Scouting ahead, the Dom-shu woman paused by a wide stream. Her pony lowered its head to drink. Sunshine sparkled off the flowing water as it rippled over well-worn boulders. The opposite bank was dotted with trees. Although not the friendly giants of her home, the slender poplars and oaks still allowed Kiya to imagine herself back in the Great Green where life made sense, with the cool green of trees above her and the softness of moss and fallen leaves beneath her bare feet.
From her mounted vantage, she spotted the telltale yellow soil of the Eastern Hundred, exposed several paces downstream. She urged her horse in that direction and found a wide trail trampled into the green turf. Horsemen had been through here. Many horsemen, and not long ago.
There was a matching trail on the other side of the creek. The riders had come from the east. As no organized bodies of imperial troops occupied the region, the horsemen must have been nomads. Kiya had to warn Casberry their enemies were near.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The sky was a clear blue, dotted with only a few small, puffy white clouds, but a thunderclap of considerable strength suddenly rolled over the woodland. The sound was strong enough to frighten a flock of birds into taking wing and cause Kiya’s pony to shy.
At the spot where Kiya had watered her horse were four of Casberry’s Householders. A human and a kender were filling waterskins. Another kender stood waist-deep in the stream searching (he said) for gold; a second human was staring nervously at the sky. All had heard the thunderclap.
Kiya sent the nervous human jogging off to warn the queen of nomads in the area. She sent the other Householders back to the column. All went except the gold prospector. That kender, his large ears protruding like window shutters, turned his head slowly from side to side.
“I hear horses,” he announced.
Kiya drew her sword. Before she could ask where the sound was coming from, a gust of wind rushed through the trees, causing her horse to shy again, and three riders burst from the trees on the western bank.
The three were nomads, dressed in buckskins and woven twig armor. They were bent low over their mounts’ necks, horses galloping hard. Two swung wide and rode around the sword-wielding Dom-shu woman without even pausing.
Startled by this tactic, Kiya concentrated on the remaining fellow. His horse reared when she slashed at him. She missed the man but cut his reins, and he toppled backward into the water. In the blink of an eye, his horse was gone, galloping after the other two.
Jumping from her horse, Kiya pressed her saber to the fallen nomad’s throat.
He threw up his hands and cried, “Save me!” With a terrified glance not at his conqueror, but at the shore from whence he’d come, he added, “We were attacked by fell magic!”
She dragged the gibbering man back to her companions, put him in the care of two kender from the Household Guard, then told the queen what had happened.
Casberry, clad in a brilliant, pink-and-gold striped shirt, squinted down at the prisoner from the extra height afforded her by the Royal Conveyance. In response to her high-pitched, imperious demand, the nomad told his tale.
The nomad and his comrades from the Skyhorse tribe had been foraging when they came upon a stone blockhouse by the Juramona road. These blockhouses, dotting the roads at regular intervals, were meant to serve as havens for imperial couriers. The Skyhorse men knew such couriers carried fine weapons and gold. The door was bolted from the inside, so they surrounded the blockhouse and yelled at its occupants to surrender. No one answered.
Undeterred, the nomads were gathering kindling so they could burn the wooden door when a clap of thunder sounded from the clear sky. The four of their number nearest the door were knocked flat by the blast. The others tried to come to their aid, but the windfall kindling they’d been collecting suddenly leaped into the air and hurled itself at them. When stones loosened themselves from the ground and joined the barrage, the nomads fled.
“Your Majesty, we should investigate,” Kiya said. “Someone important may be inside this blockhouse.” Only the rich or the noble could afford to have a mage in such a place.
Casberry tapped a long, bony finger against her yellow teeth. The map of fine lines on her wizened face lifted. “Might be a reward in it,” she mused. “I’ll go myself. Pick up your feet, Front and Back!”
The nomad captive was left to six Hyloans, who wrestled the prisoner to the ground. He flailed his arms and legs, but several kender sat on him as others tore off his clothes. Howling curses, the nomad promised terrible retribution for any violence done to him. The kender ignored him. When he was stripped to the skin and pinned to the ground on his back, a pot of red paint was produced, along with several brushes. The kender proceeded to paint the man red from head to toe.
When they were done, they released him. He rolled quickly to his feet.
“Is that it?” He laughed nervously. “Is that all?”
Kiya suppressed a shudder. “It’s enough. Look.”
The nomad peered at his reflection in the creek. The red paint, together with his pale blond hair, made him look like some insane wraith. Splashing water on himself, he quickly discovered the paint would not come off. He scrubbed himself with handfuls of sand, but the result was same.
This was the punishment known in Hylo as the “Judgment of the True Skin,” usually inflicted on kender who refused to leave home and wander as royal law prescribed. The paint was said to be permanent, but knowing how the little people exaggerated, Kiya reckoned it would probably wear off in a few days or weeks. Still, it was not an experience she cared to have. Anyone the nomad encountered would flee in horror at the sight of him, if they didn’t slay him as a monster first.
The man had begun to draw blood with his vigorous scrubbing, and he continued to scream at them all. Kiya pointed her sword at him and told him to go. To emphasize her words, the kender began tossing mud from the creekbank at the painted man.
“You’re crazy!” the nomad shrieked, backing away. “All of you-you’re crazy!”
“Crazy as kender,” Kiya agreed.
Defeated, humiliated, he scrambled up the opposite shore and crashed away through the underbrush. They could measure the naked man’s progress by the curses that echoed through the trees every time he encountered a thorny obstacle.
Casberry’s army meanwhile straggled onward through the woods. The slender trees finally thinned, revealing the imperial road from Caergoth to Hylo, called by many the Plucked Path. It had been built by ogre slaves, who literally tore trees out of the ground with their hands. Not a paved road like the Ackal Path, its surface was dirt, layered with crushed seashells brought all the way from the Gulf of Ergoth.
Before her mount broke through the trees onto the road, the Dom-shu woman heard loud voices ahead. She tapped heels to her pony’s sides, wondering what new insanity she was about to experience.
Casberry’s bearers stood in the center of the road. The kender queen was leaning forward in her chair, shaking a finger at a gray granite blockhouse and demanding its occupant come out. Around her chair gathered the humans and kender of her Household Guard. Royal Loyals lolled in the greenery on either side of the path.
The blockhouse was a massive structure, two stories high, with a flat roof and arrow slits for windows. The only entrance faced the road and was a squat door of dark oak, strapped with bronze plates. A scattering of broken kindling, and the tracks left by nomad horses supported the story told them by the painted man.
Kiya rode closer to the door and hallooed loudly. A faint stirring sounded from within.
“Are you Ergothian?” she called. “Don’t be afraid! We go to join the army of Lord Tolandruth, camped at Juramona!”