by Jean Rabe
More people were on the ground as the world bucked like a wild beast intent on throwing off its rider. Despite Mudwort’s keen vision, it was difficult to pick out everything that was happening. She was too far away, and the quake was sending up clouds of dirt and dust that were blocking her sight. She suspected the dirt clouds were choking the people and hoped all the Dark Knights choked and died.
Everything became a jarring blur. Mudwort watched many horses bolt out of the stables and jump the fence, scattering and losing themselves in the dust clouds and the foothills. The other animals moved like a wave from one side of the pens to the other. Goats and sheep made sounds shrill enough that the ruckus carried up to Mudwort. Chickens flew from the big coop that had been ripped apart by the shuddering land.
The ground buckled in the center of the camp. Even from her mountain perch, Mudwort felt the throbbing pulse. The ground lifted walls and men, pitching them over. Geysers of sand erupted, stretching eighty or more feet high. Above them, clouds of screeching birds flew in all directions.
Sulfur clouds appeared, their stench spreading over the camp and up the side of the mountain. In the distance, through the dusty, gassy haze, Mudwort spotted flashing lights emitted by rocks being squeezed and smashed together.
Blessed chaos, she thought, a smile playing across her leathery, flat face. The Dark Knights’ precious mining camp was collapsing into a ruin before her watering eyes. Not a building stood wholly intact as the quake intensified. A fissure yawned, starting between the abandoned well and the trading post and racing to what was left of the stables, widening and deepening as it moved and sucked in Dark Knights and laborers and any animals in its path. Bodies disappeared in the roiling ground, a few hands scrambling for a hold along the edges of the fissure then disappearing. One Dark Knight held on for a moment, and Mudwort feared he might save himself. But then the edge of the fissure crumbled, and his gloved hands dropped out of sight.
The forms were tiny, so far below her, and the dirt and dust continued to billow. Still, one figure managed to distinguish itself from the others, and Mudwort knew that it was Marshal Montrill. The feared and despised commander shouted orders that only the closest Dark Knights could hear.
Who cares? Words. More useless words, she thought. Only what the earth spoke mattered at that moment.
It spoke of vengeance, she guessed, angry about what the Dark Knights had done to it-digging their wells and digging their mine, reaching into the belly of the world and pulling out precious ore meant to stay safe and buried. Or perhaps it spoke of sadness, that the mountain had been pierced and robbed and hollowed out, that once-perfect tower from ancient times.
Mudwort listened to the mountain cry and the ground far below answer.
The earth spoke of sadness and pain, she recognized, hearing each word emphasized against the soles of her toughened feet. It spoke of retribution against every living thing that walked across its face-the Dark Knights and townsmen and goblins and hobgoblins. The Dark Knights in the camp were driven to their knees, then to their bellies, the earth demanding they stay down and humbly prostrate themselves.
The finest-looking building, the residence for Marshal Montrill and his officers, had fared well up to that point, but Mudwort watched with glee as, finally, the tile roof swayed and rattled to pieces; one of the walls collapsed outward, burying a knight under a pile of stone and boards. The dust swirled too darkly for her to tell if the man was killed.
“By the Dark Queen’s heads!” the knight beside Mudwort cried in anguish. His hand clasped the pommel of his sheathed sword and his gaze flickered from the destruction below to the path he stood on. More spiderweb cracks shot under him, lacing up and down the mountainside. “By all the …”
In that moment Mudwort moved behind him and threw her shoulder against the back of his legs. He dropped off the side of the trail and started rolling down the mountainside. Mudwort grabbed at the edge to keep from following him, spreading her arms and legs flat against the trail as the ground heaved. Her teeth clacked against each other, and she feared her bones would shatter, but she peered over the edge, watching the Dark Knight carom over jagged rocks, bouncing up with arms and legs flailing, coming down and rolling some more. His helmet flew off and his tabard shredded and flapped away like a blackbird taking flight. She thought she saw his sword come free, glinting in the bright sun and disappearing in the dust. He landed unmoving, speared on a rock spike.
Mudwort hated the Dark Knights more than she hated anything, and she wished them all dead. But she hadn’t thought herself capable of killing one of them. Had she been a god-worshiping creature, she thought she might have felt a moment of regret for her deed. She heard some of the gods frowned upon killing and promised punishment for any of their followers who committed murderous acts. Good thing she was a godless creature, she decided, smiling wider when she saw another fissure open up wide down below and turn into a chasm that swallowed another barracks, what was left of a residence, and several futilely-fleeing souls. A heartbeat later the chasm closed, like a great dragon snapping its jaws shut. She struggled to hear the screams, hearing instead the groan of timbers behind her, wood snapping and rocks tumbling. Then there were more screams, but those were goblin and hobgoblin voices, coming from behind her, in the mountain itself.
She looked over her shoulder to see goblins rushing out of the mine, falling as the trail pitched and the mountain shifted. Some of them crawled past her, others picked themselves up and hurried down the trail, dropping sacks of ore as they went and pushing their slower fellows aside. One of them tripped and fell off the side of the trail, arms flailing. A few of them called to her, urging her up. But she stayed on her stomach, gripping the edge of the trail even tighter.
They would probably die in their race down the trail, she thought. Better to die high on the mountain, watching the Dark Knights go first to whatever hell their gods summoned them to. She leaned her ear against the ground, listening to the earth alternately purr and shout angrily. She hadn’t expected the rumbling to stop, not while she still breathed. But it did.
Mudwort was disappointed, preferring that all of Steel Town should have been swallowed, every last brick and Dark Knight. But a small part of her was relieved that the ground was sated, and that she and many of the goblins and hobgoblins she knew were safe. She forced herself to relax then pushed herself to her knees, looking over the side.
The dust clouds thinned and settled, giving her a better view of the carnage. All of the buildings were broken and a few dozen armored knights were dead. Goblins were dead too, the ones who had been sleeping at the northern end of the largest slave pen. A hole had opened up there and sucked them down. Many more goblins were crushed and dead in the mine-she’d heard the screams and the rocks and timbers falling.
Then another tremor shot through the mountain, dropping Mudwort so hard her chin struck the trail and she bit off the tip of her tongue. Blood filled her mouth and she spit it out as she pushed herself to her feet and backed away from the edge. She put her back to the mountain near the mine entrance, continuing to spit out the blood. She cursed at the sharp pain that was strong enough to make her forget her aches from the lash marks from the taskmaster’s whip.
More goblins rushed from the mine, most of them injured, with blood running down their arms and legs. A hobgoblin foreman toted a goblin over one shoulder and cradled another small one to his chest.
“Direfang …” Even as Mudwort spoke his name, she realized the hobgoblin wasn’t her familiar friend. That foreman was not quite big enough, and he had two ears.
“Direfang is below still,” the hobgoblin told her. “In the mine still. Helping still.” The goblin he cradled tried to say something too, but only blood came out of his mouth. He was broken on the inside, and Mudwort knew he wouldn’t live to see the bottom of the trail.
The ground shuddered more fiercely and belched more sulfur into the dirty air.
From far below, she heard a cry that the hatori ha
d been loosed.
4
THE DIGGING BEAST
The Dark Knights called the great digging beast a hatori, but the goblins and hobgoblins referred to it as a dragon of the earth. Nearly thirty feet long-half the size it could eventually grow to-the one at the camp was acquired from ogre merchants two summers past at the same cost as three hundred goblin slaves.
It resembled a crocodile, but it had a scaly hide as hard as granite, pebbled brown and gray in hue, and pupiless eyes the color of eggshells. It looked like a stretch of uneven rock when it rested. The only thing that hinted it was alive were its eyes, which never seemed to close, and the faint rise and fall of its flanks from its breathing.
A thick chain was wrapped around its chest and neck, like an elaborate dog harness, the end of it affixed to a thick post that had been driven deep into the ground. The chain was short, no longer than the length of a big horse. The hatori liked to dig, and if the chain were longer, the beast would bury itself under the ground and be hard to unearth.
It had two handlers: the Dark Knights Ramvin and Ostan. They and a handful of other knights led it by the chain, like a man might tug a fighting mastiff, and they brought it into the mines each day. The knights would not have been sufficient to hold the creature-it was all muscle and teeth-but they teased it along with chunks of mutton and fat rats, both of which the hatori considered a delicacy, and they kept it constantly drugged with elixirs that were concocted by a priest who lived in Jelek. It was drugged just enough to be sluggish, never so much that it could not do its work.
Its claws were harder than the stone of the mountain, and with coaxing and prodding, the hatori dug the deepest tunnels for the knights-excavating more in a few hours than it would take a hundred goblins working several shifts to manage. The beast was treated better than the hobgoblin and goblin slaves, and the Dark Knights were more leery and respectful of it. The hatori never dug more than a few hours a day. The knights did not want to risk drugging it too much and inadvertently killing it. Neither did they want to tax it; the beast was too valuable an asset, and there were more than enough goblins to widen the tunnels the hatori had started.
The handler Ostan was just outside the hatori’s pen when the quake first struck. The knight was pitched to the ground. He hadn’t seen the cracks appear in the dry earth, one of them running through the ground where the post stood in the hatori’s pen. As the cracks widened, the post tilted.
And the great digging beast stirred.
Ostan picked himself up just as the post slipped into the crack. He had the presence to yell for help and the sense not to venture into the pen alone to try to stop the hatori.
The creature watched the post sink out of view, tugging the chain with it. The hatori was so massive that for long moments the post dangled in what had become a crevice, held by the chain wrapped around the creature’s chest.
“Trelane! Bring as many men as you can spare,” Ostan hollered. “The beast is breaking loose!”
Indeed it was. The crevice was closing; the ground was continuing to rumble and causing the slats of the pen to bounce and rattle. Ostan nearly fell over again.
“Trelane! Be fast!” Ostan held tight with one hand to a top slat and drew his sword with the other, furtively glancing around and watching Steel Town begin to disintegrate around him. “The beast, it-”
It growled then, a sound Ostan had heard only a few times before. And though the quake was causing a considerable uproar, the growl of the hatori could be heard above it. The sound started as a low rumble, mimicking the upheaval of the earth, then rose in intensity until it became so high-pitched that Ostan had to drop his sword and hold his hands to his ears.
There was a snap, the sound of the chain breaking as the crevice sealed itself, with the hatori helping by rearing back at the same time on its stubby crocodile legs. The end of the chain swung back and cracked against the fence where Ostan stood.
Ostan couldn’t hear the pounding of feet as a dozen knights and two laborers, the latter carrying coils of rope, raced toward the pen. The men vaulted over debris spilled from rock piles and widening cracks in the earth as they approached, some shouting words that were lost in the cacophony.
“We can’t lose the hatori!” cried the first knight to reach the pen. “Slaves, they can die, and they can be replaced. We might never gain another one of these.”
He slipped between slats, the knights and men following him, Ostan squeezing in from the other side after he regained his sword.
The creature growled again, the sound so hurtful it was like a punch to the stomach of the two laborers, and the knights nearby scooped up the ropes, gritting their teeth and charging forward.
“Get a rope around its neck!” Ostan shouted. He tossed a chunk of mutton in front of the hatori; he’d pulled it from a pouch that was filled with such treats.
The hatori momentarily ceased growling. Distracted, it snapped at the meat. Then it raised its head on its stubby neck, opening its jaws wide to growl again. One knight darted in and looped a rope around its neck and tried to jump back.
But the ground bucked beneath him and sent him to his back, and before his fellows could grab the rope, the hatori swung around and bit the knight in half.
The beast swung toward the other handlers. Already close to the ground on its short legs, it didn’t seem bothered by the quake. It lashed out with its tail, striking Ostan in the thighs with enough force to slam him back into the slats of the pen. The knight burst through and hit his head hard on the earth, his helmet worsening the blow and rendering him unconscious.
Eleven knights were left on their feet to swarm the digging beast, looping another length of rope around its neck. Four threw themselves across the hatori’s tail so it couldn’t flail easily, their weight helping to pin the beast.
“We’ve got it!” one of the knights called. He gestured with his head to the hatori’s back, and three of the knights jumped on the back of the creature, trying to subdue it with their weight.
But the quake kept going and going. It seemed to go on forever, though in truth the disaster took only a few minutes-but it was long enough to spread more cracks in the ground and to tear apart what was left of the hatori’s pen.
The ropes around its neck were thick but not as strong as the thick chains that usually held it in place. And the drugs that normally dulled its senses had been shaken off by the excitement of the quake and its near escape.
It thrust its claws into the still-shaking ground and thrashed its head back and forth. At the same time, it pushed itself up-enough to knock a few of the men off its back.
“We’re losing the beast!” One of the knights on its tail clung desperately as the creature thrashed. “We must …” The rest of his words were lost as the hatori lurched forward and dug furiously with its front claws, thrust its snout into loose earth, and dived underground.
Most of the knights were sent flying as it whipped its tail back and forth, rolling over once as it continued its dive, crushing the sole knight who had managed to hang on to its back. Then it was gone, disappeared into the ground, ropes and chain with it.
The quake continued as the knights fought to regain their feet and rushed to see if Ostan was alive.
5
DIREFANG
Mudwort grabbed onto a thick timber at the mine entrance. Cracks ran along the length of the wood, and a piece had peeled away at the top. Splinters pierced her fingers as she held on tighter and stared into the maw of the mine, hearing more screams and more rocks crashing. The air that wafted out was stale and filled with stone dust and the smell of dying goblins.
“Direfang!” Mudwort shouted with as much volume as she could summon. “Direfang!”
There was no answer, just more screams and the loud crash of falling rocks and the groan of the timber to which she desperately clung. The bottoms of her feet still registered the heated words of the earth, but she was too preoccupied to pick anything out of the snarling and shouting. She was wor
ried for her friend, Direfang, because if the hobgoblin died inside the mountain, who would force her to eat? Who would share stories of the time before they were slaves?
She would not miss the other goblins and hobgoblins who were dead or dying-though she would feel some remorse at their passing since more work would be assigned to her and the other survivors.
But she would actually miss Direfang. Better to either save him or die with him, she decided after a moment’s reflection.
She drew a deep breath, and when the rumbling eased, she took a first tentative step into the mine … then another and another. There were split bracing timbers and crosspieces, and a place where part of the ceiling had collapsed, almost blocking the shaft. But it wasn’t blocked enough to prevent a small goblin from squeezing through. Mudwort went forward, deeper, eyes peering into the shadows and fingers running along the stone wall to her left, tracking the faint vibrations.
Scarcely aware of her surroundings, she plodded on, instinctively stepping over rubble. She paused once and put her ear to the chest of a fallen goblin whose head was hidden by a jumble of rocks: no life. She paused again at a goblin and a hobgoblin lying curled together in the center of the tunnel, as though they’d fallen asleep. Scratches were deep on the hobgoblin’s arm, but there was not much blood and no sign that rocks had crushed them.