A mangy and demoralized collection of scum calling themselves the Hounds had joined them just yesterday, looking already half-whipped and half-starved. Soulripper was disgusted at the sight of them. He was even more disgusted to learn that this pretender had bloodied or destroyed half a dozen other bands during his short tenure as fake king, and much of the sparsely populated eastern territory seemed to live in fear of him. He would soon put an end to that.
Ironspike was in full agreement. The huge warriors of the Winter Mountains stood apart from the rest of the bands, with an enviable discipline born of a constant struggle for survival in a hostile and frigid wilderness. Ironspike had no use for the pretender, but he wanted this adventure done, and had said so. He had a long and bitter winter to face, and his boyos should be hunting and storing meat, not tromping the wilderness to no purpose. “If that’s where he went, that’s where we go.” The giant said simply, slinging his iron pick on his shoulder. It was a good weapon, capable of breaking through armor, bone or flesh with equal ease. He issued no orders, he simply nodded at his followers, and they began marching eastward.
Through pure simplicity of purpose the Winter Mountain ogres found themselves in the lead of the long column of ogres sent to put down the pretender, so they were the first to come across the gorge where Gutcrusher’s last big battle had been fought. They smelled it long before they saw it, and they knew that Gutcrusher had purposefully drawn his path so that they would. The Winter Mountain ogres were not dismayed. Many a mountain avalanche had caused similar destruction among them, and they were no strangers to death.
The ogres of the Iron Bridge Band were a different story. Soulripper’s minions looked long at the scene of the slaughter, and many of them paused, as if to turn back. The truth was that many of his people were runners. To survive near the Iron Bridge, where sometimes hunting packs of elk-men would come, you had to be able to run sometimes, and to hide. Every band from every region had its own difficulties to face, and the Iron Bridge Band were no exception. Had there not been countless legions of ogres from other bands behind them, perhaps there would have been a few defections here, but there were none. The sheer size of the ogre host had become its own subtle force, binding its members to it as surely as the force that bound them to earth.
The Blackwood clans passed the area without paying it much attention, lost as they were in their own weird dreams and visions, but the nomads of the Waste stopped to gaze hungrily at the festering bodies and bones, perhaps dreaming of ogre soup. They wisely kept such ruminations to themselves.
Whiteskin sent a few of his goblins out among the slain, to see if any plunder had escaped the attention of the King’s Band, but the little burglars discovered very little worth taking, and what they did find, they kept. Their foraging did not slow the relentless march of the great host.
At night they camped, and the camp was hungry, for the game had all fled and this was a barren and empty land at the best of times. It had been so for hundreds of generations. Not even birds frequented this wasteland, and the land only grew more desolate as they drew closer to the Black Mountain and the devastation of the Wraith Pit, the domain of the Hellbitch. Through a barren land of stone and icy brooks, with grass already brown with the coming death of summer, the long and hungry column marched on, following a clear trail laid down by the many feet of the King’s Band. The sky grew gray and old-looking, with wisps of cloud streaming above them like the windblown hair on a desiccated skull.
They came at last to the grim marker, the blasted trunk of an ancient oak, from which hung the skulls and corpses of many of their kind, and all about them the long thick bones of the dead. Some of the bones were fresh, for here Gutcrusher had also done slaughter, and only a few smaller scavengers had picked the bones half-clean. They were come to the boundary of the Wraith Pit, a place of deadly rumor that had even reached their ears, from distant lands though they were.
Still the ogres of the Winter Mountains walked on, looking impassively at the bones and bodies of their kind, and feeling little, if any fear. Ironspike was an implacable foe, it was said, and fearless in any kind of a fight. In the Winter Mountains they sometimes had to contend with trolls, and compared to them, even the Wraith Pit was less than terrifying.
The Iron Bridge Band hesitated at the grim and uncanny markers, and fear took many of them, but they were hungry. They knew that the nomads of the Waste were hungry, too, and right behind them. It was known what the nomads would do to stragglers, so the Iron Bridge Band went on. In many places the ground was spotted with the urine of their terror.
Some of the nomads picked up old bones and gnawed on them, careless of who might see, but the scavengers hadn’t left much meat. It was a disappointment.
Fargikiller’s uncanny essence outshone whatever eldritch fear the markers might have held for the Blackwood clans, and they had only heard rumors of this place anyway. There were far worse things than corpses in the Blackwood.
The ogres from the City of the Damned were used to places like this. They feared them, but they were not persuaded to abandon the hunt for Gutcrusher. But behind them there was a great falling away, and wherever an ogre from a lesser clan could do so and escape notice, he fled from the terror of the Wraith Pit. But the witch of the Black Mountain was exerting her full power, and most of these got lost, and wound up in her dominion anyway, wending their helpless way toward the Black Mountain, where the dreadful king awaited them.
The Battle of the Black Mountain
Gutcrusher stood at a cavern mouth that looked out over the guardian field that lay before the Black Mountain. He was actually inside of it, for he and his many followers had come here days earlier, expecting to find the old crone, but she did not appear to be at home. Nonetheless, it could have hardly been better designed for defense (indeed it was), and he and his three captains had immediately begun arranging a fearful reception for their guests. He had not known that the many passages winding through the Black Mountain led to so many chambers, with rooms above rooms and murder holes below, and a richness of torches and balconies and pits. He lit the torches in cunning places and stationed whelps above the murder holes.
He stood now on a wide balcony that overlooked the only entrance to this fortress, an entrance he had deliberately left open. He watched while the mighty host of ogres assembled below, saw the trappings of the many bands, and listened to Balls describe many of them, while One-eye described the others.
“Those naked dungeaters with the painted stripes.” One-eye was saying. “Them are the Wasteland Nomads. Come from a place with no meat or water, and they’s cannibals.” Gutcrusher made a small sound of disgust.
“Them big ones all in furs, those are from the Winter Mountains. They don’t ever come down from there. Always getting eaten by trolls, they are.” Balls said, competing with One-eye in this strange contest of ogre lore. Gutcrusher was paying strict attention, even while looking like he wasn’t.
“The ones with black leather shirts is from Iron Bridge. The elk-men hunt them, but they’re tough in a fight.”
“You see the witchy one? The one that keeps shifting place? That’s a warlock troll from the Blackwood. They are always in battle with the zeeks. They sometimes win, it’s said.” Gutcrusher turned a skeptical eye toward Balls. “Well, that’s what I heard. Not like I said it, I just heard it.”
“The pale one in the front there, that’s Whiteskin.” Gutcrusher nodded. He knew of Whiteskin and his people from the City of the Damned.
“I know them now.” Gutcrusher said. Then he turned to One-eye. “Go and join Wolf and the rest in the murder room. Fall back to the killing floor when I say, that’s where I’ll be. Balls, you stay up here and give them some talk and the birthday presents when the whelps bring them up.”
Balls smiled and nodded. He leaned out over the rail and looked down at the assembled ogres, perhaps a hundred long paces below, allowing his head to be seen. He noticed some fingers pointing in his direction, and some muttering
and shouting as they took notice. He waved cheerfully. Although Balls did not know it, the balcony on which he stood had been cleverly situated so that anyone assembled below might hear his words clearly. Indeed, hundreds of battles had taken place beneath him in ancient times, and many before had looked down on them from this height, for the battles had been staged for their amusement. The great square before the iron door had been designed for such things, and was an arena, although the great wooden stands had long since rotted away to nothing.
“You up there! Where’s the pretender?” Came a voice. It was a large ogre in chainmail with what looked like a blacksteel club in the shape of a skull.
“Pretender? You have the wrong mountain. There’s no pretender here.” Many heads now turned to look at Balls, for his voice was plainly audible to all of the assembly.
“Don’t lie to me, you old sack of bones, bring out your false king!”
“False king? You mean the King of All Ogres? Why should I bother him?”
Another voice came from below. “Because if you don’t bring him out, we’re coming in, and we’ll kill every last one of you.” The voice was gruff, and belonged to an ogre in a thick coat of furs, carrying an enormous iron pick.
“The door is open.” Balls taunted. “Come on across the square and enter.”
“We’re not crossing your witchy square!” The first ogre countered. “You think you can trap us?” There was scattered murmuring below, but then the ghostly looking Whiteskin walked boldly onto the battle square. For a moment there was silence, then a scattering of applause.
“There is nothing to fear here.” Said Whiteskin, and there was palpable relief below, for all had heard rumors of the dreadful watcher in the square. They were pleased to learn it was a myth. Then Whiteskin pointed his blood-blackened spear at the open doorway. “Let us slay them all!”
The nomads came first, but their chieftain stayed behind, with perhaps three hundred of his captains, sending their minions racing across the square to crowd into the doorway. They made no plan and came in no particular order, a crowd of many colored and sharp toothed savages, hasty in their lust for blood and conquest.
Balls waited patiently, hearing dim echoes of the din of battle coming down the long stone corridors and up the long stairwells behind him. He looked out over the assembled ogres and smiled.
The first thing the nomads encountered was a long dark hallway, left gleefully undefended, and they ran down it as fast as they could, stringing out carelessly, the fastest of them at the forefront. They came so swiftly into the chamber of columns, that Gutcrusher had renamed the murder room, that they did not have time for their eyes to adjust to its dim lighting. Wolf, One-eye and twenty other ogres waited among the pillars, armed with swords, spears and axes, and ropes had been tied between the pillars, forming a web of tripwires that the hapless nomads stumbled and tripped on in the darkness.
They were slaughtered wholescale. In this hasty and ill-prepared attack Splitnose suffered a painful bite on his knee, but none others of the King’s Band were hurt. When perhaps seventy or eighty of the nomads had died there, the bodies were stacked so thickly that the chamber could no longer be accessed from outside, and the attack was temporarily stopped. While the weirdly painted ogres packed the hallway and found themselves stopped in confusion, Splitnose and several other ogres began severing heads, handing them to whelps and very young bucks. These in turn passed them on and upwards, through many guarded ways, until Balls had a collection of perhaps thirty, all cleverly painted in blues, yellows and greens and spattered in blood.
He stepped up to the balcony holding a ghastly head by the hair. “Does anyone know this fellow?” He shouted to the host below. “He’s a hungry looking bloke. I understand the nomads like to eat their own. Here’s a treat for you.” He threw the head over the balcony.
An angry roar greeted him. He laughed. “You’re right!” He shouted. “No fair to the rest of you. I know you are all pretty hungry down there!” He began tossing the heads down, one after another, usually with some small comment attached. “The paint is a little smeared on this one!” or “Not much inside this skull, no brains at all!”
The ogres below began throwing stones and spears at him in rage, but they were mostly out of range, and he was in no danger. The few small stones that reached his height bounced harmless from the walls around him. And so the mighty hosts’ first foray into the Black Mountain had failed, but there were still many thousands of them below.
“Bring out the pretender!” Soulripper shouted up at Balls, and he repeated it several times, until many hundreds of ogres joined with him. “Bring out the pretender!” Balls waited until the noise died down, and then he spoke.
“I said there is no pretender here.” His voice was not loud, but such was the clever design of the great bowl before the Black Mountain that it rang clear. “But that isn’t really true, is it?”
“Pretender, pretender!” The host began to shout again, and Balls waited. Again they grew silent, many of them watching as the nomads began to pull the bodies of their fellows from the long tunnel in preparation for the next assault. Many of the bodies were missing heads, and by the the time the corpses had traveled the length of the long corridor, many were missing other parts as well.
“Look around you, brothers.” Balls said. “I see many pretenders. I see a band from the Blackwood who pretend their chief does not use forbidden witchery. I see Whiteskin, who pretends it is permitted to mix races with the goblin kind. And I see all of you pretending that the painted savages don’t eat their own kind. There are your pretenders.” An uneasy muttering followed his words.
“Don’t listen to this fool!” Whiteskin yelled. “He is nothing but a broken jester for a false king. Bring out the pretender, court jester! Why does he hide from us?”
“He is busy killing your brothers, Whiteskin. He is fighting, not like you.” Balls replied. “Look around you, brothers! Why do your chiefs stand idle when your king fights? Let the chiefs come into the Black Mountain and see if they can fight!”
But the chiefs did not come. Instead Whiteskin sent in the goblins, with a pack of ogres to strengthen them. The goblins were used to fighting in caves and in dark places, and they did not come in any kind of mad rush. They came down the hallway in teams, with some going ahead to scout, and others coming up from behind and passing them. They came with sharp stabbing swords and long spears, and they were fierce and clever fighters.
They came to the edge of the chamber of pillars and saw the many bodies of the nomads there. They saw the tripwires and ropes, and they were not fools enough to stumble among them. With sharp blades on long poles they swiped at the ropes, cutting them while Wolf, One-eye, Splitnose and others swiped at the poles ineffectually. From this the goblins learned the locations of their enemies, and they whispered to each other in their strange and chittering language, like hissing cockroaches or strange oversized beetles.
Like cockroaches they swarmed around the pillars one at a time, ducking low to avoid the weapons of their enemies, striking swiftly at unprotected legs and feet. But Wolf was there, and he had fought goblins many times before. He was no stranger to their tactics. He crouched until his hands nearly scraped the floor, coming at the goblins on their right flank behind a large square shield, his gladius thrusting at them like a piston. On the left side the goblins encountered Moonhunter, and he knew nothing of fighting goblins. They cut his legs open, then pierced his thighs, and when he fell they slashed his throat, although he did manage to kill two before they took him down.
Wolf saw Moonhunter fall, and he saw that the left flank was failing. The goblins were starting on Nightfear and Butthead with the same tricks they’d pulled on Moonhunter. “Get your shields down, protect your legs!” He shouted, but he saw that the two would shortly be overcome. “Fall back!” He roared. “Back to the narrow way!”
Butthead knew he was dying. The little fornicating creatures had cut him in the big bleeder in his thigh, and
blood was jetting out in powerful spurts, with more of the damned poking and slashing spears and blades coming. He heard Wolf’s command and knew he would never be able to turn his back on these little goat-eyed bastards. He could see that they knew it, too. They were clustering up on his side of the chamber, surrounding him with greedy, screwed up eyes, and coming around the pillar he stood behind from both sides. But if he was going to die, he would die doing something.
With a scream of fury Butthead launched himself from behind the column, and went down on both knees in the center of a densely bunched pack of the goblins. They pierced him in many places with their wickedly sharp little stabbing knives, but he was wearing chain mail over his vitals, and it takes a long time to kill an ogre whose blood is up, especially if you try to do so by bleeding him. When ogres fight, they end things with a titanic, life-ending blow, or the fight can last hours. The goblins were not capable of delivering such a blow, for they were but small things, despite their stealth and cunning.
Butthead had a long handled stone hammer, and he swung it in wide arcs, batting goblins aside and crushing skulls and ribcages by the dozens. Spears came out of the darkness, and many struck him and a few pierced him, but he did not die until an ogre came from behind the goblins and crushed his skull with an iron mattock.
His death bought Wolf and the others time to flee the chamber of columns and come to the narrow way, a place where a thick wall blocked the corridor, except for a doorway in the middle. The door was no longer there, for many centuries had reduced it nothing but a few rusty remnants on the floor, but there was space for only one ogre to come through at a time, or perhaps two or three goblins. Wolf and One-eye joined Splitnose and Nightfear in a shield wall just beyond the doorway, with a dozen bucks behind them with long spears. They waited for several minutes, for the goblins were exploring all of the many hallways that branched off of the chamber of pillars, but all of those places were empty and had been stripped of all plunder.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 77
