The sky opened up, and Mudwort felt as if she’d been punched again and again. The magic she used was that strong, draining.
“More.”
Direfang could hardly breathe, the air was so thick with smoke. His feet burned from a fire that had worked its way through the ground. It was difficult to make out the goblins still alive and fighting around him, much less those crumpled on the ground. Nkunda had fallen a few moments earlier, and Sallor had too. He’d not heard any recent whooshes from Grallik’s spells, so the wizard might be dead too. He could barely see the knights ahead of him.
Some of the knights had fallen from inhaling the smoke, some to goblins still fighting through the hellish firestorm, some to Grallik’s spells. The hobgoblin lumbered forward, tripping over a body and rising back up without registering whether it was a knight or one of his kinsmen he’d stumbled over.
“That one is mine!” Bera had spotted Direfang through the haze and charged toward him. “He killed Zocci. He is mine to kill!”
Direfang crouched to meet her. His knees nearly buckled when he took a deep breath and inhaled embers. He wanted to scream at her, but he’d lost his voice. He wanted to shout at her to leave the goblins alone, to let them have their freedom.
Instead he swung the axe with his fading strength. It still had its magic power. It sliced through her sword and continued on its deadly path, cleaving into her breastplate and dropping her. Her eyes froze as she reeled backward, amazed to have been bested by a stinking hobgoblin, amazed to be dying.
He tried to pull the axe free, but it was lodged too firmly and he was too weak. He fell next to her corpse and closed his eyes.
A moment later the incredible deluge began. Rain began to pummel the ground and drench the living and dead. Steam spiraled up from the earth, and Direfang opened his mouth and drank deeply.
“Should have left Umay in that village with those dwarves.” Graytoes’ face was streaked with tears. She sobbed and rocked back and forth, thinking about Moon-eye and Mudwort, Direfang and everyone who had been important in her short life. She refused to think about the hated Dark Knights, as she wanted her last thoughts to be only about the good things she had experienced-especially Umay. “Beautiful, beautiful Umay.”
She lifted the baby higher and kissed her forehead. She thought she saw Umay smile, but it might have been her mind going sour. The haze was too thick to properly see anything.
She held the baby close in one arm and stretched her free hand to the ground. It was so hot, she burned her fingers thrusting them into the earth. Graytoes thought she might brush Mudwort’s mind again, maybe tell her old friend good-bye.
She rocked the baby as she feebly sent her senses off toward Mudwort then crouched over Umay as the storm struck, the rain coming so hard at first that it was hurtful. Graytoes had never been in such a monstrous, horrible, wonderfully welcome storm. Surely there had never been such a powerful, violent, magnificent storm of life-saving rain!
For a moment Graytoes thought she’d found Mudwort, an image of the red-skinned goblin coming clearly in her mind and, strangely, not far away. But then the vision vanished, replaced with something that tugged at her curiosity, something magical and marvelous, something resting lightly on the earth, close.
Come find me, she thought the marvelous something said.
Through the hammering rain, Chislev’s spear called to her.
DIREFANG’S CITY
More than a thousand goblins, and all the Dark Knights, perished in the fire from what Direfang could tell. Grallik had survived, though barely. He was being treated by Horace on the bluff where the stone spire once stood. The wizard was scarred all over from fire, all of his skin looking wet with blisters, no doubt appearing hideous as far as men and elves were concerned. Because of that alone, Direfang knew the wizard would forever stay with the emerging goblin nation.
Maybe that was good, Direfang thought. The wizard had given so much of himself.
The hobgoblin had not been able to find Mudwort or Thya, the greatest of his band’s stonetellers. But Draath had survived, and the Skinweaver had vowed to teach promising younglings the art of working magic through the earth. Graytoes said she would help too. Jando-Jando stood behind her.
Direfang silently regarded the yellow-skinned goblin. Umay was tucked in a pack on her back, wrapped in a faded cloth with metallic threads in it. Graytoes leaned on a spear she said she’d found in the forest the night of the fire. It was a crooked wooden thing that was charred in places and from which dangled a couple of yellow and green feathers that appeared as if they’d just been plucked from a bird. When the light hit the spear just right-or when Direfang looked at it from an odd angle-the spear looked different, singular, dotted with gems and seeming to be straight and perfect and smooth. But that might be his mind teasing him, so he dismissed it from his thoughts. He had more important things to worry about than Graytoes’s spear.
The surviving goblin horde had decided to follow the river east, to where the forest met the base of the dwarf mountains.
They would build their new goblin city there, fashioning earth bowls like Mudwort had taught them and cutting down trees that Orvago would mark as best for building. Some would make their homes in nearby caves-those goblins who preferred the earth all around them. And if no caves could be found, Draath and the other stonetellers would fashion some. He hoped the dwarves would not take exception to the goblins’ presence.
More goblins would come, called through the earth. Graytoes said she intended to continue the calling. She also claimed that she would teach Umay how to stonetell, and that one day she would pass the old, crooked spear along to her dwarf daughter.
It would take a very long time, Direfang knew, to establish a firm foundation for the goblin nation. He would grow old and die before it was strong and a force to be feared and respected.
But it would happen; he was never sure before, but he knew in his heart that the goblin nation would be forged. “Finally free,” he said.
AFTERWORD
Goblin Rituals Regarding the Hereafter
They burn their dead fellows, the goblins and hobgoblins of Neraka and the ogre mountains.
Burn them until the air is filled with a thick, hot stench that settles firmly in your mouth and permeates every thread of your body.
Burn them until nothing is left of the corpses but bits of bones, and those they scatter so nothing touches. The ashes are left to the wind.
I am Horace, a loyal priest of Zeboim, the Sea Mother, who joined a band of escaped goblin and hobgoblin slaves fleeing from the Dark Knight mining camp called Steel Town. A human, the goblins were loathe to accept me, and I did not mind that they kept their distance. I needed only their safety in numbers while we passed through the mountains and to better land. In exchange, I offered my healing skills.
I found the goblins’ funerary practices odd, so I studied them to discover what was behind the bizarre rituals. I am ever curious, and at the time, there was little other than goblins and their handling of the dead to occupy my attention. As their pyres burned, turning to ashes the corpses of those goblins and hobgoblins who died to old age, disease, and grievous injury from beasts they’d fought, I’d listen to the survivors elaborate on the dead.
“Lurker is remembered,” I recall a burly hobgoblin saying. “Lurker was kind, eating only roots and berries and not eating the meat of beasts. Lurker loved to watch the rabbits and ground squirrels, and wanted to save them rather than kill them. Lurker is remembered.”