The bandits marched like soldiers on a battlefield through the darkening woods, as the sun started to descend from the late afternoon sky.
Eva took in the scent of their sweaty bodies, paint, and then something else. Blood. She sure hoped the smell came from Axis's wound and nothing else. Nope, she was wrong.
Mangled bodies of people started to appear on either side of the trail. Some were piled on top of others. Others lay flat in the middle of the trail. Excited flies swarmed above them.
Eva, Axis, and Gawain carefully stepped over the deceased, but the bandits didn't. They left footprints all over the corpses, ugly ones that picked up their flaky blood.
Elaine popped Eva's back with her crossbow. "Come on, move it." She saw Eva's green, sickened face. "Do you know who these people are? Their shapeshifters."
"Shapeshifters?" Eva smiled. She knew she was right.
"This means you have a shapeshifter in your party," Elaine added.
"We are so screwed," Gawain mumbled behind the two girls.
Despereaux and Margery nodded in agreement. It was strange to see horses scared, but they definitely were. They even crossed their tails together.
The field where the bandits' camp was took up the length of a castle courtyard. The tents, made from animal skin and fur, looked like teepees. A large bonfire replaced the camp's center.
Small children, also wearing paint on their faces, raced each other from their tents to the fire and back.
It looked so peaceful; it was hard to believe the bandits were cannibals.
"Attention, Meraki Clan!" Elaine's mother announced over the cheerful voices.
Instantly, her people stopped what they were doing. They hurried to their leader and bowed to her.
Elaine dragged Eva back, in order to let another member of her clan, a young man, pass her with Axis.
His face had turned white, due to blood loss. He tried to fight the man holding him, but in just thirty minutes, he lost all strength. He fell to his knees next to Elaine's mother.
She placed her palm on his shoulder. "I have good news. We captured another shapeshifter."
"Ah ha!" Eva yelled out of the blue. Thirty pairs of eyes stared her down like hungry vultures waiting for their prey to die. Eva's face turned as red as her hair. She backed into Elaine's chest. "Carry on."
"Oh, so he's the shapeshifter," Gawain observed. That earned him a rap in the tummy from Despereaux.
Axis tried to escape. He switched his form from a person to a snake, but he had no strength to slither out of the fray.
Elaine's mother grabbed his tail (she avoided his spikes), and a man in the crowd snatched his head. "Elaine," she announced, "take the shapeshifter's friends to the dungeon. We'll get him ready. We're going to have a wonderful entrée tonight."
"Wait! Axis!" Eva shouted. She reached for him.
Axis's voice filled her head. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Eva. I guess this is my punishment for lying."
"Take them away!" Elaine's mother shouted.
"Eee!" Gawain squeaked. "We're going, we're going." He made sure the horses and Eva went first.