The tent flap was dragged open, admitting moonlight, a chill autumn wind and the pavilion’s owner. Eppon the Bear-Breaker stumbled in with belly swollen on mead and spirit fatted on revelry. His muddy prints tracked on the piled furs and woven Zabyallan carpets - once fine, now faded from many months of such abuse.

He groaned, shedding his loincloth and lifting free his neck chain. He’d hung upon it a strange ring that he’d taken a liking to. Its forged skull was fierce while the horned woman’s face in its maw bore a heated beauty.

“Master!” his Illian slave-boy darted forth, the gilded chain about his throat connected to a bronze ring on the central tent pole. He held a cup of spiced wine in a silver goblet between trembling palms. “Your nightly drink!”

“Away, boy,” Eppon slurred. He flung his neck chain into the jewelry pouring from the mouth of an open chest. It slid between a lion-headed silver bangle and a golden earring still dark where he’d torn it from the owner’s lobe. “I’ve had an ocean of drink; anymore and I’ll not stand tomorrow, let alone join uncle’s hunt. By the Three, you’ve got no wits, stupid boy!”

“My apologies, Master.” The boy bowed low and made to take it away.

“Hold.” Eppon arrested him with an iron grip. “You’ve already poured it. Give it here.”

With a loud gulp and clatter, the goblet was drained and tossed away. The giant of a man wiped his moustache with a meaty arm. “Wake me at first light,” he grunted, and a pair of faltering steps carried him to his bed. He collapsed onto the soft pad of animal skins and soiled silks, his snores instantly filling the tent.

His slave-boy’s servile expression dropped immediately, eyeing the jewelled dagger among Eppon’s stolen treasures. He imagined driving it into the oaf’s back while he slept. It was terror that stayed his hand, as it had for a hundred nights. His master once lifted a warrior and crushed his back with a quick squeeze of his arms. He could still hear the giant’s rolling laughter afterward. A dagger blow would merely anger him, then those titan’s hands would be around his own throat and-

The boy shuddered, pushing away all thoughts of rebellion. He picked up his master’s cup and hurried to bed down. If he did not sleep quickly, he would wake late after his master. He bore the scars from when last that happened.

Wind blew and moonlight shifted.

The slave-boy glanced to the tent flap. His master never bothered to secure it. With a sigh, he pulled it closed and tied it shut.

He turned to wash the cup.

A hand clasped tightly over his mouth.

“Quiet!” A woman’s voice hissed at him in Makkadian, cutting off his whimper.

He had last heard the tongue in Illia’s markets in the weeks before Heba’s army had come. “Keep your eyes forward and your tongue silent!”

The voice came from only a little above his own height. Sour breath stung his nose. He nodded frantically in the woman’s grip.

A muffled footfall came from his left. He barely stifled a shriek. A tall and knife-lean man - his complexion like night and his eyes like blood - glided across the tent with the predatory grace of a hunting cat. Silently, he removed the chain from the piled treasures and gave a ferocious smile as he slipped the ring onto his finger. He flexed his hand, then snatched up the jewelled dagger and was upon Eppon’s chest in a single spring.

“Mmf!” the giant grunted, but the dark man pressed a palm to his mouth and the dagger to his throat. “Silence.” His Garric carried a liquid accent. “If you scream, I will slaughter you like a pig. If you cry out, I will do the same.”

Eppon froze as still as the grave.

“That is very good.” The man played with the dagger, its jewels glinting and its bronze tip gliding dangerously back and forth over the throat of the Bear-Breaker. “I am going to remove my hand. You will answer my questions and you will squeal no other noises. Do you understand?”

The titan’s eyes were bulging and his face flushed with rage, but he gave a slow, drunken nod. His assailant withdrew his palm.

“Woman-faced sneak!” Eppon slurred. “I’ll wring the life from-unf!” His eyes went wide and breath hissed from his teeth. The dark-skinned rogue grinned down at him. His free hand had darted down to grip what was precious between Eppon’s loins. An eerie white light began to shine from the eyes of the woman’s face on the ring.“Bear-Breaker, how do you feel about being gelded?” he asked slowly, his head tilting to one side. “The ring you stole from me-” Eppon’s eyes bulged. “-has the power to channel hellfire-” They bulged so large they appeared ready to roll from his skull. “-and it will turn your fruit and stalk to ash in a heartbeat. No more women. No sons for you, no grandsons for your father.”

“No, no, no!” Eppon choked out, seeming to sober up abruptly. “Not that!”

“You respond better to that than the threat of your throat being parted. A man’s priorities are always the same,” the other man chuckled. “So we can understand each other. You will answer my questions, yes?”

“Whatever you ask!”

“Gooood. Among the possessions stolen from me were my ring, my sword and a dark robe sewn as though the stars covered a night sky. You also took the treasure of myself and my partner. Where are they?”

“I…it’s all in my spoils!”

Crimson eyes narrowed. “I do not see them here.”magic

Eppon glanced over to a pile of furs on the opposite end of the tent. “T-there! They’re over there! I’ve hadn’t yet separated them!”

The slave boy was dragged to the pile by a wiry strength and heard the furs being flipped. He was too terrified to even glance toward his own captor. “It’s here! It’s here!” the woman crowed. “My things! Yours!”

“You are doing veeeery weeell.” The dark man grinned down at the overlord’s son. “Now, you will tell me where the wizard and her two Vestulai bodyguards are.”

“U-uncle had no interest in the wizard! M-my brother took them back to his tent!”

“Very good, very good, Eppon. You are doing very well. Now, where will you search for the Egg of Gergorix?”

“W-what? You can’t mean to-Argh!” his words died into a low squeal as the man twisted his nethers deliberately.

“Careful, Bear-Breaker. Another wrong word and you will end this night a eunuch.”

“N-northwest!” Eppon whined. “U-uncle says there are ruins northwest! Three days’ walk! In the ogres’ territory! W-we’re to search the ruins!”

He sighed in relief when his assailant finally removed his hand.

“Good man. You will go to sleep again.” The dark man raised his ring beneath Eppon’s face. It flared with white fire, hissing out a strange purple smoke. The giant Garumnan gave a cough that shuddered his whole body and went limp like a boned fish. He neither snored or stirred, and were it not for the near-absent breaths slightly moving his chest, he would have been a dead man to the eye.

“What did you do?” the woman demanded.

“Succubi and incubi demons breathe a mist to place their victims in slumber. I used an invocation that does much the same.” He looked down at the reposed form. “It will take strong magic to wake our large friend, which will waste our pursuers’ time.”

“And what should we do with this one?”

The hand tightened on the boy’s mouth, and he shook in fright. The dark man raised his hand and placed it in the midst of his gilded chain.

His ring flared and the golden links parted, dripping down to harden on the furs like gilded tears. “You are free now,” he told the boy. “Run away.”The slave-boy blinked.

“Run ”

With a yelp, the boy clambered out of the tent and disappeared into the night.

“Fool! What if someone sees him?” Wurhi demanded.

The Sengezian gave an easy shrug as he belted his sword on his waist. He inspected his robe for any rips. “They are drunk or asleep and have their slaves running about to fetch things for them as they bed. One more unarmed boy will not draw the eye.”

“Fair enou-Wait!” Wurhi snatched up a goblet from her share of Cas’ treasure. “The oaf scratched it! I should gut him now!”

“A dead son of an overlord will be mourned and avenged. A bewitched one calls for time and resources to wake, and we will need all the time we can get if we are to find the egg before this army does.”

The little thief glowered at the sleeping giant. “Only magic can wake him?”

Kyembe nodded, and Wurhi stomped up to Eppon and spit on his face. Twice.

“There, let’s go.”

“Hooold, hooold now.” The Sengezian’s eyes lit up. He plucked from Eppon’s spoils a small, mummified hand bound by a leather necklace. The grotesque fingers sparkled with silver and sapphire rings. “This is an object of power, and I think we may gain more time if we deliver it back to its owner.”

“…it’s that wizard’s, isn’t it?”

“That it is.”

“…you’re still hoping for weird wizard writhings, aren’t you?”

“I am ”

They slipped from Eppon’s tent and cautiously crossed the camp’s centre. They’d seen the younger of Avernix’s twins stumble drunkenly toward his tent while watching the festivities earlier, hidden from view.

The revel had been a wild affair.

Drink gushed like a spring flood. Warriors had gorged themselves on steaming joints of meat and hot wine served by trembling women and children. They’d arm-wrestled on barrels, and the hulking Eppon had defeated all comers with his good arm. Even his father and brother were no match for him. Agisil had rolled dice and fondled slaves, quickly growing red-faced and sloppy. The overlord had watched all from a throne of twisted branches interwoven with skulls. He’d downed mead with dignity in one moment, then burst raucously into the festivities the next.

With a single clap, he had commanded the entertainment to its next stage.

A space was cleared around the fires and the most robust captives were herded in at spear-point. They were forced to grapple in the muck to the clamour of drunken jeers and wagers for stolen coin, treasures and weapons. Countrymen had been pitted against countrymen. Outlander against outlander. It mattered not. Avernix and his horde drank in the cruel amusement like sweet wine; untouched and untouchable, like those who walk on water.

When a hulking Skjernan raider had snapped the neck of an ox-like Garumnan farmhand, cheers erupted and hand drums were brought forth. The fairest prisoners were made to dance, caper and writhe to a frantic beat. Whooping and clapping had swollen when the Vestulai warriors were dragged into the firelight. They held defiant and still at first, but a dagger held to their charge’s throat had seen them begin a reluctant dance from their homeland - a sword-dance passed from mothers to daughters for a thousand years.

Though they were without blades, the threat in every movement was explicit. Still, their militant grace had attracted appreciation, and their sullen, hate-filled eyes only spurred their captors further. Upon finishing, they’d been dragged off like used carcasses.

Ku-Hassandra had been chained to the leg of a chair of Riyenese craftsmanship, painted black, piled with cushions and inlaid with silver. Within this sat an old man that Kyembe presumed was Lukotor the Wise. His countenance had radiated an awful power, the mere thought of which made the Sengezian thankful he’d regained his ring.

Kyembe had watched the old wizard with particular interest as he’d questioned the wizardress. The old man had seemed to find Ku-Hassandra tiresome, growing bored then agitated. In less time than it took for him to drain his goblet of spiced Skjernan mead, she was removed from his sight at the dismissal of his skeletal hand. The two southlanders had wondered where she and the two Vestulai were taken.

With any hope, they would know soon.