The Rebellion s-1

by Jean Rabe

  “Hurbear.” The old goblin wanted the healer to call him by name.

  “Why?” Saro-Saro shouted, stomping his foot and setting his hands angrily on his waist. “Why help, slavers? What would a skull man gain from such generosity?”

  Hurbear translated Saro-Saro’s questions for the priest.

  Grallik nodded, listening, then he walked all the way down the trail, edging past Horace, Hurbear, and Direfang, reluctantly walking past Mudwort, and coming within an arm’s reach of the press of goblins, jostling each other for a chance to reach out and grab and choke the wizard.

  “We want to help you,” said Grallik, “and join with you because Steel Town is dead, my talon destroyed.”

  “What? Foolishness! Destroy the knights!” a dirt brown goblin shouted.

  “Hear what I have to say!” Grallik countered loudly. Though he hadn’t understood the words the goblins shouted, he well understood their malicious tone. He waited for Direfang, who had come up behind him, to translate his words. “You’ll get nothing from me-from us-if we are killed, if we are dead. But alive, we have value to you.”

  “Kill the wizard!” Brak cried out. “Kill the wizard now! Don’t listen to the slaver’s lies.”

  “Later! Kill the wizard later.” Saro-Saro said, raising eyes around him, holding Brak at bay with a harsh glance. “Kill the wizard any time later. Listen first.”

  Sweat beaded thickly on Grallik’s forehead, but his eyes showed relief when the goblins didn’t surge forward. The vast army of them waited, nervously, for him to continue.

  “I wish to join you, rather than rejoin the Order in Jelek.” Grallik swallowed hard at his own words, knowing that, one way or another, he was sealing a fate that he could never have predicted. “I could have let that great worm kill many of you. But I slew the great worm and kept you safe. I did that in order to join your army of ex slaves, help you and,” he lowered his voice humbly, “and learn from you.”

  “Knights killed many slaves in the village.” The low, hissing voice came in the Common tongue from directly behind him.

  “You are Mudwort,” he said respectfully, turning.

  She did not know much of the human language, so Hurbear translated the rest of her speech. “Watched the wall of fire burn slaves,” she said. Her voice was laced with venom. “Smelled the bodies burn. Heard the slaves scream.”

  “And your kind killed knights,” the wizard was quick to return, trying to keep his voice even. Grallik half-turned so he was addressing Mudwort as well as all the other goblins. “We could argue about who killed more and what was justified, but the argument would be wasted words. All of that is done, and Steel Town is gone. Many slaves are gone. Many knights are gone too. I acknowledge your victorious rebellion.”

  Behind him, Mudwort brightened when Hurbear repeated those words in goblin-speak. Still, she spat her reply.

  “Knights waste words often. Always. The Oath five times. Waste. Waste. Waste. Waste. Waste.”

  Grallik closed his eyes and raised his hands to the fastening of his robe. In a swift motion, he tugged the garment free, showing a thin, earth-colored shift beneath. His left arm was bare, all of his old scars visible, and many goblins pointed at them. The scars on his neck looked thick and shiny, as did those on his left calf-the shift went only to his knees.

  “I suffered too and now I denounce the Order,” he announced, the words hard to squeeze from his throat. “To join with you, I denounce the Dark Knights. I am willing-”

  “Look at Hurbear!” Saro-Saro gestured up the trail.

  High above and behind the wizard, the Skull Knight had been busy tending to the old goblin. Horace was kneeling on the trail, his face even with Hurbear’s, working his healing magic.

  “Your ribs are broken!” He said it louder so some of the goblins below could hear. “This old fellow’s ribs are cracked!”

  Hurbear nodded. “Ribs hurt. Breathing hurt. Skull man could mend the ribs maybe. Goblins kill the skull man otherwise. Kill the skull man slowly. Kill and-ouch!”

  Horace prodded the goblin gently then turned so the throng could see his fingers glowing orange. There were ooohs and aaahs, shouted questions and curses, but the goblins held fast. “I follow Zeboim,” he proclaimed. A great many goblins spat at the mention of the sea goddess, recognizing her name in any language. Meanwhile the glow spread from his fingers to cover Hurbear’s side, brightening and sparking like fireflies then sinking in.

  Hurbear recoiled, and the goblins gasped, many again calling for the knights to be killed. But a heartbeat later, the old goblin turned to face the horde and spread his arms, grinning.

  “Ribs well,” he announced joyously. “No pain there anymore.” He turned back to face the priest and indicated places on his chest and arms that still hurt. “Mend more and live, truth-speaking skull man. Here and here, hurt here too.”

  The priest hurriedly complied. When he was finished ministering to Hurbear, he took several steps down the trail and looked to Direfang. “You next, Foreman Direfang. Your arm will take some effort, and as I said, I might not be able to save it.”

  The hobgoblin hesitated, glancing around at the skeptical faces of others before holding out his good arm and making a strong fist. “No, others first, skull man.” He indicated the army behind him. “The worst injuries first.”

  The priest let out a deep breath. “I am one man,” he said softly. “A jaded, selfish man who wants to live to see the next day, and the next and the next.” Slightly louder, he said, “I haven’t the energy to heal many, not all. Not today.”

  “As many as possible this day,” Direfang returned stoically. “More tomorrow and tomorrow. Then mend this arm. Mend as many as possible and live to see the next day and the next.” He looked over the goblin assembly, raising his voice commandingly. “Spikehollow, Erguth, take the knights’ weapons.” He pointed to the two in armor at the top of the trail. “Then bring the knights down here for more talking.”

  Direfang slipped to the base of the trail then melded into the ranks of his army. “The knights are useful,” he told Mudwort as he passed. To the others, he announced, “Skull men cast spells that kill threatening things, also heal wounds. Useful alive, useless dead, the knights are.”

  “Keep the knights!” That first voice came from deep in the crowd and soon became a chant. When the crowd again quieted, Direfang headed down, toward the lake, where he intended to quench his great thirst and soak his sore arm. He looked behind him to see Mudwort glaring, but the knights slowly wended their way through the crowd, which had parted to let them safely follow him down to the village.

  “See that all the dead goblins are gathered and burned. Make sure that none dead have been missed. Search everywhere,” Direfang told a hobgoblin. “There will be a ceremony tonight to honor the dead and keep the spirits away.”

  “The knights?” the hobgoblin posed. “How shall we treat them?”

  “As slaves,” Direfang said.

  Saro-Saro had been following close behind the leader of the rebellion. He turned to his clansmen, nodding. “Direfang does not die this day,” he said. “But Direfang will be watched.”

  29

  KNIGHTLY SLAVES

  They dressed the Ergothian priest in the leather leggings of an ogre child, leaving him bare chested. His chain mail was given to the burly hobgoblin called Grunnt, who had distinguished himself in the battle of Steel Town by slaying six knights single-handedly. It was obvious Grunnt found the metal cumbersome and uncomfortable, but he refused to take it off, considering the outfit a mark of honor. Erguth wore the priest’s tabard. The tattered cloak had been ripped up and used for bandages, as had Grallik’s gray robes.

  They let the other two Dark Knights keep their tabards, though Grunnt took their chain mail and the padded armor underneath it, dividing the latter between a few hobgoblins and throwing the armor into the lake-with the knights watching sullenly. The weapons were divided between goblins and hobgoblins, who paraded around with them
near the slave pens.

  The four knights, fitted with chains and wrist shackles the goblins had found in one of the buildings, were allowed to keep their boots. Grunnt saw how soft the bottoms of the knights’ feet were and allowed them the courtesy of the boots while noting it was a courtesy the knights had never given their slaves.

  Then Grunnt and Erguth busied themselves searching the village for shoes, boots, and sandals that would fit the hobgoblins. The bodies of the ogre children already had been looted, with goblins claiming the shoes and many of the tunics. A few hundred of the goblins and hobgoblins wore clothing finally, which had been divvied up by clan and age and fistfights. Nothing fit right, save some of the children’s clothing that had been looted from Steel Town. And only a smattering of pieces, taken from inside the ogre homes, were clean and in good repair. The only thing that kept a war from breaking out over the clothing was the vow by Saro-Saro and Hurbear that more and better clothing would be taken from other villages, from merchant caravans, and perhaps from shops. Some would even be purchased with coin, rather than stolen.

  A reed-thin goblin with a dropped shoulder lit a lantern and set it near the slave pen where the four knights sat unhappily. The lantern was for the knights’ benefit, another small concession they’d been permitted because the goblins saw well enough in the dark. It was late, but just how late was impossible to know; the stars were masked by thick gray clouds of smoke and ash. No one had seen the sun set.

  “Midnight, maybe, do you think?” Grallik asked, leaning back against a post near the others. The goblins had ruined part of the pen freeing the ogres’ captives, but they’d rebuilt a section and tossed the four Dark Knights inside. Four hobgoblins, including Grunnt and Erguth, stood guard.

  “I don’t think it’s quite that late,” the priest answered stoically. “But it is night, and the moon is full. I can tell that much without seeing it.”

  Grallik raised his eyebrows skeptically.

  “Solinari, Gray Robe, she was nearly round when we left Iverton, and we have marched ceaselessly. So she must be full this night,” Horace said with a sigh, as though tired of explaining something to a child. “Every eight months, Solinari is lone and full in the sky. That night is called the Sea Queen’s Share, and we priests give to her, our goddess Zeboim, nearly all the material things we have collected since the previous Queen’s Share. Well, Gray Robe, all of my material things-my armor and weapon, my tabard, my pouch filled with coins and gems-have been taken from me.”

  “And so you think the moon is full and that the Sea Queen has already taken her share.” Grallik gave a clipped laugh that drew the attention of Grunnt. The hobgoblin moved to the post the wizard leaned against and thumped it.

  “Solinari is full,” Horace insisted. “If Zeboim favors me, most of my sacrifices will be returned.” He leaned back on his elbows, the chain between his wrists long enough to permit that. The sweat on his ample stomach gleamed in the lantern light. His eyes were closed. He was no longer able to keep them open, and his head bobbed. “I’m just so tired, Grallik. It has been too many days since I slept well.”

  “Since before the quakes for me,” Grallik admitted. He also was tired but wasn’t about to complain. Too, he’d not been using his magic, as Horace had, so the priest had his sympathy. “I can’t remember what a feather bed feels like.”

  “Only patients in my years before the Order had those.” The priest had healed injured goblins until he couldn’t stand. Two hobgoblins had carried him into the pen. “I need to sleep, Grallik.” Horace eased himself down on his back, not caring that he was lying in mud and waste.

  Grallik gripped the railings, his fingernails digging into the old, soft wood. “Horace, you said they would not kill us.”

  The priest drew his features forward into a scowl. “My divinations appear to be true, Gray Robe. At this juncture, in any event. I predicted that they would not kill us, and they have not killed us. Not yet. And unless one of us does something to provoke them, they will not kill us.”

  “Yet we are slaves, Horace.”

  “Aye, that we are. My divinations did not reveal that would happen.” He paused. “But that is a subtlety. I asked only whether we would be allowed to live if we joined with the goblins. That is what you wanted to know.” His words ended with a slur as he fell asleep.

  Grallik nodded, his gesture lost on the sleeping priest.

  “This was your idea, Guardian,” Kenosh said irritably, continuing to use Grallik’s old title. He was one of the two surviving members of Grallik’s talon, and he nearly had not followed Grallik there. In the end, he told the wizard that through the years he’d become as loyal to Grallik as he had been to the knighthood, and he did not fancy being reassigned to another talon after the wizard was demoted. “You said our best chance was with the goblins, though I think there is more to it than the simple fact of safety in their numbers. You will tell me your reasons in time, I trust.”

  The other talon member, Aneas Gerald of Jelek, slept soundly on the far side of the priest. He’d been the most difficult to convince, but he knew that with Grallik’s demotion came his demotion, and that was something he preferred to put off for a while, if not forever. In the end Aneas also decided to accompany Grallik and the other two knights, reserving the right to leave at any time. Grallik believed that Aneas would leave at the first opportunity. Perhaps ultimately he would try to curry favor with another post commander by giving him the location of the goblin army and painting Grallik a traitor.

  The priest had been the easiest to talk into their venture. Grallik had never cared much for Horace because he seemed to lack the fierce, blind loyalty of the others. Grallik had noted Horace’s absence on several occasions when the Oath was recited at dawn. But the wizard appreciated the priest’s healing skills and so had set aside that dislike when he asked Horace if he wished to follow the goblins with him.

  Horace had said he wanted to return to Ergoth, eventually, but that temporarily he would join with Grallik and offer his curative spells to the goblins. “Healing them, after all, has been my job,” Horace had said mirthlessly.

  Sitting in the slave pen, Grallik recalled several nights past, sitting in another place-at the southern edge of Steel Town near where his workshop had been and where his tomes of spells had been swallowed by the crevice. Horace sat across from him then, tracing unrecognizable patterns in the dirt.

  Horace had closed his eyes, the lids fluttering unnervingly, cheeks twitching. He mouthed words that Grallik could not discern. All of that went on for some time. Then Horace’s lips formed a tight line. Still with his eyes closed, he reached into a pocket in his tabard and pulled out four finger bones. By touch, he arranged the bones into a rectangle then cupped his hands just outside them.

  “Zeboim, mother goddess, lead us from Iverton. Zeboim, called the Darkling Sea, take us from this camp.”

  “Steel Town,” Grallik remembered whispering, in case the goddess might not know the given name of the place since it was so rarely spoken aloud. “Iverton, called Steel Town.”

  “Our home is broken,” Horace had intoned. “Our brethren dead, our commander dead. Two dozen will leave here in the morning, carrying the wounded. Brother Grallik wishes us to take a different, daring course, mother goddess. He seeks to join the goblins, the creatures we’d cruelly enslaved.”

  Grallik had nearly interrupted Horace at the word cruel. Slaves deserved no better, he felt, and how the goblins were treated was not truly cruel. It was what their station called for, the wizard believed. Still, he had held his tongue, continuing to observe the Ergothian priest.

  “Brother Grallik seeks my company and that of two more knights. Four of us, too few to risk approaching such a force of creatures, foolish perhaps. But a greater foolishness, I think, to take too many other, unwilling knights with us and risk looking like a party made for war. Foolish because we risk the wrath of the slaves and also the Order.” Horace then had bowed his head, rearranging the bones slightly. “
Zeboim, mother goddess, you know my heart is not with this knighthood. Zeboim, called the Maelstrom, called Rann on my home island, my true brothers are now dead, my true family is lost. And so I will accompany the Gray Robe until you lead me down another path, one that might take me someday back to Ergoth.”

  Grallik had rocked back and forth, growing impatient with the priest and his religious prattle. The purpose of his magic, the wizard had thought, was to determine if they would live through their first encounter with the angry goblins.

  One question!

  If the priest didn’t hurry, one of the other knights might see them and grow curious and come to investigate. Grallik couldn’t risk his plan being discovered. Leaving the Order was not an easy thing, especially given everything that had happened at Steel Town. They’d be marked men, all four of them.

  Commanders in Jelek and the city of Neraka would demote him surely. Never in his lifetime would he regain the title of guardian, let alone rise higher than that, as once he’d dreamed. In fact, he could be brought up on charges for losing Steel Town. Punishment on top of punishment! He could not stay with the Order. He could not bear the humiliation.

  All Grallik wanted was to find the red-skinned goblin and discover what strange magic she possessed. He’d seen her work with another goblin to create a hole beneath his wall of fire-not by digging, but by some sort of spell. The Order was lost to him. All that was left was magic. His tomes were lost to him; he wanted to gain power another way, and the red-skinned goblin offered a new, exciting magic.

  “Zeboim, mother goddess, you who are called Zebir Jotun, Zura the Maelstrom, and Zyr, have the goblins scattered?”

  Grallik sat rock still. Finally, he mouthed.

  The priest nodded, eyes closed but moving rapidly behind the lids. “They are largely together, the escaped slaves, but for a few gone to the winds. The goblins, they hold their army together to stay safe and strong. They go south along the spine of the land, the Khalkist Mountains. They leave the danger of Iverton for other dangers, confident in their numbers.”