Delia of Vallia: Dray Prescot #28

Chapter one
From the Ochre Limits
The woman prostrate on the desert sand moved with the lax tremble of imminent death under the vulture's outspread wings. The bird inclined his stiff black wings, circling in the air, and regarded the woman with unhurried patience, awaiting the moment of her death.
She rolled sluggishly onto her side and Rippasch the vulture curved above her, his twin shadows flickering across the sand. The woman opened her eyes.
The bird lifted and the polished beak, sharp and hooked, caught the radiance of the suns and glittered. The woman's eyes half-closed. Watchfully, Rippasch dropped lower. Now she lay still, sprawled and supine, a last quiver of her limbs signal enough.
The ochre sand stretched to the horizon unbroken except for the line of footprints, faltering as they neared the point where the woman had fallen. The twin suns burned high, red and green, drenching the barren land with heat. The bird flicked his wings and curved in to land on outthrust claws. He cocked his head to one side.
The woman's arms lay loosely, her left hand across her breasts where torn russet leather revealed tanned skin, her right open at the side of her thigh. That open right hand rested limply on the hilt of a heavy sailor knife. A roll of sand partially covered the broad blade where she had fallen.
No breeze blew to muffle the scratching sound of the vulture's claws as he strutted toward the woman. His beak pointed. Her eyes remained half open.
Cracks disfigured the softness of her lips and dust stained her face into the semblance of an idol's death mask. Her breast moved in shallow rhythm, slowing, dying, stilling to quietness. Rippasch fluffed his neck feathers and strutted forward.
The woman remained motionless.
Reassured, Rippasch fluttered out his wings and hopped onto her body. His claws dug into the tanned skin; they did not break through into the flesh or draw blood.
For two heartbeats the vulture poised on the woman's breast, a black wedge against the sunslight. For two heartbeats only--then his sharp beak darted forward for the feast.
The woman's left hand struck straight up.
Her fingers closed around the thin and naked neck. Any squawking shriek of fear or astonishment Rippasch might have uttered was mercilessly choked off.
The woman's right hand closed. The knife glittered once as it swept in a flat lethal slash.
The vulture's head flew off.
Instantly, the decapitated body was turned, was twisted upside down. The spurting flood of blood cascaded out in a jutting stream. That warm wet blood splashed over the woman's face, coursed into her mouth. Greedily, she lapped the blood, swallowing, feeling the moisture wet against her parched skin--wet wet!
She drank greedily, thirstily, gulping the red blood like a savage beast crouched over its prey.
At that moment the woman was a savage beast, ferocious and cunning, skilled in the arts of survival, and she devoured the goodness of the kill her prowess had brought her.
Presently she licked the sailor knife clean. Moisture was so precious not a drop must be wasted. She replaced the knife in its rawhide sheath at her right side, below the main gauche that snugged sweetly against her hip. The matching rapier--plain of hilt and guard, slender and yet not too slender, not a fancy weapon--remained in the scabbard swung on plain steel lockets from her left side. Her waist was narrow and the lesten-hide belt with its silver buckle, dulled from much use, was hauled up to the penultimate slot.
Standing up, she picked the sucked-dry carcass from the sand and shook it. Her hunger was not so great, yet, that she needed to fall upon the raw flesh. But she would, if she had to.
In her present situation she was sorry that she could not husband some of the blood. But that would be the first to go. Moisture was all important. And, again, from her experience she felt regret that the vulture had not chosen to attack her corpse toward evening. She might begin to sweat again, now, and that was sheer waste.
She looked about the hostile horizon.
Her airboat had decided to crash here in the Ochre Limits after a short, sharp and nasty onslaught from beastly flutsmen, murderous slavers who thought they had sighted an easy prey.