The nomad captive was left to six Hyloans, who wrestled the prisoner to the ground. He flailed his arms and legs, but several kender sat on him as others tore off his clothes. Howling curses, the nomad promised terrible retribution for any violence done to him. The kender ignored him. When he was stripped to the skin and pinned to the ground on his back, a pot of red paint was produced, along with several brushes. The kender proceeded to paint the man red from head to toe.
When they were done, they released him. He rolled quickly to his feet.
“Is that it?” He laughed nervously. “Is that all?”
Kiya suppressed a shudder. “It’s enough. Look.”
The nomad peered at his reflection in the creek. The red paint, together with his pale blond hair, made him look like some insane wraith. Splashing water on himself, he quickly discovered the paint would not come off. He scrubbed himself with handfuls of sand, but the result was same.
This was the punishment known in Hylo as the “Judgment of the True Skin,” usually inflicted on kender who refused to leave home and wander as royal law prescribed. The paint was said to be permanent, but knowing how the little people exaggerated, Kiya reckoned it would probably wear off in a few days or weeks. Still, it was not an experience she cared to have. Anyone the nomad encountered would flee in horror at the sight of him, if they didn’t slay him as a monster first.
The man had begun to draw blood with his vigorous scrubbing, and he continued to scream at them all. Kiya pointed her sword at him and told him to go. To emphasize her words, the kender began tossing mud from the creekbank at the painted man.
“You’re crazy!” the nomad shrieked, backing away. “All of you-you’re crazy!”
“Crazy as kender,” Kiya agreed.
Defeated, humiliated, he scrambled up the opposite shore and crashed away through the underbrush. They could measure the naked man’s progress by the curses that echoed through the trees every time he encountered a thorny obstacle.
Casberry’s army meanwhile straggled onward through the woods. The slender trees finally thinned, revealing the imperial road from Caergoth to Hylo, called by many the Plucked Path. It had been built by ogre slaves, who literally tore trees out of the ground with their hands. Not a paved road like the Ackal Path, its surface was dirt, layered with crushed seashells brought all the way from the Gulf of Ergoth.
Before her mount broke through the trees onto the road, the Dom-shu woman heard loud voices ahead. She tapped heels to her pony’s sides, wondering what new insanity she was about to experience.
Casberry’s bearers stood in the center of the road. The kender queen was leaning forward in her chair, shaking a finger at a gray granite blockhouse and demanding its occupant come out. Around her chair gathered the humans and kender of her Household Guard. Royal Loyals lolled in the greenery on either side of the path.
The blockhouse was a massive structure, two stories high, with a flat roof and arrow slits for windows. The only entrance faced the road and was a squat door of dark oak, strapped with bronze plates. A scattering of broken kindling, and the tracks left by nomad horses supported the story told them by the painted man.
Kiya rode closer to the door and hallooed loudly. A faint stirring sounded from within.
“Are you Ergothian?” she called. “Don’t be afraid! We go to join the army of Lord Tolandruth, camped at Juramona!”
More sounds of movement within, but no response. Kiya dismounted. The door was inset within the large blocks. She glanced at the motley bunch at her back and added, “This is the army of Queen Casberry, of Hylo. They’ve come as allies of the empire.”
Go away!
Flinching, Kiya backed up a step. The whispery, insistent voice seemed to come from right beside her.
Depart now. Go at once!
The command had the opposite effect on the stubborn Dom-shu. She hammered on the bronze door plates with her sword pommel and demanded that whoever was inside come out. Each blow boomed hollowly. The papery voice did not speak again.
Casberry appeared at Kiya’s side. So quietly did she move the Dom-shu had no notion of her presence until, drawing back her arm for another blow, she smacked the queen on the top of the head.
Kiya apologized. “I’m afraid it would take a battering ram to get this door open!”
The queen planted bony fists on her hips and took in the door and surrounding structure with a narrow-eyed glare. “I’ll get us in,” she announced. Turning, she shouted, “Bonny Waterwide! You and Rufus, come here.”
Two kender emerged from the soft ferns. Bonny Water-wide was rather tall (for a kender), wearing a leather vest and trousers and sporting blue-black hair gathered into a long topknot. Rufus had short, spiky red hair framing a pale face. He was spinning a toy top on the palm of his hand.
“First one of you to get in there gets a gold piece,” the queen said.
“Three gold pieces,” countered Bonny promptly.
“Two gold pieces.”
“Two gold pieces, and I get to ride in your chair for a day.”
The queen made a face, but agreed.
Bonny grinned, showing long, yellow teeth. “Done!”
Their haggling complete, Rufus quickly began his assault on the blockhouse. Inserting his fingers and bare toes into various arrow slits, he managed to climb the sloping wall to the roof. He lifted the cap off the chimney and climbed down into the flue.
“Good job!” Kiya said.
Hardly had the words left her mouth when a loud yell reverberated from the chimney. Thinking poor Rufus was being gutted, Kiya started for the bolted door, but Casberry’s tiny hand closed around her wrist.
“Wait,” the queen said.
A gout of soot erupted from the chimney. Simultaneously, a loud boom sounded and a red-haired projectile shot skyward. Rufus hit the top of a larch tree, then descended, flopping from branch to branch, finally landing in a cloud of soot on the wildflowers beside the road. After an instant of surprised silence, nearby kender cheered. A Royal Loyal rolled Rufus over and announced he still breathed, but was out cold.
A tapping, pinging sound brought attention back to the blockhouse. Bonny Waterwide had been busy gathering shell fragments from the road and now was tossing these, one at a time, at the structure. Several pieces flew through the arrow slits.
Keeping up the odd bombardment, she stealthily approached the door. She drew a metal object from her scabbard, not a thin sword but a slender iron rod.
In between tossing her seashell fragments, Bonny measured off a section of the rod, then bent it, with some difficulty, over her knee. She spaced off a longer length and bent the rod again at a different angle.
Kiya queried the queen with a glance. Casberry merely looked wise.
Bonny tossed all her remaining shells up the side of the blockhouse. They cascaded down, bouncing and clicking off the close-fitting stone blocks. Before the sound died, she had slipped the rod under the door and twisted it upwards. She stepped down hard on the upraised end of the rod. There was a distinct clank as the door was lifted up slightly, and then Bonny pushed the portal inward.
With a whoop, Kiya rushed forward, sword out. Much of the Household Guard followed.
A wall of wind erupted from the dark interior, sweeping Bonny off her feet. The larger, heavier Kiya leaned into the blast. With great effort, she dragged her feet forward until she could grasp the doorjamb. A lone figure stood inside the blockhouse. The only illumination came from the arrow slits, striping the interior with narrow lanes of dark and light.
The gusting wind suddenly eased, and curious kender scrambled past Kiya. The wind died completely when two knelt on all fours behind the stranger while others bowled him over. Like a pack of puppies, the kender swarmed over the fallen man. Kiya’s sword was at his throat in the next moment.