Grallik, limping, called another spell to mind. Words he’d learned in his earliest years in the Conclave spilled from his lips, and in response darts of flame flew from his fingertips and struck the goblins nearest the priest.
“Away from him!” Grallik shouted. “All of you, back into the pens.” Where the pens used to be, he decided, seeing only posts and rails strewn on the ground. It would be a challenge just to corral the goblins and find a means to contain them.
The crowd of goblins backed away from the Skull Knight, who knelt by his two fallen attendants. “Wellon is dead,” the priest called to Grallik. “Slaves will die for this, these miserable creatures. They will-”
“There’s been enough dying in these past few days,” Grallik said firmly. He kept a wary eye on the mass of trapped slaves, continuing to focus his spell on the flaming wall.
Footsteps behind him signaled the approach of a contingent of knights. No matter how many were coming, it wouldn’t be enough, Grallik thought. No standing pens, no working wards, too many goblins, half already gone.
“Guardian N’sera!” The out-of-breath voice came from Marek. “The slaves, what should we-?”
Grallik raised a hand to silence him. What should we do? the wizard thought. I have no idea. Instead, he answered: “Bring the other Skull Knights here. I know we have wounded brothers, but they’ve spells that will help quell this slave revolt now.” Then, softer, he added, “And this must be our priority, Marek. We cannot afford to lose any more of these slaves.”
“Contain the goblins, then see to the wounded,” the Skull Knight said, echoing Grallik. “As you command.”
“Aye, Guardian! I will summon the other priests!” Marek’s footsteps retreated as he shouted for the other Skull Knights.
Grallik concentrated on maintaining the wall. The stench from the burning bodies continued to assault his senses, and coupled with the pain throbbing in his ankle, the wizard was having a difficult time keeping his focus.
“Wellon and Hayson are dead,” the Skull Knight reported bitterly. “Both dead to these little butchers. And we were trying to help them! Heal them! Ungrateful monsters.”
The goblins were milling about, keeping their distance from the wizard and the Skull Knight but talking too, in their odd language, cut through with clacking sounds and hand gestures. Some wailed at fellows they’d lost to Grallik’s fire, and some merely shook their little fists at the Skull Knight.
Grallik suddenly spotted the goblin he’d been looking for, the red-skinned female who had tried to warn them of the coming quake. She had squatted, hands splayed atop the ground, her skin looking molten in the glare of the fire wall. Her lips were moving, but, of course, the wizard couldn’t hear her words with all the other racket. As he watched, his concentration divided between maintaining his spell and glancing at her, another goblin came to her side, one with a dull yellow hide and over-long ears.
His mouth dropped open when he saw the yellow goblin squat next to her, putting his hands on the ground too and speaking quickly and anxiously to the red-skinned one. Grallik’s flame wall clearly illuminated the little scene, though at first he thought the flickering light played tricks.
The ground seemed to bubble around the two goblins’ hands, then a hollow formed that stretched to the wall of fire and, to Grallik’s astonishment, tunneled under it. The hollow was just big enough for a goblin to squeeze through, and that was what the yellow-skinned goblin immediately did.
“No!” Grallik yelled, intensifying his spell. The fire filled in the hollow and rose higher, turning white with intense heat. All the other goblins edged past him, trying to escape the intense heat, and he watched with some satisfaction as they clustered in the remains of their former pens.
He looked around for the red-skinned goblin but couldn’t spot her. There were just too many goblins, a mass of shifting little bodies interspersed with the occasional taller hobgoblin. Had she escaped through the hollow path too? He prayed to his dark god that she hadn’t.
“Guardian N’sera! I need help moving these men.” The Skull Knight stood near his fallen attendants.
“You’ll have help, but be patient,” Grallik returned. He heard footsteps behind him again, at least a dozen armored men from the sound. He ordered the knights to pull the priest’s attendants to the center of the camp, to escort the priest away from the goblins, and to gather whatever wood they could find to try to reconstruct the pens.
Only one man questioned his order, a common laborer who’d joined the knights. He wondered whether ramshackle wood would hold the slaves if they saw another opportunity to escape.
“We must try,” Grallik said in harsh, hushed tones. “Do your best to build something strong. We have to keep the slaves penned in and keep alive the hope of rebuilding this place.”
The laborer nodded without enthusiasm. “Hell this place is,” he said. “Hell’s come to Steel Town.”
“Aye, that it has,” the wizard returned.
15
Direfang had not run so far or so fast since his youth, not since those days long ago, before he was captured by a band of minotaurs braving ogre lands and was sold to the Dark Knights. Once the ground stopped trembling and he was certain the quake was past, he still ran hard and fast, with all the strength he could summon. The ground was relatively flat there, and the sky was clearing, though there were still clouds, especially to the west, where Steel Town and the mine were behind him. Dawn was still hours away, but the lightening sky made it easy for him to avoid holes and cracks in the earth and the rocks that lay strewn in his path.
His legs were much longer than the goblins’. They couldn’t keep up with him, and he had long since passed them by and stopped worrying about tripping over them. He still cradled Graytoes, and she still whimpered to him about Moon-eye.
“Stop, Direfang. Find Moon. Please.”
He kept running, offering her no reply, wanting nothing more than to put more distance between himself and Steel Town.
He heard voices strung out behind him, goblins arguing about how long it would take before the Dark Knights would ride out on their surviving horses and search for them.
“Long while,” a goblin with a high-pitched voice declared.
Direfang agreed with that sentiment. Though slaves were crucial to the operation of their detested camp, the second quake had caused enough problems in Steel Town to keep the knights and their horses busy back there for some time.
So Direfang continued to run, stretching his legs and delighting in the dull aches that centered in his thighs and in the backs of his calves. His legs had not been tested in that manner for years. His side began to ache after a while, and he held his right arm close to one side while at the same time making sure he kept a good grip on Graytoes.
The young goblin wouldn’t stop babbling about her missing mate. Still, Direfang ignored her, kept running.
Foothills loomed ahead to the northeast, where he was heading. There were ogres in those hills-there were ogres in many parts of Neraka-but he intended to hunker down there long enough to rest and think and talk with any of the other goblins who had kept up with him and who wanted to keep following his lead. He would seek Mudwort’s counsel in the foothills. He would linger there so she could catch up.
Behind him, sounding like a chorus of whispers because the pounding of his feet and the pounding in his ears were so loud, he faintly heard the frightened calls of goblins and hobgoblins. When the cries diminished and became so soft that he could no longer hear them, he finally slowed his pace and looked over his shoulder. The horde of slaves looked like a brown wave rolling toward him, dirt billowing around their feet, but none moved very fast anymore. He saw two small ones in front stumble and watched as they were trampled by their fellows.