Pagas ordered his men to pursue the defeated nomads. Another landed horde, the Firebrands, marched half a day behind the Panthers. When they arrived, the Firebrands would occupy the site of Juramona and await new orders.

Once these dispositions had been made, Pagas dismounted. He drew his warrior’s dagger and held it aloft in salute.

“My lord,” he piped, reddening at the sound of his voice, “I pledge my honor and loyalty to you! Command us, and we shall follow you, even into the Abyss!”

It was a stirring pledge, but Tol heard none of it. Leaning against Egrin’s war-horse, he’d passed out cold.

Chapter 11

How could the same journey take twice as long on the return trip? This question was much on Kiya’s mind as she finally reached the fringes of the Eastern Hundred, on her way back to Tol.

She had arrived in Hylo City after a difficult three-day journey. At one point, surrounded by nomads, she had her pony galloping flat-out through a forest of ferns. The jeering plainsmen took her for an Ergothian, fleeing for her life. Kiya would never forget the looks on their faces when she pulled out her saber, unintentionally concealed by her rough woolen cloak. She relieved one nomad of his right arm and sent him flying from his horse. The barbarian on her left reached for his sword, and received Kiya’s point in the throat.

The remaining nomads fell back, regrouped, and came on again, cursing instead of laughing. She wove through the trees, dodging arrows. She hoped her pursuers would get careless and tangle with a sapling, but the nomads were born to the saddle and maneuvered skillfully around every tree.

She finally escaped them by resorting to a deed so outrageous it paralyzed her enemies with astonishment. She found herself on a bluff overlooking the Old Port Water, the stream that flowed north into the kender town of the same name. She was trapped, with a twenty-pace drop to the water before her and jeering nomads close behind. Her pursuers pulled up and approached at a trot.

Kiya was out of ideas-save one. Whipping her cloak over her pony’s head, so he wouldn’t shy, she thumped her heels hard into his flanks. He bolted forward. His hooves thumped a handful of times on the turf, then horse and woman sailed into space, turning a slow somersault on their way down to the slow-flowing water.

She knew the river was deep near the town of Old Port. Seagoing ships often sheltered there when storms raked Hylo Bay. The question in Kiya’s mind during her breathless plummet was, was she downstream far enough for the deep water? If not, her life would soon be over.

The pony hit the green water half a heartbeat ahead of the Dom-shu woman. A tall fountain of spray shot skyward. Kiya landed feet first, and the impact numbed her legs all the way to her hips. Down she plunged, deeper and deeper. Deep enough-now, back to the surface!

Kiya swam to the north shore. The pony was there already, thrashing its way up the mudflat. The nomads on the bluff finally overcame their shock and sent some arrows flickering toward her, but these landed in the water far behind.

The remainder of her journey to Hylo City was not only dull but frustrating. The kender capital lay northwest, she knew, but the few kender she encountered as she made her way through the countryside either shunned her, or gave conflicting directions. That was only the beginning of her frustrations with the kender.

An entire day had been required to persuade Queen Casberry to lend aid. The kender queen looked exactly as Kiya remembered her from their last meeting more than a decade and a half before. Tiny, even by the standards of her race, Casberry’s face was seamed by a thousand fine lines, like an apple left too long in the sun. Her hair was snowy white, pulled back in a tight bun, but her brilliant green eyes were lively as a child’s. Kiya couldn’t even begin to guess her age.

Casberry explained (at length) that she held Lord Tolandruth in high esteem for vanquishing the monster XimXim and for clearing her country of Tarsan mercenaries. Because of this high regard, she would join the fight against the nomads for a mere one hundred gold pieces per day.

Lacking her sister’s patience and skill at haggling, Kiya simply agreed and insisted they depart the next morning. The matriarch waved aside this ridiculous deadline. The Royal Loyal Militia must be given time to assemble.

Casberry made no proclamations, sent forth no heralds, yet in two days’ time a large number of kender gathered in the square before the royal residence (a dilapidated three-story house no one could call a palace). To Kiya’s jaundiced eye, the Royal Loyal Militia resembled a market day mob more than a military force. Their uniforms comprised matching green leggings and scale shirts; the remainder of their attire followed no pattern at all. Most of the kender were armed with short swords, but Kiya saw some carrying bows and a few bearing swords obviously sized for beings at least twice their height. Still, they were what Tol wanted, and Kiya vowed she would deliver them, come what may.

Now, three days into the return journey, they had at last reached the Eastern Hundred. The slowness of the return had nothing to do with the nomads-they had encountered none thus far-and everything to do with Queen Casberry and the Army of Hylo.

In addition to the Royal Loyal Militia, the queen was accompanied by her Household Guard, a band even more Unlikely than the Royal Loyals. The Householders, some two hundred strong, were foreigners, hired blades of dubious distinction, whose ranks included humans, kender from outside Hylo, a dwarf healer who prescribed potatoes for every injury or ailment, and a centaur standard bearer whose stench was so strong he was made to march at the rear, defeating the purpose of giving him the banner of Hylo in the first place, although no one would dream of hurting his feelings by asking him to relinquish it, Casberry said. The Householders were armed with whatever they fancied: spears, axes, swords, even garden rakes. When Kiya saw a group shouldering push brooms, she protested.

“They’re Outlanders, too poor to pay for weapons,” Casberry explained. In fact, she’d been throwing dice with the foreign kender and had won all their money. They’d pawned their arms to eat.

“Don’t you pay them?” Kiya asked, growing tired of endless kender peculiarities.

“I pay them to march and fight. If they don’t march or fight, they don’t get paid. Next payday’s not till New Moon Day, though.”

The Household Guard marched directly behind the queen. After them came the Royal Loyal Militia, whose exact number Kiya had given up trying to calculate. Kender soldiers left when the mood struck and rejoined the column later, coming and going whenever they pleased. Kiya estimated there were between four and five hundred of these erratic kender.

Even more than the lackadaisical habits of the kender or the innumerable chests of flamboyant attire Casberry insisted on carting along, it was the Royal Conveyance that kept their progress to a crawl.

The Royal Conveyance, the only way Queen Casberry would travel, was a sedan chair borne on the shoulders of two identically brawny humans she called Front and Back. One was dark-skinned and wore a gold headband. The other was fair-haired and sported a bull tattoo on his chest. Kiya wasn’t sure which was which. Perhaps it depended upon who was leading and who was following. The sedan chair itself was made of oak and cedar, ornately carved, inlaid with gold, and very heavy.

With Kiya in the lead-and leading kender was like herding squirrels-the Army of Hylo had wound its way through the hills and forests of the kender realm and into the Eastern Hundred. Once within the empire, they saw ample signs the nomad raiders had passed by but encountered no resistance. One battle-shocked Ergothian farmer, picking through the remains of his home, spied the Household Guard and fled, screaming. Kiya knew exactly how he felt.