Shadow Walker

by James 'Fel' Galloway

Chapter 12

Pens.

The Pens.

The most famous organized club for the display of fighting Arcans in Noraam, where civilized men and women paid hundreds of chits to watch brutalized Arcans rip each other to shreds in the arena, for their amusement. A place where the only spoils earned by the victor was that he had to eat his victim, or starve.

And they called Arcans animals.

Kyven could barely contain himself as he approached the roughly circular building known as the Pens, and saw the ever-present buzzards circling on the far side of the building, where they dumped the bones. This was a place of death, a place of pain and fury and hopelessness and despair, a place where the trauma of the Arcans had literally seeped into the very earth and created a dark pall that Kyven could physically sense. This place had taken on the very evil that was perpetrated within, a place where the earth beneath it hungered for the blood spilled by the unwilling combatants forced to fight to the death for the twisted amusement of men and women who believed that they were the epitome of the civilized man.

Kyven hadn't just walked up to this place. After leaving the Ledwell plantation, he had made sure to make the rounds in Cheston to learn about the Pens, so he knew what he was getting into when he came here. The place was famous, so there was all kinds of information about it. The first thing he learned was that he wouldn't have Lightfoot's help here. Just like at the Blue Ring, they had anti-Arcan devices all around the place both to keep their fighters in and to keep the Shaman out. No Arcan could enter or leave the Pens unless they were in a rolling cage set up to pass through that protection. There were also over a hundred men working at the Pens, from cleaners to Arcan handlers to fight organizers to the handsome and pretty men and women who wore smart attire and showed the guests to their seats or brought them drinks. There was even a restaurant within the building for the dining pleasure of the patrons, staffed by the finest Nurysian chefs. It took Kyven a little longer to glean the information he wanted, and that was that the Arcans as well as the monsters they occasionally imported for the Arcans to fight were held in dungeon-like cellars under the polished and cultured upper floors, transported into the arena by elevators and a stairway so they were completely isolated away from the patrons. The arena was enclosed within a steel cage, and had been so for over fifty years, when a fighting Arcan had somehow slipped his collar and jumped into the stands, killing nearly thirty people before being killed himself.

But the time of the Pens was at an end. Kyven had come here for two related reasons. He was going to free the fighting Arcans held within, and he was going to eradicate this blight on the earth from existence. But it wouldn't remove the taint from the land; he knew, almost instinctively, that nothing would ever grow on the earth left behind after the building was gone. It would be a permanent scar, an ugly wound on the earth where a decent man would feel unwelcome and no animal would willingly enter. That was the extent of the evil that had been perpetrated on this land.

This was one of the reasons why he had been brought into being, he realized grimly as he rode his borrowed horse towards the octagonal building. No Arcan Shaman could enter the Pens, at least if one believed the stories. An Arcan Shaman could probably get in, but he'd have to do it in the guise of a fighting Arcan. It was the rumored defenses inside that Kyven wondered about. The owners of the Pens were paranoid about protecting their fighting stock against rivals and were rightfully terrified of the Shaman, and had gone to extreme, almost insane lengths to defend the building against outside forces. From what was said, no alchemical device except the collars and the devices used to control the Arcans worked within the Pens. That meant that to a lesser extent, Shaman magic also wouldn't function within, since Shaman magic was basically the same thing as alchemy. Even from where he was, he could see that the outer walls, while gaily decorated, were reinforced, which meant that the Pens was almost like a fortress. The workers within were all armed, even the pretty-faced serving staff, with both pistols and alchemical impact rods that worked inside, protection against the Arcans as well as from unruly patrons, and Kyven would almost guarantee that there was some kind of mass-effect black crystal death device in there as a last resort against an Arcan uprising, like the one that had been on the Flauren slaver.

Those were what he was up against. He was going in there alone, into a place where his powers weren't supposed to work, armed with nothing but his posts knives, an understanding of the layout of the place, and a whole lot of balls.

It would get even dicier after he got them out. He would preferred to do this at night, when he could take the Arcans out under the cover of darkness, but there were no matches scheduled for tomorrow, so it had to be done today. Today was a match day, and they were holding special early afternoon matches, a matinee. Instead of shutting down because of the impending attack, the rulers of Cheston had demanded the Pens stay open as morale and entertainment for a nervous populace, even hold matches at this early hour, the first match scheduled to start two hours past noon. That meant that when he got them out, he was looking at six or so hours of daylight where he'd have to keep them moving, keep them hidden and out of sight but still moving where they needed to go until sunset, and do it while avoiding any pursuit the Pens and Cheston set on them. He had to hold out until sunset, when they'd be able to move with much more freedom under cover of darkness. It was going to be dangerous, but he had no choice.

How often that meme of helplessness seemed to come up. What else could he do?

Kyven was riding his horse towards the Pens, and while he had no one in front of him, there were two carriages behind him holding the upper crust of Cheston society. He was dressed in the current Cheston fashion for a gentleman of means, a black waistcoat with tails and a frilly linen undershirt, tight-fitting black trousers tucked into knee-high polished leather boots, and carrying a riding quirt. His posts knives were under his belt, which was covered over by a red sash, within easy reach if he needed them, and Lightfoot and Lucky were hiding with the Lupans and Strider not far from the building, in a stand of sea pines between the Pens and the Angry Sea. Out past the boneyard.

Trinity, he hated that Lucky had to see that. The boy was too young to see such horrors, and the vast pit filled with thousands of splintered and chewed bones was the definition of a horror.

Spirit sight showed him that the stories were true. There was an almost shimmering glow around the Pens, probably from a buried device that encircled it, that had to be the Arcan shield. Much like the Blue Ring's protection, that was how they kept their Arcans from escaping even if they got out of their cages. As he got closer, he saw his suspicions confirmed when he could make it out under the ground, covered over by the grass and hard to see at a distance, but he had to abandon spirit sight once he got closer, where they might see the glow of his eyes. He did feel it, however, when he passed over that buried device, for it sought to sever him from his connection to the spirit world, and he realized it would attack any crystal that passed over it, seeking to drain it. It was anti-magic as well as being anti-Arcan, and the first line of defense against a Shaman.

Clever. Alchemical means were about the only way someone could conceivably free and steal an Arcan, and their device eliminated that threat before they got within fifty rods of the front gate.

A brief test showed that his magic did indeed not work within the area of protection, like that anti-magic field in the Loremaster headquarters, but curiously enough, his shadow powers did function, despite them being magical in nature. Perhaps their device was tailored to stopping alchemical magic, and his shadow powers, while magical in nature, were not alchemical, nor were they Shamanic, which was simply an alternate definition of alchemical. He realized that while magic was suppressed in here, a monster's powers would function, and not just his own. His shadow powers were monstrous in origin, being the powers of a shadow fox. If his shadow powers worked, then the magical powers of other monsters worked too.

More show for the masses, he reasoned. What good was going out and catching a thunder lizard if it couldn't shoot lightning at the hapless Arcans tasked to fight it?

Either way, it worked to his advantage. He could live without Shaman magic so long as he had his shadow powers, and he could live without his shadow powers as long as he had his Shaman magic.

Another reason he seemed tailor-made to be the one to end the Pens, he felt.

A handsome groom, his blond hair done just so and with a brilliant smile, took his horse as he reached the ponderous gates of the Pens, beyond which was a richly appointed wide hall with festive decorations interspersed between tastefully understated doorways. Those led to private parlors, worker storerooms, and hallways that went deeper into the octagonal construction. From what he gathered, the restaurant was to the left, and the brandy parlor, a gathering place for men, was to the right. There was a sitting parlor for the women closer to the hollow inner ring of the building on the right, where ladies of temperate disposition could go to recover if the bloodsport in the ring below offended their delicate constitutions. There was a betting room right next to the stands on the left, a saloon complete with various gambling amenities leading off the main arena floor on the right, and the back side of the construction as well as the rear quarters were taken up by offices, kitchens, storage rooms, and other utilitarian needs.

As a patron, Kyven would be limited to the public areas of the Pens, areas clearly defined due to the fact that any door leading out of the public areas was locked by alchemical means ... means that weren't affected by the antimagic protections. The staff carried keys to those doors, but were limited; kitchen staff could only open the doors dealing with the kitchens, the handlers only the doors leading to the cages, and so on and so on. This was no real barrier to him, but he needed to know how they worked when the time came to get the Arcans out of here. He'd need a key or two, but he already knew how he was going to get one; the Arcan handlers in the cellar would have to have keys, else they couldn't get into the cellar in the first place.

The first thing, though was to find the way down to the cellars from the first floor. There had to be a way, probably through the staff areas, and he needed to know where it was and what to expect when the Arcans came out that way. But getting in there wouldn't be easy, for interspersed at strategic locations were curious little bronze boxes with crystals embedded in them, which everyone agreed were alchemical viewing devices that allowed the staff to see what was going on in front of them. They functioned despite the anti-magic field, but for Kyven, these were both a minor inconvenience and a handy means of testing a theory. He tracked down the lavatory, a poshly appointed place filled with gleaming porcelain and with indoor plumbing, found the viewer that kept a watch on the entrance, then casually reached up and touched it as he went past, where no other viewer could see what he was doing. That touch told him that the device was shielded somehow, protected from the field, probably by its curious bronze-iron casing. However, that casing wasn't designed to stop a Shaman, who simply reached through it and touching on the crystal that powered that function, using it as a conduit, and draining the crystal very quickly. Kyven himself wasn't shielded the way the device was, so the magic he drained was almost instantly shunted away from him, drained away by the field. So, he couldn't draw on the present crystals to channel spells, but he could drain any devices he came across.

So, the key to all of this was the field. All he had to do was find what was powering the field and drain it, much like that big crystal he saw in the Loremaster building was responsible for the anti-magic field that protected the towers. He doubted that the device's power source was buried, so it had to be somewhere in the building. If he could find that crystal and drain it, then he'd crack the Pens open like a walnut.

And for this, it required the unique powers granted him by his totem. Kyven stepped into the shadows he converged around himself, and fought off the disorientation and vertigo that came with crossing into the shadow world. The things were far from him, but the instant he entered their domain, they took notice of him. He could sense it. They seemed to start moving towards him, but he'd learned that they took quite a while to find him if he himself was not moving very far within their world. He used his position to look around, look beyond what he could have seen in the normal world, looking past the voids created by the light and looking into the shadowed areas of the building. He saw many Arcans below him in darkened cells, he saw quite a few supplies and devices of control and torture that made him shiver at the thought of them, and saw a few people as they entered areas of shadow during their nightly rounds. He was searching for a room that might hold a large crystal or some kind of alchemical device, then realized that in the shadow world, the anti-magic field could not touch him. He opened this eyes to the spirits while within the shadow world, something he had done many times before, and that caused the living to jump out within the shadows, as well as caused active alchemical devices to jump out to his eyes.

There! He saw a flicker at the edge of his vision. He turned towards where he saw it, looking past several other shadows, then he saw it again. Someone passed in front of a light source and cast a shadow on a very large red crystal, pulsing to his spirit sight as it powered something big, and that shadow revealed it to him here in the shadow world. That may or may not be what he was after, but it was a good place to start. When he was doing what he was doing, it a difficult to match up the real world to what he was seeing due to the shifting nature of the shadow world, where distances could actually change, but he'd had enough experience to get a good idea of roughly where that crystal was in relation to where he was in the real world. It was under him, down in the cellar, which was another good sign, on the south side of the building, under where the staff kept their offices and other staff-only rooms.

To just appear in that room that obviously had someone in it was foolish, but he did need to get closer. He took several steps, sliding along the shifting shadows, until he was facing a shadow of a dark, rough-stoned corridor that was in the cellar. He saw bars along one wall, and he realized it was more or less what he was looking for, a corridor in the cellar. He stepped into that wavering shadow, stepped into the representation of reality present there in the shadow world, then converged a gateway back and stepped through it even as he willed it to pass around him.

He appeared in a dark corridor with a sand-covered floor, and immediately it was the smell that hit him. The smell of blood, the smell of rotting meat, the smell of unwashed, bloody Arcans, the smell of festering wounds. He had a rough stone wall on either side of him, but there were bars on both sides of the walls both in front of him and behind. There was a sconce that held an alchemical lamp, but it was dark, inoperative, which provided the shadows through which he could see into the real world. He knew from his sense of things that the crystal was ahead of him, somewhere in the warren of underground passages that extended under the Pens like a spiderweb.

He stepped up to the nearest bars and looked in, and saw something that almost made him sick. There was a female wolf Arcan in the cell, laying on the sandy floor, sand that was saturated with blood. The smell of festering wounds was coming from her, for she had almost all of the pitch black fur ripped away from her thigh and had a quartet of deep, pus-filled lacerations going from hip, around the front of her thigh, and ending halfway down to her knee. She had been a victor in a match, but wasn't important enough for them to treat. They threw her in here to die, and when she was dead, they'd just excise her festering wound and feed her to the others.

He drained the cell door's alchemical lock and stepped inside almost immediately. Closing the door behind him, he knelt by the panting Arcan, whose collar was still around her neck. Getting closer to her, he could see the scars on her shoulder, back, and face, jagged lines where her fur no longer grew, wounds from her fights. She had clearly won more than one fight, but they still didn't consider her important enough to treat. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to roll towards him, or maybe away from him, but a hand on her shoulder quelled her almost instantly. She was too conditioned to obey the humans to object to anything he might do, even in her illness-induced haze.

Ah, no wonder. Her face wasn't black, it had a patch of grizzled gray that started over her muzzle and eyes and framed her muzzle, but that wasn't what had his attention. Her left eye was a blood-filled orb, and she'd probably lost sight in it. They had no use for an Arcan fighter who had a blind side. She'd probably been hit in the face or poked in the eye with enough force to rupture the vessels in her eye. He was amazed they hadn't killed her immediately. Maybe they threw her in here to see if she recovered, and if so, then they could breed her. If not, well, the other Arcans had to eat.

"Calmly, little sister," he said in a gentle voice, touching her on the side. "I'm here to help."

Despite the collar, she couldn't stop her derisive snort. He couldn't blame her.

The field may drain away his magic, but he'd bet it would have problem draining magic that had somewhere to go the instant it was pulled out of her collar. He put one hand on her collar and the other hand over her festering wounds, and built the image of the spell to cure diseases in his mind. Instead of beckoning to the fox for the power to cast the spell, he instead drained it from the collar and instantaneously channeled that magic into his spell. The field did try to interfere, tried to draw the energy away, but Kyven was too righteously pissed off to let that happen. By sheer determination, he kept the magic focused into his spell, not letting the field interfere, and under his hand the sickness causing her infection was eradicated. He could do nothing for the wounds, which would probably just get infected again anyway, but it would buy her some time.

His work on her had cleared her fever in addition to purging the sickness from her leg, and she blinked up at him with suddenly lucid eyes, one amber eye and one blood-filled orb gazing at him in confusion. "I am Shaman, little sister," he said in a low voice. "I'm here to take you and all the others away from this vile pit."

"Spirits ... be ... praised," she wheezed, getting her breath back. "I'm glad ... I lived long enough ... to see it."

"You can help me, little sister," he said quickly. "There's a room here that has a large crystal in it, I think it powers the device that traps you in here. I have to find it before I can get you out of here. Do you know where it is?"

"No, Shaman," she said in reply, reaching up with her clawed and putting it on his face reverently. "You're ... human."

"I know, little sister," he smiled. "I'm the only human Shaman we know of. But don't hold that against me. I'm here to save you if I can, or end your pain if I must."

"Either ... would be welcome. Please, Shaman. If you can't get me out, kill me. I want to be free, one way or another."

"I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I will make it quick and painless, my little sister," he said with absolute honesty, putting his hand on her upper chest solemnly. He then pulled off his waistcoat and ripped it in half between the tails, then started wrapping it around her leg. "I've cured the fester in your wound, little sister, but I have no healing ability. This is the best I can do for you."

"They call me Ebony, Shaman. Well, they called me the Ebon Death, but I like to think of myself as Ebony."

"Ebony it is," he smiled. "Now you lay here and rest. I'll come back for you while you recover your strength, after I find that room. Just be still and pretend the door is still locked, but mind that it is open if you must get out. But please stay in here until I come back for you, or you're sure they caught me and I won't come back. If you raise an alarm, I may have trouble finding the crystal.."

"I will. Will you bless me?"

He smiled and put his hand on her head and recited the ritual benediction, which made her tail shiver in delight.

"Be strong, little sister."

"For you, Shaman, anything. Anything," she said, putting her head back on the sand and closing her eyes.

He was a little worried someone may look in and see the bandage on her leg, but that was a risk he'd just have to take. That wound was open and raw, and she'd lost enough blood already. He should have left her some water, but he didn't know where it was and didn't have the time to track some down for her. She'd have to endure it until he could get back to her, and he would get back to her.

The other cages were mostly full, all filled with Arcans in various stages of recovery from wounds suffered in the arena. Not all of them were as far gone as the wolf, and Kyven encountered some hostility from the next Arcan he tried to check, a willowy male feline of some sort, a cat but with broader features and a spotted coat. He was probably one of the rare breeds. He hissed at Kyven reflexively when he drained the cage door and entered, backing into a corner. The cat's eyes weren't vacant the way feral Arcans were, so this reaction was conditioned. This male had been abused to the point where he retreated away from his conscious self to deal with the trauma of being thrown into a cage and being forced to kill another Arcan or be killed himself. But the male was no match for Kyven's strange affinity for wild Arcans, which translated to an Arcan who was traumatized to the point where he acted on instinct. He knelt down and held out a single hand and spoke reassuringly, which started working its way into the male's mind. His back came down, he assumed a less threatening posture, and then warily approached. Kyven kept his hand out until the male literally pushed his head against it tentatively. Kyven kept a calming hand on his shoulder as he checked a quartet of nasty gashes in the male's spotted coat along his ribs. It was almost to the bone, and if he'd been hit like that in his stomach, it would have disemboweled him. He also had three deep bite wounds on his upper arm, shoulder, and left thigh, and thankfully none of them were infected. They were all healing fairly well, actually. Kyven drained his collar as well, then urged him down to the sand. "Just be calm, little brother," he told the half-crazed Arcan. "Rest. I'll be back for you soon."

Though he desperately wanted to, he knew he couldn't check on every Arcan in every cage ahead of him, for there were too many and every moment he was down here he risked coming across a worker, who might raise an alarm. He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes dead ahead as he passed several cages, knowing if he looked in it would be his undoing and he would rush into the cage to care for the Arcan within. He marched right down the hallway, until a sudden voice caught him off guard. "Hey! What are you doing down here?" a harsh voice called. Kyven turned around to see a man wearing leathers standing there, holding a pain stick. This was one of the handlers, a man who earned his living off the misery of the Arcans around him. He was a tall, whip-thin man with a pockmarked face and small eyes set close together. His teeth were yellow and rotten, and he looked none too clean. If not for the stench of this place, Kyven was fairly sure he'd have smelled him from there. Kyven swallowed his impulse to murder the man and put on an innocent face, acting and lying for all he was worth. "Why, thank the Father someone found me!" he said in a relieved voice. "I've been lost down here forever!"

"How did you get down here?"

"Why, I was looking for a bathroom and went through an open door. I got lost in a bunch of hallways, and then I ended up down here. I knew I never should have went down those stairs!" he said, smacking himself in the forehead with his palm. "Can you help me get out of here?"

The man didn't look all that accommodating. In fact, he kept his pain stick in a ready position, and that device had all of Kyven's attention. He was intimately familiar with just how much they hurt, and he had to suppress a moment of unconscious panic at seeing it and being around all those bars, memories of his own imprisonment and torture threatening to rise up in him.

"Ain't no way you could have got down those stairs," he said aggressively. "I think you're gonna go see the boss, stranger."

"If it gets me out of here, then lead on, good fellow," Kyven answered immediately. "I have nothing but the truth on my side."

"Just go the way you're goin', fella," the man said cautiously.

"Certainly. But just why do you think I couldn't have gotten down the stairs? I had no problem at all."

"You ain't got no key, fella, and you can't get in the stairs without a key."

"You don't say," Kyven murmured. "I do hope you're taking me back upstairs."

"That's why we goin' this way, fella."

"So, you must have a key."

"Yeah, what of it?"

The man didn't even have time to react. Kyven whirled on him, his hand behind his back, and it came out holding three posts knives. The man lunged without seeing the knives to spear Kyven with the pain stick, but he loosed all three knives at nearly point blank range, even as he twisted to avoid the pain stick. One knife just plain missed, one hit the man in the left side of his face flat, bouncing off harmlessly, but the third drove the point right into his right eye. It didn't have enough force behind it to kill, but it punctured his eyes, causing a grayish fluid to spurt out of it, and his head snapped back even as he howled in agony. Kyven moved with blazing speed, sidestepping the pain stick, turning, and crushing his fist into the left side of the man's face. Kyven wasn't trained in fighting, but he was monstrously strong from his Shaman training and had been taught the basics by Lightfoot, so he knew how to throw an effective punch, coming from his hips as he rotated his entire body into the blow. All that power unloaded against the man's cheek, and his head snapped back with enough force to send the knife in his eye socket flying. The man staggered back, stunned, but Kyven didn't give him a chance. He grabbed the shaft of the pain stick safely under its area of operation, grabbed the man by the neck, and yanked his head back to look Kyven in the eyes. His right eye was deflated in his socket, hanging limply partially out of the socket as fluid and blood poured down his face, but his left eye locked with Kyven's own. "Now face your fear," Kyven hissed in a voice of doom, and built the spell the fox had taught him, drained the power out of the pain stick to power it, and unleashed it against the man.

In his mind, his greatest fear manifested, an unignorable phantom that attacked his mind. The man's face turned bone white, and he screamed shrilly, in abject terror, and dropped to the ground writhing and twisting, causing what was left of his right eye to detach from his head and splat to the sandy ground. "Get 'em off get 'em off get 'em off!" he squealed, rolling in the sand as he wet his pants and voided his bowels, which just added to his stink. Kyven advanced and put a boot on his stomach, holding him down, and the man looked up at him and almost fainted. He couldn't see Kyven, he saw the phantom in his own mind, that which he feared the most. The fox said some men would fight when faced with their fear, some would run, and some would just go to pieces. She said some might even die from the shock. This man was one of the runners, it seemed, but he remained coherent enough to possibly answer a few questions.

"Where is the power source for the device that keeps the Arcans in?" he asked in a strong voice.

The magic that fueled the spell was drained off by the field, and caused the phantoms to vanish. The man looked up at Kyven with a horrified single eye, blood still oozing steadily down his cheek, and he wheezed when Kyven put his boot on the man's belly. "What are you?" he gasped in shock.

"I am a Shaman," Kyven declared proudly. "Now, unless you want to live with your little friends crawling all over you for the rest of your life, you're going to answer my questions quickly and honestly."

The man turned even more pale.

"Where is the crystal that powers the device that traps the Arcans inside?" he demanded.

"I, it must be in the big room on the south end. At the stairs, take the right passage heading south, then turn right at the fork. It has to be in there, we're not allowed inside! Don't let them bite me, please! I'll do anything! Anything!"

"Give me your key."

The man immediately reached under his leather jerkin with shaking hands, and withdrew a circular pendant suspended on a sturdy metal chain. He pulled it over his head and offered it to Kyven, his hand trembling violently.

"How many Arcans are in here?"

"A hundred and three!"

"How do they come in?"

"The entry ramp on the west side! It comes in from outside!"

"How many workers are in here?"

"I dunno exactly, maybe thirty, but most are upstairs! There's only nine handlers who move the Arcans for matches on match day!"

"So I'll only find eight other men down here?"

"Us and maybe the boss, he comes down to check on things sometimes!"

"Is there a last-ditch device down here to kill the Arcans?"

He swallowed. "Yes!" he said when Kyven gave him a cold look.

"How is it worked?"

"They can hit it from upstairs!" he answered. "In the control room!"

"Where is the device itself?"

"Everywhere, in every cell!"

"Then where is the crystal that powers it?"

"I don't know. I don't know!" he squealed when Kyven raised a hand and pointed an ominous finger at the man. "Maybe near where they have the other one, I don't know!" He actually started to cry, tears leaking out of his remaining eye. "Don't kill me!" he blubbered.

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Kyven said in an empty voice, lunging down and grabbing the man by the shirt, a shirt stained with blood. He enacted his shadow powers and caused an explosion of darkness around the two of them, which caused the man to scream, but that scream was cut short to the Arcans in the cells as Kyven converged a gateway around both himself and the handler, pulling them into the shadow world. The man wobbled on the, well, whatever it was beneath them on which he was laying, as the vertigo of the place assaulted his senses, vertigo to which Kyven was much more resistant. "I'm going to let them kill you," he finished, hauling the man up, then turning and hurling him away. He exerted his will against this shadowy place, altering its dimensions, which sent the man hurtling far, far away from him. He felt the things sense that sudden and great movement and rush towards it with great speed, attracted by the wholesale alteration of their environment and sensing the warmth of the man. Kyven took a single step back, his face an emotionless mask, then he converged a gateway back to the real world.

Even from where was, he heard the man's agonized, keening shriek when the things finally caught one of the invaders of their domain. But it only bolstered his reserve as he returned to the real world. They all deserved that fate. Every spirits-damned one of them, even the vapid waitresses upstairs serving their drinks and showing off their tits. They lived on the agony of others, and they deserved an agonizing death in return.

Leaving the handler to the things in the shadow world was more a brutally practical means of disposing of the body more than any kind of poetic vengeance against them, though it certainly made him feel much better. Kyven put the key around his own neck, picked up the man's now depleted pain stick, and then deliberately broke it over his knee. "Shaman," an Arcan called from a cell. "Shaman," another joined in, and they started to chant in a low, reverent tone. "Shaman. Shaman. Shaman."

Kyven didn't look at them. He knew he couldn't bear it, not yet. He just fixed his eyes down the hallway. "Calmly, my brothers and sisters," he declared in a strong voice. "Be patient, and I'll get you out of here soon. But you must remain quiet. Nothing happened," he said simply, then he started walking forward, carrying the broken pain stick.

"Shaman," several of them whispered, and then they fell silent and returned to the interior of their cells, obeying him.

After collecting up his knives, Kyven marched right down the center of the hallway, until he reached what was obviously the stairs. He also saw why the handler didn't believe he got down here, for there was a shimmering aura of magical light curtaining the foot of them, a barrier of some kind operating despite the field, which no doubt required a key to bypass. He'd approached from the east, and beyond the stairs and down a short hallway was a large open area, the open void under the arena floor where the Arcans were loaded in the elevators or pushed up the stairs and up to the arena floor, where they would then try to tear each other apart for the amusement of the gentry of Cheston. There was movement in the big room, and Kyven saw three separate handlers move through his field of vision, some of them leading collared and handcuffed Arcans. Kyven advanced up to where he could see better, and saw six handlers and ten Arcans in the large area, obviously preparing for the first matches of the day. The Arcans looked grim, not looking at each other, not looking at Arcans they may have to kill in order to survive.

To go south, he had to enter that area and come under the scrutiny of the handlers, or bypass it by shadow walking and risk that the things in there were waiting for him on the other side.

He stepped into the shadow world rather than risk a confrontation with six men without an illusion to hide behind, taking a single step and looking for a shadow to show him what was there. He could sense that the man he's left here was dead, and there was a sense of contentment that seemed palpable in the place. The things were happy, but when Kyven appeared in their domain, they again moved to the hunt, defending their territory from an invader. But they didn't have the chance to catch him, for he found a suitable shadow not far from where he'd seen the crystal, in a storeroom of sorts, and converged a gateway back into the real world and stepped through it even as he willed it to pass over him. He emerged into a storeroom holding boxes of leather harnesses and muzzles, and there were handcuffs and leg irons hanging on the walls. He ignored it and stepped out of the storeroom, checked both sides of the passage, then headed down it. There wasn't anyone in this part of the complex, and he could feel the crystal as he approached it. In fact, he could feel two of them. One of them was definitely red, and the other chilled his soul, because it was a large black crystal.

Kyven paused to consider something. He'd never tried to drain a black crystal, and it might be dangerous - it might be downright deadly. That was directly absorbing energy that was, by its very nature, the anathema of life. That could very well kill him. If a cut black crystal could instantly kill if it was touched to a bleeding wound, bypassing the skin, then trying to drain a black crystal would be drawing that death energy directly into his body ... which was basically the same thing. No, he couldn't drain the black crystal, but he could pull it out of its device. And they'd have a bloody fun time trying to put it back in its socket after Kyven shattered it. That he more than knew how to do, because he was a crystalcutter by trade, and any crystal could be shattered if it was hit right.

He went back to the storeroom and collected up a few leather harnesses and a set of leg irons, then advanced up the hallway.

He found the black crystal first. It was in a room that required him to shadow walk to bypass its locked door, and it was in the center of a spiderweb of black steel tubes that extended into the walls in every direction. That was how they would kill the Arcans, the black crystal would discharge its energy into those tubes, which no doubt led to every cell in the compound. The crystal in the device was shockingly large, nearly fourteen points, which was huge for a black crystal. It was the size of a child's fist. Kyven didn't have gloves to safely handle it, but that was why he brought the harness. Using the leather of the harness as a buffer, he reached in and wrapped the leather around the crystal, then pulled it out; one didn't handle cut black crystals without great care, since they may have been cut with sharp edges, and a single cut could be fatal. Unless he cut it himself, he would assume any black crystal had a point somewhere that might break the skin, then kill the one holding it. He pulled it out and put it on the stone floor, arrayed the harnesses around it so they'd absorb the majority of the flying shards, then he picked up the manacle and studied the crystal. His innate sense of crystals, part of his Shaman ability, allowed him to understand the structure of the crystal and know how to hit it. Whoever cut it had done a damn good job, though, he had to admit. It was perfectly cut to bring out its maximum potential. He then reared back and smacked the crystal with the rounded side of the manacle.

There was a distinct CRACK, and the crystal shattered. A few flecks of deadly black crystal showered out around the manacle, but all of them went laterally, hitting the straps of leather. Kyven carefully and expertly gathered up all the pieces of the crystal, took off his sash, dumped them into it, and tightly bundled it up before tying it around his belt like a pouch. A handful of black crystal shards might be useful, to the army if not to him.

He found the red crystal not twenty paces from the room holding the death device, and it was connected into a bronze box that had tubes extending from it and into the walls in all four directions, going out to the outer ring, most likely. Kyven tested it by putting his hand on it and shunting its power to him instead of into the device, and immediately the field suppressing his powers began to waver.

This was it.

The crystal had to be forty points, one of the biggest he'd ever seen, and it must have cost them a fortune. But, there was another box stored in the corner that had nine individual sockets in it for crystals, which showed that this device was made to be able to run on one crystal or many, which was rather clever. It was the size of a man's head. Kyven debated taking it, but since it was cut and socketed, it couldn't be put in any other device, it was bound to the box in which it was placed. All it could power would be his magic, but he wouldn't need it once he pulled it out of there.

Instead of draining it or removing it, he instead shattered it. It took only a single hand, and he drained only certain parts of the crystal, along a few internal flaws, which caused the crystal to shudder, flare with bright ruby light, and then implode. He flinched his hand away to prevent getting shards in his hand when the crystal shattered.

The field around him wavered, and then vanished. Immediately, he opened his eyes to the spirits. And almost at the same time, he heard a deafening klaxon go off in the room, a warning to those above that the device wasn't functioning.

That was damn clever. They must have put a second device in here that was suppressed by this one, and once this one failed, that one activated. He tracked down the device quickly, a large box on the wall, and got a hand on it and drained it of its crystal quickly. The ear-splitting klaxon gave a startled gurgle, and then fell silent once its power was drained, but left his ears ringing.

He had to move fast, and he knew it. He got over to the device and stood behind it, watching with spirit sight, and not a moment later a man ran down the stairs and into the passage leading this way. Kyven collected himself and channeled an illusion into the room as the man in a handsome black suit and a short woman wearing a dress cut low enough that her breasts would fall out of it if she bent over too far approached quickly, replacing the crystal with an illusion, exact to the tiniest detail, and instilled with so much substance, drawn on Kyven's vast knowledge of crystals, that the crystal could be touched, would pass virtually inspection. The man pressed a circular key device to the door, which caused it to open, and he looked in with the woman looking in behind him. He saw the crystal in the device, seemingly just fine, and the klaxon silent.

"A hiccup?" the woman asked.

"I guess so," the man replied. "I may have Greenman come and take a look at it. I've never seen it do that before. That crystal is only four months old, it can't be getting weak already."

Hidden by the illusion, Kyven debated killing the man. This man was high-ranking around here, of that there was no doubt, and Kyven would bet that his key would open any door in the compound. But, his disappearance may be noted, and Kyven had too much work to do to do it dodging men bearing pistols and impact rods, as all men and women above were armed. Including these two. Kyven reluctantly let them go, for the welfare of the Arcans at this point was more important than avenging their pain on those that made their fortunes off of it. Ebony and the spotted cat and all the others would need him to get out of here.

But there would be some avenging. Kyven shadow walked back through the door, sensing the things were slowly but inexorably finding his location, then stole down the passageway after ensuring the man and woman went back upstairs, back through that glowing curtain of magic that still covered the base of the stairs. The six handlers were still there, the Arcans waiting in grim silence for their forced deathmatches. He wrapped himself in the illusion of the man he killed, then walked confidently out into the open area.

"About time, Cote," one of them said acidly. "I swear, it takes you so long to take a shit, you must have to eat first." The man didn't notice that the man he thought was Cote came out of a different hallway than he'd entered, and Kyven exploited that fact to get up close to the men before one of them figured that out. One of them turned his back to Kyven to grab the leash of an Arcan, and Kyven silently reached down and pulled his impact rod out of its sheath.

"Hey!" he barked, and then the room plunged into darkness.

Hidden by the shadows, blending into them to be invisible, and using his spirit sight, Kyven laid into the six men with calm efficiency. The impact rod activated when he pulled it, and when he struck the man in the head with it, it shattered his skull and sent him flying like a sack of meal. Kyven barely felt any impact or recoil at all, but it struck with such magical force that it was as if the man was hit by a cannonball. He stepped around the startled Arcan, who was starting to duck, then shattered the face of the next man by hitting him right in the nose, sending blood and bits of flesh and bone flying as his body was blasted in the direction of Kyven's swing. One of the men shouted loudly and reached for his pistol, but a blow to his side crumpled him around the impact rod and threw him several paces, where he collided with two of the seated Arcans. They gave startled cries, but made no other moves. The other three were stumbling around blindly, one of them reaching for his pistol, and that one Kyven attacked first, jamming the impact rod into he belly. Breath and blood blasted from his mouth as the force of the blow devastated his insides, and he fell to the sand five rods away with blood absolutely pouring out of his nose and mouth. He turned and backhanded one of the two remaining men in the side of the head with the rod, snapping his neck and tearing the flesh of his neck, nearly ripping his head off, then he sprinted at the last man, the farthest away, who had more sense than the others and was trying to flee, his hands out in front of himself as he blindly ran towards a wall, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Shaman!" he screamed. "Shaman in the staging area! Sha-" he started, but the word was shattered along with his jaw when Kyven struck him in the side of the head with the rod, crushing bone and sending him catapulting in a sideways somersault in the direction of his blow, to collapse bonelessly to the sand.

The one he'd hit in the side was moaning and moving feebly. Kyven canceled the shadows, returning the area to visibility, and the two Arcans gaped at him in awe as he padded over put his boot on the back of the man's butt, and brained him with the impact rod. Kyven's eyes were glowing with emerald radiance, and that caused the two Arcans to reach their hands up towards him. "Shaman," one said reverently, and he was actually crying.

Kyven cast a quick look about for that last handler, but he was beyond Kyven's ability to see ... he might be upstairs. He instead knelt down by the two Arcans, and put his hand on the shoulder of the female bear Arcan who was weeping, a wide-shouldered female that was heavy-bodied, like most bear Arcans were. She too had scars marring her fur, including a nasty one on the bridge of her muzzle, just behind her nose. "Calmly, little sister," he said, sliding his hand up and draining her collar, then pulling it off her. She gasped and put her wickedly clawed hand to her neck, then put both her hands on his chest. "Will you tell me where they keep most of you?"

"That way," she answered, pointing north. "There are some that way, the injured ones," she pointed back to the east, "and a few more that way, mostly the ones they just brought," she finished, pointing to the west.

"Can I trust you not to fight each other if I uncollar you?" he asked loudly, looking at the other Arcans seated not far from him.

"Yes!" a tall, gangly male coyote blurted. The others also agreed, and Kyven quickly uncollared the ten Arcans. He stuffed the impact rod in his belt, then looked at the others. "Take their weapons and wait here," he ordered. "Kill any human that comes down those stairs," he added, pointing to the stairs to the east. "You, come with me," he finished, pointing at a very muscular bull with sharpened metal caps on his horns, a truly monstrous specimen of a bull Arcan.

"What would you have me do, Shaman?" he asked.

"It never hurts to have a second pair of eyes in enemy territory," he answered, "and you look capable. Besides, I need a strapping strong Arcan to help me, and you fit the bill."

"I would defend a Shaman? I ... I'm so honored," he said with a quavering voice.

"I'm going to be defending you, my large friend," Kyven chuckled. "Let's get the others."

As he promised, he returned to the injury quadrant and first went to the wolf's cage. She looked at him with bright eyes, then got wary when the huge bull came in behind her. "It's alright," Kyven assured her. "Our large friend here is going to carry you out of here. Are you ready?"

"I can walk!" she protested.

"Not until I get a better look at that leg, you're not," Kyven told her bluntly. "I'm not asking you, little sister, I'm telling you."

She looked very nervous when the huge bull approached her, but she relaxed a little when he did nothing more than gather her into his arms, making the large female almost look like a child. Kyven led the bull back towards the center, but he stopped them with an upraised hand, looking up to the floor above, where three men were moving to come down the stairs, all three armed and ready. They were coming down to investigate the shouting. "They're coming," he said. "Go, quickly!" he ordered, hefting the impact rod and wrapping himself in an illusion of one of the men he'd just killed, the one that had shouted. He covered the rod with the illusion, hiding it, and he rushed past the bull and bravely stepped through the magical curtain, which did not impede him because he was wearing a key. He started up the stairs as the three men came down, and they met near the middle. "What the fuck is going on, Connor?" the lead man demanded.

"My fault, my fault," Kyven apologized in the dead man's voice. "Cote scared the shit out of me."

The men looked at him, then one of them laughed. "What did he do?"

"Yeah, like I'm gonna tell you so you can rag on me," Kyven answered, turning back down the stairs. "Is everything okay up there? We still on schedule for the matches?" he asked, pausing before starting down.

The man blinked. "Uh, yeah, I guess," he answered.

"Okay, I saw the boss run down here after that gong went off, we weren't sure what was going on. The boss didn't explain it when he went back up, he just ran back upstairs."

"Ah. Yeah, I could understand that," another said as they too turned and started back upstairs.

Kyven padded back down the stairs, and paused just at the curtain because three Arcans were wound up like springs just around the corner, waiting to brain or shoot anyone that appeared. "Stand down, brothers," Kyven said in his own voice. "It's me."

They backed up quickly as Kyven dispelled the illusion and stepped through the curtain, where the two canines and the coyote breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, brothers, keep an eye on the stairs," he ordered.

With the bull's help, they quickly cleaned out the injured Arcans, laying them on the sand in the staging area. Then, he knew, it was going to get touchy, because he had to free the healthy fighting Arcans, who might not be quite so amenable as those who saw him kill the handlers and the injured. He took stock as he advanced, and saw that the north quadrant was one huge open area with cages built in rows through it. There were one hundred cells in four rows of twenty five, and the cells were barely large enough for the biggest Arcans to lay down in them. All the cells were occupied by a single Arcan except for one, where a huge cat Arcan had a terrified-looking cat female in the cage with him, and he was availing himself of her charms with enthusiasm, her body almost completely surrounded by his as the huge male held her against him and had sex with her. Most of the Arcans were male, with about fifteen or so females. All the females were large, and as Kyven recalled, they only fought other females. Putting a female in the arena with a male was rarely an entertaining match unless the female was extraordinarily large, like that bear in the staging area. Kyven moved up to the middle row, his eyes blazing with emerald light, and his appearance got the attention of quite a few of them. "Little brothers and sisters!" Kyven shouted. "I am a Shaman! I'm here to get you out of this hellhole! I want all of you to stand by your cage doors so I can get your collars off. When I do, go to the staging area and wait, but do not leave the staging area! It's not safe yet for you to try to escape! And no fighting!" he barked commandingly. "I don't want to see a single drop of blood out there, not when you're so close to getting out!"

Many of them didn't believe him, but they changed their minds when he got close, and they could see his eyes. The first one he came to summed up the others, who gaped at his glowing eyes. "But you're human!" he protested, even as Kyven drained the door and opened it without a key.

"Even humans can care about Arcans," Kyven said simply, reaching over and draining the collar, then pulling it off and tossing it aside.

Much to Kyven's surprise, the Arcans obeyed him. He released them as fast as he could because he didn't want to leave them out there unsupervised, and managed to go through the entire paddock in about ten minutes. He kept looking back into the staging area, and though many of the Arcans were agitated and some where dangerously close to the west passage, they obeyed him. Either they obeyed him because he was a Shaman or they obeyed him because he was a human, but they obeyed. No fights erupted, and they waited for him in the staging area.

As he ran back into the staging area, he heard music start upstairs, a bunch of trumpets. Shit, the matches were supposed to start! Any minute now they'd realize that something was very wrong unless he thought fast. He looked at the Arcans, and realized he had some impressive muscle here, but he also had lots of hands.

A fire. Of course!

"Listen!" he barked quickly. "The matches are about to start, and we're not ready to leave yet! I want everyone right around me to go back to the cells and grab blankets and pile them in front of the stairs. Quickly, we don't have much time!"

They sure as hell didn't. Two elevators started descending from the roof, which was the floor of the arena above, and the booming voice of the announcer became audible. "Now!" Kyven snapped, and that spurred them to action. A good couple dozen Arcans rushed past him and back into the paddock area, and Kyven bolted across the staging area to the stairs. They arrived with the blankets quickly after he got there, and he took their blankets and tossed them at the foot of the stairs. Once he got enough to sustain a fire, he channeled a blast of fire into them, causing them to erupt into instant, searing flame. More Arcans arrived, and they tossed the blankets onto the fire of their own volition. Kyven ran back out and whistled to get their attention, then urged them forward. "We'll empty the cages in the west passage as we move!" he barked. "We all escape together!"

Again, he was amazed that they obeyed him. He ordered larger Arcans to carry the injured, and they did as he commanded. He led nearly a hundred Arcans into the west quadrant, which was as similar series of open cages spread out along a large open area. These Arcans, however, weren't fighting Arcans. They were very old, or very young, or almost emaciated, they were so thin, or they looked ill. These were the fodder ... no. These were the food. They bought Arcans specifically to feed them to the fighters, and these Arcans were waiting for their turn to be thrown into a fighter's cage and ripped apart and eaten. Kyven set the tone by opening the nearest cage, holding a clearly elderly female raccoon Arcan, a female who didn't even have a collar on; that was how little regard they had for her. He reached his hand towards her, his expression gentle and reassuring. "Come, little mother, let's get you out of here and away from this hell," he told her.

She gave him a startled look, then burst into tears and collapsed against him. "Shaman, my prayers are answered!" she wailed. "The spirits favor us!"

"They favor us all, little mother," he told her, helping her out of the tiny cubicle, so small she couldn't even lay down in it ... and she was a small Arcan. "You, help our little mother," he commanded, pointing at a large, burly canine, one of the scarred fighters. He looked very wary, but he did take her hand and keep her close to his side.

There were shouts and commands threading to his ears from the staging area, and he turned to look. Men were piled up at the top of the stairs, trying to get down, but the choking smoke was driving them back. The blankets weren't set afire to block the passage, but to choke the stairwell with smoke, since the stairs drew the smoke up like a chimney. That smoke would buy them minutes, but minutes only. They had raised the elevators, and four men each were getting onto them to prepare to ride down to see what the hell was going on. "Men are about to come down the elevators!" he called. "Whoever has the pistols, guard the back! Shoot at them when you can get a clear look! Make them jump off the elevators!" He had to work fast, and he did so, almost running down the line, draining every occupied cage door, and the Arcans within wasted no time bursting out of the cages. To his surprise, the fighting Arcans told them to stay, not to run, repeating his orders to them. They obeyed mostly out of fear, for most of them knew they were sent here to die, sent here to be eaten by the very Arcans who now surrounded them. Kyven hadn't had time to tell them what was going on. He heard a series of shots behind him, as the Arcans with the pistols fired on the guards coming down on the elevators, but Kyven ran back up when he realized he could do something about it. He channeled fire once more, creating blazing balls of flame, and he hurled them at the elevators ... not at the men or the platforms, but at the ropes. His aim was unerring because it was his magic that guided them to their targets, and they exploded against the ropes and caused them to burst into immediate and furious flame.

He felt that one. Draining so many doors had actually began to tire him, and channeling fire was taxing for him, especially the way he had used it. He didn't have much left, so he had to get them out of here fast, and do it with a minimum of Shaman magic. But, his attack had the intended effect. The ropes on the left elevator snapped while it was still a good twenty rods in the air, and the four men on it shrieked as they plummeted to the ground. The men on the other elevator lunged for the ropes that weren't on fire, and two of them managed to grab them before that platform as well had the ropes on one side snap, sending two men to the sandy floor. Of the six men that had fallen, only two of them were moving with any degree of coordination, and both men dropped back to the sandy floor when Kyven's knives hit them. He abandoned his precious posts knives, leaving him with only one left as alarms started sounding up through those now empty holes in the ceiling of the staging area, where the last two men were trying to climb the ropes to get up to the top rather than drop down and face the free Arcans they could see below.

It took Kyven a few minutes to get the rest of the cages open, and he found himself looking at well over one hundred Arcans, most of them huge and scarred and looking anxious, the rest small and afraid. But he led them toward a large pair of doors, near which there were three cage wagons parked. Kyven had them help him get the doors open, and he used spirit sight to look around. Those upstairs hadn't quite figured out that the Arcans could escape yet, and since the customer entrance was on the north side, there wasn't anyone around. The device buried in the ground was inactive, and that meant that they were free to leave. "Alright," Kyven said, bending down and taking off his boots, then grabbing his foxhead medallion in his hand. He enacted its power, and many of the Arcans gasped or cried out when his bones turned to water, and his muscles and flesh and tissue flowed into a new form, as his head sprouted a muzzle and fox ears, as a tail tore through his black breeches and quickly grew fur, and his body changed until the shadow fox Arcan stood before them, eyes still glowing with emerald brilliance. He shook himself to rid his bones of that cold feeling, then regarded them with an authoritative expression. "Don't let anyone fall behind! We all escape together!" He doubted that was going to hold once they were out of this hall, but he didn't want those Arcans carrying the injured or helping the feeble just drop their burdens and run for the trees. But, to head off that kind of nonsense, he pointed at the same coyote he'd freed in the staging area. "You, lead them out. Run straight for the stand of pines there across the way, go about a minute in, then stop and wait. Understand?"

"But what about you, Shaman?" he asked immediately.

"I'll be bringing up the rear to protect us," he answered. "Now go! Quickly, we don't have much time!"

The coyote blinked, then turned and dropped down to all fours and bounded out into the ramped tunnel that led outside. The others quickly followed suit, the unburdened Arcans pulling well ahead of those helping others or carrying the injured. The Arcans tasked to help others and therefore slow down might have wanted to abandon their burdens and run, but the Shaman was behind them, running on his legs and looking back almost as often as he looked forward, his eyes glowing with the unmistakable radiance that marked him as a revered Shaman, and someone they would obey. With him behind them, they did his bidding and carried the wounded, and he protected them as they ran for the trees.

Kyven watched carefully for any sign of pursuit, but there was none. The Pens either didn't have the manpower to chase down all their Arcans, or they were afraid to tangle with the Shaman who had freed them. There were people looking in their direction, but they didn't see them for long, since Kyven stopped halfway across the grassy field upon which the Pens was situated, turned, and channeled that last of his strength to set fire to the grass. The grass wasn't overly dry, but it did catch fire, and that fire slowly began to spread as Kyven backed up, turned, and dropped to all fours to catch up with the trailing edge of the Arcans.

The coyote obeyed him, running about a minute into the trees and stopping. When he got there, coming up behind them, there were a lot of frayed nerves and animosity seething among the Arcans. The fighting Arcans were hostile towards one another, and the other Arcans were afraid of those they knew would eat them if given the chance. Kyven had to defuse this quickly, before Lightfoot and Lucky reached them. "Listen to me," he called, standing up and getting their attention. "Just leave it all in the Pens," he ordered. "None of you are going to fight each other, and none of you will ever eat the flesh of another Arcan again," he said with heat. "I know it's not easy to just abandon what kept you alive, but you're not fighting Arcans anymore. You are free Arcans, and free Arcans have a choice. You can choose to abandon the ways the humans forced on you and return to the ways of your people. It won't be easy, I won't deny that, but it all comes down to you deciding that you don't want to be what they made of you anymore. I won't make you choose what you want to be, but understand that so long as you are with me, you will obey me. And I absolutely forbid you to fight among yourselves. I absolutely forbid you to eat the flesh of your own kind. If you can't obey those two simple rules, well, there's a lot of forest out there, and you don't have to stay with me. But if you do stay with me, I'll take you to an army of Arcans that will feed you and protect you. They won't ask you to fight when they attack the humans, and they'll give you all the food you could want."

"But what if we want to fight?" a large bear asked.

"Then you may fight, but you won't fight each other," Kyven answered. "You'll fight the humans, and you'll be fighting for your freedom.

"Let me explain what's going on," he told them. "The Arcans have their own nation, far to the west of Noraam, and they are moving against the humans in the open now. We've raised an army of Arcans and sympathetic humans, and we're helping other humans who are opposing the Loremasters for their own reasons. While the Flaurens and the others fight to prevent the Loremasters from taking over Noraam, we will be fighting to free the Arcans from slavery. We hope that when this war is over, we take the Arcans back over the mountains and leave the human lands to the humans. They'll have to do their own work, not work the Arcans to death and reward you with nothing but a skinner's knife or a butcher's cleaver.

"I freed you because you deserved to be freed after everything the humans have done to you," he told them. "Yes, I'm hoping that some of you will join the army and fight for us, because the one thing the humans taught you was to fight, and you will do it well. But I won't expect you to fight. If you decide you won't raise your hand against another ever again, we will honor your decision and allow you to help us in ways other than fighting, such as foraging food for the army, or cooking, or helping pack and unpack the camp every time it moves and stops. We want you to be free, and part of being free is having the choice to do what you want, within reason. Outside of fighting with the other Arcans or the humans who help us and trying to eat each other, you basically have free rein on what you decide you want to do. Hell, you can even decide to walk out of this clearing and wash your hands of the whole deal, and I will not stop you. I will honor your decisions, so long as your decisions don't intrude on the two simple rules I intend to impose on you.

"All I ask is that you listen to me, and try to work together. I know that won't be easy, since I have no doubt the humans made some of you fight each other in the arena, but you have to start somewhere. I'm not the best leader in the world, but I can get you to someone who is a great leader, and bring you to a Shaman who can help you far more than I can.

"Now, understand one thing," he said, motioning to himself. "This is the disguise. I'm really human, I just own a device that allows me to take an Arcan shape for brief periods of time, because I can run much faster like this," he told them, releasing himself from the form. His bones against turned to icy water as he returned to his human self, and he shivered once he had completed the change. He dropped his boots and looked at them. "This is the real me. I'm human, but I am Shaman," he told them intensely. "I believe in everything the Arcan Shaman believe, and I will serve and protect you, because you need me. You are my little brothers and sisters, and I will be your Shaman if you let me. If me being human bothers any of you, say so now."

Nobody said a word. They all just gaped at him.

"Alright then," he said, sitting on the ground and starting on his boots. "Everyone rest for a few minutes. I want to check the injured before we move on, and we're also waiting for someone to join us."

Kyven did just that after he got his boots on, checking each of the twelve injured. He had to purge another infection from a short yet powerfully built, very rare wolverine Arcan, a breed almost unheard of outside of Haven, but outside of that, there was little he could do for any of them but bandage them, and all he had were his own clothes. By the time he checked Ebony, all the clothing he had left were his belt and breeches, and those had both legs ripped off to the thigh in order to fashion bandages for the injured. "I see the bleeding stopped, little sister," he said to her. "Our first stop will be at a river or creek so everyone can drink. I know you must be thirsty."

"I'll make it, Shaman," she said in a reverent tone. "And I can walk. They don't need to carry me."

"Alright, but only because we're not going very fast. I want to see if they're going to pursue us. I want to see how many soldiers they send out, so I can warn the army. We can easily outrun the soldiers, even with us carrying the injured, so really what we're doing is luring them out."

"I will walk for you, Shaman," she declared, deliberately getting to her feet, as if to prove it to him. He could see that her injured leg was trembling from the effort. "And I will fight for you."

"You will do nothing but heal," he told her, standing up and putting his hand on her shoulder, almost having to reach up to do so. "After you're whole, then you can do what you want to do. But until then, you are my responsibility, Ebony."

There was a commotion at the edge of camp, and Kyven heard growling. He rushed over there quickly when the two Lupans padded through the trees towards them, and Strider and the Arcans were right behind them. Lucky was actually riding Strider, and Lightfoot was leading the Equar. "Calm down!" he barked. "They're who we're waiting for! They're friends!" The pony-sized Lupans gave the fighting Arcans challenging looks, their tails low and their fangs slightly bared, but Kyven got right in front of them. "Sirra, Dauro, down," he barked, then kicked himself for using the names Lucky gave them. By the spirits, he'd never un-name them now!

"They are yours, Shaman?" a tiny little gray-furred mouse Arcan asked in a meek voice. She couldn't be more than three years old, not even having developed her adult breasts yet.

"They travel with me, but they are owned by no one," he answered her. "They are wild, little sister. Remember that before you think about petting one of them. They won't take kindly to your overture, but they won't hurt you so long as you leave them be."

She swallowed and nodded vigorously, taking a step back and partially behind him. He patted each Lupan on the neck fondly as he went past the two seated animals, then hugged Lightfoot. "Fire. Clever," she told him.

"Thank you. Any trouble?"

She gave him a flat look.

"Fair enough," he chuckled. "Alright, Lucky, off my Equar. You get to walk like everyone else, even me."

"Aww, he just got to where he'll let me ride him!" he protested.

Kyven gave him a slight smile. "Strider," he said expectantly.

Lucky squealed when Strider suddenly bucked, and the little cat sailed over the Equar's head and landed on his butt almost at Kyven's feet. "Good Equar," Kyven said with a nod.

"You cheater!" Lucky accused, which made Lightfoot laugh. That was noteworthy.

"I am a cheater, Lucky. I thought you were bright enough to figure that out by now," Kyven said mildly, which made Lightfoot snort, then laugh again. "Lightfoot, which way to the nearest isolated water where we can have a short rest?"

She pointed west. "Half an hour."

"Alright, can you scout ahead? We'll start moving in a few minutes."

She nodded and bounded away. The two Lupans got up and followed her silently. Lucky moved to follow, but Kyven put a hand across his chest. "Stay with Strider."

"Yes, Kyven," he nodded, going back and pointing his finger in Strider's unrepentant face. "I'll get you for that! That hurt!"

"Children never learn," Kyven said under his breath as he turned back to the Arcans. "We'll be moving in a few minutes, and going to where there's water and where we can rest a little more. So get ready," he announced.

Kyven rode herd with the Arcans as they moved, not at a run but still faster than humans could easily walk, a ground-eating gait which Kyven had no trouble holding. He moved through the Arcans constantly, touching shoulders, asking if they were alright, answering questions, because he knew that he was dealing with highly volatile Arcans that needed almost constant reinforcement, couldn't be allowed to forget for a second that a Shaman was among them and watching them. Some of them were probably obeying him because he was human, some because he was a Shaman, and others because he freed them, but so long as he kept them moving and prevented any fighting, he was going in the right direction. Lightfoot left a trail for him to follow, and he kept the coyote on that trail, allowing him to lead the disorganized mob of Arcans as they moved through a stand of sea pines left up to separate Cheston from the plantations and hamlets west. Lightfoot expertly maneuvered around open areas, so a walk that was only a minar long if they went straight was actually more like three. Eventually, however, they reached a small clearing that had a spur of the Cheston River running through it, a bypass just off the main river that split from it and rejoined, forming a small island just off the bank. Kyven had them all drink and sit down to rest, and also to gather themselves and enjoy a little time just being out of that hellhole. Kyven had to feed these Arcans, and that was high on his list of priorities; if he left them hungry, fights were sure to break out.

But first things first. He took the talker off Strider's saddle, which had been taken off the Equar so he could have a break, and hit the button, and waited for the reply. "Danvers," the general said after a short pause.

"General, I have the Pens Arcans," he answered.

"Excellent! How many did you rescue?"

"Between fighters and the Arcans they were going to feed to them, about a hundred and forty."

"Where are you?"

"West of Cheston, along the river," he answered. "They're in generally good shape, but I have about twelve who are too injured to move about on their own. Despite that, we can still move. Where do you want us?"

"Bring them to the army," he answered. "Turn due north after you get across the river, but make sure you're about five or six minars west of Cheston before you start north, they have patrols and scouts out. Kyven, if you cross any farms or plantations, do what you can to free the Arcans off them."

"Alright, that we can do. I need to feed these Arcans anyway, we can just plunder the farms for livestock."

"Don't let them go hungry," Danvers warned.

"I already planned for that, General," he answered, whistling loudly. The Lupans, who had been standing near Strider, trotted towards him along with the Equar. "Lightfoot! Lucky!" he boomed.

"That was loud, Kyven," Danvers complained.

He chuckled. "Sorry. I need to get moving, General. We'll be moving north in a little bit."

"I'll have scouts out looking for you."

"Alright. See you sometime tomorrow."

"Good luck out there, Shaman."

"You too, General."

His cat Arcans reached him just after Strider and the Lupans reached him, and he knelt down and cleared the ground and started drawing the riverbank. A couple of the fighting Arcans also gathered close as Lightfoot reached him and knelt. "Alright, we have our orders," he told her. "Danvers wants us to bring the Arcans to the army. He told me to swing about six minars west of Cheston, cross the river, then turn north. He also told me to free any Arcan I come across from farms or hamlets. So, this is what we're going to do," he began, pointing at the crude map. "Lightfoot. I need a fording spot west of the river. Can you find either a ford or a bridge west of us?"

She nodded.

"Lucky, we need food before we start out. I don't want the Arcans to move hungry. Saddle Strider, and since he'll let you ride him, take him out and look for signs of deer or any plantation, village, or farm that's close to this location, and try to get at least a rough idea of how many humans are on them so we know what we're up against if we have to raid them for supplies. Do not let them see you."

"I'll be careful, Kyven," he answered.

"There's a ranch that way, Shaman," one of the fighting Arcans announced, pointing southwest, a very large but very young canine, who had no scars on him. "I worked on the plantation beside it before I was sold, when I was a child. They sold me to the Pens not long ago."

"Ranch? As in cattle?"

"Sheep, actually, but meat is meat," the canine answered.

"Lucky, go find it."

"I'm on my way," he said, picking up Strider's saddle and rushing over to the Equar.

"I'll go with him, Shaman. I'll know where it is when we get close enough for me to recognize the landmarks the humans talked about," the canine offered.

Kyven nodded. "Be careful," he cautioned. "Strider, don't harass this one," Kyven ordered, pointing at the canine.

"He's savage?"

"No, he's overly playful," Kyven said dryly, which made the canine laugh.

"Is there a ford?" Lightfoot asked the canine.

"I can't tell you that, I'd never been off my plantation before I was sold," he said with a shrug.

"I'm going," she said to Kyven.

"Be careful," he said, which earned him a flat look and a snort in reply.

"What can we do to help, Shaman?" Ebony asked, who had limped over.

"Actually, if any of you feel up to it, you can check the woods around us. I'm sure the Chestoners are searching for us, so they may have scouts out. If you see a scout, do not kill him unless he's coming right towards us. Run back to me and let me know, and I'll go out and deal with him."

"We can take a human, Shaman," a large bear said indignantly.

"I'm sure you can, but your time to fight is over, my large friend," Kyven told him simply. "I won't make you fight anymore. I'll defend this whole group by myself if I have to, because you have earned the right to have someone else protect you after everything you've been through."

"I would fight anyway," the bear said with simple dignity. "I will scout."

"I'll go," another called.

"I will!" said another.

In about ten seconds, Kyven had nearly twenty fighting Arcans willing to scout, including Ebony, whom he rejected. He told them what to do and sent them out, warning them to report back to the group every ten minutes whether they saw someone or not, just in case the group needed to move so they wouldn't be left behind. He continued to move through the Arcans, with Ebony and both Lupans following him, reassuring them and gently reminding them that he was there, which kept them on good behavior. He spread quite a few blessings around and checked the bandages he'd put on a few of them, making sure they hadn't slipped. Lightfoot returned quickly, bounding up to him and noticing that the fighting Arcans gave her a curious look, but also respectful. She knelt down immediately and used her claw to dig a furrow in the grass. "We're here," she said, and she traced a few curves in the grass, plowing up dirt. "There's a bridge here," she said, tapping the end of her line. "About four minars upriver."

"Good work," he told her with a smile, patting her shoulder. "Go back there and watch it. The Chestoners might try to occupy it or set a scout there to see if we show up. If we don't show up by sunset, come find me."

She nodded, then got up and bounded away. He went back to checking on the Arcans, spending about a half an hour making rounds and keeping things calm, until Lucky and the canine returned to the camp. "It's about five minars that way, Kyven," Lucky said from the saddle, pointing southwest. "There's only like five humans on the ranch right now."

"How many Arcans?"

"On the sheep ranch, none," he answered. "But there's a cotton plantation right beside it, I saw a bunch of them working the fields. They looked like they were getting ready to go back to their houses for the night."

"My old plantation," the canine told him. "If you try to free those Arcans, they'll shoot at you, Shaman."

"I'll deal with that," he said. "Alright, how long will it take to get there if we avoid the humans?"

"About two hours if we go slow. There was a bunch of farmland we crossed, and didn't see anyone out on it and only about half of it had any crops or cotton on it."

"Alright. Good work, you two," Kyven said, patting the canine on the shoulder.

"I was called Jumper on the plantation, but they decided to call me Doomjaw at the Pens," the canine said.

"Jumper is a much better name," Kyven smiled. "Crops, you say? Was any of it edible?" he asked Lucky.

"Well, one field was full of little stunted shrub-like plants," he answered. "The other, I dunno what it was. A bunch of green stalks with little leaves."

"We'll see when we get there. It might be edible."

"I'd love to eat a plant again," Jumper sighed.

"We'll see." He turned. "Alright, everyone get ready to go, we're leaving as soon as the scouts all get back!"

As the group moved, it had scouts in front of it now. Five fighting Arcans were scouting just in front of the column as it made its way southwest, making sure they weren't ambushed in the trees and checking out the open areas when they reached them to ensure there were no humans. They crossed the first farm field, which was left fallow, but the second one was indeed filled with a bunch of small, wide little plants that had no visible shoots, berries, or fruits. Kyven knelt down and pulled one up, and chuckled at what dangled among the roots. "Peanuts," he said. "The plants are peanuts!" he shouted. "Pull them up as we go by if you like them, but don't push each other and don't stop, eat on the move! There's plenty for everyone!"

The group ripped a few hundred peanut plants out of the field as it moved, and most of the Arcans nibbled on raw peanuts as they moved through a narrow strip of trees and to another farm. This was the other field Lucky mentioned, and it was filled with carrots. The group stripped quite a few of those as well, but that wasn't anywhere near enough to satisfy them.

After two hours of careful movement, they reached the ranch Lucky and Jumper had scouted. It wasn't that large, but there were about seventy sheep in a broad fenced pasture, with a simple house and two large barns at the extreme southeast side of the land. There were only two men watching the seventy sheep, one on a horse and the other sitting on an old log that looked to be a fallen tree they'd never removed. On the far side of the pasture was the cotton plantation. Kyven quickly formulated a plan for dealing with this, for this was clearly a family ranch and the five humans were the family that ran it. Kyven was basically about to ruin them, but there was no help for it. His Arcans needed food, and this was the closest and most easily available food.

"Wait here," Kyven told them from the fence. "Let me deal with those two humans, then feel free to go after the sheep. Just mind one thing," he said forcefully. "You will share. There's more than enough for all of us. If I see even one fight, I'm gonna come kick your butts. Understood?"

They nodded or replied.

"Give me one of the impact rods."

One was passed to him, and he checked it and realized that it, like most of its kind, had two settings, one to stun and one to kill. The rod he'd pulled on those men, out of the handler's sheath, had been set to kill, and those men died because of it. He set the rod to stun only, then kicked Lucky off Strider, mounted him, and jumped him over the fence, galloping towards the two shepherds. The two men watched him approach nervously, and as he got close he saw that neither man was armed. However, he didn't expect the reaction he got when he got there. One of the men looked at him, then gasped and went for the belt knife at his waist.

"It's the man on the wanted poster!" the younger, dark-haired man blurted. "The murderer!"

The wanted posters ... he'd forgotten about those. His face was stamped on a whole lot of them, but he'd thought they were all far north, near Avannar.

"Put the knife down, son," Kyven warned as he drew his last posts knife.

"Leave this place, stranger," the older man called, wielding his herding stick like a fighting staff.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," he answered. "I'm afraid I have to take your sheep. I'm sorry I have to, but I have no choice."

"You're not takin' our sheep, murderer!" the younger man screamed, lunging forward.

Kyven didn't have to do a thing. Strider knocked the young man down with a quick strike of his foreleg, sending him sprawling, and Kyven raised his knife to be visible to the older man, in a throwing position. The man glared at him, then paled and took a few steps back as he looked past the Equar. Kyven looked back and realized that ten of the fighting Arcans were barreling at him, and they looked furious. They'd seen the young man attack him, and they were rushing to defend him!

Kyven quickly interposed Strider between the men and the Arcans, keeping an eye on the older man. "Stop!" Kyven shouted. "I'm alright!"

"He attacked you, Shaman!" the leader of them, which surprisingly was Ebony, said in outrage. How she ran so far, so fast, on an injured leg was beyond him.

"We'll kill them!" another of them shouted in fury.

"Stand down!" Kyven barked. "I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself!" He turned towards the two men. The young one was just getting back to his feet, and the older one was gaping at him in shock, because Kyven's eyes were now open to the spirits. Kyven was starting to understand what Clover complained about. The Arcans were extremely protective over the Shaman, and sometimes it made it hard to do their jobs because of so many well-meaning hands getting into their business. "Now go eat," he told them. "And keep an eye on the cotton plantation, the men over there may decide to interfere. If you see them coming, herd the Arcans towards the ranch house."

Ebony looked enraged, and she was all but shaking. But she nodded, a little stiffly, and the others followed her as she turned and started towards the now nervous sheep. Kyven whistled, then pointed at the sheep, and the other Arcans boiled out of the woods by the fence. The terrified bleats of the sheep were cut brutally short as the caged animals had nowhere to run from the hungry predators, and it only took a few minutes for every sheep to end up dead on the grass, already being eaten. The smaller Arcans came out slowly and timidly, but the fighting Arcans made no obvious moves when they sat by their carcass, and allowed them to share.

That was all Kyven needed to see.

"Alright, gentlemen, let's get you safely out of the way," Kyven told the two dumbfounded men. "We don't want anyone getting hurt, because I think you have an idea of what they'll do to you if you lay a finger on me."

The older man visibly paled, then he dropped his staff like it was a live snake.

Kyven herded the shepherds to their house, and was right when he figured it was a ranch family. The other three humans present were a mother and her two young children, who came out of the house to see what was going on as Kyven approached, but then ran back into the house when they realized the reality of the situation. Kyven kept an eye on them, and saw the female barricade herself and her two kids in a small root cellar. She was holding something in her hands, which Kyven guessed was a musket. "Go on in the house, and you'd better call out to your wife or she may shoot you. Stay in there until we're on our way, you'll be safe. Oh, and don't get any bright ideas," he warned. "If you shoot any of them, I'll kill you. If you kill me, they will rip you apart and probably eat you, and you know they will."

That threat held the family in check. The two men entered the house and called out to the woman, and then entered the cellar. Kyven then entered the house after them and found the trap door down to the cellar. He took water from a nearby bucket and tossed it on the door, then he used Shaman magic to flash freeze it before the water could drain away. He did that two more times until the ice on the door was over a finger thick, and he left them after taking the other two muskets they had in their house. The ice on the floor and door would effectively seal them in until it melted, and that wouldn't be until this evening.

Kyven left the Arcans to eat as he took on the appearance of the older man, jumped the fence, and took care of the cotton plantation. His illusion allowed him to get close enough to the three startled workers, who were indeed gathering to do something about the Arcans overrunning their neighbor, with the idea to kill enough to scatter them and catch as many as they could to sell given how much Arcans were worth now. Kyven's illusion let him get right among the men as he pretended to be in a panic, and once he was right up with them, he attacked. The first man went down to the impact rod before the other men could even comprehend what was going on, for Kyven still wore the face of their neighbor, and they seemed utterly stunned that he would attack them. But they recovered enough to fight back, and when they did that, Kyven resorted to his shadow powers; Kyven was no brawler when he didn't have the upper hand, exploiting every advantage to win a fight in the easiest manner possible and with the least risk to himself, which was the way of his totem. He created a cloud of shadow around the entire area, and the men could no longer see him. The two men fired wildly, blindly with their muskets, one man grazing his friend with a musket ball just over his elbow, and Kyven laid into the nearest man with his impact rod, never getting in front of a man with a musket, and he was agile enough and had fast enough reflexes to evade the muskets and knock out the man holding it with the impact rod. When there was only one man left, Kyven struck his wrist with the rod, numbing his hand and making him drop his musket, then he tripped him and drove him to the ground even as he dismissed the shadows. Kyven leaned down and grabbed him by his work shirt, his eyes glowing with a baleful green aura, then hauled him completely off the ground and held him aloft, his feet dangling nearly a rod off the ground. "How many more men run this plantation?" Kyven demanded, glaring up at the man with his eyes open to the spirits.

"Go to hell, you freak!"

"Then face your fear," he said, meeting the man's eyes and channeling the spell that made him see his greatest fear.

The man's eyes widened, and his skin literally turned gray as his expression turned almost to wax, drooping down from his skull. He started trembling violently, his stare vacant, and then he shrieked, a blood-curdling scream that would make any child immediately hide under his bed. Kyven ended the spell and hoisted the man up even higher, and the man blinked and began to hyperventilate, even as he wet himself. "Answer my question or spend the rest of eternity staring that in the face," he said in a cold, sinister tone.

"Just one!" he said in a terrified voice. "He's working the other field! The rest went to go soldier in Cheston!"

"Any women? Any children?"

"At the plantation house! The master has a wife and two kids!"

A dark shape stalked up behind Kyven, and he glanced back to see Ebony. The bandage over her wound was dark with blood, no doubt opening it with that dash towards him earlier, and she looked over his shoulder and at the man he was holding. Her maw was also bloody from her meal. Kyven dropped the man unceremoniously, causing him to all but curl up on a fetal position, and he looked back at her. "Watch them," he told her. "Actually, hold on, I have a better idea," he said, advancing on the nearest cluster of slave Arcans, field workers who were all nude, staring at him with amazed eyes. He advanced on a little ferret that couldn't be more than four, a very cute little female, and smiled. "Let me have that, little one. You don't need it now," he told her, reaching out and blocking the crystal's power, shunting it to himself without actively draining it, which caused it to stop working momentarily. He unlatched it and pulled it from her neck. She put her hands on her neck in awe, then threw herself against him, hugging him tightly.

"Shaman!" she squealed in delight. "Oh, bless me, Shaman, bless me!"

Kyven was basically swarmed by the slave Arcans, and they reached out to him, touching him, begged for his blessing. He held them off a little, long enough to take off their collars, and they followed him as he returned to the men. He knelt down and grabbed one of the unconscious ones by the hair, pulled his head up, and locked the collar around his neck. "How are these set?" he asked the slaves.

"We can't leave the plantation," one of them answered. "And they can punish us with them."

"Are they set to punish you if you attack someone?"

"Only humans. They sometimes made us fight each other and they'd watch," a raccoon answered.

"But they're set to punish actively? If someone says a certain word?"

"Yes, Shaman."

Kyven grinned ominously as he locked a collar on the other senseless man. "Good. Would one of you kindly stay with them, and if they wake up and misbehave, give them some of what they've given you?"

"You just made an old woman happy, Shaman," one of the older Arcans said, a canine female with grizzled, gray fur under her chin. "I'll do it."

"Ebony, stay here and protect our honored mother," Kyven ordered. "And be here to deal with these men if the collars don't stop them."

"Can I kill them?" she asked eagerly.

"If the collars won't stop them, yes," he answered. He picked up the musket that hadn't been fired, and then took on the illusion of the man he's frightened into insensibility with his magic. "Now let me go find that other man and deal with him, then we'll plunder the plantation house for supplies, free the Arcans, and move on."

It took him only about two minutes to find the last man, since he was riding a horse towards them as Kyven jogged towards the manor house. He rushed to dismount, and then he was on the ground unconscious when Kyven konked him with the impact rod, which had been hidden by the illusion. He took the man's pistol, musket, and what looked like a controller of some sort for the collars, put a collar on him, threw him over his horse, and led it towards the plantation house. The master of the plantation, a middle-aged man wearing finery similar to Arthur Ledwell's, stepped out onto the back porch as Kyven walked the horse into the house compound, with the house, a small smithy, two barns, and a small cotton mill for baling cotton at the far end. The Arcans lived in rude huts along the fringe of the compound on the east side, and his spirit sight showed a woman, a girl, a boy, and three female Arcans within the main house. "What's going on, Smythe?" the man demanded. "We heard musket shots! Is Gerry alright?"

"Unconscious," Kyven answered in Smythe's voice. Kyven cocked the musket and then raised it on the man. "Now take that pistol out of your sash."

"Smythe! What on earth are you doing?" the man demanded.

"I'm not Smythe," he said in his own voice, then he dismissed the illusion. The man gasped and stared at him, then he paled when he looked at Kyven's glowing eyes. "Now remove your pistol, sir. Slowly."

He did so, carefully taking the pistol out of his sash, and setting it on the rail of the porch, cleverly keeping it within reach. The man's eyes widened as he looked behind Kyven, but Kyven didn't dare take his eyes off the man while that pistol was within his reach. Kyven turned his hand to shadow and reached out with it, his hand stretching impossibly long on his wrist, then it wrapped around the pistol and pulled it back to him. He stuffed the pistol in his belt quickly, then he put his hand back on the barrel of the musket and dared glance behind him. The Lupans were there, padding up to him, until they flanked him on both sides. They both sat down sedately, staring up at the man with baleful amber eyes.

"I wondered where you two wandered off to," he told them absently. "Now then, sir, let's get you inside. I'm going to lock you and your family in the cellar so you won't get in our way, and so long as you do nothing, you'll be left healthy and well."

"Just like my men?" he asked harshly.

"They're all alive. They'll have big headaches when they wake up, but they're alive. But first things first," Kyven said, lowering the musket and reaching for the saddle. The man looked to be pondering running into the house, but Kyven vaulted up over the rail of his porch so fast it startled him. Kyven snapped a collar around the man's neck, and he looked suddenly outraged when he reached up with his hand and felt what was there.

"It will keep you out of trouble," Kyven said mildly.

The wife was hysterical and the girl crying, but the teenage boy glared daggers at Kyven when he invaded their house, rounded them up, and put collars on all of them. He had them handy because the three house servants had collars on. He had the servants drag the man off the horse into the kitchen, where the door to the cellar was located. They dumped him onto the ground, two cat Arcans and a mouse, all three of them nude; in fact, there wasn't a dressed Arcan anywhere on the plantation, which was unusual for Cheston. "Put your outrage back in your pants, boy," Kyven told the teenager in a steady voice, dryly amused by his hateful stare. "Be thankful I only kill when I have no choice, else you'd be dead."

"Lying bastard," the boy spat.

"Sirra, Dauro!" Kyven called. The boy's eyes went wild when two massive, pony-sized canines padded in through the door, taking up a significant amount of kitchen as they stood near to him. "My two friends will make sure you don't get any bright ideas. If you come back up these stairs without me, they'll kill you. That's your one and only warning, people. Now, down the stairs, all of you."

Kyven went down into the cellar behind them, and as they stood in a nervous group in the middle, Kyven cast about with his eyes, making sure they had no crystals or alchemical devices down here, nothing they could use to call for help. He didn't care if they had muskets, because there were no windows down here and thus they had no way to shoot at anyone except each other. Kyven left them there and dragged the unconscious man down and dumped him on the floor. "You'll get the other men down here when I drag them over," he told them. "You just stay down here and stay out of the way. At sunset, you're welcome to leave the cellar."

"What are you going to do?" the wife asked in a trembling voice.

"Free your Arcans, take every weapon we can find, take all the food we can find, and then leave," he answered immediately.

"You're a rebel!"

"I'm a Shaman," he answered, staring at her with his glowing eyes.

"Impossible! Only Arcans are tainted by the devil!" she gasped.

"Get ready to rewrite your theology, lady," Kyven said dryly, raising a hand and sending an arc of electricity along his fingers, which made her gasp and flinch. "I won't be the only human Shaman you see. The spirits have decided that the human race needs Shaman, and so here I am. And there will be more after me," he declared simply.

Kyven left them in the cellar, jamming a chair against the door to keep them in there temporarily. The three house Arcans gazed at him in adulation, then the mouse stepped up to him. "Shaman, will you bless me?" she asked in a meek voice.

"Of course, little one," he smiled, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving her the ritual benediction. He blessed the other two, then put his hands on each of the cat's shoulders. "Now listen. I know you three know everything there is to know about this house," he said, to which they nodded. "I want you to gather up every weapon and alchemical device in this house you know about and put them out on the back porch. You also need to gather up all the food. Now, since this is a cotton plantation, where do they keep the sling pouches for harvest time?"

"In the barn, Shaman," one of the cats answered.

"Good. You, go find the weapons," he said, looking at the gray tabby. "You start collecting the food," he told the mouse. "You go get the slings and pile them on the back porch so we can carry the food away," he told the brown and red spotted cat. "I'll send some Arcans to help you as soon as I can. When they get here, tell them what to do, okay?"

"Yes, Shaman!" they said enthusiastically, and they rushed off to do their jobs.

Kyven had the men dragged to the plantation and tossed in the cellar, and they got to work. Kyven first sealed the door with ice as he had done with the sheep ranchers, then he went out around the plantation and gathered up all the Arcans, freed them, and told them that they would be coming with his rag-tag band as it sought to join the main army. He gathered them up at the main house and put them to work as the fighting Arcans both helped and also kept watch, protecting the host as it systematically stripped the plantation. Kyven took everything, and in scorched earth tactics, what he could not use but could be used against his group, he destroyed. The wagons were the perfect example of that. He couldn't take the wagons, but those wagons might be used in the war effort against the Arcans, so he broke all the wheels on both wagons and took the horses. He used every saddle in the barn, but four of the horses were purely meant to draw wagons, so he was four saddles short. That wasn't a real problem, though. The injured Arcans capable of riding were put on the horses so the fighting Arcans didn't have to carry them, but it still left him with six Arcans that had to be carried. One of the plantation field Arcans came up with an idea of putting them in slings carried by the draft horses, and that idea worked fairly well. They fashioned slings out of canvas and put one on each side of a draft horse, then lashed them down so they weren't jostled all over the place. They were like little hammocks, and the Arcan that built them using some sticks and rope had done a good job.

But there was also the matter of sacking the plantation. Kyven had the Arcans strip it of virtually everything, even the clothes of the children, which were packed into slings that would be carried by the Arcans. They looted six muskets, three pistols, no alchemical weapons, and several utility alchemical devices such as spotlights and firestarters. Kyven handed out the weapons mainly to the plantation Arcans, the smaller ones that might need a weapon, but he made sure to fashion a sheath for the impact rod and keep it on his hip. The weapon seemed to suit him, since he could use it either lethally or non-lethally, and it didn't take much training to whack someone with a stick. Kyven was no fencer, no fighter, and the ease of use of the weapon was perfect for him.

He took stock after the looting was done. He'd freed 31 Arcans from the plantation, which swelled the ranks of his little army significantly. All of them were going to travel with him, stay with the Shaman, but Kyven did notice that about a dozen of the fighting Arcans had slunk off during the looting, taking what they could get and running away. Kyven didn't stop them, nor did he have any anger towards them. That was their choice, and he would allow them to make it. It still left him with about 80 fighting Arcans, not including the injured, and nearly 80 smaller Arcans, both the plantation workers and those that were fated to be fed to the fighters. His group had looted enough foodstuffs to last his group for about a day, and that was all they'd need to reach the army. He checked the injured as they were loaded into the slings, helped the others mount, and then knelt down and peeled back the makeshift bandage on Ebony's leg. She allowed him to do so, hissing slightly under her breath as the bandage pulled away some scabbing. "I'd really rather you ride, Ebony," he told her as he made sure the wounds had more or less stopped bleeding after she reopened them, then tied the remains of his waistcoat back around her leg.

"I will walk, Shaman," she told him simply. "I will walk with you."

He gave her a look. "I think I've proved that I don't need a nanny, Ebony. I may not be as good at fighting as you and the others, but I cheat quite a lot."

She gave him a completely unashamed look. "I won't let anyone touch you, Shaman," she declared adamantly.

Kyven reached out with one hand and deliberately poked his finger into his other forearm. "I do believe you have just failed, Ebony," he said dryly. She gave him a startled look, then actually laughed.

"You meant it when you said you cheat."

"Outrageously," he drawled, standing up.

Leading Strider and with Lucky again walking, and with Ebony right beside him, Kyven started them out. Fighters scouted ahead as he showed them which way to go, and more fighters watched their backtrail for pursuit, protecting the column as it moved. Kyven allowed Lucky and Strider to lead, and he again roamed through the host, allaying fears, keeping the fighting Arcans calm and reassured, distributing blessings almost every time he turned around, often blessing the same Arcan three or four times. It took them nearly an hour to get to the bridge, where he had them come to a stop as he called Lightfoot in. She bounded up and rose up on her feet, then leaned forward and nuzzled him briefly. "Clear," she told him simply.

"Good work," he told her, patting her on the shoulder. "Go help the scouts. I'm sure they need to learn the trick of moving quietly, and I know you know the way to the army."

She gave him a scathing look to told him she believed just that.

They picked up the pace after they got across the bridge, for Lightfoot knew where they were going and guided the column. She left signs for Lucky and Lucky followed them, and the massive Equar was the undeniable leader of the disorganized pack of moving Arcans, many of them weighed down by their cotton picker slings laden with food and supplies for the army. Kyven had Lightfoot avoid the human settlements and instead try to lead them to and through isolated plantations and farmsteads, which caused their population to expand as they moved. Kyven sacked three more farms and two more plantations as they moved, farms that were critically undermanned because many of the hands were in Cheston to be part of the army, and that let Kyven and his Arcans more or less just march in and take over. Kyven was careful not to kill anyone, taking over every farm as he took over the first one, just riding in using illusions and distracting the hands long enough to ambush them at close range. Kyven had to actually start leaving things behind, though he denied them to the enemy by destroying them, and every farm they left had a bonfire burning out in a field where food, supplies, and possible resources that might be confiscated by the Chestoners to use against the Arcans was destroyed.

Those fires more or less led the response right to his mob of Arcans. At sunset, as they rested, The spotted cat bounded in with two others and sought him out. "There's a bunch of humans on horses coming up behind us, Shaman," he reported.

"Are they armed?"

"I think so. I didn't get a good look."

Kyven stood up from checking the nasty wounds on the side of a male bear, one of his injured. "Alright, good work, little brother. Stay here, and make sure you keep a very tight rein on all the horses. They're going to be very scared in just a few minutes."

"You're going to go fight them alone?" the cat gasped.

"I'm not going to fight them at all. And they're not going to fight either if they're chasing after their horses."

"How are you going to do that, Shaman?" Ebony asked.

"Magic," he said with a malicious smile. "Wait here. I'll be right back."

Moving with swiftness and grace that looked more Arcan than human, Kyven ghosted back behind them, towards the road they'd just crossed not long ago. He could hear the men after pausing to listen, about a half a minar away from the sound of it, the sound of trotting horses and the jingle of spurs and metal and the slap of leather on horseflesh. There were certainly a lot of them to be making that much noise, an expedition to corral the escaped Arcans that they knew were nearby, since they'd left a trail of burning pyres behind them to mark their path.

This would work. This was a forested area between plantations, about two hundred rods of woods that marked the boundary between the holdings of two different families, which weren't uncommon through most of the southern and central marches of Noraam. Kyven dredged his memory and recalled an image, and then worked meticulously to build that image in his mind in exacting, ultimate detail. This illusion had to be perfect, it had to have so much substance that it would terrify the horses, and that meant that he had to build it and channel it with absolute perfection. When he absolutely every single detail in his mind, he built that image into a spell and beseeched the fox for her blessing, which she granted with sadistic approval. She certainly approved of this trick, since it was perfectly within her nature.

Behind him, a truly monstrous figure slowly swirled into view, a huge, shaggy-furred monstrosity with a narrow head and claws as long as a man's leg on its forepaws, whose back topped off nearly fifteen rods off the ground. It had two white streaks running side by side down its broad back, and a large, bushy tail where those two white streaks merged to a single white band. Glowing red eyes glared out from that small head, and rows of deadly teeth were visible when it opened its huge mouth. It was a Wolveran, the very image of the one Kyven had seen, and it was one of the most feared and ferocious monsters in all of Noraam. The Arcans stayed far away from them, and even the humans on this side of the Smoke Mountains knew about these savage marauders, for they were known to cross the mountains and attack settlements. They were vicious, single-minded ravagers so deadly that no one in their right minds stayed within a minar of one.

The illusion was perfect. It was so perfect, it even had a smell, a musky, strong odor that assaulted Kyven's nose, a smell he knew personally and was able to weave into this illusion, and a smell that might panic the horses in his group if they caught it on the breeze. "Alright, boy, let's go scare the shit out of the Chestoners," he told the illusion. He steeled himself and aligned his mind to accept what he saw in front of himself as real, as totally real, then he reached out and grabbed a shaggy tuft of its fur.

Then, methodically, he climbed up on top of his illusion, spreading his legs wide across its broad back and leaning down. He got a firm grip in its shaggy fur, then kicked the illusion with his feet.

The Wolveran illusion started shuffling forward, but doing it quietly, making almost no noise, but leaving behind very real footprints. So complete was the illusion, so detailed, so instilled with substance, that it was solid to the touch and had real weight. The Wolveran shambled along the wood-flanked road on quiet feet, as the sound of the army got louder and louder, then it hunkered down at the start of a turn in the road and waited.

When the first of the horses appeared coming around the bend, two scouts searching for signs of the army as their horses walked forward slowly, the men stood no chance. While maintaining his illusion, Kyven exhausted himself almost completely by blasting the men and their horses with killing cold, killing them instantly and literally freezing the horses in mid-stride. One of them toppled over sideways, its foreleg breaking off its frozen body and the rider atop it shattering like a statue, while the other horse shuddered, wobbled slightly, and then came to an eerie, silent rest to become a living statue of frozen flesh. Kyven urged the illusion forward, past the dead scouts, then urged it to a shambling trot. When the main body of the Cheston men came out of the twilight gloom, about a hundred of them all mounted and carrying muskets, riding in two columns with three men out front, who had to be the commanders. Kyven had his illusion surge forward and give that shrieking cry which was undoubtedly a Wolveran, a growling, throaty cry that any man with any experience in the forest knew and feared. The men sawed their reins to stop their horses, and the men in front's eyes widened when a Wolveran burst out of the darkening trees ahead, charging them at full bore!

Few men could stand up in the face of that kind of pure terror, for the Wolveran's glowing red eyes bored into any man who dared look into them, promising agonizing death. They were the eyes of pure evil, and no man could hold that gaze for long. The ground under the horse's hooves literally shook as the immense monster charged them with a low, shuffling galloping gait, its short legs rolling under it yet still barreling at them with surprising speed. The men reacted as Kyven expected. The horses also reacted as he expected. The men were indecisive and fearful, but the horses started shying and prancing, sensing a deadly predator nearby, feeling the ground shake under them, but not quite close enough for them to make out in the gloom yet.

"Wolveran!" one of the man screamed in fear, and that just about did it. Kyven had the illusion shriek again just as the commander tried to have his men open fire, drowning out his command as the man drew his own musket. The commander leveled it at the illusion, and to his credit, he fired. The musket ball disappeared into the shaggy expanse of the Wolveran's fur, and though it passed through the illusion harmlessly, the man couldn't tell that, could only see that his shot didn't even make the monster flinch. Kyven had the illusion open its maw to show them its deadly teeth, some longer than a man's hand and sporting fangs that could completely impale a man. The illusion then got close enough for the horses to see and smell, and that caused them to panic. Horses had the sense not to be on the business end of a Wolveran's jaws. Several more men sent wild, disorganized shots towards the illusion, further panicking the horses with the loud explosions, and then they all scattered in every direction.

The commander stared down the maw of the Wolveran, then turned his panicked horse at the last instant and scrambled out of the way. He gurgled and fell out of his saddle, however, when Kyven's last posts knife sank into his neck, severing his artery. Blood boiled out of the wound in spurts as he stiffened and then toppled out of the saddle. He then raised his pistol and shot at one of the other men that were in the lead, but he missed. The men didn't seem to care about the man on the Wolveran's back, attacking them, because all their attention was taken up by the Wolveran. His Wolveran was scattering the now terrified men and their panicked horses as it charged into the throng of them, screeching and growling and snapping its huge jaws at anything that was even remotely close. Some men tried to level their muskets at the illusion, but the panicked horses made it impossible for them to line up a shot. Many horses bucked off their riders and raced away in any direction that did not take it closer to the Wolveran, and only about half of those horses had riders. The men on the ground scrambled to their feet and ran away, completely disorganized and terrified despite the shouting of one of the men in front, trying to rally the men to fight the monster. But Kyven had approached them in the darkness and used their surprise to then terrorize them into a complete breakdown of discipline.

Where Kyven had missed with the pistol, he didn't miss with Shaman magic. It pretty well completely exhausted him after the use of magic over the day and the demanding attack he had unleashed against the scouts, but he channeled lightning against the man trying to get control of the men, lightning that literally made his head explode in a shower of bone and gore. He had to grit his teeth to maintain the illusion of the Wolveran, his blood burning and pounding in his ears from his exhaustion, but that explosion and the sudden smell of blood in the air finished off the horses. The few that the men were keeping under control turned and bolted, completely panicked, and those men that managed to stay in their saddles could only hang on for dear life. The men who had been unseated scattered into the farmland, trampling cotton plants in their mad dash to get away from the savage monstrosity. Kyven had the Wolveran rise up on its hind legs and bellow loudly, which allowed him to slide off its back, then he quietly went about gathering up the muskets the men had dropped as he had his Wolveran appear to be eating the dead, hunched over their corpses as he tired himself even further by supplying the illusory sounds of bones cracking and being crushed as the Wolveran seemed to eat. Once he gathered up the sixteen muskets that had been thrown down or lost in the rout, he covered himself with shadow to be invisible in the deepening night and held the illusion long enough to get back into the trees. The Wolveran then simply vanished without a sound, but there were no more men anywhere nearby to take notice of it. A few men did notice it, but they were on foot and the rest of their men were too scattered to even try to get back together

The Arcans were worried and nervous when Kyven jogged wearily back to them, his face gray and sweating profusely, carrying so many muskets he could barely keep them under control in his trembling arms. The Arcans rushed forth, taking the muskets, and Ebony put her arm around him and literally held him up. "I'm alright," he said. "I just wore myself out faster than I expected, that's all. Shaman magic is very demanding to use."

"Did it work?" Lightfoot asked as she reached him.

He nodded. "They're scattered behind us, it's going to take them a long time to get their men and horses back together and organized, especially since I killed their commanders."

"How?" she asked.

"I sent a Wolveran after them," he said with a wolfish smile. "I killed the commanders in the confusion."

Lightfoot laughed. "Effective."

"I'm going to have to ride now, I'm too tired to walk," he said to them. "I'm sorry."

"Never apologize to us, Shaman," Ebony declared, literally picking him up. "I'll carry you to your big horse." And she did just that, limping along with him cradled in her arms. He was too tired to argue that she was injured and shouldn't be carrying him, but this wolf was a very determined female.

"I'll need some food," he said. "Raw meat. It will help me recover."

"I'll make sure you get it," she told him, reaching Strider. She then quite literally pushed him up and into the saddle by his rump, and she was tall enough to do it. She then stood right by the Equar and told one of the smaller Arcans from one of the plantations to bring raw meat for the Shaman.

Kyven waited for the food to arrive and took it with a grateful nod, Ebony handing it up to him, and then Lightfoot took over, getting them ready to move.

They moved much faster at night, and quickly left the soldier men far behind them. Arcans could see at night just effectively as a human could in the daylight, and they used the cover of darkness to literally march right through hamlets and farms they would have avoided. They also freed even more Arcans as they moved, moving with surprising quiet despite there being so many of them as they moved onto farms and ranches and plantations, finding the Arcans, and Kyven would wearily get down off the Equar and drain their collars and fold them into the host. No farm they crossed even bothered to put out any guards or watchers, so utterly confident they were in the collars, that or the fact that the farms were currently undermanned with their hands being in Cheston to help defend it. There were a couple of close calls, but nothing that required his direct intervention. Lightfoot led them unerringly, the cat almost having a sixth sense that led her right to the army, the same way she could find him. By midnight, Lightfoot had encountered the vanguard of the army's scouts, and it had been an amicable meeting. Soon afterward, Clover, Danvers, and several others arrived, Danvers in nothing but a pair of breeches as he was roused out of bed. Kyven slid out of the saddle and embraced Clover fondly. "My brother," she said, licking him exuberantly on the cheek. "I am so glad to see you! You look awful."

He laughed. "I'm just exhausted, Clover," he answered her. "I have about three hundred Arcans here, General. Some want to fight, some don't."

"We'll get them all sorted out, Kyven," he smiled.

"Ebony, this is Clover, a sister Shaman. Clover, this is Ebony. She and a few others need your help," he finished, pointing at her bandage even as Clover looked closely at her blood red left eye.

"I'll see to them at once, my brother," she said, licking him one more time and then releasing him. "Now, let us see to your eye and this leg of yours, my large sister," she said, kneeling down and starting to work on the knots of the bandage. "General, could you have our people find the wounded and bring them to me, please?"

"Of course, my dear," Danvers smiled. Ebony, however, wasn't giving Danvers a very pleasant look.

"He's a friend, Ebony," Kyven said warningly. "If you trust me, then trust him."

She didn't look too happy to hear that, but she did nod. "Will you bless me, Shaman?" she asked Clover.

"Of course I will, but after we see to your leg," she answered, getting the bandage untied. She winced slightly when she saw the ugly wound. "You've been walking on this leg?" she said incredulously, turning an accusing stare to Kyven.

"Hey, she's bigger than me, it's not like I could make her stop," he protested.

Clover laughed. "Yes, I think I can see that," she said as she looked up and took notice of Ebony's adamant expression. "Dear girl, there is such a thing as being too tenacious," she chided the wolf as she put her hand to the ugly gashes on Ebony's leg. "Be lucky I was close, for had you kept walking on this leg, you would have crippled yourself," she declared as Kyven felt her start working her healing magic.

Kyven left the Arcans for Clover and Danvers to sort through, for he was bone weary and could barely keep his eyes open. However, he wanted the fighting Arcans to be able to see him to keep them calm and reassured, so he decided to just sit down in the field. Sirra and Dauro padded in from the woods and walked around him, then laid down beside him, the big male literally laying down against Kyven's back. Sirra's huge head settled into his lap, a very open declaration of where the Lupans' loyalties lay. The feel of their warmth near and against him and their protective closeness making him feel secure overwhelmed his desire to see to the dispensation of the Arcans. He sagged back against Dauro's flank, and almost immediately fell asleep.

It was the sun that woke him up, and to his surprise, he was right where he'd been when he fell asleep. He was still leaning against Dauro, but now the Lupan was laying his side and Kyven was propped up against his narrow chest, his head rising and falling with the breaths of the Lupan. Sirra was curled up all but around him, surrounding him completely with Lupan, her head laying beside Dauro's. His legs were partially under Sirra, but she wasn't crushing them because his legs were under her narrow midsection, not her ribs. He felt a little stiff, and as usual after sleeping off magical exhaustion, he was ravenously hungry, a hunger that instilled a nearly phobic fear in him, a reflex from his time in the Ledwell cage. The camp bustled all around him, and to his surprise, or maybe not, Ebony and two other of the fighting Arcans were sitting calmly not ten paces away, watching him. Ebony had some sort of attachment to him because he rescued her, and he saw that she shared that sentiment with the coyote he'd had lead the group and the spotted cat he'd calmed down in the cell.

"Sirra," he called groggily, pushing at her. "Sirra, let me up." She opened her glowing amber eyes and regarded him calmly, then rolled over on her back, all four paws up in the air and her tail wagging. Kyven laughed despite himself and scrubbed her fur on her belly fondly, then patted her ribs as he stood up. "You big puppy," he accused as Ebony stood up. Her leg was healed, and what was more important, he could see that her left eye was no longer filled with blood. He stepped over to them and raised a slightly trembling hand up to her face, cupping her left cheek. "Did she save your vision?" he asked.

She nodded. "Shaman Clover healed me," she told him. "Are you alright?"

"Weak and starving, but that's not unusual given how much I exhausted myself. Take me to some food. Now."

"Clover wants to know -"

"Now," he cut her off. "Clover will understand, and she'll wait."

Ebony and the others led him to where they were keeping the stores, and he tore into the raw venison they offered him, sitting on a box they'd had on a pack horse. He wolfed down more than what seemed a man could eat so fast he barely chewed it, but the raw meat did its work, flushing new strength through depleted muscles and flushing energy through him once again. The raw meat replaced what he burned away using his magic, leaving only a feeling of weariness that he knew would fade soon. The Arcans waited for him to eat, and he had to chuckle ruefully as he stood up. "I'm not going to disappear if you look away, you three," he accused.

Ebony just looked right at him. "You are my Shaman," she declared.

"They say there's going to be a war," the cat said. "You need someone to watch your back, just like you told that bull. Another pair of eyes in hostile territory."

"And we'll be those eyes," the coyote declared adamantly. "We already agreed. We will stay with you, Shaman. You are our Shaman, and we are your Arcans."

"To the end," Ebony declared with dignity. "You saved my life, and now I will repay you by protecting yours."

"I would have died in that cell if not for you, Shaman," the cat agreed.

"You saved us all," the coyote added, putting a hand on the shoulders of the other two. "And now our lives will be devoted to protecting yours, just as Ebony said."

"I don't need protection, my friends. And to be honest, you couldn't follow me half the places I go. Me being human gives me the ability to move through the human world unrestricted, and there are times when I just can't have Arcans with me."

"But when you can have us with you, we will be there," the coyote stated. "We talked to Clover. We understand what you are, and what you can do. We know you do things so dangerous nobody else will even attempt them, and you do them without fear. We won't disgrace ourselves by failing to be half as brave as you, Shaman. When you need us, we will be there."

"I do them with plenty of fear," he chuckled ruefully. "But I do them because nobody else can. I'm a totem Shaman, friends. That means that I have certain advantages that other Shaman don't have, and my particular area of expertise is illusion."

"Still, we will be your claws and fangs, Shaman," the cat said quietly. "Lightfoot said you can't fight for yourself. We will do your fighting for you."

"I can fight well enough," he retorted, a touch indignantly. "Lightfoot just thinks I'm helpless because she can kick my ass. Well, she can kick anyone's ass, so that's an unfair determination."

Ebony actually laughed. "I'm afraid of that little cat," she admitted. "There's just something ... something about her. I don't ever want to have to fight her."

"Then you know exactly what I'm talking about," he said with a snort, turning from them. "Now show me where Clover is."

The three of them led him through the camp, all but daring anyone to get in their way as they headed for a large tent near the center of the encampment. "Shaman," the coyote said tentatively. "We would ask something of you."

"I think you're imposing a lot more than asking," he noted.

The coyote laughed. "We don't want to carry the names they forced on us in the Pens," he explained. "You gave Ebony her name. Would you give us ones too?"

"Fine. You're cuddlewuggums, and you're smooshy-yumyums."

The two males almost fell down as they skidded to a stop, giving him wild looks. Ebony burst out into helpless laughter. "Be careful what you ask for. You may get it," Kyven told them mildly as he walked past them, then they too began to laugh, a bit ruefully.

Clover was in the tent, along with Danvers, Lightfoot, and most of his command staff. They were clustered around a folding table that held a map of Cheston on it, in great detail, as well as fortifications and counters that represented enemy forces. They stopped and looked to him when he entered, and Clover came over and licked him fondly on the cheek. "Feeling better?" she asked.

"Some," he answered. "Plans?"

"Going over them, yes," Danvers answered. "And since you're here, we can ask you about some of them."

"What do you need me to do?"

"The question is, what do you think you can do?"

"Well, I can disable those tower cannons," he said, coming up to the table and touching the fortress tower that held one of the city's sea cannons, which was now pointing inland. "I can get both of them, and maybe some of the other artillery they have out there."

"Good," Danvers said. "the main thing I would want you to do, though, is make sure they have no alchemical death machines. I don't want to send a column of men and Arcans into a black cloud and listen to them die."

"Oh! Speaking of death machines," he said, reaching for the pouch still around his waist. He untied it and put it on the map, and carefully unfolded the sash. Danvers' eyes widened when he saw the black crystals inside. "I took this out of the death machine in the Pens," he said. "I had to shatter the crystal just in case they caught me, so they couldn't put it back in, but I think it'll actually be more useful like this than as one crystal."

"It will indeed!" he said immediately. "We can load the slivers into pistols, and I'm sure we can find a use for the larger pieces." Kyven carefully folded it back into a pouch, and Danvers had a page take it to the weapons quartermaster. The young man held the folded sash well away from his body as if it were a live snake.

That was actually a very wise and healthy reaction, given what he was holding.

"Alright, so you think you can disable the tower cannons, and maybe some of the artillery they have scattered through the city?" Danvers asked.

"Easily," he shrugged.

"Good. We'll work with that, then," he declared, pointing at the map. "Let me show you what we intend to do.

"We're going to attack around midnight tonight," he began, pointing at the southwest section of the city. "Here. You said this gate is the most weakly defended, and its fortifications are almost ramshackle, so that's where we're going to hit them. I'm sending in riflemen first who will get close enough to fire on the walls but out of musket range and sweep the walls around the gate clear. Then I'm going to send in some cavalry and some Arcans to take the gate, which shouldn't be that hard for them because I already have volunteer Arcans who are willing to scale the gate and open it from the inside. Once we have it open, they switch to different tasks," he said, tracing his hand up the street behind the gate. "First, they'll sweep the walls from the inside to clear off the musketmen our riflemen missed and allow our forces to get in with a minimum of gunfire slowing them down, and secondly, they're to occupy these houses here, here, and here, to prevent any kind of organized response from coming down the streets as our forces get inside and muster by the gate for the next phase. You said they haven't blocked any streets inside, and while that may allow them to move their troops anywhere in the city, they're going to find that it also lets us move unfettered through the city," he said with a grim smile. "We'll take these positions here and hold them while the main force of the army moves in. Once we're in position, we're going to go this way with the invading force," he said, tracing a street that would take them towards the ocean, but in a curving arc, leading right to the front gates of the city's sea fort. "The key to Cheston is Fort Summer. If I can breach the fort and get my men inside, then keep them from doing the same thing to us, then we have them. We'll have the fort, and can basically shell Cheston at our leisure and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. And this is where you come in, Kyven."

"I can get inside and open the main gate," he said before Danvers could ask him.

"Excellent. Now, while we're doing that, there's going to be a diversionary force here," he said, pointing to a section of the north wall. "They'll have our cannons, and they'll start shelling the north wall a little bit after sunset while we move around the city, then just before we attack the southwest gate, they'll form up as if we're about to attack, because by then they should have a wide hole blown through their wall. That should draw the majority of the defense to that point, which will give us the opportunity to hit them from behind. Once we breach the fort, these forces will retreat and take up positions here, here, and here, to keep the Chestoners pinned inside the city. Those are all high ground, ridge tops, and we can quickly fortify those positions. The Chestoners will take unacceptable losses trying to storm those ridges, and they'll be forced to try when we move the four cannons we have up to those ridges and start bombarding the city from both the inside and the outside. Two hundred men with Briton rifles can hold any of those ridges against a thousand men with muskets. With us holding both their fort and the high ground outside, and with us blowing the hell out of their city one cannonball at a time, they'll have few if any options. They should surrender after they see we have them squeezed in a vice."

It was a strange plan, but Kyven could see the devious possibilities of it, where Danvers utilized the unconventional assets at his disposal, mainly his highly mobile and night-sighted Arcans and Kyven's unique abilities. Instead of laying siege to the entire town, as they would expect, or attack the entire town and force the Chestoners to surrender in a bloody battle whose outcome was uncertain, Danvers' idea of storming the fort and then barricading themselves inside it was unconventional, and in its own way, brilliant. They'd never expect such a daring maneuver, and with Kyven there to deal with the front gate and just let them in, well, they'd also never see it coming. Their job was to take Cheston, but Danvers was going to do it from the inside. If they held the fort, and they kept enough men outside the city to keep them penned in the walls, then the forces of Cheston would be trapped between two armies ... armies with cannons that would slowly yet inexorably pound Cheston into rubble. And there wouldn't be a damn thing they could do about it.

"So, you need me to disable the tower cannons only temporarily," Kyven reasoned, looking at the map. "And I'd need to disable the artillery here, here, and here permanently, so they can't bombard the fort once we take it."

"That would be best," Danvers nodded. "Though once we have the fort, we can attack those positions ourselves. So, those positions are just a bonus, Kyven. If you can take them out, good. If not, don't worry about it. The tower cannons aren't the only cannons in the fort, but the Chestoners will have a hard time using them against us along the path I intend to use. It keeps buildings between us and them the entire way there, and they can't hit what they can't see. The tower cannons are the main ones that could attack us since they have such a high vantage point, so those are the ones we need removed from the battle."

"Alright, that works," he nodded. "Your plan is a little tricky, but if it works, we'll beat the piss out of them."

"I'll take that as a complement, Shaman," Danvers chuckled, but then his expression became serious. "This is going to be very dangerous for you, Kyven. For us too, for that matter. Opening that front gate will take something spectacular, since they'll have a lot of men there. We'll have to fight our way in once we get past the gate, but we'll be able to do it."

"Men are easy to fool if they're being told what to do by someone they trust, General," he said calmly. "I'll have to leave early today to get inside and study the interior and come up with a plan, but if you want that gate open, I'll make sure it's open. I'll even do what I can to get the men out of the courtyard so you don't have to fight for every rod of courtyard once our men start coming through the gate."

"I'll take all the help I can get, Shaman," Danvers said seriously. "This plan is risky, but the rewards are worth the risk. If we can take the fort, they'll be helpless."

"It's worth a shot," Kyven agreed. "After all, if things go bad, I can always just sneak away. So it's your ass that's on the line here, General, not mine."

Danvers gave him a look, then laughed loud and long.

Chapter 13