features could. What his expression mostly consisted of was a showing of sharp teeth. Hecar could barely contain his fury.
“Kaz will not go west, nor will he go east. He will stay in the south, hoping to evade us.” Scurn turned toward Molok for agreement.
The ogre gazed at the minotaurs around him as if only just now remembering he was the instigator of this heated argument. It was time to settle things, Molok decided. Wiping his hairy paws on his kilt, he reached down to a pouch between his feet and pulled out a crumbled piece of parchment. With one fluid motion, he tossed it at Scurn. The startled minotaur succeeded in catching it before a sudden burst of fire scorched both paper and his own hand.
“What is this?”
Molok cracked open the bone he had been picking over and began sucking the marrow. Frustrated, the minotaur unfolded the sheet and tried to make out the markings in the dim, flickering light of the flames. His eyes widened, and he looked angrily at the ogre.
“This is a proclamation signed by the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia himself!”
There was renewed muttering on the parts of the assembled group. After four years of pursuing their quarry through the lands of humans, they now knew more about the Knights of Solamnia than any others of their race did, save Kaz.
“What does it say, Scurn?” one of the other minotaurs asked impatiently.
‘The Grand Master offers a reward for several beings of various races. One of them is Kaz!” The last was said with total disbelief. “He is wanted, it says, for conspiring against the knighthood, specifically, the planned assassination of the Grand Master himself. There is also mention of murder here, but it does not specify whose and when.” Scum’s tone indicated that he was a bit confused about what he had just read.
‘Then he is wanted by the knighthood as much as he is wanted by us,” someone stated.
“Where did you get that proclamation?” Hecar snapped at the ogre.
Molok shrugged. “I find it yesterday. It had… fallen… from the tree that someone had posted it on, I think.”
“Why would the knights demand Kaz? He was their comrade!” one of the other females asked the group as a whole.
“As are some of these others,” Scurn added. He tossed the parchment to one of the other minotaurs, who started reading it slowly. The minotaurs prided themselves on the fact that, of all races save perhaps the elves, they were the most literate. While physical strength was the final arbiter in their society, knowledge was the tool that honed that strength.
“The knights are mad!” Hecar muttered. “Have they given a reason?”
“Have they given a reason for anything we have seen in the time we have pursued Kaz?” Scurn glanced around. “They may have a reason; they may not. There are names on that proclamation that were their staunchest allies in… in that time.”
“That time” was a war that the minotaurs were doing their best to wipe from their memories. More than one gave Molok a look of bestial hatred. The minotaurs had been slave-soldiers to the ogres and humans who had followed the dark goddess, Takhisis, in her struggle against her counterpart, the lord of light, Paladine. The Knights of Solamnia had represented that god, and in the end, it was one of their number, a Knight of the Crown named Huma, who had literally forced the goddess to capitulate. Only one other who had witnessed the costly victory had survived.
Kaz. Very few actually knew what part he had played in the final battle. Humans did not care to glorify what they tended to think of as a monster. The other minotaurs had pieced the story together over the years, though some, like Scurn, denied its plausibility.
“If the Knights of Solamnia want his head,” the mutilated warrior began, “then he will surely stay in the south, where their presence is weaker.”
Many of the others nodded. Molok looked at each and every one of them and then shook his head. “After four years, you know nothing. Even you who knew Kaz.”
He received twelve steady glares, which he ignored, as usual. “The knights be acting strange. His friends be now his foes, even the Lord of Knights, who, if what we learned be true, called him comrade in the war.”
There was a pause. He had their full attention now. “Kaz will go north-north to Vingaard, I think.”
It was fortunate that the land they presently roamed was empty of settlements, for the shouts that rose among the group could no doubt have been heard for miles around. It was finally Scurn who quieted the others- Scurn and Hecar.
‘The Knights of Solamnia may have become twisted, Molok,” Hecar blurted, “as we have seen time and again, but do not make Kaz one with their madness. Despite all else, he is still a minotaur!”
Scurn nodded. Even he did not believe their prey was enough of a fool to head north.
Molok retrieved the proclamation and glanced at it one last time. With a toothy, predatory smile, he thrust it into the fire. After watching it burn to ash in mere seconds, he looked up once more at his companions… his hated companions.
“He be no fool. Never said he was.” Molok reached down, gathered his few belongings, and rose. He gave the minotaurs a look full of contempt for what they were. Even now, no longer slave-soldiers, they needed an ogre to lead them around by their ugly noses. “He be Kaz, though, and that be why he will go north to Vingaard. He needs no other reason.”
The ogre turned and stalked away, a disturbing look on his face, hidden from the minotaurs.
Chapter Two
I should go west, Kaz thought grimly. West or remain in the south.
He snorted as he glanced back at the path he had been following. The sun was high in the sky, making it possible to see quite some distance.
His mount, the giant warhorse that Lord Oswal himself had bestowed upon the minotaur as a token of his appreciation, nickered impatiently. After five years with Kaz, the animal had picked up rebellious tendencies that would have shocked the more formal knighthood. In many ways, the horse was a reflection of its master.
Kaz quieted his mount and stared at the proclamation once more.
It was the fifth copy he had seen of this particular one, and it made no more sense to him now than it had the first time he had read it. Lord Oswal was a friend, a comrade. The elder Knight of the Rose, made Grand Master after the death of his brother, had even given Kaz a seal permitting him safe passage in any land that respected the might of the Solamnic Order. Yet now this same comrade was making unsubstantiated accusations of crimes Kaz had supposedly committed!
The notices had only recently reached the southern lands. Kaz snorted. He glanced at the other names listed as outlaws along with his. Some he recognized, such as that of Lord Guy Avondale, the Ergothian commander who had aided in the final battle against the renegade mage, Galan Dracos, and his dark mistress, the goddess Takhisis. Huma had always spoken well of the man, once going so far as to say that Avondale deserved to wear the garments of a Solamnic Knight, so admirable was his individual code.
With a snarl, the minotaur ripped the sheet from the tree.
Kaz led the warhorse by the reins to a more secluded spot to the left of the path and leaned against one of the trees to wait for someone. Patience was not a habit he had been successful in cultivating during his life so far, and what little he did have was just about used up from waiting.
“Paladine’s Blade, Delbin!” he muttered under his breath. “If you don’t make it back in the next hour, I’m moving on!”
He could only imagine what sort of mischief his companion was getting into in Xak Tsaroth, the city a few miles due west. Xak Tsaroth bordered southwestern Solamnia and eastern Qualinesti, the land of the elves, and
