the ogres were sure they had them trapped, the kender had vanished mysteriously. Every one of the penitent officers avowed that the disappearances were the result of some unknown magic. Kurthak, who had never heard of a kender sorcerer, scoffed at the notion.
“Fools,” he told Tragor as they struck out eastward from Myrtledew, toward their barren, rocky homeland. “The stupid lackwits let them escape.”
Tragor grunted noncommittally, his sheathed sword swinging on his back as he trudged through the woods beside Kurthak. “What will you do?” he asked.
Kurthak pondered, glancing back at the columns of ogres who followed him. Of the thousand warriors he had brought with him on this raid, he had lost perhaps a hundred, with a like number wounded. Except for Argaad, the officers who had failed him marched with the survivors. They took great care not to meet his coal-black stare as he glared at them.
“I am not sure yet,” he said, his brow beetling.
“They should die,” Tragor declared flatly. He smacked a leathery fist against his palm. “Lord Ruog would not look well on you if you let them live.”
Kurthak shrugged as if this meant nothing to him. Ruog, hetman of the greatest ogre horde ever to emerge from the wildlands of the Goodlund peninsula, was a lord who valued swift action on the part of his followers. Kurthak would have to report to him immediately, and Ruog would not be pleased to hear that the Black-Gazer’s war band had captured fewer than a hundred slaves. He would demand blood for the lost kender.
Still, Kurthak hesitated as he considered the possibilities. “I hear your words, Tragor,” he declared, pursing his lips in concentration. “I think, though, that I have a better idea.”
Kurthak the Black-Gazer scowled fiercely, his face glowing orange in the firelight. He stood upon a tall, jagged boulder, looking down at the six officers whose prisoners had escaped. All around him the ogres of his war band shifted and leaned closer, muttering to one another. The flames of great bonfires licked upward, as if seeking to ignite the starry sky.
Though they were fewer than three leagues from the Kenderwood, the land could not have been more different. The ground was parched and rocky, unsuitable for farming-or even herding-and great shelves of rock jutted from the barren hillsides. There was not a single tree to be seen, though clumps of razorleaf bushes clung stubbornly to the loose, sandy soil. Scorpions and snakes scuttled and slithered around them.
The officers who knelt before Kurthak were tightly bound, strong thongs of leather securing their arms and legs. Stripped of armor, helm, and shield, they kept their gaze resolutely on the ground before them. None met the warlord’s fierce, one-eyed glare, though at times they did twist and crane to look over their shoulders. Tragor paced behind them, moving from one end of the row to the other. His hands twisted eagerly about the hilt of his sword.
“You have failed me,” Kurthak stated. “I do not brook failure.”
“But,” protested one of the officers, a fat ogre named Prakun, “my lord-”
“Silence!” thundered Kurthak. “There can be no excuses!”
Tragor moved quickly. His two-handed blade flashed in the firelight, cleaving flesh and bone. The ogre to Prakun’s right fell heavily against the fat officer, dark blood welling from the stump of its neck. Its head rolled in the dust, its eyes staring sightlessly at the pale moon.
Prakun cried out in terror, shoving the corpse away from him. A sharp stench filled the air as the ground beneath his knees grew dark and damp.
“Lord Ruog will ask for your heads,” Kurthak continued, gesturing at the prize that lay pop-eyed before him. “I will give him what he wants.”
Tragor’s sword whistled through the air a second time. The ogre to Prakun’s left drew a sharp breath, but before it could cry out its head came free, flying forward to crack against Kurthak’s boulder and tumble to the ground. The new corpse stayed stubbornly upright for a moment, then swayed like a drunk and sagged to the ground. Prakun’s face was livid with fear, gleaming white in the firelight. The other officers hunched their shoulders, cowering, as Tragor continued to pace behind them. Blood dripped from the champion’s sword, making black stains on the stony ground.
“But,” Kurthak concluded, “I am not unmerciful.”
Again the sword flashed. Sensing what was coming, Prakun threw himself forward, landing face-first in the dirt. Tragor’s swing went wide, and the champion struggled to keep the force of the unexpectedly unhindered blow from pulling him off his feet. Prakun rolled back and forth, blubbering pitifully, but could not otherwise move. Snarling, Tragor stepped forward and brought his heel down hard on the small of the weeping ogre’s back. Prakun screamed as his spine snapped, but his cries were short-lived. Tragor drove his sword downward. It took two mighty blows to cleave through Prakun’s thick neck.
Kurthak glowered down at the three remaining officers, who trembled as they, in turn, regarded Prakun’s unmoving corpse. He smiled, his teeth gleaming sickly yellow in the shadows.
“The rest of you can go,” he said.
There was a moment of shocked silence as the assembled ogres looked at one another incredulously. When Tragor stepped forward and cut the remaining officers’ bonds, however, the onlookers’ disbelief quickly gave way to outrage. Fists waved in the air, and angry oaths rang out in the night. Many of the ogres had come to witness their warlord’s judgment, simply for the chance to see blood spilled; denied the slaughter they had expected, they quickly became furious.
“Silence!” barked Tragor, brandishing his sword in the air. “Be still, or you’ll taste what you crave!”
Reluctantly, the throng settled down. Angry eyes turned toward the boulder where the Black-Gazer stood.
Kurthak smiled, his eyes glinting, and gestured at the stunned officers who still knelt before him. They were staring at each other in amazement and dread, not understanding what was going on.
“You three,” Kurthak declared, “shall receive no punishment for your failure. You shall continue to serve me, just as you did before, and none here shall be allowed to harm you. But fail me again, and I will make sure you wish you had died tonight.”
“Y-yes, my lord,” one of the officers said in a small voice. The other two simply stared, their mouths hanging slightly open.
Kurthak folded his arms across his broad chest. “Go, then,” he growled. “Return to your warriors at once.”
The officers quickly scrambled to their feet, their faces deathly pale, and hurried away. The onlooking ogres tarried a moment, then began to disperse, shambling away into the gloom. They muttered to one another as they went, pondering their lord’s judgment.
Tragor remained, wiping his sword’s blood-caked blade with a tattered skin. He did not look at Kurthak as the warlord climbed down from his boulder.
“You have not asked me yet,” Kurthak said, “why I do this.”
For a long moment, Tragor silently continued to clean his weapon. Then he nodded and looked at Kurthak through narrow eyes. “I know you, my lord,” he said. “You’ll tell me, if you wish me to know.” He returned to polishing the blade.
“I will explain,” Kurthak said. He leaned back against the rock face, eyes glittering with reflected starlight. “What do you think those three will be thinking the next time we attack the kender? I have killed their comrades before their eyes, and threatened to do the same to them if they displease me. They will fight harder now that they fear my wrath.”
Tragor considered this. “What if they don’t?” he asked. “What if this… mercy makes them soft?”
“It will not,” Kurthak asserted. He lifted his chin confidently.
“Maybe not,” Tragor allowed, not fully convinced. “But what if-”
Suddenly he stopped speaking, sniffing the air. A new smell had risen amid the other stenches that hung about them. There was a strange sweetness to it, marking it as different from the sour odor of ogre sweat.
“Kender?” Kurthak asked, scenting it too.
Tragor sniffed again, then shook his head. “Human.”
“Human!” Kurthak exclaimed. He glanced at the shadows, even more alert than before. “How close?”
“Close enough,” said a voice.
