Enough, Malys’s voice said within his mind. He is dead. Where are your followers, Black-Gazer?
His nostrils flaring angrily, Kurthak turned away from Arlie’s battered corpse and stalked off down Elbowpoke Way. Tragor followed, teeth bared in a feral snarl.
Soon they caught up with a bedraggled group of a hundred ogres, most of them wounded. The group, which was all that remained of a band three times that number, pursued one group of jeering kender.
“Hey!” the kender taunted. “Do you smear yourselves with filth on purpose, or does it just happen naturally?”
Kurthak and Tragor added their voices to the chorus of roars that erupted from the ogre band. They chased the kender around bend after bend in the road, yearning for slaughter. Then, suddenly, they rounded a corner and stepped into the cleared quadrangle in Kendermore’s midst.
A pitched battle was raging, all across the yard. A thousand ogres pressed toward the quadrangle’s midst from all sides, hacking and stabbing madly at a cluster of a few hundred kender. The kender fought back desperately, their weapons clashing and clattering. Many of their number lay sprawled in pools of blood, but somehow the survivors held their own, keeping the remnants of the horde at bay. In their midst stood three figures Kurthak recognized. Two were Plainsfolk-a young man and woman-and the third was the silver-haired kender who had stood atop the merlons that morning. With them were several dozen archers, who clustered around glowing braziers, arrows nocked on their bowstrings.
The kender fought valiantly, but they were clearly doomed. More and more ogres staggered into the yard, bloody and bruised from the gauntlet they had run through Kendermore’s streets. Every time one of Kurthak’s troops fell to the kender’s whirling hoopaks, another stepped forward to take its place. The battlefront began to constrict as the ogres slowly pressed inward.
Paxina Thistleknot turned and met the Black-Gazer’s hateful glare. Her lips curled into a tight, vulpine smile, then she said something to the archers.
Sensing something was wrong, Kurthak cast about wildly. He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling. A pungent reek hung over the quadrangle, thick enough to bring tears to the hetman’s good eye. Casting about, he quickly spotted the source of the smell. The walls of the tall houses and shops surrounding the yard were covered with thick, black grease.
“What is that?” he asked.
Tragor looked, frowning, then reached out, brushing the nearest wall with his fingertips. They came away smeared with grime. He rubbed them together, held them up to his nose. Then he turned back toward Kurthak “It’s pitch,” he said.
“Ready!” shouted Paxina.
As one, the archers touched the tips of their arrows to the smoldering braziers. The shafts’ tips, wrapped in oily rags, burst aflame. The archers pulled their bowstrings back to their cheeks, aiming high. Kurthak’s eyes widened with understanding.
“Fire!” Paxina cried.
A multitude of twangs rang out. The arrows flew high, arcing above the seething battle, then dropped toward the houses at the quadrangle’s edges. A blazing shaft whizzed past Tragor’s head, embedding itself in the wall before him. He stared at it, blinking in surprise.
The wall exploded with fire. Tragor screamed as flames flared out around him, enveloping his body. Kurthak could do nothing but stare in horror as his champion became a living, howling torch. Tragor staggered back from the building, dropping his sword and beating wildly at the sheath of fire that surrounded him. He shrieked in agony, fell to his knees, then crashed face forward onto the ground. His burning body twitched violently, then was still.
The building he had been standing before rapidly became an inferno. It wasn’t the only one. The archers’ flaming arrows struck dozens of other houses, setting them alight as well. The fire spread with shocking speed, leaping from one pitch-soaked building to the next. In moments, the quadrangle was surrounded by a ring of flame.
Through the heat-shimmering air, Kurthak saw plumes of black smoke rise where other blazes were breaking out all over Kendermore. The crackling of burning wood grew deafening, drowning out the clamor of battle.
“What are they doing?” the Black-Gazer shouted. “They’re burning their own city!”
The ogres panicked, searching vainly for a way out of the trap. In that moment, the tide of the battle turned. The kender in the quadrangle’s midst pushed forward, slashing and stabbing. Many of the ogres died; others broke and ran, screaming as they sought to escape the conflagration.
But the kender knew their home. They knew which streets to block, which buildings to set alight. Most of them managed to escape, running out of the city ahead of the flames; others dove down tunnel entrances, scattering in all directions through the passages. For Kurthak’s horde, however, there was no escape. Sheets of flame blocked their way; burning buildings collapsed, filling the streets with fiery rubble. Ogres perished by the score, overcome by fire and choking smoke.
Kurthak stood amidst it all, hewing about him with his club. He spotted a group of four taunting kender, who had just killed two ogres and were trying to escape through the smoke. They saw him as he charged toward them, and turned to run. One of them, a tow-headed boy in bright blue trousers, lagged behind his fellows: Kurthak knocked him flat, then smashed his cudgel down, spattering the young kender’s blood on the cobblestones. The other three glanced back, horrified, but did not slow their pace: they ran onward, through a roiling wall of smoke. He gave chase, but when he cleared the other side of the pall, they were nowhere to be seen. He cast about, growling in frustration, but the kender were gone. Enraged he lashed out with his club at the nearest available target: a stack of water barrels, piled high against the wall of a burning blacksmith’s shop. The barrels shattered, splinters of wood flying everywhere. He began to turn away, then stopped, confused. Where was the water?
Looking down, he confirmed his suspicions: the barrels had been bone-dry, empty. He kicked at the broken staves, pushing them aside, and saw the hole in the ground.
It was dark and small, too tight for him to squeeze through, but large enough to admit a kender… or three. It led down into the ground, its earthen stairs freshly scuffed by passing feet. He gawked at it, dumbfounded. Then his mouth dropped open with sudden comprehension. All at once, he knew-how the kender had eluded his people at Myrtledew, how they had fled the inexorable advance of the horde toward Kendermore, how, even now, they were escaping the inferno they had made of their city. He reeled, nausea twisting his stomach as he stared into the tunnel entrance.
Off to his left, a burning house collapsed, littering the ground with stone and blazing timbers. The deafening crash roused him, bringing him back to his senses. He glanced back into the quadrangle, through the billowing smoke. The remaining kender were making short work of his people, then melting away into the shadows-fleeing, he realized, into the safety of their subterranean passages. At that moment, Kurthak the Black-Gazer knew his horde was utterly beaten and that he would die here with his people if he didn’t get help soon.
He sought that help in the only place left to him: his mind. Concentrating, he focused on the presence that simmered within him, seeking the other who dwelt in his thoughts. “Malystryx!” he begged, speaking the words aloud even as he thought them. “Mistress, hear me.”
I am here, Black-Gazer, Malys’s voice growled. What is happening?
“We are betrayed!” he shouted. “The kender have tricked us! They destroy their own city and flee through tunnels, under the ground! We are doomed!”
For several heartbeats, Malystryx didn’t respond. Then a white-hot star exploded inside Kurthak’s head as she forced her way into his brain, ripping into his memories, seeing what had happened, how the ogres had been fooled. Her disgust flooded his mind, and he doubled over, gagging.