Shadow Assassins (The Second Realm Trilogy) (11 page)

He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Dante, it’s late. Go back to your dorm. And go to
bed.
No sneaking out, no rule breaking. Bed.”

She shot him a glare that worried him, her dark eyes flashing red in the reflection of the light. She didn’t argue with him further, storming out of his office instead.

Dirk sighed heavily once more, leaning his head onto the cool wood surface of his desk. He was never going to have kids, if they could turn out to be like Dante.

The Kkyathi were an interesting tribe. Kaleb watched as they lit up what they called the
social fire
, the camp fire in the center of their tribe grounds, as night fell over Kkyathi land. There were several cooking fires to the sides, used for food preparation, but the social fire was the fire around which people danced around and socialized at. Like the town tavern, the social fire was the place where people gathered to unload the events of the day onto their friends and exchange ideas. People sat on carved wooden benches or balanced on the ends of crates or other objects, clinking their cups and laughing merrily around the fire.

Kaleb felt a bit awkward, just sitting awkwardly out to the side. Kikkaho had been his guide around the tribe, introducing him to the warriors he had walked beside or a few of the cooks, but she had left him for a few errands she had to run. With no one else really familiar to talk to, he hung around the fringes, observing.

“How do you like it here, stranger?”

He turned. The woman who had been hanging around Kirrah stood before him, holding a metal cup. She was smiling at him, her golden eyes warm. Her red hair had been released from its binding and it flowed around her shoulders freely. She wore the armor of the Kkyathi, which was leather and free of fancy decoration. The leather had been stressed and battle worn, but it was still supple enough to
allow movement and thick enough to stop a knife. There were weapons on her, but she gave no indication that she was going to use them.

Realizing that he was staring, he quickly replied, “I like it here. You’re all very kind.”

She sat down on a log next to him. “I’m not really one of them. My tribe, the Chokerre, was wiped out by Emeralde’s knights. The Kkyathi have been kind enough to let me stay. So, you should probably realize that they are kind to strangers, as long as you pose no threat to them.”

“I’m not a threat,” he murmured faintly, sitting down next to her. “I’m sorry about what happened to your tribe, though.”

She shook her head, her brilliant red hair glimmering in the light of the social fire. “The battle between Emeralde’s knights and my own were how Kirrah and I met. She was spying on our tribe, trying to warn us about the knights. We had fought and well, she became my war conquest.”

There was so much foreign terminology Kaleb had been exposed to since he had found the tribe. The words were plain enough, but the meaning obviously had a different significance than what he was used to.

At his apparent confusion, the woman before him clarified, “Kirrah and I fought when she was discovered on our land. I could have killed her, but I spared her life instead. That made her my war conquest, or slave until the life debt was paid. She paid the debt in the same day by saving me and taking me to her tribe but...we’ve stuck around each other a lot since then.”

The small, warm smile on the woman’s face suggested the sort of feelings she had for the werecat. Kaleb smiled with her. “The two of you must be fierce warriors.”

She nodded. “Kirrah is leader of the Kkyathi warriors. I was the leader of mine. I could not be with someone of less caliber and skill.”

“Are you a werecat like she is?”

At the question, the woman grinned, exposing canine teeth that were longer than what Kaleb was accustomed to. “No. The Chokerre were a great clan of werefoxes. I’m the last of them.”

A werefox and a werecat together.
Now that was something he had never heard of. He was going to comment on it, but his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden commotion. From the edge of the woods, several men shouted an alarm. People around the social fire stopped their conversation and looked towards the forest, instantly alert.

The woman cursed. “We have company in the woods. I’m sorry, but I must part ways with you. It was nice talking to you, for however short a time it was. My name is Kamu, by the way. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” he said. “But could I help out somehow? I can shape shift to a creature that can help, possibly.”

She murmured her approval and led him to a small gathering. The men who had raised an alarm were now crowded around Kirrah, letting her know what they had found. Several armored knights on horseback were wandering through the forest, weapons drawn.

“Men who are lost do not wander around with swords out and ready for battle,” one of the warriors spoke up.

“You’re right.” Kirrah said to him. Louder, she announced, “Men! We ride out to go greet these men on horseback. If they are Emeralde’s knights, they must leave our land.”

A cheer of agreement rose up from the men around her.

Kamu found her lover and greeted her with
a nuzzle to the cheek before turning her attention to Kaleb. “Our visitor wishes to assist by shifting into an animal that can help us.”

Kirrah eyed him and nodded. “Take the form of a great cat, like us. There are two kinds of Kkyathi warriors – the ones who remain in the form of man in armor and the kind who run as wild animal. Transform, stranger, and join the line of creatures.”

Kaleb nodded and followed her lead. Kirrah had stepped back, undoing her armor until she wore no more than a thin cotton sheath that hid her nakedness from him. As she shifted into an animal, the cotton sheath tore and shredded apart. Her body warped, bones melting and re-forming into the correct shape appropriate for that of an animal. She fell forward as fur sprouted from her body, the lengthening limbs becoming strong with the massive muscle of the panther she transformed into. Brilliant yellow eyes stared out of the panther, highly intelligent and waiting.

Kaleb followed right out of her, his body falling into the form of a tiger. It was his favorite kind of large cat and he figured it would be appropriate for the werecat tribe. He met the stare of the panther he had met earlier and a sort of approval passed between them.

Kamu stayed in human form, but she swept her hair up and out of her face, tying it up before she withdrew a long dagger from the belt at her hips. A few of the human-form warriors stayed close to her, as if she were leading them. Around them, several other warriors were shifting into the form of various cats, from mountain lions to tigers. They joined up with the line of human warriors who wore armor and carried heavy blades and sharp bows. Without Kirrah having to direct her warriors, the group of human and animal headed to the forest, perfectly trained, settling into a sort of formation where the great cats headed the group of humans.

What followed next could only be described as a hunt. Kaleb watched the human-form Kkyathi move from tree trunk to tree trunk, hiding their lithe bodies from view. The feral cat warriors, meanwhile, crouched into the tall grass and forest underbrush. There were indeed men on horseback wandering through the forest, their heavy swords drawn but not used to navigate through the forest. They were a group of maybe fifty men and it was almost as though they were expecting to be attacked, with how tense they were. The torches and lanterns they carried did little to light up a clear path around them and they squinted in the dim orange light. Their horses tripped on the tangled forest ground, clomping around, snapping twigs and snorting their disapproval. Their loud noise covered the sounds the Kkyathi warriors made as they hid in their various spots. The horses knew there were predators around. As they edged closer to the Kkyathi cats, they grew uneasy, refusing to go forward. The knights cursed and forced their horses on.

Kaleb watched from his spot next to Kirrah. He had lost track of Kamu; she and her human-form warriors were behind among the trees. He thought he had seen her climb a tree, fast as lightning, but he couldn’t be sure when he himself had been running.

During his work with the Shadow Assassins, his animal forms were usually used to chase and subdue, never fight. A thrill ran through him that was more animal than it was anything else. This was like nothing his human mind could comprehend. He was in a tiger’s body and the tiger’s instincts awakened, his senses heightened and trained eagerly on the prey in front of him. He was a bundle of coiled energy that could spring up at any given second, bringing down the horses without as much as a second thought.

He saw Kirrah move suddenly, her black-furred body nothing more than a streak in the night-dark forest. That was the cue the rest of the cats needed. Several followed her lead, taking down the horses in one fell swoop. There was a horrible commotion as the horses fell. The armored men were thrown, their weapons falling to the forest floor, lanterns shattering. One lantern lit the forest floor ablaze for a brief moment, but the body of a horse smothered it quickly.

“Attack!” one of the knights yelled. “We’re under–”

He was silenced by an arrow as it lodged into his throat. Kaleb briefly saw the form of one of the human-form warriors holding a bow out, before he disappeared behind the trunk of an ancient tree.

From there, chaos broke out. With the horses down, the knights were forced to fight on foot. Their heavy metal armor might have stopped the biting fangs and slashing claws of the feral-form Kkyathi, but the human-form Kkyathi were right there to take care of the rest, with their blades and arrows.

Kaleb wasn’t comfortable with attacking one of the armored men without provocation, but he did fend them off when they attacked the ferals. He rammed his body into that of a knight, who was thrown off course as he tried to attack a bobcat with a leather cord and moon-disk around its neck. With the knight thrown off course and his helmet knocked aside, the bobcat started a counter attack that involved the man’s exposed head. Kaleb turned away, to his next target.

On it went. He helped the cat warriors out as they needed it, helping them knock armor aside so they could attack. He even saved one of the big cats from a deadly sword, pushing the cat to the side before he circled back around and went to take the knight down. The cat warrior was momentarily offended, before he realized what Kaleb had pushed him away from, and what Kaleb now offered to him as an open attack.

The battle around Kaleb was a mass of hissing cats, writhing fur and gleaming metal. The horses were down for the count and a good number of armored men lay still on the forest floor.

When there were only a small number of men were left, Kamu stepped forward, pointing her dagger at one of the knights. “Leave, knights of Emeralde. We have defeated your companions. Don’t make us have to defeat all of you.”

She tripped over her carefully formed words, in the native tongue of the Emeralde knights. There were few Kkyathi who could speak the Emeralde tongue, but it was learned out of necessity, with the constant conflict between her tribe and the kingdom. Kikkaho was much more fluent in the Emeralde tongue but her half-sister wasn't here.

The knights admitted defeat fast after that. With Kirrah in feral form, Kamu directed the knights, allowing them to collect their dead. A few feral Kkyathi left the battle field, returning with a small wooden platform that they dragged behind them with lengths of rope. They allowed the knights to mount their dead on the platform, but the knights had to drag it out of the forest themselves.

The Kkyathi warriors didn’t relax until the knights had crossed out of Kkyathi territory and back into the Emeralde Kingdom. They followed the knights right to the border of the territory, howling their victory into the night. It was infectious. Kaleb had barely engaged in combat but he felt the same victory that the others had. He felt a sense of connection deep within himself, connect himself to the warriors he had fought with. Their victory was his own.



The shape shifter was a useful asset.

Kirrah changed back into her human shape, covering her naked body with a spare cotton dress the warriors had brought back with the wooden platform. As she covered herself, she glanced back to the shape shifter, watching as he and Kamu went around their warrior party and checked the warriors over for injury. Kaleb had been useful in battle. While hesitant to attack the knights, he had saved her warriors, even pushing a knight out of the way before he would have taken a swipe at her.

He was definitely a useful asset.

As the knights were forced out of Kkyathi land, the warrior party she rounded up begins the journey back to their camp ground. She felt a soft hand at her back and knew Kamu was the one touching her. The red headed werefox came up beside her.

“The shape shifter helped us greatly in battle,” Kamu said, her golden eyes amused. “What do you think about making him an honorary member of the tribe, as I was made?”

Kirrah couldn’t hide her smile. The woman before her was the only one who could make her smile so. “I agree with you, dear. He was a great help. I think we can reward him with an honorary membership.”

The journey back to the camp ground was a different journey than the one away from it. The warriors were mostly silent, thinking over the battle and tending to their wounds as they walked. It didn’t take them long to reach the edge of the forest. The edge of the forest held the guard tower, a small pillar where warriors kept a nightly watch over the camp ground, defending it if necessary. When the men in the guard tower saw the war party coming from the forest, they reached for the set of drums nearby. The Kkyathi victory song rose from the air, encouraging the warriors and their village.