maukra,” he said, with a slight bob of his head. It was hard to know how to respond to Maukra. She didn't usually demand bowing and scraping, but technically as a priestess of the Birdfang she was entitled to it.
“So you're the w-priestess,” Heshk corrected himself at the last minute. Krazzek was almost proud. “If he dies, what happens to the fang weapon?”
“Who said there was a fang weapon?” Dyryl asked.
“A man slays a Fang and comes to a master infuser. I don't have to be the smart one,” Heshk sneered at her, “to figure that out. We came here hoping to obtain the weapon. If the warrior is dying, he won't need it.”
“I am also a healer,” Maukra said. “And that's why he was brought here. But yes, the weapon you're looking for exists. But like Milkaamek's ax it won't accept another wielder. The weapon is useless to you without him. And its power is killing even him as we speak. Tonight, I will perform a ritual to calm the Fang's soul. If it succeeds you can take it up with him. If it fails the weapon will be no good to anyone at all.”
Krazzek didn't know much about infusion, but that sounded...off? Wrong? There was something she wasn't telling them. It was almost as if this warrior was the one who'd been infused instead of the weapon. Had he been dumb enough to use the Fang's blood in one of those magic tattoos? Except no, you can only infuse something's soul once and she said the weapon had the soul in it. Before he could figure it out, a pretty Angelarian woman poked her head out the door.
“He's sleeping again,” she said. “Gods, Maukra, I hope this...works...”
She stared at Krazzek and Heshk with her eyes wide. Rude. He'd never seen her before, had he?
“Then we will return in the morning,” Heshk said with a stiff bow. “Thank you.”
“Uh, yeah,” Krazzek said. “Thank you.”
He turned and left with Heshk, utterly confused.
“That woman!” Heshk chuckled gleefully. “Did you see her, Krazzek, did you see her?”
“Which one?”
“The Angelarian! She's Shylldra. Shylldra ty Imperiens!”
“One of the old emperor's daughters? So what? He had like twenty they're scattered all over the place.”
“So she's almost as valuable as the weapon. I've got an idea.”