It was fortunate that there were no faces or features that I'd been personally close to, as I would have lost any semblance of calm. Each body had been… harvested, for lack of a better form of expression. The fangs were pulled from their mouths, the claws were cut from their fingers, and, most strangely and bloody of all, their frills had been cut from their heads. Every step of the desecration of the bodies had been deliberate and done with a sharp blade. The bodies, the meat was left behind, so there was no real reason for a beast to have done this. No, this was the result of a "person" deciding to hunt my people for sport.
Maybe the hunters had thought that the Khatif were a threat and the Kha were mere animals, but even if that had been the case, I didn't care. I would repay blood with blood, and they would be carved just as my people had been. Looking at the way the blood splattered through the partially snowy clearing, I could see that at least some of the victims of dismemberment had still struggled as they'd been cut to pieces.
These hunters decided we weren't people, that we deserved to be so unceremoniously dispatched. They'd find that their hubris quickly resulted in Keel-style revenge.
"Gather the bodies," I commanded, "I refuse to let their strength go to waste. They shall provide for their packs and those they cared about. Before we take the bodies, though, look for tracks or any other sign of whatever it was that thought they could challenge the Zaaktif Ashlani and his Empire. After finding trails, we'll return home and from there, we'll decide how best to track down and slaughter whoever dared to do this."
Every member of the pack spread out, but not far enough that they were out of sight of the rest. Each inspected the surroundings, trying to see what it was that had ambushed our people. There wasn't much in the way of clues. There weren't many signs of struggle, so however the pack had been ambushed, they'd been largely unaware of the attackers until the moment they appeared. It seemed like the attackers had taken pleasure in inflicting pain on the pack, but they'd also been careful enough to ensure that they wouldn't be overwhelmed in numbers, since many of the Kha had been slain in the initial attack.
The Khatif had been targeted as the ones to be tortured. Their legs showed where their tendons had been cut to keep them from escaping. Their blood stained the snow all around their corpses, signs of their struggle and agony. The crimson of their lives left no good information behind. Just a reminder of their comparative weakness to their killers.
After looking around and feeling my rage thundering in my ears, I ground my fangs and forced myself to stop thinking about the suffering our enemies had needlessly inflicted on these hunters. Instead, I tried to think of what type of creature this could be. They were obviously intelligent and malicious. Indlovu were the first to be discounted, as they would have left tracks in the snow. Each of the massive creatures was so tall that they'd scrape the trees overhead with their passage. Humans were a possibility, but I doubted it. We hadn't seen any since we left the Veratocracy's lands, and why would they have been here in the south? If there were Wavespeakers, though, I was sure they could erase any signs of their passage in the snow.
Even so, I didn't think this was the work of Speakers. There would have been more signs of blunt force if there was an Earthspeaker, burns from a Flamespeaker, or the smell of ozone and disturbed foliage from a Windspeaker. Maybe if it had been a force entirely made up of Speakers who only used Wavespeaking and Soulspeaking, but that would be stupidity in its highest form. After all, every Speaker could use any of the disciplines, regardless of where their greatest strengths lay. Only learning a single discipline was artificially weakening yourself for no reason, and I refused to believe that the Veratocracy, terrible and hateful though they were, were stupid.
Anyway, these Kha had been killed with blade and claw. Jagged, rough slashes in parallel covered their bodies, with deep, clean cuts interspersed throughout each of the victims' corpses. It didn't look like the work of Speakers.
So, it would have to be someone else. The people from Shandr had been different from those from the Veratocracy, and didn't seem able to use the Words like the Veratocracy's people could. Maybe it could have been someone from there, but I got the distinct impression that they preferred to stay back and out of conflict, taking more of a "we're more trouble to kill than it's worth" approach. That and we were hundreds of miles away from Shandr, through the entirety of the Indlovu Plains and across the Shandise.
Some of the Indlovu we'd spoken with had mentioned something about "The Hordes" to the north, and I had no way to know how far their ranges extended. It could be that they'd sent a party to the south? But it just didn't make sense. Someone from Tala would have mentioned a human presence nearby if they'd known about it. Maybe there was something on the other side of the river that they knew about, but the massive population of giant crabs would be enough to dissuade anyone from continuing on that path. It could be that the crabs stood as a barrier between Tala and the Hordes, but I didn't mind that for now.
That only really left two different options, as far as I knew.
The first was that insufferable princeling that attacked us as we passed Shandr. He'd mentioned something about how keelish were his people's prey, or something to that effect. Just remembering the fool had me grinding my fangs again, and I wished I'd killed the little bastard. Maybe that was my pride as a Keel, but I was confident now that I could have killed whatever Shandr threw at us and continued on our path. They would see just how powerful Nievtala's people were, and I would lead us to victory and…
I shook the thought from my mind. He was alive the last time I saw him, even if crippled by fear and my hand. He could have passed his information to his people, even though he'd seemed to be an outcast, as far as I was concerned. Maybe they lived near here? My understanding of the geography of the continent was shaky at best, so I couldn't say if they weren't also Shandise dwellers. That'd be annoying if that was the case, but we could deal with it without too much trouble if there weren't too many of the beasts. If there were thousands of them, though… then it would be a war of attrition, and we didn't have the resources or deep roots to draw on to succeed there.
With a sigh, I moved my thought process from thinking about the… Misti Hawar, I think they'd been called. Instead, I thought of the only other "people" we had made contact with or heard of.
"Tar?" I shouted. "Tar!"
The talking rat didn't answer me, but I resolved myself to find the little sneak and ask some pointed questions about what other kinds of people he knew. After all, if there was a talking rat, couldn't there be a talking, sword-wielding bear?