Theris walked day and night until his strength gave out and exhaustion overtook him. The Hunt followed, helping him search the blighted lands for his wife and children, but they found only ruined villages and empty foundations where homes once stood. Occasionally they would stumble across the bones of dead cattle and the men would fall upon them, smashing them with rocks, hoping to find a bit of marrow inside.

They rarely came across other men unless they passed along the edge of the blighted lands. Then they would sometimes encounter a lone figure or small group hiding from a nearby village. A challenge was made and a choice offered: join the Hunt or become the hunted. Unless the hunted were in a large group, they rarely chose to fight or run, but when any did, the Hunt fell upon them with spears and teeth and claws.

What happened to the hunted after that, Theris never knew. It was difficult for him to think or remember anything past that horrible day he walked down the blood-soaked street of his village. At one point he found himself and the Hunt standing on the eastern bank of the Pardos River, the city of Nur only a few hundred yards away on the far bank where the river forked.

Smoke rose above the city, but they were the pale thin columns of cooking fires. He watched people moving in the distance, heard the call of fishermen readying their boats and the bleating of animals being led in through the gates. The peaceful human habitation seemed strange and distant and alien to him.

Part of him wanted to leave the silent staring men at his side and go into the city, find a building or some piece of roof he could put between himself and the sky and lie down and sleep. How long had he lived like this? How many days had he spent out in the wild?

Only the thought of leaving his wife and daughters in the hands of their captors turned his head back to the blighted lands. To his surprise, every one of his starving men followed him.

<==|====|==>

The gob-bocari's expression was frozen in a silent groan. Draped over its large pointed ears and hanging beneath its tiny chin, a cord a cord was threaded through its severed fingers. Its eyes had been replaced by white stones and the pole on which it had been impaled was inscribed with the symbols of schemas.

"It was the draek's cry that gave me the idea," Karux said with a note of satisfaction in his voice. Garanth, Karux's students, Z'taes, and Z'taes' men all listened to him with various expressions of mixed curiosity and disgust. "As horrible as that sound is, it is not the sound alone that makes their cry so frightening. The draek is, somehow, crafting schemas with its cry and the gob-bocari are particularly sensitive to those."

Z'taes gestured at the grisly post. "If these schemas are what frightened the gob-bocari, why do you need...the rest of this?"

"The schemas evoke the looming presence of death, but the rest of it makes it personal. When a gob-bocari sees this, it is like looking into a reflecting pool and seeing its own death leap out at them."

"Very well, but why the necklace of fingers?"

Karux shrugged. "I don't know, but that combination in that arrangement really seems to terrify them."

"It frightens me," Harkin said.

Netac nodded. "He frightens me."

"Z'taes, have you begun burning the bodies yet?" Karux asked.

"My men are lighting the fires as we speak."

"Have them first remove the heads and hands and bring them to me."

Z'taes shuddered. "Very well."

"Netac, I'm going to need your help as well." Karux turned and walked to the edge of the fields and Netac followed. "We have a lot of tanning to do."

"Joy," Netac groaned.

"Now stand back," Karux stopped before a small rocky outcropping.

Garanth followed as well, intent on asking him a question, but sensing a shift in the karis, he changed his perception to the world of forms. He had experimented with a few small schemas when no one was around, with limited success. Still, he never missed a chance to watch Karux or his students work their craft so as to learn from their example.

Karux summoned the symbols of a stone and began to arrange them in complicated multi- layered strands. When he activated them, the bedrock rose up from the ground, spread out and formed a hollow. When it finished, it had formed a waist deep trough in which a dozen people could lie side by side.

"Do you think that is big enough?" Karux asked.

"I should hope so," Garanth said.

Karux looked back at him. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, Adra, the men have a request."

Karux frowned at the word 'Adra', but seemed to have given up trying to stop him from using it. "What?"

"The men have taken to calling themselves the gobo-bashers. They'd like one of these gobo-poles as a trophy."

Karux shrugged. "We're going to be hauling multiple scores of these things on the donkeys. I hope to have more than enough to protect all the villages of the south. But if we need more, well, the gob-bocari seem plentiful."

<====|==|====>

The stalks had begun to bend from the weight of the ripe heads of grain. The farmers were in the fields singing as the late summer light flashed from their bright bronze sickles. Macander bent and cut in time with the rest of the men while the women and children gathered up the stalks and tied them into sheaves. He shared a smile with Tokarha as young Reavkin tried to lift the sheaves and stand them together into shocks. As Macander bent once more to his task, he heard the excited shouts of the boys playing near the road.

"Men! Men are coming with spears!"

The harvesters paused and looked up curiously. Macander jogged to the edge of the field and saw a hundred men marching along the road, raising a cloud of dust behind them.

"To the korion! The korion!" he shouted and raced back to scoop up Reavkin. Tokarha could barely walk as it was nearly time for her to give birth. But they all made it into the korion and closed the doors before the reavers had arrived.

"Women go to your homes!" Macander shouted and raced for his house. "Men don't open that gate and keep your sickles handy."

"Where are you going?" Shihar asked.

"To get something. I'll be right back."

Macander raced around behind their small house to a narrow tool shed built against the back wall. Pulling out shovels, hoes, an adze and a saw and tossing them carelessly aside, he scraped away the dirt on the floor and found the edge of a board buried there. He jerked it up, yanked it out and grabbed a bundle wrapped in oil skin. Spinning it open, he pulled out a leather tunic covered in bronze plates and put it on. He took up his double-headed spear and raced back around to the front gate.

He felt some remorse for lying to Karux all those months ago about throwing his gear away, though perhaps he felt worse for keeping it. Had he secretly hoped he would be called to use it again, or had he feared that life itself had determined he was to be a reaver and wouldn't let him quit?

The farmers all gaped at him when he returned. Shihar looked him up and down, his eyes settling on the bladed staff. "You look like you know how to use that thing."

"People of Kerwyn's Hill!" a spearman called out from the other side of the gate. "Why have you closed your gate?"

"Have everyone stand back," Macander told Shihar quietly. "I'll catch their attention. The others are only to attack the reavers from behind with their sickles. If the reavers turn on them, they are to back up and let me handle them."

Shihar, looking confused, nodded his agreement.

"We've only come to offer our friendship and help," the spearman said.

"We've already told you, we'll have nothing to do with the Collective," Macander shouted back.

"We know that. However the elders of the Collective cannot, in good conscience, allow you to harm your people with your selfishness. Therefore they have given us the authority to force our help upon you."

"Their thoughts are so twisted...they must all be sick in the head," Shihar muttered.

Macander nodded. "You can say that again."

"So why don't you open this gate," the spearman suggested. "It's too feeble to keep us out."

"It was only meant to keep out pests," Macander said. "We had no idea they would be so large. We are, however, prepared to exterminate you if necessary."

The spearman laughed. "We see that you've already started harvesting the grain for us. Perhaps we'll just finish the job and take it back to Nur with us. You'll know where to come to get your fair share."

"You just go ahead, lay down your spears and do that."

The spearmen on the other side of the gate paused and Macander heard urgent muffled voices. They weren't farmers and it seemed they didn't like the idea of disarming themselves to harvest the rest of the grain. Macander doubted any of them had done any honest work since they had taken up the spear. When they stopped talking and started throwing themselves against the flimsy gate, he knew they were serious about the forced 'help.'

Macander gestured for everyone to move back. He took a step back himself out of the arc of the gate and spread his stance and bent his knees. He glanced at the surrounding farmers who stared back in white-faced terror, hefted his spear and smiled.

He knew men were about to break in and try to kill them. He knew that if they put up a fight and lost, the reavers would likely take it out on their wives and children. The image of it all hovered at the edge of his imagination making his hands sweat and his heart race. But he felt another part of himself rising to the challenge, wanting to test himself against determined opponents. Years ago he had fought death itself to a draw at the battle of Korion-Tamia. How difficult could these warriors be?

The reavers crashed against the gate and the wooden supports holding the crossbeam immediately began to splinter. A second crash caused the gate to nearly burst open, splinters of wood falling away as it partially opened and bounced back closed. Macander lunged forward as the third crash flung the gate wide. With a victorious shout, he sliced open the throat of the man on his left with the tip of his spear and plunged it into the temple of the man on his right on the return swing.

The men behind them recoiled as the first two dropped and Macander charged forward, his spear held horizontal at shoulder level. He plunged into the first line, knocking them down into the feet of the men behind. His bladed staff whirled in a deadly dance, slashing reavers as they tried to back away, stabbing down at the fallen as they tried to rise. They didn't have to all be killing blows, he told himself as some of the wounded rolled and scrambled away. He just had to hurt them enough to make them stop fighting.

The reavers regrouped and readied their weapons. Macander backed up into the gateway, reducing the number that could get to him at any one time and using the bodies of the fallen as obstacles. He did a quick count of the fallen and wounded. Twelve down. Only eighty-eight to go.

With roar of outrage, the reavers charged him. Macander waited until they bunched up at the gate, then batted their spears aside and stabbed back. A couple of men tripped over the obstacles on the ground and Macander made a point of stabbing them with the back end of his weapon before they could get up. The enemy reavers fought with some skill, however, He felt the impacts of their spears jerking at his armored tunic.

One spear, thrust from someone behind the frontline, grazed his cheek with a sting as he ducked while more slashed at his armsand legs. He thought they were only scratches, but he knew that what only felt like a minor wound during battle could sometimes be a gaping wound that led to fatal bleeding. Still, he was able to throw the attack back, allowing himself time to catch his breath. He had lost count of the fallen, but he guessed they had lost a quarter of their number. Depending on their leader's nerve, they were about to either give up or get very aggressive and try to end it quickly.

The leader decided to get aggressive.

With a shout, they lunged forward en mass. Macander was driven back, away from the gate into the open, whirling his staff as he frantically blocked their attacks. Some in the first lines went down, tripping over their fallen comrades, but Macander was unable to exploit it. "Finish them!" he shouted.

The farmers at the margins rushed in, stabbing and slashing with their sickles. The reavers' heads turned and Macander leaped in catching the distracted with an attack to their throat, armpit or legs. Unarmored, the farmers were quickly forced on the defensive. His neighbor, Shoma went down with a spear thrust into his side, then Torha, who worked the plot next to Macander's dropped from an obviously fatal spear thrust to the chest.

The attackers, however, had lost nearly half their men. Their leader must surely be questioning his approach, Macander thought. With a roar of mounting rage, Macander swept aside the attacker's spears and leaped into the middle of their formation. Shouldering some aside, he kicked legs, punched and elbowed out enough space in the middle to raise his weapon. He lunged back and forth, stabbing one reaver, then another with alternating ends of his staff. He whirled it around as the reavers tried to bring their own spears to bear.

Forced into a ring and attacked both from within and without, the reavers fell back. "To me! To me!" their leader called out, standing in the gate. Tripping over their own fallen, the reavers stumbled back into a rough formation.

Macander let them fall back. He stood, spear at the ready, gasping for breath. He smiled grimly even while bleeding from a dozen shallow wounds. Taking their cue from Macander, the farmers stood back, bloody sickles at the ready.

"I can see that you would prefer not to have our help," the leader said.

"Perhaps we should continue this discussion another time?" He waited but Macander did not respond. "If you would allow us to collect our fallen, we would leave you in peace."

Macander exchanged looks with Shihar who gave him a nod that was nearly a shrug.

"Bring no spears within the walls," Macander rasped, still breathing heavily.

The leader hesitated, then nodded at a couple of his men. They handed their spears to their fellows and crept forward cautiously, bending to check their fallen. The injured, they helped to their feet, sometimes leading them away with an arm across the shoulder. The dead and the dying were carried out. Few reavers walked away without some sort of burden.

The farmers sighed and lowered their weapons. Macander did not lower his guard, but waited for a surprise attack.

The reavers were true to their word and limped away with their wounded. They left behind a few dead farmers and a half-dozen wounded, some of whom were not likely to survive. Once the men of the Collective had left the korion, the women rushed out to check on their men with tears of both joy and sorrow.

Shihar came over to Macander. "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. You were amazing."

Macander sighed. "I'd like to trade my harvest for one of the donkeys and a few supplies."

"Why?"

"I'm taking my family to Har-Tor."

"Do you think these men will come back?"

"I know they will and they'll bring more men."

"So you're abandoning us?"

"No. I'm coming back and I'll be bringing Karux's tireavs with me."