Wraith's Lament, chapter 3: Chapter 1

“The Soutton Talbot… finest tracker outside of the Idyl. And inside it, too, or so some say. If anyone can find our rhakos, it’s this girl.”

Decima had never heard anyone wax lyrical upon an ordinary windhound before, but it was a good look for Samawat. She and Prendergast kept pace with the tracker pair as they pushed their way through the deepest, least accessible tracts of the Haunted Woods. Behind their little team, probably judging them the entire time, was Supreme Commander of the Legio Sol herself, General Kali, astride her famed mount, Geiger.

“Watch your-- no, don’t cross the spoor! Side steps, yes, in case we need to double back.”

‘Spoor’, in this case, was a polite word for ‘glowing red rhakos scat’. The stuff was everywhere: splattered on the tree trunks, smeared on the ferns, glinting through the leaf litter, almost blood-like in texture and hue. This region was clearly a prime hunting ground for them.

But the real important field sign to look out for was the faint outline of four-clawed footprints that had been smushed into the soft mud. Unlike the many other tracks that criss-crossed it, the edges on these ones hadn’t even crumbled over yet. This was the freshest trail, most likely to lead them to the rest of the pack.

“So, what inspired you to come out of the city and mingle with the commoners?” Decima called behind her. Kali stared back, probably mentally drafting her dishonourable discharge. Not that she had that authority, of course. That was for the Tribune of the Urban Cohorts to say. Ah, sweet delegation of authority.

But the good luck had to run out eventually, and as Prendergast trotted along, he noticed that the ground was starting to turn from mud soup to leaf salad, and with it, their precious tracks.

‘The prints ended half a mile back. How is she still going?’

“Easy,” Samawat replied, “she’s following the silence.”

And so she was. The windhound was still going strong, in that half-bounding, half-loping run that her species was so famous for, her ears perked up and swivelling left and right. No birds, no scurrying mammals, not even a breeze. Only the sound of their own steps and the faint jangle of Geiger’s reinforced armour. Whatever they were on the trail of, it wasn’t natural.

“Senka,” Kali said, almost to herself. “She has to be the key. Somehow.”

“Hmm?”

“Senka,” Samawat said, when the general didn’t elaborate. “We call her the Sorrowful. The Taura-Naji of Wasvesti used to tell of a ghostly stryx roaming the shore, crying for a rider who would never return. War wounds more than flesh and bone. Perhaps enough to echo through the centuries…”

“Stop,” Kali called out. Even the windhound tilted her head and pulled up short as she and Geiger strode forward, the former pointing her sabre dead ahead.

“Stay downwind.”

Decima squinted ahead. Beyond the mass of trampled ferns and snapped tree branches lay an open, almost perfectly-circular clearing. A rhakos lay in its dead centre: Black feathers, red eyes, eyespots of dread and bone-white, skeletal stripes. By all accounts, it was unaware that it was being watched.

Too easy. Too obvious. They’d burst into that clearing all ready to apprehend it, and that was when the attack would come. Not from the front, but from the side, and the other two rhakos they didn’t even know were there.

‘What’s the plan?’ Decima mouthed over to Kali.

The general mimed pushing out a noose stick and hooking an invisible neck with it. Then she pulled an actual noose stick out of her saddlebag and extended it to its longest possible setting.

Okay, that was the one in view sorted. What about the others?

Kali stared back at her. Ah, right.

And would the famed general be okay with being the bait?

Geiger snorted out a plume of smoke. Yeah, they’d probably be fine. So that was that, then.

Decima looked over at Samawat, who looked over at his windhound, who locked puppy eyes with Kali. With that silent signal exchanged, they fanned out around the rim of the clearing, ready to spring.

The rhakos in the open stayed prone as Kali and Geiger approached it, ready to hook and tighten. The eyespots on its head stared back at them, the same sickly shade of red as the infection pulsing in its breast. Then one of them blinked.

Geiger let out a fearsome battlecry, and the rhakos screamed back at him. It scrambled to its feet with alarming agility and lunged up for his neck, but Kali leaned over and swept her arm, and the loop went through its head and went taut and its forward momentum boomeranged back on it. Geiger battered it with one of his wings as it screamed at him, talons flailing as Kali wrestled it to the ground.

Two glowing eyes lit up the darkness just beyond, and the rhakos pack burst into the clearing, snarling with jaws bared. Geiger blasted fire at them, and they danced around the flames, inching around to his flank, until Samawat jumped out and tackled one of them, his windhound following up with a firm upper leg chomp. Prendergast and Decima went for the other one, the former’s feet kicking and stomping.

While each party was wrestling with their respective targets, Decima caught a blur of movement in the corner of her eye. This shape had to be the largest creature she’d ever seen, almost rivalling Geiger in height, and it wasn’t attacking. It was just watching, waiting, as if calculating its chances of turning the tide. A swarm of red wisps was gathering behind it, like an army rallying to its commander.

“Over there! Get it!”

But everyone was too busy to break off-- Kali needed her stryx to keep her quarry restrained, the Taura-Naji couldn’t rodeo more than one rhakos at a time, and Prendergast needed someone to keep him from getting bitten.

“Hoo, boy.”

So it turns out they’d been right about two things. Unfortunately, they had neglected to account for a potential third thing.

“Clever lad.”