The Rebellion s-1

by Jean Rabe

  “This is home,” one close to Direfang said dully. “Cannot leave home. Steel Town is safe home. Safe here.”

  20

  THE END OF STEEL TOWN

  This place is dead to us.” Marshal Montrill said glumly, lying flat on his back, wadded cloaks propping his head up so he could see the men who circled his makeshift bed. “What the quake didn’t destroy, the goblins did.”

  The air was gray with ash and dust, laced with the sounds of men coughing and moaning and, in the distance, someone hammering. A knight barked orders to his fellows, but the words were drowned out by the crash of something metallic falling.

  The men tending the wounded in what passed for the infirmary looked little better than their suffering patients. There wasn’t an inch of bandage or clothing that was not bloody and filthy, not a patch of skin that shone clean.

  “Aye, Commander,” Grallik acknowledged. “It is all finished.” The wizard’s gray robe was smeared with blood and ashes and tattered at the hem. A dirty stubble marred his face, though no beard grew on the left side where his old fire scars were thickest.

  Grallik himself had given Montrill the painful report of the goblin rebellion, describing the events vividly and leaving nothing out. Some goblins, he told Montrill, still remained in the camp, at the old slave pens, held by the priests’ enchantments. It looked as though the goblins who had revolted were trying to force the remaining slaves to leave, but the divine enchantments were strong and the menials were still rooted in place. Grallik did not think it wise to send any more knights to attack the goblins. It would be a suicide mission. He hoped the goblins would all leave, soon and quickly. Besides, few knights besides those guarding the infirmary were healthy enough to fight. That was what he told Montrill, bluntly.

  “I hold myself to blame, Marshal Montrill.” In truth Grallik did blame himself because he’d posted only a few sentries at the pens after the second quake. He certainly hadn’t expected the escaped slaves to return, and he couldn’t easily recast any of his wards or glyphs. “We were not prepared.”

  Montrill said nothing to ease Grallik’s guilt.

  During the heat of the goblin battle, the wizard had stood on a hillside made of mine detritus, north of Steel Town. He had used a simple spell to render himself unseen and another enchantment to extend his vision into the center of the ravaged mining camp. It had been painful to observe the defeat, the goblins sweeping in and tearing apart everything the Dark Knights had built up during the past three decades.

  Yes, the goblins had defeated the knights, even killing three more from Grallik’s talon. He had only two men remaining in his own command. The wizard could almost smell the blood from his safe vantage point, mixing with the sulfur that still tinged the air. More than once, Grallik had closed his eyes, sick of the spectacle, the defeat, the carnage, and giving himself over to coughing fits. And more than once he’d considered wading into the fray and unleashing every fire spell he could manage before the goblins could bring him down.

  But there were too many goblins, and his magic was close to spent. And he was in charge of whatever was left of Steel Town. It was his responsibility to order the surviving knights to fall back, sending two dozen to protect the wounded in the new infirmary. He doubted the surviving knights could stand up long to the goblin swarm if they chose to pursue their slaughter and turned in their direction.

  So he did all he could do. He reviewed the spells in his memory and judged where to place his magical defenses: a wall of white-hot fire here, columns of fire there, an incendiary cloud to choke out those goblins brave and foolish enough to rush the flames. And when the spells were done, Grallik joined the two dozen knights in the infirmary. He was a Dark Knight who swore the Oath every morning, and he picked up a sword-he could well use one-curling the fingers of his fire-scarred hand around the pommel, the leather wrappings of which were already stained with blood.

  He had vowed to fight hand to hand and, if necessary, give his life in that hellish, barren place. He truly expected to die there.

  But the goblin swarm hadn’t spilled toward the infirmary yet and they seemed content to loot the valuables in the camp. He heard the reports: hobgoblins carrying off sheep and goats, goblins and hobgoblins collecting every container in the camp and filling them with water. The red-skinned goblin who’d predicted the quake stabbed a Dark Knight in the knee then rode gleefully around on the shoulders of a hobgoblin who once had been a foreman of the deep mines.

  Every Dark Knight death was on his hands.

  But there’d been no other option, really, Grallik thought.

  He stood, hanging his head, at Montrill’s side. The commander had awakened from his fever sleep during the massacre, and there’d not been a single Skull Knight available to tend him at that time. The only one left-Horace the Ergothian-had been trying to cast a spell on some of the goblin attackers until he, too, was wounded and fell.

  Montrill had tried to get up and join the struggle, but a young knight disobeyed the order to help him rise and instead pressed the commander back onto the bed.

  “Men will come,” Grallik said. “Twice, Marshal Montrill, I have sent word of the quake and its destruction to Dark Knight commanders in Jelek and Neraka. I have asked for considerable reinforcements.”

  “But the men will come too late.”

  “Aye, Commander. Much too late.”

  Montrill’s face was ashen. “Steel Town is dead to us.”

  “The entrances to the mines collapsed with the last quake.” Earlier, Grallik had verified that horrible reality from his perch on the hill. “They could be reopened again, of course, or new entrances dug. But it will take time.”

  “Years.” The word was a rasp Grallik had to strain to hear.

  “Aye, Marshal Montrill. Even with slaves-new slaves bought from the ogres and minotaurs-it will take years to set this camp operating again as it used to be.”

  Montrill closed his eyes, clearly checking his anger. “It will operate again, Guardian Grallik, but not under our watch. We have failed the Order, and so this camp will fall to the direction of a younger man with fire in his belly, one who will give this place new life, probably a new name. Perhaps he will name it something grand or something sad to mark the unhappy events of this day. My fire flickers out, my comrade.”

  Montrill’s throat worked, and a young knight stepped forward, tipping a jar of water so he could drink. Montrill swallowed only a little, the rest spilling over his cracked lips.

  “You will recover from your wounds, Marshal Montrill.” Grallik’s voice sounded confident, though he doubted his own words. There was only one Skull Knight left, the Ergothian, and he’d been wounded, perhaps seriously. Grallik had seen him lying next to a dead horse. Where was he now? He looked around.

  The supplies were thoroughly ransacked.

  Montrill’s color was bad, his skin clammy and cold. The fingers of his broken hand were red, an early sign of gangrene, the wizard knew.

  “You will recover and be given a new post, Marshal Montrill. The quakes were not your fault. There was nothing anyone in this camp could have done to prevent those quakes.”

  Montrill nodded, accepting that statement. A thin line of blood spilled over his lower lip and he coughed, his shoulders bouncing against the cot. “Aye, the quakes were beyond our control,” he said, pausing again to cough blood. “But the goblins that escaped and returned to attack us, Guardian Grallik, we could have done something about that.”

  “No, they were too numerous,” Grallik countered. He wanted to add: not with the wards and glyphs destroyed, the pens shattered, the many Dark Knights distracted or wounded or dead. “They were an army not to be stopped. Though I admit I should have done more, prepared for any eventuality.”

  “You will be demoted, of course, stripped of your title and sent to the rank of a common soldier for some time. I, too, will lose stature. A demotion for me looms as well.”

  Grallik bristled. “There were too many goblins. I c
ouldn’t have anticipated-”

  “Simple, stupid creatures they are, Grallik,” Montrill mused. “Stupid, reckless slaves.”

  Not all of them, Grallik thought. “One of them was smart enough to predict the quakes.” The red-skinned one, she remained stubbornly in his thoughts. “I heard her tell a guard something bad was going to happen in the mines.”

  A woman suddenly wailed, and a man’s voice tried to calm her. “My son!” she screamed. Then the sound of hammers grew louder and helped muffle her grief. Grallik looked away from the commander, trying to spot the woman and seeing only swirls of dust and shuffling men.

  “Superstitious creatures, I say, those goblins,” Montrill returned. “Not even a wizard as powerful as yourself could have predicted what the earth was going to do. How could a goblin know a quake was coming? Damnable simple, stupid creatures, the goblins, the lot of them.”

  Grallik stood there for several long minutes, listening to the crackle of fires throughout the camp, to the plodding of knights nearby as they tended to the wounded, the soft cry of the woman. The goblins were still close, but he had no desire to see how many or know what they were doing. A wind gusted from the west, stirring up the dirt and making the stench of charred bodies and sulfur all the worse.

  “In the morning, we leave,” Montrill ordered. “Those who can walk will carry those who can’t. We march to Jelek, Grallik.”

  The wizard felt the brutal slap of Montrill’s words. The Marshal did not call him Guardian Grallik any longer.

  “Grallik, Steel Town is lost and dead to us.”

  “And we are dead to it,” Grallik added.

  21

  SOME STAY BEHIND

  They could have been carved from wood, the goblins standing mute and staring wide-eyed in the cobbled-together slave pens. They didn’t register their freed brothers urging them to run. And the one pushed over by Crelb did not even try to rise up from the ground.

  Behind them, Steel Town was rubble. Fires still burned, illuminating bodies, broken homes, and a few laborers who risked the goblins’ wrath by poking through piles of debris looking for relatives. Direfang had told the goblins to let the humans be. There had been more than enough killing. The hobgoblin was more interested in getting the rest of the slaves organized and out of the mining camp.

  “Stay then,” Mudwort hissed at the goblins who couldn’t shake the spell they were under. “Sheep, go ahead and stay. Sheep, go ahead and die to the Dark Knights left in this place. Die in the mines to the still-angry earth!” She edged by Direfang and wove her way through the entranced slaves. “Die in Steel Town and let the spirits fill the rotting bodies!”

  Her words finally stirred some of them, particularly mothers with babies who feared the notion of their younglings dying in another quake. If none were left to burn the bodies or scatter the bones, their children’s spirits would likely be lost and tortured forever. A group of mothers nervously gathered up their young and tugged them, following after Mudwort.

  Still, there were many goblins who had never known anything but Steel Town, had been born in that place and did not know anything except the barren camp and slavery. The unknown frightened them. They refused to leave, huddling defiantly.

  “Come east,” Direfang told the ones who were ready to follow. He spoke loudly to be heard above the throng, but his words didn’t carry much strength. He was tired physically and tired of trying to persuade the weak minded. “Fools, the lot,” he muttered, half to himself. “Fools to stay.”

  The surviving Dark Knights had all but vanished, hiding in the infirmary, Direfang thought scornfully. Their numbers pathetically reduced, the knights had made no attempt to return to fight with the rebellious slaves and-for a time-they would be satisfied with the docile ones remaining.

  The hobgoblin flirted with the idea of leading the army to the infirmary and slaughtering the knights down to the last one. But there had been enough death, he told himself again, and he worried that the Dark Knight wizard might be there and might call down fire upon them. Best to leave with their victory, he decided. And best to leave some knights alive to tell the grand tale of the goblin rebellion.

  “All right then, stay and serve the taskmasters,” Direfang told the still-enchanted slaves, still mute, staring dumbly. “Stay well,” he added after a moment.

  Direfang gestured, and his army headed out, most of the slaves who were undecided about whether to stay or go allowing themselves to be pushed along with the crowd, in the end leaving only a hundred or so slaves behind. The exhausted hobgoblin asked Spikehollow to take the lead for a while; then he dropped his sword and picked up a hesitant goblin with his good hand, half dragging him along with the rest.

  “Stay well,” he repeated loudly over his shoulder. “More likely stay and die, as Mudwort says. Stay and be sheep to the few Dark Knights.”

  Direfang took a last look at the camp, weary eyes sweeping over rubble made hazy by dusty air. He focused on where the tavern had once sat, remembering the music that sometimes spilled out of that building and the knights’ laughter that used to make him angry. His gaze moved to a lone charred chair that stood in the center of what had been the store, then to a pile of steadily burning goblin bodies elsewhere. Firelight made pools of blood shine darkly everywhere, and he vowed to find a stream in the mountains so he could wash the Dark Knight blood off his hide.

  He wasn’t sad to leave that place, nor was he happy. The hobgoblin realized he no longer felt anything about the camp where he’d spent so many years as a slave. He felt no emotion, just emptiness.

  At the edge of his vision, Direfang saw a female hobgoblin slap her mind-clouded mate, and when that didn’t work, she picked him up and carried him across her back, complaining. Other goblins were doing the same. A particularly burly hobgoblin toted two goblins under each arm. Some of the entranced goblins were coming to their senses, whether by the prodding of their fellows or because the magic was finally wearing off. They acted as if they hadn’t seen the battle that had just played out, and they chattered questions to their fellows, who didn’t take time to answer.

  Still, there remained dozens who refused to accept freedom. Dozens who stayed in their falling-apart pens and did not even turn around to watch their brothers leave.

  “East,” Mudwort called. “East, Direfang says!”

  The word became a new chant that swelled rhythmically.

  Mudwort climbed on the shoulders of a hobgoblin in the middle of the army. “East, Erguth.” She glanced over her shoulder at still-burning fires and at the slaves who clung to Steel Town.

  “Fools,” she spat. Then she turned her gaze to the eastern horizon, which was slowly lightening. The battle had lasted hours. It was the misty time before dawn. “Wonder what the Dark Knights will chant this day when the sun comes up,” she mused. “Wonder how many are left to repeat their worthless oaths and credos. How many will say wasted words in that man’s hole? There aren’t that many voices left.”

  Direfang lengthened his stride, wincing with each step of his right foot. He never looked back, though many did, some continuing to call out to friends left behind.

  The hobgoblin released the goblin he was carrying to rub dirt out of his eyes. It didn’t help, and another rubbing only seemed to make matters worse. His eyes throbbed, his neck was stiff, and his arms felt as heavy as the ore sacks he used to drag from the mine. The pain in his head made it difficult to think.

  He locked his eyes on the distant foothills, and for a moment he wished he would have stayed there when they’d first bolted. It would have been easier, certainly less hurtful, fewer would have died-goblins and knights. But they wouldn’t have gained the food and blessed water, wouldn’t have freed Mudwort and hundreds of others, wouldn’t have had the pleasure of slaying the men who had once whipped them.

  Pleasure, he thought, almost smiling.

  Suddenly his mind was flooded with images of the past already receding: the mine and the camp and what he might have been doing t
hat very instant if the quakes had never struck and never destroyed the wards and glyphs and weakened the knights, injuring and killing so many. He would be working in the mines, a foreman but also a slave. He would be struggling under sacks of ore, ordering goblins to dig faster, walking the tunnels to check on his charges. He was feeling something after all. Tears from painful memories welled in his eyes and helped to wash away some of the dirt.

  Direfang continued to think of the sad, horrible past, forcing himself to feel deeply in order to give his eyes a washing and a measure of relief from the dirt. He thought of all the whippings he’d received, remembered what it had felt like to have his ear cut off. He walked faster, feeling stronger, reaching the front of the pack and passing Spikehollow. Despite the pain, he kept up his pace, not wanting a single goblin to be ahead of him or see his tears.

  “Show no weakness,” he whispered.

  The sky was gray by the time he’d walked the first mile. It was a murky, misty blanket draped across Neraka. It looked empty, no sun yet, no stars or moons, no clouds. His eyes eventually were washed and felt better. He didn’t think about the past anymore. The wave of emotion passed. He welcomed the emptiness again, not wanting to feel anything for a long while.

  22

  THE STILL-ANGRY EARTH

  When they reached the foothills, the goblins feasted on the livestock they’d brought with them and on other supplies they’d hauled out of the camp. They shared their good fortune with the goblins who’d stayed on the rise, and the hobgoblin called Erguth made sure that Moon-eye and Graytoes were among the first to be given food and water. After Direfang drank his fill, he dropped the other full skin he’d carried, then watched as a group of young goblins fought over it.