“But maybe not for long,” the other hissed.
That got Ruffem’s attention. He sucked in a breath, inhaling dirt too, which stuck to his teeth. He coughed and pushed himself up.
The other two hobgoblins were indeed from his clan; Ruffem recognized them once he looked at them, though he still couldn’t put names to them. One had pockmarks on his face and neck from some malady of youth; the other had a head that seemed too large for its body. Both had mud-brown hides and wore boiled leather breastplates, marking them as clan warriors. It was the one with the pockmarks who had said they might not be free for long. Pockmark helped Ruffem to his feet.
“Too many minotaurs,” Pockmark said. “Wise to run, Ruffem. Would that everyone had run.”
“Others ran,” Ruffem managed to gasp. Some part of him thought his cowardice was justified because he’d spotted some of his kinsmen fleeing. “Others ran first.”
The hobgoblin with the overlarge head snarled. “Foul creatures from the pits, minotaurs. Man-bulls that should burn in the abyss.”
Ruffem nodded in agreement.
The pockmarked hobgoblin brushed at Ruffem’s chest to get the dirt and sticks off. “Hagam warned the clan about the minotaurs. Hagam days past said slavers were coming and that a shaman promised freedom to the south. Should have listened to Hagam.”
“Hagam ran days past,” Ruffem said.
The pockmarked hobgoblin prodded Ruffem’s chest and stomach and picked at the blood. “This blood …”
“Belongs to a minotaur,” Ruffem finished.
They got on either side of him and propped him up as they continued south, trying for a steady pace.
“A dead minotaur,” Ruffem added as he shook them off and regained his footing. He grinned widely so they could see the blood on his teeth and gums. He made a snapping gesture, indicating he’d bitten the minotaur. The minotaur had held Ruffem in a bear hug, waiting for another minotaur to bring a rope to tie him. Ruffem had stretched up and clamped his teeth on the minotaur’s neck, releasing a rush of blood. “A very dead minotaur.”
“Should have listened to Hagam, though,” Pockmark repeated. “None would be caught to be sold as slaves. All would be free.”
“South,” Ruffem said, pointing. His legs burned, but his muscles still worked, good and strong. “Run now.”
Ruffem took off at an easy lope, the others following.
THE OTHER RED-SKINNED SHAMAN
Mudwort smelled the goblin bodies burning; the stench was so thick in the air and heavy in her lungs that she took only the shallowest of breaths. Although she’d smelled death often, it was an odor she’d never allow herself to get used to. Other goblins cast the smell off as commonplace; even Direfang seemed inured to it. But Mudwort thought it should always bother her, even if she had no special attachment to the ones who’d died.
The world was harsh and everything eventually died. But did goblins have to stink so badly when they stopped breathing?
She’d smelled nothing truly pleasant in a long, long while.
When she concentrated on the rocks and dirt beneath her fingertips, the odors from inside the earth grew stronger and helped mask the death scents, but it did not get rid of them entirely. The Dark Knights and goblins had moved away from her, and Direfang was busy helping the injured. So she relished the relative peace and silence that had settled around her.
When she was alone, it was easier to listen to the stone.
Exploring, she discerned traces of copper far below, and when she stretched her mind to the south, she found glistening fibrous blue crystals melded in bumpy, gray rocks. They were mixed with dark green hairlike threads in places, and there was a taste to them that reminded her of early summer mornings from before she was a slave. She lingered over the bumpy rocks, which she’d not encountered before, and her mind teased the hairlike threads.
“What do the rocks say? What say?” She cocked her head. “Saying something, but talking too soft. Stop the whispering. Say something louder.”
Mudwort heard crows cawing and angrily gnashed her teeth together. They’d inadvertently drawn her senses back to the surface. Many crows were circling, she knew, waiting for the goblins to leave the tylor carcass, waiting to feast on whatever was left … and on any flesh remaining on the goblins and hobgoblins that were still burning in the death pile.
“Stone saying something,” she scolded the crows. “Saying something more interesting than crows and bugs and Dark Knights and goblins.” She leaned forward and pressed her ear to the ground and twirled her fingers deeper into the dirt. She squeezed her features together, and her head started pounding.
“What say?” She jammed her knee hard against the ground in consternation. “What?”
It was a soft sound at first, for the most part words that were too indistinct for her to comprehend. But she picked out a few phrases in goblinspeak.
“Huh. Stones not speaking at all. Goblins are.”
She strained to hear clearly, finally managing to block out the crows and concentrate on the distant whispers that had become insistent and were pulling at her.
“Goblins are talking of magic!” She let her mind flow like water through cracks and over slices of shale and around the gray chunks filled with the hairlike green crystals. Then she detected the cavern below and raced toward it, finding the familiar oval with the symbols around it that she’d spotted a few days past.
It was near! That cavern had to be close to where she sat in the mountains! It felt close, but Mudwort couldn’t determine precisely where.
Her heart raced as she hurried down a corridor, spying a light ahead and focusing on it. She pressed her senses against the wall and instantly faulted herself for trying to hide. Whoever-whatever-was down there could not see her. She wasn’t really in that place. She was still above the ground, too close to the Dark Knights and the rotting tylor and all the burning bodies. Too close to the ceremony for the dead that she knew was happening and that she had no interest in.
Only her mind was below the earth.
“Hurry,” she urged herself. “Find the goblins.”
She wound her way through one tunnel and the next, sometimes dipping down, other times rising toward the surface, occasionally doubling back. The maze reminded her of the tunnels in the Dark Knight mines in Steel Town, where she’d toiled for too many years. But the stone in the earth tunnels was different than that in the mines. There were more of the gray, bumpy rocks shot through with blue and green crystals, and sections of granite along the floor had been worn smooth and shiny by many passing feet. Yet there were none of the rocks the Dark Knights had coveted to turn into their steel swords and knives. And there were no slaves.
But there were goblins. She continued to hear them.
Mudwort better understood the words; they were coming louder. Krood, dallock, slarn. Hunger, dance, sleep. Hunger was repeated the most often. Krood, krood, krood, she heard. Goblins were always hungry.
The tunnel she glided down widened ahead, opening into a chamber filled with goblins and lit by guttering, fat-soaked torches that had been rammed into crevices. The air was not pleasant; it was filled with smoke from the torches and the sweaty odor of goblins. But it was better than the air around the tylor, so Mudwort pretended that she was breathing the underground air.
The goblins down there were all of the same clan, likely, as their skin was the same color. It was red but much darker than hers, the shade of dried blood, almost black in places. One goblin had a gray patch on her back that Mudwort found curious. A mark from birth, perhaps?
The goblins milled anxiously as Mudwort observed them, and she grew anxious too. Thirty, she counted, or close to that number; they constantly moved, so it was difficult to know just how many there were for certain. They walked with shoulders back, proud like the Dark Knights who once paraded around Steel Town. Their chins were tipped up, faces set in grins, nostrils quivering. And their hides were relatively smooth; Mudwort could not spot many scars or a single sign of injury. Not one walked with a limp. Clearly, from their tall, full frames, they were not oppressed slaves. Not one of them was skinny. And not one of them wore a scrap of clothing or carried a weapon.