Carnage (Remastered) Read Free Page B

collapsed to the ground under the weight of it. Caught, like a
bug in amber.
    Blood trickled down the Knight's side as he
walked slowly toward the last soldier. He ignored it. His words to
the worm on the ground required all his concentration. They would
set the tone for what was to come.
    The Knight stopped almost on top of the
Broken-Bolt-no-more. He released the web of air that held the
prostrated man but the soldier didn't move except to shiver on his
belly.
    "Look at me." Cold rage added gravel to his
already deep voice; it came out as a grinding whisper.
    Hesitantly, the man turned onto his back and
looked at the Knight. He was not seeing a fourteen year old kid or
even a twenty-five year old man. He saw a mass of slowly swirling
shadow with eyes that glowed crimson.
    "Do you know why you live?" The
Hunter-no-more shook his head jerkily, not quite believing he was
and certainly not believing he would stay that way.
    "You are to be my herald, boy. You will go
back to your masters and you will tell them all that happened here.
You will tell them I called you to this place so the lives of your
vile brethren could feed my hunger. You will tell them that the
vengeance of the Harrowers has begun. Do you understand me, boy?"
Even more jerkily, the man nodded his head, eager to agree to
anything that would keep him alive. The Knight was tempted to ask
for his soul to see if he would offer it up. "You will tell them
one more thing. You will tell them my name. I am…Wraith." If the
boy kept nodding like that, his head was bound to fall off. "Now
go, run boy, and tell everyone you meet of me."
    Scrambling, the man got off the ground and
began to run. "Boy!" The Knight – no, the Wraith, he liked the
sound of it – spoke and the command cracked against the
hunter-no-more like a whip. He froze in mid-step. "Don't come
looking for any remains. They belong to me now. As do their souls."
If possible, the man ran even harder.
     
    Alone in the site of his first massacre,
Wraith allowed himself to become Vlad once again. The agony in his
side crashed into him full force. Sweat poured from his body as the
heat he'd ignored during the battle assaulted him. Grunting in pain
he forced himself to remain erect as he spread healing webs over
his wounded side. Bones knit back together and burnt flesh repaired
itself. Not the first hit he'd ever taken. He could deal.
    Vlad let the cloak drop too. No way the
little coward would double back to try and gather more information.
He'd created the web that made the cloak as a joke last Halloween,
but it'd come in handy. The perfect tool for the job he needed to
do, terrify a superstitious fool. That was all wizards were any
more.
    "So that's what you look like."
    Snapping back into his Wraith persona, the
Knight spun around. Behind him, maybe twenty-five feet away, stood
two new figures, one man, one woman.
    The voice in his head had
been quiet since he'd first noticed the Hunters but it finally
spoke up. Nothing's ever
easy . Kurt Cobain
replaced Johnny Cash with Smells like Teen Spirit.

The World
of Knights: Knight Hunter Tactics
     
    The Knight Hunters are a paramilitary
organization sworn to the service of House Blackblade. Creation of
the Knight Hunters was mandated in one of the very first Articles
of the Burning Sand. At first the wizard High Council tried to
maintain at least nominal command Over the Hunter. Legal and
budgetary constrains forced them to hand total control over to
House Blackblade. The have retained control ever since.
    While their membership is recruited from the
military Knight Hunters are not part of the military chain of
command. Their orders come from the High Inquisitor who is
appointed by house Blackblade. The second child of house Blackblade
is most often chosen High Inquisitor.
    Numbering more than ten thousand the Knight
Hunters actually spend very little time actively hunting. A large
portion of their recourses and time is taken up by analyzing raw
population data.