Fiery Furnace

[NekoButcher]

So the girl who was making things much more complicated than they needed to be was named Karuka. Pounder stood by Markham as the two do-gooders spoke to each other and cursed the way that it seemed the rest of the group looked up to them as leaders. With a face taught with displeasure, he shivered slightly, making no efforts to conceal his weaknesses now that he had found that between Karuka and Markham, they were more likely than not to be perceived as strengths.

“We should start moving now though…” he said. “It is only a matter of time before someone, anyone comes to finish up what was started. I don’t know what these people want, I’m not a particularly political person, but riots don’t just come out of nowhere. There are always more rioters, more people that are angry. Let’s not delay.”

Since they had already resolved that they would head towards the river, Pounder went along with the group. Again, he felt torn between two decisions. Going by the river would make sense, from a standpoint of getting oriented, but at the same time, they were strangers in a strange land, and it seemed that political turmoil was heating up. Pounder didn’t know if they were being assaulted because the mob was bloodthirsty, or because of their race, because they were not deeply involved with the Salvic church or even if they just happened to end up on the wrong train by chance.

Regardless, he knew that moving to a river was a bad idea. The closer they were to water, to the supposed ‘civilization’ of Salvar, the more likely they were to be detected. Perhaps people like Karuka and Markham were operating under the assumption that the rest of Salvar was bound to help them, and while they might have been right, Pounder found it highly doubtful. There was just too much uncertainty, he thought it was best they conserve whatever martial resources they had in order to fight when necessary. Perhaps once they got to Knife’s Edge, things would be different, but until then, Pounder didn’t want to be overrun by an unruly country mob.

However, he knew that most people wouldn’t listen to him. They would head to the river because Markham had suggested it. Grudgingly, he complied, but only because he had determined that the powers of the group he was traveling were enough that his chances of survival with them were better than apart. He only hoped that nothing happened at the river.

[Karuka]

It wasn't so much a river as a shallow creek that was about five yards wide. They couldn't stay long, but it would give them a chance to refresh themselves and clean wounds. Fortunately, the ones worst wounded had wounds readily washed out and stitched up, and there were a few minor burns from the explosion.

All told, out of about two hundred and fifty passengers, fewer than a hundred remained. Of those, most were women and children; when push came to shove, their husbands and sons of fighting age had chosen to protect the weaker members of their families, and had fallen doing so.

The fact that she'd helped slow down and take out the mob had spared the rest their lives, for the moment, but the victory was only bittersweet. Too many lives had been lost. It was too big a fight. Now she could just hope to get the majority of the people to the next town, and the tot that she'd left with one of the women to her aunt in Knife's Edge. It was more responsibiity than she'd ever had in her life, and she was glad that there was someone to share it with.

When everyone was taken care of and had had some water, a scout led the group to a sheltered area to spend the night, since darkness was drawing on soon and the adrenaline rush of earlier had left most of the able-bodied fighters exhausted.

The few people that had any sort of food were more than willing to share it, but it wasn't enough for everyone. Markham gathered what there was to feed the children, while Karuka asked for volunteers to go out and hunt.

When the hunters left, she and a few women started weaving branches together into mats so they could have a barricade against the wind. They wouldn't be able to make big fires, so it was looking to be a very cold night.

There are a couple of wee ones that I'm not sure will make it...and a few of the elderly.

It was going to be the hardest trip of Karuka's life, and of that, the red-head was certain.

[NekoButcher]

Pounder had stayed back instead of joining the hunt. Markham had asked him to go, but Pounder pointed to the knee which he had deliberately been limping with the entire walk to the river and said, in a cleverly manipulative way, that he would be happy to go, but only if they felt that he wouldn’t slow them down. He even offered Markham his crossbow and bolt pouch, though just in case the muscular man had accepted, Pounder had made a point to remove half of his bolts.

Markham, of course, denied. “You’re a good man for even offering,” he said. “And I couldn't take your weapon with me on the hunt and leave you defenseless, it would be almost cruel. It was thoughtless of me to even ask, you’ve been fighting with us this whole time, bum leg and all. Rest up, heal some. Talk to one of the women when they’re done with what they’re doing, and one of them will bandage it for you.”

Concealing a sinister grin, Pounder just nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very understanding.”

Shortly after the hunting party had left, Pounder began to regret staying back. It wasn’t that his conscience was causing him pains as much as he wondered if he would be getting a proper meal. Even someone like Markham was bound to make sure he was fed before bringing the rest of the food back to camp. And for someone like Pounder who had no qualms eating raw meat when necessary, it would have been much easier for him to get his fill. When the food had been passed around to be shared the first time, the cat man hadn’t received any.

With the temperature as it was, the older catman wondered if there was any point to fishing in the river. He definitely didn’t want to fish the way that was most common for his people, by dipping into the river and clawing at what he could find, but he imagined between all the twine being thrown around, he could have rigged up something with a spare canvas to catch some fish. Once he looked into the rippling water, he abandoned that plan. He was more like to lose whatever cloth went into the fishing than he was to get any food.

Now, with no plan for food other than to hope for Markham’s munificence, Pounder made his way to Karuka, just to see if the girl had any ideas that he hadn’t thought of. Making sure to limp visibly on his long since healed knee, he approached her, waving gently as he made his way towards her. “Hello,” he offered. “My name’s Pounder, I wanted to thank you for what you did back there.” He offered a polite smile and extended his hand out towards her.

[Karuka]

Karuka had been watching the cat-man as much as she'd been watching everyone else. She'd watched even more intensely when she noticed that he was the only adult that wasn't willing to pull his weight. Even the littlest children were helping out, gathering twigs and sticks for fires or stuffing leaves into the branch mats that everyone was making.

Maybe he had hoped to curry her favor or her sympathy by coming over to introduce himself, but Karuka wasn't having any of it. She'd risked her life for him and all the others, and if he was going to be deadweight to an already weak band of refugees, he was either going to shape up or be left behind.

She took his paw firmly, shaking it in her own calloused hand. "Karuka."

She leaned down, getting closer so that she could speak quietly enough that only he could hear her. "That's not a fresh wound. It's old, and you know how to maneuver around it. I've seen men with wounds like yours, but I've never seen them so cowardly as to try and use an old wound to shirk work. If you won't hunt, help weave mats for shelter. If you won't do that, stand watch. But you will work, or you will not eat. EVERY person in this band must to his or her fair share, or everyone will suffer. I'd sooner expel someone who won't than watch the rest suffer, and you stand a better chance with the group than alone. What will it be, Pounder?"

She let go of his hand as a woman approached her with a question, and left him to think of it as she went off to keep working to set up their camp site. She needed to keep the others as warm as possible during the night, but having fires would be dangerous after sundown.

Even worse, clouds were gathering, and it smelled like snow. Things were starting to go from bad to worse, and they had at least a full day's march after what would be a long, cold night out in the open.

[NekoButcher]

Pounder’s eyes narrowed darkly as Karuka spoke to him. He was simultaneously enraged and offended, enraged at her audacity and offended with the way that she called his integrity into question. There were many things he wanted to say in reply to her, but he held himself back. She had no right to speak that way, and had they not been in a more public place, Pounder might have slapped her in the face.

As it was, he held back, but took a long look at her while he thought of what he would say one day, when he looked over her broken, bloody body. After he had calmed down just enough to say something without threatening her, Pounder turned to Karuka again. “I will keep watch,” he said. “It is one of the few things I can do effectively with my knee. If you knew old injuries like you said you did, you’d know one like this doesn’t ever go away. The pain might disappear in times of need out of necessity, but it never leaves. That’s something you might want to think about Karuka, things that never leave…”

With that, Pounder was content that he had said as much as was prudent to say. He looked around at the women and children closely, debating whether or not there were any of them that were unattached enough that he could have picked them off should he have deemed it necessary. While Pounder wasn’t a cannibal himself, he had sold enough human flesh that he hardly found the prospect of eating it in a time of necessity hardly unappealing.

Still, Pounder supposed he shouldn’t complain too much. The expectation, at its base, was relatively reasonable, though Pounder thought angrily that no one would have thought the same way if he had told a kid that the either pulled themselves up or that they didn’t get saved. But he reminded himself, the job wasn’t so bad. Given his fur, keeping watch would hardly be an issue, even if he remained outside. Also, it gave him the advantage of being able to flee if necessary. He doubted that Karuka had considered this, but after the way she had spoken to him, she was not going to get an early warning.

With that, Pounder settled into a post he had made for himself by the north end of camp, the direction that Markham and the rest had gone off hunting. He looked up at the sky once he was settled in just to get a grasp of the weather. It looked like it was starting to snow. Reflexively, the older cat man shuddered. His only solace would be that Karuka would weather it worse than he would.

[Karuka]

She could see the hatred in his eyes as he watched her, could see it seethe beneath his skin as he stalked away. He probably understood the need for the structure they were enforcing upon him, but he resented the fact that it was being enforced. He had probably taken her for the same sort of optimist as Markham, but had instead crossed a cynic.

Well that's tough potatoes. I didn't see him fighting, although Markham said he helped with evacuation. He limped too badly to keep up like he did. And then a threat for demanding he be a useful member of the group? I'd like to see him try...

The old man may have been little and quick, but Karuka was still young, spry, strong, and better equipped.

Their little clearing was almost starting to look like a hut as the mats went up against the chill wind. It would only help to keep them warm, not garuntee it, and would leave a trail if anyone tried to find them, but that, too, was tough potatoes. Karuka would just have to hope that if a scout party decided to check up on the mob, they would see the damage of the explosion and assume that all the passengers had died in the firey furnace of the burning train.

Any company worth its salt will investigate, though, and we aren't more than five miles away. Too close...but we can't keep these people moving.

Karuka had wrapped her fleece-lined oilskin cloak around an elderly couple who had agreed to look after Meg. They'd left their belongings on the train, and would have frozen otherwise. Karuka had retained her old woolen cloak. It was battered and thread-bare in places, but she was more warmly dressed overall than she had been the previous winter, and it had gotten her safely through that.

As the fires were started and hunters came in one by one, some with food, others empty-handed. All told, there were a few rabbits and a couple of ground birds. Along with some edible tubers that a few women had gathered, there would at least be a few bites of food for everyone. It was much better than nothing, and the meat was set over the fires immediately.

A couple of the boys, an eight and a nine year old came tramping back from the stream. It had been their task to gather water, but they'd left that to the girls and whittled hooks, using weeds as lines and bugs as bait, and they brought in four or five fish, welcome additions to the ration.

Karuka paced anxiously along their flimsy walls, keeping herself occupied by stuffing in more leaves. They were too close to the wreck, too close to the stream, had too few fighters and too many children, mothers, and elderly. The red-head didn't know what on that train had been so important that they'd rally a mob and kill innocent children for, but it had to have been important.

Or maybe they were trying to get a point across. From what I've heard of it, the Church of the Ethereal Sway is as intolerant of other religions as the Christians back home. The more fear they can instill, the less resistance they'll have...and surely during wartime, they want all the power they can muster.

It was sickening. It was beyond sickening, and when the red-head shivered, it wasn't just from the cold. If the Church had been trying to make a point, the all too large and weak band of travelers might be looking at attack even before the dawn.

[NekoButcher]

The snow began to fall. It started relatively light, but it was accompanied by a bitter cold. Pounder had remained at his post through it, not as much out of dedication but because he got a subtle pleasure in freezing if it meant his enemy would as well. He continued to look out over the horizon, and eventually Markham returned with the rest of the hunting party. They didn’t have much, as far as food was concerned, it was clear they came back because they were afraid of being lost in the snow.

“Keeping watch?” Markham asked as he approached Pounder.

Pounder nodded. His first intuition was to answer with a simple nicety, but he soon thought of a much better, more elaborate plan. “Yeah,” he began. “I knew someone needed to do it. They were going to send this red haired girl to do it, but I recognized her immediately and was somewhat reluctant. While we were on the train together, before any of this ever happened, she was sitting near me, and while I could be wrong, I think I heard her earlier praying to the Ethereal Sway.”

Markham’s eyes opened widely. “Even if she does hold the beliefs of the zealots, she stayed with us so far, so we shouldn’t be too quick to judge,” he offered.

“Perhaps,” Pounder replied. He had found Markham a bit hard to hear with the stormy winds, but even so, he thought he got a good enough glimpse of what he was saying.

Markham patted him on the shoulder and passed him by. Pounder decided that he would make no effort to go after their food. For the moment, he would wait to see if Markham confronted Karuka. He was almost certain that it would happen. From the way Pounder had seen Markham’s face, he knew it would be a matter of time. There was just something in the look that showed both shock and a feeling of anger at an elaborate deception that suggested, even if Markham’s nature suggested otherwise, the matter would be settled before they went to bed.

“You might as well come with,” Markham turned around to say. “You can barely hear anything with the wind and snow the way it is. If we have fire, you deserve it too…”

Before Pounder could reply, the sounds of horses moving across the ground appeared. They began to sound louder and louder, reminiscent of the railroad’s clickety clack. Pounder shuddered. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he knew that it wasn’t good.

Soon, a group of men, dressed in the warrior priest’s robes of the Church of the Ethereal Sway turned and looked at the group. “We know some of you are innocent,” he said. “But some of you are among the damned.”

Pounder gulped visibly. “How do you decide?” he asked. Secretly, he cursed his luck. He had just spread a rumor that Karuka was the most pious around.

[Karuka]

Karuka had neglected to eat, telling the woman who had tried to feed her that she'd gone longer and harder on no food. A meal would have felt good, but there were others that needed the food more than she did. Nursing mothers, for instance, needed as much food energy as possible, as did frail elders.

It wasn't even sunset when the group burst from the woods, dressed with the same markings as the priests had during the attack on the train. They started inspecting each person, one at a time, for signs of "innocence" or "heresy." One woman who knew what was happening started begging for mercy when they looked at her, but merely got beaten for her trouble. Her son, the nine-year old that had gone for fish, lashed back at the priest in charge.

He grabbed the boy and leveled a dagger at his neck.

"Unrepentant heresy such as this cannot be tolerated. You might think us cruel for killing this little boy, but we will not allow the disease of faithlessness, disrespect and unwholesomeness to continue infecting the people of this nation. Those of you that are yet innocent will be returned home. Those of you who are not will be taken, given a chance to confess and repent, and released. If you resist or are found unrepentant, this is what will happen to you."

The knife raised over the boy's throat, but before it could plunge down, an amber fist struck the priest square in the jaw, knocking him to the ground and away from the boy. Karuka, who had been standing near the temporary wall, toward the end of the line, had broken away from her captors and now stood between the priest and his target, proud and fierce as a tigress protecting her cub. Even as he stood back up, his blue and gray robes rustling softly, his face contorted in anger and lips beginning to form around damning words, she held her ground. Her left wrist turned out to give her spiked bracelet a good chance of hitting if he gave her reason to attack.

A glint on her hand caught his attention though, changing his anger into shock.

"Priestess!"

Karuka blinked. What?

The man grabbed her hand, scrutinizing the ring she'd plucked from the corpse with his intense hazel eyes. Apparently, it was a mark of rank that she'd grabbed without knowing anything about the religion.

"Priestess, why are you here among these heretics?"

Karuka had to think fast, trying to come up with words that sounded right to the ears of a cleric of a religion she knew nothing about. She supposed that innocents, heretics, and infections would just have to be enough.

With an imperious toss of her head, Karuka yanked her hand from the clergyman's grasp, glaring into his heavily jowled face. Since she had the ring, she had his attention...as well as some negative attention from the refugees she'd risked her life to save. Being forced to pose as a priestess was more than a little dangerous on two fronts, but if she was going to save these people, she'd have to accept the risks.

"I am here, Priest, because it was my task to save as many innocents from that train as possible. These people are not your concern, they are mine."

She watched a frown stiffen the priest's jowls. He didn't believe her; the half-brained plan was certain to crumble in a matter of moments.

"Why dressed as such?"

She scoffed slightly, standing up straighter. "Because if I dressed as a priestess among these, I would have no chance to help them safely home. It destroys faith in the hearts of the people to send a mob to murder them."

The priest bit his lip, and Karuka could feel her heart trembling in her chest. It was starting to look like violence would have to start. There were no open fields this time, and they'd made their own walls. Meanwhile, the priest was muttering to himself. All eyes were on him, none of his own men daring to move without his consent. If he was staring down a priestess senior enough to be sent on such a mission, they'd already done enough damage. But he still needed to decide what he believed.

"I didn't hear anything about...what parish did you say you served? What Cathedral?"

This, she knew nothing of. She didn't know where the parish boundaries were or even any cities in Salvar save one. To answer "Knife's Edge" would have meant trouble, she was sure. If only she knew an obscure one...

She set her lips and folded her arms. Since she couldn't answer, she'd either silently stubborn her way out or hope for a miracle. If that failed, the priest before her would die first.

[NekoButcher]

“She serves at the Sulgolov lake Parish,” Pounder interjected. “On the outskirts of Sulgolok, in the farmland there…” He hated to help Karuka out of trouble, but now, it seemed as though he had no choice in the matter. Even though he would have had no problem with her receiving her justice at the hands of the warrior priests, he didn’t know how, without her they could justify their own sanctity.

It was fortunate that Pounder had, in his anger against the Kyorl, had renounced all traces of an Alerarian identity. When he had looked for spiritual counseling, he had gone to Salvar, just because he never felt comfortable feeling vulnerable in the country that had killed his son. While he never considered himself a religious fanatic, he was well enough aware of the religious tenets to help fake Karuka through.

“Please,” he continued. “We mean absolutely no harm. We’re tired and cold and we haven’t eaten in a while. Give us a chance here…”

The leading warrior priest seemed somewhat disappointed with the answer, but only because it had been correct. Pounder knew the look well. He had worn it many times himself. He couldn’t help but think about how he had ended up on the wrong side of the conflict. His personal sympathies were much more like to lie with the church, at least this warrior priest, who seemed to be using the excuses of civil war and piety as a veil for his own angry desires.

Still, there would be no conflict today. The rest of the priests would not kill, with Pounder’s help, Karuka had successfully demonstrated that they were on the same side. Now, Pounder intended to press the advantage. He knew if they were truly warrior priests, even with a Civil War, they would have been honor bound to help a group of travelers under the command of a higher ranked priestess of their order.

“What kinds of transport do you have?” he asked.

“Four wagons where we hold our things,” one of the priests answered. “There are thirty of us in all here, and we can each carry at least one person on our horses with us. Fortunately for all of you, there is a little farm city, a pious city, less than half a mile from here. If you wish, we will take you all there.”

Pounder grinned. Then, before he could accept the offer, the sound of a baby pierced the air. Pounder cringed.

“Let’s see this,” the leader of the warrior priests said. He followed the sounds of the cries to a little oilskin, and picked up the baby. She was quite cute, and had Pounder been paying more attention to Karuka on the train, he would have recognized her as the baby that Karuka had promised would reach Knife’s Edge.

The blood thirsty warrior’s eyes lit up when he saw the child. Even in the rough snowy winds, Pounder could see the murderous glint that had been reignited by the find of the baby. Immediately and discreetly, he began to load his crossbow with the intention of using it the moment the warrior priest said what Pounder expected.

“This child, she carries a curse!” the priest began. He held up the baby in a way, that with the snow, it would have been difficult for anyone to see what he was talking about. “Just above her left shoulder! There is a mark of two vampire teeth! A cursed mark of birth, and people who would house her can only be our enemies! High Priestess, you have shamed me and you have shamed your faith-”

Before the priest could finish, Pounder had landed a bolt right in his eye. The shot had been a somewhat difficult one, but the experienced hitman had considered the child to be an acceptable risk. He knew that the moment the baby was brought into the picture, conflict between them was bound to be inevitable, and he’d wanted to make the first strike count. Now, with the sounds of weapons unsheathing all around him, the feline regretfully awaited the beginning of battle.

[Karuka]

Meg's screams grew louder as Pounder's bolt resulted in ichor and blood splattering over her and her little dress. Normally, Karuka would have rushed over to quiet and soothe her, but there wasn't any time. Now she only had the time to worry about the weapons leveled at her throat, and at the throats of the group she defended.

Thirty warrior-priests, and there were maybe twenty able-bodied warriors among her exhausted gaggle of survivors. True, it was better odds than five hundred against fifty, but this time there wasn't anywhere for the women, children, and elderly to run. She could see a pair of arrows glinting from hidden spots in the woods; the campers would be brightly illuminated for the archers.

Just as she thought that, arrows went whizzing by her head to land in one man's shoulder and an elderly woman's eye. Apparently, one archer was better than the other.

"Pounder!" The voice that cried out to the neko belonged to Markham. "The archers!"

As a body, the other twenty-seven warriors advanced. Karuka threw two knives before the swarm hit, one humming straight into the throat of the lead, mace-wielding bulk of muscle, the other missing entirely and hitting the distant ground with a shff.

Then the swarm hit. Karuka dodged a sword as it slashed down toward her slender neck and backhanded viciously with her left hand, letting the plynt bracelet drive its spikes deep into her attacker's throat. Markham matched swords with another of the attackers, and at the very back, one of the old men had picked up her blood-red staff and was holding off a pair of priests quite deftly.

The clamor of battle filled the clearing, and the tang of blood soon contaminated every breath drawn, breath that had seemed so sweet and clean when the snow had started falling. Screams of the injured, dying, and frightened could be heard over the metallic tattoo of metal on metal.

The Irish red-head hacked and slashed at the front of the line. She'd taken a few blows, including one from a Prevalida knife that had opened her vlince shirt and cut viciously across her back. The pain only seemed to heighten the experience of battle. Never before had her mind been so clear while blood flowed hot through her veins. She could see every blow before it was coming, move fast enough to dodge most of them and move right into the attacker so that she could bathe her mythril daggers in his blood.

THIS was war like her ancestors had experienced it, and she could see why it was glorious to wage war, see it to victory, and die in it. She'd never felt so alive, so energetic, so kinetic and powerful as this.

As her third victim fell lifeless to the ground, Karuka let out a battle-cry as she turned to the next amidst the chaos and the raging blizzard.