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A people who have been pushed off of their lands are visited by a masked bandit, the Silver Fox, who has an unusual request that could prove lucrative for these battered people.

Based on a story dice prompt (pictured in the thumbnail), which gave the following dice:
A tent
Panic/Fear
A masked fighter
A shield
An apple
A goblet
A clock", "writing": " D’aone was the name tacked to the village like a bad advertisement. Since the Dawn, the Waarashee people had not named their dwellings. To give a name to a thing was to give it life, and power over that which was its domain. People were to have dominion over the place where they dwelt, not the other way around. So, to live in a place with a name was as sacrilegious as a Waarashee could be, but they had been given little if any choice on the matter.\n When the first of the “wanderers” had appeared in the Munapi Valley, the elders of the Waarashee had thought little of it. So many had wandered through the area over so many millennia that it was now tradition to bless those that passed by the current camp of the people. These wanderers were not, however, going to some other far-flung place. They established a camp on the north end of the valley, felled trees, raised a fort of stone and wood, cut into the land to plant their crops and trampled hunting grounds with their ever-expanding herds of monstrous livestock.\n “They are a people that do not know the value of a name,” Elder Attoa said somberly when he learned that these settlers had named their little commune Lith’delaine. “That wicked place they have crafted will rule them forever and a day until the well of imprisoned souls in that place spills over.”\n This prophecy had yet to come to pass by the time the 8th Light Cavalry arrived in Munapi Valley. Known for their brutality and callous disregard for life, human or otherwise, the presence of the 8th was viewed as a threat, even by the largely peaceful Waarashee. Threat or not, there was little they could do, for they were not a people of war. Such things they had left to the Calaxi and the Ilionqi many generations ago. Runners sent to these mighty peoples of war, however, returned with sad eyes.\n “They are gone,” the runner sent to the Ilionqi reported to the elders, “all gone. Their bones are stacked like firewood in their fortress of Na Pa Ori; the ghosts of their elders weep there every night and tear at the flesh of the living.”\n Two runners had been sent, and now the elders knew why only one returned.\n D’aone was the final result of the short-lived Waarashee Rebellion. The 2,000-or-so People of the Valley that were not butchered by the 8th over the course of the four month war were packed into an arid little corner of Munapi Valley and told, in no uncertain terms, that if they ever tried to leave the land so “graciously” granted to them by the Comminuri government they would be erased, just like the 8th had erased the Calaxi to the east and the Ilionqi to the south.\n Rebellious youths and frustrated elders would, on occasion, stray from D’aone to harass the Comminuri settlements that had begun to pepper the valley. These renegades, despite their fire and strong words, were always exceptionally careful not to be caught. Ruin had been promised their fathers and grandfathers, and they were not about to test the patience of the violently ignorant Comminuri soldiers.\n Settlements grew, prospered, and began to attract more wanderers. Vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells were mixed in with these semi-earnest peoples. Roving bands of rabble-rousers and highway thugs would crop up from time to time, looting and pillaging weaker homesteads and pestering the convoys established to protect wagons laden with goods bound for other locales. These bands were often quickly dealt with by the still ruthless and still very present 8th Light Cavalry. The faces of these monsters had changed over the years, but their reputation had hardened into a spike that could be driven into the coldest heart of the most ruthless bandit to discourage them from action.\n Silver Face was a name that even the battered Waarashee had heard by the time trouble came to D’aone. Thought to be the last of the great warriors of the now extinct Mulnakal band far to the west, this outlaw was whispered to be an immortal soldier by those few runners that still carried the news of the world from what remained of one people to another. All peoples knew that the Mulnakal were beast people, descendants of those whose ancestors had joined with the primal spirits of the world to become something more than a human, so they assumed that this Silver Face was some massive, powerful being full of tortured spirits that fueled their monstrous reputation.\n “Certainly, he descends from those who drew strength from the spirits of earth and stone,” one elder said.\n “He is a child of the wind and fire,” another intoned with certainty.\n When Silver Face rode into D’aone, even the eldest of the elders was a little confused by the long bushy tail and tall, black tipped ears of Silver Face. The tarnished silver mask the outlaw wore did little to hide their snout, their sharp teeth, and their blazing gold eyes.\n “How has a child of chaos and trickery become a powerful warrior?” some wondered to themselves as Silver Face rode to the heart of the village with a dozen of his gang in tow.\n They were even more confused with Silver Face loudly demanded to know where the elders held council. Her voice was not the voice of a man.\n “Explains the heavy duster, I suppose. She hides what she is in many ways,” one villager muttered, glaring a little as Silver Face dismounted to properly greet the five elders that had come shuffling out of their collective home.\n To the shock of the elders, and the surprise of those watching, Silver Face knew how to greet the elders in their own tongue, bowed her face to the earth in appropriate deference to those who had known and seen more, and invoked the blessings of both land and sky upon their meeting, which was a custom of the Mulnakal that no living Waarashee had seen.\n When they retired into the home of the elders, half of the gang stayed outside to watch the horses and guard the door, while half and Silver Face entered with the permission of the elders. Those left outside seemed at ease, merely observing the people that were crowding about the elder’s home in curious fervor. No weapons were held, or even reached for, and the odd collection of bandits, many of whom also didn’t appear entirely human under their heavy traveling coats and hats, politely answered questions posed to them by the bold adults or ignorantly brave children.\n Inside, the elders sat around the Circle, which previous elders had made by cutting out the abhorrent wooden floor to reach the earth below to make a proper Circle. To those that knew, the Circle showed all known truth, from birth to death, the journey of the soul beyond the world of the living, and the way that one should comport one’s self in life. The Circle was a gift from the earth and the creatures that dwelt upon it, given over generations to the Waarashee people by messengers and prophets who could see beyond the coils of the flesh. The Great Circle was still hidden away on the mesa of Tibomalo, the great mountain that stoically guarded the south passage of the Munapi Valley, but no one had dared attempt a pilgrimage to the Great Circle since the Waarashee had been confined to D’aone.\n Again, Silver Face acted as one that knew the customs of the Waarashee and sat to the north of the Circle. She was a guest and a stranger, so she sat at the furthest point from the core of truth contained at the beginning of the circle, which was in the south.\n Her goons remained near the door, staying well away from what they had all been told was a sacred icon. Some of them were even under the impression that Silver Face would cut off their hands if they got too close to the Circle. While she was perfectly capable of such things, she would only do so if necessary. Fear was not her main tool for power, as the people of D’aone were about to discover.\n “Five wagons will come here two days from now,” Silver Face announced to the assembled elders of the Waarashee. “They are laden with goods that were bound for Lith’delaine. They are now mine. Four of the wagons will be yours to do with what you will. I suggest, with all reverence, that you disperse their goods and destroy the wagons to avoid suspicion. The fifth wagon is mine and your people are to stay well clear of it. Do you understand?”\n “You expect us to let you use our people to fence your goods?” Elder Hawe asked. He was the youngest of the elders and his question drew a disappointed sigh from Bauni, the eldest of the elders.\n “She is paying us for silence and discretion,” Elder Bauni explained with great patience. “What is in these other wagons, Silver Face?”\n “Food, clothing, tools, dry goods, probably some guns,” Silver Face listed casually. “What I was after was hidden among a shipment of otherwise homely goods. I am sure they are things your people can make use of.”\n “And the catch?” Elder Roduka asked pointedly, his years of negotiating with the Comminuri settlers and officers of the 8th showing in his instant distrust of this proposal.\n “The 8th is already on the move,” Silver Face said calmly. “They will be here to find the missing convoy almost as soon as it has arrived here.”\n Curses and oaths were muttered, and not completely under anyone’s breath. The gang members by the door tensed, but reached for nothing as Silver Face shot them a venomous glare. If the boss said “don’t you dare” then they did not dare, even if she hadn’t actually said anything to them.\n Elder Bauni recovered his temper first.\n “You would bring our destructors to our doorstep, then expect us to thank you for poisoned goods?” he asked firmly, locking eyes with the notorious bandit.\n “The Waarashee are prophets and poets, not warriors,” Silver Face replied with equal sternness. “My people fought the 15th Heavy Infantry until there were none of us left, and we were warriors. The Comminuri are locusts that know only how to feed themselves. They swarm to places where there are not already hordes of them, sink their teeth in, and never let go. For every thousand of them you cut down, ten thousand rise up. But, they are arrogant. They believe their numbers and guns and war machines make them powerful. All these things do is make them stupid. I fought the 15th for a year, and drove them back. I have fought the 9th Light Cavalry, and their bones now decorate the Papalsa hills. I have made war with the 2nd, 7th, 10th, and 22nd Infantry, and they no longer dare pursue me. The 8th Light Cavalry will be no different. They will come here, I will butcher them with the strength of my ancestors, and draw them away from this place for so long that your grandchildren will not know them when they return.”\n “Tall promises,” Elder Roduka snorted. “Forgive us if we have lost enthusiasm for the words of the Comminuri.”\n The rest of the elders groaned. Roduka’s mistake was known to the rest of the room before he even realized what he had done.\n Silver Face stood so suddenly that no one saw the movement. Moving as though time and light were standing still, she appeared behind Roduka, a short but cruel knife of steel that was blacker than a starless night, fixed to a sturdy handle of antler, biting into his neck.\n “I should have blood for that slander,” Silver Face hissed into the terrified elder’s ear, her blade still poised to spill his blood upon the Circle. “But you seem to be a child in the face of some of the other wisdom in this room. I am Mulnakal. There is no other blood in my veins. Today, I forgive your insult. Tomorrow…I shall do no such thing.”\n Withdrawing the knife, Silver Face strode to the door, her gang forming up around her.\n “The wagons arrive in two days,” she said over her shoulder to the shaken elders. “What you do is in your hands. I have a war to win. Peace be upon you and your kin.”\n With a flick of her bushy tail, she left.\n True to her word, five bulky supply wagons arrived after two days. Each wagon sagged under the weight of its cargo, drawn along by six massive oxen apiece. The elders watched cautiously as their people quickly unloaded the wagons. Bauni’s heart ached as he witnessed joy on the faces of mothers and children for the first time in a very long time. Bushels of wheat, dried and fresh fruit, bolts of fine textiles, casks of salted meats, crates of bullets and dynamite, long guns and pistols, ammunition in little crates, carefully packed jars of sweets and preserves and pickled goods, casks and bottles of wines and liquors, books in Comminuri and other languages, tools and hardware, timber, steel billets and trinkets, all this and more poured from the four wagons that were not being carefully guarded by Silver Face’s gang. All the elders did their best to restrain their tears as their people wept over food and goods that would keep them not merely alive but comfortable through the coming winter and beyond.\n Silver Face approached the elders in the midst of the ruckus the wagons had brought with them. She and her gang had kept to themselves for the last two days, but they had seemingly melted back into being from the shadows when the wagons arrived.\n “Do you remember my terms?” she asked so that only the elders could hear her as she stood before them.\n “Of course,” Elder Bauni said solemnly. “This kindness is not lost on us and we will do as you have instructed. The goods will be spread out to appear as if they have always been here. What we cannot make appear natural will be hidden in the hills for now, until your wagon and the 8th have been dealt with.”\n Before Silver Face could acknowledge the elder’s compliance, one of the gang came rushing up to her.\n “They’re comin’ in hot from the east boss,” he puffed, a behemoth of a long gun in his hands, his torso draped with bandoliers that were nearly bursting with bullets that were longer than any man’s fingers.\n “Tell the boys to mount up,” Silver Face said, her tone changing ever so slightly as she addressed her man, causing Elder Bauni to smile ever so faintly. “Get that wagon headin’ south, now! As soon as any y’all can see those horse-fucking bastards, turn ‘em inside out!”\n Elder Bauni chuckled as the gunman scurried away.\n “You seem to have mastered the way of Comminuri speech,” he noted to Silver Face.\n “One must speak to a child as a child, and to a stranger as an elder until their nature is known,” she replied with a grin. “To each is given the way of the word, but to each the word is made their own. Is that not what the Circle teaches?”\n “It is indeed,” the old elder agreed with a warm smile. “Go to your work of blood then, little sister. We will make that which you have given us become one with our dwellings, so that none will suspect you gave us anything.”\n Silver Face bowed to the elders, pressing her face to the soil under their feet once more, blessing them once more, before she stood, turned to the east, and drew her black knife.\n “Move it!” she roared at her gang as they labored to get their prized wagon moving among preparations to do battle. “Get that damn wagon out of here! Graze? The fuck are you doing? Put that damn whisky down, get on your horse, and get me a headcount of these trotting shits! I want to know exactly how many of these cock-suckers are heading our way!”\n “She certainly has a way with words,” Elder Roduka grumbled, one hand touching the bandage on his neck that covered the tiny incision Silver Face had made there.\n “She is a daughter of two peoples,” Elder Bauni said solemnly, his attention turning away from the bandit and her gang to focus on his own people once more. “And more than one world. Beast folk are becoming rarer with each passing season. Anger from beyond this world burns in her veins, as do the cries of her slain people. She has become d’ana suk-ta.”\n There was a collective shudder among those within earshot of those words.\n “She does indeed seem to be a monster among monsters,” Elder Raduka conceded. “So let us not anger her. I will get some men together to dismantle the wagons.”\n “We shall send runners into the hills,” Elder Bauni said. “They will find places to hide the guns for now, and other things we cannot explain away as having traded for. Everyone is to stay well away from the battle that is about to unfold.” His eyes settled on Silver Face one last time. “It would be unwise, I think,” he mused, “to let the children, or even the bravest of men, to see the carnage a d’ana suk-ta brings to a battlefield.”\n As the people of D’aone worked to make the wagons and their goods disappear, the fifth wagon was steered out of the village, nosing its way slowly south and into the hill country. To the east, in the valley, one could see the plume of dust that heralded the coming of the 8th Light Cavalry.\n From the slope of the hill west of D’aone, Elder Bauni watched. His ancestors were poets, as Silver Face had said. They had made no deals with spirits or devils, or even the Comminuri settlers. As such, he had no gift for seeing great distances, but he did have a heavy brass telescope. The bulky brass tool had been a gift from a young man that had come to D’aone to look at the stars in the sky. “Astronomer” was still a funny word on the tongue of any Waarashee, but that was what the young man had been. He had given this telescope to Elder Bauni as a gratitude offering for allowing him to stay with the Waarashee and learn their stories of the stars while he made his own observations of the heavens.\n Fully aware that it was likely a bad idea, Elder Bauni trained the telescope on the valley below. He kept the tool in his room most days, but liked to carry it onto the hill sometimes to look out into the valley or up at the stars. Today, as he turned the elegant brass knobs, it brought into sharp focus the bobbing forms of the 8th Light Cavalry.\n This was not the full force of the 8th. Elder Bauni guessed he was looking at perhaps 200 of the 3,000-strong force. Still, 200 was enough to destroy D’aone if they chose to do so, or if Silver Face did not hold up her promise to destroy them.\n No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than a bright flash filled the telescope. Cursing and blinking, Elder Bauni switched eyes and watched in horror as the head of the column flew, some in pieces, others whole, propelled by a violent explosion on the path they had been riding on. By the time he felt the push of the explosion against his chest and heard its rumble, the dead were raining down on the valley below like snow.\n It was impossible to clearly see what was happening, but the distant thunder of a gun battle was clear as Elder Bauni pressed his eye to the telescope. The cavalry were in disarray. Horses with and without riders bolted in all directions. Most only made it a few hundred paces or so before they were caught up in small explosions or their riders were torn from their saddles. Riders were being thrown by bullets, but there was something else pulling them from their saddles, something that almost appeared like a person.\n Slowly, horrifyingly, Elder Bauni comprehended what he was watching. Silver Face’s gang was not responsible for more than a few explosions and riderless horses here and there. They were not the ones leaping from horse to horse, soldier to soldier, causing figures to crumple into black lumps that moved no more. Perhaps some of the gunfire was from the gang, but most of it was coming from the cavalry as they desperately tried to exterminate the shadow that was weaving death among their ranks. At a closer distance, it would have been easy to see with the telescope what was happening, but Elder Bauni needed no such view.\n As a boy, he had been told the tales of the d’ana suk-ta. Warriors would bind spirits to their bones, making them stronger, faster, able to step through shadows, to speak with animals, to see visions and use magics that others would not dare touch. The price was their sanity. D’ana suk-ta, which had no good translation in Comminuri but could be termed “monster to monsters,” were rabid, bloodthirsty, unable to continue to live among their people. Exiles, they wandered the places near their people, protecting them without ever seeing them again.\n Even from such a distance, it was not hard to spot the glint of silver on the figure that was tearing through the quickly dwindling cavalry.\n “Power like no other, at the price of one’s soul,” Elder Bauni muttered, finally looking away from the carnage. “Yet she has managed to maintain control. Ancestors save us from that sort of power…but bless Silver Face. Surely, the cavalry people will be more interested in her and their missing wagon than us.”\n That prayer was indeed granted, because no one except a dozen officers from the 8th came to D’aone a week after the 200 sent to recover the wagons were never heard from again. The visiting officers had questions for the elders, mostly surrounding whether they had seen who was responsible for the “inhuman” display of the 200 corpses on the south side of the road that was pockmarked with craters from explosives that the cavalry knew the Waarashee did not possess. Truth is precious to all peoples, and the Waarashee were no different, so they quite bluntly informed the inquisitive soldiers that their troops had been destroyed by the notorious bandit known as Silver Face.\n Questions about the missing wagons and their goods never came up. The leader of the 8th Light Cavalry, a sober-faced man named Captain Bisbee, identifiable by his bushy eyebrows and soft voice, simply thanked the elders for their time and stood slowly, as if carrying a massive weight.\n “If you see Silver Face again, don’t do anything rash,” he said to the elders. “Silver Face and his gang are dangerous. I know what you think of us Comminuri, and I don’t blame you. I can’t atone for what my predecessors done to you and yours, but I don’t want anymore violence on nobody, especially the Waarashee. Be careful.”\n “We will exercise the greatest of caution,” Elder Bauni assured Captain Bisbee.\n “They don’t know Silver Face is a woman?” Elder Roduka asked under his breath as the cavalrymen departed.\n “There is much they do not know,” Elder Bauni replied calmly, “and much they will learn, if they will only be teachable.”\n “What do you think she stole from them that this new captain is so worried,” Elder Hawe wondered, then elaborated when he was met with perplexed looks. “This Captain Bisbee is a gentle man; you can see it in his face. But his face also betrays him. Whatever was in the fifth wagon, he fears it…or rather, he fears the fact that it is no longer in the possession of his people. I merely wonder what it is that Silver Face stole from them.”\n “Perhaps we shall never know,” Elder Bauni sighed as he turned to begin preparing for another long day tending the sprawling garden behind the house. “Whatever it is that she took, it is not our business to know. Let us continue with our lives as they are and not worry about the lives of those who merely sojourn with us.”\n And that is exactly what the people of D’aone did.\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "      D’aone was the name tacked to the village like a bad advertisement. Since the Dawn, the Waarashee people had not named their dwellings. To give a name to a thing was to give it life, and power over that which was its domain. People were to have dominion over the place where they dwelt, not the other way around. So, to live in a place with a name was as sacrilegious as a Waarashee could be, but they had been given little if any choice on the matter.
      When the first of the “wanderers” had appeared in the Munapi Valley, the elders of the Waarashee had thought little of it. So many had wandered through the area over so many millennia that it was now tradition to bless those that passed by the current camp of the people. These wanderers were not, however, going to some other far-flung place. They established a camp on the north end of the valley, felled trees, raised a fort of stone and wood, cut into the land to plant their crops and trampled hunting grounds with their ever-expanding herds of monstrous livestock.
      “They are a people that do not know the value of a name,” Elder Attoa said somberly when he learned that these settlers had named their little commune Lith’delaine. “That wicked place they have crafted will rule them forever and a day until the well of imprisoned souls in that place spills over.”
      This prophecy had yet to come to pass by the time the 8th Light Cavalry arrived in Munapi Valley. Known for their brutality and callous disregard for life, human or otherwise, the presence of the 8th was viewed as a threat, even by the largely peaceful Waarashee. Threat or not, there was little they could do, for they were not a people of war. Such things they had left to the Calaxi and the Ilionqi many generations ago. Runners sent to these mighty peoples of war, however, returned with sad eyes.
      “They are gone,” the runner sent to the Ilionqi reported to the elders, “all gone. Their bones are stacked like firewood in their fortress of Na Pa Ori; the ghosts of their elders weep there every night and tear at the flesh of the living.”
      Two runners had been sent, and now the elders knew why only one returned.
      D’aone was the final result of the short-lived Waarashee Rebellion. The 2,000-or-so People of the Valley that were not butchered by the 8th over the course of the four month war were packed into an arid little corner of Munapi Valley and told, in no uncertain terms, that if they ever tried to leave the land so “graciously” granted to them by the Comminuri government they would be erased, just like the 8th had erased the Calaxi to the east and the Ilionqi to the south.
      Rebellious youths and frustrated elders would, on occasion, stray from D’aone to harass the Comminuri settlements that had begun to pepper the valley. These renegades, despite their fire and strong words, were always exceptionally careful not to be caught. Ruin had been promised their fathers and grandfathers, and they were not about to test the patience of the violently ignorant Comminuri soldiers.
      Settlements grew, prospered, and began to attract more wanderers. Vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells were mixed in with these semi-earnest peoples. Roving bands of rabble-rousers and highway thugs would crop up from time to time, looting and pillaging weaker homesteads and pestering the convoys established to protect wagons laden with goods bound for other locales. These bands were often quickly dealt with by the still ruthless and still very present 8th Light Cavalry. The faces of these monsters had changed over the years, but their reputation had hardened into a spike that could be driven into the coldest heart of the most ruthless bandit to discourage them from action.
      Silver Face was a name that even the battered Waarashee had heard by the time trouble came to D’aone. Thought to be the last of the great warriors of the now extinct Mulnakal band far to the west, this outlaw was whispered to be an immortal soldier by those few runners that still carried the news of the world from what remained of one people to another. All peoples knew that the Mulnakal were beast people, descendants of those whose ancestors had joined with the primal spirits of the world to become something more than a human, so they assumed that this Silver Face was some massive, powerful being full of tortured spirits that fueled their monstrous reputation.
      “Certainly, he descends from those who drew strength from the spirits of earth and stone,” one elder said.
      “He is a child of the wind and fire,” another intoned with certainty.
      When Silver Face rode into D’aone, even the eldest of the elders was a little confused by the long bushy tail and tall, black tipped ears of Silver Face. The tarnished silver mask the outlaw wore did little to hide their snout, their sharp teeth, and their blazing gold eyes.
      “How has a child of chaos and trickery become a powerful warrior?” some wondered to themselves as Silver Face rode to the heart of the village with a dozen of his gang in tow.
      They were even more confused with Silver Face loudly demanded to know where the elders held council. Her voice was not the voice of a man.
      “Explains the heavy duster, I suppose. She hides what she is in many ways,” one villager muttered, glaring a little as Silver Face dismounted to properly greet the five elders that had come shuffling out of their collective home.
      To the shock of the elders, and the surprise of those watching, Silver Face knew how to greet the elders in their own tongue, bowed her face to the earth in appropriate deference to those who had known and seen more, and invoked the blessings of both land and sky upon their meeting, which was a custom of the Mulnakal that no living Waarashee had seen.
      When they retired into the home of the elders, half of the gang stayed outside to watch the horses and guard the door, while half and Silver Face entered with the permission of the elders. Those left outside seemed at ease, merely observing the people that were crowding about the elder’s home in curious fervor. No weapons were held, or even reached for, and the odd collection of bandits, many of whom also didn’t appear entirely human under their heavy traveling coats and hats, politely answered questions posed to them by the bold adults or ignorantly brave children.
      Inside, the elders sat around the Circle, which previous elders had made by cutting out the abhorrent wooden floor to reach the earth below to make a proper Circle. To those that knew, the Circle showed all known truth, from birth to death, the journey of the soul beyond the world of the living, and the way that one should comport one’s self in life. The Circle was a gift from the earth and the creatures that dwelt upon it, given over generations to the Waarashee people by messengers and prophets who could see beyond the coils of the flesh. The Great Circle was still hidden away on the mesa of Tibomalo, the great mountain that stoically guarded the south passage of the Munapi Valley, but no one had dared attempt a pilgrimage to the Great Circle since the Waarashee had been confined to D’aone.
      Again, Silver Face acted as one that knew the customs of the Waarashee and sat to the north of the Circle. She was a guest and a stranger, so she sat at the furthest point from the core of truth contained at the beginning of the circle, which was in the south.
      Her goons remained near the door, staying well away from what they had all been told was a sacred icon. Some of them were even under the impression that Silver Face would cut off their hands if they got too close to the Circle. While she was perfectly capable of such things, she would only do so if necessary. Fear was not her main tool for power, as the people of D’aone were about to discover.
      “Five wagons will come here two days from now,” Silver Face announced to the assembled elders of the Waarashee. “They are laden with goods that were bound for Lith’delaine. They are now mine. Four of the wagons will be yours to do with what you will. I suggest, with all reverence, that you disperse their goods and destroy the wagons to avoid suspicion. The fifth wagon is mine and your people are to stay well clear of it. Do you understand?”
      “You expect us to let you use our people to fence your goods?” Elder Hawe asked. He was the youngest of the elders and his question drew a disappointed sigh from Bauni, the eldest of the elders.
      “She is paying us for silence and discretion,” Elder Bauni explained with great patience. “What is in these other wagons, Silver Face?”
      “Food, clothing, tools, dry goods, probably some guns,” Silver Face listed casually. “What I was after was hidden among a shipment of otherwise homely goods. I am sure they are things your people can make use of.”
      “And the catch?” Elder Roduka asked pointedly, his years of negotiating with the Comminuri settlers and officers of the 8th showing in his instant distrust of this proposal.
      “The 8th is already on the move,” Silver Face said calmly. “They will be here to find the missing convoy almost as soon as it has arrived here.”
      Curses and oaths were muttered, and not completely under anyone’s breath. The gang members by the door tensed, but reached for nothing as Silver Face shot them a venomous glare. If the boss said “don’t you dare” then they did not dare, even if she hadn’t actually said anything to them.
      Elder Bauni recovered his temper first.
      “You would bring our destructors to our doorstep, then expect us to thank you for poisoned goods?” he asked firmly, locking eyes with the notorious bandit.
      “The Waarashee are prophets and poets, not warriors,” Silver Face replied with equal sternness. “My people fought the 15th Heavy Infantry until there were none of us left, and we were warriors. The Comminuri are locusts that know only how to feed themselves. They swarm to places where there are not already hordes of them, sink their teeth in, and never let go. For every thousand of them you cut down, ten thousand rise up. But, they are arrogant. They believe their numbers and guns and war machines make them powerful. All these things do is make them stupid. I fought the 15th for a year, and drove them back. I have fought the 9th Light Cavalry, and their bones now decorate the Papalsa hills. I have made war with the 2nd, 7th, 10th, and 22nd Infantry, and they no longer dare pursue me. The 8th Light Cavalry will be no different. They will come here, I will butcher them with the strength of my ancestors, and draw them away from this place for so long that your grandchildren will not know them when they return.”
      “Tall promises,” Elder Roduka snorted. “Forgive us if we have lost enthusiasm for the words of the Comminuri.”
      The rest of the elders groaned. Roduka’s mistake was known to the rest of the room before he even realized what he had done.
      Silver Face stood so suddenly that no one saw the movement. Moving as though time and light were standing still, she appeared behind Roduka, a short but cruel knife of steel that was blacker than a starless night, fixed to a sturdy handle of antler, biting into his neck.
      “I should have blood for that slander,” Silver Face hissed into the terrified elder’s ear, her blade still poised to spill his blood upon the Circle. “But you seem to be a child in the face of some of the other wisdom in this room. I am Mulnakal. There is no other blood in my veins. Today, I forgive your insult. Tomorrow…I shall do no such thing.”
      Withdrawing the knife, Silver Face strode to the door, her gang forming up around her.
      “The wagons arrive in two days,” she said over her shoulder to the shaken elders. “What you do is in your hands. I have a war to win. Peace be upon you and your kin.”
      With a flick of her bushy tail, she left.
      True to her word, five bulky supply wagons arrived after two days. Each wagon sagged under the weight of its cargo, drawn along by six massive oxen apiece. The elders watched cautiously as their people quickly unloaded the wagons. Bauni’s heart ached as he witnessed joy on the faces of mothers and children for the first time in a very long time. Bushels of wheat, dried and fresh fruit, bolts of fine textiles, casks of salted meats, crates of bullets and dynamite, long guns and pistols, ammunition in little crates, carefully packed jars of sweets and preserves and pickled goods, casks and bottles of wines and liquors, books in Comminuri and other languages, tools and hardware, timber, steel billets and trinkets, all this and more poured from the four wagons that were not being carefully guarded by Silver Face’s gang. All the elders did their best to restrain their tears as their people wept over food and goods that would keep them not merely alive but comfortable through the coming winter and beyond.
      Silver Face approached the elders in the midst of the ruckus the wagons had brought with them. She and her gang had kept to themselves for the last two days, but they had seemingly melted back into being from the shadows when the wagons arrived.
      “Do you remember my terms?” she asked so that only the elders could hear her as she stood before them.
      “Of course,” Elder Bauni said solemnly. “This kindness is not lost on us and we will do as you have instructed. The goods will be spread out to appear as if they have always been here. What we cannot make appear natural will be hidden in the hills for now, until your wagon and the 8th have been dealt with.”
      Before Silver Face could acknowledge the elder’s compliance, one of the gang came rushing up to her.
      “They’re comin’ in hot from the east boss,” he puffed, a behemoth of a long gun in his hands, his torso draped with bandoliers that were nearly bursting with bullets that were longer than any man’s fingers.
      “Tell the boys to mount up,” Silver Face said, her tone changing ever so slightly as she addressed her man, causing Elder Bauni to smile ever so faintly. “Get that wagon headin’ south, now! As soon as any y’all can see those horse-fucking bastards, turn ‘em inside out!”
      Elder Bauni chuckled as the gunman scurried away.
      “You seem to have mastered the way of Comminuri speech,” he noted to Silver Face.
      “One must speak to a child as a child, and to a stranger as an elder until their nature is known,” she replied with a grin. “To each is given the way of the word, but to each the word is made their own. Is that not what the Circle teaches?”
      “It is indeed,” the old elder agreed with a warm smile. “Go to your work of blood then, little sister. We will make that which you have given us become one with our dwellings, so that none will suspect you gave us anything.”
      Silver Face bowed to the elders, pressing her face to the soil under their feet once more, blessing them once more, before she stood, turned to the east, and drew her black knife.
      “Move it!” she roared at her gang as they labored to get their prized wagon moving among preparations to do battle. “Get that damn wagon out of here! Graze? The fuck are you doing? Put that damn whisky down, get on your horse, and get me a headcount of these trotting shits! I want to know exactly how many of these cock-suckers are heading our way!”
      “She certainly has a way with words,” Elder Roduka grumbled, one hand touching the bandage on his neck that covered the tiny incision Silver Face had made there.
      “She is a daughter of two peoples,” Elder Bauni said solemnly, his attention turning away from the bandit and her gang to focus on his own people once more. “And more than one world. Beast folk are becoming rarer with each passing season. Anger from beyond this world burns in her veins, as do the cries of her slain people. She has become d’ana suk-ta.”
      There was a collective shudder among those within earshot of those words.
      “She does indeed seem to be a monster among monsters,” Elder Raduka conceded. “So let us not anger her. I will get some men together to dismantle the wagons.”
      “We shall send runners into the hills,” Elder Bauni said. “They will find places to hide the guns for now, and other things we cannot explain away as having traded for. Everyone is to stay well away from the battle that is about to unfold.” His eyes settled on Silver Face one last time. “It would be unwise, I think,” he mused, “to let the children, or even the bravest of men, to see the carnage a d’ana suk-ta brings to a battlefield.”
      As the people of D’aone worked to make the wagons and their goods disappear, the fifth wagon was steered out of the village, nosing its way slowly south and into the hill country. To the east, in the valley, one could see the plume of dust that heralded the coming of the 8th Light Cavalry.
      From the slope of the hill west of D’aone, Elder Bauni watched. His ancestors were poets, as Silver Face had said. They had made no deals with spirits or devils, or even the Comminuri settlers. As such, he had no gift for seeing great distances, but he did have a heavy brass telescope. The bulky brass tool had been a gift from a young man that had come to D’aone to look at the stars in the sky. “Astronomer” was still a funny word on the tongue of any Waarashee, but that was what the young man had been. He had given this telescope to Elder Bauni as a gratitude offering for allowing him to stay with the Waarashee and learn their stories of the stars while he made his own observations of the heavens.
      Fully aware that it was likely a bad idea, Elder Bauni trained the telescope on the valley below. He kept the tool in his room most days, but liked to carry it onto the hill sometimes to look out into the valley or up at the stars. Today, as he turned the elegant brass knobs, it brought into sharp focus the bobbing forms of the 8th Light Cavalry.
      This was not the full force of the 8th. Elder Bauni guessed he was looking at perhaps 200 of the 3,000-strong force. Still, 200 was enough to destroy D’aone if they chose to do so, or if Silver Face did not hold up her promise to destroy them.
      No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than a bright flash filled the telescope. Cursing and blinking, Elder Bauni switched eyes and watched in horror as the head of the column flew, some in pieces, others whole, propelled by a violent explosion on the path they had been riding on. By the time he felt the push of the explosion against his chest and heard its rumble, the dead were raining down on the valley below like snow.
      It was impossible to clearly see what was happening, but the distant thunder of a gun battle was clear as Elder Bauni pressed his eye to the telescope. The cavalry were in disarray. Horses with and without riders bolted in all directions. Most only made it a few hundred paces or so before they were caught up in small explosions or their riders were torn from their saddles. Riders were being thrown by bullets, but there was something else pulling them from their saddles, something that almost appeared like a person.
      Slowly, horrifyingly, Elder Bauni comprehended what he was watching. Silver Face’s gang was not responsible for more than a few explosions and riderless horses here and there. They were not the ones leaping from horse to horse, soldier to soldier, causing figures to crumple into black lumps that moved no more. Perhaps some of the gunfire was from the gang, but most of it was coming from the cavalry as they desperately tried to exterminate the shadow that was weaving death among their ranks. At a closer distance, it would have been easy to see with the telescope what was happening, but Elder Bauni needed no such view.
      As a boy, he had been told the tales of the d’ana suk-ta. Warriors would bind spirits to their bones, making them stronger, faster, able to step through shadows, to speak with animals, to see visions and use magics that others would not dare touch. The price was their sanity. D’ana suk-ta, which had no good translation in Comminuri but could be termed “monster to monsters,” were rabid, bloodthirsty, unable to continue to live among their people. Exiles, they wandered the places near their people, protecting them without ever seeing them again.
      Even from such a distance, it was not hard to spot the glint of silver on the figure that was tearing through the quickly dwindling cavalry.
      “Power like no other, at the price of one’s soul,” Elder Bauni muttered, finally looking away from the carnage. “Yet she has managed to maintain control. Ancestors save us from that sort of power…but bless Silver Face. Surely, the cavalry people will be more interested in her and their missing wagon than us.”
      That prayer was indeed granted, because no one except a dozen officers from the 8th came to D’aone a week after the 200 sent to recover the wagons were never heard from again. The visiting officers had questions for the elders, mostly surrounding whether they had seen who was responsible for the “inhuman” display of the 200 corpses on the south side of the road that was pockmarked with craters from explosives that the cavalry knew the Waarashee did not possess. Truth is precious to all peoples, and the Waarashee were no different, so they quite bluntly informed the inquisitive soldiers that their troops had been destroyed by the notorious bandit known as Silver Face.
      Questions about the missing wagons and their goods never came up. The leader of the 8th Light Cavalry, a sober-faced man named Captain Bisbee, identifiable by his bushy eyebrows and soft voice, simply thanked the elders for their time and stood slowly, as if carrying a massive weight.
      “If you see Silver Face again, don’t do anything rash,” he said to the elders. “Silver Face and his gang are dangerous. I know what you think of us Comminuri, and I don’t blame you. I can’t atone for what my predecessors done to you and yours, but I don’t want anymore violence on nobody, especially the Waarashee. Be careful.”
      “We will exercise the greatest of caution,” Elder Bauni assured Captain Bisbee.
      “They don’t know Silver Face is a woman?” Elder Roduka asked under his breath as the cavalrymen departed.
      “There is much they do not know,” Elder Bauni replied calmly, “and much they will learn, if they will only be teachable.”
      “What do you think she stole from them that this new captain is so worried,” Elder Hawe wondered, then elaborated when he was met with perplexed looks. “This Captain Bisbee is a gentle man; you can see it in his face. But his face also betrays him. Whatever was in the fifth wagon, he fears it…or rather, he fears the fact that it is no longer in the possession of his people. I merely wonder what it is that Silver Face stole from them.”
      “Perhaps we shall never know,” Elder Bauni sighed as he turned to begin preparing for another long day tending the sprawling garden behind the house. “Whatever it is that she took, it is not our business to know. Let us continue with our lives as they are and not worry about the lives of those who merely sojourn with us.”
      And that is exactly what the people of D’aone did.
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