He scowled — a frightening and fierce expression, on his face. "Mama want find those ones?"
"Sure," the Lady Drule said. "Don't know where to look, though."
"No problem," Krog said, standing and pointing northward. "They over there."
"Where?"
"There. See smoke? That where other others go."
He seemed certain of it, so Drule said, "Fine. We go there, too. Highbulp prob'ly need 'tendin' to 'bout now."
She called to the rest, and they set off northward — a nine-foot creature guiding, a long line of three- to four-foot creatures tagging after. In the distance, far across a wide, sundered valley littered with the debris of nameless catastrophe, was a ridge. Beyond the ridge, Krog said, were their lost people. It would take all day to get there, Drule guessed, but they had nowhere else to go.
It was midday when Drule and Krog rounded a spire of rock that might once have been a mountaintop, and came face-to-face with a stranger, a human, carrying an axe.
As any good gully dwarf would do, faced with an armed Tall, the Lady Drule shrieked, turned and ran. Behind her, gully dwarves scattered in all directions.
Krog looked after Drule for a second, thoroughly puzzled, then looked again at the bug-eyed man standing there, gawking up at him in terror. Krog shrugged eloquently, then voiced a mighty shriek, flung up his hands just as Drule had done, and pounded away after her. His shriek drowned out the screams of the man, who was now bounding away in the other direction, shouting, "Ogre! Ogre!"
Some distance away, Krog found the Lady Drule hiding behind a clump of grass. Krog did the same, though his clump of grass covered no more than the lower part of his face and maybe one shoulder. He stayed there until Drule rose. Deciding the danger was gone, she went to regather her followers. Krog didn't know why they had been hiding, but whatever suited Mama was all right with him.
It was late evening. Hazy dusk lay in the long shadows of the Khalkists, and the smoke of campfires hung in the air when a gully dwarf named Bipp crept through the brush to the shadowed slave pen and looked inside. He squinted. "Highbulp?"
Several faces turned toward him. "Hey," someone said. "That Bipp."
"What you doin' out there, Bipp?" another asked.
Bipp put a finger to his lips. "Sh!"
"What?"
"Sh!"
"Oh. Okay."
"Where Highbulp?" Bipp whispered.
"Right here, somewhere. Highbulp? Highbulp, wake up. Bipp here." A pause, then, "Highbulp! Wake up! Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp! Bipp here."
"Who?"
"Bipp"
"Shut up over there!" a human voice shouted. "Can't you little dimwits ever be quiet?"
At the sound, an armed guard at the far comer of the pen looked around, and Bipp flattened himself in the shadows. "Shut up in there, or you'll wish you had," the guard ordered.
Then Gorge was there, peering through the lashed-post bars. "What Bipp want?"
"Lady Drule send me. She lookin' for you. Why ever'body here?"
"Can't get out," the Highbulp said, peevishly. "Talls got us incarcera… in custo… got us locked in for sell."
"Oh." Bipp studied the bars, shrugged, and turned away. "Okay," he said. "Have nice evenin'. I go tell Lady Drule."
In a moment he was gone, but behind him a babble of voices echoed, and a guard roared, "You slaves heard what I said!"
A torch flared. A guard with a patch on one eye drew a sword and thrust it viciously between the bars. A human screamed, and the scream became a whimper as the guard withdrew the sword, bloody.
The man put away his sword, grinned at another guard. "That ought to quiet them," he said. "Slaves don't need two ears, anyway."
Atop the ridge, the Lady Drule and the others listened wide-eyed as Bipp made his report. He told them what he had seen and what he had heard, and there was no doubt what it all meant. Most of the males of the Bulp clan were prisoners of heavily armed Talls, and would be sold into slavery.
Drule scratched her head, wondering what to do about that, then gave up and went to find Hunch. "You Grand Notioner," she reminded him. "Time for Grand Notion."
The Grand Notioner was preoccupied, trying to repair the bindings on his feet after a long day's walk. "What about?" he grumbled.
" 'Bout how get Highbulp an' all away from Talls! Pay attention."
"Oh." He thought about it for a while, then shrugged and pointed at the stick in her hand. "Use bashin' tool, I guess."
"For what?" Drule looked at the stick.
"For bash Talls," he explained.
To the Lady Drule, that didn't sound like much of an idea, but when several long minutes of fierce concentration didn't produce a better one, she resigned herself to it. Bashing Talls, in her opinion, was a very good way to get into a lot of trouble, but maybe it was worth a try.
"Anybody wanna bash Talls?" she asked around, hoping for volunteers. There were none. She would just have to do it herself, then.
Nearing the foot of the ridge, Drule suddenly was aware that Krog was right behind her, mimicking her stealthy approach. She turned and raised a hand. "Krog wait," she whispered. "I got somethin' to do."
In a rumbling whisper, the big creature asked, "What Mama do?"
She pointed toward the pen, where a guard was sitting on a rock. "See Tall there? Gotta bash him. Now be quiet."
"Oh," Krog said. "Okay."
With Krog silenced, the Lady Drule crept on down the slope toward the guard. Even sitting on a rock, the man was taller than she was, and his ready sword glinted in the starlight.
Trembling with dread, Drule crept up behind him, raised her rat-bashing stick, and brought it down on the back of the man's head as hard as she could.
"Owl" the man said. His hand went to his head. "What th' — " He reached for his sword.
The Lady Drule tried to run, but tripped over her own feet and fell.
The raider guard spied her, spat. "Gully dwarf!" He grasped the hilt of his sword… then raised his eyes to see the last sight of his life — a massive club descending on his skull.
The Lady Drule got her feet under her, started to run again, then saw the squashed body of the man sprawled across the rock. Krog stood to one side, disinterestedly gazing out over the fire-lit camp.
"Wow!" Drule breathed. Raising her rat-stick, she stared at it in amazement. "Pretty good bash!"
Quietly, then, she crept toward the pen, bright eyes looking for other Talls to bash. Somewhere nearby, a rumbling whisper said, "Ones with weapons first,D Mama."
That, she realized, made pretty good sense. She wondered how Krog came to know such sound strategy. At the bottom of the slope, she began to circle the slave pen. The gully dwarves were all crowded into one comer of the wooden cage enclosure, spumed by the humans inside.
As Drule neared that comer, a voice whispered, "There Lady Drule! Hi there, Lady Drule." Another voice whispered, "Highbulp! Wake up! Lady Drule here… Highbulp? Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp!"
Drule said, "Sh!" and went on. Behind her, a giant shadow moved, but those inside were too busy watching her to notice it.
Just beyond the comer of the stockade, a man stood leaning on a spear staff. He yawned, and a stick smacked him sharply across the buttocks. "Here now!" he started to say, but only part of it was ever said. The club that smashed into his skull put an end to it.
"Wow," the Lady Drule muttered.
Another guard stood at the next comer, and just beyond him burned the coals of a cook-fire. Other men lay in sleep, their weapons at hand. Quietly, Drule approached the guard, raised her stick, and whacked him on the back. The man said, "Ow!" and spun around, raising his spear. "Gully dwarf," he said. "And a female one. Where did you come from?"
"Woop," Drule shouted. She raised her stick and struck again.
The stick whacked across the man's knuckles, and he dropped his spear. His eyes narrowed. "Why, you little snake," he hissed. "You'll pay for that." He drew a long knife from
his boot and lunged at the gully dwarf, who dodged aside, tripped, and fell.
The slaver aimed another thrust, then stopped. A chorus of shrieks sounded from inside the pen. Some of the slaves had just noticed Krog stepping into the light of the fires. Crashing, thudding sounds erupted. Thuds, rending snaps, and a high-pitched scream abruptly silenced.
The guard turned, gaped, screamed, "Ogre!"
He started to run, tripped over the Lady Drule, and sprawled facedown.
A stick whacked him on the back of his head, and a voice said, "Take that!" Then, "Don' know what wrong with this bashin' tool. Used to work real good."
As the man got to his knees, Drule decided she had done enough bashing, and ducked away. The area around the nearby campfire was a shambles — sprawled bodies everywhere, dropped weapons lying here and there… and blood, lots of blood. Krog had finished there and gone on to the next fire, unleashing havoc. There were screams of fear, screams of agony, the rhythmic thudding of a huge club against flesh and bone.
Like huge death, Krog strode around and through the sleeping-fire, a growling, implacable horror with rending fingers, ripping teeth, and a great club as tireless and relentless as a harvester's scythe. Wide-eyed, terrified slavers came out of their blankets, grabbing up weapons to confront him. Some never even got to their feet before the heavy club flattened them and great feet trod across their bodies. Others tried to regroup and fight, and were splattered with their companions' blood even as their own blood splattered others.
A man with an eye-patch rolled aside, hid for a second in shadows, then sprang to his feet, aiming a heavy sword at the marauder's backside. He swung — and the sword thudded into hard wood, embedded itself, and was torn from his grasp. A huge hand closed around his helmed head and squeezed, and the iron helm collapsed, crushing the skull within. Krog flung him aside and went on, growling his pleasure.
Somewhere, deep in Krog's mind, a glimmer of memory awakened — memory triggered by the violence and the smell of fresh blood. Rampant and towering in the remains of the sleeping camp, Krog raised his club toward the sky, and a growl sounded in his throat — a growl that became a roar that echoed from the hillsides, a roar of challenge and of pleasure, the cry of a rampaging ogre.
Ahead of him were other fires, where men with weapons scrambled in all directions, and his eyes lit with pleasure.
But then, behind him somewhere, a voice called, "Krog! 'Nough foolin' 'round! Got better things to do!"
The glimmer of memory held for a moment, urging him on, then became tenuous and faded. Feeling a disappointment he didn't understand, Krog turned and headed back, pausing only for a casual swat that brained a panicked, fleeing slaver. "All right, Mama!" he thundered, his lower lip jutting in a huge pout. "Comin'!"
The ladies of Lady Drule's retinue, and the few males with them, had followed Drule and Krog as far as the pen. Not finding a hole in the cage, they made one. Using the edges of burnished iron stew tureens, they chipped away enough sapling bars and lashings for the gully dwarves to come tumbling out, and a flood of crouched Talls right behind them. Pushing past and through the gully dwarves as though they were not there, the Talls grabbed up fallen weapons and launched a murderous attack on the stunned and disorganized slavers.
The minute Gorge III, Highbulp of This Place and Those Other Places Too, was free of captivity, he threw back his shoulders, donned his most regal pose and issued the orders of a true leader. "Everybody run like crazy!" he commanded.
It was many hours later, and broad daylight, when the reunited Clan of Bulp paused on the devastated lower slopes of the Khalkist Mountains to regroup. Through night and morning they had fled, each and severally. But now Gorge remembered that he had sore feet and decided it was a good time to stop and reassert his authority. He proclaimed a temporary This Place, and by threes and fives they gathered around him.
There was one small problem. Through it all, nobody had thought to tell Gorge about Krog, so when the Lady Drule and her band showed up, shrieks and screams filled the hazy air and they found a This Place with no one in attendance except old Hunch, sitting on a rock.
Drule looked around in confusion. "Where Highbulp? Where ever'body go?"
"All run an' hide." Hunch shrugged.
"Why?"
"Dunno. Didn' say. Ever'body just holler an' run an' hide."
Impatiently, Drule set her fists on her hips, stamped her foot, and shouted, "Gorge! Where you?"
Here and there, shadows moved. From brushy crevices and piles of stone, faces peered out. The Highbulp's voice said, "Yes, dear?"
"What goin' on?" the Lady Drule demanded. "You playin' game?"
More of the gully dwarves peered from hiding places, all gaping at the towering Krog. "What that you got with you, dear?" the Highbulp called.
Drule looked up at the ogre, then turned toward the voice. "Nothin'! Just Krog! Stop fool 'round!"
Reassurance didn't come easily, but lapse of attention did, and soon the whole tribe was gathered.
Within an hour, they had stew on, and the Lady Drule handed a tureen to Gorge III. He sniffed, tasted, and proclaimed, "This superi… excep… pretty good stew! What in it?"
"Cave bear an' skinny green plant," she said. "An' mushroom an' tall-grass seed an' leftover bird nest."
He took another sip and nodded. "Good stuff. Best I… cave bear? Where get cave bear?"
Offhandedly, Drule pointed at the hulking Krog, who was waiting for the crowd around the stew pot to disperse so that he could finish the pot. "Krog get," she said. "Krog not much for hunt rats, but bash bears real good."
"Krog," the Highbulp said, scowling in thought as he studied the amiable monster. He hadn't really thought much about Krog since the first shock of encounter, but when he did, troubling notions tumbled around in his head. He glanced at Drule suspiciously. "Krog call you Mama," he said. "You been up to somethin', dear?"
"Krog lost, needed mama." She shrugged. "Keeps callin' me that."
"Oh." Gorge sipped at his stew, relieved but still troubled. "Dear, wha' happen to Talls at slave camp? Somethin' squash 'em?"
"Mostly Krog," she explained. "He got th' hang of bashin' Talls pretty quick. Had lotta fun."
"Hmph!" Gorge sat in thought for a time, then asked, "How you an' others find us?"
Again she pointed at the huge creature nearby. "Krog find place. Krog pretty handy have around, right?"
"Right." The Highbulp scowled. Tossing aside his empty tureen, he stalked away, sulking.
The Lady Drule stared after him, then beckoned the Grand Notioner. "Hunch, what wrong with Highbulp?"
"Highbulp?" Hunch shrugged. "Highbulp is Highbulp. That his main problem."
"What that mean?"
"Highbulp gotta be Highbulp alla time," he explained, puzzling it out as he went. "Gotta be big cheese, top turkey, main mullet, otherwise, no good be Highbulp."
"So what?"
"So now Krog big hero. Ever'body lookin' up to Krog. Not good for Highbulp. Steal his thunder."
The Lady Drule pondered, trying to understand. "Okay," she said finally. "What do about it, then?"
"Maybe Highbulp make Krog a knight," Hunch said simply, "like Tall kings do. Heroes real nuisance to kings, but if king make hero a knight, alla glory belong to king again."
"Oh," Drule concurred. "Okay" With renewed purpose, she strode to where the Highbulp was sulking and faced him. "Highbulp better knight Krog," she told him.
He frowned a puzzled frown. "What?"
"Knight Krog, then Highbulp be like a king, get glorious."
"Highbulp already glorious," he pointed out, then squinted at her. "Knight Krog good idea, huh?"
"Real good idea."
"Right," he decided. "Jus' what I was thinkin 'bout."
Gorge strode to the middle of the camp and raised his arms. "All pay attention! Highbulp got announ… proclam… somethin' to say!"
When he had their attention, he pointed at Krog. "Highbulp gonna… Ever'body! Stop lookin
' at Krog! Look at Highbulp!"
When he had their attention again, he said, "Highbulp deci… conclu… make up mind to do Krog big honor, for — " he turned to Drule " — for what?"
"For be hero" she whispered. "For valor an' service. For be brave an'… an' bashful."
It was a bit complicated for the Highbulp. Turning back to his assembled subjects, he said, "For bein' a good guy, make Krog be Sir Krog. Krog!" he ordered. "Go over by big rock an' prost… recumb… hunker down real low."
With a nod from Drule, the big creature did as he was told. Kneeling before a boulder, he bent low enough that it was almost as tall as himself. Gorge walked around him, trying to remember what he had heard about knighting. He glanced at the huge club in Krog's hand and pointed at it. "What that?"
"Bashin' tool," the Lady Drule said. "Krog made it."
"Good," Gorge said. "Krog, give bashin' tool to Highbulp"
Hunkered low before the boulder, Krog turned his head, saw Mama's nod of approval and extended his club. The Highbulp took it and, when Krog released it, sat down hard with the club across his lap. It weighed almost as much as he did.
"Gonna need volunteers," the Highbulp muttered. He pushed the club away, stood and called, "You, Chuff. An' Bipp. An' Skitt, all come help."
Three sturdy young gully dwarves stepped forward. Gorge climbed to the top of the boulder and beckoned. "Bring bashin' tool up here."
Between them, the three managed to hoist the club and themselves onto the boulder, scattering dust from its top. Beside it, Krog wrinkled his nose, shook his head, and began to fidget.
"Hol' still, Krog," the Lady Drule told him.
With the Highbulp supervising, the three volunteers positioned the club above Krog's left shoulder.
Gorge drew himself up regally. "Krog, 'cause of exce.. unusu… for doin' good stuff, I dub you SIR KROG." To the volunteers, he said, "Dub Krog on shoulder now."
Falling dust tickled Krog's nose. He sneezed. A cloud of dust blew up around the boulder, blinding the dubbers. Bipp sneezed and lost his grip on the club, Chuff fell over backward, and Skitt, suddenly lifting the full weight of the thing, lost control of it. With a resounding thud, the club descended on the back of Krog's head.
The Cataclysm Page 22