Helati was a grumbling shadow as she stalked over to Kaz. “May Sargas take Greel’s damned hide, and Scum’s for good measure!”

“Scurn?” Kaz asked quietly.

“He and the ogre lead this farce we call a mission of honor and justice.”

She dropped whatever it was that Greel had given her and fed him a few strips of meat. “I’m sorry that I cannot untie you. Hecar and I argued on your behalf, and even Tinos seemed willing, but Greel wants to take no chances. You are his prize. I daresay that by the time we reach Scurn, the short one will have us believing that he caught you alone, without our aid. Such honorable people we are. These past few years of chasing after you have changed us-much to the worse, I’d say.”

“You and Hecar are siblings?” Helati’s face was deep in shadow. He wished she would move so that he could see her better, be able to read her reactions better. It was always wise to know the enemy, he told himself.

“You don’t remember us, then. Hecar was certain of that. You were a tutor for the younger classes…”

Kaz grimaced at the memory. “The year before they deemed me ready to give my life for the ogres and humans. You and your brother were in one of the classes? Those were for the young just entering adulthood. You cannot be that young.”

She laughed quietly. “Poor teacher. You fail to realize that eight years have passed since then. We have changed, my brother and I. We always felt you picked on us especially. Apparently it was not that important to you.”

“Helati, I had to run after I killed the ogre leader. If I had stayed, they would have tied me to a stake and flayed me alive. I would have joined Braag’s victims.”

It was impossible to see the reaction on her face, but Kaz could hear her breathing catch briefly and noticed that her hand, still holding a piece of meat, had paused halfway to his mouth. He regretted causing the latter action most of all, having eaten almost nothing all day.

The female minotaur snorted quietly and continued with the feeding, occasionally taking a small scrap of meat for herself. As she fed Kaz, she spoke. “I could believe you-certainly the stories I’ve heard prove you are no coward and have dealt with others honorably-but Molok has his own proof. Proof that the high ones found convincing.”

This time Kaz snorted, his anger flaring. “If they are the same ones who ruled when we were slave-soldiers to the other races, then small wonder! They are lackeys to the ogres and those who followed Takhisis’s pet, the renegade sorcerer Galan Dracos!”

Greel rose from the fire. “If he cannot keep quiet, he does not get fed, Helati! If that fails to calm him, I can silence him personally!”

“I can handle him, Greel!” To Kaz, she said quietly, “Greel would be only too glad to silence you. He thinks your running away is judgment enough, and that you have forfeited any right to speak on your own behalf. Only his fear of Scum keeps him from you.”

Kaz swore under his breath. “You and your brother seem levelheaded. How can you be a part of this?”

“We were given a duty, and as minotaurs we will see that duty through to the end.”

It all seemed so futile. This was what he had feared would happen if he allowed himself to be captured.

“Greel wanted me to show you this.” Helati put down the meat and reached for the object the leader had given her. To the prisoner’s eyes, it appeared to be a dark sphere, perhaps the size of an apple.

“What is it?”

“Watch. Stare into it.”

As Kaz stared at it, the sphere began to glisten. Kaz shuddered without thinking. “Magic? Have we weakened so much we have turned to magic?”

Helati quieted him. “It is something the ogres use that they buy from mages. Scurn has one like it, and a proclamation from the emperor claiming the honorable intentions of our mission: the capture of an accused murderer. Now watch.”

Kaz did as he was told, his eyes widening as the dark, opaque sphere suddenly became transparent. Within the sphere, he watched a landscape begin to grow from nothing. Tiny mountains rose in the background, and skeletal trees burst from the earth like mad, undead horrors. Figures began to blur into being, one on the right, the other in the center.

Kaz knew what land this was, though not the name of it. He knew it because he had served there, still blindly obedient to dark-robed mages and ebony-armored warlords. It came as no surprise that the figure at the right was him, and that the one in the center was the ogre who had commanded this army. There was something wrong with the scene, however, something that did not reveal itself to his eye at first.

The humans. The victims. The living toys of his captain, a loyal servant of the Queen of Evil. Where were the old one and the children that Braag’s axe had played with? Instead, the ogre seemed intent on something in the distance and did not even notice the minotaur’s presence. Kaz could predict what was going to happen next.

The Kaz figure raised a club. As the club rose behind the unsuspecting ogre, the real Kaz shook his head and denied the falsity of the scene. The club came crashing down. The ogre collapsed into a lifeless heap. The Kaz figure looked around once and fled. Other forms- ogres, minotaurs, and such-rushed forward even as the scene faded away.

It was another inaccuracy. It had taken only a single blow from his fist, struck while they stood face-to-face, to crack the skull of the ogre and send him to his reward. Not some dishonorable ambush!

“A lie!” Kaz no longer cared whether he remained quiet or not. “That’s a lie! I am no base murderer! He cruelly killed the helpless, the defenseless! His action was without any honor! It was the work of a butcher, not a warrior, and he did it far too many times to be reprieved from death! I gave him a warrior’s death!”

The sturdy ropes designed by the minotaurs to hold anything less than a dragon began to strain under his anger. Helati fell back, dropping the sphere. Greel and the others were already on their feet. One of the ropes snapped, and Kaz, still in a rage, roared as he felt the hold on him loosen. For a brief moment, the knowledge that he was a step closer to freedom urged him on. Then Greel and Tinos were on him.

They struck him relentlessly, Greel laughing out loud at one point. The short minotaur was enjoying every second of it. As Kaz’s mind began to swim, he wondered if Greel had any ogre blood in him.

Greel’s rage burned out under the endless blows, and Kaz blacked out mercifully.

Kaz stood before judgment, but it was not minotaurs who would decide his case. Black, mad Crynus sat on one side of the triumvirate, his head, which had been severed in life, lolling on his neck at an awkward angle. He seemed not to care.

Bennett, proud, arrogant Bennett, hawklike features glowing with the fire of his own magnificence, sat on the opposite side. He appeared less interested in the trial than he was in giving commands to the knights who rushed in an endless stream to and from him. They knelt, heard some whispered order, and each departed in haste, only to be replaced instantly by another knight.

The central figure, seated high above the rest, seemed to have trouble deciding who he was. One second he was Greel; the next he was Rennard. He became one of the goblins who had captured Kaz after the latter had killed the ogre captain. At last the central figure settled on a shape. It was, of course, the ogre captain himself. A portion of his head was missing, but there seemed to be no blood-nothing, in fact.

“A court of your peers,” a mocking voice said.

Kaz looked around and found himself staring into the sightless eyes of a dreadwolf. The bone-white beast, looking like nothing less than a month-dead, skinned animal, winked at him. It was sitting no more than two yards away, on top of a ledge.