The Rebellion s-1

by Jean Rabe

  The hunger was desperate, the feeding frenzied. Not even Folami, Leftear, and Bentclaw working together could control the clans. Within minutes, all of the food and water was gone.

  Direfang and Mudwort sat with Moon-eye and Graytoes as goblins picked at the bones of the sheep and goats and lapped at the bloody hides. The oldest goblins had been given the animal hearts as symbols of respect, and they still gnawed on those vital organs while those around them whooped and danced in celebration of their freedom and full bellies.

  “Worry soon,” Mudwort said, pointing at the horde. “Sinks in, other goblins will worry lots too. Wonder where next food will come from, food and water. In Steel Town, everything was provided, though never ever enough of it, no. No hunters in this lot, so there will be worries.”

  “There used to be hunters among us,” Direfang argued softly. “In the time before Steel Town, some hunted.”

  “Forgotten how,” Mudwort said. “Forgot everything except how to mine and carry ore. So soon the worrying will come.”

  Direfang climbed higher and stretched out on a flat table rock and closed his eyes. He heard Moon-eye softly singing to Graytoes, and he faintly heard Saro-Saro calling to Mudwort, asking her to listen to the earth and discover what lay to the south. Moments later he heard goblins arguing over clothing they’d taken from Steel Town. Erguth the hobgoblin was loudly claiming a pair of boots. Spikehollow could be heard, grandly recounting his part in the knight massacre and boasting a long hank of hair he’d pulled off the head of a merchant who stood in his way. Direfang had no desire to see the prize so kept his eyes closed for a time.

  There was a scuffle over a dagger with a horn handle, and Direfang briefly thought about rising and ending all the arguments, demanding that the throng quiet down and let him sleep. Or, failing that, he’d walk up farther into the hills where he could wait until they all dispersed. Quiet might ease the aches in his body and the pounding in his head from where the horse had kicked him. But before he could rise to speak or climb higher, exhaustion claimed him.

  Mudwort waited until most of the goblins and hobgoblins were sleeping, their ugly snores drifting up the rise. Not so many goblins had ever slept at the same time in Steel Town because of the various shifts operating in the mines, so the snoring had never been so loud and bothersome.

  She climbed higher, beyond Direfang, feeling the midafternoon sun beating hot on her shoulders. The lashmarks on her back had begun to scab over, and they stretched uncomfortably when she reached to grab for handholds. She squeezed her eyes shut after several minutes, willing the pain on her back to go away. She heard her heart pounding and her breath panting and the wind playing across the stone and sending dirt gathered in pockets scattering. She focused on the rhythm of her heart; it was labored. But she calmed herself and slowed the beat, concentrating on the warmth of the sun and caress of the wind, lessening the hurt from the whip marks.

  There would be no more whippings, she promised herself. She would never let anyone catch her again and return her to slavery. She would die first. She opened her eyes and started climbing again. Mudwort had expected lots of trees and thick foliage away from Steel Town. She used to scamper through reeds and tall, itchy grass in her youngling years, and she thought the land away from Steel Town might be like that. She had expected mossy stretches and acorn husks crunching under her feet. But when she breathed deep, hoping to smell the heady loam, there was only dirt and stone, the same as she smelled in the mines, and still the hint of sulfur.

  She didn’t intend to climb too high because that would take her away from the safety of the horde. But she wanted privacy. From her perch, the wind brought pleasant sensations-a trace of flowers that were blooming beyond her sight and the odor of some wild animal that had passed that way, perhaps a mountain goat. The stench from the unwashed goblins was not as strong up there, and she entertained thoughts of striking out on her own for good so she wouldn’t have to constantly breathe her smelly brethren.

  But there was safety in numbers, she reminded herself, which was why she stopped. She sat on a flat piece of stone, warmed from the sun, and dangled her legs over the side. She placed her hands on either side of her hips and thrummed her fingers against the rock in time with the song Moon-eye had sung earlier. She repeated the verse she remembered.

  Moon glows pale and soft pearly

  Yet goblins have no time to rest

  Moon calls the dark of the evening

  When the night bird leaves the nest

  Mudwort realized the earth was still angry, though not so terribly angry as it had been when it brought down Steel Town. When she dipped her senses into the stone, she could feel it twitch lightly, hardly noticeable. Things were shifting still in the earth, in ways she didn’t understand but could register. Even many miles away from Steel Town-from what had been Steel Town-there were hints of tremors. From cracks in the stones around her and other signs, Mudwort could tell that the quakes had reached out there.

  How far?

  Had all the world rumbled?

  Had all the camps of men and all their cities been turned into dust?

  It was a happy image she conjured in her mind, building after building in ruins, humans crushed beneath the wreckage. Ogres, too, buried in their villages, and minotaurs dead everywhere. All the creatures of the world slain, except for goblins and hobgoblins and perhaps a scattering of bugbears. She knew none of that was likely true, that the quake couldn’t have affected the whole world, but she let herself daydream for a bit. Then she dipped her senses farther into the rocks directly beneath her and listened hard.

  If another quake came, it wouldn’t be as devastating as the two she’d already lived through. The earth told her that much. It had vented enough rage, she knew, at least for the time being.

  “But the earth is angry still,” she reflected aloud. Mudwort was surprised at the sound of her voice, so clear up there when it wasn’t competing with other goblin voices. “It will not lie still, the angry ground. It is not yet done.”

  Mudwort propelled her senses into the earth by imagining that her fingers that brushed the stone were actually burrowing into the ground, by growing eyes with sight so extraordinary she could see far below the ground, by growing huge ears, so she could better listen to the earth murmurs.

  At first, she thought it might have been her imagination. She saw layers of stones and strips of sand, looking like painted bands on pieces of pottery. She saw crystals in slabs of rock, including one particularly vivid collection of blue crystals mixed with malachite. In some places the rock was dark, but mostly it was cerulean. Other stones her senses skipped along were familiar: obsidian, chert, and basalt.

  She considered catching Direfang’s attention and sharing that information with him. But going after the hobgoblin might jeopardize breaking whatever connection she’d made with the deep-down stones. How far could she peer through the earth?

  Mudwort pictured herself flowing to the northwest, where the Dark Knight camp once had prospered. A heartbeat later she felt as if she were traveling there, running through the ground rather than on top of it, moving effortlessly, her legs never tiring, her feet never hurting. She heard something as she went, a sound she didn’t recognize. It was almost pleasing, a susurrus that calmed her and bid her go faster.

  The layers of rock she flowed through were not even, as she expected them to be. At one time they’d probably looked that way, all even with one placed atop the other by time and the elements. But the quake had broken up the layers and made them more … interesting was the word she wrapped her mind around. Shards jutted up here and there, and she passed right through them. A stretch of sand was ribboned with strips of slate. Coarse grains of something crystalline and pale gray were spread across a scattering of obsidian chunks. There was more of the curious blue and malachite mixture.

  She could tell she was near the camp or perhaps had rushed by it and was at the mountain with the mine shafts. She saw large pieces of the ore the Dark K
nights coveted, one a massive section with thick red veins in it that she knew would yield good, pure steel. It was covered by bands of obsidian and chert. She was pleased it was so deep, so the Dark Knights would not find it and profit by it. That deep part of the earth, at least, was safe from the horrid men.

  Mudwort was amazed that she could see colors and feel textures, though she warranted that her active imagination could have been responsible for some of those sensations. She thought she could also smell the richness of dirt that had never been farmed and smell the dustiness of sand and the acrid tang of chipped slate. She would have lingered under the ground for quite some time-or rather let her mind tarry there-had she not felt a startling wave of heat.

  Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, thinking that perhaps some goblin had started a fire near her. then realizing that was a foolish thought. She was still alone on her little rock, well above Direfang, who was in turn perched above Moon-eye and Graytoes and all the rest. None of them were paying any attention to her. Those who were not sleeping were still reveling in their freedom.

  Moon-eye still fawned over the sleeping Graytoes. Direfang still stretched on his back, his chest rising and falling too unevenly for him to be sleeping. He’d been sleeping before but not right then. So he was pretending to be asleep, she decided, as she and others so often had done in the slave pens. Pretending so he could have peace.

  She wiped the back of her arm across her forehead. She was hot; something in the ground had made her hot! A part of her was suddenly frightened, but a greater part was curious. So she closed her eyes again and steepled her fingers against the stone, leaning forward on her arms as if poised to dive into the earth. In a sense, that was what she did, sending her mind hurtling against the stone and wondering why she’d never more fully explored her surprising abilities back in Steel Town. Perhaps the impetus of freedom gave her power, or perhaps it had driven her mad.

  “Mind fouled?” she wondered. “Mind broken?”

  If her mind had gone rotten and she were only imagining all of it, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, she thought. She was enjoying it, and it had been a long time since she’d enjoyed anything. If madness was fun, so be it.

  Again, she raced through the earth, slowing when she encountered something interesting, such as a tree root so old it had turned as black and as strong as obsidian. The tree that once grew above it was long gone, and Mudwort futilely tried to picture what it must have looked like. Then she continued on her journey, no longer focusing on the Dark Knight camp. She’d tired of that place and of those horrid men. She spiraled outward from her lofty perch.

  There were things-goblins, men, animals, she couldn’t determine what sort of creatures-moving across the ground, maybe coming in her direction. Perhaps some of the goblins who’d remained in the camp had changed their muddled minds and escaped and were following them. Perhaps surviving laborers were headed to Jelek or the city of Neraka. The things moved with purpose, steadily in one direction, though they did not move quickly.

  Then her mind brushed creatures that stirred in the earth to the south, where Direfang intended to go. They were smaller creatures, stirring among the sand and rocks. Snakes, she suspected, because in the past she’d seen several snakes slither out of holes beyond the boundaries of the slave area, sunning themselves in the hottest part of the day and returning to their holes at dark or when a knight walked by and disturbed them. Once, months and months past, she saw the goblin called Brak grab a snake that had slithered too close to the pens. Brak had reached out with his leathery arm and snapped it up, catching it behind the head so it could not easily bite him. Probably he ate it, but Mudwort hadn’t watched; her attention had been distracted by something else at the time.

  No doubt all the burrowing animals for miles around the Dark Knight camp had been affected by the quake-either killed or displaced, their homes broken just as the buildings in Steel Town had been broken. They were all stirring.

  Just how far had the devastation reached?

  Mudwort wondered again if any of the ogre villages in the hills to the east had been shaken and battered. She hoped they’d all been destroyed. Because Direfang wanted to go south, perhaps she should concentrate on exploring in that direction.

  South.

  Farther.

  “Ack!”

  All of a sudden, she felt a bitter taste in her mouth that no amount of spitting would relieve. Odd that she hadn’t noticed the taste before. Perhaps she’d been too preoccupied to notice it building up. But right then it was all she could think about. It had settled firmly on her tongue and made her eyes sting. It filled her nose with a dry, unpleasant scent, and again made her feel unnervingly hot all over.

  Curious, that hot, bitter sensation. Mudwort instinctively knew what it meant.

  Something very, very bad waited to the south.

  23

  MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND

  Direfang finally slept. For quite some time, he’d been resting, stretched out on the rock, right arm draped over his burning eyes to keep the sun out. He felt almost nothing in his left arm, which a Dark Knight had deeply slashed. He was glad that any pain from that wound was not competing with his other aches, especially with the pounding in his head from the horse that had clipped him. The pounding would not stop.

  But he was a little worried about the arm. He’d looked at the wound, which ran inches deep below his left elbow, practically to the bone. He’d wrapped a strip from a Dark Knight tunic around his arm in an effort to staunch the bleeding. The cloth was black and, therefore, did not show any blood, but it felt warm and sticky. He didn’t want to think about his wounded arm. He had plenty of other things to be concerned about, such as all the goblins who milled at the base of the foothills and were waiting for his leadership.

  When next he woke, it was well into the afternoon, and his skin felt burned from the sun. He could hear goblins chattering below him, one calling out shrilly that Direfang had woken up again. Others turned their faces toward him.

  He let out a great sigh and propped himself up. Dozens of the goblins called to him, the words blending into an annoying buzz before turning into a chant that was picked up by most of the crowd. Krumb and Thema were at the front, repeating his name over and over. He shuddered. It didn’t look as though many had left. What had seemed a good idea two nights past, escaping from the Dark Knight camp and returning to free the rest of the slaves, had turned into a nightmare. What was he going to do with all those stupid goblins?

  Those goblins, clearly more than one thousand of them-perhaps close to two thousand-had waited at the base of the foothills for him all through the early-morning hours and into the afternoon. The faces he looked down on carried myriad expressions-most of them hopeful and filled with anticipation, some of them worried, eyebrows raised in question. Not many appeared angry, but some glared at him.

  He stood, and a cheer erupted.

  “Direfang!” the chant grew louder.

  Mudwort nudged his leg. She’d crept up behind him. “All look to Direfang,” she said. “Commander Direfang. Marshal Direfang. Guardian Direfang.” She used Dark Knight titles.

  He sighed again, scratching at his chin.

  “Say something,” she urged.

  “What?” he mused to himself. “Say what?”

  “Something,” she repeated. “Say something important.”

  He edged forward and raised his right arm, holding the left, still numb, close to his side. “Free of the Dark Knights,” he began. He said something else, but his words were lost in the whoops and cries of the throng below.

  When the cheers quieted, Spikehollow climbed on Erguth’s shoulders and waved a fist. “South now, Direfang?”

  “South when?” Gnasher shouted.

  They all intended to follow him wherever he went, Direfang realized. He shuddered again, clenching his teeth tight. The previous night, he had said he would go south, and he expected some to accompany him. Others might also go south, wanderi
ng on their own. But he never intended that they move as one massive army, sticking together in freedom.

  He’d needed their numbers for last night’s raid on Steel Town. But he didn’t need all of them following him anymore.

  He opened his mouth to tell them to split up, go away, that a force the size of theirs would be difficult to feed, perhaps impossible. A force that size would have to raid more human camps, perhaps ogre camps, and would have to capture merchant caravans. More than once he’d thought about the notion of robbing caravans of food and valuables, but how could he lead so many, feed so many?

  “Could capture caravans,” he whispered. “But goblins would be no better than Dark Knights to hurt others and steal.”

  “What Direfang say?” Mudwort asked, tipping her ears toward him.

  Yet a force that size could not be enslaved easily. Could it? Ogres would indeed think twice about attacking them.

  “South together!” Spikehollow called as loud as his hoarse voice could manage. “South with Direfang!”

  “South alone,” the hobgoblin said softly. “Wanted to go alone, maybe with Mudwort and some others. Not all.”

  Direfang did not want the responsibility of leading such a massive army. He’d only wanted out of Steel Town-wanted all of them out of that pit of hell. There were far too many of them for him to manage. As a foreman in the mine, he was in charge of shift after shift, but never so many all at once. But the slaves had always obeyed him, to the point that he couldn’t remember being forced to punish one of them. Perhaps because he’d supervised so many of them over the past few years, they still looked to him for orders. Maybe they’d been slaves for so long they couldn’t think for themselves.

  “Lead, Direfang!” Boliver howled.

  Maybe they really did need a leader.

  They were all free. They could do as they pleased. In smaller groups, they wouldn’t need as much food and water. In smaller groups they could hide in caves and under overhangs in the mountains and in others throughout Neraka and Khur. Those groups that reached the forests could hide amid the trees and cool shade, maybe regroup and start villages.