Chapter 5

Smoke choked the streets of the town of Myrtledew, rising to blot the sun from the clear, blue sky. Burning ashes floated on the wind, which fanned the flames that crackled all across the village. The air reeked of burning—the rich smell of wood, the wet odor of straw, the sickly sweet stench of hair and flesh. The fire had already consumed the town’s entire southern half and had started to work its way north.

Kurthak the Black-Gazer stood amid the carnage, his scabrous lips curled into a scowl. The ogre warlord scratched his coarse, green-black beard and glowered at the flames, shifting the weight of his great spiked club on his shoulder. His eyes—the left one nothing but an empty socket—narrowed with disgust as he regarded the remnants of the kender village.

“Sloppy,” he growled.

Tragor, his second-in-command, grunted and spat in the soot. He weighed his massive, two-handed sword, watching the blood run down the groove in the middle of its blade. “We did good enough.”

“No,” Kurthak snapped. He glowered at Tragor, gesturing at the warrior’s bloody blade. “We killed too many.”

“Live kender, dead kender,” Tragor rumbled. “What’s the difference?”

Kurthak shook his great, shaggy head, his ox-homed helmet glinting in the ruddy firelight. “I have explained this to you, Tragor,” he snarled. “A dead kender is no good to us.”

“At least they shut up when they’re dead.”

A snort that might have been laughter erupted from Kurthak’s lips. “Still,” Kurthak grunted, “I gave specific orders. Take them alive. Any clan-chief who didn’t heed me will bleed this night.”

The attack had begun at midday. When Kurthak’s war band—a thousand warriors, only a fraction of the total horde—had descended upon Myrtledew from the shattered wastelands to the east, the surprised kender had been unable to raise any defenses in time. There had been no keeping the ogres from running rampant through town. A few of the kender had fought, but most sought to escape—not out of fear, of course, but because they knew they had no hope of winning and preferred to fight another day.

Escape, however, had not been so easy. The ogres had surrounded the town, cutting it off and slaughtering those who tried to flee west, into the depths of the Kenderwood. Their bloodlust awakened by the fighting, Kurthak’s warriors had rampaged through the village, hacking and smashing anything smaller than they were. By the time the fighting was done, nearly half of Myrtledew’s population of several hundred kender were dead. Of the survivors, many were indeed useless to Kurthak—children, the old, the sick. The ogres had put most of them to the sword.

The rest, however, were being rounded up, even now, amid the blazing wreckage. Kurthak watched as a squad of heavily armed ogres locked a cluster of thirty kender in irons and marched them, at spearpoint, toward the edge of the village. The fierce-spirited kender shuffled along, the chains that shackled their ankles rattling as they made their way toward the slave wagons that waited on the east side of town. They looked truly miserable, which only increased Kurthak’s satisfaction as he watched them pass.

“My lord!” the leader of the warriors called. He turned away from his men and hurried toward Kurthak and Tragor. He was a wart-covered brute with a jagged brown snaggletooth jutting from his mouth. The ritual scars on his cheeks and the horsetail plume on his helmet identified him as a low-ranking officer in Kurthak’s band.

“Argaad,” the Black-Gazer responded. “What news?”

“We captured these wretches at the riverside,” Argaad reported, his chest puffing with pride as he gestured behind him. “They tried to escape on a barge, but we stopped them.”

“Good work,” Kurthak said. He slapped the warrior on the shoulder. “You have done your clan proud.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Argaad bobbed his head, beaming with pride. “I give them to you as a gift. It is an honor to serve you. If you should need a bodyguard, or someone to lead the next attack—”

Tragor cleared his throat. “Argaad,” he said in a low voice, “your gift is getting away.”

Argaad whirled. Somehow, in the middle of his speech, the kender had slipped out of their bonds. Now one of his men lay on the ground, bleeding from a knife wound in his gut, and the rest were watching, stunned, as their captives dispersed.

“Don’t stand there, you louts!” Argaad roared. “After them!” He gave Kurthak a quick glance that was half-apologetic, half-horrified, then turned to lope after his men, driving them after the kender.

Tragor started to laugh, but Kurthak cut him off with a baleful glare. “This is no joke,” the warlord snapped. “Each of those kender is valuable to me.” He motioned toward the fleeing prisoners and the ogres who gave chase. “Come. We will help Argaad catch them again.”

“Good,” Tragor declared, hefting his great sword. “I’ve been hoping for some sport.”

They both ran, charging after Argaad and his men. The kender were quick, but the ogres took long strides, and easily kept pace. As they ran, the towering brutes readied large nets to catch their fleeing prey. The kender weaved among burning buildings, splitting up and regrouping as they charged through the streets, but the ogres—Kurthak and Tragor running now in the lead—kept after them, snarling and howling.

At last they reached the edge of the blasted village. A thicket of tall, tangled bushes rose ahead of them, carrying on for five hundred yards before giving way to the dark Kenderwood. The kender sprinted for the thicket, but Kurthak only grinned, waving his arm toward the forest. “Get ahead of them!” he called. “Trap them in those brambles!”

Obediently the ogres fanned out, charging around the bushes toward the woods. Kurthak and Tragor kept on the kender’s heels. The first ones disappeared into the bushes with a rustle, and the others followed without hesitation—all except the last one, a golden-haired youngster who glanced over her shoulder directly at the warlord and his champion and smiled. Then she, too, was gone.

“Pen them in!” Kurthak bellowed, pulling up at the edge of the brambles. He pointed at the branches, which rustled with the kender’s passage. “Watch the bushes! You can see where they are!”

The ogres soon encircled the rustling scrub, then began to close in, thrusting their spears and swords into the thornbushes. The ring tightened like a noose about the fleeing kender.

“Good idea, my lord,” Argaad declared. “We have them trapped—they have nowhere to go. They won’t get away.”

Kurthak nodded impatiently. “Let us hope so.”

The rustling in the underbrush continued to move slowly toward the tree line. Kurthak, Tragor and Argaad watched impatiently as the ogres closed in, flattening the brambles and cutting swaths toward their quarry.

Then, all at once, the rustling stopped.

The ogres stopped too, their brows furrowing with confusion. Involuntarily, Argaad sucked in a sharp breath through his jutting, rotten teeth. Tragor glanced at Kurthak, his eyes questioning, but the warlord was lost in thought, plucking at his beard as he tried to understand what was going on.

“My lord,” Argaad asked, his face the color of bleached bone, “what should we do?”

Kurthak pondered a moment, then pointed at the spot where the rustling had ended. “Keep going,” he bade. “They must still be there.”

The ogres moved on, weapons and nets ready. Argaad held his breath as the circle of his warriors narrowed to a mere two dozen yards, then one dozen. The bushes remained motionless.

The ogres stopped when they were close enough for their spearpoints to reach the middle of the ring. They jabbed their weapons into the bushes, probing the spot where the rustling had stopped so suddenly. Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Argaad called anxiously. “They should be right there!”

The ogres prodded the scrub with spears, hacked with swords and axes, and beat the bushes with cudgels. They trampled the brambles flat in some places, pulled their knotted roots from the ground in others. The kender, however, were gone.

“What witchcraft’s at work here?” Tragor grumbled, baffled.

“Torches!” ordered the Black-Gazer, his face creased with rage. “Burn them out!”

A pair of ogres pushed past the rest, wading out of the bushes, then ran toward the fiery ruins of Myrtledew. The other brutes edged outward again, toward the edges of the thicket, always watching for some sign of the vanished kender. Before long the runners returned, each bearing a pair of burning firebrands. They looked to Kurthak, ignoring Argaad altogether. Glowering furiously, the warlord waved them on toward the bushes.

The shrubs’ dry leaves and branches caught fire quickly, and the flames spread. The ogres waited all around the bushes, waiting and watching for the kender to flee the blaze. Within minutes the whole thicket was aflame, curling and blackening as the fire raged higher. And still there was no sign of the kender. The ogres watched the conflagration, gaping in confusion.

“You lost them!” Kurthak snapped at Argaad, who flinched beneath the lash of his words.

“I don’t understand,” the snaggletoothed warrior protested. “They couldn’t have escaped the fire. How could they enter the bushes without leaving? You saw them go in there, my lord!”

Slowly, Tragor moved to stand behind Argaad.

Kurthak nodded slowly, pondering. “Yes, I did,” he agreed.

“My lord,” Argaad began. “I didn’t—”

With a suddenness that startled even Kurthak, Tragor lifted his heavy, two-handed sword high above his head, then slammed it down on the cowering warrior from behind. The blade hacked through Argaad’s helmet, splitting his skull in half. The snaggletoothed warrior stood rigid for a moment; then Tragor jerked his sword free, and Argaad crumpled in a bloody heap.

Kurthak looked down at the corpse, then shrugged. “Come,” he bade, and motioned for Tragor to follow. “There is nothing left for us here.”

They left the thicket to burn and Argaad’s body to draw crows.

Argaad was not the only warrior to lose his prisoners inexplicably. When the ogres regrouped outside the smoldering ruins of Myrtledew, no fewer than six officers came to Kurthak and reported, with trembling voices, that their captives had broken free, opening their shackles with concealed lockpicks, and fled. Some had made their way to the underbrush or the forest itself; others had ducked into the village’s larger buildings. In every case, just when the ogres were sure they had them trapped, the kender had vanished mysteriously. Every one of the penitent officers avowed that the disappearances were the result of some unknown magic. Kurthak, who had never heard of a kender sorcerer, scoffed at the notion.

“Fools,” he told Tragor as they struck out eastward from Myrtledew, toward their barren, rocky homeland. “The stupid lackwits let them escape.”

Tragor grunted noncommittally, his sheathed sword swinging on his back as he trudged through the woods beside Kurthak. “What will you do?” he asked.

Kurthak pondered, glancing back at the columns of ogres who followed him. Of the thousand warriors he had brought with him on this raid, he had lost perhaps a hundred, with a like number wounded. Except for Argaad, the officers who had failed him marched with the survivors. They took great care not to meet his coal-black stare as he glared at them.

“I am not sure yet,” he said, his brow beetling.

“They should die,” Tragor declared flatly. He smacked a leathery fist against his palm. “Lord Ruog would not look well on you if you let them live.”

Kurthak shrugged as if this meant nothing to him. Ruog, hetman of the greatest ogre horde ever to emerge from the wildlands of the Goodlund peninsula, was a lord who valued swift action on the part of his followers. Kurthak would have to report to him immediately, and Ruog would not be pleased to hear that the Black-Gazer’s war band had captured fewer than a hundred slaves. He would demand blood for the lost kender.

Still, Kurthak hesitated as he considered the possibilities. “I hear your words, Tragor,” he declared, pursing his lips in concentration. “I think, though, that I have a better idea.”

Kurthak the Black-Gazer scowled fiercely, his face glowing orange in the firelight. He stood upon a tall, jagged boulder, looking down at the six officers whose prisoners had escaped. All around him the ogres of his war band shifted and leaned closer, muttering to one another. The flames of great bonfires licked upward, as if seeking to ignite the starry sky.

Though they were fewer than three leagues from the Kenderwood, the land could not have been more different. The ground was parched and rocky, unsuitable for farming—or even herding—and great shelves of rock jutted from the barren hillsides. There was not a single tree to be seen, though clumps of razorleaf bushes clung stubbornly to the loose, sandy soil. Scorpions and snakes scuttled and slithered around them.

The officers who knelt before Kurthak were tightly bound, strong thongs of leather securing their arms and legs. Stripped of armor, helm, and shield, they kept their gaze resolutely on the ground before them. None met the warlord’s fierce, one-eyed glare, though at times they did twist and crane to look over their shoulders. Tragor paced behind them, moving from one end of the row to the other. His hands twisted eagerly about the hilt of his sword.

“You have failed me,” Kurthak stated. “I do not brook failure.”

“But,” protested one of the officers, a fat ogre named Prakun, “my lord—”

“Silence!” thundered Kurthak. “There can be no excuses!”

Tragor moved quickly. His two-handed blade flashed in the firelight, cleaving flesh and bone. The ogre to Prakun’s right fell heavily against the fat officer, dark blood welling from the stump of its neck. Its head rolled in the dust, its eyes staring sightlessly at the pale moon.

Prakun cried out in terror, shoving the corpse away from him. A sharp stench filled the air as the ground beneath his knees grew dark and damp.

“Lord Ruog will ask for your heads,” Kurthak continued, gesturing at the prize that lay pop-eyed before him. “I will give him what he wants.”

Tragor’s sword whistled through the air a second time. The ogre to Prakun’s left drew a sharp breath, but before it could cry out its head came free, flying forward to crack against Kurthak’s boulder and tumble to the ground. The new corpse stayed stubbornly upright for a moment, then swayed like a drunk and sagged to the ground. Prakun’s face was livid with fear, gleaming white in the firelight. The other officers hunched their shoulders, cowering, as Tragor continued to pace behind them. Blood dripped from the champion’s sword, making black stains on the stony ground.

“But,” Kurthak concluded, “I am not unmerciful.”

Again the sword flashed. Sensing what was coming, Prakun threw himself forward, landing face-first in the dirt. Tragor’s swing went wide, and the champion struggled to keep the force of the unexpectedly unhindered blow from pulling him off his feet. Prakun rolled back and forth, blubbering pitifully, but could not otherwise move. Snarling, Tragor stepped forward and brought his heel down hard on the small of the weeping ogre’s back. Prakun screamed as his spine snapped, but his cries were short-lived. Tragor drove his sword downward. It took two mighty blows to cleave through Prakun’s thick neck.

Kurthak glowered down at the three remaining officers, who trembled as they, in turn, regarded Prakun’s unmoving corpse. He smiled, his teeth gleaming sickly yellow in the shadows.

“The rest of you can go,” he said.

There was a moment of shocked silence as the assembled ogres looked at one another incredulously. When Tragor stepped forward and cut the remaining officers’ bonds, however, the onlookers’ disbelief quickly gave way to outrage. Fists waved in the air, and angry oaths rang out in the night. Many of the ogres had come to witness their warlord’s judgment, simply for the chance to see blood spilled; denied the slaughter they had expected, they quickly became furious.

“Silence!” barked Tragor, brandishing his sword in the air. “Be still, or you’ll taste what you crave!”

Reluctantly, the throng settled down. Angry eyes turned toward the boulder where the Black-Gazer stood.

Kurthak smiled, his eyes glinting, and gestured at the stunned officers who still knelt before him. They were staring at each other in amazement and dread, not understanding what was going on.

“You three,” Kurthak declared, “shall receive no punishment for your failure. You shall continue to serve me, just as you did before, and none here shall be allowed to harm you. But fail me again, and I will make sure you wish you had died tonight.”

“Y-yes, my lord,” one of the officers said in a small voice. The other two simply stared, their mouths hanging slightly open.

Kurthak folded his arms across his broad chest. “Go, then,” he growled. “Return to your warriors at once.”

The officers quickly scrambled to their feet, their faces deathly pale, and hurried away. The onlooking ogres tarried a moment, then began to disperse, shambling away into the gloom. They muttered to one another as they went, pondering their lord’s judgment.

Tragor remained, wiping his sword’s blood-caked blade with a tattered skin. He did not look at Kurthak as the warlord climbed down from his boulder.

“You have not asked me yet,” Kurthak said, “why I do this.”

For a long moment, Tragor silently continued to clean his weapon. Then he nodded and looked at Kurthak through narrow eyes. “I know you, my lord,” he said. “You’ll tell me, if you wish me to know.” He returned to polishing the blade.

“I will explain,” Kurthak said. He leaned back against the rock face, eyes glittering with reflected starlight. “What do you think those three will be thinking the next time we attack the kender? I have killed their comrades before their eyes, and threatened to do the same to them if they displease me. They will fight harder now that they fear my wrath.”

Tragor considered this. “What if they don’t?” he asked. “What if this… mercy makes them soft?”

“It will not,” Kurthak asserted. He lifted his chin confidently.

“Maybe not,” Tragor allowed, not fully convinced. “But what if—”

Suddenly he stopped speaking, sniffing the air. A new smell had risen amid the other stenches that hung about them. There was a strange sweetness to it, marking it as different from the sour odor of ogre sweat.

“Kender?” Kurthak asked, scenting it too.

Tragor sniffed again, then shook his head. “Human.”

“Human!” Kurthak exclaimed. He glanced at the shadows, even more alert than before. “How close?”

“Close enough,” said a voice.

Tragor whirled, his sword coming up reflexively. Kurthak reached for his spiked club. The two of them watched the edges of the firelight, nostrils flared as they tried to pinpoint the voice’s source.

“You will not need your weapons,” the voice continued. It was soft and sibilant, low but not deep. A woman’s voice. “I have not come to do you ill.”

“Show yourself, then,” Tragor demanded, not lowering his sword.

Soft, mocking laughter filled the air, making the ogres’ skin prickle. “Very well,” the voice said.

She was closer than Kurthak and Tragor expected, stepping out of the gloom fewer than twenty paces away. She wore a deep, black cloak, its hood pulled up to obscure her face. She strode forward, opening her black-gloved hands to show that they were empty.

“Stop,” Tragor said, brandishing his sword and moving to bar the woman’s path.

She ignored him, continuing to walk toward the two ogres.

“I said, stop!” Tragor repeated, his voice rising with fury. The broad, gleaming blade wavered in his hands “Come no closer, or—”

“Call off this yapping dog, Black-Gazer,” the woman interrupted, her voice laden with frost. “I would speak with you, and will come as close as I like to do it.”

“Impudent wretch!” Tragor barked. He leapt forward, swinging his sword in a blow meant to split the robed woman in two, across the shoulders.

She moved with amazing speed, diving and rolling under Tragor’s flashing blade. Before the champion could arrest the blow, she leapt at him, her fists swinging.

The blows—first her left hand, then her right—struck Tragor square in the stomach, below his metal breastplate. The ogre doubled over, making a high-pitched, wheezing noise, and the woman’s black-booted foot came up suddenly, catching him full in the face. There was a wet crunch as the kick broke Tragor’s nose, then the champion fell back, his face blossoming with blood. Tragor staggered, trying to keep his footing, but the woman spun, her foot lashing out again and connecting solidly with his groin. He sank to his knees, sobbing, and she seized his helmet by its plume and yanked it off. Tragor tried one last time to lift his sword, but the heel of the woman’s hand cracked against his temple, and he collapsed in a senseless, flaccid heap.

The fight had lasted less than half a minute, from first blow to last. The woman watched Tragor for a moment, making sure he wasn’t moving, then turned to face Kurthak. When she spoke, her voice was soft and calm, displaying no sign of exertion whatsoever.

“I have a proposal for you, Black-Gazer,” she said.

Reflexively, Kurthak’s grip on his club tightened, but then he glanced at Tragor’s senseless form and forced himself to relax. There were few warriors in Lord Ruog’s vast horde who could match Tragor ‘s physical prowess. Yet this strange, cloaked woman had bested him without even winding herself.

He lowered the club, his eyes fast on her. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is not important.”

Kurthak shook his shaggy head. “I must know your face—at least.”

The woman considered this, then shrugged. “Very well,” she said lightly. “If it is so important to you.” She reached up and pulled back her hood.

Kurthak caught his breath in horror.

She might have been lovely once, or she might have been plain. It was impossible to tell now, for the woman no longer had anything resembling a face. Her skin was a mass of red, puckered bum scars. Her hair had been completely scorched away, leaving nothing but bare, charred scalp. Her ears, nose and lips were gone; any other features were little more than soft, indistinct lumps. Only her eyes survived, blue and glittering beneath puffy, blistered lids. They shone with cruel humor when she saw the disgust on Kurthak’s face.

“I am called Yovanna,” she told him. Her voice had not been marred by whatever had ruined her face; the contrast only made her visage more gruesome. “I bring you a message. My mistress wishes to speak with you.”

“And who is this mistress?” Kurthak asked.

“Her name is Malystryx.”

The Black-Gazer stiffened at the mention of the name. He knew stories of the great red dragon who was said to dwell to the north of the Dairly Plains, but he had never seen her. “What does she want with me?” he asked.

“She doesn’t want you,” Yovanna replied. “She wants your people, Black-Gazer. So she sent me to summon you.”

“And why should I go with you?” Kurthak pressed, his anger growing.

Yovanna regarded him carefully, her blue eyes searching. “Malystryx has been watching your people for some time,” she said. “For months, you have been raiding little kender towns.”

Kurthak thought he heard derision in her voice, but he wasn’t sure—there was no telling from her face He snorted. “For sport,” he said. “And for slaves.”

Yovanna’s face pinched and creased in what might have been a smile, but which looked like a nightmare grimace. “My mistress would like to join forces with you,” she hissed.

“If she is so powerful, why does she need our help?”

“She needs allies as her power grows.”

“What will she give me in return?” Kurthak asked.

“She will give you Kendermore.”