Beneath the wizened arms of a Joshua tree, a silhouette watches over the fields of the village of Peshri as dusk falls, as still and haughty as the stone gods that watch over this broken land.<br/><br/>Khait is armored fully, and rests with her back against the trunk of that tree.  One gauntleted hand rests upon the haft of a short spear, the other folds over her drawn knees.  The helmet atop her head emanates a soft, metallic sound as she rests her head back against that hard trunk.  A few silvery white tendrils spill out from her hastily-donned helm... she had a rough time preparing for the watch this evening; she was reluctant to rise before the sun went down.<br/><br/>Such had been the case often for her... she preferred the night, loved it, in fact... she volunteered for these evening missions without the slightest hesitation.  Where other warriors of the guild fought to stay awake or shuffled boredly, playing cards and dice to keep themselves sane, she could sit, watch, and think for hours on the beauty of the evening, the vast multitude of the stars, the grace of a stalking night-fox on the sand, or the coldness that crept into every grain of sand in Mu.<br/><br/>She had never fallen asleep on night watch.  Never dozed.  She could wait, and watch, for hours in that darkness.<br/><br/>This wasn't always good.  The guild was clearly divided on how they felt about the young, strangely beautiful fighter... no one bragged to have bedded her, no one could identify the color and shape of her features as certainly from any known land... she was like some alien treasure shipped to their land from a country never seen, but one that no one was certain how to display.  She fought well... like a cornered lion where desperation set in... like a cold, devouring viper where the mission was clear.<br/><br/>Except for her damnable horse... she should have ridden a chariot, like a decent warrior... instead, she sat the beast's back, like some kind of heathen, and fought from its back like some forgotten beast of war made complete.  Blades, lance, spears... all from four charging hooves that darted into and out of the fray like a demon.  Damnable woman.<br/><br/>And why always the night..?  None could say.  She kept to it, and it to her, like lost lovers in mutual remembrance.<br/><br/>She watched over the hillside as a calf wandered from its sleeping mother down in the fields.  Arrogant in its youth, the bull calf's bell clanked but once, and not enough to wake his mother, as it awkwardly shambled toward the edge of the field.<br/><br/>This wasn't hat she was trained to watch for, she knew... the townsfolk had found slaughtered sheep and cattle, their hearts and organs removed, in droves... they blamed the work on rabid jackals, or perhaps a starving pack.  Khait was supposed to watch the staked, sickly ewe that the townsfolk had staked fourty meters to the east of the cattle pen... for, certainly, no beast would choose to face the horns of a herd when such easy pickings could be had... and take them down.  All she was<i>supposed</i>to do was watch that staked ewe until the jackals set for it... then kill as many as possible until she ran out of spears or arrows, then track the scattered survivors to the pack and slay the rest.<br/><br/>But... her eyes went back to the wandering bull calf.<i>Something's amiss,</i>she thought... and her instincts had proved right before.<br/><br/>She rose steadily, and Asiman-- her fury of a war horse-- raised his chestnut head to watch her.  She didn't speak... Asiman was used to her silence.  And as she climbed silently onto his back and raised her lance, the horse remained as silent as death.<br/><br/>The bull calf still meandered, his behavior odd... he looked sickly, was trembling... or, at least, that's how it appeared from her vantage point.  Khait guided Asiman at a walk, watching... the bull calf was not alone.  Others of the herd were awake, shuffling about, rolling their necks and shaking their great, horned heads as if beset by flies... but there were no flies.<br/><br/>Steadying her lance, Khait rode lower, approached them... at the horse's scent, the stock began lowing... they were unused to the smell of war stock or race stock, so horses were as strange to them as the jackals.  A breeze stirred the feathers at the back of Khait's neck, and as she passed her eyes from beast to beast, riding into their ranks, her mouth went dry and her back stiff with anxiety... Were they diseased?  Mad?  There were no visible things that could torment them so... perhaps it was best that they all be slaughtered and burned.  She turned Asiman toward the village square, where she was told to report for reinforcements-- and stopped, her heels hovering just above Asiman's flanks.<br/><br/>One of the cattle had fallen-- the bull calf-- and lay upon its side, heaving air and spewing foamy saliva onto the cracked earth.  Its side rose and fell-- and then, she saw, bulged.  It bulged, it did not heave... something within was trying to escape.  She readied her spear, turned Asiman, watched for whatever evil this might be, and steeled herself against the urge to flee.<br/><br/>She had never run, and would not begin now.<br/><br/>The calf's flank burst like a rotten melon, and up spewed a column of black shapes like leaves, or beetles... locusts, she realized.  They flew up in a great, spiraling column, then tapered off... a second, then third column joined in, as other cattle ruptured their internal organs into the night and spewed locusts and plague beetles, puddles of maggots, or even baby adders onto the night ground.<br/><br/>Asiman backed hesitantly away... he didn't know how to fight this.  And Khait concurred... this was evil that eluded the lance.<br/><br/>Turning the steed, she urged him into a full-out run, and they-- rider and stallion-- tore through the dusty streets of the village to spread the news of what she had seen.