The Tribes of K'haren - Completed

Chapter 27.3

'How do they know?' Corvaer shouted angrily once the dragon and his passengers were gone.

'They can't know. It must be a coincidence.' Elgron replied calmly.

'What do we do now?' It was Elgron's first man who'd spoken. Worguin was his name, if Corvaer remembered correctly. The guy was angry but kept it in. He was a snake like creature and his scales were similar to Corvaer's but he didn't have horns and hardly any teeth. He only had long, thin fangs and a split tongue that kept nervously licking over his lips.

'We go down and release some chaos, then somebody will surely strike.' Now this was Almrut. Usually, she didn't speak without being spoken to first, but the other first man's uninvited contribution must have been too tempting. Yet Corvaer gave her a disappointed look to make sure she wouldn't speak up again.

'It's not going to work.' Elgron said grimly. 'Didn't you see these two? They were unarmed. If even their leaders are unarmed, what kind of weapons do you expect the rest of them to have? Even if they were foolish enough to attack us completely unarmed, they surely would give up way too soon for us to be able to cause much harm.'

Corvaer bit his tongue. On the one hand, he wanted to show off how very well his troops could cause chaos and make any man strike first, on the other hand, he didn't even really want to fight these people. They surely weren't the kind of danger the queen had been talking about. Also, if they'd happen to fail, the shame would be unbearable. If they instead just found another target, they could still return home as successors.

'They are leaving!' Feyn flew in low circles over the camp and kept shouting the good news. Some had supposed so already when the army had gone out of sight, but Nume had insisted on not giving into this hope until it was sure. Therefore, Feyn had flown high up and watched the army march away with Zar'gno following them from a distance. He'd decided to keep an eye on them and said he'd be back with news in the evening.

Everybody cheered and seemed to be happy now that the danger was gone, only one person remained untouched. Mersha ran to the place where Kran and Nume were about to drink to their luck. Once he arrived, he had to fight through many bodies and their smells made him want to throw up. How could they not wash themselves despite living so closely to a river?

'Mersha, do you want to join us?' The boy looked at the man who'd spoken. He'd seen him a few times before but didn't know his name, mainly because the man was of no importance whatsoever. Now that he offered Mersha a drink, the boy decided to keep out of his way. It was too important for his visions to stay clear for him to drink any of that disgusting liquid. Without a word, the boy grabbed Nume's left hand and dragged her away from the crowd. As he'd expected, Kran followed and the rest seemed to be too busy drinking to even notice them leaving.

'You do realise this isn't over yet, don't you?' The accusing look on Mersha's face was intimidating.

'They're gone, don't worry, they won't be coming back.' Kran said, oblivious to how pointless it was to tell a foreteller what he thought was going to happen.

'Exactly. Where do you think they'll be going now? I mean, it's not as if they could hurt anybody for everybody in K'haren is so peaceful and would never give them any reason to attack...' At that point, Mersha decided that sarcasm was something he liked and was going to use more often. The look on Nume's face was just too pleasing. Kran, however, looked rather confused and helpless.

'You know, don't you? You know why they didn't attack us. Tell me.' Nume said. Now Mersha couldn't help smiling. At least some level of intelligence seemed to be around.