The bones had been bleached dry by the sun and now were a gleaming white amidst a sea of green grass that stretched on for miles in any direction. The sun glimmered off the bones, drawing the two riders to it. They came across the rest of the body on their way to the skull—a femur here, a rib there—the body having been torn apart by whatever carrion hunters inhabited these parts. When they reached it, one of the riders dismounted, picking it up gingerly to study it, while the other kept her eyes upon the horizon in all directions.

“Be quick,” the woman, whose name was Harni the Cleaved. “There is someone approaching.”

“You know this cannot be rushed,” Mejk the Unharnessed said, not taking his eyes from the skull.

“It may have to be,” Harni said.

Hearing the urgency in her voice, Mejk looked up from the skull and cast his eyes along the horizon. “Who is it?”

“Who else,” was her whispered reply.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

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