Wrath

As it turned out, the dust cloud Grant spotted was made by two separate groups of people on horseback, trading arrows from strong recurving bows and charging in and out of each other's ranks with swords hacking and twirling. Both groups looked much the same, in armor of thick overlapping boiled leather squares with heavy curved blades and high-backed saddles.

One group was distinguished by a mark variously engraved on the brows of their helmets, painted on shields, or sewn onto coat sleeves and what light barding some of their horses wore. It was similar-looking to the one that had appeared on the back of Grant’s hand, but a quick comparison showed it not to be quite the same. A different character from within the same system of letters or symbols, perhaps, and they seemed to have about the same number of wedges, but it looked as if about half of them had been rotated a little more than one-third of a full turn counterclockwise, such that many that sat diagonal on his mark were straight horizontal or vertical on their sigil.

He watched them from about two hundred yards off, laying concealed in the grass with his binoculars resting on the stump of what was once a woody shrub. It didn't take long for him to piece together that the side identified by that strange mark was outnumbered and being slowly hemmed in. They seemed to be circling an ox-drawn cart defensively; its contents, covered by a great canvas sheet, must have been quite valuable to merit their sticking around to defend the thing.

As one man with their sigil on a flag mounted to his back waved his sword and shouted a command, he went down with an arrow in his throat, and his death broke the morale of the whole unit. Four of the marked riders broke off and abandoned the cart. Their ten remaining adversaries closed the distance quickly, even as a fifth defender tried to scoop the man driving the cart onto the back of his horse. A few arrows followed the four riding off, but none met their mark. The attackers were more concerned with securing the cart than inflicting casualties in the rout.

The driver and his would-be savior were not so lucky. A sword-stroke where belly met pelvis doubled the rider over, and the cart-driver tumbled to the ground. He rose and drew a short blade of his own. Impressively, as two foemen circled him, he managed to land a cut down the right hand and forearm of one. Even as he followed through with the motion, however, the other swung behind, dropped from his saddle, and tackled the driver to the ground.

The now-riderless horse, a palomino with short blue cloth barding bearing that strange mark, wandered in Grant’s direction. If it came just a little closer, he could run up, mount it, and ride off before the victorious party could stop him. He tucked away his binoculars, held his rifle out in front of him, and started army-crawling forward through the grass. Damn it, he thought with a slight grin, I was a mechanic in the navy, then I got out of the navy, I might be dead now, and here I am doing infantry shit.

He peeked up every now and again to check what the victorious riders were doing, getting a closer look through his scope where it was warranted. After tying the captured driver to the back of the oxcart, they gathered up the horses of the fallen that hadn’t wandered far– not yet going after the one he wanted, fortunately– then set to stripping the arms and armor off the bodies of the dead. The equipment was laid in two separate piles, one for friends and one for foes, and dried grass and such wood as could be found out here was gathered into a pyre for their three fallen. The four killed defenders, they piled near their prisoner, then started a smaller fire there. Not for burning the dead, clearly, but it seemed an odd time and place to build a cookfire.

One rider broke off toward Grant and the stray horse. Grant huddled low to the ground, and the riderless horse barely missed trampling him as it galloped off, still spooked by the men and horses who had killed its last rider. The pursuer wheeled back around, and seemed to look right at Grant. His heart skipped a beat, but his hunting camouflage appeared to work just as well on men as deer, and the man turned back with an oath of “Yog help me, I'll bugger that gelding.”

That surprised Grant, that he could understand these strange warriors with archaic weapons. Made them seem a little less alien and a little more human, for the moment.

He heard a scream, and looked through his scope. Sure enough, the fire they had lit behind the cart had a spit set out over it now, and on it was a cut of meat. Fresh meat. Still steaming from the carcass, it looked like. Odd. There were still two oxen in front of the cart, and Grant didn't see any fallen horses. The only dead creatures were–

One of the victorious riders had the body of a slain enemy tied upside-down to the back of the cart, next to their prisoner. Grant couldn't see clearly what he was doing to the body, but a pile of red and gray things was growing near where the captive cart-driver sat. A second rider dismounted next to the cookfire, drew a knife, and cut away the prisoner's tunic. Slowly, with a shudder of sadistic glee, he brought the blade in toward the struggling man's skin, at the same point between belly and groin where Grant might begin cutting up a buck…

The smart thing would have been to lay low, to let these men– these demons– finish their cannibalistic feast and ride off, then scoop up one of the horses that had run from them and ride the opposite direction. Grant knew this, but at the moment, he didn’t much care.

Thunder rang across the steppe, and the stooping butcher went limp, his head falling into his would-be victim's lap. The one cutting into the dead man dropped next. The mounted one who had ridden out to chase the horse turned again, but not the length of a breath passed between Grant completing a second turn of his rifle's bolt and a third shot punching through the armor on the warrior's chest.

Now the remaining seven were roused against him, and he came to appreciate just how difficult his situation was, with his element of surprise fully spent. Even if he ignored the one with the injured arm for the moment, he had only one bullet left for each of the rest. Six shots, and if he missed a single one, they would ride him down and fill him with arrows. Or worse. Grant had never seen frontline combat before. He'd never given or received an injury in a fight worse than a concussion or a broken nose, until about eight seconds ago. And this combat, like many of those fistfights, he had rushed into without much thought.

But he understood his own impulsiveness, and because of that, he liked to take the time to learn things well and do them right whenever he wasn't in a blind fury, so he would have the tools to succeed when his anger got the better of him. He was an avid hunter, and he knew he might sometimes get frustrated and attempt dangerously long chases or irresponsibly difficult shots, so he had put in the practice to be a strong hiker, have good bushcraft, be a good shot with a bow…

And a damned good shot with a rifle.

He rose from prone to a low kneel to get a better view over the grass. The one who had been stacking fuel around the bodies of their slain went down before he could climb in his saddle. The bullet pierced through him from behind and struck the horse, but the soft-point bullet had expanded and lost most of its energy by the time it exited the rider’s cuirass. It caused the animal no harm but a bruise, and fright.

The injured man was being tended to by one of his comrades, who abruptly tied off a bandage and sprang for his mount. Grant got him through the stomach as he turned to charge. The wounded one was also trying to mount up, but was taking long enough just to climb on his horse that Grant was willing to ignore him and find a more dangerous target.

He found his sixth mark stooped behind the oxcart, when sunlight glinted off the head of an arrow. Apparently this man was quite confident in his archery, and the hundred-and-fifty plus yard shot that followed came impressively close, the arrow burying itself in the dirt a mere two paces short of Grant and five to his left. The distance was less impressive for the rifle shot that followed, but the placement in through the jaw and out through the brainstem was something Grant intended to brag about, if he lived– or remained only dead once over– long enough to get the chance.

Two galloped back toward the cart from behind it to Grant's right, tossing aside bundles of wood for their pyre and readying bows. He shifted position, pulled his rangefinder, and tagged one. Two hundred and seventeen yards; maybe a bit of a daring shot for a moving target, especially with no ammo to spare, but now that he had seen these cannibal monsters bleed, he wanted more, and he didn't want to wait for it. He took the shot, and immediately regretted it when his target didn't drop from his saddle.

Then the rider clutched his leg, and turned to shout something to his companion. The two then turned, and fled into the sunrise together.

Cowards. Grant smiled, then caught hoofbeats off to his left. As he turned to face the last hale rider– the injured one was only now beginning to gallop in his direction– an arrow struck the ground where his knee had been a moment before. Grant stood and aimed, even as the rider nocked another arrow, his steed now about fifty yards away and galloping, forty, thirty…

He fired at the same time the second arrow left the bowstring. He didn't immediately see what happened to his enemy, as the arrow struck the objective lens of his scope and came to a stop with its tip emerging from the side of the aluminum body. Lowering the rifle, he saw a riderless chestnut horse slowing to a trot as it approached him.

Grant cycled his bolt, then swung easily into the saddle, the horse giving him no trouble. The final rider approached him. The warrior's sword was in his left hand, his right held tight to his chest, but by the time Grant brought the rifle to bear on him, he was already turning to flee the same direction as the earlier two. Grant considered letting him go. It was a bad look, shooting a man in the back, and he only had a single round left. Hell, if it looked like these cannibals were going to capture him at some point in the future, he might want it for himself.

Fuck it.

Grant point-aimed over the top of the broken scope, and shot the cannibal in the back.

All of the bastards fallen or fleeing, Grant rode over to their captive. He fished a hunting knife from his backpack, and was about to dismount to cut him free, but hesitated.

“Who were those whoresons?”

“Bekhites, who else?”

“And y’all are?”

“Cainites. Did you not see our mark?”

“I was wondering about that.” Grant displayed the back of his hand.

“A Penitent, and bearing a wand of strange and powerful magics, and lost on the steppes without the faintest clue who calls this place home. An encounter with one such as you is fateful indeed, stranger.”

His wand was freshly spent of all its magics, but Grant didn't see any sense in making that known just yet. “Is this Bekhite land, or Cainite? And what is a ‘Penitent’?”

“This is both our peoples’ land, and neither. We two are adrift in the emptiness of the north. Herdsmen and raiders, but not sowers of seeds nor tillers of the soil. We Cainites at least were once builders of cities and empires, but no more. Our envy rests on the Bekhites for having no such legacy to mourn. As for your mark… I had wished you would tell me what it was, what the title it conferred meant. Our shamans told us to look out for it, that there were more people than usual bearing it upon the face of Nod, but they said nothing of its significance. We were to offer every incentive for you to come willingly before the father.”

“And maybe I will, if it gives me the chance to kill more of these Bekhite sombitches. But who is your father?”