"Puny things!" the ogre roared, gaining momentum. "Throw rock at me?
Loam last thing you will see!"
"What did you do that for?" the dwarf growled. "Now look what -"
"I didn't expect him to be quite so cranky," Chess explained, interrupting. His hoopak-sling sang and another pebble – this one larger – smashed into the advancing ogre's face, full on his wide nose. Dark blood spurted, then dripped downward, veiling the thing's grotesque mouth. The ogre roared again and sprinted toward them.
"I think he's really angry," the kender said. "This one's yours. I'd better look around and see if there are others."
"What?" Chane turned, but the kender was already gone, leaping nimbly from one rock to another, upslope, pausing here and there to peer down into the shadowed pathway below.
"Rust and tarnish!" Chane stared at the advancing monster. The thing was tall enough to reach him with its club, even from the path below the rock where he still crouched. And it was coming fast. He fingered the hilt of his sword, then decided against it and unslung his hammer.
"Kharas aid me now," the dwarf breathed.
Backing up a step from the edge of the rock, Chane glanced quickly at its moonlit top, then knelt and swung. He struck stone with the spike-end of his hammer. Again he swung. Then the dwarf ducked as a hand the size of his back appeared above the stone and swung a massive club that whuffed over him.
Chane's hammer rang again on the surface of the stone, and again. The great club rose above him and descended, crunching into the stone beside him with a sound of thunder. Again the cudgel was raised aloft, and this time Chane had to throw himself to one side as it smashed down where he had been. He rolled, righted himself, and swung his hammer again. The weapon's spike sank into stone, making another hole in a precise line of holes that – he hoped – followed a faint flaw line in the rock.
Just beyond and below the rock outcrop, the ogre leaped upward. For an instant its eyes were level with Chane's. The dwarf dodged, and the club descended again, raising a cloud of stonepowder. The ogre's roar was a rising, echoing thunder of rage. The club thudded here and there, searching for Chane… then paused. The sounds beyond told the dwarf that the monster was climbing. He sighted on the fault line and swung again.
The top of the ogre's head came into view, then its eyes. The creature bellowed in huge pleasure when it saw that the dwarf was trapped there with sheer cliff at his back and no place to go. The ogre clung to the stone and raised its massive club. Chane scooped stone dust and threw it into the huge, grinning, bloody face.
The ogre roared in rage, lost its hold, and dropped from view. Quickly, though, it started climbing again. Chanc's hammer rang. The sound of its impact was different now, a slight, hollow echo accompanying each stroke.
And the spike sank deeper into the stone with each swing. Again the massive hand appeared with its club, and descended a blow that would have flattened and crushed the dwarf, had it found him. Chane panted, concentrating on his work. The scrabbling sounds of clumsy climbing began again, and the ogre's head came into view.
Chane raised his hammer one last time, whispered, "Reorx, guide my maul," and brought it down against the stone. The sound of the impact seemed to go on and on, the ringing strike becoming a deep, low grinding sound as the fault opened… a hair line that became an inch, then another inch… then a cleft a foot across, that widened abruptly and crashed away into the walled pathway below, carrying the ogre with it. Chane crept to the newly sheared edge of the outcrop and looked down. The pathway beneath was a jumble of fallen stone, its walled opening filled halfway to the top. A cloud of stone dust hung above it, veiling the moons' light.
Slinging his hammer, Chane took his sword in hand and bounded down to the rockfall, searching for openings. He found a wide slit, thrust his sword into it, and prodded as far as the blade would go. Somewhere underfoot, distant-sounding and muffled, the ogre howled in outrage. Chane went looking for wider fissures.
He was still darting back and forth across the tumble of slab-stone when the kender reappeared, just above, crouched on the sheared ledge. "What did you do with your ogre?" the smaller one asked. "I hear him, but I don't see him."
"He's under these rocks," the dwarf snapped. "I can't reach him."
"Well, that's not so bad," Chess shrugged. "That means he can't reach you, either. Of course, if you'd killed him first, then buried him, you wouldn't have this sort of problem. Don't you know anything about ogres?"
"This is the first one I ever saw," Chane growled, prodding into another crack with his sword. Beneath the rocks something yelped, and the pile of stone shuddered.
"Well, you may have the chance to see some more, if that's what you want. There's something else up there quite a distance away, but definitely up the path. It might be another ogre… maybe several. They tend to come in bunches, you know."
"No, I didn't know."
"Kind of like goblins," the kender said. 'You hardly ever find one goblin without finding a lot of goblins.
Which reminds me, I thought for a minute up there that I could smell goblins. Have you ever smelled goblins?"
"Not intentionally. What do they smell like?"
"Oh, I don't know." The kender pondered it, finding the challenge interesting. "They smell like, uh, maybe a sort of a mixture of fresh manure and dead frogs. I don't know. Goblins smell like goblins. Anyway, you don't generally find ogres and goblins in the same place at the same time. That's why I was surprised to smell goblins."
Chane made a final pass from one end of the rockfall to the other, but found no opening large enough to reach the buried ogre with more than just the tip of his sword. The kender, watching him, went to one of the cracks the dwarf had already tried and inserted the butt-end of his hoopak, then plunged it downward as hard and as deep as he was able. Beneath their feet, the pile of stones rumbled and quaked, and a trilling bellow emerged from various crevices.
"I think he's ticklish," Chess observed.
"I think we should get out of here before he really becomes irritated,"
Chane said. Thoughtfully, he reached into his pack and touched the hard, warm facets of Spellbinder. Instantly the faint, green guideline was there, leading up the switchback trail, heading for the pass high above.
Yet the kender said there were more ogres up there, and maybe goblins, as well. Chane realized that he had never seen a goblin either. He didn't relish the idea of meeting some of them just now, though. The ordeal with the ogre had left him shaken.
"Maybe the thing to do," he told himself, "is to go after those people who were running down the path and find out what they know about what's waiting above."
Chess looked around, frowning. "Don't you want to see for yourself? I do."
"I'd just as soon know what I'm getting myself into before I get into it," Chane decided aloud. "I'm going to talk to some of those people. You can go on up there if you want to."
"Good idea," something soundless seemed to say. "Let's go."
"Hush, Zap," the kender said. "I know what you're trying to do."
"Misery," the spell mourned.
The dwarf glanced around. He was growing accustomed to the ditherings of the kender's companion, but it still bothered him.
"Zap thinks if I take him far enough away from you and Spellbinder, that he can happen," Chess said with a shrug.
The dwarf had already started back down the zigzag trail, so the kender followed him. Chess looked back toward the distant heights now and then and wished the old spell hadn't attached itself to him.