"I'm fine, Wylan," Tarrin said in an emotionless tone. "Sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up. I promise."
"Eron said you-he never said anything about this!"
"Does it surprise you that he didn't?" Tarrin asked calmly, standing fully erect and feeling himself fully in control. "I can see it now. 'By the way, Wylan, did I mention that my son is now a homicidal maniac?'"
Wylan gave him a strangled look, then actually laughed. "Well, if you say it that way, I can see why," he admitted. "Are you feeling-"
The door to the inn opened, and four more Dal soldiers were standing there, looking in with sudden horror and revulsion. One of them actually turned and vomited. "Good gods!" another called. "That thing killed them all!"
"Get it!" another called, an officer by the looks of him, raising his sword to attack.
These four lasted little longer than the first twelve, but the only difference was that Tarrin attacked them with a rational mind. He swatted aside a sword and then casually decapitated the leading attacker, the officer, with a twist of the paw and then a wicked backhanded swipe of his claws. Before the dead body fell, he had the man behind the first in his clutches, with his claws sank into the man's chest, then picked him up as if he weighed no more then a small dog and hurled him head first into the wall. The other two men, who had not rushed in to the attack, turned to flee, but Tarrin grabbed both of them by the backs of their chain jacks and hauled them into the inn, picked them up, then smashed their heads together with enough force to break their necks and shatter their skulls.
That was sixteen. There could only be four or five more left, and Tarrin wasn't going to leave them around to cause trouble. "Excuse me a moment, Wylan," Tarrin said politely, then he ducked under the door and left the inn. He saw that the guards at the door of the barracks were gone, so he let himself in and then stalked through the barracks quietly and deliberately, hunting down the others. Three he found in their beds, and were dispatched without arousing them from slumber. Another was found in an office, who looked to be the barracks commander, and he too died without much fuss, though Tarrin had to drag him back in through a window while he screamed and begged for mercy. The last one was a challenge, for he had been in an outhouse behind the barracks, and had seen the the man Tarrin killed in the office try to escape out the window, so he ran.
He didn't make it to the edge of the forest. Tarrin caught up with him, then killed him with a single claw to the back of the neck in mid-stride.
Using Sorcery to clean the blood off of himself and repair the holes in his clothes, Tarrin returned to the inn and stepped into the carnage. Wylan still crouched behind the bar, only his eyes and the top of his head visible. "Sorry about that, Wylan," Tarrin said calmly as the rain began again. "Let me take care of this."
Weaving together a flow of Air and Water, Tarrin stripped the bloody mess off the floor and the walls, even the ceiling, then caused it to drift out the door. He used a weave of Earth to dig out a suitable hole for the mangled refuse, then it was placed inside and buried neatly. Then he reached within, touching the core of his Druidic power, and Created tables and chairs that resembled the old ones, though they had the look of new furniture rather than the scratched, pitted appearance of the old ones.
Wylan rose up uncertainly, looking at Tarrin with just a little fear in his eyes. That stung Tarrin a bit, but he couldn't help it. It was part of what he was. "I hope you know that you just made things very uncertain for us, lad," Wylan said soberly.
"I'll take care of it, Wylan," Tarrin told him. "Before I leave, I guarantee you that you won't have to worry about another Dal garrison marching up the road."
"I certainly hope so." Tarrin turned and walked back out the door. "Where are you going, lad?"
"To evict someone," he answered in a very ugly tone, a red haze building up behind his eyes.
The villagers were coming out of their houses. He recognized all of them, but he didn't reply to their calls, didn't wave to them as he marched resolutely towards the overgrown road that would take him to his farm, his home. He was going to deal with Jesmind, one way or another. The idea that she had usurped his home violated him to the core, even more so with the thought that she had brought with her a child that had no more of a place there than she did. He wasn't jealous of that-not too jealous, anyway-but the thought of his home being violated by an outsider overwhelmed any logical reasons as to why she chose that place to live.
The villagers recognized him, but instead of following after him, they approached the inn, where Wylan had come out and was calling to the others, keeping them from following the outraged Were-cat.
They didn't want to see what could very well happen on the old Kael farm.
Step, step step.
The sound of his footsteps mixed with the sound of the halting rain, sounds of raindrops hitting newly grown leaves, hitting the ground, hitting him. He'd lost the cloak somewhere-he couldn't remember where or how-and he was too mad to think to summon it back, so he had marched off in the rain. He was more or less soaked now, which made him that much more angry at being wet. Those sounds seemed distant to him as he made the last turn and found himself looking on the land he had called home all his life, still called home, a land that no longer looked as he remembered it.
The house was still there, but the large barn and the brewhouse were collapsing in on themselves. The house had been recently painted, a dark brown color much like wood itself, and the smaller barn showed signs of recent repair. There was a hoed patch of ground where the chickens used to scratch in the farmyard, what looked to be a garden. The place looked empty, somehow, without animals or sounds or activity. It almost looked abandoned. But there was smoke rising from the chimney, a sure sign that the house was occupied.
That caused him to come up short. Jesmind was in that house. He was very angry with the thought of her living there, of her bringing a child into his home, but fonder memories of Jesmind competed with those angry mentations and reminded him that he still cared for her. He was mad at her, but he still cared for her. Maybe instead of breaking down the door and proceeding to chastise his old flame, he should give her the chance to explain.
I've tried to kill my own mother, and I meant it at the time, Jesmind had told him once, long ago. He knew exactly how she had felt right at that moment. Part of him wanted to strangle her, and the other part wanted to find out why she was here.
Either way, he wasn't getting any answers standing in a soggy barnyard staring at the house. Taking a cleansing breath, trying to calm down to the point where he'd give Jesmind a chance to explain, he started towards the house again.
He reached the inner edge of what he had always called the yard, about fifty spans from the porch, when the front door opened. He couldn't see inside because the front of the house faced to his left, but he did see someone come out. He kept coming forward as a small figure exited the house holding a small basket in its hands, but as the figure turned, he saw that it had a tail.
The figure was that of a little girl, probably about six, who skipped down the steps of the porch lightly. She had the white fur of her mother, but had strawberry blond hair instead of red, tied into a single tail behind her. She wore a little half-shirt that left her belly bare and a pair of rugged leather breeches, undyed, with shredded cuffs around her ankles from her claws. "Five minutes!" Jesmind's booming voice called from inside. "If you're not back by then, I'll tan your hide, young lady!"
"I'll hurry, mama!" the little girl called back.
Who was this? This was no baby! This was a six year old girl! Had Jesmind had this girl before she met him, and had broken off from raising this baby girl to take care of him? Was she the reason Jesmind had left him? Tarrin stopped where he was and tried to make sense of it all. Why hadn't she told him about this? She would have. She should have. There was no reason to keep this girl a secret from him. It made no sense!