Rider after rider emerged from the swirling grit stirred up by their horses’ hooves, thirty-two horsemen in all. Armed with long lances, they halted just outside the ring of village huts. Visors on their helmets were shut, lending the intruders a faceless, menacing air. It must be stifling for the men inside-if men they were.
The unknown riders were frightening enough, but on their heels came a more terrifying sight. Striding into view came a squad of towering ogres, each almost as tall as the mounted warriors ahead of them. Yellow tusks, filed sharp as daggers, protruded from the ogres’ underslung jaws. Their ears were pulled down to their shoulders by heavy ornaments of brass and bone, and their nobby gray hands were smeared with dried gore. The tallest of the monsters had blue-black tattoos on their shaven pates, and dry white skulls of various victims, two-legged and four-legged, hung from loops on their tarnished armor.
The screaming became general as the villagers shrank from the monstrous new interlopers. Many threw down their tools and huddled around the old gong post.
“Ogres,” Old Marren said grimly. His grip tightened on Laila’s arm.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I can smell them.”
No ogres had been to the village in living memory, and Malek wondered where the old man had encountered such monsters before. He let the question go unasked, muttering instead to Marren, “Do you still have that sword?”
The old man’s sightless eyes gazed into the air over Malek’s head. “I do. Over the fireplace.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Malek, no!” Laila hissed.
“Go quickly, son!” countered the blind man.
Malek dashed inside. Marren’s sword was old, nicked and pitted, but he kept it well honed and oiled. Malek took it down. It felt like stone, long and heavy. He had never held a sword in his life.
Outside, the ogres ignored the cringing farmers and set about slaking their thirst at the well. Bucket after bucket of water went down the ogres’ long gullets, spilling out their jutting jaws and dripping from their ivory fangs. When one ogre didn’t pass the bucket fast enough, his comrades buffeted him around the head with their massive clawed hands. Slipping in the mud, the tardy ogre fell heavily against the stone wall surrounding the well. His companions hooted.
Malek counted ten ogres, each armed with a long-handled axe; burnished, well-dented bronze shields; and banded-iron armor criss-crossing their chests.
Six more horses entered the village behind the ogres. Taller and finer-bred than those the lancers rode, they bore riders in blackened three-quarter plate, much stained from long days in the saddle. One rider bore a standard pole with a short, forked oriflamme of sun-faded scarlet. When the six appeared, the lancers straightened in their saddles and the ogres ceased their frantic guzzling and sorted themselves into a semblance of a line.
The riders drew up between the well and the gong. In the center of the group, a tall horseman in streaked sable plate raised his visor and looked over the frightened farmers. Malek made out a short, wide nose and beetling brows, but the rider was undeniably human.
“Where is your headman?” he demanded.
When no dared respond, the man in black armor nodded, and the warrior beside him produced a crossbow. Knocking a thick quarrel, the bowman pointed his weapon at the crowd and loosed. To Malek’s horror, Sohn the brewer collapsed, his chest pierced through.
More screaming and weeping erupted as the crowd of villagers surged away. The lancers quickly encircled them, herding the terrified farmers back to the gong. Two of the younger men tried to break free and run. Neither made it more than ten steps before they were spitted on rusty lances. Each new outpouring of blood brought fresh screams from the frightened farmers and restless growls and grunts from the ogres.
Malek had enough. He charged at the rider with the raised visor, waving Marren’s old sword. He would have died for his temerity had not the invaders’ leader stayed his archer’s hand. Six steps from the horsemen, an ogre stuck out the handle of his axe and tripped Malek. The sword went flying, and Malek’s charge ended facedown in the fresh mud.
“One of you has courage, if not brains,” said the leader. The ogre who tripped Malek drove his bare foot into the villager’s ribs. Shod or not, it felt like a plowshare. Malek rolled over and over from the blow. Fire and pain flashed through his side.
“Get up.”
When it was clear Malek could not oblige, the leader ordered one of his ogres to get the farmer. The enormous creature, spattered with mud and smelling as if he’d rolled in the rotting carcass of a dead cow, seized Malek by the wrist and dragged him before his commander.
“Who are you?”
“Malek, Gusrav’s son,” he gasped.
“What place is this?”
“Nowhere …”
The ogre slapped Malek on the back of the head. A mild reproof by ogre standards, it rattled the teeth in Malek’s jaw.
“I ask you again, what place is this?” barked the commander.
“The village of Nowhere!”
At his leader’s nod, the ogre dropped him. Through tear-filled eyes, Malek watched as the invader unbuckled the chin strap of his helmet and pried the heavy headgear off. Under the sinister black helmet was a surprisingly benign countenance. Of middle age, his heavy brows and flat nose, combined with high cheekbones and deeply tanned skin, lent him an aura of refinement unusual for a bandit chief.
“I am Rakell,” he declaimed loudly. “Lord Rakell. I have come to this province to bring law and order to backwaters such as this. From this moment on, I am master here. My word is your only law. Obey me, and all will be well. None shall be spared who defy my will. Is that clear?”
There was no response other than quiet weeping. Rakell ignored the muted lamentations.
“At my invitation, dwarves of the Throtian Mining Guild have established an iron mine sixteen leagues from here in the northwestern buttes of the Khalkist Mountains.” Sensing geography meant little to his listeners, Rakell gave up further description. “They need able-bodied people to work the diggings. This village will provide twenty for the mine today and in thirty days’ time, another twenty.”
“There are only sixty-six adults here,” protested one farmer weakly. “Take away forty and there won’t be enough hands to harvest or plant!”
Rakell raised his hand, and three ogres waded into the crowd and dragged out the man who dared protest. While Rakell looked on impassively, they beat the poor farmer senseless with their enormous knotty fists. When blood started to flow, the bandit chief called off his thugs.
“That’s enough. Cripples and corpses can do little work.”
The ogres desisted. To the villagers the self-proclaimed lord of Nowhere added, “Perhaps your dialect is as backward as your wits. When I speak, it is a command, not a request!”
When the villagers persisted in clinging together in defiance of Rakell’s orders, the lancers moved in, using their spears to lever men and women from the weeping throng. They cut out the first twenty they came to, ranging from Nil’s teenage son to Bakar’s stout aunt Yena. Torn from friends and family, the chosen villagers were shoved into line by the ogres and shackled together.
Malek managed to roll onto one knee. Catching Rakell’s eye, the bandit-lord called for Malek’s lost sword. An ogre complied, presenting the weapon to his commander pommel-first.
Rakell took the sword. Upon examining it, his thick brows arched up in surprise.
“How did a knightly blade get to this dustheap, I wonder?” To Malek he said, “You, farmer. Where did you get this blade?”
“My plow turned it up in the barley field,” he lied.
Rakell swung the blade experimentally, testing its balance and heft. “Interesting. Pre-Cataclysm work, watered steel made by the school of Thelgaard … I shall keep this.” He slid the old sword through his buff leather baldric.