“Guardian N’sera,” one of the guards began. “Shall I-?”
Grallik raised his scarred hand. “I need no help with this. Just watch the slaves.”
The odor from the dead was strong and overpowering and threatened to topple the wizard. Grallik was thankful he’d not eaten that day, else he’d be retching as he stood in front of the grisly pile. A haze of insects blanketed the mound, the incessant buzzing of the creatures making it hard for him to think. They flowed out around him, gnats sticking to the sweat on Grallik’s face and neck and flying into his nose and mouth.
He gagged and crossed his arms in front of his chest, ground the ball of his foot against the hard earth, and reached into his mind for one of his easiest fire spells. He closed his eyes when he felt the flush of the magic, a warmth that was comfortable and welcome. The magic sprang away from him to strike the edge of the pile a dozen yards away. He directed the energy to envelop the closest corpse, a hobgoblin clad in a threadbare tunic that quickly caught fire. Flesh was harder to burn than cloth, so Grallik had to concentrate, picturing a column of beautiful flame, of red, orange, and yellow. Blessed color to contrast with the mud brown of Steel Town. He opened his eyes to see a lick of fire begin to dance along the cloth and catch at the hobgoblin’s hair.
The insects were loud, so he couldn’t hear the first few harmonious crackles of fire. But after several moments, the flames spread and the noise of pleasant pops and hisses grew, and the annoying insects buzzed away into the darkness. Grallik felt the heat caress his face, relaxing him. The stench intensified, burning hair and flesh adding to the stink and sending billowing gray-black clouds up in the sky to blot out the stars. The Dark Knights always burned the slaves’ bodies, not willing to go to any effort to bury them and not wanting to give them any measure of respect. The goblins and hobgoblins never protested such treatment of their dead-not that their objections would have mattered.
Grallik circled the pyre, sending small lances of flame from his fingers toward the far side. He saw crushed skulls and ribs, partial torsos, and decapitated bodies. A war could not have been more destructive. He’d so far avoided venturing toward the Dark Knights’ graves, though eventually that would be necessary if he sought a pair of good boots. He could handle the sight of mutilated slave corpses far better than that of his dismembered brethren.
Satisfied that the pile of hob and gob bodies was burning well, he turned away and abruptly stopped in his tracks.
Goblins and hobgoblins were pressed against the fence, watching the fire. More, they were watching Grallik, their eyes wide and filled with fear and anger and sadness. They looked all the same to the wizard, though his eyes registered the different skin colors-orange, brown, red, yellow, and mottled shades in between. All were a bit drab and weathered looking, like old paint that had faded.
Most had wide-set eyes and broad noses, thin lips and sharp little teeth. Some had tall, pointed ears; others had crooked ones with pieces missing or decorated with shards of bones. Most were thin because the Dark Knights fed them just enough to keep them alive, and their ribs and shoulders were weirdly pronounced. A scattering had little pot bellies, and many had real arm and leg muscles from the heavy work they were forced to endure in the mine. Only one in five or six wore any articles of clothing. As in human society, clothing seemed to carry some measure of distinction, with the older or larger goblins boasting garments that came either from children in Steel Town who had outgrown them or women who had gotten tired of a raggedy garment and pitched it into the pen.
The hobgoblins were simply larger versions with more tufts of hair and even wider faces. Some had large enough teeth to be considered tusks. They came in a smaller range of colors, browns and reds, though they were equally drab and scarred. But they tended to wear more clothes because the hobgoblins served as foremen and stood apart from their more unfortunate brethren.
No two of them looked exactly alike, yet all of them appeared beaten down by years of hard work, malnourished from improper amounts of food, dazed by their hopelessness. To Grallik, they were all one and the same-tools for a job, to be treated with as much care as a sturdy pick or a shovel.
Little more than debris.
Many of the ones staring at him were injured, the stink from their dried blood and oozing wounds reaching Grallik as the breeze shifted. One in a corner drew his notice-a skinny female goblin with dark red skin and a lugubrious face etched with harshness. Her eyes were different, dark and small, set close to the thin bridge of her nose. They gave her a particularly angry expression. The others usually gave space to her, he’d noted in the past. Perhaps, like him, they were bothered by her angry eyes. Grallik had heard her two evenings past, hollering to the guards about a coming disaster. Could she have known about the quake?
How smart was she?
There were shamans among goblinkind. Was she one of them?
Huh! He shook his head. It was not likely but not impossible. He’d never scrutinized any of the slaves, only gave them passing glances when they brought the ore down the mountain. He’d never wondered if one of them carried a magical spark.
It was not likely that Angry Eyes was a shaman. And yet …
His throbbing feet reminded him that it was past time to sit and rest. His course took him around the goblin pens and toward chairs lined up where the tavern used to be. Grallik kept his gaze on the skinny red-skinned goblin as he went.
“The earth is not done,” he thought he heard her say.
10
Direfang watched as Moon-eye fawned over Graytoes. The young female sat propped up against a post, hands on her rounded stomach and eyes closed. She looked as if she slept, but the hobgoblin knew she just wanted a measure of privacy. Pretending to sleep despite all the noise and the crowding and the swarms of insects was her only way to get some measure of peace. Moon-eye waved gnats away from her face.
Her legs were swollen, and Direfang could tell that the left might be broken. If it were broken, it would be a clean break, he knew from experience. There were no bones poking out of her skin and no maggots worming their way inside. He was amazed that both legs hadn’t been thoroughly shattered and that she hadn’t died. But the ground beneath her chamber had been packed with soft dirt, and the dirt had absorbed some of the impact of the timber falling on her. Direfang had carefully carried her out of the mine and down the mountainside. He knew Moon-eye to be a hard worker, and he did not want Moon-eye to grieve too much over the death of a mate and risk punishment.
“Skull men will see to Graytoes later,” he told Moon-eye. “Mend Graytoes later. Graytoes will be well, maybe even a little later today.” He paused. “But maybe not until tomorrow. The skull men are busy mending the knights right now.”
Moon-eye snarled something unintelligible. He’d called to the guards several times, trying to get one of them to summon a Skull Knight to heal his mate. There were other goblins injured worse, but Moon-eye didn’t care about them.
“Moon-eye’s Heart hurts,” he said, stroking Graytoes’s arm.
“When the skull men are done with the knights, one will come here,” Direfang said.
“Promise?”
Direfang scowled. “No.” He patted the top of Graytoes’ head then worked his way through the mass of goblins so he could stand at the rail and watch the funeral pyre. He wondered why the Dark Knights chose to bury their dead and forever trap their spirits beneath the earth.