The days that followed were an eternity for Rial, and as those days turned into weeks he began to fear he would lose himself. The white-hot rage that had consumed him upon waking that first night in the cangue, cramped and spine on fire, had long since burned away, to be replaced by a cold, dead core of nothingness. He no longer felt the weight of the planks on his shoulders; his whole being was a dull, throbbing ache.

He was kept in the courtyard during the day, forced to stay for hour upon excruciating hour at the Kotaku's side, taunted by his captor as he struggled to stand. He was not allowed to speak - at first, the Kotaku would strike him when he did, but after a few days he had a more effective method of punishment: thirst.

The Kotaku was as good as his word. Only he gave Rial drink, forcing water down his throat at irregular intervals. He had tried to make Rial beg for his drink, at first, and Rial was proud he had at least defied the Kotaku in that respect. This pride weakened as his thirst increased.

At night he would be dragged out of the compound by fearful servants, who alternately ordered him to move and apologised for their actions, and chained by one foot to a post set into the ground on the edge of the village square, close to where he had observed the compound from the trees upon his return. He would be forced to stay there until morning, under the baleful stares of the refugee crowd and the howls of the distant khiladri.

He was given no food; it was clearly the Kotaku's intention to starve him.

"This is what will happen to any who disturb the peace of our village," the Kotaku had announced to the refugees when he accompanied his prisoner the first night Rial had been dragged out and chained. "Any who feed or provide sustenance to this man shall suffer the same fate."

Rial had been stunned at how well the Kotaku affected his old mannerisms in front of the outsiders, emulating the cool seniority he had once carried so effortlessly. Only one twitching eyelid and a veiled hostility in his tone reflected the new reality.

The campfires of the refugees were burning only fitfully late on the third night when Shaleigh came striding through the mass of tents,[1] leather armour strapped on and a sword at her side. She carried a pack slung across the shoulder, and came towards him in long, steady paces, ignoring the following eyes of those huddled on the ground below.

Rial watched dully as she approached, too weary to muster much curiosity as to her intent. As she came to within a few steps of him she quickly swung the pack around into her hands and reached in.

The sight and smell of the food within caused his mouth to water, spikes of pain flaring in the dry glands under his tongue. He bit greedily into the proffered fruit Shaleigh offered, the pulp and juice that flooded his senses better than anything he had ever eaten.

Shaleigh's gaze fell challengingly on the staring faces of the crowd around them as she wordlessly took a slab of meat from her pack and held it for Rial to eat. The fires themselves seemed to quieten in the tension.

A sound drew Shaleigh's attention, and she looked up as the main doors of the compound slid open to reveal a household servant. The light framed a young woman, no older than Rial, frozen as she took in the scene before her. She stood there, trembling under Shaleigh's stare enough to make the blade at her side rattle in its makeshift holder.[2]

The tense silence held for some time, and then the servant hurried away on her errands. It was clear she would not be speaking of this.

Neither would the others. Eyes gradually fell from the scene and a low hubbub of conversation returned to the camps. Rial ate and drank until he could no longer stand.

Shaleigh took the weight of the cangue as it descended, helping Rial to sit with his legs folded beneath him. The planks still weighed heavily on him, but that was a sensation he was used to. She sat there in silence beside him until he fell into an awkward sleep, and though he did not know it until morning she rubbed a salve on his neck to sooth the chafed and worn flesh. She returned many evenings after that.

Despite his suffering Rial found some small benefit from his new situation. Kept besides the Kotaku throughout the day, Rial witnessed firsthand the gradual deterioration of both the man and the man's grasp on village affairs.

He'd never realized how mundane running the village really was. Even now, in times of great stress, the most stimulating matters to be brought before the Kotaku were petty squabbles about property rights or familial disputes. Nervous petitioners, doubly nervous upon seeing Rial chained and stockaded beside the chair, stammered out their complaints as respectfully and politely as they could, often to the detriment of their own arguments, and the Kotaku would either issue a decision or, more often than not, leave it to another minor Family member to resolve.

These petition sessions were attended to at set intervals throughout the day, and the rest of the time was devoted to countless rites and ceremonies that seemed to possess no significance whatsoever.

It was funny, realising that.

Growing up, Rial had never questioned the significance of the morning summons, the noon-light obeisance, the small offerings that were renewed every day at the shrines that littered the compound and outside, nor the careful, deliberate sculpting of the gravel gardens that absorbed so much of the senior servants' time, but now it was all faintly ridiculous. He found himself grinning at the quietly mumbled complaints of the Kotaku, complaints that came more and more frequently as the man got used to his prisoner's presence, and at the exhaustion of the servants who wasted so much time performing unimportant rituals for trivial reasons.

There was one topic of conversation that always caught Rial's attention, however, and that was reports on what was happening outside the village boundaries.

The Kotaku, it seemed, had banned anyone from traveling too far from the village, allowing only foraging and hunting parties even this amount of leeway, and what news there was was brought in by newly-arrived refugees. There were many of these though, and the Kotaku had men and women specifically tasked with gleaning what information they could about circumstances beyond the mountains.

One common thread was that the small town Rial knew as the outpost was now nigh-on unapproachable. Newcomers brought stories of a town gone to banditry, a place where it was impossible to tell who was the law and who criminal, so similar had they become. The smallest infraction meted the severest punishment, and in that town of transients and rogues the row of bodies strung up around the town walls was kept well-stocked.

From further afield came stories of roving bands of grakar or thieves attacking not only solitary caravans but whole convoys, forcing those who relied on trade for their livelihood to spend the entirety of their profits on armed guards, a purchase that still did not guarantee safe passage across the plains.

These tales, paralleling what Rial had heard so long ago from the people he met with Hamist, were now joined by accounts of plagues that reduced whole cities to a fraction of their former populations in months, and stories of armies on the march further afield. Some told tales of the deserters that fled these armies in entire companies to loot and pillage in safer climes.

It was the tales of the khiladri that most piqued Rial's interest, however. Tales like the one being told right now, over two weeks into his imprisonment. These were especially gratifying as he could see what his captor did not.

"...and you say they attacked you, do you?" sneered the Kotaku at the couple cowering in front of him.

The man and woman, both middle-aged and dressed in torn finery, had arrived very late the previous night, bolting out of the bushes crying with fear. Their skin carried the scratches of a hundred branches, the cuts of a thousand thorns, but nothing deeper. The Kotaku had ordered them brought before him.

"They came at dusk, sir," said the man, clearly ignorant of the proper form of address. His accent carried the lilt of a faraway place. "We were lost in the woods and searching for water, chased there by thieves and rapists some days ago. The monsters came at us from all around, moving like lightning with howls that deafened us. We ran all night, their growls only steps behind."

"You outran khiladri? For hours, you say? And you expect me to believe this foolish tale?" said the Kotaku, glaring at them from his chair.

The man's eyes flicked fearfully from his interrogator to Rial, standing dirty and sickly beside him, then back again. He licked his lips as he struggled to respond.

“But it’s true!” the shaking man protested. “They chased us for hours, always on our heels; we were lucky to avoid them for so long!”

“Yes, very lucky.”

The Kotaku gave a derisive laugh.

“Remove them,” he continued with a dismissive wave of the hand, calling on two of the servants who stood patiently on the edges of the courtyard. “They will receive nothing from the village stores until they tell the truth of how they came here.”

The Kotaku muttered to himself as the protesting couple were led away.

“All of them, trying to turn us against each other, against those who have watched over us for so long,” he grumbled, annoyed at yet another easily-discounted story.

The Kotaku looked up towards where the khiladri statues would be, were they not blocked from view by thick blue leaves.

This was not the first such account, not by a long way. Rial had heard a similar tale most mornings of his captivity, as the Kotaku grew more and more infuriated at the continual stream of strangers pouring into the village. With the limits placed upon the hunting parties and the trail leading to the village hard to find even for those who knew of its presence a sharp decrease in new arrivals had been expected. Instead, the flow was almost unaffected.

Though apparently no one else could see it, to Rial what was happening was obvious.

The khiladri were herding people towards the village.

Rial could almost understand the howls of the pack that echoed across the mountains at night. He heard them call to each other, singing out their positions, their movements, their discoveries of wanderers lost in the mountains. He could see the animals in his mind, silver flashes flowing across the land towards these people, surrounding them and driving them in terror towards the village, never quite attacking but always on the edge of doing so, always leaving just enough space for their prey to escape… as long as they fled in the right direction.

It was so simple Rial was surprised others could not see it. It didn’t even require a significant shift in behaviour; where before the khiladri would guide a lost soul through trust, now they led with fear.

The effect of their efforts was more apparent every day. Rial saw it with every suspicious look the villagers gave the huddled mass filling the square, with every veiled comment mumbled beneath the breaths of those crossing through the clustered campfires, with every parent that clutched their child closer as they passed by the refugees.

The village was a powder-box into which more fuel was added every day, and Rial could feel the tension in the air. All it would take was one spark.

That spark came the next evening.

[1] Rial had seen a definite increase in the number of these make-shift shelters even over the few nights he had been there.

[2] Rial had seen a lot of these poor-quality weapons appearing around the waists of almost any who lived within the Family compounds. Clearly the Kotaku had managed to persuade another smith to manufacture them.