16 – The Huntress

The Black Hounds were hardly difficult to track, but then again it seemed they weren’t making much of an effort to cover their tracks. And, well, Yomi was willing to bet they weren’t a particularly bright group to start with.

She had seen the smoke rising from the ruins of the trading post well in advance, and had reined her cassowary to a halt on a hill so she could get a better look from afar through her spyglass. She knelt there, shaded by the trees and the shrubs, and chewed a pellet of mint as she did so.

There was nobody out that way but corpses, carrion birds, and loping bonehounds. “Shit,” she huffed, catching the pellet between her incisors. “Too damn late. Again.” She rose to her feet, one hand resting on the grip of the billhook sheathed on her belt.

She made her way back over to Hagure, the black bird lazily pecking at a few interesting specks on the road, and mounted up again. A chilly and damp breeze rose up her way, fanning the fur trim of the cloak she wore. She pulled it closer with one hand, the other giving Hagure’s reins a swift flick. The bird cawed and hurried downhill, taloned feet kicking up plumes of dust on every speedy step.

The carrion crows took off as she drew near, taking with them whatever chunks of blackened meat they could shove in their beaks. The bonehounds were more stubborn, baleful red eyes glowering at her from behind the helmets of sculpted bone that sprouted from their flesh. But a quick flash of the billhook, and a rustle of pressure in the air from Yomi’s qi, was enough to get them yelping and scattering.

The scavengers didn’t have much in the way of bravery, particularly when they faced the Intent of someone like her. It was much the same with humans too.

Yomi scanned the corpses on the roadside, and then inspected the burned out interior of the post. To her complete lack of surprise, just about everything of value had been stolen from the place. The cargo left strewn about from the smashed boxes was the kind of junk that couldn’t be eaten, smoked, drank, or sold off for a big profit.

The Black Dogs were nothing if not consistent in their thieving ways.

“Fucking vermin,” she said, turning and spitting her pellet of mint into the ashen soil. She turned to Hagure, the scar-faced bird watching her with his head cocked to the side. “I know, I know. We shouldn’t waste much time here, but… well, I’m probably not getting into the Hereafter if I don’t put more good deeds under my belt, and the Great Goddess responds well to folks burying the untended dead.”

She pulled a shovel from the side of the saddle, because it was just common sense to travel with a shovel, and set about her work. And while she tried to rationalize it aloud, telling herself she was doing this to get a foot in the door of the afterlife… the plain truth was it simply wouldn’t have sat right with her to leave those corpses to rot.

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It was a long process, even with qi burning in her meridians, but she was well experienced when it came to digging ditches at this point at least. Her quarry had made it easy to learn, leaving a bloody trail of corpses for her to follow and tend to.

The sun was dipping into the horizon as she packed the last piece of soil into place, leaving a great tract of tilled earth by the side of the burned out wreckage.

“Think I’ve lost track of how many they’ve killed by now,” she muttered, reaching up and wiping streaks of sweat and soot from her brow. Nobody who knew Yomi would have considered her a feminine woman, same way most of the mountain women got looked down upon by the ‘civilized’ lowlanders… but, here and now, she really wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking her a filthy thug, caked in ash as she was.

Hagure pulled his head back and squawked, kicking and scratching the road with one foot.