The man had pushed him from the wagon and proceeded to beat and kick. Kosar had been in more than a few fights and he could look after himself, but this rover’s rage had been beyond anything he had ever encountered. Kosar fended off the first few blows, but then his rhellim-flooded attacker knocked him to the ground and, erection waving and glistening in the moonlight, started kicking his head. The naked woman jumped down to join in, and even through the pain Kosar noted her beauty. Others added to the beating, almost all of them naked and drugged. Kosar was beaten into unconsciousness by a group of naked men sporting erections and women glistening wet.

After the beating they strapped him down in the open and left him there for three days, remaining encamped nearby to observe his slow death. They watched with mild interest as wild animals took bites from his arms and legs. One of the women stripped him and forced a dribble of rhellim down his throat, laughing as he grew hard in the blazing sun, not following through on her implied offer. And then, feigning benevolence, the rovers had freed him.

They made him an offer: they would kill him quickly and painlessly, or he could brand himself a thief.

Kosar had done the cutting himself, sprinkling dried powdered Wilmott’s root into the wounds to prevent them from ever healing properly.

It had been harder for him to travel since then, more difficult to make friends. Even though he wore gloves, they grew bloody. Everyone knew what he was. Honest folk shunned him because he was a thief, and thieves shunned him because he had been caught. So he had traveled down the western side of Noreela, looking for a place to settle, realizing the farther he went that his life must now change.

He had stayed in Pavisse for several moons. His wounds had betrayed him there as well, yet in Pavisse that had seemed not to matter so much. The mining town had more than its fair share of criminals, and they formed something of an underclass, a society within a society. It was the last town he visited before finding and settling in Trengborne.

And now he was back, seeking to renew an old acquaintance.