they always exchanged information about intruders or newcomers in their territory. Nalaryn had heard of a stranger who appeared quite suddenly by the Lake of Death. An elf, female and of quiet tread, Nalaryn was told. She smelled of blood, not her own, and even more of danger, so the Kagonesti avoided her.
Porthios was little impressed by Kagonesti gossip. He asked who the female was.
None of the Wilder elves knew. From the signs they’d found at a goblin camp, she had killed several before being taken by slavers, who were also traveling in the direction of Samustal.
“Soon enough all elves in Qualinesti will be free,” Porthios said, regarding the lumbering humans.
Nalaryn nodded. He did not understand how selling humans into slavery would free elves, but the Great Lord had spoken and Nalaryn was pledged to obey.
Chapter 4
Kerian awoke in pain. Her arms were tightly bound behind her, and she lay on her side in a noisome, rickety cart. The cart had barred sides and a wooden roof and was traveling along a heavily rutted road. Every bump caused her head to throb unmercifully.
Since her capture, she had been beaten and starved. The ogre-goblin gang she’d found in the forest had sold her to a large party of humans. The going rate for a female elf was twenty-five steel. The goblins sold her for only ten. Despite beatings from the ogre, she had managed to kill another goblin and assault all the rest. She had become a liability they were only too eager to be rid of.
The human slavers didn’t question the low price; they assumed they were putting one over on the ignorant goblins. That feeling did not last. She was put in chains immediately. The instant one of the humans passed too close as the small group of slaves trudged along, Kerian cold-cocked him with a length of chain. Rather than beat her, the humans simply stopped feeding her. For three days she received no crust of bread, no drop of water. Nor would her fellow slaves share their meager rations. The penalty for helping a prisoner evade punishment was the loss of a finger, a toe, or an eye. The other captives were all Qualinesti. Floggings and starvation they could endure, but mutilation filled them with dread.
The human slavers sold her to a large band of mercenaries escorting several hundred captive elves to the slave market they called Samustal. During the exchange, she slipped her bonds and tried to run. Starvation and dehydration were her undoing. Recaptured, she was given over to the “trouble” cart. Its half-ogre driver beat her, tied her hand and foot, and flung her in a cage with other recalcitrant prisoners.
Hungry, thirsty, and in pain, she was in no way cowed.
“Someone’s going to pay,” she groaned as soon as she regained consciousness.
“Tell it to the driver,” said a deep, gloomy voice.
She hauled herself upright. Crowded into the wooden cage with her were three male elves and one dwarf. All were bound as she was. The dwarf had spoken.
“What did you call him?”
She rested her forehead on her knees, willing her abused skull not to split in two. Something touched her bare foot and she looked up. One of the elves had pushed a covered bucket to her. Using his teeth, he lifted the cover by its rope handle, set it aside, then took the curved end of the metal dipper in his mouth. As he held it steady, she drank tepid water from the cup on the other end.
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.
