The cataclysm

OGRE UNAWARE

Through most of a day — from when the sun was high overhead until now, when the sun was gone behind the dagger-spire peaks of the Khalkist Mountains and night birds heralded the first stars glimpsed above — through those hours and those miles he had trailed the puny ones, thinking they might lead him to others of their kind. Now they had stopped. Now they were settling in on the slope below him, stopping for the night, and his patience was at an end.

Crouching low, blending his huge silhouette with the brush of the darkening hillside, he heard their voices drifting up to him — thin, human voices as frail as the bodies from which they issued, as fragile as the bones within those bodies, which he could crush with a squeeze of his hand. He heard the strike of flint, smelled the wispy smoke of their tinder, and saw the first flickers of the fire they were building — a fire to guard them against the night.

His chuckle was a rumble of contempt, deep within his huge chest. It was a campfire to heat their meager foods and to protect them from whatever might be out there, watching. Humans! His chuckle became a deep, rumbling growl. Like all of the lesser races, the small, frail races, they put their trust in a handful of fire and thought they were safe.

Safe from me? His wide mouth spread in a sneering grin, exposing teeth like sharpened chisels. Contempt burned deep within his eyes. Safe? No human was safe from Krog. Krog knew how to deal with humans — and with anyone else who ventured into his territory. He found them, tracked them down, and killed them. Sometimes they carried something he could use, sometimes not, but it was always a pleasure to see their torment as he crushed and mangled them, a joy to hear their screams.

There were a dozen or more in the party below him. Four were armed males, the rest a motley, ragged group bound together by lengths of rope tied around their necks. Slaves, Krog knew. The remnants of some human village ransacked by slavers. There were many such groups roaming the countryside in these days — slavers and their prey. Small groups like this, usually, though sometimes the groups came together in large camps, to trade and to export their prizes to distant markets. Those, the big groups, he enjoyed most, but now he was tired of waiting.

He studied them; his cunning eyes counted their shadows in the dusk below. The slaves were grouped just beyond the little fire, but it was their captors he watched most closely, marking exactly where each of the armed ones settled around their fire. Experience had taught him to deal first with the armed ones. He carried the scars of sword and axe cuts, from times when armed humans had managed a slash or two before he finished them. The cuts had been annoying. Better, he had learned, to deal with the weaponbearers quickly. Then he could finish off the others in any way that amused him.

For a long time now, ever since the beginning of the strangenesses that some called omens, humans and other small races had been wandering into the territory that Krog considered his — the eastern slopes of the Khalkist Mountains. Chaotic times had fallen upon the plains beyond, and the people of those plains were in turmoil. Krog knew little of that, cared less. Every day, humans and others were drifting westward toward the Khalkists, some fleeing, some in pursuit… and they all were sport for Krog.

Below him on the slope, the humans' campfire blazed brightly, and the humans gathered around it. He watched, and repressed the urge to rush down at them, to hear their first screams of terror. Let them have a minute or two to stare into their precious fire. Let them night-blind themselves so they would not see him until he was among them. It would make his attack easier, with less likelihood of any of them fleeing into the darkness.

Stare into the light, he thought, licking wide, scarred lips with keen anticipation of the pleasures to come. Stare into the fire, and…

He raised his head; his grin faded. He stared into another fire, a fire that sprang from a glowing coal in the overhead sky and grew until it seemed to fill half the sky. Searing light far brighter than firelight, brighter than the light of day, billowed out and out until the entire eastern sky was ablaze with it. Sudden winds howled high above, shrieks and bellows of anguish as though the very world were screaming. The radiance aloft grew and intensified, instant by instant, a blinding blaze of sky in which something huge, something enormous and hideous, coalesced, spinning and shrieking, and plunged downward to meet the eastern horizon in a blinding blast of fury.

Stunned and half blinded, he stood on the slope, barely aware of the sounds all around him — birds taking terrified flight, small creatures scurrying past, the screams and shouts of the terrified humans just down the slope. Panic and fear, everywhere… then silence. A silence as complete as the recesses of a cavern seemed to grow from the world itself as the brilliant, distant light dimmed beyond the horizon. A slow, agonizing dimming, like the reluctant ebbing of a hundred sunsets, all at once descended.

Out of the silence came a sound that was not a sound as much as a tingling in the air, a mounting of invisible tensions. Past the eastern horizon, where the immense flare still lingered, lightning danced and black clouds like mountain ranges marched up the sky, one after another. The inaudible sounds grew and grew, becoming a torrent of vibration that strummed the winds and made rocks dance on the slope. In the distance, gouts of brilliance spewed upward, rising above the clouds to shower the eastern world with marching storms of fire.

Shouting and screaming, terrified creatures rushed past him, the largest among them less than half his size and wide-eyed with fear. The humans from the slope below, slavers and enslaved, fled together in panic. They ran within arm's reach of him, and he barely noticed them as they passed. Dazed and dazzled, he stared out across a landscape gone insane, a landscape where distant mountains writhed and shattered and sank from view, where serpentine brilliance danced in a fire-lit sky gone black with climbing smoke, where the horizon heaved upward like a tidal wave, rushing toward him.

Winds like hammers swooped down from aloft and struck him with a force that sent him tumbling backward, arms and legs flailing helplessly as oven-hot gusts rolled him uphill a dozen yards and dropped him into a heaving pit. His club was wrenched from his fingers and flew skyward, carried by raging winds. Struggling, fighting for balance, he got his feet under him and climbed, drawing himself over the edge of the chasm just as it closed with stone jaws behind him.

In a bedlam of howling, furnace winds, shattering stone, and deep, bone-jarring rumbles from beneath the ground, he lay gasping for breath, then raised stricken eyes as the nearer mountains to the west began to explode.

Huge boulders rose into the sky like grains of flung sand, then showered back down onto the slopes, bounding and rolling downward, bringing other debris with them as they came.

He struggled upward, dodging and dancing, flinging himself this way and that as monstrous rock fragments shot past, shaking the ground with their force. A tumbling boulder the size of an elven mansion bore down on him, and he flung himself aside, hugging the ground as it hit, bounced and sailed over, missing him by inches. He raised himself and turned to watch it go, and something hit him from behind — something massive and stone-hard that smashed against his head, bowling him over. Chaos rang in his ears, and he saw the hard, shaking ground rise to meet him… then saw nothing more.

Where he fell, shards of stone skidded and bounced, piling up in drifts around him. After a long time, the stonefalls slowed and stopped, and a creeping, gurgling torrent of mud and silt from ravaged slopes above rolled down to bury the lesser debris. He was not aware of being buried. He wasn't aware of anything now. The flowing soil found him, covered him and passed on, and there was nothing there to see.

With the winds came clouds, and with the clouds came rain — torrents of rain washing over a ravaged land, rain and more rain, scouring channels and gullies in the sediment among the tumbled stones.

The rains came and went and came again, and between storms the ravaged land lay in silence.

On a caprock hillside, where scoured stone rose in stacked layers above the climbing slopes, evening light made a patchwork of shadows, hiding indentations in the stone cliffs, camouflaging them from prying eyes. Here on the south face of the cliff, low in its surface, one of those somber shadows might have seemed slightly different from those around it, to the practiced eye — darker and deeper, the opening of a cavern that opened to other caverns beyond.

Screened from view by jutting rock, the spot was just the sort of place the combined clans of Bulp had been seeking for weeks — a place that could be This Place until it was time to move on to Another Place.

And, seeking it, they had found it and moved right in. Furtively, they entered, scouted around, were satisfied, and reported the find to their leader.

With great ceremony, then, His Royalness Gorge III, Highbulp by Choice and Lord Protector of This Place and Who Knew How Many Other Places, made his own brief tour of inspection, strutting here and there, looking at this and that, muttering under his breath and in general behaving like a Highbulp.

Various of his subjects trailed after him, occasionally stumbling over one another.

At a wall of rock, Gorge stopped and raised his candle. "What this?" he demanded.

At his shoulder, his wife and consort, the Lady Drule, peered at the wall and said, "Rock. Cave have rock walls. Wouldn't be cave without walls."

Old Hunch, the Grand Notioner of the Bulp Clan, padded forward, leaned on his mop-handle staff, to ask, "What Highbulp's problem?"

"Want to know what is that." The Lady Drule pointed at the wall.

"That wall," Hunch said. "Rock wall. So what?"

"Highbulp doin' inspec… explo… lookin' 'round," Gorge proclaimed. He moistened a finger, touched the wall, then tasted his finger. "Rock wall," he decided. "Cave got rock wall this side."

"Other sides, too," Hunch pointed out. "Caves do."

Satisfied, Gorge wandered away from the wall, raised his eyes to look critically at the rock ceiling, and tripped over a bump in the rock floor. He sprawled flat and lost his candle.

"Highbulp clumsy oaf," Drule muttered, helping him to his feet. Someone returned his candle to him, and he looked around, found a foot-high ledge, and sat on it. "Bring Royal Stuff," he ordered.

Several of his subjects scouted around, found the tattered sack that was the Holder of Royal Stuff, and brought it to him. Digging into it, throwing aside various objects — a rabbit skull, a broken spearhead, a battered cup — Gorge drew forth a broken antler nearly as tall as he was. An elk antler, it once had been part of a set, attached to a tanned elk hide. The hide and the other antler were long gone, but he still had this one, and he raised it like a scepter.

"This place okay for This Place," Gorge III decreed, "so this place This Place." The ceremony ended, he tossed aside the elk antler. "Get stew goin'," he ordered. " 'Bout time to eat."

The Lady Drule stepped aside to confer with other ladies of the clan. There were shrugs and shaking heads. She paused in thought, gazing into the murky reaches of the cavern.

"Rats," she said.

Gorge glanced around. "What?"

"Rats. Need meat for stew. Time for hunt rats."

Within moments, small figures scurried all around the cave and into the tunnels leading from it. Their shouts and chatter, the sounds of scuffing, scrambling feet, the thuds of people falling down and the oaths of those who stumbled over them, all receded into the reaches of the cavern.

Gorge looked distinctly irritated. "Where ever'body go?"

"Huntin' rats," the Lady Drule explained.

"Rats," Gorge grumbled. No longer the center of everyone's attention, he felt abandoned and surly. He wanted to sulk, but sulking usually put him to sleep, and he was too hungry to sleep.

It was a characteristic of the race called Aghar, whom most races called gully dwarves: Once a thing was begun, simply keep on doing it. When at rest, they tended to stay at rest. But once in motion, they kept moving. One of the strongest drives of any gully dwarf was simple inertia.

Thus the rat hunt, once begun, went on and on. The cave held plenty of rats, the hunting was good, and the gully dwarves were enjoying the sport… and exploring further and further as they hunted.

Stew, however, was in progress. Seeing that her husband was becoming more and more testy, the Lady Drule had rounded up a squadron of other ladies when the first rats were brought in. Now they had a good fire going, and a stew of gathered greens, wild onions, turnips and fresh rat meat was beginning to bubble.

Gorge didn't wait for the rest to come to supper. He dug into one of the clan packs, found a stew bowl that once had been the codpiece on some Tall warrior's armor, and helped himself.

He was only halfway through his second serving when a group of gully dwarves came racing in from the shadows at the rear of the cave and jostled to a stop before him.

"Highbulp come look!" one said, excitedly. "We find.. ah…" He turned to another. "What we find?"

"Other cave," the second one reminded him.

"Right," the first continued. "Highbulp come see other cave. Got good stuff."

"What kind good stuff?" Gorge demanded, stifling a belch.

The first turned to the second. "What kind good stuff?"

"Cave stuff," the second reminded him. "Pretty stuff."

"Cave stuff, Highbulp," the first reported.

"Better be good," Gorge snapped. "Good 'nough for inter… int… butt in when Highbulp tryin' to eat?"

"Good stuff," several of them assured him.

"What kind stuff? Gold? Clay? Bats? Pyr… pyr… pretty rocks? What?" Another resounding belch caught him, this one unstifled.

The first among them turned to the second. "What?"

"Pretty rocks," the second reminded. "Highbulp come see!"

"Rats," Gorge muttered. Those around him seemed so excited — there were dozens of them now — that he set down his codpiece bowl, picked up his candle, and went to see what they had found. A parade of small figures carrying candles headed for the rear of the cavern — the guides leading, Gorge following them, and a horde of others following him. Most of them — latecomers on the scene — didn't know where they were going or why, but they followed anyway. Far back in the cavern, a crack in the rock led into an eroded tunnel, which wound away, curving upward.

As he entered the crack, Gorge belched mightily. "Too much turnips in stew," he muttered.

By ones and threes and fives, the gully dwarves entered and disappeared from the sight of those remaining.

The Lady Drule and several other ladies were just coming back from a side chamber, where they had been preparing sleeping quarters. At sight of the last candles disappearing into the tunnel, Drule asked, "Now what goin' on? Where Highbulp?"

Hunch was inspecting the stew. He looked up and shrugged. "Somebody find somethin'. Highbulp go see." He tasted the stew. "Good," he said. He tasted again, then turned away, philosophically. "Life like stew," he said. "Fulla rats an' turnips."

The Lady Drule glanced after him, mildly bewildered, then glanced around the cavern. Only a few of the males were there, some asleep, some more interested in eating than in following the Highbulp around, and two or three who had started on the trek into the tunnel, then lost interest and turned back.

She could see them clearly, she noticed. The cavern suddenly was very well lighted, light flooding in from the entrance and growing brighter by the moment. Near the fire, a sleeping gully dwarf rolled over, sat up and blinked, shading his eyes. "Huh!" he said. "Mornain' already?"

The light grew, its color changing from angry red to orange, to yellow and then to brilliant white, nearly blinding them, even in the shadows of the cavern. Other sleeping souls awoke and gaped about them.

"What happenin'?" the Lady Drule wondered. Hunch returned with a bowl and filled it with stew. "Get-tin' lighter," he said, absently. Abruptly there was a howling at the entrance, and a gust of wind like an oven blast swept into the cave. The stew in Hunch's bowl seemed to come alive. It spewed up and out, showering gravy halfway across the chamber. The bowl followed, wrenched from the Grand Notioner's grip, and Hunch followed that, rolling and shouting, his mop-handle flailing.

Everywhere, then, gully dwarves were scurrying for cover — stumbling, falling, rolling, fleeing from the brilliant, howling entrance. They scurried into crevices, rolled into holes, dodged behind erosion pillars… and abruptly there was silence. The bright light still flooded in from the entrance, but now not quite so blinding. The roaring wind died away and the howling diminished to a low, continuing rumble almost below hearing.

Silence… then the rumbling increased. The floor of the cavern seemed to dance, vibrating to the sound. Bits of stone and showers of dust fell from the walls, and chunks of rock parted from the ceiling to crash downward. A rattling, bouncing flood of gravel buried the stew pot and the fire, and there was a new sound above the rumbling — the high, keening wail of stone splitting.

The cavern's entrance collapsed with a roar. Tons of broken stone slid across the opening, burying it, sealing it. Within, the rumbling and the rattle of rockfall were a chaos of noise, but now the noise built in darkness, for there was no light to see.

The tunnel from the back of the cavern called This Place wound deep into the capstone of the hill, bending and turning, always angling upward. His Royalness Gorge III, Highbulp and leader of clans, was somewhat to the rear of his expedition when the rest of them rounded a bend in the rising tunnel and saw the light ahead. Somewhere along the way, Gorge had decided that his feet were sore, and had taken to limping whenever he thought about it.

But when he heard the shouts and exclamations ahead of him — cries of, "Hey! This pretty!" and "Nice stuff, huh?" and "Where that light comin' from?" — he forgot his limp and hurried to see what was going on. Rounding a bend, he found a traffic tie-up in a well-lighted cave, where the light seemed to grow brighter moment by moment. The first arrivals there had stopped in awe; others had piled into them from behind, and several had fallen down. Wading around and through tangles of his subjects, Gorge pushed past them and stopped. The cavern was a wide oval, an erosion chamber where ancient seeps had collected, and at the top of it was a hole that opened to the sky… a sky that suddenly was as bright as day.

"What goin' on here?" Gorge demanded. "What light through yonder… yon… why hole all lit up?"

"Dunno," several of his subjects explained. Then one of them pointed aside. "See, Highbulp? Pretty rocks."

He looked, and his eyes widened. One entire wall of the cavern glistened like brilliant gold, layer upon layer of bright embedment shining in the dark stone. "Wow," the Highbulp breathed… and belched. As though echoing him, the whole cavern shuddered and rumbled.

"Way too much turnips," Gorge decided, as those around him looked at him in admiration. He turned his attention again to the wall of pyrites. He moistened a finger, rubbed it against a glittering lode, then licked it. "Real nice," he said. "Good pyr… pyr… pretty rocks."

Spying an exceptionally bright nodule, he reached for it. The cavern belched again — a deep, rumbling roll of sound — and the node fell loose in his hand. Gorge belched in surprise, and the cavern echoed him. The light in This Place had dimmed slightly, and suddenly became murky with dust. Gravel fell and rattled around them as the whole cave shook in a spasm. "Hiccups?" someone asked.

"Not me," the Highbulp declared. "What goin' on here?" As though the mountain had given a stone belch, the cavern vibrated and began to shake. Gully dwarves danced around in confusion, stumbling and falling over one another. The spasm subsided slightly, then came again, this time far more violently. Fallen gully dwarves piled up on the gravel-strewn floor, and the Highbulp was thrown head over heels, to land atop them.

" 'Nough of this!" he shrieked. "Ever'body run like crazy!"

They would have, gladly, but a rumbling like approaching thunder growled all around them. Debris from above pelted down on them, and the cavern's floor heaved and rose, pitching them into the center, where they piled up in a writhing, struggling mass with the Highbulp buried somewhere within.

Then, with a tremendous roar, the hole in the ceiling split wide, the cavern's floor heaved upward, the very world seemed to belch mightily, and the hilltop above erupted in a gout of gravel, pyrite fragments, dust and tumbling gully dwarves.

The Highbulp found himself airborne, and shrieked in terror, then he was falling, and thudded onto hard ground beneath a smoky red sky. Someone landed on top of him, and others all around. For a time he lay dazed, then he raised eyes that went round with wonder. He was on a hilltop, surrounded by other stunned gully dwarves, and all around was confusion. In the distance to the east, the horizon and the sky above it were a cauldron of blazing, writhing flames, where smoke and black clouds marched across a howling sky. And in the opposite direction, to the west, mountains were exploding.

"Wha' happen?" several voices echoed one another. "Cave all turnippy," someone said. "Burp us out."

For long minutes, the ground beneath them shook and danced, and they hugged its surface in panic. The sky rained dust and cinders on them, and huge winds howled overhead. Then there came a lull, the quaking subsided, and dark raindrops thudded into the dust around them.

One by one, the gully dwarves got to their feet. They crowded around the Highbulp, making it almost impossible for him to get his feet under him.

"Back off," he growled. Those nearest backed away, creating a ripple effect in the crowd that knocked some of those on the outside down again. Gorge stood up, tried to dust himself off, and a large raindrop splattered on his nose. He looked around at his gathered followers, squinting in the darkness that had replaced the brilliant light.

Lightning split the sky overhead, illuminating everything, and Gorges latest belch turned to a shriek of panic. All around them were Talls — humans — armed men with swords and axes that glistened in the storm light — armed, determined human slavers… and there was nowhere for the gully dwarves to run.

The rains came and went and came again, scouring a savaged land that never again would be as it had been before. Gray morning light shone on silent chaos, a land rent and ripped and devastated, a landscape of desolation, where huge boulders lay scattered upon silt-buried slopes, a place of sundered silence in a land torn and rent by cataclysm.

Mountains no longer had the dagger-spire silhouettes of yesterday, but instead presented cratered and tumbled faces to the dawn. Their slopes were strewn with boulders. Jagged shards jutted like teeth from the pitted flows of settling topsoil scoured from ravaged ranges above.

On one such slope a searching falcon circled near the surface, drawn by scurrying rodents among the stones. The bird spiraled downward, gliding just above the stones, then beat its wings and darted away when something moved in a place where nothing should be.

The falcon beat away, and behind it a grotesque, recum bent figure stirred. Half buried in silt, it had seemed only a fragment of thrown rock — until it moved. It stirred, shifted a portion of itself upward, and drying mud sloughed away to reveal a large, rounded head surmounting great, knotted shoulders. It raised its head and opened puzzled eyes, peered this way and that for a moment, then pushed its huge torso upward on massive arms, and the rest of it became visible. Legs the size of tree trunks bent and flexed, and the creature paused on hands and knees to look around again, then shifted to a sitting position.

Big, calloused hands went to its head, and it closed its eyes in momentary pain. A growl like distant thunder escaped it. Its grimace revealed teeth like yellow chisels, in a mouth that was wide and cruel.

The jolt of pain passed, and the creature sighed, opening its eyes again. Something had happened. Something inconceivable that seemed at the edge of memory but was just beyond recall. In a muttering voice as deep as gravel in a well, it faltered with words. "Wha… what? What happen? Where?" Wincing at the effort, it tried to remember… and could not. Only a word came to memory, one significant word. A name? Yes, a name.

His own name. Krog.

Sore and shaking, he stood. Small, unseen things scurried away among the tumbled stones.

KROG. "I… am Krog," he muttered. It was true. He knew that, but nothing more. His name was Krog, but what had happened to him? Where was he? And WHY?

"Who am I?" he whispered. "Krog… what is Krog? WHO is Krog?"

The battered landscape told him nothing. In the distance, where dawning grew, were smoke and haze. In the other direction were high mountains, but they meant nothing to him. Everywhere he looked, he saw a bleak and sundered landscape that was the only landscape he knew because he remembered no others.

It was as though he had just been born, and abruptly he felt a terrible loneliness — a need for… something… for belonging. There must be someone somewhere, someone to care for him. Someone to teach him, to help him understand. There had to be someone.

He turned full circle, big hooded eyes scanning the distance. Nothing moved. Nothing anywhere suggested that there was another living creature other than himself.

"Not right," he muttered, the words a low growl that came from deep within a great chest. "Not just Krog. Not all alone. Has to be… somebody else here."

He started walking on unsteady legs. All directions were the same, so he went the way he had been facing, with the mountains to his left and the gray, hazed morning to his right. Ahead was a caprock hill, and he headed toward it. Remembering nothing except his name, knowing nothing except that he had awakened from nowhere and was headed to a place, aware of nothing except his aching head and the driving need not to be alone, Krog went looking for someone.

"Even the mountains are different," one of the men said, pointing with a coiled whip at the distant peaks standing against a high gray sky. "What in the names of all the gods could have done this?"

Those nearest him shrugged and shook their heads. Men of the tribe of Shalimin — reviled by those who knew them as "the raiders," or "marauders," or, simply, "the slavers" — were men who knew the ways of the wild, not the ways of the world. The changes they saw now in that world were abrupt and massive; the night of change had been terrifying. Yet, whatever had done it, now it seemed to be past. And if sawtooth crags now stood where before had been dagger-spire peaks, if what had been meadows now were fields of strewn stone, if entire forests that had stood yesterday now lay fallen and desolate, it was not theirs to worry about.

It was over. The world was still here, and they still walked on it, and it was time to regroup.

"You!" one of them shouted, brandishing a whip. "Back in line and stay there!" Ahead of him, a small, terrified creature scurried back into its place in the ragged line proceed ing northward. "Gully dwarves!" He spat. "We won't show much profit from this haul, Daco."

"Better than nothing, though," his companion said. "They can be sold for simple work. They're strong enough to tote and fetch."

"They won't bring a copper a head." Daco sneered. "Slave buyers know about gully dwarves. They're unreliable, they're clumsy, and they can't be taught anything useful."

"Devious, I've heard," someone added. "I wouldn't want one for a slave of my own. Always plotting and scheming. They'd be a danger to have around if they could concentrate on anything for more than a minute or two. You, there! Get on your feet and walk! Nobody said you could stop and sleep!" He turned to the flanker opposite him. "See? That's what I'm talking about. The one with the curly beard there… just like that, he was taking time out for a nap."

The motley assemblage made its way northward across a strange and tumbled land, a dozen armed men driving several dozen gully dwarves. The little creatures — barely half the size of their captors — stumbled in an erratic double line, each bound to those in front and behind by a length of cord tied around his neck. The men surrounded them, herded them like cattle.

The slavers had been two separate parties only days before, and each party had been successful. Good slaves for the market. Human slaves — men, women and children. Then the Cataclysm — whatever it was — had occurred. Each party had lost its captives in the ensuing chaos, and now they had nothing to show for their expeditions except these pitiful gully dwarves they had chanced across.

Little enough to show, when they arrived at the main camp. Still, the gully dwarves were better than nothing.

The line topped a ridge, and they looked out on yet another scene of chaos. A forest of tall conifers once had lined the narrow valley. Now, hardly a tree was standing. The valley was a patchwork maze of fallen timbers, scattered this way and that as though some giant thing had trod there and paused to scuff its feet.

The men stared at the scene in wonder, then movement caught their eyes. "Ah," Daco breathed. "There. Look."

Among the fallen timbers were people, a ragged line of them making their way northward. Even from the ridge top, it was obvious that they were refugees… from something. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and among them were women and children. No more than two or three carried weapons of any sort. "Well, well." Daco grinned. "It seems our luck has just improved. That lot will bring a fine price at the pens."

This Place was a mess. Whatever had happened was through happening, but the entire cavern was a litter of fallen stone, gravel dumps, and dust. Holding candles high, the Lady Drule and the others with her poked about, seeing what could be salvaged. There wasn't much: a few iron stew bowls, Hunch's mop-handle staff, about half of the Highbulp's prized elk antler, a few bits of fabric, a reaver's maul, a battered stew pot, a stick used for stirring… odds and ends. Most of what the clans had owned was either destroyed or lost.

The Lady Drule shook her head sadly. "Gonna need to forage soon," she said. " 'Bout outta stuff."

She wandered toward the entrance — or where the entrance had been — and looked at a mighty wall of fallen stone. There was no way out. The entrance was sealed.

Behind her, a whining voice said, "So much for that."

She turned to see the Grand Notioner, leaning on his mop handle. "Guess so," she said.

"So what we do now?"

"Dunno." Lady Drule shrugged. "All go find Highbulp, I guess. Let him decide."

"Decide what?" Hunch frowned. "Highbulp dumb as a post. What bright idea he gonna have?"

"Highbulp our glorious leader," Drule pointed out. "He think of somethin'."

"Hmph!"

He followed along, though, with all the rest, when the Lady Drule set out in search of the Highbulp. The last she had seen of him, he and most of the other males had been disappearing into a crack in the back of the cave. The search began there.

Beyond the crack was an erosion seep, a damp, winding tunnel that led away into the hill, curving beyond sight, heading generally upward. Drule started treading along it, and there was a clamor behind her. "What happen?" She turned to look.

"Nothin'," someone said. "Somebody fall down." "Come on," the Lady Drule urged them. "Keep up."

A smoke-hazed sun had crossed much of the sky, and the hot, searing winds from the east had changed to cool, whispering winds drifting down from the shattered peaks to the west. Time and miles were behind Krog since his awakening, but still he had found no one.

It was as though the world were an empty place, and he the only being on it. Confusion and sheer loneliness drove him on, though his search seemed more and more hopeless.

Then, atop a barren caprock hill, he heard voices. People — somewhere — talking among themselves. With a whimper of sheer glee, Krog searched for the source of the sounds, his eyes alight, his ears twitching. He saw no one, but after a time he heard the voices again and found where they came from. Amidst a pile of rubble was a hole in the ground, and somewhere below were voices, coming nearer. He knelt, peered into the darkness. He could see nothing. He tried to lower himself into the hole, but only his head would go in. The hole was far too small for his shoulders. He backed out, sniffling in frustration, and heard the voices again — various voices, close enough now that he could almost make out the words.

Knowing nothing else to do, Krog lay beside the hole, listening. The sound soothed and comforted him. He was not alone after all. He sniffled again, and tears glistened in his eyes as he closed them.

The old seep wound upward, and upward again, and the gully dwarves followed it, their candles casting weird shadows on the stone walls. It was slow going. Whatever had made the cavern shake and had sealed its entrance, had littered the tunnel with shards and slabs of broken rock. Footing was tricky, requiring more concentration than most of the Lady Drule's followers could maintain in a place with so many distractions — layers of fresh stone to be looked at and tasted, small, furry things to be noted in case there was time later for a rat hunt, and their own distorted shadows bobbing here and there.

As a result, the journey was punctuated with thuds and bumps, trips and falls, and a running commentary up and down the line:

"Look here! Pretty shine."

"What that over there? Dragon?"

"Not dragon, dummy, just bat shadow."

"Oops!" Thud.

"Hey, floor bouncy 1"

"Not bouncy. You fall on me. Get off."

"Somethin' shiny there? Nope, just Bipp's eyes."

"Anybody bring stew?"

"Where we goin', anyway?"

"To find Highbulp."

"Find Highbulp? Why?"

"Dunno. Lady Drule say so."

Then, from the head of the line, "Sh!"

The Lady Drule had rounded a bend and saw light ahead. She stopped, and several of her followers bumped into her. "Sh!" she repeated.

Behind her, around the bend, someone complained, "Hunch! Get staff off my foot!" Then, "Hunch? Hunch! Wake up, get staff off my foot!"

There were sounds of a tussle, and the Grand Notioner's voice, "What? What goin' on?"

The Lady Drule turned, frowning. She put a finger to her lips. "Sh!"

This time the message was relayed back down the line, and there was silence. She turned again, peering toward the dim light ahead. The tunnel seemed to widen there, and something glistened. Raising her hand to keep the rest hushed, Drule crept forward. Another cavern was just ahead, its floor strewn with broken rock and glitters of pyrite, and the light came from overhead. She tiptoed into the open, peering around. The light was daylight and came from a hole in the ceiling. There was no sign of the Highbulp and his explorers, but among the glitters lay two or three candles, a forage pouch, and a shoe. The others had been here.

The Lady Drule's ears perked at a sound that was like faraway thunder — or someone snoring. It came from overhead, and her eyes brightened. "Gorge?" she called softly. "Highbulp, where you?"

"Lady Drule find Highbulp?" someone asked.

"Must be close," someone else suggested. "Sure sounds like him snorin'."

Drule looked up at the opening in the ceiling, then handed her candle to the one nearest her. "All wait here," she said. "Maybe they up there. I go see."

Clambering onto a pile of fallen stone, she found handholds on the stone wall and climbed toward the light. The opening above was small — about two feet across — but it was big enough for any gully dwarf to go through.

The Lady Drule climbed, then hoisted herself into the hole. The sound of snoring came again, very close. If that was Gorge snoring, he was outdoing himself. She had never heard even the Highbulp sleep so loudly.

With a final pull, she raised her head above the hole and looked around. She was on a hilltop littered with stone. Fragments and grotesque shapes were all around, and a particularly ugly large boulder blocked her view on one side. She raised herself from the hole, dusted herself off, and started to climb over the boulder, then stopped in confusion. It didn't feel like stone. As she bent to look at it more closely, the snore came again, then cut off abruptly. A pair of huge yellow eyes opened directly in front of her. For an instant, Drule froze in panic, then she pivoted and tried to run… and had nowhere to go. A pair of enormous hands rose behind her, blocking her escape, and the big head with the yellow eyes came upright and gazed at her. Below the eyes, a huge mouth opened, exposing great, chisellike teeth. In horror, the Lady Drule gaped at the monster, and it grinned back, then the big mouth moved, and it spoke one word. "Mama?"

In the cavern below, the rest of the ladies — and the few males with them — waited with growing impatience. They could no longer see the Lady Drule, and could no longer hear the snoring. There were voices somewhere above — or a voice and intermittent rumbles of thunder — but they couldn't hear what was being said.

By threes and fives, they started wandering around the cavern, looking at the pyrite deposits, the fallen stone, anything of momentary interest. Several had nearly decided to go back down the tunnel to the lower cavern and put on a pot of stew, when the hole above darkened and Drule's voice came down. "Ever'body come up," she called.

Hunch peered upward. "Lady Drule find others? Find what's-'is-name… th' Highbulp?"

"Not here," she called back. "Tracks, though. Maybe we follow an' find."

The first ones to the top glanced at the Lady Drule, started to hoist themselves out of the hole, then spotted the huge, ugly creature crouched nearby — its gaze fixed lovingly on Drule — and retreated in panic, dislodging those below them. Within seconds, there was a tumbling pile of gully dwarves on the cavern floor and nobody climbing.

The Lady Drule appeared at the opening again, looked at them curiously. "What happen? Ever'body fall down?"

"What that you got up there?" someone asked. "Big, ugly thing."

"Oh." She glanced around, then looked down again. "That just Krog. Stop wastin' time! Come up."

Several of them began climbing again. Heads reached the surface and poked out, wide eyes looking past Drule at the creature still squatting nearby.

"That Krog?" someone asked.

"Krog," Drule assured them.

"What Krog?" another demanded.

"Dunno," she shrugged. "Just Krog. That all he remember. All come on now. Got to find Highbulp."

"Why?" several of them wondered. Then one added, "We don' like Krog. Make him go 'way."

Drule stamped her foot impatiently, then turned and walked to Krog. "Go 'way, Krog," she said. "Shoo!"

Obediently, the creature stood and backed away several steps.

"More go 'way than that!" somebody called from the hole.

"Shoo!" Drule repeated, waving her arms at Krog. "Shoo! Shoo!"

Looking very puzzled, the creature retreated farther, then squatted on its haunches again, a smile of contentment on its face.

It was some time before the Lady Drule got all of her people out of the hole. When she did, they crowded around her, staring at the creature she had found. She was so hemmed in that she could hardly move, and began pushing her way out of the crowd.

" 'Nough look at Krog!" she commanded. "Come on. We gotta look for Highbulp!"

A layer of dust had settled on the hilltop, and there were tracks all around. Three distinct sizes of footprints — gully dwarf prints, human prints twice their size, and Krog prints twice the size of the human prints.

She showed the rest of them the tracks, then pointed. "Highbulp an' rest go that way with Talls."

Hunch stared at the tracks, frowning. "Highbulp real dimwit to go with Talls," he declared. "Why do that?"

"Dunno." The Lady Drule shrugged. "We go see."

She set out northward, the rest falling in behind her. Behind them, Krog realized that they were leaving. He stood up.

"Mama?" he rumbled. "Wait for me." He hurried to catch up with the Lady Drule, and gully dwarves scattered this way and that to avoid being stepped on.

Drule looked back at the confusion and shook her head. "Ever'body come on!" she demanded. "No time for fool around!"

"It not us fool around. It Krog!"

"Make Krog go 'way."

After they had gone a few miles, the Lady Drule gave up on getting rid of Krog. She had tried everything she could think of to make the creature "go 'way," and nothing had worked. Faced with the inevitable, she accepted it and just tried to ignore him. It was difficult. Every time she turned around, the first things she saw were enormous knees. Even worse, he insisted on calling her "mama," and kept trying to hold her hand.

Worse yet, Krog's presence tended to discourage the others from following closely. Sometimes, when the Lady Drule looked back, they were barely in sight. Then, when the smoky sun was setting beyond the mountains to the west, she looked around and couldn't see them at all.

On the verge of exasperation, she climbed a broken stump and peered into the brushy distance. "Now where they go?" she muttered.

"Who?" Krog asked.

"Others," she said. "S'posed to be followin'. Can't see 'em."

"Oh," he rumbled. "Here." Great fingers circled her waist, and he raised her high. "See, mama? There they are."

A half mile back, the others had stopped at the edge of a fallen forest and were scurrying about. They had built a fire.

"Oh," the Lady Drule said. "Time for eat."

"Yeah," Krog agreed, setting her on her feet. 'Time for eat. What we eat?"

"Make stew," she explained. "What else?" With a sigh, she started back.

"What else?" Krog rumbled, and followed.

Partway back, on a wind-scoured flat littered with fallen stone, Drule saw furtive movement among some rocks, and her nose twitched. "Rat?" she breathed. She circled half around the rocks, saw movement again, and dived at it, her fingers closing an inch behind the rodent's fleeing tail. She stood and shook her head. "Rats," she said.

Krog watched curiously, repeated, "Rats," and squatted beside a boulder. With a heave, he lifted it, and several rats scurried away. The Lady Drule made a dive for one, missed it. Her hand closed around a stick. A second rodent raced by. Drule swatted it on the head.

She picked it up, looked at it, then looked at the stick in her hand. It was a sturdy hardwood branch an inch thick and about two feet long. "Pretty good bashin' tool," she decided.

"Bashin' tool," Krog rumbled.

By the time they got back to the others, Drule had three rodents for the pot and Krog was busy fashioning a bashing tool of his own. He had found a section of broken tree trunk about five feet long, and was shaping it to his satisfaction by beating it against rocks as they passed. It was a noisy process, but the implement pleased him. It felt right and natural in his hand. He held the forty-pound club in front of him, studied it with satisfied eyes, tossed it in the air, caught it, and studied it again. "Pretty good bashin' tool," he said.

By the time the stew was ready, daylight was gone. "Better stay here for sleep," the Lady Drule told the others. "Go on tomorrow."

"Go where,S Mama?" Krog wondered.

"Find others."

"These others?" He indicated the crowd around the fire.

"No," she said. "Other others."

"Fine," the Grand Notioner said, picking out a stew bowl. He dipped it and sat down to eat as others made their way to the pot. There weren't enough iron bowls to go around — much had been lost when the cavern of This Place had collapsed — but they made do with vessels of tree bark, cupped shards of stone, and a leather boot that someone had found and cut down.

Drule had just started eating when she heard a sniffle in the gloom, a very large sniffle. She looked up. "What matter with Krog?"

"Want some, too," the monster explained.

The Lady Drule filled a tree-bark bowl and gave it to Krog. He sniffed it, opened his mouth, and popped it in, bowl and all. He swallowed. "Good," he said. "More?"

Hunch, the Grand Notioner, stared up at the big creature in disbelief. "Gonna need lots more rats an' greens," he said. "Bark, too, if Krog keep eatin' th' bowls."

"Rats?" Krog's eyes lit up. "Krog get rats with bashin' tool"

He stood, picked up his club, and vanished into the darkness. He was gone for a long time, and most of the gully dwarves were asleep when he returned.

Drule saw him approaching and held a finger to her lips. "Sh!" she said.

Quietly, Krog came to the waning fire, found a clear spot and dropped something on the ground, something very big. "Rats too quick for Krog," he whispered. "Can't catch 'em. This do?"

Drule gaped at the thing. She had seen cave bears before, but never a dead one, and never up close. It certainly would make a lot of stew, she decided.

The Highbulp Gorge III was not happy. First to be snatched up by armed Talls and herded cross-country with a rope around his neck, lashed with whips and insulted at every stumble, then to be thrown into a cage with the rest of his followers and dozens of Tall captives as well — Gorge was almost certain that his dignity had been offended, among other things.

"This intoler… outra… unforgiv… this stink!" he grumbled, pacing back and forth in the comer of the roofed pen where the gully dwarves were huddled. "Slave, Talls say. Not slave. I Highbulp!"

"Not slave either," several of his subjects agreed.

A voice growled, "You gully dwarves pipe down or you'll feel the lash."

"Hmph!" Gorge muttered, but lowered his voice. "Maybe dig out? Skitt? Where Skitt?"

"Here," a sleepy voice said. "What Highbulp want?"

"Skitt, you dig hole."

"Tried it," Skitt said in the gloom. "Rock underneath. Need tools, no tools. G'night."

"Might cut through bars," another suggested. "Bars are wood."

"Cut with what?" still another pointed out. "Same thing. Got no tools. If had anything for cut, could — "

"Shut up over there!" a human whispered from the other side of the pen. "You'll get us all in trouble!"

"Hmph!" Gorge said, feeling helpless and hopeless.

Armed guards patrolled around the pen. Nearby, the fires of the slavers' camp burned bright. They had been coming in all day, groups of four to eight at a time, most of them bringing captives, and now there were at least thirty in the camp, and dozens of slaves in the pen.

A guard passed near the wood-barred enclosure, and a human voice inside said, "If only I could get my hands on a sword, I'd…"

The guard laughed. "You'd what, slave? Fight? By the time we sell you, we'll have beaten all the fight out of you. Now shut up."

Another guard strolled past on the gully dwarves' side, and the Highbulp and his followers cringed away from the bars. They didn't like the way these Talls talked, at all.

At first dawn, the ladies packed as much bear meat as they could carry, while the Lady Drule went looking for tracks to follow. Krog tagged along, happy as a duckling following its mother.

Drule searched northward, then stopped and scratched her head. There had been tracks before, she was certain, but now there were none. "Where they all go?" she wondered.

Krog squatted beside her, scratching his head in imitation. "Who?" he asked.

"Highbulp an' th' rest," she reminded him. "Ones we been tryin' to find."

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.

For a moment there was a stunned silence, then Krog shook himself like an angry bear, raised his head… and the Highbulp found himself staring into a huge face that was no longer amiable. A growl like approaching thunder shook the slopes. Krog's once-innocent eyes brightened with a flood of returning memory — brightened and glittered with a killing rage.

"Uh-oh!" the Highbulp gulped. He turned, leapt from the stone, and shouted, "Ever'body run like crazy!"

Gully dwarves scattered in all directions, disappearing into the shattered landscape. Behind them, a mighty roar sent echoes up the mountainsides — the roar of an ogre unleashed.

Krog stood, picked up his club, and brandished it, roaring again. "Krog!" he thundered. "I am Krog! Not Krog Aghar! Krog Ogre! Krog!"

Seeing movement, he sped after it, his feet pounding. Beyond a shoulder of stone, he skidded to a stop. A female gully dwarf lay there, staring up at him in horror. "Krog?" she said.

Her voice — the remembered voice and the remembered face of the little creature — made him hesitate, and his hesitation angered him. For an instant he felt… soft. "Shut up!" he thundered. "I am Krog! Krog ogre!"

She blinked, and a tear glistened in her eye. "Krog… not want Mama anymore?"

"I am ogre!" he roared. "You… nothing to me!" Furious, he raised his club high, then hesitated as another small figure darted out of a shadowed cleft to face him, a little gully dwarf male with curly whiskers, the one they called Highbulp. The gully dwarf faced him with terror in its eyes and an elk tine in its hand, and again Krog hesitated.

The absurd little thing was challenging him! A snarl tugged at Krog's cheek, but still he hesitated, looking from one to the other of the puny creatures. They meant nothing to him, nothing at all, and yet, there was something about the pair…

For a moment Krog stood, his dub lifted high to strike, then he shook his head and lowered it. Wrinkling his nose in disgust — mostly at himself — he turned and stalked away.

Behind him, the Highbulp Gorge III lifted the Lady Drule to her feet with trembling hands. They clung together, staring at the monster's receding back.

"'Bye, Krog," Drule whispered.