by Jean Rabe
Breathing slowly and shallowly, he got to his feet, leaning against the crooked stone and wood wall of his workshop. His fingers flitted across the cracked mortar; his had been one of the sturdier buildings in Steel Town, and he feared the remaining two walls would topple at any moment. He tipped his head up, hoping for cleaner air, but found none. The mountains and volcanoes that ringed the camp were hazed by the dust too, looking faded like an old painting.
He heard a nervous whinny and turned just as a frightened horse shot past him, eyes wide and foam flecking its mouth. A knight chased the beast, the sun glinting off his armor and making his shoulders and arms glow as if he’d been ensorcelled. Grallik watched him catch the reins and saw the horse toss its head, nostrils flaring and front hooves coming off the ground as it fought against the knight.
Grallik stepped away from the wall, arms in front of his chest as if warding off the choking dust and dirt. When the wind changed, he caught another mouthful. He spit it out again and cursed, coughing so hard that his shoulders bobbed. When the spasms stopped, he turned back to see the knight leading the horse behind the remnants of the stable and into a pen that was one of those that had largely survived the quake. At the edge of his vision, the wizard saw the pines on the slope of one of the volcanoes, their branches looking bare and pale, like the skeletal remains of long-dead creatures.
It hurt, physically and emotionally, to gaze upon the wholesale destruction. Grallik stumbled around the wall and into what remained of his workshop. Only the northern and western walls were intact. The front of the building had crumbled and the thatch roof was caved in. He’d hidden a flask of water behind some books on a shelf. He wanted to find it and flush his eyes. He choked back a bitter laugh as he pulled at the thatch to clear the floor, looking for the flask.
His worry always had been the volcanoes. He’d never considered the possibility of an earthquake, and yet it made sense. Land dotted by volcanoes was prone to quakes, he’d heard, and tremors had been recorded in the camp before his arrival. There had been rumors of faint ones just a few days ago. But something of the magnitude he saw that day had never occurred to him.
It took him several minutes to pull the thatch away and several more minutes to find both his breath and the water flask. He held it to his chest as though it were a priceless treasure and then against his face, finding some coolness to it. He kissed the cork then gingerly tugged it free, sniffed the water, and poured some in his eyes, finding only a little relief. Then he took a small mouthful and held it, savoring it as if it were fine, aged wine, finally swallowed it, and replaced the cork. Once more he held the flask against his chest, then he thrust it in a deep pocket so none would see that he had it. He turned too sharply at the pop of a timber and gasped in pain, instantly worried that his sore ribs might be more than bruised and responsible for the heat in his lungs.
His vision slightly improved and he took inventory. His workshop, which also served as his home, was largely destroyed. He was fortunate that the shelf and his precious water flask survived, both being on one of the standing walls. Benches and tables and his prized bookcase carved of walnut were so much kindling, torn apart as if a herd of maddened bulls had trampled them. The frame he heated the ore on was broken, the pans beneath it lost, and behind the frame-where his bed and meager possessions had been-stretched a wicked-looking crevice in the ground. The jagged crack extended south of the building and had pulled men and animals underground, including everything of value he owned-lost in the depths.
Grallik’s throat grew tighter, and he fought for air in his grief and fury. He stumbled forward, kicking aside pieces of wood from a shattered bench and kneeling at the edge of the crevice. Without any roof, the sun shone down brightly over his head and the wizard could see that the bottom of the gash was dozens, perhaps hundreds, of feet below. A mailed arm jutted out of one side, a leg farther away was from a different knight’s body. A piece of tangled blanket was caught between two large rocks, and a post from his bed poked up from what looked to be the deepest point. Everything was charred, with smoke rising from a few pieces still burning.
He’d been heating the ore when the quake struck, and when he ran outside to see what was happening, that ore had caught fire and spread to his precious possessions. He noted that pages ripped from one of his books were burning at the edges, as if someone were blowing on them. A section of the crevice’s far wall had collapsed, but he knew nothing down there was worth recovering.
Grallik eased back from the edge and sat heavily, unmindful of the debris that jabbed at the backs of his legs. Everything he had nurtured and treasured was gone. In his mind, he likened his sense of loss to a close relative dying.
Again he thought of his family.
“Everything.” The word came out as a harsh whisper, his mouth instantly dry again from all the blowing dust. “By the fading memory of the Dark Queen’s heads, it is all gone.”
He would have cried, but it was not in the nature of a Dark Knight. So he silently mourned and forced down a sob. The half-elf had never been one for burdening himself with personal objects, so he hadn’t lost a considerable amount of goods. The Order provided clothes and food and more coin than he could spend-particularly at his posting. He disdained knickknacks or jewelry or art objects. He was a relatively simple man in terms of physical trappings.
But his magic-his scrolls and spellbooks and vials upon vials filled with prized arcane powders and enchanted liquids-that was all lost to the quake. Years of research had been sacrificed, notes on arcane experiments and diagrams of magical objects he’d intended to fashion-those were all gone. A tome of spells-a singular copy-from decades ago when he studied as a Black Robe with the Conclave, obliterated. He felt the color drain from his face and his chest constrict. His life was in ruins at the bottom of that crevice.
The rare magics learned while he was with the Conclave, the ones from before he joined the Dark Knights, those and much more were in the crevice. The spells that allowed him to call lightning from the sky and let him read passages in ancient, foreign languages, the spells that created spheres of acid out of air, helped him to breathe water, or stay awake for days at a time, the one that summoned an invisible force to clean his workshop and bring him food-he hadn’t cast some of them in years. Without that tome and his other spellbooks to consult, to stir his memory and to renew his knowledge, he doubted he could ever cast such magic again.
“All of it lost. My research.”
The destruction of his notes might extract the greatest toll. He’d so meticulously written down his evolving theories on strengthening steel and giving it arcane properties. He’d been so very close to an amazing breakthrough, something that would benefit the entire Order and propel him to fame and a prime posting and promotion up the ranks. Grallik was certain he could recall many of his notes, but it was years and years of note taking, and his memory couldn’t absorb everything.
For nearly five decades, Grallik had served the Dark Knights, a long time even for a half-elf. A Thorn Knight, he commanded only one talon, nine men, all of them Lily Knights. But given the years, his title should have been marshal or warder, and he should have been assigned to a place where no silly act of nature, no earthquake, would have deprived him of his research and diagrams and books, especially the old Conclave tome. He deserved a more favored post.
“Sir N’sera?”
The half-elf didn’t stir until he’d heard his name and title spoken a third time. He looked up to spot a member of his talon standing where the doorway had been.
“Sir, the commander-Marshal Montrill-is injured. Skull Knight Ramvin is tending to him. But until Marshal Montrill is able …”
The rest of the words were unimportant, so Grallik shut them out and rose up, brushing futilely at his robe and picking his way out of the remains of his workshop.
Until Montrill was able and fit … until that time … then Grallik, because of his seniority, would take charge of all of what he thought of as Chaos T
own. It was the responsibility Grallik had dreamed of even a moment ago, but in truth he was not prepared for it. At least the demands of the new job would keep his mind so busy he couldn’t dwell on his utter loss.
“How many wounded?” Grallik asked, deciding that taking stock of his charges was the first proper order of business.
The knight drew his lips into a needle-thin line. “At least a third, Sir N’sera. Wounded or dead, all of that’s being sorted out now. Between the quake and the hatori, falling buildings and the like …”
Grallik straightened and squared his shoulders, gesturing for the knight to move aside. “Then I place you in charge of the tally. See to it immediately. We must know our current strength.” He paused. “And our weakness,” he added under his breath, too softly for the knight to hear. He raised his voice to a normal level. “Marshal Montrill. You said he is hurt. How badly?”
A part of Grallik wanted Marshal Montrill to be very badly hurt, so he could at least be heartened by his promotion, but he shoved those malign thoughts away. For the good of the Order and the good of the annihilated camp, Montrill needed to survive. He was a capable leader.
“I don’t know, Sir N’sera. Shall I …?”
“Find out?” Grallik shook his head. “No, I’ll see to Marshal Montrill. Start with the others. Begin your count.” Grallik watched him go, wondering how the knight would approach the task and knowing whatever numbers he came up with would not be wholly accurate. The once-orderly mining enterprise was gone. In its place was a void of death, injury, and destruction that would take time to calculate.
No building stood truly intact, with unruly mounds of rubble replacing the familiar structures. Laborers and their families either milled about listlessly in disbelief or were rushing around in panic. Raised voices and shrill bleats and whinnies filled the air. Knights were assembling into formations on the west side of the camp. To the east, more knights were rounding up goblins and hobgoblins and repairing one of the five slave pens.
He’d cast warding spells and laid glyphs on the ground outside the slave pens shortly after his posting there and had refreshed them every third or fourth month as a precaution. But the quake tore up the ground they’d been placed upon, rendering some of the wards and glyphs useless.
Possibly all of them.
Grallik would have to pray for the precise warding enchantments so he could cast them correctly again. It would take days to restore all the enchantments to keep the slaves from escaping. Several of them, he recalled fondly, shot pillars and walls of flame into the air, incinerating potential escapees.
Of course, no slaves had tried to escape for several months. The Dark Knights had made examples of offenders in the past, catching those not burned to death by Grallik’s wards and glyphs and torturing them before slaying them in front of the others. The Dark Knights had sufficiently beaten down the goblins’ and hobgoblins’ spirits and tore away their sense of self-worth to the point that likely none of them entertained thoughts of fleeing anymore. The threat of ogres, and some minotaurs, in the nearby mountains further hindered them.
My precious pillars of fire.
He’d have to replace all of them to be certain the pens were escape-proof. But he couldn’t start doing it during the day when the slaves in the pen could clearly see what he was doing. He didn’t dare risk letting them figure out that the wards and glyphs might have been rendered useless.
Their numbers were too great …
Grallik looked to the pens and shuddered. There were far more slaves than knights, ten times as many, and without the wards? Were the goblins smart enough to realize the wards might be gone? Just the day before, he’d heard a skinny female goblin hollering in the common tongue about something bad coming to the mine. He hadn’t paid any attention to her babble.
Had she been babbling about the quake?
How smart were the goblins?
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two knights carrying a badly injured knight on a makeshift stretcher. Grallik set off after them, hoping they would lead him to the infirmary and the wounded Marshal Montrill.
7
DEATH SEARCH
Direfang managed to squeeze through one passage after another, at times stymied by cave-ins, forced to retrace his steps, stopping to brace sagging timbers with broken ones he’d picked up along the way, tearing off goblin limbs that protruded from rock slides, and demanding, again and again, that Mudwort help him with his laborious rescue mission.
“Cannot save any more goblins,” Mudwort insisted finally. “Not here. Not in this part of the mine. Too much of it has collapsed. Why Direfang not give up?”
The hobgoblin bent until his face was close and even with hers. The scars and lines on his visage were thick and his expression hard, as if his head had been carved out of rock from the mine.
“Everything dies, Mudwort. Goblins, hobgoblins, death comes to all-from the quake, long years, sickness. But not everything has to be enslaved.”
She raised an eyebrow, and he growled in response, a ribbon of drool spilling over his lower lip and plopping to the floor.
“Save goblins here, save slaves. Save other goblins in the hills from being made slaves. Understand?”
“Dark Knights bring in more slaves no matter what,” she answered, fists on her hips. “Saving nothing by poking around here, Direfang.” Her expression softened. “Saving spirits, though.” She shuffled away from him, pretending to look for more oil and lanterns.
There was only a little oil left in the lantern Direfang carried, and they’d not found more. A niche where barrels of oil and other supplies were kept was buried under rocks. The air had grown fouler the deeper they went, and it was filled with the sounds of timbers groaning and rocks falling. Some collapsed tunnels they passed smelled thickly of death.
“All goblins left in this mine are smashed,” she said after many minutes had passed. Her eyes flitted nervously to a split beam overhead. “Direfang be dead too if …”
“Don’t know that, Mudwort. Might be more goblins alive.” He forced his way through a choked passage, adding more cuts to his badly scratched chest and arms and scraping the top of his head. “Should not leave any goblins here, alive or dead.”
“Shalbo, Direfang. Certainly bad, this place is. Shalbo, shalbo indeed. Give up, Direfang. Give up now! Feyrh!”
Direfang had been moving as quickly as possible, hesitating only at cave-ins and places where he couldn’t hope to fit through. But he stopped at another blocked shaft and let out a great sigh. From somewhere beyond the blockage, the earth rumbled. It sounded like a new cave-in happening.
“Give up,” she repeated. “Direfang, just give up for now. Please.”
He glowered at her, and a bubble of drool spilled out of his mouth. He batted it away with the back of his free hand.
“Slaves always give up, Mudwort. Always give in.” He scratched at a deep scar on his chest. His scar-ridden body attested to his years in service to the Dark Knights. The palm of his right hand was smooth, not having any of the blister scars and ravages of his left. When he was younger, his left arm had been thrust into a campfire because he’d been tardy bringing a commander his dinner. He’d not been tardy since.
His ear had been cut off ten years earlier when he’d tried to escape with a small band of slaves. The Skull Knights used their magic and determined he was not the instigator-he had been a follower, not a leader-and he was valuable in the mines because of his size and strength. So they only sliced off his ear and for a long time made him wear it on a cord around his neck until it had shriveled to a black and unrecognizable thing and finally rotted off. The other captured escapees were goblins, and their lives were slowly extinguished in full view of the pens. Only a few of the offenders escaped death.
Direfang’s hair covered up most of the scars he’d received from various whippings. But some were so thick and deep that no hair grew over them and it looked as if his skin carried a disease. A jagged scar on his face ran fr
om the outer edge of his left eye down to the tip of his chin. It was from an accident in a shaft the previous year, from a crosspiece falling down and clipping him. A fresh scar, on his right forearm, came when he was struck by an angry, thirsty, pick-wielding goblin, just three days earlier.
Scars crawled all over him. His appearance gave him an intimidating mien that helped make him an effective foreman. At that moment he looked even worse, coated with blood and stone dust.
“Maybe give up,” he said finally. “Maybe Mudwort right.” He turned and looked behind him, took a step in that direction, then stopped. “Maybe one more look.” The hobgoblin pressed on through another crack, edging by broken, bloodied limbs that stuck out from shattered stones and timbers. By the time he reached a chamber where he could stand, his trousers were soaked in blood-his own and that from the victims he’d passed.
He sagged against a wall, exhausted, and fought for breath.
“No further.” Mudwort shook her head, made a tsktsking sound. “No more tunnels to search. Gart! Give up. Or die here and rot.”
It seemed as though they’d been through every tunnel they could fit through in that section of the mountain, and the chamber they stood in ended in another cave-in. They’d not encountered any live goblins for some time, so the prospects of finding any more were fading.
Direfang shook his head. His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Maybe here all gone, but try other places. There are other places in the mountain we can search for goblins.”
There were two other entrances to the mines on their side of the mountain and two more elsewhere-five in all. Direfang stroked his chin, considering his next move.