His goblin friend’s mind indeed had gone sour, Direfang thought. Mountains could not break. Not even the earthquakes had shattered the mountain that the steel mine was in. They had simply collapsed the tunnels. Still, he shivered as another cloud of smoke and ash belched up from the crater.
“South leads to freedom,” Mudwort said. She cackled and rubbed her hands together-something the hobgoblin had not seen her do before.
“Hope Mudwort right,” Direfang muttered as he moved ahead.
24
They could have passed for giants, the eight ogres the goblin army swarmed in the mountain pass. Though they were easily nine feet tall and had shoulders as broad as boulders, they’d been caught by surprise and put up only a token resistance before being beaten to bloody lumps by Direfang’s goblin horde.
The scene was made more gruesome by the darkening sky and the flocks of birds racing to the east. It had been noon from the position of the sun when Direfang first spied the ogres. But within the passing of a few minutes, all the time it took for the killing, the sky had turned ominously gray and the air cooled.
Some goblins noticed the quick change in the weather but were not overly concerned. Weather was nothing they could do anything about. They were more curious about the dead ogres and what might be in the pouches dangling from their rope belts. Those goblins and hobgoblins who were farther back in the column-and who hadn’t even joined the fight with the ogres-were more interested in why everyone had stopped and why the scent of blood was so heavy in the air.
“More vicious here than against the Dark Knights,” Mudwort said of the goblins feasting on their ogre enemies. She had reclaimed her perch on Erguth’s shoulders and was watching her brethren with a certain amount of disgust. “See the blood? More angry at the ogres than at the foul Dark Knights.” She turned Erguth’s head so he could look at the largest ogre corpse, which had been practically shredded. “Much angrier, this fight. See?”
Ogres had captured most of the goblins in the first place then subsequently sold them to the Dark Knights in the mining camp. Mudwort detested ogres with all her heart for that reason, but she’d not taken part in the slaughter-instead, she and Erguth had allowed the other goblins to surge past them and join the frenzy of killing and feasting. She was tired of blood, tired in general. And she was much more interested in the changes in the dark afternoon sky.
“It is a good vicious,” Erguth returned, eyes fixed on the massive shredded ogre. “A most happy vicious.”
“Yes, it is,” Mudwort said after a moment. She placed her bony chin on top of his head and watched goblins smear ogre blood on each other’s faces. They were painting clan symbols, some she didn’t recognize. Some were arguing over choice pieces of the fallen, and over the protestations of others, a barrel-chested hobgoblin claimed a rough-weave tunic that one of the ogres had worn. The garment fell to the hobgoblin’s ankles and was spattered with blood, but it was in better repair than most of the garments looted from Steel Town.
Mudwort looked at the sky again and nudged Erguth to forge ahead through the crowd. The mountain pass was relatively narrow, allowing only seven or eight goblins to squeeze through it at one time, resulting in Direfang’s army stretching way back and meandering along the trail like a winding river. Word of the ogre deaths was still being whispered along the line, and she heard Brak and Folami and Crelb and others grumbling behind her that they’d been too far back to take part in the glorious bloodletting.
Had Mudwort not been on Erguth’s shoulders, the hobgoblin wouldn’t have made it to the very front, so tight was the press of goblins wanting their turn at the dead ogres. But she dismissively waggled her fingers at the goblins who blocked their progress, sneering and glaring when necessary. The goblins grudgingly edged aside, giving her a measure of respect and mumbling again about how she alone had predicted the quakes.
From up in the front, Mudwort could better survey the bloody mess. A goblin whose name she didn’t know but who had been among those in her pen in Steel Town was using a Dark Knight knife to cut out the heart of one of the ogres.
“For Saro-Saro!” the goblin claimed, marking him as a member of the old one’s clan.
Another goblin, a wizened one with a malformed arm, was working on prying open the rib cage of a female ogre and tugging that one’s heart out for Hurbear.
Mudwort spotted Direfang several yards beyond the dead ogre bodies. He stood with Spikehollow, Graytoes, and Moon-eye, studying something on the trail. She prodded Erguth more firmly, and the hobgoblin carefully picked his way around the bodies, nearly slipping in a pool of blood, just as more goblins closed in to demand a share of the kill. Erguth showed little interest in partaking and averted his eyes after passing a few particularly gruesome-looking corpses.
“Direfang!” Mudwort called, drawing the leader’s attention as Erguth lumbered close.
Direfang acknowledged her with a nod but kept his eyes focused on Moon-eye. The one-eyed goblin was sniffing the trail and running his fingers around the edge of an ogre footprint. Mudwort climbed down and joined Moon-eye. She watched him closely then took a pinch of dirt from inside the print and set it on her tongue. Moon-eye looked quizzically at her then resumed his surveillance of the trail.
Far behind them, the goblin throng had grown noisy, with word spreading farther about the ogre deaths and questions pouring forth about why everyone had stopped. Mudwort shut the noise out and dug her fingers into the earth.
“This way,” she heard Moon-eye say. “Carry Graytoes now. Please.”
Direfang obliged, picking up the female goblin with his good arm and cradling her close. She could walk on her own and had been doing just that for hours. But Moon-eye was fretting over her and was clearly annoying Direfang.
“Smell it? Smells bad. Ogres came from this way.” Moon-eye pointed up a rise, where a narrower trail wound between granite outcroppings. “Scent is fresh and stinky-strong. Smells worse than Dark Knights.” He scampered away from the main trail and headed up the narrower one, Direfang following and Mudwort reluctantly pulling back from the earth and again climbing up on Erguth’s shoulders. She’d sensed something through the soil, a presence perhaps, and she’d wanted to explore further. But the narrow, upward trail curved east. She wanted to know why Direfang had decided to abandon the southern route.
“Spikehollow, Brak, follow now!” Direfang motioned to those behind him. “Crelb! Forget the dead ogres. Move!”
“Not going south,” Mudwort said, catching up. “Going east now. Why?”
He gestured impatiently, pointing ahead. Erguth struggled to keep up with him as Direfang kept moving.
The column of goblins and hobgoblins, spilling out over the sides of the narrower trail as it crested a rise, looked down upon an ogre village. It filled an impressive egg-shaped basin, the Khalkists rising all around it. Larger than Steel Town had been, some of its crude huts, made from wood and stone, were in a shambles, and the earth around the village was slashed with deep, wide cracks between the piles of rubble. So the quakes had been felt even there and had killed some ogres. Across from the goblins, where another trail led, smooth from all the heavy feet that had trod it, was evidence of a funeral pyre. Fat crows picked at the edges.
The ogre town had four dirt roads that divided homes from gardens and livestock and a central communal building that was the largest structure most of the goblins had ever seen. Three big beasts, cows or oxen perhaps, slowly cooked over fire pits in front of it. One building was surrounded by a low stone wall. Mudwort could see four wells and a scattering of flowers around some of the still-standing homes.