“Where did you get that proclamation?” Hecar snapped at the ogre.

Molok shrugged. “I find it yesterday. It had… fallen… from the tree that someone had posted it on, I think.”

“Why would the knights demand Kaz? He was their comrade!” one of the other females asked the group as a whole.

“As are some of these others,” Scurn added. He tossed the parchment to one of the other minotaurs, who started reading it slowly. The minotaurs prided themselves on the fact that, of all races save perhaps the elves, they were the most literate. While physical strength was the final arbiter in their society, knowledge was the tool that honed that strength.

“The knights are mad!” Hecar muttered. “Have they given a reason?”

“Have they given a reason for anything we have seen in the time we have pursued Kaz?” Scurn glanced around. “They may have a reason; they may not. There are names on that proclamation that were their staunchest allies in… in that time.”

“That time” was a war that the minotaurs were doing their best to wipe from their memories. More than one gave Molok a look of bestial hatred. The minotaurs had been slave-soldiers to the ogres and humans who had followed the dark goddess, Takhisis, in her struggle against her counterpart, the lord of light, Paladine. The Knights of Solamnia had represented that god, and in the end, it was one of their number, a Knight of the Crown named Huma, who had literally forced the goddess to capitulate. Only one other who had witnessed the costly victory had survived.

Kaz. Very few actually knew what part he had played in the final battle. Humans did not care to glorify what they tended to think of as a monster. The other minotaurs had pieced the story together over the years, though some, like Scurn, denied its plausibility.

“If the Knights of Solamnia want his head,” the mutilated warrior began, “then he will surely stay in the south, where their presence is weaker.”