South of Paradise: Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Links in the chain
In frontier ground I would keep my forces closely linked.
— The Art of War, The Nine Varieties of Ground
We were given a few days rest before being paired once again, this time with a different partner. During the return and while resting at the Nest, we continued our mental conditioning, weaving together sentences, phrases, and thoughts. In our extreme exhaustion, our minds united even more strongly. If I turned my back, I could now sense Wanda’s presence; I would know if she had entered the room or left, the sort of mood she was in, what she needed at a basic level. She also knew the same of me, in fact, I knew that she knew that… Well let’s stay away from that line of thought.
I could tell when she had gone to sleep. Our cots all lay in a line, and the moment she moved out of consciousness I could sense that the color of her thoughts had changed. They diminished in activity and speed, then a crescendo of dreams brought back her mental energy, and they diminished again in a sleep cycle. I stayed awake just so I could hold onto that odd sensation of watching her dreams flow in and out. She said she did the same (or did I just know that she had done the same?)
When I myself went to sleep, I felt closer to her, and many times entered her dream, or she entered mine. Oftentimes I would have thoughts that I realized didn’t start in my own head. It was beginning to disorient me. We’d communicate by trading thoughts while others were talking to us, staring off into the void of space as we danced into and out of each other’s minds.
“This is the second stage of your mindweave.” The master said to us after our Wake had returned from their different tasks. We were lined up in the yard in our new pairs. “We now must forge new links between all of you, while the art of mindweaving is fresh in your minds.”
“Bailey and Kyle, Sid and Samson, come here.” The master gestured to his left. The four of them approached, Sid with a limp, and Kyle with a large gash set on his right forearm, wrapped with a bandage.
“Sid, you are with Kyle, and Bailey, with Samson.” The four of them rearranged themselves so that Sid, Kyle, Samson and Bailey stood in a line.
“We are going to divide the Wake into a team of four, and a team of six. The rest of you are to be paired as such: Ian and Leon, Shane and Wanda, Erin and Jane.”
We stood in the prescribed pairs on his right side, and turned towards him to hear our next task.
“You have been set in different pairs once again, so that you will grow closer with your newly paired brothers and sisters.” The master backed away a bit so he could more easily face us all. “You are going to guard a large movement of cattle and supplies traveling through a very dangerous region, South-eastern Guang. It recently became overrun with Carrion when a Wake was overpowered by a large horde. Only one Vulture made it back, to let us know of the state of affairs, before passing soon after.” The master’s eternally composed face showed a few lines of pain at the corners of his mouth when he paused.
“The six of you are to guard the cattle train,” he said, gesturing to his right towards Ian, Shane, Wanda, Erin, Jane and myself, “Whereas the four of you will take the rear guard, taking care of other supplies destined for market, and various travelers.” He gestured towards Samson, Kyle, Sid and Bailey. “A few overseers will intervene should the life of any travelers be threatened, but be aware this test is very real.”
Bailey raised her hand after the master paused, and he nodded towards her, giving her leave to speak.
“How long is this cattle train, exactly?”
“It extends about a half a mile, or about a 10 minute walk down the whole length of the column if it’s paused. You will all be mounted, to ensure rapid response to whichever part of the column requires defense.”
It had been a while since any of us had ridden; there were very few horses at the Nest, since most were away for movements like this in foreign areas, and simply because horses were much rarer than they had once been. We did most of our traveling by foot, so the word mounted took us all aback.
Samson raised his hand after a moment; the master inclined his head towards him.
“How long do we have to prepare… and will we be able to practice riding before we set out?” Samson was a bit worried about falling, as he unconsciously rubbed the side he had once fallen on.
The master chuckled. “Of course, just remember to get back on the horse quickly if you fall.” He placed his two fingers in his mouth and let out a quick whistle. A Vulture with a black face covering led over a train of ten horses, recently groomed and fed. Their coats shone brilliantly in the morning sun. They were all the same breed: short legged and barrel chested, differing shades of chestnut, black and white. They were bridled and saddled, though not covered in the leather armor they would don in a couple days.
Sid was giddy at the sight, but restrained himself from running over. His face was beaming, while most of us were either reluctant or in Samson’s case, terrified.
“You have a day to get re-accustomed to riding. Please ride alongside your newly assigned pairs. It will be good practice for tomorrow’s riding formations.” He dismissed us with a curt wave of his hand as he turned back towards his quarters, while we approached our four-legged companions.
Sid practically skipped to the strongest one he could find. “Aren’t you a beauty?” he said as he approached the horse’s left side, and slowly placed his hand on her head. The horse snorted indifferently. We each led our horses away so we could mount without fear of bumping into one another (we were practically novices, after all). Samson was unwilling to mount his horse without some assistance, which Erin offered him at a moment’s notice. Erin held the bridle and stroked the horse’s muzzle while Samson scrambled onto its back.
Once we had all mounted up, we turned towards Samson, who was visibly shaking, and Sid, already trotting around the yard with pride. After a quick laugh, we split off into our pairs and formed a column with Sid and Kyle at the head.
Sid decided to lead us southward towards the nearest town, while we each performed our mindweaving exercises. Since we had already made the bond once, the second time was much easier.
Ian, my new mindweaving partner, was a very interesting fellow. He always had a commanding presence, and the master seemed to be grooming him as a leader.
“Cold.” I said to start easily.
“Hot.” Ian responded.
“Fear.” Ian said.
“Samson.” I chuckled.
On we went, moving from concrete to abstract words, and then to sentences in a matter of minutes. An hour or so in, as we approached town, we were already perceptibly connected, our thoughts bouncing back and forth like the ebb and flow of our meditative movements. Wanda was a few horses behind me, and I could feel the connection she had made with Shane. Shane was a humorous guy, so I heard her laugh quite frequently during our ride over, a sound I had been unable to coax out of her during our first task or before. She simply snorted at all my attempts to make her laugh, or chastised me.
As we reached the outskirts of town, our voices fell low, so as to be respectful of the villagers.
The villagers could be seen quickly shuffling inside, so as to avoid us. They were very fearful of Vultures, mostly because of our propensity for taking small children from their mothers and mutilating corpses so as to prevent reanimation.
Not the qualities you look for in a friend, I admit.
Their fear was justified in these respects; however, we were sworn not to harm a living soul, even before taking the brand on our back, “the Mark.” The order held violence against innocent flesh as the worst transgression. Even if a villager used force against us, any retaliation on our part would mean immediate exile. So we feared them as well.
But a column of horses was a truly novel sight, and as we approached the first set of small houses, the heads of curious men, women and children peered out at what was probably the largest number of horses in one place any of them had ever seen, aside from some other movements of Vultures.
Horses were a rarity in an age where a Carrion farmer would stumble through and devour his own stables, or a roving pack of them would pick off a set of mounted men. The Undead could never outrun a horse, but the horses could become paralyzed with fear at the sight and smell of them (as were most men and women, to be fair), and the undead’s stamina was unending. The horses we rode had to be specially conditioned to not spook at the sight, sound and smell of Carrion.
My Wake and I surveyed the town, looking at all the seemingly abandoned houses, and the various shops that had flipped their signs to “CLOSED” with our arrival. The wood was worn and creaky; the wind made quite a racket as it blew through and rattled all of the loose boards and broken windows. Our Nest was always freshly painted and repairs were frequent, so the contrast was stark. These people were barely getting by.
A small girl, against the outcry of her parents, bounded out of one of the houses, to get a closer look at the column. Most of us gave her a blank look or kept our eyes, ears and mouths focused on our hushed conversations and the road ahead. Sid, however, was too jubilant to ignore her. He flashed the girl a great big smile, took her aback. Kyle began to reach out to Sid, to try and turn his attention away from the girl.
We weren’t supposed to be creatures of emotion, and so our sullen, solemn nature was well known to the townsfolk.
Emotion was our fuel; while the Carrion might have had superior stamina, we had the power of Hate, Love and Rage. But we needed to conserve our emotions and only use them when the moment called for it.
But Sid could not conceal his joy, even to one outside the Order. She was paralyzed, unsure of what to do next, when Sid held up his hand to signal a halt. Ian frowned, but pulled back on the reins, as did everyone else. Except Samson, who unintentionally broke from the column and plodded slowly forward because he was afraid he would fly off his horse if he attempted to stop it.
“What is your name?” Sid spoke softly.
“Rain.” The girl spoke with almost no hesitation, but she maintained her look of confusion mixed with fear.
“Well, Rain, would you like to ride?” Sid said, offering her his hand. The girl saw the strength of Sid’s hands, and knew that the most important thing to do was
run, run
before she was taken away forever. Her parents let out a shriek from within the door of their house, and a murmur went up through the town. Rain was now shaking, though paralyzed, as the desire to run mixed with the fear that she would be unable to escape. Sid pulled his hand back after a moment, sensing the disapproval of his compatriots and the fear of the villagers.
“Right! Where are my manners?” And with a deft movement of his legs, he swung himself off the horse. He pulled the mare over to the girl, and had the horse dip its head, so she could reach out and pat it. “You two haven’t even met yet!” Samson had now circled back around to the column and was pacing back and forth, with Kyle chuckling every time he passed and Bailey just rolling her eyes at Samson. The rest of us were on edge, and our anxiety wove in and out of our thoughts.
Ian was visibly annoyed as well, and clicked at Sid, signaling him to get back on his horse. Sid looked over at Ian and frowned, while Rain stroked the mare with sheer wonder. Sid softly turned the horse’s head away, after Rain had run her fingers through its mane a few times. Sid smiled, saying “One day, I’ll make sure you get to ride.” He dipped his head in a bow, remounted with one swift movement, and waved goodbye to her as we all resumed our movement through the village. Ian let out an enormous sigh of relief, as did we all.
Our Wake took a few breaths together: In…Hold… Out… In…Hold… Out… And the anxiety of the moment passed. Fear of death was not an issue within the order: this was stamped out at an early age. But there was fear of exile as a punishment, a fate worse than death. We moved away from the town, though the girl followed our column to the outskirts, and kept waving until she was a dark speck in the red-orange glow of the setting sun. The whistling the wind made through the village could still be heard, even when we moved beyond the hills and had almost returned to the Nest.
***
“Form up!” Ian yelled to the front guard. Ian and I rode second and third position respectively on the left, with Shane and Wanda at the left and right positions in the front, and Erin and Jane mirroring Ian and I as the second and third positions on the right. We formed a jagged parabola around an imaginary cattle train, represented by some overseers on slow-moving horses. We kept one another within sight, over the backs of the imaginary cattle. Back a considerable distance, we could see Samson, Bailey, Sid and Kyle spread out in a relatively tight fan. The middle of the train was relatively exposed in this formation, but the key to moving the train through dangerous territory would be keeping the front clear, and our second priority was keeping the people at the rear safe. A strong offense and a concentrated defense. The horses wore their leather armor so we could feel the difference in weight.
We were a bit sore from yesterday’s simple ride, but as we dashed in our formation across the lands north of the Nest, we were beginning to adjust to the harsh rocking of the horses. The clatter of our gear and the rushing wind formed the accompanying chorus to our galloping and shouting.
“ENEMY LEFT!” Yelled Ian, as our formation shifted to form a line trained on the left side of this imaginary column. Those in the rear guard pushed their horses to seal the line together, leaving one to watch the right.
As our line of horses closed, we slashed at the imaginary foe, cutting them down with our long sabers. The spades were not the weapon of choice on a horse.
“SIGHTED RIGHT!” Yelled Samson from the rear, and we moved swiftly around the column, accelerating forward and slowing down to bring ourselves in position.
“LARGE GROUP, FRONT!” Ian yelled, and our parabola condensed into a tight cone, as we slashed and swiped at the imaginary horde in front. Bailey and Sid rushed forward to assist while Samson and Kyle stayed back. Samson still seemed frightened, but the adrenaline of the moment was helping to deaden his fear of riding.
We continued like this throughout the day, eating and drinking in the saddle, taking spare moments to relieve ourselves, but the overseers kept plodding forward like stubborn cattle. The Nest took training exercises very seriously.
There were a few scary moments, like when one of the horses bucked and tried to throw Wanda; I reached out mentally and helped calm her while she regained control of the creature. Samson seemed a bit wobbly at times but had few problems other than his unease. Our strength training was enough to keep us in the saddle all day, but we were still sore by the end.
I could feel Ian yelling in his mind before it came out of his mouth, and even faintly felt Wanda’s partner Shane’s thoughts through her own mind. Everytime she smirked, I knew it was Shane passing some humorous comment into her head. What a dope. I thought. Jealous huh? Wanda’s thought landed in my head like an arrow. Shane sent her another comment in response. I turned my focus to Ian and to moving in and out of different formations.
At the end, we would move before Ian even let loose a shout, his mental energy coursing like lightning through the ten of us, our formations shifting fluidly in the scorching light of day.
We rode hard for most of the day, and after our formations and movements were solid, we decided it was time to let the horses rest before the journey ahead. We led our mounts back to the small stables, each of us giving them a gentle pat before letting other Vultures brush and feed them. Sid had a bit of a grin on his face, having fared much better than he had the previous day. Samson gave him a comforting slap on the back.
“A regular cavalryman, ready to charge into battle, eh?”
“A bit scared, but courage is staying strong in the face of fear, right?”
Our master walked over from the yard, after having dismissed another Wake under his tutelage and chuckled “Courage is knowing the risks and taking them anyway. Did you all ride well?”
We turned to Wanda, who admitted her near fall, and the rest of us expressed our apprehension, except for Samson whose optimism and ebullience flowed like oxygenated, bright red blood.
“We could have been better, but we won’t have a problem on the road!” Samson stated confidently.
“Know the risks, take them anyway.” Our master said, bowing low to us. We returned the gesture solemnly, and mentally prepared for the next day’s journey, while we packed our possessions. We lay in our bunks quite sore. We had rotated a bit so that we could sleep near our new partners. Ian and I fell asleep around the same time; I could hear his breathing slow right as mine did, and we practiced riding in our dreams, with the shades of our companions flitting in and out of our dreamworld. I saw Wanda’s face emerge out of the haze and we both smiled; the world of dreams was much purer.
***
“Alright, get a move on!” the master shouted, and slamming his staff in the dirt he sent the ten of us on our way. We took off at a canter, saving our horses for the next day of riding, since we were just supposed to make it to the column by nightfall. We’d studied the maps the day before, and our path would take us south-east, moving in and around villages to come up behind the slow moving herd.
Our Wake kept up its mindweaving, doing things like exchanging images with others. If you closed your eyes and concentrated, you could make out the viewpoint of another. I could only take on the images Wanda sent at first, but I was starting to get Ian’s. I could just barely see Shane through Wanda, but that tentative connection was the beginning of something truly remarkable. As we pressed our minds and practiced, I could get pieces of information from everyone, without a single word uttered. Hours passed under the rising sun, as we spoke in soft whispers to supplement our mindweaving. The country rose and fell under the horses’ hooves, the blue sky full of lazy clouds drifting overhead. Sparse sections of trees lay on both sides of the road. Farmers reaped the land, with the harvest season having just begun, the leaves showing the first signs of change and the crops taking on the warm colors of yellow and orange.
But the serenity of the scene was underlaid by a cacophony of mental activity. We started running drills in small pairs, creating mental challenges for us to overcome. They could be anything from riddles to playing a mental game of Go, which was hard on a full size board, but possible by imagining a subsection. It was amazing how easy connecting was after the first weave. Like a blacksmith making his chain links, we were better at twisting and forging our thoughts into intelligible structures. The hardest part about connecting is coming to terms with how others think; once that’s done, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of who had the thought first.
We pulled the horses over to a river to take a drink, and we ate our midday meal. Simple bread and some dried fruits and nuts made our feast, but it was quite easy to carry on conversing without having to move one’s mouth. One would have remarked that we were the most polite eaters, not uttering a peep with food in our mouths. The speed and frequency with which we were actually conversing would have made us appear like a gaggle of geese, if our words were audible.
Speaking from the mind’s eye, a few things did not transfer very easily, like tone or emotion. The “voice inside your head” has one volume level, so the best way to send emotion was through briefly closing your eyes and visualizing an image. With practice we were becoming truly adept at sending these images, to seed our mental exchanges with emotional color.
Ian had shared some information of his former life, and I reciprocated, telling about my life on the farm. We’d all heard each others stories, but now we had visuals. He went first: his dad was a traveling salesman, who would often bring Ian along on trips. Ian’s father dropped dead in a market one day from a weakness of his heart. When the Vultures discovered he would not reanimate, Ian was taken away forcibly, although his mother was many miles away, back at home. Ian had resisted but hadn’t shed a tear; his father was not the warmest of gentleman, to say the least. He sent me a very fuzzy image of the pair of Vultures dragging him back to the Nest, away from the crowd of folk in the town market. I told him my story in turn, giving him the image of my mother and the broken plates on the kitchen floor.
Our Wake packed up, formed a column and proceeded forward at a canter, with Ian and me behind Sid and Kyle. We moved through a small village after traversing a few more miles, shutters flapping or slamming shut as the few inhabitants still in town hid from our sight. As we reached the far outskirts of the town, we saluted the patrol of a couple Vultures. When Wakes were on patrol, they always split up to be only a few miles away from one another, always in pairs, with the allowed distance given by the strength of their mental communication. The more adept they were, the farther they could roam from one another.
We were reaching a humid part of the country, as our Wake moved down towards the sea, a fog began to encircle us; the flora and fauna took on a greener and darker tone. Densely packed forests sat far from the road; the fear of wandering carrion being hidden by trees had created the need to push the tree line far back, either with woodcutters or controlled burning. The stumps had long since decayed, leaving behind irregularly shaped fields. They were constantly culled to keep the grass low and to keep back the tree line. Fear was a great motivator.
The horses had special blinders on at this point, in order to reduce the fear they experienced at the sight of Carrion. We held our ordered column with Sid at the lead, moving in twos, keeping our eyes and ears peeled for stray Carrion.
Our vigilance was rewarded with a rustling by the tree line, as a group of five Carrion sprinted towards us. Ian yelled, or rather thought intensely: Erin and Jane, Shane and Wanda, to the left, form up! The four of them moved left out of the column, brandishing their sabers in the afternoon sun. The five Carrion moved towards the four horses, practically falling over themselves to get at my Wakebrothers and sisters. Erin, Jane, Shane and Wanda pulled themselves into a single line and rode a circle around the Carrion. As the Carrion turned around, the four riders tightened the circle and made clean cuts through each of them. Erin dispatched two while the others each decapitated one.
The Carrion were delimbed and piled together, then set on fire, all within a matter of minutes. The column chanted “Life Forever, Death an Instant” as we pulled away from the small pyre. There were no other Carrion we encountered on the way to the cattle train, though we heard rustles and cries behind the tree line, as well as the crunching of branches under “human” feet.
As the sun was slipping under the horizon, we came upon the line of cattle. It was utterly (and as Shane emphasized, udderly) massive. Hundreds of cows lined the side of the road, with a large group of people camped out by the rear. There were just short of a hundred people in tents pitched by the end. They all stood as we approached, respectfully bowing, but shuffling back as their respect mingled with fear. There were a few pairs of overseers among the group, they inclined their heads respectively as we gave them a low bow.
Our Wake dismounted and hobbled the horses. Five of us took first watch at the edges of the camp, the other five slept near each sentry so they could awaken and quickly change guard. I took my watch first, Ian sleeping by my side. I could hear the whispers of Ian’s dreams bubble up as I scanned the lines of the forest, sentinels in the moonlight. He moved in out of the dreams of the others spread out across the camp: proximity affected the strength of one’s mindweave. But as we improved, distance became less of an obstacle.
Already we were making great strides; I had to focus hard to fight the distraction of the dreamers’ thoughts. I could easily check in with the other sentries: Shane, Jane, Samson and Sid. They each expressed their apprehension in snippets of words and emotions, each drifting between speaking to me and scanning the trees about a half a mile away. We were scared for the ride tomorrow.
My watch passed practically without incident. During the end of my watch, as indicated by the movement of the moon, Sid heard a noise out in front of him, diametrically opposite me in the camp. Before I could get to the other side, an overseer had moved next to Sid, held out an open hand, and pushed forward towards the tree line. Three Carrion moved out towards the camp. Our whole Wake had awoken as our mental activity crescendoed, but the overseer danced and swept his spade clean through the intruders, dodging their rapid movements and using their awkwardness and brutality against them. Sid and Shane removed the limbs of the creatures, preparing them for burial, and we changed guard.
There were no other Carrion nearby, since they had been cleared out by other Vultures days before. Those three were roamers. We changed guards a couple times without incident.
We burned them in the morning before we left.
***
The ride was slow; the training had been faster paced, but this was to mimic moments of panic. At dawn, 100s of cattle, ten Wake members, fifty individuals and four overseers pushed out of our clearing towards the South-east. Our Wake resumed the same formation we had taken earlier, with the spearhead composed of Ian, Shane, Wanda, Erin, Jane and myself and Samson, Kyle, Sid and Bailey at the rear. The smell of the herd was omnipresent; last night our fear and apprehension had kept it out of our minds, but as the sun pounded down, the smell became more and more noticeable. The region was awfully humid and the rain was quick but powerful. Luckily we weren’t in the monsoon season, so it was just sticky.
The overseers rode at the middle of the column, to cover the region we had missed. But they would only intervene in dire situations; the overseer’s actions during the night were simply a courtesy. Today there would be no courtesies.
The first couple of hours were uneventful. As the sun crept in a smooth arc towards the zenith, our odorous and boisterous column moved along the road. The cattle moved in rows of four to five, flowing over the edges of the path. The tree line crept eerily close in some areas; this part of Guang was far from most settlements. We needed our undivided attention to pick out the sounds of rustling brush and sticks breaking, which meant we kept about as close to the tree line as we dared. The horses crunched the long grass under their shooed hooves. Our mental communication was fairly minimal, we threw threads back and forth if anything alerted us. Only a few false alarms arose during the morning.
At noon, we took a break near a river to water the horses and cattle. The river was a quarter of a mile from the main path, so we had to squeeze the column through the narrow forest path and move down into a small valley. We dismounted our horses to move through the forest, keeping the column protected and being careful not to injure our mounts.
As we moved through the forest, Erin threw up an alert, a mental shout: movement at our left! Those of us in front whipped towards her, spotting human figures darting in and out of the trees. We left our horses trotting along the column and sprinted to support Erin. A group of five Carrion was moving at a dead run towards us. Erin and the rest of us from the vanguard formed a small semi-circle, measuring our distances apart with our spades, so we were outside each other’s reach. The creatures crashed through the trees and we cut them down with about 15 powerful swings. They ran straight into us, not noticing until the last moment our presence, distracted by the horde of smelly meat moving behind us. We couldn’t take the time to burn the bodies (especially not without burning down the entire forest), so we stripped the heads and limbs from the bodies and crushed them underfoot.
We jogged back to our horses and mounted up, the column only having moved slightly forward. We made it to the river and drank up, washing the rotten flesh that had splashed over our arms and faces. The whole column lay parallel to the river, while our Wake stood guard and each animal or traveler had a long drink. After a few minutes we brought the column around, back the way we had come, moving onto the main path. We traveled without incident for another couple hours, the muggy heat intensified as we passed noon. We ate in the saddle.
At about an hour after noon, we pushed over a very large hill, and saw smoke and fire in the distance. Fire was a sign that people were trying to flee from Carrion. The creatures had no fear of fire, but the heat would strip the muscle from their flesh, hindering their ability to pursue at full speed. Fire also would push away the tree line, so the Carrion had less room to hide. Fire meant a lot of Carrion. The master had warned us that the region was overrun.
Fire. Ian communicated back to our Wakebrethren at the rear of the column.
Get ready, Bailey thought back.
We fanned out towards the edge of the trees, nerves on edge at the impending surge of Carrion. We had never faced so many in quick succession; our training was only an echo of what this would be.
The cattle seemed tired from having walked without grazing all day, but we pushed them harder upon seeing the fires. They hemmed and hawed as we butted their hides with our spades, causing the lead cattle to move at double the pace; the rest followed suit. The roar of hooves clambering over the dirt sounded like the approach of an army.
As we rounded a bend, we saw Carrion in the road. They were chasing down and devouring people, pushing in and out of the trees, towards a small set of houses in a clearing adjacent to the road. Children and families were being torn apart right in front of our eyes. We held to our column; our task was not to save these townspeople. A quick calculation brought the number to thirty Carrion, with probably double that flitting in and out of the trees. We brandished our sabers and widened the space between each horse so we would cover the entire front.
The Carrion rushed the column just as they had in the forest, but our goal was not to kill, simply to incapacitate them. We aimed for the midsection and the legs, trying to immobilize the creatures, smashing their skulls or decapitating them if possible. Erin and Ian caught the creatures at the front, knocking them over and trampling them underneath the cattle train. We followed suit, letting the beasts crush the Carrion underfoot. We just had to be careful not to let the Carrion sink nails or teeth into the creatures or the column would be disrupted.
I hacked at six different creatures, as we began moving up a steep incline. The cattle began to slow, from fear and exhaustion. We moved up and down the column to force them on and pick off Carrion who had broken through and began tearing the flesh from them. Ian’s shouts were almost inaudible in the cacophony, but he reinforced it with calls from his mind:
FIVE LEFT “FIVE LEFT!” CHECK RIGHT “CHECK RIGHT!” GET THAT CARRION OFF THE COW, WANDA “GET… CARRION… WANDA!”
His breaths came ragged as he punctuated each word with a swing of his sword arm, his grip around the bridle white with tension. We knew that more and more Carrion would be attracted by the noise and smell, so we needed to create a diversion. The cattle that had been attacked were staggering out of the column, barely able to ambulate.
Bailey saw this as an opportunity. More Carrion were attempting to pick off these weaker cattle. Bailey started to lead them away, mentally sharing her view of the cattle being run off the path by her horse. Ian broadcast out FOLLOW HER LEAD “FOLLOW HER LEAD.”
We each followed suit, finding a wounded animal to drag from the column. Bailey then ran her saber up the side of the wounded creature once it was a distance from the column, releasing a torrent of blood and offal. The Carrion swarmed the ox that Bailey had felled, the allure of easy flesh much greater than the stampeding column. We each followed suit, apologizing breathlessly before ending the poor creatures’ lives. Slashing through a few Carrion that came for our horses, we rejoined the column and prodded the beasts onward.
This tactic only slowed the onrush of Carrion from behind, but the ones ahead still saw the living meals rushing towards them.
Once we crested the top of the hill, the beasts were exhausted, as were we. It seemed we had reached a midpoint, but there would be no respite for some time.
There were fewer Carrion on the other side of the hill. The fires and noisome smells lay behind us, but there were a few groups charging up the hill. Fortunately we were headed downhill, and we had a different tactic in mind. The column had run ragged as we had cut down parts of the herd and charged uphill, but with gravity now helping us, we could mount a charge. We led the cattle at the edges of the column and drew them outward, widening the column to extend towards the treeline. Now the prey would trample their predators.
Fatigued though they were, the cattle picked up speed. The people in the rear had safely crested the hill, since the Carrion were still occupied by the fresh kill along the side of the road. The column streamed down the hill, the beasts’ breath ragged as the pounding of their feet increased. The Wake fanned out in the front, with every member of the vanguard now leading the charge.
New carrion in front went for the cattle but were either cut down immediately or trampled in the storm. Those that came closing in on the flank were pushed off or ran through by the Vultures at the rear guard.
An hour passed where a few stragglers would sweep through and we Vultures quickly flew to dispatch them. Our Wake was riding on fumes as it seemed the last of the foul creatures followed in our “wake,” so to speak. A small fraction of the cattle had died and the rest were running on fumes. As the night fell, the column fell to a slow crawl, and some of the creatures fell over from their exertion. We tied up our horses and set the first watch. As a blessing, there was not a rustle except the wind moving through the trees.
We all slept well that night, as the dreamers whispered to the watchers, who almost dozed where they stood, staring into the black night.
When we finally arrived in a small town, all told, 14 of the cattle had not made it. All of the people had survived. It was a victory, the first of many for us. We celebrated with a day of not riding. Samson was overjoyed.
