The cataclysm t2-2

by Margaret Weis

  "Who?" Krog asked.

  "Others," she said. "S'posed to be followin'. Can't see 'em."

  "Oh," he rumbled. "Here." Great fingers circled her waist, and he raised her high. "See, mama? There they are."

  A half mile back, the others had stopped at the edge of a fallen forest and were scurrying about. They had built a fire.

  "Oh," the Lady Drule said. "Time for eat."

  "Yeah," Krog agreed, setting her on her feet. 'Time for eat. What we eat?"

  "Make stew," she explained. "What else?" With a sigh, she started back.

  "What else?" Krog rumbled, and followed.

  Partway back, on a wind-scoured flat littered with fallen stone, Drule saw furtive movement among some rocks, and her nose twitched. "Rat?" she breathed. She circled half around the rocks, saw movement again, and dived at it, her fingers closing an inch behind the rodent's fleeing tail. She stood and shook her head. "Rats," she said.

  Krog watched curiously, repeated, "Rats," and squatted beside a boulder. With a heave, he lifted it, and several rats scurried away. The Lady Drule made a dive for one, missed it. Her hand closed around a stick. A second rodent raced by. Drule swatted it on the head.

  She picked it up, looked at it, then looked at the stick in her hand. It was a sturdy hardwood branch an inch thick and about two feet long. "Pretty good bashin' tool," she decided.

  "Bashin' tool," Krog rumbled.

  By the time they got back to the others, Drule had three rodents for the pot and Krog was busy fashioning a bashing tool of his own. He had found a section of broken tree trunk about five feet long, and was shaping it to his satisfaction by beating it against rocks as they passed. It was a noisy process, but the implement pleased him. It felt right and natural in his hand. He held the forty-pound club in front of him, studied it with satisfied eyes, tossed it in the air, caught it, and studied it again. "Pretty good bashin' tool," he said.

  By the time the stew was ready, daylight was gone. "Better stay here for sleep," the Lady Drule told the others. "Go on tomorrow."

  "Go where,S Mama?" Krog wondered.

  "Find others."

  "These others?" He indicated the crowd around the fire.

  "No," she said. "Other others."

  "Fine," the Grand Notioner said, picking out a stew bowl. He dipped it and sat down to eat as others made their way to the pot. There weren't enough iron bowls to go around — much had been lost when the cavern of This Place had collapsed — but they made do with vessels of tree bark, cupped shards of stone, and a leather boot that someone had found and cut down.

  Drule had just started eating when she heard a sniffle in the gloom, a very large sniffle. She looked up. "What matter with Krog?"

  "Want some, too," the monster explained.

  The Lady Drule filled a tree-bark bowl and gave it to Krog. He sniffed it, opened his mouth, and popped it in, bowl and all. He swallowed. "Good," he said. "More?"

  Hunch, the Grand Notioner, stared up at the big creature in disbelief. "Gonna need lots more rats an' greens," he said. "Bark, too, if Krog keep eatin' th' bowls."

  "Rats?" Krog's eyes lit up. "Krog get rats with bashin' tool"

  He stood, picked up his club, and vanished into the darkness. He was gone for a long time, and most of the gully dwarves were asleep when he returned.

  Drule saw him approaching and held a finger to her lips. "Sh!" she said.

  Quietly, Krog came to the waning fire, found a clear spot and dropped something on the ground, something very big. "Rats too quick for Krog," he whispered. "Can't catch 'em. This do?"

  Drule gaped at the thing. She had seen cave bears before, but never a dead one, and never up close. It certainly would make a lot of stew, she decided.

  The Highbulp Gorge III was not happy. First to be snatched up by armed Talls and herded cross-country with a rope around his neck, lashed with whips and insulted at every stumble, then to be thrown into a cage with the rest of his followers and dozens of Tall captives as well — Gorge was almost certain that his dignity had been offended, among other things.

  "This intoler… outra… unforgiv… this stink!" he grumbled, pacing back and forth in the comer of the roofed pen where the gully dwarves were huddled. "Slave, Talls say. Not slave. I Highbulp!"

  "Not slave either," several of his subjects agreed.

  A voice growled, "You gully dwarves pipe down or you'll feel the lash."

  "Hmph!" Gorge muttered, but lowered his voice. "Maybe dig out? Skitt? Where Skitt?"

  "Here," a sleepy voice said. "What Highbulp want?"

  "Skitt, you dig hole."

  "Tried it," Skitt said in the gloom. "Rock underneath. Need tools, no tools. G'night."

  "Might cut through bars," another suggested. "Bars are wood."

  "Cut with what?" still another pointed out. "Same thing. Got no tools. If had anything for cut, could — "

  "Shut up over there!" a human whispered from the other side of the pen. "You'll get us all in trouble!"

  "Hmph!" Gorge said, feeling helpless and hopeless.

  Armed guards patrolled around the pen. Nearby, the fires of the slavers' camp burned bright. They had been coming in all day, groups of four to eight at a time, most of them bringing captives, and now there were at least thirty in the camp, and dozens of slaves in the pen.

  A guard passed near the wood-barred enclosure, and a human voice inside said, "If only I could get my hands on a sword, I'd…"

  The guard laughed. "You'd what, slave? Fight? By the time we sell you, we'll have beaten all the fight out of you. Now shut up."

  Another guard strolled past on the gully dwarves' side, and the Highbulp and his followers cringed away from the bars. They didn't like the way these Talls talked, at all.

  At first dawn, the ladies packed as much bear meat as they could carry, while the Lady Drule went looking for tracks to follow. Krog tagged along, happy as a duckling following its mother.

  Drule searched northward, then stopped and scratched her head. There had been tracks before, she was certain, but now there were none. "Where they all go?" she wondered.

  Krog squatted beside her, scratching his head in imitation. "Who?" he asked.

  "Highbulp an' th' rest," she reminded him. "Ones we been tryin' to find."

  He scowled — a frightening and fierce expression, on his face. "Mama want find those ones?"

  "Sure," the Lady Drule said. "Don't know where to look, though."

  "No problem," Krog said, standing and pointing northward. "They over there."

  "Where?"

  "There. See smoke? That where other others go."

  He seemed certain of it, so Drule said, "Fine. We go there, too. Highbulp prob'ly need 'tendin' to 'bout now."

  She called to the rest, and they set off northward — a nine-foot creature guiding, a long line of three- to four-foot creatures tagging after. In the distance, far across a wide, sundered valley littered with the debris of nameless catastrophe, was a ridge. Beyond the ridge, Krog said, were their lost people. It would take all day to get there, Drule guessed, but they had nowhere else to go.

  It was midday when Drule and Krog rounded a spire of rock that might once have been a mountaintop, and came face-to-face with a stranger, a human, carrying an axe.

  As any good gully dwarf would do, faced with an armed Tall, the Lady Drule shrieked, turned and ran. Behind her, gully dwarves scattered in all directions.

  Krog looked after Drule for a second, thoroughly puzzled, then looked again at the bug-eyed man standing there, gawking up at him in terror. Krog shrugged eloquently, then voiced a mighty shriek, flung up his hands just as Drule had done, and pounded away after her. His shriek drowned out the screams of the man, who was now bounding away in the other direction, shouting, "Ogre! Ogre!"

  Some distance away, Krog found the Lady Drule hiding behind a clump of grass. Krog did the same, though his clump of grass covered no more than the lower part of his face and maybe one shoulder. He stayed there until Drule rose. Deciding
the danger was gone, she went to regather her followers. Krog didn't know why they had been hiding, but whatever suited Mama was all right with him.

  It was late evening. Hazy dusk lay in the long shadows of the Khalkists, and the smoke of campfires hung in the air when a gully dwarf named Bipp crept through the brush to the shadowed slave pen and looked inside. He squinted. "Highbulp?"

  Several faces turned toward him. "Hey," someone said. "That Bipp."

  "What you doin' out there, Bipp?" another asked.

  Bipp put a finger to his lips. "Sh!"

  "What?"

  "Sh!"

  "Oh. Okay."

  "Where Highbulp?" Bipp whispered.

  "Right here, somewhere. Highbulp? Highbulp, wake up. Bipp here." A pause, then, "Highbulp! Wake up! Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp! Bipp here."

  "Who?"

  "Bipp"

  "Shut up over there!" a human voice shouted. "Can't you little dimwits ever be quiet?"

  At the sound, an armed guard at the far comer of the pen looked around, and Bipp flattened himself in the shadows. "Shut up in there, or you'll wish you had," the guard ordered.

  Then Gorge was there, peering through the lashed-post bars. "What Bipp want?"

  "Lady Drule send me. She lookin' for you. Why ever'body here?"

  "Can't get out," the Highbulp said, peevishly. "Talls got us incarcera… in custo… got us locked in for sell."

  "Oh." Bipp studied the bars, shrugged, and turned away. "Okay," he said. "Have nice evenin'. I go tell Lady Drule."

  In a moment he was gone, but behind him a babble of voices echoed, and a guard roared, "You slaves heard what I said!"

  A torch flared. A guard with a patch on one eye drew a sword and thrust it viciously between the bars. A human screamed, and the scream became a whimper as the guard withdrew the sword, bloody.

  The man put away his sword, grinned at another guard. "That ought to quiet them," he said. "Slaves don't need two ears, anyway."

  Atop the ridge, the Lady Drule and the others listened wide-eyed as Bipp made his report. He told them what he had seen and what he had heard, and there was no doubt what it all meant. Most of the males of the Bulp clan were prisoners of heavily armed Talls, and would be sold into slavery.

  Drule scratched her head, wondering what to do about that, then gave up and went to find Hunch. "You Grand Notioner," she reminded him. "Time for Grand Notion."

  The Grand Notioner was preoccupied, trying to repair the bindings on his feet after a long day's walk. "What about?" he grumbled.

  " 'Bout how get Highbulp an' all away from Talls! Pay attention."

  "Oh." He thought about it for a while, then shrugged and pointed at the stick in her hand. "Use bashin' tool, I guess."

  "For what?" Drule looked at the stick.

  "For bash Talls," he explained.

  To the Lady Drule, that didn't sound like much of an idea, but when several long minutes of fierce concentration didn't produce a better one, she resigned herself to it. Bashing Talls, in her opinion, was a very good way to get into a lot of trouble, but maybe it was worth a try.

  "Anybody wanna bash Talls?" she asked around, hoping for volunteers. There were none. She would just have to do it herself, then.

  Nearing the foot of the ridge, Drule suddenly was aware that Krog was right behind her, mimicking her stealthy approach. She turned and raised a hand. "Krog wait," she whispered. "I got somethin' to do."

  In a rumbling whisper, the big creature asked, "What Mama do?"

  She pointed toward the pen, where a guard was sitting on a rock. "See Tall there? Gotta bash him. Now be quiet."

  "Oh," Krog said. "Okay."

  With Krog silenced, the Lady Drule crept on down the slope toward the guard. Even sitting on a rock, the man was taller than she was, and his ready sword glinted in the starlight.

  Trembling with dread, Drule crept up behind him, raised her rat-bashing stick, and brought it down on the back of the man's head as hard as she could.

  "Owl" the man said. His hand went to his head. "What th' — " He reached for his sword.

  The Lady Drule tried to run, but tripped over her own feet and fell.

  The raider guard spied her, spat. "Gully dwarf!" He grasped the hilt of his sword… then raised his eyes to see the last sight of his life — a massive club descending on his skull.

  The Lady Drule got her feet under her, started to run again, then saw the squashed body of the man sprawled across the rock. Krog stood to one side, disinterestedly gazing out over the fire-lit camp.

  "Wow!" Drule breathed. Raising her rat-stick, she stared at it in amazement. "Pretty good bash!"

  Quietly, then, she crept toward the pen, bright eyes looking for other Talls to bash. Somewhere nearby, a rumbling whisper said, "Ones with weapons first,D Mama."

  That, she realized, made pretty good sense. She wondered how Krog came to know such sound strategy. At the bottom of the slope, she began to circle the slave pen. The gully dwarves were all crowded into one comer of the wooden cage enclosure, spumed by the humans inside.

  As Drule neared that comer, a voice whispered, "There Lady Drule! Hi there, Lady Drule." Another voice whispered, "Highbulp! Wake up! Lady Drule here… Highbulp? Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp!"

  Drule said, "Sh!" and went on. Behind her, a giant shadow moved, but those inside were too busy watching her to notice it.

  Just beyond the comer of the stockade, a man stood leaning on a spear staff. He yawned, and a stick smacked him sharply across the buttocks. "Here now!" he started to say, but only part of it was ever said. The club that smashed into his skull put an end to it.

  "Wow," the Lady Drule muttered.

  Another guard stood at the next comer, and just beyond him burned the coals of a cook-fire. Other men lay in sleep, their weapons at hand. Quietly, Drule approached the guard, raised her stick, and whacked him on the back. The man said, "Ow!" and spun around, raising his spear. "Gully dwarf," he said. "And a female one. Where did you come from?"

  "Woop," Drule shouted. She raised her stick and struck again.

  The stick whacked across the man's knuckles, and he dropped his spear. His eyes narrowed. "Why, you little snake," he hissed. "You'll pay for that." He drew a long knife from his boot and lunged at the gully dwarf, who dodged aside, tripped, and fell.

  The slaver aimed another thrust, then stopped. A chorus of shrieks sounded from inside the pen. Some of the slaves had just noticed Krog stepping into the light of the fires. Crashing, thudding sounds erupted. Thuds, rending snaps, and a high-pitched scream abruptly silenced.

  The guard turned, gaped, screamed, "Ogre!"

  He started to run, tripped over the Lady Drule, and sprawled facedown.

  A stick whacked him on the back of his head, and a voice said, "Take that!" Then, "Don' know what wrong with this bashin' tool. Used to work real good."

  As the man got to his knees, Drule decided she had done enough bashing, and ducked away. The area around the nearby campfire was a shambles — sprawled bodies everywhere, dropped weapons lying here and there… and blood, lots of blood. Krog had finished there and gone on to the next fire, unleashing havoc. There were screams of fear, screams of agony, the rhythmic thudding of a huge club against flesh and bone.

  Like huge death, Krog strode around and through the sleeping-fire, a growling, implacable horror with rending fingers, ripping teeth, and a great club as tireless and relentless as a harvester's scythe. Wide-eyed, terrified slavers came out of their blankets, grabbing up weapons to confront him. Some never even got to their feet before the heavy club flattened them and great feet trod across their bodies. Others tried to regroup and fight, and were splattered with their companions' blood even as their own blood splattered others.

  A man with an eye-patch rolled aside, hid for a second in shadows, then sprang to his feet, aiming a heavy sword at the marauder's backside. He swung — and the sword thudded into hard wood, embedded itself, and was torn from his grasp. A huge hand
closed around his helmed head and squeezed, and the iron helm collapsed, crushing the skull within. Krog flung him aside and went on, growling his pleasure.

  Somewhere, deep in Krog's mind, a glimmer of memory awakened — memory triggered by the violence and the smell of fresh blood. Rampant and towering in the remains of the sleeping camp, Krog raised his club toward the sky, and a growl sounded in his throat — a growl that became a roar that echoed from the hillsides, a roar of challenge and of pleasure, the cry of a rampaging ogre.

  Ahead of him were other fires, where men with weapons scrambled in all directions, and his eyes lit with pleasure.

  But then, behind him somewhere, a voice called, "Krog! 'Nough foolin' 'round! Got better things to do!"

  The glimmer of memory held for a moment, urging him on, then became tenuous and faded. Feeling a disappointment he didn't understand, Krog turned and headed back, pausing only for a casual swat that brained a panicked, fleeing slaver. "All right, Mama!" he thundered, his lower lip jutting in a huge pout. "Comin'!"

  The ladies of Lady Drule's retinue, and the few males with them, had followed Drule and Krog as far as the pen. Not finding a hole in the cage, they made one. Using the edges of burnished iron stew tureens, they chipped away enough sapling bars and lashings for the gully dwarves to come tumbling out, and a flood of crouched Talls right behind them. Pushing past and through the gully dwarves as though they were not there, the Talls grabbed up fallen weapons and launched a murderous attack on the stunned and disorganized slavers.

  The minute Gorge III, Highbulp of This Place and Those Other Places Too, was free of captivity, he threw back his shoulders, donned his most regal pose and issued the orders of a true leader. "Everybody run like crazy!" he commanded.

  It was many hours later, and broad daylight, when the reunited Clan of Bulp paused on the devastated lower slopes of the Khalkist Mountains to regroup. Through night and morning they had fled, each and severally. But now Gorge remembered that he had sore feet and decided it was a good time to stop and reassert his authority. He proclaimed a temporary This Place, and by threes and fives they gathered around him.