“Slaves,” Erguth said to Mudwort in a hushed tone. “See there, those buildings, inside? Slaves there to be sold to the Dark Knights.” He pointed to the narrow end of the basin, where a high wooden fence with spikes around the outside contained several dozen hobgoblins, goblins, and a few humans-the latter huddling together away from the rest. Mudwort hadn’t seen humans enslaved before, and she wondered who-or what-the ogres planned to sell them to.
“Maybe eat them,” Erguth said of the humans, seeming to read her mind. “Maybe the ogres eat them.”
Nearly sixty ogres could be seen in the village, doing various activities. They had the shape of men, though their heads were overly large for their thick necks, and there were hard-looking ridges across their foreheads shading their dark eyes. Their arms were abnormally long, and the largest of the ogres had ropelike veins standing out from their shoulders to their wrists. No sentry was posted to warn them of Direfang’s force. They had never felt threatened in those mountains, so they were oblivious to the army on the crest, the many goblin eyes observing them greedily. The brutes moved around their broken buildings, sifting through the debris, trying to reconstruct some of their homes.
“Rebuilding like the Dark Knights tried to do,” Erguth whispered. “Doing a better job too.”
“Ugly, stinky ogres.” Mudwort was amazed that the Dark Knights considered goblins ugly. The Dark Knights regularly dealt with ogres, and those creatures were much more hideous! How the knights could call anything ugly after dealing with ogres made no sense to her. Ogres were positively revolting.
“Toads are beautiful compared to these … monsters,” she hissed. She wrinkled her nose and made a gagging sound, certain that she could detect their noxious odor even high up there on the ridge. Only a few had short-cropped hair, and she wondered if those ogres had become tangled in something or had been demoted in rank and so had to cut their hair. Ogres often were proud of their long, smelly, dirty hair. All the ogres below had matted clumps hanging to their waists or below.
“Bugs,” she said. “Crawling on heads. Crawling all over.” Mudwort imagined that the ogres’ hair was infested with them. Some had braids festooned with bones and twigs. One had colorful beads woven into a beard. Most had no facial hair, not even eyebrows. “Stinky monsters, the lot. Stinky, mean.” She turned her head and spat, just missing Erguth’s arm.
All of the ogres were muscular, and their chests and legs glistened with sweat from the day’s heat. Though they wore trousers, only half wore any shirts or tunics. Despite the presence of a small lake at the wide end of their village, dirt streaks, some in elaborate patterns, were conspicuous on their bodies-all over their arms, faces, and chests-and their shoulders were smeared with ash. Mudwort noted patches of ash on the ground and covering some of the rubble. She twisted to look behind her at one of the biggest volcanic peaks. It continued to belch ash and smoke into the air and likely, she reflected fleetingly, was responsible for the gray sky.
“Don’t think that is the one that will break,” she said to herself. Still, the glow around its crater made her nervous, and she watched a line of lava spill over the side. She couldn’t see the bottom of the lava ribbon because a mountain slope was in the way. “Don’t think so, but don’t know for certain.” Once more she climbed down from Erguth and scampered across jagged rocks to get her own view of the volcanoes. “Know for certain at least one mountain will break.”
She wrapped her fingers around a spire of rock, instantly feeling the tingle of it. She knelt and felt the ground trembling slightly, so faint she hadn’t registered it against the tough soles of her feet. It wasn’t the same nervousness or anger she’d noticed before in the mine.
The trembling felt … anxious was the word she finally put to the sensation. Mudwort thrust her mind into the stone, hurling her senses downward and passing through layers of rock and dirt, tunnels where snakes and badgers and other things had dwelled but were now absent. Things were moving about in the mountain, creatures sharing the stone’s anxiousness and streaming south and east, some burrowing upward and moving aboveground. There were large tunnels too, and Mudwort would have tarried to learn more about them had she not heard the explosion of whoops from Direfang’s army.
She glanced up in time to see goblins and hobgoblins spill over the ridge and descend on the ogre village.
25
Many goblins brandished Steel Town knives, and the hobgoblins with swords held them high while letting out ear-splitting shrieks. Mudwort peered over the edge of the rock spire and watched the surprised ogres react in confusion.
It was a beautiful sight. Mudwort wished she could have watched the battle in Steel Town from such a vantage point. The ogres barely had time to grab weapons-clubs and gardening tools and rocks from the buildings they were repairing-before the first wave of goblins struck. Mudwort cursed the dark sky. If the sun were out, she could see the glorious sight much better.
There were Brak and Folami, charging ahead of Direfang and Spikehollow and barreling into an ogre holding a hoe. Folami shot beneath the brute’s arms and rammed a knife into his thigh while Brak grabbed the hoe handle and pulled it free. The ogre roared in anger and flailed with its empty hands, finding Folami’s head and wrapping its big fingers tight around the goblin’s skull. The ogre picked Folami up, crushing his skull and throwing his corpse toward the approaching Direfang. The hobgoblin howled, put his head down, smashed into the ogre, and sent it to the ground.
“Folami dead.” Mudwort shook her head. He was a young, strong goblin, and she used to enjoy listening to his stories-not that she’d ever told him that, but she listened while in the slave pens. She watched as more goblins died, the ogres bashing their heads with clubs and rocks, then hurling the bodies into the still-surging army.
Mudwort looked around to spot others she knew, seeing Moon-eye near Direfang and instantly scowling. “Should not be there.” She tsked. “Should be with Graytoes.” If Moon-eye shared Folami’s fate, Graytoes would be devastated. To lose a baby and a mate could be too much for the goblin to bear. Mudwort did not want the responsibility of looking after a grieving Graytoes, nor should the task fall to Direfang.
“Moon-eye, come here!” Her words were not loud enough to carry down the rise and into the village. But she repeated them twice more, feeling a little better just for saying them. She’d made a token effort to save Graytoes’ mate.
The ogres were more formidable than the Dark Knights, she realized after only a few moments. First of all, the ogres were not as tired and broken as the knights had been. There’d been time for them to rest since the second earthquake, and they were larger and stronger than the knights in Steel Town. As she watched, one of the ogres lifted a hobgoblin over his head.
“Erguth?” Mudwort was on her feet, hand cupped over her wide eyes, staring. “No. Not Erguth. Someone else.” She didn’t know that hobgoblin’s name, but from his coloring, she knew him to be a friend of Direfang’s. And she saw Direfang racing toward the brutish ogre, Erguth close behind him. Direfang was coated with blood, and Mudwort hoped fervently it was ogre blood and not his own. He’d not yet wholly recovered from the wounds the knights and quakes had inflicted.
Mudwort turned her gaze to another part of the battle and saw Spikehollow lead a band of goblins toward the slave pens, quickly dispatching two guards and starting work at pulling apart the old wood slats. All the goblins had caught the blood fever; the desire to fight was infectious. Spikehollow gestured here and there to various goblins, and though she couldn’t hear him, she knew he was barking orders.