By the time they reached Saftsea, a third of the men had already died from disease. Hagor couldn’t count himself surprised. He’d known it would happen the minute they’d boarded, wide-eyed and innocent. Travel across the Black Straits wasn’t for the weak of heart, and most ships took half the lives they’d carried.

No matter. They were at Saftsea now, and so for most of these boys, their journey was over. They’d gather their strength in the port city, stay here for months, years, perhaps until the war was over, convincing themselves that they had no need to see their sons or wives. Anything to avoid the Black Straits again.

Hagor, meanwhile, was barely a quarter done. He’d stay in the bay for a few days, maybe a week if he was lucky. Then… off to the red sands. Seven in ten men made it through the red sands and back alive, a far better rate than the Black Straits, but that was because most men trained for years before entering. It was a path few dared take. Even he, at the ripe age of 85, had only done it twice.

Which made him one of the world’s foremost experts.

They docked the ship in the southern port, off by the salt flats and the forges. The trireme would need a great many repairs before it set off again.

Hagor limped off the docks and found himself greeted by an old friend.

The woman before him was tall in stature and sharp in gaze, studying the sea before them like it was a beast to be tamed. She had cold gray eyes and brown hair braided tight down her back.

Where her left ear should have been, there was a gaping hole.

“Nhaara,” said Hagor with a smile. “It’s been many years.”

The woman didn’t bother with pleasantries. “We leave for the Eastern Reach at sunset tomorrow, old man. Will you join us?”

Hagor chuckled. “Straight to business, I see.”

“Will you, or won’t you?”

Hagor shifted his weight on his cane. The wind was blowing his hair in his eyes, pale white and stringy, but he ignored it. “I’m sorry, dear. The journey across the straits was not so easy this time. All the boys with me… young and unblooded, sun in their eyes and hope in their hearts. It took six weeks of disease to break them from that madness.”

Nhaara stared, unmoved. “So you’ll be staying in Saftsea?”

Hagor stared out at the ship he’d come from, where they were unloading crate after crate of flour and cured meat, his haul from out west. “Oh, heavens no. A few days in this town is enough for me. I’ll take the next caravan into the wastes, whenever it leaves. I’ll meet you in Kahera by the end of the month.”

Nhaara was staring again. “How long have you been at sea, old man?”

Hagor glanced back. “Three months. Why?”

Nhaara snorted. “Then much has changed since you boarded that death machine. Walk with me. We have much to discuss.”

There was an uneasy way those words came from her, which struck Hagor as strange. In his thirty years knowing the woman, he’d seen her cut off her own infected ear without so much as a flinch, take down Firewyrms with nothing but a pocket-knife, and put her own camels down without protest.

Wondering what this could possibly be about, Hagor hobbled on after her. “What’s the harm in my waiting, Nhaara?” He was gasping for breath a little– Nhaara had made no effort to slow her pace for him– but he soldiered on anyway, “The sands will demand I be at my fullest strength. If you insist I join you, wait till the next caravan and come with me–”

Nhaara stopped in her tracks, and Hagor ran face first into her. “There won’t be another caravan for at least a month, old man. Perhaps not even one till the end of the war.”

Hagor stared. “What? Then how the bloody hell do they plan to supply Kahera–”

Nhaara’s voice dropped to a low whisper. “Look around. Do you see anything strange about this city, Hagor?”

Hagor stopped to take a breath and observed. What he saw wasn’t too pleasing. They were standing at the port marketplace, usually the most bustling part of town, where the traders met the fishmongers and the salt farmers.
There must have been less than twenty walking about.

Black dust stained some of the stalls, and others were decked with rotting fruit. Koberyn’s stall, Hagor’s blacksmith of choice, was boarded and broken, and it looked like someone had recently robbed it.
And at the center of the square was a pile of human heads.

As they approached the mound, the smell of rotting flesh engulfed Hagor. His eyes started to water, but he forced himself to look all the same. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Heads of all shapes and sizes, even one or two of little children were piled atop each other in a pyramid, staining the wood deck with their blood. There must have been thirty in total, and some peeling quite strangely.
Hagor leaned in for a better look and recoiled with a gasp. The faces of those heads, the skin was pulling away and stretching in all sorts of fashions. And behind those faces were other faces, and behind those, even more.

“Qulori,” said Nhaara distastefully. “The Golden Empire has aligned itself with cannibals.”

Hagor had heard stories of the southern cannibal clans before, even as a boy. He remembered clinging to his mother at night, hearing stories of Qulori savages who hunted men like sheep, who ate their flesh and wore their faces as their own.

“I’ll admit,” said Hagor softly, “I never quite believed they were real until seeing one in the flesh…”

Nhaara twitched a little at his poor choice of words. “Believe it, old man. Look at their tongues.”

Hagor stared across the pile. That was the one thing common across all of them. All had their tongues pulled out, and all, when examined closely, had green stained tongues. “Qul root, isn’t it?” Hagor asked. “The bloody weed they get their name from?”

“Aye. Only two things a Qulori will eat, another man’s flesh and Qul root.”

Hagor had heard those stories too. How the Qul root let them morph bodies and shapes, let them fit the faces they stole. “These are all the ones that’ve been found at Saftsea?”

Nhaara nodded. “They got in quite far before the Warden started catching them. Setting fires, stealing goods… After the first few were found and killed, the Warden ordered the tongues of every man, woman, and child examined. Rounded up all the ones that were green and had them slaughtered. One of them had taken the face of the Warden’s seven year old daughter.”

Hagor stood up shakily, half from the bum leg and half from the sight of the heads. “So that’s all done then. No more body switchers.”

Nhaara laughed strangely. “Not so fast, old man. They left a gift.”

Nhaara was walking again, so Hagor hobbled hurriedly after her, cursing his limp. “A gift? What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“They’ve broken all path to Kahera,” Nhaara said, keeping her voice low. “In the three months you’ve been at sea, nine caravans have gone out. Not one has made it across the wastes.”

Hagor blinked. “Not one has gotten to Kahera… but the city must be starving then.”

“Probably.” Nhaara gave a cold laugh. “Impossible to know, isn’t it? That’s the irony of it. Tiny little city off the coast of the kingdom, surrounded on all sites by water and desert. The Golden Empire’s ships still blockade the water, raging bloody war across the sea. The Red Wastes used to be the only way to feed or contact the damn city, but now that they’ve been cut off– for all we know, Kahera’s a ghost town, filled with starved, lifeless corpses.”

“But what’s stopping the caravans?” Hagor pressed. “What’s forcing them back to Saftsea?”

Nhaara’s voice was as harsh as glass. “They’re not coming back here, old man. They’re disappearing.”

Hagor laughed uncertainly. “What?”

“The Black Straits clog your ears, old man? The caravans, they’re vanishing.”

“But– how– some of the best navigators in the known world make that trek every year, even before the war. I refuse to believe they vanish without a trace–”

“Not without a trace.” Nhaara shook her head. “In each caravan, exactly one survivor always comes back.”

“Comes back? To Saftsea? Well surely you can just ask them what happened–”

Nhaara stared at him. “If only we’d figured that. They’ve gone bloody mad, Hagor, all mumbling the same story. They tell the tale of some beast, haunting its way through the Red Wastes, preying upon them.”

“Beast?”

“Aye. It’s the same pattern every time. A caravan goes out into the Red Wastes; makes no difference if it’s thirty or three hundred. No word of them for weeks; no pigeons, no nothing. Then, one of them stumbles back into the city, mad as anything. We can barely get a word out of them, Hagor. You should see it for yourself. Warbling about some sand beast that attacks in the cover of darkness, picks them off one by one until there’s just one left.”

“Why leave one alive?” Hagor wondered aloud. “If it’s preying on the caravans, surely it’ll take them all in one swoop.”

Nhaara wrung her hands together. “Because it’s toying with us, old man.” Her voice had gone dark now. “Killing one at a time, leaving one to suffer, that’s its game. The ones who come back, they don’t last for long. They wake up at night, screaming strange things about ‘death melodies’ and jawed snakes with a thousand teeth… within a week of coming back, they all take their own lives.”

They had crossed the city center now, on their way to the trader’s barracks. Nhaara kept going. “The one who survived the first caravan, a woman my age. She came back mumbling about that song the beast sang, and the next day, she jumped off a cliff and drowned herself. After that…”
Nhaara began ticking them off with her fingers. “The second came back with a missing arm; he bashed his own head in a few days after. This was back when we were convinced there was no beast, that it was just a mirage in the sand. You know how the sand does strange things to you…”

Hagor merely nodded, and Nhaara continued on. “The next two both set themselves on fire. Both of them were screaming madness in the few days before, again something of some song the beast was singing. The men in the taverns have taken to calling it bloodsong. The last noise you hear before death.”

“The fifth…” Nhaara faltered a little, and when she spoke again her voice was cracking, “the fifth was Rhosal.”

Hagor pulled up short. “Rhosal was in one of these?”

Nhaara nodded. Her eyes had gone dark. “After the fourth time, we knew something had gone wrong, so Rhosal led a hunting party into the sands to search for the beast. He came back mute.”

“Mute? His tongue had been cut, or his jaw broken…”

“No. He could speak just fine. He just didn’t want to. The only word he’d say was “melody”, and even that he barely whispered.”

“He wouldn’t speak? Not even to…”

“Not even to me.” Nhaara would never admit it, but Hagor knew the two had once been lovers. Her voice was broken now, but she kept going anyway. “It was like he was a different person, Hagor. Senseless and sleepless, barely ate, locked himself away for days on end… until one day he peeled his own skin off, bit by bit, in some cruel kind of self torture. I found a dessicated corpse in his lodge a week after the hunting party, the head burned to a crisp in the fireplace.”

“I am sorry, Nhaara,” said Hagor softly. “I know you cared for him–”

“The ones who survived caravan six and seven just vanished,” said Nhaara loudly, drowning him out. “They came back, screaming about the song, then simply disappeared into the night. For all we know, they’re still out there, slowly sinking into madness.”

“Nhaara,” said Hagor firmly. “What happened with Rhosal–”

“The man who came back from the eighth caravan was eaten by a Qulori. That’s how we cottoned on to them, and from there, the hunt began.”

“Nhaara–”

“By the time the ninth caravan got back, the Warden had done his trick with the tongues and caught them all. We tortured a few of them; most gave up nothing, but one finally told us about the caravans. He admitted to the beast, some kind of southern creature they brought up with them in a cage. It's a mountain beast, apparently, preys on men and sheep alike, but put it in the sand and it burrows through it like its water. Builds a network of tunnels, some as deep as a thousand feet, and erupts from it to feast. The song… he said it was its mating call. The Qulori died before we could get any more out of him, but the ninth survivor confirmed it when he got back. Spoke of falling into a tunnel, coming face to face with the beast… and here’s the thing that told us what kind of creature we’re dealing with… the thing let him go. Like it knew. Like it was doing it all on purpose.”

“Look, I don’t know about how you left things with–”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about Rhosal. If you have something else to say, say it. Otherwise we’ll walk in silence.”

Hagor sighed. “Have it your way. So the beast, you know it’s playing with you because it let the ninth one go.”

“Aye. Before then, we thought it was sloppy, and that the deaths afterward were all chance. But now…”

“Bloodsong.” Hagor shuddered. “Is this ninth man still alive? May I speak to him?”

“Aye. The madness hasn’t gotten to him yet, though it’s been a good three weeks. You can see him tomorrow morning, when you make up your mind on whether to come with us.”

“But bloody– why can’t I take the next caravan, especially if this creature is out there?”

Nhaara stared. “Have you not been listening, old man? No one in their right minds wants to join one. It took me two weeks to gather this one, and even this is only a party of ten–”

Hagor turned pale. “There’s only ten? That’s far too little, Nhaara. We need at least thirty, and I’d feel safer with about a hundred…”

Nhaara grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Hagor. This creature has scared the blood out of every trader in this city. If this caravan fails, the Warden will shut down all caravans out of Saftsea until the beast is killed or dies. And if that song really is a mating song, there’s little hope of either.”

“But if the caravans are shut down, Kahera starves–”

“Why do you think I’m going, old man? My son’s still there; all of four. I cannot wait till this war is over to feed the city.” Nhaara let go of his shoulders, and brushed the sand off her arms. “Hell, if I wait even another day, half the group I’ve gathered will run for the hills. Make up your mind by tomorrow, Hagor. If I’m to die out in the Red Wastes to the sound of Bloodsong, I’d rather do it with you than alone.”