Winterheim it-3

by Douglas Niles

  “Let’s get moving upward,” Barq One-Tooth said, coming to join the impromptu council.

  By now all of the weapons had been dispersed. Kerrick could see hundreds of men milling around on the harbor plaza. Some were swarming onto Goldwing, battling the few ogres who were trapped aboard the ship, while others were chasing the merchants from their stalls on the marketplace one level above. The lower two levels of the city were churning in chaos under the onslaught of more than two thousand rebellious slaves.

  “You men!” Moreen called. “Will you follow me against the ogre king? To rescue Strongwind Whalebone and to bring down the House of Bane?”

  “Hail the King of Guilderglow!” cried Barq One-Tooth. “Long live the Highlanders!”

  “And the Lady of Brackenrock!” Kerrick bellowed, exulting in the power of his own voice. “She leads the revolt, in the name of all the Arktos!”

  The roars of hundreds of cheering men rose like thunder through the vast atrium of Winterheim. Kerrick found himself shouting along with the rebels, while Moreen held her sword over her head, looking every bit the part of the warrior princess. In a surge of energy, the slaves advanced, and the pair led the frenzied horde in a pell-mell rush across the harbor level.

  “They would make a splendid couple, wouldn’t they?” Tildy Trew remarked dryly.

  Kerrick was surprised to see the slave woman running beside him, keeping up with apparent ease. She carried a long pole, and he noticed that the end was slick with gore. Clearly, she had joined in the revolt with full enthusiasm.

  “Who?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “Why, Strongwind Whalebone and Moreen Bayguard,” she retorted, without breaking stride. “Isn’t that what they both want?”

  “Some would call it destiny,” the elf replied tentatively, feeling a familiar twinge.

  Strongwind and Moreen were the leaders of the Icereach clans, and in their union, mankind would have a real hope of freedom and prosperity. Moreen herself had acknowledged that, and Kerrick had willingly offered to help her. He shrugged away his misgivings and ran, shouting.

  The throng of rebels followed the elf and the chiefwoman as they raced across the plaza, up the steps to the market level, and onto the ramp leading them higher into the great mountain city. Barq and Tildy ran close to them, and Black Mike surged into the lead, waving a big sword. Kerrick felt a thrill of emotion and knew that there was nowhere he would rather be, nothing else he would rather be doing. Life in Silvanesti, life as an elf, was but a pale shadow of this intensity, this battle frenzy, this joy.

  They charged past two more levels, everywhere witnessing scenes of struggle and celebration as the newly liberated humans wrested the city away from their former masters. Amid the chaos was proof of great violence. Bodies of ogres and humans, males and females, young and old of both races were scattered along the promenades, streets, and markets. Here and there pockets of ogre warriors battled stubbornly, each of them isolated in the midst of a storm of raging men, but they were disciplined, especially the red-coated grenadiers. They more than held their own, and in several places they were mounting savage, coordinated counterattacks.

  “This is the Terrace Level,” Tildy explained to Kerrick as they ran past yet one more level of the ramp. “If we can get above this, we should be able to capture the heights!”

  “Onward!” shouted Black Mike, at the head of the file.

  They surged up a broad, inclined road, toward the opening leading toward the next level. A thin line of ogre warriors, less than a dozen spanning a fifty-foot gap, stood grimly in their path.

  The crash came only moments before the slaves reached that tenuous line. Two huge barriers of stone swung forth on massive hinges, their own weight bearing them outward and downward until they slammed into a framework to form a makeshift wall, nearly crushing the leading rank of humans. Kerrick felt the paving stones shake underfoot from the impact, while many men were knocked from their feet by the powerful vibrations.

  The result was clear to the elf and to all the humans, who groaned in unison. The two stone gates formed an impenetrable barrier across the ramp leading to the Noble, Temple and the Royal Levels of Winterheim. Beyond that wall of rubble they heard the cheers of a thousand ogres, roaring in defiance and victory, knowing that-for now-they were safe.

  “Sire, the slaves are in full revolt!” cried Lord Forlane, reporting to Grimwar Bane in the throne room. “We have dropped the gates across the ramps above the Terrace Level and blocked them from the heights of the city, but I fear we have lost the harbor, the Moongardens and much below.”

  “Hold the line at the gates,” ordered the king with an angry glance at Forlane.

  He knew those stone blocks would be virtually impassable, at least until the humans started using their chisels and picks. There were small gaps in the stone barriers, but these were narrow enough to restrict access to single attackers and could be held by brave ogres. The king knew that under those conditions his warriors could stand against the humans indefinitely.

  However, he understood that they needed to do more than simply hold back the slaves-they needed to attack. His judgment told him that he should lead that attack, but he found, to his continuing amazement, that he had no desire to fight, to kill, not right now. He looked at the big human woman, still in chains in the corner of his throne room, and once again felt that urge to talk to her, to try and see this matter from her point of view. Nearby was Strongwind Whalebone, the king of the Highlanders. He looked strangely apathetic for a king, as if he had no fears and no hopes regarding the outcome of this battle. Both people intrigued the monarch of the ogres.

  “My husband, allow me to take the axe, to rally your warriors with the symbol of Gonnas. The men will benefit from the knowledge that the sacred talisman has been returned.” Stariz spoke for the first time since appearing in the throne room, bearing the Axe of Gonnas.

  Grimwar scowled. He didn’t trust the queen and for that reason didn’t want her out of his sight, but he needed to do something, make some gesture to prove to his warriors that the royal presence was still in command. He glanced questioningly at Forlane, who nodded firmly.

  “The queen has a good idea, my lord. The sight of the axe will surely raise morale all along the barricades, and it could serve to terrify the slaves, as well. Your palace guard is ready to move-two hundred ogres, armed and eager for battle. They will follow the axe-er, the queen!”

  “Very well,” the king ordered, suddenly grateful for the respite from matters of war. He waved his wife away. “Go, go make your gesture, your attack, and see if you can drive them back from the gates. Return here when you are done.” He couldn’t resist an added, sharp admonition. “This time, do not expose the axe to the chance of capture!”

  “As you command, my husband,” said Stariz, flinching at his words, then bowing deeply. In another moment she was gone, zealously clutching the axe and followed by Forlane and a retinue of palace guards.

  Still agitated, the king started to pace around the throne room. He found his eyes wandering, again, to the solemn figure of the human woman who had been captured with the axe. Her hands had been chained as a precaution, and she was seated on the cube of stone that the queen had wanted to use as a chopping block. A pair of grenadiers, swords in hand, flanked her and watched their charge with determined attention.

  The king stalked over and tried glaring down at her, his hands planted firmly on his hips. Several questions had occurred to him, and he decided that it was time for some answers.

  “Why did you come here?” he demanded. “Was this rebellion your doing?”

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t the rebellion inevitable? My companions and I did not come here to incite your slaves to revolt, but surely you must have realized that you couldn’t keep that many people under your heel forever. There are more humans here than ogres by far. Think about it!””

  “Why must they revolt?” he asked. “I feed them, allow them to live and breed. Those who work
hard are rewarded. It is not a bad life!”

  “It isn’t close to freedom, even for those who live that blessed existence,” she retorted sarcastically. “What about those who suffered the lash or the sacrifices demanded by your pitiless queen? People will not live in slavery forever. As I said, it was inevitable that they revolt.”

  “Many of them have been killed, and many more will die before this is over!” he argued. “It is pointless!”

  “Perhaps to you, but not to them,” the woman said quietly. He was startled to see tears in her eyes, and he felt strangely uncomfortable.

  “What about you?” Grimwar Bane asked, turning to the Highlander king. “How do you explain yourself?”

  Strongwind shook his head with an air of sadness. “I should have died on Dracoheim,” he said. “None of this would have happened. They came to rescue me, but I’m not worth all these lives! It was a mad quest, and I would give anything to send them all away from here!”

  “Maybe there’s more than just lives at stake, whether it be your life or the lives of a thousand slaves,” Bruni suggested gently. “What if many are freed because you were brought here?”

  “That would be a worthwhile gain,” Strongwind agreed wistfully, “but I don’t see how it can occur.”

  “It will never happen,” Grimwar Bane interjected sternly. “My grenadiers will prevail!”

  “Perhaps the mere chance at freedom is worth the risking of life,” Bruni replied sharply. “I know that would be my feeling, if I was out there.”

  “You are a strange enemy,” mused the king. “You say things like that, knowing that I hold your life in my hands. Do you not worry about enraging me?”

  She shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “Perhaps I am beyond worries such as that.” A hint of a shy smile appeared on her round face It made her look very appealing, Grimwar thought. “In any event, it’s the queen’s capacity for rage that has me worried … not yours.”

  Grimwar Bane chuckled in spite of himself, before turning to resume his pacing. The queen. Yes, her capacity for rage was worrisome to him as well. Abruptly he turned back to the slave king.

  “Did you kill your mistress, the lady Thraid?” he demanded of the human.

  Strongwind glared fierecely back at him, the first hint of spirit and emotion that the man had displayed since being brought here.

  “I have never killed a woman, be she human or ogress,” he retorted angrily, “and I never will, unless I have a chance to drive a blade into your wife’s black heart!”

  This was an honorable credo to Grimwar. The ogre king had to believe the human, but so many questions remained unanswered. If anything, he had more now than when he began to talk to these maddening humans. How could that woman be so calm? Why did she intrigue him so?

  What in Krynn should he do now?

  Captain Verra was shocked by how quickly his plans had unravelled. The thousand Seagate slaves had been freed, with the loss of every one of the two dozen ogres he had put in charge of guarding the gate. He had never envisioned an attack coming from outside the huge slave pen.

  The lumber yards, too, had been swept up in revolt. At least the ogres there had been able to retreat with some modicum of discipline. The rest of his troops he had summoned from their posts on the harbor and market levels, lest they all be destroyed. Now the remnants gathered around him, six or seven hundred red-cloaked brutes, well trained and heavily armed.

  “What word of the rebels?” he asked one of his sergeants.

  “They have moved past us and up through the city,” reported the veteran. “Only a few are left holding the market.”

  “How far will the main force get?”

  “I heard a smash of stone moments earlier, Captain. It seems likely that the gates above the Terrace Level have been closed. Surely they will be stopped there.”

  The ogre soldier nodded, beginning to form a plan. “There are a thousand ogres from the palace guard above them. If we can attack from below, the wretches will be trapped on the terrace. We’ll wipe them out!”

  “Aye, Captain-a great plan!” agreed the sergeant, with an eager bob of his tusked face.

  “Send a detachment to the Moongarden Road,” the captain added. “Two hundred grenadiers should be sufficient. I want them to block the corridor, and if any humans come up from that way they are to be driven back to the food warrens, hunted down, and killed.”

  “As you command, Sir!”

  “Now, form the men into ranks,” roared Verra, his optimism recharging. “We’ll clean them out of the market and head on up from there!”

  His veteran troops responded with precision, forming three long lines. “Forward, my brutes!” the ogre captain bellowed. “Attack without mercy!”

  With a roar of enthusiasm, the scarlet-clad grenadiers rushed forward to obey and to kill.

  “We can’t get through!” Black Mike declared, trembling with rage. “To come so close and be stopped like this! Chislev curse them!”

  He and Moreen were gathered with Kerrick and Barq One-Tooth a short distance back from the stone debris that had fallen across the ramp. More humans had joined them, including many house slaves from the ogre dwellings on these levels. They thronged in the passageway but had no way to progress any farther upward into the heart of Winterheim.

  Moreen scowled and looked over the makeshift army. Its numbers continued to swell as more and more slaves streamed into the mob from the lower levels of the city.

  “We have to do something!” she snapped.

  “That’s for sure,” Tildy Trew said, coming back from the lip of the atrium, where she had been looking down toward the harbor level. “It looks as if the grenadiers have gotten organized. They’re on the move. They’ve already retaken the marketplace, and now I think they’re coming this way.”

  Dinekki the bat felt strong again. She had perched on the high mast of the galley and watched the slave revolt sweep across the waterfront. Ogre blood stained the deck below her, and pockets of battle still raged. Nearby, a dozen grenadiers were barricaded in the shipyard, while a hundred humans threw burning brands between the planks of their small fort. Already flames were springing up from the stores of timber. The old shaman shuddered at the thought of all that smoke filling up this mountain cavity.

  Now she had pressing business, and once again she took wing. Her flight led her up the wide chimney of the city’s atrium, past level after level where slaves still fought their masters or celebrated their newly won freedom.

  Higher up, the ogres were still in control, she saw. She spotted the queen wielding her blazing axe and heard the cheers of hundreds of ogre warriors as they beheld their talisman. The ogres on the highest levels were gathering for a downward attack, while other ogres-those in the scarlet cloaks-were fighting their way up from below. There was much killing still to be done, she feared, and it looked as though the main group of rebels would be pincered here on the Terrace Level and annihilated.

  The power of Chislev bore her easily, and she offered a prayer of thanks to her benign goddess. When she looked at that flaming axe again, she glimpsed the power of another god there, a deity of pride and violence. Though she sought proof of his dark, evil nature, instead she sensed a power as natural, in its own way, as the might of her nature goddess.

  Finally she was at the very top of the mountain city. Winging down a long corridor with a high, arched ceiling, she hurried toward the throne room of the ogre king. She dived through an open door and spied Strongwind Whalebone chained and seated in the corner of the throne room. Bruni was there, too, talking to the ogre king. No one noticed her, just a mere bat, as with a sense of relief Dinekki finally fluttered down and came to rest on a link of chain right next to the slave king’s ear.

  23

  End of hope

  Mouse looked up and saw a high, vaulting archway and a vast space yawning beyond. Torches and lamps flickered like stars high above, and he knew that he was seeing the inside the ogre city. There was a scent of sal
t in the air, suggestive of the sea, and the Arktos sailor knew that somehow, inside this mountain, the great city’s harbor was near.

  The bodies of a hundred ogres lay scattered through the cavern behind them. Mouse and Thane Larsgall had led the defeat of the defenders of Winterheim. As the war party surged through the wide tunnel, each detachment of ogres had been overwhelmed in a brief, furious skirmish.

  The war party had been reinforced by hundreds of slaves liberated from the Moongarden barracks. Along the way to the city, as they passed other slave pens, caverns to either side of the passageway that were fenced off by pickets of stout timbers, they threw each gate open, and additional men and women had joined the revolt.

  Slyce was still running with the humans, a grin on his face. The gully dwarf carried a long knife that he had claimed from a foe, and though at first Mouse was afraid the little fellow would get injured, he had welcomed the enthusiasm with which Slyce had flung himself into each attack.

  The Arktos captain had no idea how many slaves had spilled out of their pens and were charging along with the throng-hundreds, perhaps even a thousand or more. They carried pitchforks and cudgels, hammers and picks, anything that might serve as a weapon. Shouting and whooping, they headed toward the ogre fortress with an air of joyousness, a spirit that Mouse suspected would be violently dashed all too soon. He couldn’t help feeling that it had been too easy up until this point.

  He saw Feathertail running along in the crush, her eyes alight. She smiled at him, a slash of white teeth in her brown face, and she looked fierce and beautiful at the same time. He wanted to live through this battle, to spend the rest of his life with her, but he knew that if they were to die here it would be a death that would be the stuff of legends.

  At last the corridor opened into a wide atrium, but here the momentum of the rush slowed. Mouse pushed himself to the front rank, then stopped and stared in dismay. The exit from the corridor was blocked by a solid phalanx of ogres, six or eight deep, armed with long spears and sheltered securely behind a wall of tall, iron shields. A captain stood with them, and upon his order the formation began to advance at a measured stride.