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help. The Amalite rebels aren't attacking there they are in the Jethrik territory right on the Jethrik border."
    "Why?"
    Tarius shrugged, "Who can say for sure? My guess would be that it's because the Amalites look so much like the Jethriks. It makes it easy for them to infiltrate without detection. It's harder for the Jethriks to keep an eye on them. I would imagine that as much as the sea between us is what has always made the Jethrik their target of choice. Also, there is something to be said for their fear of the Katabull. They can say what they like about their gods and cling to their hateful religion, but in the end they fear the Katabulls' righteous wrath against them, and we did totally annihilate them when last they came against us. You always remember your last battle best. They aren't supposed to be practicing their religion but it's hard to get people to stop clinging to the lies they enjoy. But they fear us more than they trust their gods." She got a puzzled look on her face. "But there is something else, too, something I can't figure out. There are too many of them. These raids do devastating damage more than a handful of stragglers hiding in the forest could do. They have found themselves a place to hide in great numbers, a hive."
    "A hive Madra?"
    "What else would you call something that held many stinging beasts?" she said with a smile. She looked him right in the eyes and he held her gaze. "There is a stench to an Amalite, they aren't fond of bathing and believe such things as perfumes are evil. They may look just like the Jethriks but there is a smell to them, you will know it when you smell it. There are many things I must tell you all." She turned and walked back over to the three beaten apprentices still sitting on the ground and Jabone followed.
    "Listen up because I'm only going to tell you this once. No one wants to think that genocide is ever the answer, but you can kill people much easier it seems than you can kill idiotic beliefs. It seems that even I was short sighted in dealing with the Amalites." She spit on the ground. "That even I didn't go far enough. I who loathed them, even I didn't understand how insidious was their religion how it had so completely corrupted the soul of whoever followed it. We killed every priest, every warrior that we found among the Amalites, leaving only their noncombatants alive. We burned their temples, we split their country between the Jethirk and the Kartik, and we moved to inhabit their land. But somehow their hateful beliefs have survived. The Amalites have rebuilt their religion and are somehow bringing their people back to it, in secret and in hiding in the Jethrik-held territories of the Amalite.
    "You may think that we are over reacting to this threat. That they are persecuted. You may say to yourself, what harm is a belief. But you haven't lived in the time of the Amalites in power. You haven't fought these people who believe their gods want them to kill the unbelievers. They hate us all because they believe that is what their gods command. You think that mercy is a virtue and it is, but you must show the Amalites no mercy. None are to be trusted, all are suspect, and when you find a group hiding and doing nothing more menacing than praying you must slaughter them to the last man, or they will kill you and all that you love, for this is their way.
    "If you don't understand why they are so monstrous, why they must be killed simply because of their beliefs, then you don't truly understand what the Amalites do when they come to full strength. How they fell upon the Katabull and tried to make us extinct. How they marched across the Jethrik killing every living thing, burning crops and homes, leaving nothing but waste and famine behind them, all in the names of their gods.
    "They follow their beliefs blindly and they will show you no mercy because you aren't one of them. If you don't understand all that I have just said, if you don't agree, than you shouldn't go,