Free Awake the Cullers (History of Ondar) by Amanda Young, Raymond Young Jr. Page A

children she gave everything to save and pulled off his cloak, wrapping it around her broken body. Picking her up, he ignored the bruised and torn musc les of his arms and carried her. The children followed close behind. “Come with us,”
    “ Look over there,” one of the townspeople called from the top of the hill.
    Kern took one look at the man’s face and climbed up to him to see what had him so afraid. Past the tree tops, and the foothills, at the base of the valley, sat a camp, a very large camp. They were too far away to make out many details, but from the number of fires and tents he saw, they were looking at a group of substantial proportions. “Let’s go,” he said, staring at the plumes of smoke and feeling a rise of terror run through him. “Let’s go.”
     
    *   *   *
     
    “What should we do?”
    Traxton heard the mix of uncertainty and excitement in his friend’s question. Bricksben shifted, silent despite the dead grass and leaves at their feet. Martiene crouched beside him, equally quiet and just as excited. His eyes beamed. There were both practically salivating at the prospects of the battle ahead. On the other side of the tree line stood the thing the three of them had spent months searching for. They found the Culler camp.
    But it was much larger than they expected. Cullers normally travelled alone or in small bands, quickly reduced by infighting or by people going off on their own. They abhorred order and rules. They thrived on chaos. Cullers were a force that could not be controlled or contained, only temporarily directed. They could never be completely destroyed. Even if every one of them was eradicated today, another would arise tomorrow. They were creatures of instinct, fed by bloodlust, crazed by snippets of knowledge and insights mortals were never meant to have and subjects of a god most of their kind did not know the name of. They worshipped him, not with prayers or rituals but with death and destruction. Their actions spread his teachings, infecting other susceptible minds with its corrupt meanings. They were pawns, used and thrown away as needed.
    Yet, there were hundred s, maybe thousands of them here. They were traveling, living and fighting together, if reports of earlier raids were to be believed. And indeed, their own research supported those reports. Smaller groups did split off to plunder the random village, but they then rejoined the whole. It was unprecedented, and reason for pause. Going down there to face this horde would be suicide. While some armies may be tricked or demoralized by the magic clones their three man group often used to make their numbers appear greater, as they had with that gathering of warriors burning bodies at Breakeren, such ploys would not make a difference here. Traxton did not fear death, but to die for no reason, while their enemy survived, was pointless. They needed to learn more and develop a strategy of attack to wipe out as many of the enemy as possible.
    “We wait.” He felt their eyes turn on him in surprise and disappointment. Their hatred of the Cullers ran deep, all the way to their gods. The Sublinates followed Randik, a god of war and battle. According to his teachings, con flict was inevitable, but through battle, skilled warriors could tap into the art of sublime combat
    Raze gloried in destruction. It was not enough to defeat an opponent in open combat. You must tear their body to shreds, pummel their flesh and spirit, terrorize and break their minds, destroy their homes and families and wipe them completely out of existence. His followers carried these teachings into their treatment of their own bodies. Unlike Sublinates who used magic and training to meld with weapons to become a weapon, Cullers would rip and destroy their own flesh, forcing it to accept the weapons they shoved in their bodies. Instead of designing blades to grow with their bones, they replaced their bones with blades. They were completely out of harmony