Then there was a chomping sound. The ogre was chewing his way out, despite his missing teeth. Soon his snout broke through the far side of the wall, then chomped to the left and right-He spit out wall-nuts as he went, and they formed little walls around the tree where they fell. Then the tree crashed to the ground, its trunk severed. The ogre returned to the fray.
He ripped a medium rosewood tree from the ground and hurled it at Smash. Smash threw up a fist to block it, but the trunk splintered and showered him with splinter-roses.
Smash, in turn, swung a fist through a sandalwood trunk, severing it. He grabbed the loose part and hurled it at the ogre, who blocked it. This time there was a shower of sandals and other footwear.
The ogre took hold of a fat yew tree, twisting it around and around though it bleated like a female sheep, until the trunk separated from the stump. "Me screw with yew," he grunted, ramming the twisted trunk at Smash's face.
"That is un-ogrammatical," Smash said. "Ogres always say he or she, not you." But he ripped off a trunk of sycamore and used it to counter the thrust. "Syc 'em!" he cried, bashing at the yew. "Syc 'em more!"
he cried, bashing again. And because this was the nature of that tree, it sycked 'em more.
Both trunks shattered. Trunks were really better for containing things than for fighting. Some trunks were used for trumpeting. Still, these were the most convenient things to use for this battle.
The ogre tromped into the deeper forest to the south, where larger trees grew. He chopped with both fists at a big redwood trunk. Smash stomped to a bigger bluewood and began knocking chips out of it with his own fists. Soon both trees came crashing down, and each ogre picked one up.
The other ogre was the first to swing. Smash ducked, and the redwood whistled over his head and cracked into a sturdy beech tree. The encounter was horrendous. The red was knocked right out of the redwood, and the sand flew from the beech. A cloud of red-dyed sand formed, making a brief but baleful sandstorm that swirled away in a series of diminishing funnels, coating the other trees.
Now Smash swung his bluewood. The ogre ducked behind a butternut tree. The trunk clobbered the tree.
Blue dye flew out, and butter squished out. Blue butter descended in a gooky mass, coating everything the red sand had missed, including a small pasture of milkweed plants. Blue buttermilk formed. All the spectator ogres turned from dry red to dripping blue. It did improve their appearance. Anything was better than the natural hue of an ogre.
The ogre bent to rip out a boxwood tree. This time Smash was faster. He sliced off a section of trunk from a cork tree and rammed that at the exposed posterior. The cork shoved the ogre right into the box, where he was stuck. bottom-up, corked.
Now the ogre was really angry. He bellowed so hard the box exploded and the cork shot up toward the sun with a loud Bronx cheer. When it hit the sun it detonated, and a. foul cloud eclipsed the orb, turning a clear day to the smoggiest night ever to clog the noses of the jungle. Creatures began coughing and choking all around, and a number of plants wilted as the stench spread out like goo.
In the cloying darkness, the ogre retreated. He had had enough of Smash's full strength. But Smash was not through with him. He pursued, following the ogre into the deepest jungle by the sound of his tromping.
Something struck Smash's arm, temporarily numbing it. It was an ironwood bar. In the dark the ogre had harvested another tree and had hurled it from ambush. Some might consider this to be a cowardly act, but ogres did not know the meaning of cowardice, so it must have been some other
kind of act. Ogres did comprehend cunning, so perhaps that was it.
Smash picked up the bar, started to twist it into a harmless knot, reconsidered and started to hurl it violently back, reconsidered again, and hung on to it. It would make a decent spear.
He listened, trying to locate the ogre. He heard the sproing as another ironwood sapling was harvested.
He charged that spot-and tripped over a fallen log. Naturally the log splintered into a storm of toothpicks that shot out like shrapnel, making pincushions of the surrounding vegetation. Smash lost his balance.
He windmilled an arm and a leg...
Now the ogre knew Smash's location more accurately. The other spear eame whistling at him as if it had not a care in the world and caught his outflung foot. That smarted! Smash rolled back, got his feet properly under him, limped, and struck back where his keen ogre hearing indicated the other ogre was.
Unfortunately, he had not realized that dirt remained in his ears, from the time he was spiked into the ground. His blow was countered, being off target, and the other bar clonked him on the side of the head.
This turned out to be a serendipitous blessing, for the clonk knocked out most of the dirt. Now he could hear properly! He reoriented and swung hard and accurately at the other-and missed, for the other was retreating.
The smog was beginning to clear. Smash pressed forward, striking repeatedly at the dim shape before him. The counterings grew fewer and weaker as the enemy retreated. Smash accelerated-and the figure ducked aside, put out a foot-and Smash tripped over it and stumbled headlong into a drop-off.
In midair he realized he had been tricked. The ogre, familiar with the terrain while Smash was not, had led him to the cliff. Smash should have been more suspicious of the sudden, seeming weakness of his opponent. But of course, without his Eye Queue, he was no smarter than any other ogre.
He landed on a bed of sharp gravel. Something yiped. Great yellow eyes opened. A jet of flame illuminated the area. Smash got a clear view of his situation.
Oops! He had fallen directly into a dragon's nest! This was the lair of a big surface dragon, open to the day because such a monster feared nothing, not even ogres. The dragon wasn't here at the moment, but its five cubs were.
In a moment all of them were up and alert. They were large cubs, almost ready to depart the nest and start consuming people for themselves. They were all as massive as Smash, with coppery snouts, green metal neck scales, and manes of silvery steel. Their teeth glinted like stars, and their tongues slurped about hungrily. As the light returned, all recognized him as an enemy and as prey. What a trap this was!
The ogre looked over the brink of the pit. "Ho ho ho ho!" he roared thunderously, causing the nearby trees to shake. "Me screw he blue!" For Smash stood on blue diamonds that made up the nest, which he had taken for gravel. All dragons liked diamonds; they were pretty and hard and highly resistant to heat.
Because dragons hoarded diamonds, the stones assumed unreasonable value, being very rare elsewhere.
Smash understood this extended even to Mundania, though he wasn't sure how the dragons managed to collect the stones from there.
Dragons were not much for ceremony. All five pounced, blasting out little jets of flame that incinerated the vegetation around the nest and heated the diamonds at Smash's feet, forcing him to jump.
Smash, angry at himself for his stupidity in falling into this mess-imagine being outwitted by a dull ogre!- reacted with inordinate, i.e., ogrish, fury. He just wasn't in the mood to mess with little dragons!
He put out his two gauntleted hands and snatched the first dragon out of the air. He whipped it about and used it to strike the second in mid-pounce. Both dragons were knocked instantly senseless. Weight for weight, no dragon was a match for an ogre; only the advantage of size put the big dragons ahead, and these lacked that.
Smash hurled both dragons at the other ogre, who stood gloating, and grabbed for two more. In a moment both of
these were dragging, and the dragging dragons were hurled up to drape about the ogre.
The fifth dragon, meanwhile, had fastened its jaws on Smash's legs. They were pretty good jaws, with diamond-hard teeth; they were beginning to hurt. Smash plunged his fist down with such force that the skull caved in. He ripped the body away and hurled it, too, at the other ogre.
The smog had largely cleared, perhaps abetted by the breeze from Smash's own activity. Now an
immense shadow fell across them. Smash looked up. It was the mother dragon, so huge her landbound bulk blocked off the light of the sun" Not all big dragons were confined to Dragonland! It would take a whole tribe of ogres to fend her off-and the tribe of the Ogre-Fen Ogres would certainly not do that.
Smash had been tricked into this nest because the other ogre knew it would be the end of him.
But Smash, having cursed the darkness of his witlessness, now suffered a flashback of dull genius.
"Heee!" he cried, pointing a hamfinger at the other ogre.
The dragoness looked. There stood the ogre, in midgloat, with the five limp, little dragon cubs draped around his body like so much apparel. He had been so pleased with his success in framing Smash that he had not thought to clear the debris from himself. The liability of the true ogre had betrayed him-his inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Naturally the dragoness assumed that he was the guilty creature.
With a roar so horrendous that it petrified the local trees and caused a layer of rock on the cliff to shiver into dust, several diamonds to craze and crack; and a blast of fire that would have vaporized trees and cliff face, had the one not just been converted from wood to stone and the other not just powdered out, she went for the guilty ogre.
The ogre was dim, but not that dim, especially as a refracted wash of fire frizzled his fur. While the dragoness inhaled and oriented for a more accurate second shot, he flung off the little dragons and dived into the nest-pit, landing snoot-first in the diamonds. The contrast was considerable-the sheer beauty of the stones versus the sheer ugliness of the ogre. It looked as if he were trying to eat them.
Smash hardly paused for thought. At the moment, the dragoness was a greater threat to his health than the ogre. He wrestled a boulder out of the pit wall and heaved it up at the dragoness, while the other ogre struggled to his feet, shedding white, red, green, blue, and polka-dot diamonds. The dragoness turned, snapped at the boulder, found it inedible, and spit it out Smash realized that the other ogre had disappeared. He checked, and saw a foot in a hole. The boulder he had thrown had blocked a passage, and the ogre was crawling down it, leaving Smash to face the fire alone. Smash didn't appreciate that, so he grabbed the foot and hauled the ogre back and out. Several more diamonds dropped from crevices on the creature's hide-black,, yellow, purple, plaid, and candy-striped. In a moment Smash had the ogre in the air, swinging him around by the feet in a circle.
The dragoness was pumping up for a real burnout blast. Such an exhalation could incinerate both ogres in a single foop. She opened her maw, letting the first wisps of superheated steam emerge, and her belly rumbled with the gathering holocaust.
Smash let go of the ogre, hurling him directly into the gaping maw, headfirst.
The dragon choked on her own blocked fire, for the ogre's body was just the right size to plug her gullet.
The ogre's feet, protruding slightly from the mouth, kicked madly. Then the ogre's broken teeth started working as he chewed his way out. The dragoness looked startled, uncertain how to deal with this complication.
Smash wasn't sure how this contest would turn out. The dragoness' fire was bottled, and her own teeth could not quite get purchase on the ogre in her throat, but she did have a lot of power and might be able to clear the ogre by either coughing him out or swallowing him the rest of the way. On the other hand, the ogre could chew quite a distance in a short time. Smash decided to depart the premises with judicious dispatch.
But where could he go? If he scrambled out of the nest, the dragoness might chase after him, and he would be more like a sitting duck than a running ogre, in the open. If he remained-
"Hssst!" someone called. "Here!"
Smash looked. A little humanoid nymph stood within the hole left by the boulder.
"I was raised in the underworld," she said. "I know tunnels. Come!"
Smash looked back at the dragoness, who was swelling with stifled pressure, and at the kicking ogre in her throat. The former was about to fire the latter out like a missile. He had sympathy for neither and was fed up with the whole business. What did he want with ogres anyway? They were dull creatures who crunched the bones of human folk.
Human folk. "Tandy!" he cried. "I must save her from the ogres!"
The nymph was disgusted. "Idiot!" she cried. "I am Tandy!"
Smash peered closely at her. The nymph had brown hair, blue eyes, and a spunky, upturned little nose.
She was indeed Tandy. Odd that he hadn't recognized her! Yet who would have expected a nymph to turn out to be a person!
"Now get in here, you oaf!" she commanded. "Before that monster pops her cork!"
He followed Tandy into the tunnel. She led him along a curving route, deep down into the ground. The air here turned cool, the wall clammy. "The dragon mines here for diamonds that my mother leaves," she explained. "There would be terrible disruption in Xanth if it weren't for her work. The dragons would go on a rampage if their diamonds ran out, and so would the other creatures if they couldn't get their own particular stones. It certainly is nice to know my mother has been here! Of course, that could have been a long time ago. There might even be an aperture to my home netherworld here, though probably she rode the Diggle and left no passage behind."
Smash just followed, more concerned about escaping the dragon than about the girl's idle commentary.
There was a sound behind them, like a giant spike being fired violently into bedrock. The dragoness had no doubt disgorged the ogre from her craw and now was ready to pursue the two of them here. Though the diameter of the tunnel was not great, dragons were long, sinuous creatures, particularly the wingless landbound ones, who could move efficiently through small apertures. Or she could simply send a blast of flame along, frying them. Worse yet, she might do both, pursuing until she got close, then doing some fiery target practice.
"Oh, I'm sure there's a way down, somewhere near," Tandy fussed. "The wall here is shallow; I can tell by the way it resonates. I've had a lot of experience with this type of formation. See-there's a fossil." She indicated a glowing thing that resembled the skeleton of a fish, but it squiggled out of sight before Smash could examine it closely.
Fossils were like that, he knew; they preferred to hide from discovery. They were like zombies, except that they didn't generally travel about much; they just rested for eons. He had no idea what their purpose in life or death might be. "But I can't find a hole!" Tandy finished, frustrated.
Smash knew they had to get out of this particular passage in a hurry. He aimed his fist and smashed a hole in the wall. A new chamber opened up. He dropped through, carefully lifting Tandy down.
"That's right!" she exclaimed. "I forgot about your ogre strength! It's handy at times."
A rush of fire flowed along the tunnel they had quitted. They had gotten out just in time!
"This is it!" Tandy cried. "The netherworld! I haven't been in this section before, but I recognize the general configuration. A few days' walk, and I'm home!" Then she reconsidered. "No, there isn't any direct connection. The-what's that thing that cuts Xanth in half? I can't remember-"
"The Gap Chasm," Smash said, dredging it out of his own fading memory. In his ogre personality, he was too stupid to forget things as readily as Tandy could.
"Yes. That. That would cut off this section from the section I live in, I think. Still-"
She led him through a dark labyrinth, until the sounds of the enraged dragon faded. They finally stood on a ledge near cool water. "She'll never find us here. It would douse her fire."
"I hope you'll be able to find our way out. I'm lost." Ogres didn't care one way or the other about the depths of the earth, but did like to be able to get around to forage for food and violence.
"When the time is right," she said. "Maybe never."
"But what of our missions?" Smash demanded.
"What missions?" she asked innocently. Then Smash remembered. She no longer cared about seeking fulfillmen
t. She had given up her soul.
Chapter 15. Point of View
But in a moment he realized this was not serious. "I have your half soul," he said. "Take it back." He put his huge paw on his head and drew out the fillet. It adhered to his own soul, with which it had temporarily merged; evidently the two souls liked each other, different as they were. At last her soul rested in his palm.
Then he moved the faintly luminous hemisphere to her head and patted it in. The soul dissolved, flowing back into her. "Oh, that feels so good!" she exclaimed. "Now I know how much I missed my soul, even the half of it!"
Smash, back to his own half soul, suddenly felt tired. He sank down on the rock where he was resting. It was dark here, but he didn't mind; it was easy to rest in this place.
Tandy sank down beside him. "I think my soul feels lonely," she said. "It was half, and then it was whole with yours, and now it's half again, with maybe the better half missing."
"Yours is the better half," he said. "It's cute and spunky and sensitive, while mine is gross and stupid."
"But strong and loyal," she said. "They complement each other. A full person needs strength and sensitivity."
"An ogre doesn't." But now he wondered.
She found his hamhand with her own. "Okay, Smash, I remember our missions now. I wanted to find a good husband, and you-"
"Wanted a good wife," Smash finished. "I didn't know it, but the Good Magician evidently did. So he sent me where I could find one. But somehow the notion of sharing the rest of my life with an ogress no longer appeals. I don't know why."
"Because true ogres and ogresses are brutes," she said. "You really aren't that kind, Smash."
"Perhaps I wasn't when I had the Eye Queue curse. But when I lost it, I reverted to my natural state."
"Are you sure your natural state is brutish?"
"I was raised to be able to smash ironwood trees with single blows of my homely fist," he said. "To wrestle my weight in 'dragons and pulverize them. To squeeze purple bouillon juice from purple wood with my bare hands. To chew rocks into sand. To-"
Ogre Ogre x-5 Page 31