With a final pull, she raised her head above the hole and looked around. She was on a hilltop littered with stone. Fragments and grotesque shapes were all around, and a particularly ugly large boulder blocked her view on one side. She raised herself from the hole, dusted herself off, and started to climb over the boulder, then stopped in confusion. It didn't feel like stone. As she bent to look at it more closely, the snore came again, then cut off abruptly. A pair of huge yellow eyes opened directly in front of her. For an instant, Drule froze in panic, then she pivoted and tried to run… and had nowhere to go. A pair of enormous hands rose behind her, blocking her escape, and the big head with the yellow eyes came upright and gazed at her. Below the eyes, a huge mouth opened, exposing great, chisellike teeth. In horror, the Lady Drule gaped at the monster, and it grinned back, then the big mouth moved, and it spoke one word. "Mama?"
In the cavern below, the rest of the ladies — and the few males with them — waited with growing impatience. They could no longer see the Lady Drule, and could no longer hear the snoring. There were voices somewhere above — or a voice and intermittent rumbles of thunder — but they couldn't hear what was being said.
By threes and fives, they started wandering around the cavern, looking at the pyrite deposits, the fallen stone, anything of momentary interest. Several had nearly decided to go back down the tunnel to the lower cavern and put on a pot of stew, when the hole above darkened and Drule's voice came down. "Ever'body come up," she called.
Hunch peered upward. "Lady Drule find others? Find what's-'is-name… th' Highbulp?"
"Not here," she called back. "Tracks, though. Maybe we follow an' find."
The first ones to the top glanced at the Lady Drule, started to hoist themselves out of the hole, then spotted the huge, ugly creature crouched nearby — its gaze fixed lovingly on Drule — and retreated in panic, dislodging those below them. Within seconds, there was a tumbling pile of gully dwarves on the cavern floor and nobody climbing.
The Lady Drule appeared at the opening again, looked at them curiously. "What happen? Ever'body fall down?"
"What that you got up there?" someone asked. "Big, ugly thing."
"Oh." She glanced around, then looked down again. "That just Krog. Stop wastin' time! Come up."
Several of them began climbing again. Heads reached the surface and poked out, wide eyes looking past Drule at the creature still squatting nearby.
"That Krog?" someone asked.
"Krog," Drule assured them.
"What Krog?" another demanded.
"Dunno," she shrugged. "Just Krog. That all he remember. All come on now. Got to find Highbulp."
"Why?" several of them wondered. Then one added, "We don' like Krog. Make him go 'way."
Drule stamped her foot impatiently, then turned and walked to Krog. "Go 'way, Krog," she said. "Shoo!"
Obediently, the creature stood and backed away several steps.
"More go 'way than that!" somebody called from the hole.
"Shoo!" Drule repeated, waving her arms at Krog. "Shoo! Shoo!"
Looking very puzzled, the creature retreated farther, then squatted on its haunches again, a smile of contentment on its face.
It was some time before the Lady Drule got all of her people out of the hole. When she did, they crowded around her, staring at the creature she had found. She was so hemmed in that she could hardly move, and began pushing her way out of the crowd.
" 'Nough look at Krog!" she commanded. "Come on. We gotta look for Highbulp!"
A layer of dust had settled on the hilltop, and there were tracks all around. Three distinct sizes of footprints — gully dwarf prints, human prints twice their size, and Krog prints twice the size of the human prints.
She showed the rest of them the tracks, then pointed. "Highbulp an' rest go that way with Talls."
Hunch stared at the tracks, frowning. "Highbulp real dimwit to go with Talls," he declared. "Why do that?"
"Dunno." The Lady Drule shrugged. "We go see."
She set out northward, the rest falling in behind her. Behind them, Krog realized that they were leaving. He stood up.
"Mama?" he rumbled. "Wait for me." He hurried to catch up with the Lady Drule, and gully dwarves scattered this way and that to avoid being stepped on.
Drule looked back at the confusion and shook her head. "Ever'body come on!" she demanded. "No time for fool around!"
"It not us fool around. It Krog!"
"Make Krog go 'way."
After they had gone a few miles, the Lady Drule gave up on getting rid of Krog. She had tried everything she could think of to make the creature "go 'way," and nothing had worked. Faced with the inevitable, she accepted it and just tried to ignore him. It was difficult. Every time she turned around, the first things she saw were enormous knees. Even worse, he insisted on calling her "mama," and kept trying to hold her hand.
Worse yet, Krog's presence tended to discourage the others from following closely. Sometimes, when the Lady Drule looked back, they were barely in sight. Then, when the smoky sun was setting beyond the mountains to the west, she looked around and couldn't see them at all.
On the verge of exasperation, she climbed a broken stump and peered into the brushy distance. "Now where they go?" she muttered.
"Who?" Krog asked.
"Others," she said. "S'posed to be followin'. Can't see 'em."
"Oh," he rumbled. "Here." Great fingers circled her waist, and he raised her high. "See, mama? There they are."
A half mile back, the others had stopped at the edge of a fallen forest and were scurrying about. They had built a fire.
"Oh," the Lady Drule said. "Time for eat."
"Yeah," Krog agreed, setting her on her feet. 'Time for eat. What we eat?"
"Make stew," she explained. "What else?" With a sigh, she started back.
"What else?" Krog rumbled, and followed.
Partway back, on a wind-scoured flat littered with fallen stone, Drule saw furtive movement among some rocks, and her nose twitched. "Rat?" she breathed. She circled half around the rocks, saw movement again, and dived at it, her fingers closing an inch behind the rodent's fleeing tail. She stood and shook her head. "Rats," she said.
Krog watched curiously, repeated, "Rats," and squatted beside a boulder. With a heave, he lifted it, and several rats scurried away. The Lady Drule made a dive for one, missed it. Her hand closed around a stick. A second rodent raced by. Drule swatted it on the head.
She picked it up, looked at it, then looked at the stick in her hand. It was a sturdy hardwood branch an inch thick and about two feet long. "Pretty good bashin' tool," she decided.
"Bashin' tool," Krog rumbled.
By the time they got back to the others, Drule had three rodents for the pot and Krog was busy fashioning a bashing tool of his own. He had found a section of broken tree trunk about five feet long, and was shaping it to his satisfaction by beating it against rocks as they passed. It was a noisy process, but the implement pleased him. It felt right and natural in his hand. He held the forty-pound club in front of him, studied it with satisfied eyes, tossed it in the air, caught it, and studied it again. "Pretty good bashin' tool," he said.
By the time the stew was ready, daylight was gone. "Better stay here for sleep," the Lady Drule told the others. "Go on tomorrow."
"Go where,S Mama?" Krog wondered.
"Find others."
"These others?" He indicated the crowd around the fire.
"No," she said. "Other others."
"Fine," the Grand Notioner said, picking out a stew bowl. He dipped it and sat down to eat as others made their way to the pot. There weren't enough iron bowls to go around — much had been lost when the cavern of This Place had collapsed — but they made do with vessels of tree bark, cupped shards of stone, and a leather boot that someone had found and cut down.