“Brothers and sisters of the King’s Band.” He began, and their jostling and murmuring ceased. “Listen up: The Black God is dead, we killed the fornicating thing and all of his shes and we took all his swag.” There was a lusty roar of approval at this announcement. “I told your warriors what the laws was going to be when I come into the kingship, and I’m telling them to you again now. From now on, any ogre who eats the flesh of another must die. Any ogre who fools with spook-pushing and witchery must die. Ogres will not kill shes. Bucks will be allowed to come into camps, but they can’t sire shes until they are full-growed. If bucks or ogres want to kill each other, that has to be done outside of camp, and every camp and every band will have a captain. Captains will share swag and shes fair and square with their boyos. I pick the captains, and if I don’t, then my great captains Balls, Wolf and Ironspike will. When a captain says for you to do something, you do it.”
He paused and watched Azha the Fury as she climbed the hill to stand beside him. “This here is your queen, Azha the Fury. She runs this here camp, and all the shes has to do what she says. There ain’t going to be no more chiefs taking all the shes in a band. Every ogre gets a fair chance at a she, and the shes get to decide who gets whom. All what I just said is the law, and if you don’t follow the law, you answer to me.”
The people listened to Gutcrusher and watched while Azha spoke to him quietly. After a few words he turned again to the people. “I don’t want to be bothered with little shite, but today we’re holding court. If you got something bothering you, and you think you need to talk it at me, now is the time.”
For a long moment there was silence, then the ogres, ogresses, bucks and whelps began murmuring amongst themselves, trying to decide if the things on their minds were worth bringing to the attention of the king. His admonition not to bring little shite before him had caught their attention, and his reputation was such that they feared his wrath. Nevertheless, after a few moments a she approached the bottom of the hill and spoke to the king.
“Two weeks ago we was hunting the big elk herd east of here, up hard against the Bone River, king.” She began, and Gutcrusher turned his face to her. Her voice was hard and matter-of-fact. “It was a big herd, and we had all the shes and all the bucks and whelps helping, like Queen Fury said we should. Mana the White was running spears and Eshala the Bloody was screaming at the elks to keep them running to where Mana was waiting with the whelps and bucks. The pigsuckers come across the Bone on horses, king, and they stole the herd. There was three whelps hard by the river, just watching to learn how to hunt, and the pigsuckers run them down. They speared them, king, and one of them was my get.”
Gutcrusher’s face grew hard and grim. He crossed his mighty arms across his chest and looked out upon his people, the warriors in their glistening armor (for they hardly ever took it off), the gathered shes (more than any single band had ever before boasted), and the whelps and bucks, all here to see the King of All Ogres dispense justice.
“I told them.” He said at last with barely suppressed fury. “I told them not to cross the Bone never again, didn’t I Balls?” Balls nodded from his place among the front rank.
“You told them, king.”
“Aye.” Wolf agreed. “You made it plain as plain.”
“The old laws is clear, my people. The penalty for trespass is down from ancient days, and I hereby declare it as your king. All of the lands of the pigsuckers is hereby forfeit to the Muharl. I will gather all of my boyos, with all of their swag and gear. We will take all of their land, kill their warriors and shes, and drive their whelps into the snow to starve. This ain’t no bridge battle, boyos. This is war.”
And all of the gathered Muharl gave a mighty roar of approval, for this was the manner of king to whom they had bent knee. “We hunt and we kill!” One ogre yelled, and soon it became a chant, until all of the assembled Muharl had joined in it. “We hunt and we kill! We hunt and we kill!” At dawn on the next day their campaign began.
Khama Holle liked the winter, especially when she was in her crone aspect. She puttered about the Black Mountain, gathering the herbs and thistles and dried leaves she needed, collecting the mosses and lichens she also found use for, and setting snares for the rabbits and birds that were now returning to the lands that had been desolate before. The death of the guardian of this place had been the lifting of the curse that lay upon the land, and even under the snow the life was slowly returning. In the upper chambers of the mountain she made a lair for herself, for she did not need much in the way of creature comforts. A bed of stone was sufficient for her to take what little rest she needed, and she found kettles and pots in which to brew potions and teas, and she crafted tablets of wood upon which to engrave the eldritch runes she remembered.
Her revenge upon the Black God Jotnar Hel had been long delayed, but satisfying nonetheless. It was not in her nature to be forgiving, and the passage of ten thousand years had done nothing to slake her thirst for vengeance. In ancient times he had terrorized her, banished her and punished her, but he had paid. Now she was as free of her need to revenge herself as she was free from the eldritch prison in which she had languished for an eon. The passages within the Black Mountain were utterly dark, but she did not need light to find her way. Even before her long imprisonment she had been of the land and in the land, and her long period of attunement had only made her senses other-than-sight keener.
She thought of the ancient sorcerer-king Marten from time to time, but he was long dead, and by now his bloodline so attenuated that she would have to avenge herself upon all of mankind if she wanted to avenge herself on him. He had killed the magic that made her powerful and in so doing imprisoned her, but that was a long time ago. She neither forgot nor forgave, but there was no object upon which to vent her wrath, so she was content.
For now it was sufficient to feel the cold on her skin, to see the sunlight and the snow, and to walk freely after so long entombed. She was thinking of Gutcrusher on a day when great clouds had rolled over a cold sky and hidden the sun when she sensed the ogres coming. Rumors of the march of thousands of booted feet came to her from the earth, and she prepared a large bag of a few selected things and began walking with deceptive swiftness to meet him.
She knew what was coming, of course. The pattern the ogres was following was as old as time. First chaos, and then formation (helped along by herself, of course), and then the great testing of strength and expansion. Soon she must die, for that was her nature, to die and then be born again with the spring. Her long entombment had only held in abeyance the pattern that was her existence, but she could help Gutcrusher in one last thing before the end of her natural year.
She hastened along, her strides much longer in fact than they appeared, for she must be in her proper place when he arrived there.
Wolf and Hammers were scouting together in front of the long column of ogres. There were many among them who had not had a chance to do battle in the wonderful armor of the dead god, and they were eager, but Gutcrusher had wisely decreed scouts. Wolf was his most experienced hand at scouting, for although Balls was a wonderful fighter, he was not particularly stealthy. Hammers was eastern Muharl, like Wolf, and they knew the country.
“I dunno about crossing the Bone, even in all this swag.” Hammers worried. “I hear things din’t go so good fer you lot last go.”
“Aye. It was a nasty business.” Wolf agreed. “The damned zeeks and their arrows. Still, there were only a handful of us that time, and we weren’t expecting the bastards. The Crusher will have a plan for them this time.” Wolf figured there hadn’t been more than two hands of the damned zeeks last time he’d crossed the Bone River, and two hands of ogres. With the army behind Gutcrusher now, not even ten hands of zeeks could stop them, so long as they kept their heads and didn’t run. Zeeks could be damned scary.
He was thinking these thoughts when he saw a hunched shape dressed in black, leaning on a crooked staff, not five paces ahead of them. He halted sudde
nly. “I see you, old crone. What do you want?” He demanded.
“Hello Wolf.” She replied. “I think you know what I want. I want to talk to your mighty king. Is he with you or following?”
Wolf stopped and shrugged. He didn’t like the crone much, even though she’d been responsible for making Gutcrusher king and given him, Wolf, plenty of swag. Still, she was witchy, and that went against the grain. He nodded the way the two of them had come. “He’s back there with the boyos. We’re going to cross the Bone.”
The old woman nodded. “I thought so. There’s no other reason for you all to be going this way. Khama Holle can help you with the hidden people. Go and tell the king I am here. I will speak to him alone.”
“Hammers, go fetch the king.” Wolf said, sending the slightly less senior ogre back. Wolf was suspicious of this old crone, and wanted to have a few words with her. “Just what do you want with us, old witch?” He demanded.
“I want you to prosper and grow strong.” She replied.
Wolf smiled cunningly, but his eyes narrowed. “Nobody does something for nothing, witch. You are playing some kind of game here. What do you want from the King’s Band?”
She looked up and Wolf and smiled back. “Wolf.” She said, considering him. “The patient one. The loyal one. The survivor. You’re the smart one, aren’t you Wolf? Haven’t I seen you fight, Wolf? You never lose your head and you never strike in anger. Stay with him Wolf. He will have need of you.”
“I bent my knee, witch. I’m not going nowhere.”
“Ah, but the Black God is dead, Wolf. All that is bound by him is undone. Don’t count on the ritual of the binding. Those you think are loyal may not be.” She paused then, as if considering how much to tell him. “But I will say this. He is the Ogre King and make no mistake. None other would have had the courage to strike the Black God, not even you.”
“I know it witch. He’s not afraid of nothing and he’s got the Dead God’s own luck.”
She smiled brightly then. “The Dead God. Is that what you call him now? I like that, Wolf.” She gave a cackle of pure delight. “You asked me why I help you, and that is it mostly. You gave me my vengeance!” Her voice was a menacing hiss. “For more than nine thousand summers I dreamed of it. For this reason alone I would see you prosper. But there are other arrogances that need knocking down. The world is changed greatly, but some things never change. There should always be a Gutcrusher to shake things up, and there he is.”
Wolf turned his head and saw Gutcrusher striding toward them, with Hammers following at a respectful distance. He lifted his chin in greeting. “The witch, king. We been having a talk.”
Gutcrusher strode forward to greet her. Like Wolf, he was wearing steel armor from his neck to his booted feet, including a steel cap on the top of his head. He carried his blacksteel mace negligently in his right hand, and his round shield was in his left. He grinned broadly. “Hello witch. Got another god you want us to kill?”
“No, mighty king. I am here to help you kill those who think they are like gods to you.” She patted the large sack she was carrying. “I’ve brought something to help you kill the hidden people. Those you call zeeks.”
Gutcrusher frowned. “It ain’t witchery, is it?”
She shook her head firmly. “No, mighty king. It is the opposite of witchery. The zeeks use witchery to hide from you. I’ve brought something to help you see them.” He nodded appreciatively.
“That will come in handy.”
In a sacred dell in the middle of the piney Korfir Wood in the western foothills of the Wintry Mountains, near to the ruins of the ancient Kirluni city called Korfir, twenty of the hidden people assembled in a loose semicircle around their huntmistress Mizlani. They were alike in size, about as tall as human children aged ten to twelve, with an unearthly beauty and grace. They looked at the world through eyes that had no discernible pupils, like deeply colored cataracts, perhaps, but the eyes seemed natural in their smooth and perfect faces, looking like the sculpted faces of young gods.
These were the Thushavra, a people who had been ancient in the days when Marten the Sorcerer-King reigned here, and they were still here when all of his cities, of which Korfir had been one, were fallen to ruin. An occasional block of mossy, man-carved stone marked ancient and fallen walls, and here and there the remnants of a paved road could be found, even after all of this time.
The Thushavra wore clothing woven from the fibers of certain blossoming trees, fibers that were durable and took color well, and their cloaks and blouses were dyed in the mottled browns and green of the forest, so that against the trees they were difficult to see more than a few paces away. They carried bows, leaf-bladed swords with very sharp edges, and quivers full of poisoned arrows, for this was a hunt with a military objective, not a gathering of food.
They were wary, but confident, for it was rare that more than ten of them assembled together, and twenty? Twenty Thushavra could easily account for any army of men or ogres, or so they believed. Each one of them was experienced in the hunt, with centuries of experience in dealing with the hazards of this northernmost part of their realm upon which to rely. Their senses were keen, their skills were unsurpassed, and they were possessed of a deep knowledge of the arts of the seen and the unseen, so that if pressed they could vanish as if into nothing.
Although the Thushavra kept themselves apart from the world of men, elk-men, giants and ogres, and played little part in their wars or the ever-changing boundaries of their kingdoms, they were aware of all that passed near their lands. Thushavran spies had watched the battle of the Whitewood Forest with fascination, even as they had watched Walcox burning the night before. Hunters had seen the gathering of the bands before the Black Mountain and they had watched the rise of Gutcrusher, the first King of All Ogres in many thousands of years. They had learned of the fall of the Black God, and they thought this news good, and they had watched the ogres remind the elk-men to respect their borders. Thushavra had watched the battle of Ugly Woman Hill, although they had a different and much more seemly name for the place.
So it was that they were aware of the march of the ogre king to the east, and they could guess from his trajectory that he intended to cross the Falls River Branch of the Bone River, despite the fact that the hidden people had forbidden it. This meeting was a mere formality of course, for the Thushavra knew what they must do. They gathered their stores of arrows, two quivers each, embraced each other with love, said a few brief words of encouragement and set off into the forest. Within a few strides they seemed to vanish, as if they had stepped into a different world. Perhaps they had.
The eastern most frontier of the Muharl Ogre Country still lay under a blanket of snow, but the afternoons had been warm enough that the boughs of trees were bare of the stuff, and icicles hung here and there in the more shadowed places. Some eight thousand ogres followed their leaders in a long and broad column some eight or nine wide, a black armored mass moving fairly swiftly for the terrain was easy and their strides were long. Spears, swords and shields were carried in hand, and cheerful profanity laced the air all along their line of march. Behind them a broad swath of churned up mud and snow marked their passage beneath the trees, and the elk and aurochs steered clear of the place, for it carried the scent of death.
Splitnose snuffled and periodically wiped the snot that constantly flowed from his mangled nose, pausing only to hawk and spit noisily, for the cold aggravated his sinuses. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, for he had been given half a handful of some herbal concoction to chew, and it tasted vaguely like bird-shit smelled. Still, it was given him by the king’s own hand, and was supposed to help should they run into zeeks.
“Gah, it’s like eating ass!” Foesmasher complained, striding next to him. His voice sounded hollow and tinny from inside of his helmet, an ugly affair like an upturned shit bucket with holes for eyes.
“Shut up and chew.” Splitnose replied angrily, and talking made some of the nasty stuff run down his
throat. He belched loudly, and felt his gorge rise. He hawked and spat a great gob of mucous into the snow. Fortunately the helmet he’d chosen had an open face.
“When we get across the river, I’m going to find me a slag.” Foesmasher continued, oblivious to Splitnose’ admonition. “I’m going to wet my pike, by the Dead God. It’s high time we broke the fookers.” There was a general murmur of agreement from the ogres marching around them.
“Remember, boyos.” Splitnose warned. “We gots to get across the Bone before we can have any fun. Remember the plan. We got to be ready any damn time now.”
But the march went on, and the ogres plodded surely to the east, and the slopes of the hills were always a bit longer on the eastern side. Slowly and surely they descended into the heavily forested valley of the Falls River branch of the Bone, the ancient boundary of their lands. At the foot of the last hill they stopped and ate, and the wind died, and silence reigned over the valley of the Bone River.
Gutcrusher sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, idly scratching at the lice beneath his armor, and he looked at his captains, Balls, Wolf and Ironspike. “Any of you boyos notice anything different after chewing the witch’s mash?” He asked, for it seemed to him that a certain sharpness of vision and clarity had come to him once he’d gotten over the foul taste, and the sensation remained with him.
“I notice it tasted like warmed up shite.” Wolf said acerbically. “Like I ate a rotten goat’s udder.”
“Everything is sharper.” Balls observed after a thoughtful moment. “I think I can hear things better, too. But Wolf is right. The stuff tastes like shite, I don’t wanna know what the bitch put in it.” He looked surreptitiously at the crone, who was standing some thirty paces away.
“I don’t care what she says.” Ironspike said, and his voice was deep and granite-hard. “It seems witchy to me. We shouldn’t ought to have took it.” Gutcrusher had passed each of his captains half a handful of the stuff from the witch’s sack, and he had passed it out liberally to his most trusted boyos.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 122
