“The woman’s clothes are ruined,” Pippa said, frowning and pointing to the bloody rag that used to be the dwarf’s shift. “Shoes all right, though. Short, wide shoes.” She shouldered her way up to the body, crawling between the legs of a hobgoblin and tugging the leather slippers off. She sloshed them around in the water to rinse off the blood and pranced away with her prize.
Chima draped herself over a small basket near the body and clawed angrily at her kinsmen who were trying to see what was inside. Leftear growled at her and waved his knife, but she wouldn’t budge from the basket.
“Enough!” Direfang had not been at the front of the column, and he’d been late to catch up with the dwarf killing at the stream. Since his tumble down the mountainside, he’d been forced to move slower because of a twisted leg and blurry vision. He’d nearly died back there, and the Dark Knight priest had saved him-just as the priest had also saved Graytoes and Two-chins. But the priest told Direfang some of the mending would have to come on its own, and that could take days.
“Leave Chima alone!” Direfang barked. He had directed Spikehollow to lead while he’d drifted back into the heart of his army, walking at a slower pace. Rustymane, another hobgoblin, had been charged with carrying the still-whining Graytoes.
Direfang plodded forward as fast as his sore leg would allow, stopping when his feet sank into the cool mud of the stream bank. He stared across to the opposite bank and at the woman’s body, barely recognizable as a dwarf’s. Then he glanced at Chima, who still protected the basket filled with clothes.
“Take one thing from the basket,” he ordered Chima. “Only one.”
She raised her lip in a protesting snarl but bit off any reply. Then she dipped her head in the basket and poked through it until she came up with what she guessed was a child’s dress the color of wet saw grass. She pulled it on and stepped back.
“Saro-Saro’s clan should have the basket now,” someone behind Direfang said. “Saro-Saro-”
“Enough!” Direfang repeated. He whirled to face the goblins behind him, anger etched deep in his scarred face. “Savages,” he said, waving an arm to indicate the dwarf. “There was no threat here. No weapon. One woman washing clothes! No reason for this bloodletting!”
“But the fat woman screamed,” Spikehollow protested at Direfang’s side, still wet from the stream. He cleaned his knife on the grass and sheathed it. “Screamed and screamed. And that scream could have brought men with weapons.”
“Probably her screams will bring men.” Chima smoothed at her dress and adjusted it around her hips until it lay properly, though it was too big and hung to her ankles. “The woman screamed a lot. That short, fat woman-”
“Dwarf,” Direfang said with a sigh. He knew some of the goblins had never seen a dwarf. “That was a dwarf.”
“Just one dwarf,” Spikehollow added. He’d dropped his voice so only the closest goblins could hear. “One that will never scream again.”
“One that might have been worth talking to.” Direfang wiped a line of spittle from his lip.
More goblins splashed across the stream, some lingering in the water to drink. The Dark Knights drank too, and washed their hands and faces.
“Talking to one dwarf would not have been much help.”
“Need a map, Spikehollow. Need to know how much farther to the fishhook of mountains that goes around the sea. Need to know how many more days-”
“That dwarf did not have a map,” Spikehollow said sulkily. He cocked his head and opened his mouth to say something else, but Direfang waved him silent.
The sound of goblins splashing in the stream grew louder, and many were pushed up on the opposite bank to make room for their fellows. Direfang moved farther away to avoid being jostled.
“Rustymane and Graytoes will pass out the rest of those clothes.” Direfang gestured at the basket and snarled when some of the yellow-skinned goblins growled their objections.
Chima twirled to show off her dress. “There will be more clothes from other dwarf women. There will be more dwarves nearby. Dwarves are like birds, nesting together. Many dwarves, maybe.”
“But not too many,” Leftear said. “Don’t want there to be too many.”
“Look! Fat little men!” Rustymane shouted. “They’re here now!”
Gravel-voiced shouts and the sound of branches breaking came from the south. Dwarves appeared, weaving around the trees and charging toward the goblins, their stubby legs churning up the loam.
“See? That short, fat woman should not have screamed,” Spikehollow said triumphantly. “Look what comes now!”
A cheer went up from the goblins as they rushed to meet the dwarves’ charge, while a shiver raced down Direfang’s spine.
“More killing!” Chima exclaimed, her eyes sparkling as she raced to join the fray.
“Tired of all the blood,” Direfang said. But he stood and watched and made no move to call a halt to it.
“Do not hurt the trees!” Pippa cried. She was sitting on the muddy bank and trying to put on her new shoes, but they kept slipping off because they were too wide. Goblins swarmed past her, rudely bumping her aside on their way to grappling with the dwarves.
There were only fourteen dwarves, wielding hoes, rakes, and shovels, their beards swishing around their waists as they dashed toward the goblins. The dwarves’ clothes were not so fine as what the men had worn in Steel Town, Direfang couldn’t help but notice, and not one of them wore a piece of armor.
Direfang moved forward as his kinsmen started the killing.
The first dwarf fell before Direfang cleared the far bank.
The dwarves’ battle cries were brief. Only one remained standing by the time Direfang lumbered to the edge of the copse. He was a young, stout dwarf, the hobgoblin saw, and the muscles of his arms bunched as he swung his hoe around like a scythe. The dwarf’s wide arc caught Chima in the stomach, ripping through the green dress she’d coveted. He picked her up on the blade and effortlessly heaved her over his shoulder. She landed in the low branches of a pin oak, her arms twitching and rattling twigs as she died. Leftear howled his anger at his friend’s death as the young dwarf ripped open the belly of another goblin, then one more.
To Direfang’s eyes the dwarf was obviously more than the simple farmer he’d initially appeared and far more skilled than his dead kinsmen. The dwarf flipped the hoe around and struck a female goblin in the forehead with the handle, cracking her skull, then rapped her in the temple so hard that blood ran down her face and she crumpled. The dwarf spun the hoe again, once more using it as a scythe and slaying one of Saro-Saro’s clansmen. Then he advanced on a hobgoblin, using the handle end of the hoe as a spear.
Goblins flowed around the last dwarf, trying to avoid the deadly hoe and awkwardly navigating through the trees, some of them stopping to stare up at the leaves and to feel the bark. Many of the goblins had been born in Steel Town and had never seen trees, save the pines to the far north of the camp, and they could not hide their amazement. Other goblins continued past their wide-eyed fellows, breaking through the copse and seeing a village shaded by the eastern slope of a jagged peak.
They whooped loudly at their discovery, and Direfang hurried to catch up to them. He glanced once over his shoulder, seeing that the defiant dwarf was finally being brought down by the odds, the hoe yanked from him as he was brutally torn apart.
Direfang lengthened his stride, ignoring the ache in his twisted leg and blinking furiously in a failed effort to clear his vision.
“Stop! No more killing!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “No more blood! Listen! Stop!” He wanted someone in the village left alive to talk to, to ask about the mountains and the land beyond them.
He shouted “Stop!” until he was hoarse. And eventually the goblins did stop-just short of the village. Anxious, the goblins raised and lowered their knives, shifted from one foot to the other, or craned their necks this way and that to get a better look at the dwarf homes. They whispered among themselves, the noise like a swarm of locusts. And though it was difficult to make much sense of what the goblins said, Direfang knew they were excited at the prospect of what might be gained and what they might kill.