KRUSHITA KNEW WHAT THE lookouts were seeing long before they began yelling.
She had sent her mind out to the buzzard almost immediately after her mother had gone to join the militia on the far side of the circle.
She would have preferred the shvan, but they were all several dozen miles away and still milling about in confusion and fear. They had managed to elude the invading army by slipping through the broad gaps in their ranks. The invaders now surrounded the entire camp in a gigantic circle that was converging at an alarming rate, but they had originated from that one broadly rectangular patch of desert that Krushita had seen earlier through the buzzard’s and shvan’s eyes.
It was only after they emerged from that one place that they had spread out, swarming to surround the camp before rushing at it in an enormous, coordinated charge.
Now she soared high above the camp, the buzzard unnerved by the sight as well as the stench of what lay below.
The same cremation-ground stench of rotted corpses, worm-ridden flesh, fly-infested carrion. No, not like a cremation ground. Like a battlefield. In the buzzard’s mind, there was no word for such a place, of course. But it understood the concept. Death ground. A place where mortals fought and died in great numbers.
A feast for buzzards.
Except that these rotting corpses, wormy carrion, ripened bodies were moving.
Running.
Racing across the sand as fast as their rotting, mangled bodies could carry them. Which was pretty damn fast—faster than the buzzard had seen any humans move before.
Nothing moved really quickly in the desert. It cost too much energy, too much water. Least of all humans, who were so weak they could hardly survive a day or two without the liquid resource. Even buzzards were better than that, capable of going several days without drinking, and dromads were legendary for being able to endure weeks of hard trekking across the wasteland between drinks.
But not humans. Which was why their species moved like feeble lizards and needed dromads, horses, uks, or some other mount to carry their weak bodies across the red sands.
Yet these were sprinting across the hot sands now, all running toward the large camp filled with humans, uks, and all manner of strange things that made no sense to the buzzard’s simple mind.
Why were they running?
That was obvious, even to a buzzard.
They wanted to feed.
To kill.
To rip.
To tear.
To bite.
Shred.
Gorge.
And the food they craved was only to be found here, in this vast wasteland of red sand.
Living mortal flesh and blood.
Food.
Food.
Food, their feverish brains yelled as their broken feet and cracked bones carried them at madcap speed over the burning sand.
Food.
That was why they were running.
They sensed food ahead, in plentiful supply.
And nothing would keep them from it.
Nothing.
The buzzard had never seen such insanity.
True, humans were insane as a species.
But even by their crazy standards, this was a new level.
Dead humans rushing to kill living ones, not to steal their things, their shiny metal, their mounts, water, or animal meat supplies—none of the usual things that humans seemed to fight over in the Red Desert.
They wanted to eat them.
Even the buzzard could sense their killing frenzy.
The noise from their feverish brains was audible to the buzzard’s highly attuned senses.
Krushita didn’t have to ride their minds to know what they were thinking, feeling, what they wanted.
They wanted to kill those living mortals and eat them while they were still alive.
The buzzard shivered, wings dipping and curling inward as it experienced a chill that was strange and alien to its buzzard mind. Almost as if some other being was within its head, sharing its thoughts and sensations, and, just for a brief instant, it had felt that other being’s emotions too.
Terror.