Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

Tragor cleared his throat. “Argaad,” he said in a low voice, “your gift is getting away.”

Argaad whirled. Somehow, in the middle of his speech, the kender had slipped out of their bonds. Now one of his men lay on the ground, bleeding from a knife wound in his gut, and the rest were watching, stunned, as their captives dispersed.

“Don’t stand there, you louts!” Argaad roared. “After them!” He gave Kurthak a quick glance that was half-apologetic, half-horrified, then turned to lope after his men, driving them after the kender.

Tragor started to laugh, but Kurthak cut him off with a baleful glare. “This is no joke,” the warlord snapped. “Each of those kender is valuable to me.” He motioned toward the fleeing prisoners and the ogres who gave chase. “Come. We will help Argaad catch them again.”

“Good,” Tragor declared, hefting his great sword. “I’ve been hoping for some sport.”

They both ran, charging after Argaad and his men. The kender were quick, but the ogres took long strides, and easily kept pace. As they ran, the towering brutes readied large nets to catch their fleeing prey. The kender weaved among burning buildings, splitting up and regrouping as they charged through the streets, but the ogres-Kurthak and Tragor running now in the lead-kept after them, snarling and howling.

At last they reached the edge of the blasted village. A thicket of tall, tangled bushes rose ahead of them, carrying on for five hundred yards before giving way to the dark Kenderwood. The kender sprinted for the thicket, but Kurthak only grinned, waving his arm toward the forest. “Get ahead of them!” he called. “Trap them in those brambles!”

Obediently the ogres fanned out, charging around the bushes toward the woods. Kurthak and Tragor kept on the kender’s heels. The first ones disappeared into the bushes with a rustle, and the others followed without hesitation-all except the last one, a golden-haired youngster who glanced over her shoulder directly at the warlord and his champion and smiled. Then she, too, was gone.

“Pen them in!” Kurthak bellowed, pulling up at the edge of the brambles. He pointed at the branches, which rustled with the kender’s passage. “Watch the bushes! You can see where they are!”

The ogres soon encircled the rustling scrub, then began to close in, thrusting their spears and swords into the thornbushes. The ring tightened like a noose about the fleeing kender.

“Good idea, my lord,” Argaad declared. “We have them trapped-they have nowhere to go. They won’t get away.”

Kurthak nodded impatiently. “Let us hope so.”

The rustling in the underbrush continued to move slowly toward the tree line. Kurthak, Tragor and Argaad watched impatiently as the ogres closed in, flattening the brambles and cutting swaths toward their quarry.

Then, all at once, the rustling stopped.

The ogres stopped too, their brows furrowing with confusion. Involuntarily, Argaad sucked in a sharp breath through his jutting, rotten teeth. Tragor glanced at Kurthak, his eyes questioning, but the warlord was lost in thought, plucking at his beard as he tried to understand what was going on.

“My lord,” Argaad asked, his face the color of bleached bone, “what should we do?”

Kurthak pondered a moment, then pointed at the spot where the rustling had ended. “Keep going,” he bade. “They must still be there.”

The ogres moved on, weapons and nets ready. Argaad held his breath as the circle of his warriors narrowed to a mere two dozen yards, then one dozen. The bushes remained motionless.

The ogres stopped when they were close enough for their spearpoints to reach the middle of the ring. They jabbed their weapons into the bushes, probing the spot where the rustling had stopped so suddenly. Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Argaad called anxiously. “They should be right there!”

The ogres prodded the scrub with spears, hacked with swords and axes, and beat the bushes with cudgels. They trampled the brambles flat in some places, pulled their knotted roots from the ground in others. The kender, however, were gone.

“What witchcraft’s at work here?” Tragor grumbled, baffled.

“Torches!” ordered the Black-Gazer, his face creased with rage. “Burn them out!”

A pair of ogres pushed past the rest, wading out of the bushes, then ran toward the fiery ruins of Myrtledew. The other brutes edged outward again, toward the edges of the thicket, always watching for some sign of the vanished kender. Before long the runners returned, each bearing a pair of burning firebrands. They looked to Kurthak, ignoring Argaad altogether. Glowering furiously, the warlord waved them on toward the bushes.

The shrubs’ dry leaves and branches caught fire quickly, and the flames spread. The ogres waited all around the bushes, waiting and watching for the kender to flee the blaze. Within minutes the whole thicket was aflame, curling and blackening as the fire raged higher. And still there was no sign of the kender. The ogres watched the conflagration, gaping in confusion.

“You lost them!” Kurthak snapped at Argaad, who flinched beneath the lash of his words.

“I don’t understand,” the snaggletoothed warrior protested. “They couldn’t have escaped the fire. How could they enter the bushes without leaving? You saw them go in there, my lord!”

Slowly, Tragor moved to stand behind Argaad.

Kurthak nodded slowly, pondering. “Yes, I did,” he agreed.

“My lord,” Argaad began. “I didn’t-”

With a suddenness that startled even Kurthak, Tragor lifted his heavy, two-handed sword high above his head, then slammed it down on the cowering warrior from behind. The blade hacked through Argaad’s helmet, splitting his skull in half. The snaggletoothed warrior stood rigid for a moment; then Tragor jerked his sword free, and Argaad crumpled in a bloody heap.

Kurthak looked down at the corpse, then shrugged. “Come,” he bade, and motioned for Tragor to follow. “There is nothing left for us here.”

They left the thicket to burn and Argaad’s body to draw crows.

Argaad was not the only warrior to lose his prisoners inexplicably. When the ogres regrouped outside the smoldering ruins of Myrtledew, no fewer than six officers came to Kurthak and reported, with trembling voices, that their captives had broken free, opening their shackles with concealed lockpicks, and fled. Some had made their way to the underbrush or the forest itself; others had ducked into the village’s larger buildings. In every case, just when 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.