“As many as possible this day,” Direfang returned stoically. “More tomorrow and tomorrow. Then mend this arm. Mend as many as possible and live to see the next day and the next.” He looked over the goblin assembly, raising his voice commandingly. “Spikehollow, Erguth, take the knights’ weapons.” He pointed to the two in armor at the top of the trail. “Then bring the knights down here for more talking.”
Direfang slipped to the base of the trail then melded into the ranks of his army. “The knights are useful,” he told Mudwort as he passed. To the others, he announced, “Skull men cast spells that kill threatening things, also heal wounds. Useful alive, useless dead, the knights are.”
“Keep the knights!” That first voice came from deep in the crowd and soon became a chant. When the crowd again quieted, Direfang headed down, toward the lake, where he intended to quench his great thirst and soak his sore arm. He looked behind him to see Mudwort glaring, but the knights slowly wended their way through the crowd, which had parted to let them safely follow him down to the village.
“See that all the dead goblins are gathered and burned. Make sure that none dead have been missed. Search everywhere,” Direfang told a hobgoblin. “There will be a ceremony tonight to honor the dead and keep the spirits away.”
“The knights?” the hobgoblin posed. “How shall we treat them?”
“As slaves,” Direfang said.
Saro-Saro had been following close behind the leader of the rebellion. He turned to his clansmen, nodding. “Direfang does not die this day,” he said. “But Direfang will be watched.”
29
They dressed the Ergothian priest in the leather leggings of an ogre child, leaving him bare chested. His chain mail was given to the burly hobgoblin called Grunnt, who had distinguished himself in the battle of Steel Town by slaying six knights single-handedly. It was obvious Grunnt found the metal cumbersome and uncomfortable, but he refused to take it off, considering the outfit a mark of honor. Erguth wore the priest’s tabard. The tattered cloak had been ripped up and used for bandages, as had Grallik’s gray robes.
They let the other two Dark Knights keep their tabards, though Grunnt took their chain mail and the padded armor underneath it, dividing the latter between a few hobgoblins and throwing the armor into the lake-with the knights watching sullenly. The weapons were divided between goblins and hobgoblins, who paraded around with them near the slave pens.
The four knights, fitted with chains and wrist shackles the goblins had found in one of the buildings, were allowed to keep their boots. Grunnt saw how soft the bottoms of the knights’ feet were and allowed them the courtesy of the boots while noting it was a courtesy the knights had never given their slaves.
Then Grunnt and Erguth busied themselves searching the village for shoes, boots, and sandals that would fit the hobgoblins. The bodies of the ogre children already had been looted, with goblins claiming the shoes and many of the tunics. A few hundred of the goblins and hobgoblins wore clothing finally, which had been divvied up by clan and age and fistfights. Nothing fit right, save some of the children’s clothing that had been looted from Steel Town. And only a smattering of pieces, taken from inside the ogre homes, were clean and in good repair. The only thing that kept a war from breaking out over the clothing was the vow by Saro-Saro and Hurbear that more and better clothing would be taken from other villages, from merchant caravans, and perhaps from shops. Some would even be purchased with coin, rather than stolen.
A reed-thin goblin with a dropped shoulder lit a lantern and set it near the slave pen where the four knights sat unhappily. The lantern was for the knights’ benefit, another small concession they’d been permitted because the goblins saw well enough in the dark. It was late, but just how late was impossible to know; the stars were masked by thick gray clouds of smoke and ash. No one had seen the sun set.
“Midnight, maybe, do you think?” Grallik asked, leaning back against a post near the others. The goblins had ruined part of the pen freeing the ogres’ captives, but they’d rebuilt a section and tossed the four Dark Knights inside. Four hobgoblins, including Grunnt and Erguth, stood guard.
“I don’t think it’s quite that late,” the priest answered stoically. “But it is night, and the moon is full. I can tell that much without seeing it.”
Grallik raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“Solinari, Gray Robe, she was nearly round when we left Iverton, and we have marched ceaselessly. So she must be full this night,” Horace said with a sigh, as though tired of explaining something to a child. “Every eight months, Solinari is lone and full in the sky. That night is called the Sea Queen’s Share, and we priests give to her, our goddess Zeboim, nearly all the material things we have collected since the previous Queen’s Share. Well, Gray Robe, all of my material things-my armor and weapon, my tabard, my pouch filled with coins and gems-have been taken from me.”
“And so you think the moon is full and that the Sea Queen has already taken her share.” Grallik gave a clipped laugh that drew the attention of Grunnt. The hobgoblin moved to the post the wizard leaned against and thumped it.
“Solinari is full,” Horace insisted. “If Zeboim favors me, most of my sacrifices will be returned.” He leaned back on his elbows, the chain between his wrists long enough to permit that. The sweat on his ample stomach gleamed in the lantern light. His eyes were closed. He was no longer able to keep them open, and his head bobbed. “I’m just so tired, Grallik. It has been too many days since I slept well.”
“Since before the quakes for me,” Grallik admitted. He also was tired but wasn’t about to complain. Too, he’d not been using his magic, as Horace had, so the priest had his sympathy. “I can’t remember what a feather bed feels like.”
“Only patients in my years before the Order had those.” The priest had healed injured goblins until he couldn’t stand. Two hobgoblins had carried him into the pen. “I need to sleep, Grallik.” Horace eased himself down on his back, not caring that he was lying in mud and waste.
Grallik gripped the railings, his fingernails digging into the old, soft wood. “Horace, you said they would not kill us.”
The priest drew his features forward into a scowl. “My divinations appear to be true, Gray Robe. At this juncture, in any event. I predicted that they would not kill us, and they have not killed us. Not yet. And unless one of us does something to provoke them, they will not kill us.”
“Yet we are slaves, Horace.”
“Aye, that we are. My divinations did not reveal that would happen.” He paused. “But that is a subtlety. I asked only whether we would be allowed to live if we joined with the goblins. That is what you wanted to know.” His words ended with a slur as he fell asleep.
Grallik nodded, his gesture lost on the sleeping priest.
“This was your idea, Guardian,” Kenosh said irritably, continuing to use Grallik’s old title. He was one of the two surviving members of Grallik’s talon, and he nearly had not followed Grallik there. In the end, he told the wizard that through the years he’d become as loyal to Grallik as he had been to the knighthood, and he did not fancy being reassigned to another talon after the wizard was demoted. “You said our best chance was with the goblins, though I think there is more to it than the simple fact of safety in their numbers. You will tell me your reasons in time, I trust.”
The other talon member, Aneas Gerald of Jelek, slept soundly on the far side of the priest. He’d been the most difficult to convince, but he knew that with Grallik’s demotion came his demotion, and that was something he preferred to put off for a while, if not forever. In the end Aneas also decided to accompany Grallik and the other two knights, reserving the right to leave at any time. Grallik believed that Aneas would leave at the first opportunity. Perhaps ultimately he would try to curry favor with another post commander by giving him the location of the goblin army and painting Grallik a traitor.