by Jean Rabe
He had a thought. Was it magic?
If so, he should leave it there, maybe settle it back in its hole, maybe bring Mudwort to look at it and hear her opinion. The goblin shaman seemed to understand mysterious things of the earth. Maybe she could cast a spell and talk to it.
But what if he couldn’t find that place again, as it wasn’t on the game trail? And he might not have time to come back that way, as he ought to get busy moving the goblins farther away to a good water supply where the land had not been soaked with their kinsmen’s blood. So he bent and wrapped his fingers around the narrow part, hoisting it upright again.
Direfang grabbed the bottom with his free hand, sucked in a breath, and picked it up, holding it in front of himself as if it were a precious log he was carrying back to stoke a funeral pyre for dead goblins.
The spire was heavy, though not so heavy as he expected. Direfang was strong and somehow managed it. He used to tote sacks of ore from the mines in Neraka and told himself it was not as heavy as a big sack of rocks. Yet he struggled under it as he found his way back to the game trail, scratching his ankles and shredding the cuffs of his pants in the sticky bushes. It wouldn’t have been so onerous a task if he had not lost so much blood. He still didn’t feel as strong as usual.
Although Direfang couldn’t say why he wanted the spire, he knew he didn’t want to leave it behind. He had to set it down and rest briefly several times before he finally reached the spot where most of the goblins had been camped.
There’d been thousands of them when he’d left. Gaping, he saw that there was only one: a thin-framed, yellow-skinned female clutching a bundle to her chest.
It was Graytoes and her baby—a dwarf infant she’d taken from the village they’d passed through.
“Direfang!” she whooped when she spotted him.
He shuffled toward her, eyes cutting left and right in search of more goblins. He saw tamped-down grass and other evidence of their passing, and beyond Graytoes, in the gaps between large oaks, were the crude frames where the bloodrager hides were being tanned. He could smell the pong of the mixture Orvago had made and spread on the skins.
Some five thousand goblins had left the shore and come inland to build a nation, where still more had joined them. Many of the clans had camped a little distance away from the main group, and Direfang squinted and cupped his hand over his eyes, hoping to spot smoke spirals from cook fires.
“Nothing,” he said, eyeing Graytoes.
“Direfang was not lost,” Graytoes said happily, rising to meet him, face beaming when she glanced first at him then at her baby, Umay, who had just made a charming cooing sound. “Mudwort said Direfang wasn’t lost. Mudwort was right. Mudwort talked to the earth and told the clans that Direfang was swimming and getting rid of the blood-stink. Late, not lost.”
Direfang opened his mouth, but Graytoes kept babbling.
“Mudwort told the clans Direfang would come back when the blood-stink was gone. That another home site should be found, that more trees should be cut and—”
“Where is—”
“Mudwort said Direfang should have some alone time. Trees should be cut, Mudwort said, and water found. Mudwort said Direfang would want these things done. Rockhide and Bug-biter, Bentclaw, and Thya all agreed.”
“Where is—?”
“Mudwort said Direfang is selfless and doesn’t take enough alone time. Mudwort said—”
Direfang snarled and set the spire down. Graytoes stared at it, as if she’d not noticed him carrying it before.
“Oh! A big rock, tall and pretty, Direfang found. Mudwort did not say that Direfang had found a big, pretty rock. Said Direfang was getting rid of the blood-stink.” She sniffed the air. “Direfang got rid of the blood-stink and found a big rock. What is—?”
“Stop chattering for a minute! Where did Mudwort go? Where did all of the clans go?” Direfang’s words were a sustained growl.
Graytoes continued to stare at the spire, holding Umay against her with one arm and snaking out the other to touch the stone with her thumb. “Yes, pretty,” she said. “That is a very pretty rock, Direfang.”
“Graytoes!”
“Thya and Rockhide took some of the clans past the nut trees.” Graytoes’s eyes were still riveted on the stone, however. “Thya and Rockhide. Mudwort went too, after a while, and Grallik and Qel and …” She wrinkled her face, searching for a word. “And Qel’s hairy friend. Mudwort and Thya said to wait for Direfang. That Direfang was not lost. Just late. Said to wait for Direfang. Knobnose is cutting down trees with the Fishgatherers. Bug-biter too. Somewhere cutting down trees.”
Direfang raised his gaze to the scattering of nut trees at the far side of the tanning hides, staring off. “Mudwort shouldn’t have left Graytoes alone,” he said irritably. “Mudwort should know better.” He clenched his hands, the nails digging into his palms. Mainly he felt angry at himself. He fished in his pocket for the silver spoon and thrust it at Graytoes.
“For Umay!” she squealed with delight. “Where did Direfang find such a pretty, shiny thing? Where did—?”
He cut her off with a glance. “Move,” he said.
Direfang took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the pleasant smell of the tamped-down grass, the foul smell of the tanning hides, and the scents of Umay and Graytoes. Then he picked up the spire and started south. Thousands of goblins left a trail that was easy to follow. They moved slowly without him too. They wouldn’t be far ahead.
Graytoes tucked the spoon inside Umay’s blanket and hurried to catch up.
3
THE STONETELLERS
THERE WILL BE A CITY
Well more than a week later, as the sun just started to set, Direfang was digging a hole on a bluff under the shade of a honey locust. When he was done, he placed into the hole the three egg-shaped stones that he’d been carrying in his pocket.
He couldn’t recall if they’d been touching when he unearthed them near the ruined foundation back near the camp they’d vacated, though for some reason he thought they should. So he rested the narrow ends against each other, fingers lingering on the pretty blue one, and turning them so the carved letters faced up.
He was aware that the gnoll Orvago was watching him closely. Grallik, too, was interested, though the wizard stayed farther away—thinking, perhaps, that Direfang had not noticed him.
Direfang had determinedly lugged the spire all that way, despite urgings from Thya and Knobnose that he drop the heavy load. They saw nothing particularly special about the rock spire and thought it silly to carry such a burden so far. Hundreds of goblins had come over to look at it or touch it during the past few days, but only a handful showed anything more than a passing curiosity in the big rock. Most wondered whether Direfang had lost his wits, dragging around such a worthless item.
“Just a rock,” the hobgoblin Sully pronounced, those around him agreeing. However, Sully had carried it occasionally for Direfang when the hobgoblin had looked a little fatigued. “Carved, pretty, but just a rock. A big one.”
Direfang had not argued with Sully or the others; they could well be right. But he was determined to keep it nonetheless.
“Magic in it maybe, Direfang,” Mudwort said thoughtfully. She hovered next to him and watched as he placed the base of the spire on top of the three stones and filled dirt around it as an anchor. “Magic probably.” She’d also told him that a week past when he’d asked her to examine it. But even then she couldn’t tell him the function of the spire’s possible magic. “Might be useful. Might not. Might have only marked the grave of a dead elf.”
Direfang had thought Mudwort would be wholly fascinated by the stone, but she seemed preoccupied with something else, humoring him by paying some attention to him at odd times like then.
“Might be a bad thing, Direfang. Maybe it should have stayed where it was found.”
He couldn’t tell her why he felt compelled to bring it along—other than that he’d decided he wanted it. Direfang rar
ely wanted anything tangible. The mug he had unearthed he’d already given to Sully.
“It marks here the spot of the first city of the new nation, this spire.” He brushed his palms against his trouser legs as he spoke. He stood back to admire it. “A monument to goblins.”
“There is no city here, Direfang. And that’s not a monument to anything.” Mudwort traced the symbols in the spire with a thumb. “Just dirt and trees and many, many goblins here. Goblins cutting down some of the trees.”
In the silence that settled between them, he heard the chopping sounds of goblins toiling. He hoped they could get a few hours of work in before they settled in for the night. Goblins had keen senses and could see well even when the light left the sky, but he knew he could not push them too hard.
Some five thousand goblins were massed in the area, all working, all under his command. He couldn’t see them all, as the ground was not flat, rising into ridges like thick wrinkles on a boar’s neck. The gullylike depressions hid a good many from his view. But he could hear the horde, thrashing through bushes and chattering, some snoring, and the younglings playing.
“You are wrong. There will be a city here, Mudwort,” the hobgoblin returned as he rolled his shoulders to work out a sore spot. “And after it is finished, then it will be named.”
She made a snorting sound and picked something out of her teeth. “Perhaps it will be called Rock Town,” Mudwort mused. “Named after Direfang’s maybe useful spire. Maybe Direfang’s Bad Rock.”
Irritated, he padded away from her and stood at the edge of the bluff, staring down a slope covered with trillium and moss roses to a meandering river that looked earth-brown in the growing shadows. Widely spaced maples grew along his side of the bank, tall ones with thick trunks whose roots reached out into the water like blackened, thirsty snakes. The trees on the opposite side were much smaller, mostly firs as far as he could tell, as if the river marked a line between two different lands. Perhaps a fire had ravaged the other side some decades before, he reflected, the river stopping the flames from touching the other part of the forest and keeping the old hardwoods safe.
There were also willow trees on the side where the goblins worked, though not many of them. Two were massive, their canopies like giant mushroom caps that sheltered secrets beneath them. Mostly there were oaks. Farther west along the river were cattails, and a handful of young goblins not yet assigned work were busy searching through them looking for tasty insects and crayfish. Near them, a broad-faced youngling with yellow skin had become tangled in hyacinth vines and was calling for help. The crayfish hunters watched and cackled until he pulled himself free.
Groups of scouts had found several likely places for the city. Direfang had picked that particular spot from among the candidates because the river was sluggish there and not terribly wide. That made it safer as far as he was concerned; most of the goblins could not swim. The river would provide adequate water, perhaps an abundance of fish, and there were plenty of large trees for shade. Too many trees, really, and that made it even more ideal, according to the gnoll druid. Direfang heard a persistent thuck sound—members of the Boarhunters clan chopping down trees the gnoll had marked. Some of the land would have to be cleared for goblin homes.
Mostly, Direfang picked that place because so many of the goblins were impatient to choose and begin to build. He feared too much delay might cause the horde to splinter with some of the smaller, younger clans drifting away. He wanted to keep them all together, for safety and strength.
“This will be a good home,” he said to himself.
Direfang could recall so very little of where he lived in his youth. The strongest memories came from Steel Town, perhaps because they were such awful ones. He idly raised a hand and traced a scar on his breastbone, remembering exactly when and where he’d gotten it—three years past, deep in one of the Dark Knight tunnels. He’d been overseeing a crew of new slaves, one of them a goblin with sharply filed teeth and veins so thick on his arms they looked like night crawlers oozing up from the earth. The goblin’s mind was sour, and at one point he turned suddenly and took a pickaxe to Direfang rather than to a nearby wall laced with ore. The goblin swung the axe over and over, striking Direfang’s chest and side before his fellows subdued him. Light had exploded behind Direfang’s eyes that day, with white and red shards that danced in dizzying patterns in front of his fingers as they dripped scarlet with his own blood.
Direfang shook off the memory. Most of his scars had been caused by the Dark Knights, and those times brought far worse memories than the day with Nkunda … he’d only just then recalled the maddened goblin’s name. He’d actually forgiven Nkunda for the wild transgression and did not report the incident to the knights. That day he’d watched the anger melt from Nkunda’s eyes, along with any spark of spirit. When a knight asked Direfang about his wounds, he said merely there had been an accident in the deep tunnel, that he’d tripped and fell on something sharp. Nkunda was with his mass of followers; Direfang spotted him working with the Fishgatherer clan to fashion nets from vines. He’d not spoken to Direfang since the incident three years past. Direfang wondered if Nkunda spoke to anyone.
“Magic, certainly, this rock is.” Mudwort had been saying something else, but Direfang had been too preoccupied to catch her words. “But maybe foul magic, this rock. Hear? Maybe Direfang should not have planted this spire here. Maybe it will bring bad fortune to Rock Town. Worse than the bloodragers.”
He kept his back to her. None had been able to decipher the writing on the stone—Orvago, Qel, and Grallik had spent hours studying it when the army stopped to rest. It was not of a language any of them knew, or so they claimed. None of the goblins and hobgoblins could read, though, save Direfang, who had mastered that skill by studying over the shoulders of Dark Knights during his years as a slave. There was a big crate of books higher on the bluff, among the supplies the goblins had transported on the ships with them. Perhaps one of the books might hold a key to the spire. Such research would have to wait. The rock was not important anyway, Direfang thought. It was just something he wanted to bring along and plant there; he couldn’t say why.
“It is not foul magic, Mudwort,” Direfang said finally. “Grallik would have wanted it left behind if it was foul.”
She scowled, her disapproval lost on him. “Grallik is not so powerful a wizard that—”
“Not so powerful as Mudwort?”
Without waiting for her reply, Direfang walked parallel to the bluff’s edge away from Mudwort and toward the youngling who had scrambled loose from the hyacinths.
The Boarhunters chopped down trees oddly, Direfang thought. He stood with his back to the river, watching eight of them attack an oak. The Boarhunters were marked by their coloration, a hazy gray that was black in places, the shade of wood left behind after a fire just died. Their voices were edged with a coarseness the hobgoblin had noticed in some of the men in Steel Town—the ones who often smoked pipes and frequented the lone tavern. The Boarhunters had joined his army shortly after Direfang had come ashore in the forest. They were among the many who had answered Mudwort’s call.
Their leader went by the name of Cari, though Direfang had heard a few clansmen call her Evania, which Grallik said was an Elvish word meaning young warrior. She was young, Direfang could tell that by her features, and though many in her clan were easily twice her age, they clearly respected her and followed her lead. She intrigued him.
She was more than forty feet off the ground near the top of the tree, her mate, a burly goblin named Keth, calling up to her from a lower branch. Two other goblins were also in the tree, the other four ringing the trunk. Each bore an axe or a heavy-bladed knife that was sharp on only one side and looked unwieldy.
As Direfang watched, Cari looped a rope around her waist and tied it to the trunk. Keth did the same, but the other two goblins were not so high up and were apparently unconcerned they might fall.
As Cari chopped at the uppermost branch, Direfang wo
ndered what she had done to win dominance in the clan. Inheritance rights were uncommon among goblins, though one ailing leader might name a successor who had been particularly loyal. Usually leadership was tied to some great feat; Direfang was the army’s leader because he had led them from Steel Town and won their freedom from the Dark Knights. Thya led her clan because she was a shaman, the rest of her fellows in awe of her abilities and wisdom. Darkeyes was the new leader of the Flamegrass clan because he saved a youngling from drowning in the surf shortly after they’d arrived at the forest’s edge. The previous Flamegrass clan leader died of the plague that had threatened all of them.
Cari sawed at the uppermost branches on the opposite side of the trunk where Keth worked. As the branches fell to the ground, the quartet at the bottom pulled them away. A distance from the tree, younglings stripped the twigs and leaves off. Sully carted the branches off to a growing pile.
Direfang noted that as Cari and Keth moved lower on the trunk, they skittered out on thicker branches, cutting them off in pieces. Only once did Cari have to grab the rope when she slipped. Otherwise, she had appeared agile as a squirrel. Direfang decided he would ask how she gained the leadership of her clan during a rest period.
Keth was more daring, reaching out farther and chopping with an erratic motion that threatened to cut off one of his own limbs. Direfang silently cursed himself when he caught himself wishing that Keth would fall; after all, he’d caught the long-armed goblin urinating on his spire shortly before it had been planted on the bluff.
The two goblins below Cari and Keth were not as fast, but they were cutting at thicker limbs that had created a latticework that had to be pulled apart.
The Boarhunters made the work look easy; they obviously had cut down many, many trees before. There was a cadence to their chopping that the other workers hadn’t yet mastered, and there was little talk between them. But Direfang knew it was hard work; the veins were bulging on Keth’s arms, the sweat beading up on all of them, the ragged breathing of the two on the lowest limbs attesting to their exertions.