Warrior (Relentless #4)(98)

By the time we finished our run, she was winded but glowing. I made a note to run in the woods with her whenever I could.

She was quiet but no longer withdrawn as we walked back to the stronghold. At the main entrance, I opened the door for her.

“Get some lunch and rest for a bit. We’ll meet up again at two.”

“Okay,” she said, looking at ease after our morning together.

I remembered then that I had planned to give her a gift for her first training session. I removed the knife I carried on my hip and held it out to her.

“Here. This is to replace the knife you lost.”

She unsheathed the knife and touched the pattern on the handle. The pleasure on her face told me I’d chosen the right gift.

“You did great today,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she blurted, turning away like she was embarrassed by my praise.

I opened my mouth to tell her she had earned it, but one of the trainees chose that moment to come racing into the main hall.

“Shut the door! Shut the door before they get out!” he shouted frantically.

I slammed the door shut when I saw a small white creature careening toward us. The kark changed course and flew up to the high arched ceiling.

“What is it?” Sara asked, tilting her head to look at the kark.

The trainee’s reply was drowned out by the sounds of an entire flock of karks headed in our direction. Karks were not dangerous to us, but I pulled Sara behind me anyway as they filled the main hall.

A warrior named Sahir ran into the hall, followed by a group of trainees. Sahir took care of the menagerie, and he helped educate the trainees on the many species in the world and how to handle them.

One of the boys had a sword, and I almost laughed out loud at the sight of him swinging the weapon at the tiny karks whipping around his head.

“Don’t hurt them!” Sahir lunged for the boy. “Do you realize how long it takes to breed karks? We can’t kill them.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do with them?” the boy yelled.

“We have to round them up somehow.”

Sara ran over to Sahir. “How do you catch them?” she asked him.

“Normally you’d use a spray made from scarab demon pheromone. Karks can’t resist it. Unfortunately, this batch was not supposed to hatch yet, and I didn’t see a bottle of spray in the crates.”

I frowned. Karks were hard to breed, and the people who handled them were fastidious about their care. No one would ship a batch of eggs without making sure the pheromone was packed with them.

Sahir shouted something about getting a sedative to calm the karks, and then he ran from the hall, leaving us with a few hundred frantic karks.

The only word I could use to describe the scene in the hall was chaos. Trainees ran around, trying unsuccessfully to catch the creatures as Chris and a dozen other warriors ran into the hall and stared in shock.

“What in God’s name is going on here?” Tristan bellowed from the second floor landing, before he descended the stairs with Celine. “Who is responsible for this?” he shouted above the noise when he reached the main floor. “Where is Sahir?”

“He went to get some kind of sedative to knock them out,” Sara told him.

Tristan stared angrily at the mess around him. “How did this happen?”

Sara shook her head and pointed at the other trainees. “Ask them. I was with Nikolas.”

Jordan stepped forward. “It was an accident. We laid all the eggs out after breakfast and turned them as Sahir instructed. We just went back to turn them again and they were all hatched.”

“I want these things caged before they make an even bigger mess,” Tristan ordered, joining us at the center of the hall.

Celine squealed and started hopping around and trying to get kark dung from her hair. I had to turn away so she wouldn’t see me struggling not to laugh.

Sara didn’t try to hide her amusement, although her laugh was cut short when she got a whiff of the stuff. Her eyes watered, and she covered her nose and mouth.

I was grinning when my eyes met Tristan’s, and after a few seconds, his scowl turned into a smile. He shook his head and looked around the hall that was going to require several cleaning crews after the karks were rounded up.

“They must be getting tired,” one of the boys said. “Should we try to catch them now?”

I looked where he was pointing and saw Sara holding a sleeping kark while several dozen of the creatures rested on surfaces around her. Having seen what she could do to a werewolf and two hellhounds, I knew she had to be doing the same thing now.

Walking over to her, I said in a low voice, “Are you doing this?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how long it will work on them. I hope Sahir gets here soon.”

“Someone needs to be reprimanded for this disaster,” Celine said when she and Tristan walked over to us.

I didn’t bother to tell her there was no one to blame for this one. She was too upset about the white dung clinging to her hair to listen to reason.

One of the boys ran up to us carrying mesh equipment bags. “Will these do?”

“Good idea!” Sara smiled at him and called out to the other trainees to help them.

They managed to get all the sleeping creatures in the bags, but that didn’t help with the hundreds of karks flying around the room. It got decidedly worse when the situation became too much for the newly hatched karks, and they began to defecate everywhere. Tristan threw up his arms, and he, Chris, and I stood together watching the spectacle.