5 - A Bone-Herd

“Siwion Haraklez!” One of the zardukar came down to the workshop to call Hara out of her latest set of experiments.

She had FireDrake One in his cradle next to her desk, suspended over the enormous crevasse. His head was arched up over and he held his wings at full stretch to actually capture something fluttering up from a tank on her desk.

Hara clamped a lid onto the tank, and picked up a metal hook... “Get that one, One!”, she called and FireDrake snatched what looked like a seed out of the air and spit it down to where she could hook it.

“Yes?”

“Siwion you have your mist screen turned off and there is a call urgently being sent from your konsiliarch.”

She shook herself. “Let me guess, my fathers are still in code and can't answer?”

“Yes, Siwion.”

Hara looked down at herself and then up at One who gazed down at her with interest. “Thank you,”

She dee-mandered the screen on and the fog began falling between the two obelisks on her desk. “Accept from Konsiliarch.”

The image came up, of the head of Milar's office. “Hara... isn't your father available?”

“Hello, Vidarna. They're in code... trying to find a way into Glass Mountain, so we can get to what Terence calls 'the legal sharks'. Do you know what a shark is?”

“Something like a blue-wolf, or ice-tiger I think.” She waved dismissively. “You have a diplomatic incident coming your way.”

“What's happening?”

“The Hippifrei have decided that they want to join this new alliance.”

“What, Milar, Lainz and Nadu?”

“Yes. They're sending a delegation to Lainz since your fathers are there. They aren't coming through here, but out of the badlands.”

“You know anything about the delegation?”

“I had a lin message from the Lainz border and it looks like it's a full-on bone-herd.”

“Oh, dear. That means they have at least a dozen necromanders with them, then.”

“It looks that way.”

“Thank you, Vidarna. I'll pull them out of code.”

“Maybe you should leave your screen on, so I can call you if I get any more information.”

The Hippifrei were so reclusive that most people never saw one in their lives, out on the dust-grass plains. They had more Earth horses than anyone else on Hinnemon, and followed the swaths of earth green that threaded through with the red and orange grasses out past the badlands, growing along the underground water trails.

They used bone instead of wood to build and make things since even the lollipapera wouldn't grow out there. The oddest thing they did was slaughter all their excess colts, once they'd bred, and used the animated bones as their riding animals. Their manders specialized in being necromanders, at least that was what the rumours said. Ilax had dealt with one of them as an Ambassador to Milar but she had gone home right around the time of his and Kyrus's wedding without rancour apparently.

“A whole bone-herd,” Hara said to herself.

*What is a bone-herd?* One asked.

“Twenty-five horses, ritually killed, de-fleshed, eaten and then all their bones cleaned up, put back together with symbolic strips of dried muscles that held them together, painted, carved, harnessed up and re-animated. They don't need to be fed, watered, exercised or cared for the same way that living horses need, leaving all the water for the riders."

"My father said that only their elite could do that. He said that most Hippifrei never came near their borders and didn't do that, or couldn't do that to their precious horses. Like that Lainz who we killed making it to Lainz... the one Nadian hired to stop us? He was a necromander but really a crude one compared to what the Hippifrei can do.”

*So they turn living creatures into machines? Like you did me?*

Hara stared up at the FireDrake. “One... I'm sorry. I never realized...”

*You are upset? Why? I am not in pain. I am a living machine. You did not build me to resent my role. You did not build me to hurt. In a sense you built me content.*

“It still doesn't seem right because you are a sentient.”

*If I could understand the problem perhaps I could discuss this with Mom? She and I are in the same position. But we do not understand resentment, nor exploitation.*

“You've been talking to Terence about this, haven't you?”

*Yes.*

“Let me know if you come to any kind of conclusion, would you?”

* Yes.*

She nodded to One and threw a cloth over the tank she had her latest project in, but left her screen on behind her as she went up to draw her parents out of code and tell them the news.