It was with a start that I noticed the lengthening shadows of twilight. I had entered a deep cut in the foothills, a gorgelike depression that fortunately ran along the course of my strangely guided journey. Picking my way along the valley floor, I stayed to the right of a splashing brook that tumbled from some unknown height before me.
With nightfall imminent, I decided to look for shelter against the near wall of the gorge. Turning from the stream, I made my way toward the moss-covered cliff that occasionally showed between the boles of the mighty trees. Maybe I could find a cave or some kind of overhang that might help to keep me dry.
It wasn't until the splashing sound of the brook was muffled by intervening trunks that I heard the groan, a rumbling gasp of pain resonating from a massive chest. Instinctively I took cover, worming between gnarled roots, pressing closer against the cliff.
The groan was repeated. Clearly the sound originated some distance away, near the base of the cliff that rose in a tangled mess of cracked limestone and thick, thorny brush to my right. Creeping with all the stealth I could muster, I advanced along the base of the precipice, cautiously seeking... what?
Shadows thickened around me, but I heard no further sounds of pain. My hand went instinctively to the hilt of my sword, but I didn't draw the weapon; instead, inching closer to the source of the noise, I tried to look in every direction at once.
The wind had died away completely, and the birds, too, became strangely still as I crept around a massive, twisted tree trunk. Peering past the rotten, punky wood, I observed a region of mossy talus at the bottom of a steep section of the gorge wall. Once again there was a noise—the deep, rasping sounds of something very large straining to draw a breath. Though no words were articulated, the very intensity of the respiration indicated a creature in severe pain.
I inched up to the first of the fallen boulders, and it seemed as if the panting came from very nearby. Cautiously I peered over the rock—and confronted a broad, tusked face, barely an arm's length away from my own.
"Ogre!" I yelped, tumbling backward to sit heavily on the ground.
Hearing nothing in reply, I rose cautiously, peering around the corner of the rock, ready to flee at an instant's notice. The rounded muzzle, yellowed fangs jutting upward from the protruding lower jaw, the dark, piglike eyes staring at me with unblinking appraisal, all confirmed my original conclusion. Scrambling to my feet, I drew my sword and took a hesitant step toward the imagined safety of the woods.
The ogre groaned, a piteous expression of pain, and I realized that he wasn't about to leap up and give chase. Or at least, if he was faking his injury, he was a lot more clever than any of the hulking humanoids I'd encountered before. Too, his face seemed less threatening than other ogres I'd seen, even vaguely benign, in a dull sort of way.
Cautiously I crept around the rock, finding another vantage where I could climb up and get a look at him while remaining ten or twelve feet away, enough distance that I could make a quick getaway should the need arise.
"Hello," grunted the ogre, his speech startlingly clear. The tone was deep, the articulation better than that of any of the ogres with whom I'd had the previous misfortune to converse.
"I'm Badswell Lummoff," he added helpfully.
"Kip. Kip Kayle," I replied with a nod. I saw that one of the ogre's legs jutted sideways at a brutal angle, and with a quick look upward, I deduced that he must have fallen from the height of the gorge wall. "Looks like your leg is broken."
" 'Fraid so," he replied sadly. "Guess I'm dyin' here. Not much to do about it, though. Still, Mum's goin' to be sad."
Again he spoke more clearly, and with unogrelike passivity. I guessed that he was a youngster; he certainly didn't loom to the gargantuan proportions of most of the bull ogres I'd encountered. At the same time, I noticed that his muzzle was less protuberant than typical for his breed, and there was an undeniable spark of intelligence—relatively speaking, of course—and even the potential for humor in those dark eyes.
Intelligence and humor were two characteristics I'd never associated with any ogre before, and my curiosity was aroused. Given the distance I'd traveled, it seemed unlikely that the injured brute was a member of Scarnose's band. Yet there were probably others of his ilk around, since I knew that ogres rarely lived alone. Apparently it's too much work to tend to the necessities of daily life when goblin or human slaves can easily do the work for you.
"Do you live near here?" I asked, making myself comfortable on the rocks.
"Yup. Mum and Pap have a cave just up the gorge. Prob'ly waitin' supper on me right now." The ogre nodded his head lugubriously, turning his neck as if to look around but wincing from the sudden pain caused by the movement.
Again I wondered at the creature's strange behavior. Most ogres would have been furious at being stuck in such a predicament and would have striven to kill anyone who came within reach out of sheer viciousness. This fellow Badswell was clearly a unique example of his race.
"You're a very interesting ogre," I noted by way of an opening.
"I'm only half an ogre. Mum's a human," the big fellow said after a momentary lull.
I nodded thoughtfully, thinking that this explained a lot. Badswell was not a full-blooded member of his savage clan. Then I pictured another, frightening thought.
"Your Mum—she lives in a cave with your Pap?" I asked, suddenly shivering at the image of savage captivity that was conjured in my mind.
"Yup." Badswell Lummoff nodded proudly. "All my life, and before then, too. Ever since Pap brung her up here from the town long time ago."
My nostrils flared in outrage at the thought of a helpless maiden dragged into the wilderness by a brutal monster, no doubt horribly used, forced to live in the ogre's squalid cave, to tend his needs—even to bear his child! I had to draw several deep breaths just to calm myself, and only then did my own reaction register as a surprise. After all, although kidnapping and slavery were clearly great wrongs, I typically would not have viewed them as my problems unless I was the one being kidnapped or enslaved.
Yet somehow it seemed as though Badswell's—and especially his mother's—situation made a difference to me.
"She's still there?" I asked casually, wondering whether the brutish ogre kept her chained to the wall, or perhaps forced her to languish in some sunless pit, no doubt sealed by a boulder only her vile master could move.
"Sure. That's where we live! Lived, I guess—I'm gonna die purty soon."
For the first time, I remembered that I might have the ability to help this poor fellow, who seemed a remarkably decent sort when one considered his ancestry. My hand closed around the stick of wood in my pouch, and I leaned forward to get a look at the fellow's leg,
"A bad break," I allowed.
"Sure 'nuff. Fell right down the cliff. Never thunk I could be so clumsy."
"I might be able to help you," I said hesitantly. "That is... I'm kind of lost. If I could make your leg better, do you think you could take me to your cave, let me meet your Mum?" The ruse of dishonesty was troublesome to me, but far less so than the mental image of that helpless human female. Then I comforted myself with the reflection that, when I thought about what I had said, I hadn't really lied after all.
"Why, sure! But how kin you help? I kin see you don't got a new leg for me!"
"Maybe I can make the old one better," I suggested, suppressing my smile. Badswell clearly had a rather limited education, which wasn't surprising given the enslavement of his mother and the doubtlessly ruthless and brutal nature of his father.
I took the stub of ebony and placed it against the broken leg. In seconds, the swelling subsided.
"Wow! You got a good stick there!" Badswell exclaimed, rising and experimentally placing his weight on the leg. "It works."
"Healing magic," I explained modestly.
The half-ogre ambled across the ground in a rolling gait that showed no signs of a limp. I hadn't fully appreciated his size until he stepped up to me, looming li
ke a mountain overhead.
"Whyn't ya come with me? Meet Mum and Pap?"
Again I pictured that dark lair and the helpless human female imprisoned within.
"Sure," I agreed. I felt a twinge of reservation when I scrambled down from the rock to stand beside Badswell Lummoff, realizing that my shoulder was about the same height as his knee. Still, I had already made up my mind.
Badswell started to lead me over the tangled ground at the base of the cliff. Surprisingly we made good time, and I realized that the half-ogre followed a regular network of paths and ramps formed by the fallen trunks of huge pines and the crests of monstrous boulders that had tumbled from the precipice since ancient times. The route allowed us to avoid the jagged rocks and weathered stumps that made a tangled obstacle course out of the ground itself.
Curiously, my sense of direction matched exactly the route that Badswell took, as if I had been headed here since leaving Oakvale. I began to sense the lightness of the destiny that took me toward the ogre's lair. With each step, my outrage grew. I imagined, in vivid and horrifying detail, the captivity that must have been the lot of the half-ogre's mother for the last several decades. In fact, I was amazed that she had even been able to survive.
Badswell himself didn't seem like such a bad sort. He held back his pace to accommodate my shorter legs, and often turned back to lend me a hand over a high obstacle or across a wide span of space. On these occasions, his face was invariably bent into a tusk-baring leer that I gradually recognized as a guileless, friendly smile. Doubtless the influence of his human mother had tempered the vicious brutality of his low-browed sire.
Before I knew it, we were scrambling up a narrow ravine, hopping up a series of flat rocks arrayed very much like a stairway. Bads stepped easily from one to the next, but I was puffing and sweaty by the time we reached the lip of the limestone bluff.
"Here's cave," he said helpfully as I stared upward at a moss-draped hole leading into the blackness of the rising ridge beyond. The tang of bitter smoke was thick and acrid in the close air of the ravine. A massive beam framed each side of the door, supporting a huge lintel of granite. That upper stone merged into the rock of the hillside, looming ominously over the entryway and holding back a significant tonnage of loose boulders.
The sense of direction that had guided me through the wilderness rose to an acute level, indicating the dark aperture of the cave was my destination. Perhaps it was only right that I rescue this woman, I thought. Certainly the feeling was an urge that I found increasingly difficult to ignore.
"Does your Pap keep your Mum in there?" I asked, cautiously eyeing the gloomy aperture. At first nothing was visible within, but gradually my vision adjusted and I began to perceive a few details.
A trail of smoke drifted through the air, near the flat ceiling of the passageway. From the rough walls and irregular floor, I could tell that the cavern was natural for the most part, though the ogres had done some work to smooth and widen it. I tried to imagine the plight of the poor human captive, supposing that she was chained to the wall somewhere in the lightless depths. The very thought sent a shiver of outrage down my spine, and my fingers clenched around the hilt of my short sword in a conscious gesture of grim determination.
I had decided against asking Badswell for more information. Though he seemed none too swift, I was taking no chances on alerting him to my intentions. Even though the half-ogre himself had made no overt moves against me, I had to regard him as a potential enemy. It seemed far safer to approach the task of his mother's rescue with stealth and secrecy, at least for the time being.
"Bads! You bring supper?"
The cry screeched from the depths of the cave as we passed through the entrance. I would not have been surprised by the bellow of a bull ogre, but the high-pitched nature of the cry contradicted my initial anticipation.
Then a hulking brute charged from the darkness with startling speed, rushing like a lumbering buffalo. The fellow's torso was round-shouldered, the face tusked and bestial, feet broad enough to set the ground pounding. My first instinct was to flee, but then I noticed that the creature wasn't even aware of my presence. Instead, he looked over his shoulder, and I got the distinct impression that it was the ogre who was fleeing.
The monster was huge, larger even than Badswell, and dressed in a tattered rag of bearskin. Those tree-trunk-sized legs pumped furiously, and the rasping sound of the ogre's breathing whooshed like a blacksmith's bellow. The screeching voice followed him from the darkness as he bore down on me.
"You call this firewood? I want some dry logs! Something that'll burn without blowing your fool breath all over it!"
"Certainly, luv!" barked the ogre, charging through the entrance of the cave. The round, tusked face swiveled around, staring wildly over the brute's shoulder, and I got the distinct impression that his features sagged with relief as he made his escape.
Then a bulky shadow loomed inside, approaching the cave mouth, and I wondered if that person could possibly be human, never mind a helpless, kidnapped maid. She looked more like a giantess as she gestured us curtly forward with an arm the size of a bear's foreleg.
"Git in here!" she demanded in the face of our hesitation, and I had the sickening feeling that I had made a very terrible mistake.
CHAPTER 8
MUM AND PAP
"Well? Don't jist stand there. Git in here and let's see what you got." The voice rumbled from the shadowy figure within the cave, the question as palpably hungry as the glare of a ravenous spider-wolf.
"Uh, sure, Mum," Badswell grunted, taking me by the hand.
Though he still towered over me, the half-ogre seemed smaller than he had before. His shoulders slumped, and his head dipped awkwardly forward in a posture that made him look slightly off-balance. "Come on—you don't wants to keep her waitin'!" he hissed from the side of his broad mouth.
Actually, at this point I was ready to keep "Mum" waiting for a very long time. My doubts about the hastily conceived idea of a rescue had grown into full-blown misgivings. Still, Bads had me pretty firmly by the arm, and there was the matter of my peculiar direction sense, the feeling that I was supposed to go into this cave.
"What do we have here?"
The shrill voice dropped to a whispered hiss that was, if possible, even more frightening than the shrieking cries that had echoed moments earlier. I saw the dim shape moving forward, and as my eyes gradually adjusted to the pale light of a fading fire, I had trouble believing that the woman before me was in fact human.
She was certainly the largest person I had ever seen, male or female. Lumbering on legs that made Badswell's limbs look like twigs, she scowled from a face creased by numerous wrinkles—or chasms, more accurately, since her skin resembled the relief map of a mountain range. Squinting her bloodshot eyes, she leaned down to regard me, and her bloated face broadened into a hideous smile, revealing gums that provided home for only a few scattered, blackened teeth.
"A halfling, huh? Bads, ya done good."
"T'anks, Mum," said my newfound friend, beaming. "Dis's Kip. He fixed my leg."
"Oh, 'e did, did 'e? What a nice little fellow. Now you come here for yer reward, I'm bettin?"
"Uh, no, ma'am," I replied before bowing as politely as I could with Badswell's hand still gripping my arm. Sheepishly he let go, and I sensed that he'd been holding me more for his own comfort than my security. It was easy to understand why: His mother was undoubtedly the scariest creature I'd ever seen.
Then I remembered the spider-wolves that had killed Saysi, and modified this realization: Mum was only the second most frightening being I had beheld.
"I'm Bertisha," declared the woman, with a gurgling attempt at gracious hospitality. "Bads don't got the manners of a stableboy, so he prob'ly din't tell ya that. Whyn't ya come over here and have a seat?"
The big woman seized my shoulder in a calloused paw and whisked me across the cave before plopping me onto a hardened stone bench. "Supper won't be for a while yet. Oak
gnar, that fool husband of mine, brought a bunch of green wood for the cookfire!" As she said this, her voice dropped to a rumbling growl, and I actually felt sorry for the bull ogre I had observed moments before.
For the first time, I noticed the source of illumination in the cave: a large firepit, lined with glowing coals. Much of the smoldering blaze was obscured by a massive caldron suspended over the blaze. With a growing, sickening certainty, I suspected that the iron kettle figured prominently in the dinner plans.
"Um, thanks a lot, ma'am," I replied as graciously as I could, considering that my heart was lodged somewhere in the middle of my throat. "But I really have to be going."
I started to sidle toward the entrance, but Bertisha reacted with startling speed. She reached out and touched me with something hard, sneering wickedly as I tried to twist away. Immediately my limbs felt sluggish, as if they were mired, trying to push through thick mud. I spun, ducking my head and leaping toward the cave mouth, when I realized that several seconds had passed and I was still in the midst of my first step. My right foot finally padded to the ground, but before I could raise the left to take another step, Bertisha seized me by the scruff of the neck and plopped me down onto the bench.
"Stay there!" she barked, her face inches from my own. I gagged, realizing that if it hadn't been for the sweetening effects of plenty of onion, her breath would have almost certainly been toxic.
When I tried to squirm in place, I found that the invisible mire remained close around me. Miserably I understood that some kind of magic spell had been worked on me, an enchantment of slowing that virtually ensured I would be caught if I tried to flee. I've always hated being ensorcelled, and I struggled desperately in the invisible, but very real, grip of the spell. No matter how hard I strained, every move I made was enacted in excruciating slow motion. I kicked my foot, and it was like pushing the limb through a pile of soft sand.
The Rod of Seven Parts Page 9