When she was done, the elf covered the bucket again and pushed it to one side. Kerian thanked him. Grimly, he replied, “Don’t be grateful. It’s no mercy to live like this.”
His sympathetic expression was reflected on the faces of the others. Even the dour dwarf was regarding her with pity.
“Who are you?” she said.
“We were free. Now we are slaves,” the elf answered. He lifted his head and sniffed the air. “I can smell the slave market already.”
She too could smell it. They were approaching from the east, and the wind carried the odors of wood smoke, open privies, and unwashed bodies. Kerian put her face to the wooden bars and peered ahead.
Like most Qualinesti towns, Bianost had been built to be, as much as possible, a natural part of the forest. With characteristic finesse, the elves shaped the living trees into homes and shops, and natural clearings were planted with the flowers and fruit trees for which the town became famous. Bianost apples and figs were renowned throughout Ansalon, and the honey collected from enormous hives on the perimeter of the orchards made the most potent mead in a thousand miles.
The floral glory of Bianost was gone. In its place squatted Samustal, a fetid settlement named for Captain Samuval and ruled by Lord Olin Man-Daleth.
Dusk had come, made darker still by the pall of smoke overhead. Fed by several large bonfires and thinner columns rising from innumerable cook fires and street torches, the wood smoke acted like a shield, holding in the odors of rotting garbage, open latrines, and hordes of unwashed inhabitants. The structures lovingly shaped from living trees by generations of Qualinesti were twisted and gnarled, bark black and peeling. A stockade of dressed timbers encircled the heart of the town. Outside that twelve-foot fence was a patchwork assortment of tents, huts, and lean-tos. The invaders had felled many trees to construct additional structures, but the new buildings showed signs of hasty workmanship: timbers poorly joined, walls leaning, roofs canted.
The cart was passing through the outer edges of the shanty town ringing Samustal. If she was going to do something, Kerian knew she must try it now, before they entered the stockade.
“We have to get out of here,” she said in a low voice.
“Wonderful idea,” the dwarf snorted. “We’ve fared so well thus far.”
“If we all work together—”
“We’ll all die together. Listen to me, woman. I tried to fight back. All I got for my troubles was a cracked skull, a broken rib, and a dead brother.” His face twisted. “It’s hopeless.”
Pointedly, he turned his back on her. She looked to the three elves. They avoided her gaze.
“Listen to me! It’s not hopeless!”
Kerian had been working at the ropes that bound her wrists and finally had succeeded in loosening them. Lying on her back, she drew her legs up and worked her wrists under her hips until they were in front of her. Her small success did not impress her fellow captives.
Fine. She would do it herself. Decades ago she had been forced into servitude by Qualinesti elves who thought they were improving the lot of a barbaric Kagonesti. No matter how benign the intentions or how kind the master, slavery was slavery, and the Lioness would not go quietly to such a fate.
She began to yell, kicking the wall of the cart behind the driver’s seat with both feet. The cart abruptly halted. A goblin came to the side of the cage, yelling at the prisoners to be still. She heaped insults on him until the goblin foolishly shoved his spear through the bars at her. She took hold of the shaft with both hands and jerked. The goblin’s face hit the wooden bars, and Kerian was on him instantly. She encircled his neck with her bound wrists, dropped to the floor, and planted her feet against his back. Pulling with her arms and pushing with her feet, she snapped his neck.
Kerian recovered the goblin’s spear. The sharp head made quick work of the ropes tying the cage door closed. In seconds she was out the door and sprinting for the horse yoked to the cart. Despite their earlier lack of enthusiasm, her fellow captives scrambled out of the cage after her and took off in all directions.
Shouts rose, but Kerian wasted no time looking back. She cut the horse’s tether with the spearhead and thumped heels against the animal’s sides. It sprang forward—
—and immediately went down. She tried to jump free but her weakened body finally had had too much. She fell heavily on her side. The horse was struggling, neighing shrilly, and Kerian saw a fine cord wrapping its rear fetlocks. Each end of the cord was finished by a wooden ball larger than her fist.
Three goblins arrived and aimed their swords at her throat. Behind them came the half-ogre. It had thrown the odd weapon, which whipped around the horse’s legs, bringing it down.
Turning its attentions to Kerian, the creature gave her a back-handed slap that split her cheek and blackened her eye. “No more trouble,” the half-ogre commanded.
She was hauled to her feet, arms tied behind her back, this time at both wrists and elbows. Her ankles were hobbled with rawhide cord, allowing just enough movement so she could shuffle along. On the ground nearby lay the body of one elf, killed trying to escape; the other two had succeeded in getting away. The dwarf, slower than the Qualinesti, had been recaptured.
Two goblins carried Kerian back to the cage and tossed her inside. The door was secured, and soon they were rumbling on their way again. Panting and furious, Kerian cursed her failure, fully expecting her glum companion to join her. He did not. Instead, impressed by her deeds, the dwarf asked, “Who are you, woman?”
She glared at him through one good eye and one beginning to swell shut. “A free elf,” she snapped. “And I will be no one’s slave!”
She closed her eyes, rested her throbbing head on the filthy floor, and pondered her next move.
The dwarf regarded her in silence, a thoughtful expression on his face.
The captives were taken to a large cage outside the former town hall of Bianost. It was one of many similar cages sprawled in the city square, adjacent to the auction block. Before being tossed inside, Kerian and the dwarf were registered with the auction master, a rail-thin human with a hairless dome of a head and a pewter patch over his left eye. His displeasure at having his dinner delayed by the half-ogre’s late arrival was lessened by the sight of Kerian. Young female elves were becoming harder and harder to find. Appreciation gleamed in his good eye.
True to her word, Kerian did not go tamely into captivity. She fought the goblins who carried her, kicking one in the stomach and the other in the face. The half-ogre did not intervene. The creature seemed pleased by her spirit, laughing uproariously with every hurt she inflicted on the frustrated goblins.
A dozen unfortunates were crowded into the holding cage, a low-ceilinged wooden box only fifteen feet on a side. The furious goblins didn’t bother untying Kerian. She was simply dumped unceremoniously into the muck on the cage floor. The dwarf was shoved in after her and the door closed and barred.
“Why do you keep fighting them?” he asked. “What does it get you?”
“Satisfaction.” She twitched her bound arms. “Can you get me out of these?”
He obliged, working patiently on the tough knots. She kept twisting and turning, studying their prison. “Hold still,” the dwarf grumbled.
When she was free of the cords, she jumped up and prowled around the holding box, minutely examining the walls, ceiling, and floor.