Pungent was the largest of the four pirates, but not the smartest. He was a skilled fighter and a hard worker, which actually made him more valuable in Xander's eyes. Pungent followed orders without question, making him an ideal minion.

But now that Pungent had no one to order him around, he felt uneasy. He liked smashing heads and brawling, not wandering through the woods without a ship. He would make these people pay for crashing his home. Pungent smiled as he imagined all the ways he could kill whoever her found.

"Surrender!" Junayd called with a sword at the pirate's back. The general had managed to sneak silently up behind his foe.

Pungent was surprised but not afraid. "You are the general. Good. I like a challenge."

The large pirate turned around suddenly and pushed away the sword with his arm. A large gash appeared on the man's bicep and began to bleed, but Pungent did not seem to notice. "I lost feeling in that arm a long time ago."

Junayd got a sinking feeling as Pungent gave a wicked grin and pulled out his weapon.

"Give me a good fight, soldier! It has been too long since someone has."

"Every man I have fought so far says I have the cleanest cut when I removed their head," Junayd boasted.

The pirate did not get the other man's humor. "How could they tell you such a thing?"

The general laughed. "Their ghosts inform me on their way to the afterlife, of course."

Pungent gave him a blank look before realizing that the soldier was making fun on him. This only served to make the huge pirate upset. "Enough!" he boomed. "Fight me."

Junayd inhaled deeply through his nose. "Fine," he answered reluctantly. The general had hoped that the man would surrender easily. Pungent's insane strength and numbness to pain scared Junayd more than he would admit. And the general's shoulder was still not completely healed. If he did not keep moving quickly, Junayd knew he was doomed.

Pungent's curved sword whizzed toward his opponent's neck, but Junayd was light on his feet. He leaned back as the blade nearly nicked his chin, then quickly went for his own strike. A piece of the pirates sleeve sliced open, and now both of Pungent's arms were bleeding profusely.

The pirate seemed amused. "I don't feel any pain there either," he announced.

"Noted. Please tell me where you do feel pain so that I can strike there next," Junayd answered amicably. The two men circled each other for a moment.

Pungent pulled his lips to one side. "No one's asked me that before. I suppose my head feels pain, but the rest of me is numb as ice."

"Then I will aim for your head," Junayd said, happy to oblige.

"You can try."

Pungent's method of sword fighting was mostly slashing and jabbing, but it was very effective. The sheer brute force made Junayd's finesse mostly useless. The general was making tons of scratches and cuts on his opponent, but the pirate never reacted to any of them. Junayd began to wonder if the man's bones were made of steel, because not even the hardest strike seemed to make much difference in the depth of the wound.

Running out of strength and stamina, Junayd backed up to a tree. His legs were almost ready to collapse from the weight of the strikes against his sword. Another of the crushing blows and the hero would be finished. Sensing his opponent's weakness, Pungent ripped the sword from Junayd's hand and tossed it aside, his hand bleeding from the action. "It was a nice battle while it lasted," the hulking man gave the general a final compliment. "Too bad it is over."

"Leave him alone!" Devrim called from behind. Pungent stopped his assault and turned to the new foe.

"Wait your turn! I will be with you shortly." Pungent needed to complete what he started. He returned to finish off Junayd when a knife flew through the air and lodged itself in the high above the two men's heads.

"You missed!" Junayd screamed.

Devrim smirked, "Did I?" he pointed up. A large beehive was hanging above them. Having been mostly severed from the tree by the blade of Devrim's knife, the hive fell and lodged itself on Pungent's head.

The angry bees immediately swarmed. "My face!" Pungent screamed in a muffled voice. He ran around blindly to escape the stings of the small striped creatures. Even after he removed the hive from his face, they still attacked. In a last ditch effort of self-preservation, he ran toward a small cave and dove inside. He immediately regretted the decision as the roar of a bear larger than him answered his screams. The two men outside winced.

"I was coming to warn you about the bear," Devrim said.

"Why didn't you just stab that guy with the knife?" Junayd complained.

"With all the cuts he had, I was afraid it wouldn't do any good. This took care of both problems."

Another roar rang out, and the two men decided they should go. "We need to find Mairwen. Hopefully she actually listened this time and just hid," Devrim said.

"A thousand gold coins says she did not," Junayd proposed the wager.

"I am not betting on my daughter," Devrim responded, rubbing his forehead. 'Because I would probably lose,' he added only in his thoughts.

Heading toward the meeting point, the two men spotted Eira. "I haven't found Mairwen." The blonde woman told them.

There was a collective sigh. "I will need to tie a bell on that girl," the Emperor moaned.

"I only had one pirate follow me." Eira said.

"Same," Devrim chimed in.

"I had a behemoth that should have counted as two…" Junayd complained.

"That just leaves one pirate. Where is he? And where is Mairwen?" Devrim looked every direction in search for the pirate and princess.

Then they heard a pained yell from a man not far off. "Found them!" Junayd smirked.

——————-

Mairwen was supposed to head straight to the meeting point, which was near the rest of the imperial group. She was not supposed to leave a trail so that none of the pirates would follow her. Just in case one did, she was supposed to hide and wait for the others to join her at the meeting point.

But Mairwen, as usual, wanted to take her fair share of the work. When she had left her shoe prints like the others, Devrim could only sigh. "Hide in the meeting spot."

"Do not worry. No one will catch me. I will see you soon." Mairwen took off quickly.

"The Maker protect her," the Emperor muttered as he went his own direction. "Or at least a Fate." If Hanna had heard this, she would have chuckled. Mairwen was not the one who would need protecting in this case.

The princess ran full speed toward the meeting point, with the intention of scurrying up a tree. It was one of the many things that Brinn had taught her over the years: when your enemy has no arrows, height can be your friend. If a pirate caught the trail she had left him, he would lose her in the branches.

Just as she reached the small clearing and was looking for a tree, Mairwen heard a soft whinny. Instinctively, she abandoned her attempt to hide in order to investigate. 'I am too curious for my own good,' the girl scolded herself.

Tucked into a copse of oak trees, four horses were tied up and munching the grass. No one was in sight. The horses had the imperial mark on their sides and no saddles. Obviously, they were stolen.

"Who is watching you?" Mairwen wondered as she searched for a missing lookout. She came to a decision. Removing the ropes, the princess sent the steeds toward the south with a gentle pat. "Go find new masters. The ones you had will not need you any more." The horses took off and were almost out her sight when they reared back and instead turned northward. "Or, go home...that will work too."

The princess was slightly confused by the horses' response until she heard an angry call. "Come back, you lousy mules!"

"Uh oh," Mariwen realized that either she made too good of a trail to follow or there was a lookout after all. Either way, she needed to scurry up the oak and get out of sight. Tucking herself into a branch, Mairwen rubbed the spot on her thigh where the new pan tied to her belt had hit her as she climbed. Then she draped Devrim's new saddle bag, which was across her shoulders, onto a nearby branch.

Shifty had been enjoying the game of cat an mouse with the princess. He believed that he must be a gifted tracker, because it was almost like a trail was being left for him to follow. If only Shifty had more experience, he would have known that Mairwen had basically drawn him a road map.

Now Shifty was looking at the fleeing horses and trying to decide how to proceed. Without the animals, the pirates would have to return to Valiant on foot. If the other men caught the leader as they had planned, then they would have the additional problem of forcing him to walk. The pace would be slow. What if they killed the leader and had to carry him back? That did not sound like a good option either, both for the extra work and the smell. And if the imperial soldiers found out what they had done and chased them down, then they would be dead without much of a fight. The smaller the retreating horses got in his vision, the less Shifty wanted to stick around.

Deciding that he would steal a horse from the imperial group and strike out on his own, Shifty turned to leave. "Forget it! Who needs this kind of trouble," he muttered angrily.

Mairwen misunderstood his departure and was afraid he might be returning to Valiant. 'I cannot let him get away,' she thought. She must give up her position or risk losing sight of the bandit.

"I did not think a pirate would give up looking for a little girl so easily," the princess said innocently from her perch.

At first, Shifty was not sure where the voice came from, but then he looked up. "You released the horses?!" he growled. The girl may have been dressed in a soldier's uniform, but now that he could see her closely, she was very young. More than that, she was exceptionally pretty. His voice took on a honeyed tone. "Come down, young lass. You must be tired after all that running. I have some water you can have. I don't bite."

"I said I was a girl, not a baby you can lure with treats. And stay right there! Do not come any closer." Mairwen's voice was pleasant even in her threat, so Shifty did not take her seriously. He stepped forward and received a shoe in the face. 'I wish I had brought my bow,' the girl lamented.

Shifty tucked the shoe into his belt. "I will make sure to return it to you when you come down." He grasped the tree and took another of Eira's borrowed boots in the forehead. "Stop that!" Shifty yelled.

"Well, I have to. I do not have any more shoes," Mairwen agreed. Her calm demeanor unnerved the pirate slightly, but he now that his pride was involved, Shifty would not give up until the girl was humbled. The oak which the princess had chosen was not hard to climb, and Shifty was able to manage it even with his larger frame. He pulled himself over the first low branch when something brown came tumbling at him. Shifty moved to avoid the flying saddle bag, and ended up tumbling to the ground back-first.

The air knocked out of him, Shifty had to wait a moment before his vision cleared. "It is in your best interest to give up," Mairwen coaxed him with all the compassion that she had. The fall had really seemed to hurt.

Her kindness only lit an angry fire in the pirate. When Shifty was able, he leapt from the ground with all his might and hurried up the tree. In no time, he was on the same branch as the girl. "Come here," he ordered as he leaned forward. Mairwen seemed so innocent that he did not even bother to pull out a knife to threaten her. It was only when he noticed her hands behind her back that a question formed in his mind. "What do you have there?"

----------

After hearing the yell, Eira, Junayd and Devrim rushed to the source of the noise. When they entered the small copse of trees, Mairwen was standing on the ground over an unconscious Shifty. From the impacted dirt, the pirate seemed to have fallen from a great height.

"What happened?" Devrim asked as he stared wide-eyed at the girl.

Mairwen held out the new frying pan, "I'm sorry. I dented it."