The Rebellion

14

Then the ground rumbled fiercely, a real shock wave. Direfang didn’t hesitate. He grabbed up Graytoes and barreled into the fence, splitting the slats and rushing through the barrier. At the same time, a giant crevice opened up at the western edge of the slave pen, sucking a number of hapless goblins and fence posts down into the angry earth.

Slaves screamed in terror, and many followed Direfang, who stumbled to his knees as the ground shook harder.

“Take care with Moon-eye’s Heart! Don’t drop Moon-eye’s Heart!”

Moon-eye was close behind. Direfang growled but cradled Graytoes to his chest as he lumbered to his feet. She whimpered, and he couldn’t tell if she was in pain or was still weeping over what the Skull Knight had done to her baby. The hobgoblin whirled to the east, doing his best not to jar Graytoes. Slaves swarmed around him. The continually-rattling ground made it difficult to keep his footing.

Goblins surrounded him and raced ahead of him, all panicked and jabbering, all calling out for his leadership. A foreman in the mine, he was someone they expected to give orders and aid, but the only thing he could say was, “Run! Run! Follow! Don’t stop running! Feyrh!”

All around he heard the knights moving and yelling, but the earthquake was strong, and it was rocking Steel Town.

There were five large slave pens, and Direfang had been in the middle one. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Skull Knight and his two attendants. They’d still been out when the quake hit. One of the attendants was on the ground, overrun by goblins. Another was slashing with his sword, his back to the priest, who was weaving a pattern in the air.

He was casting a spell, Direfang knew, and he didn’t want to be anywhere within range of the magic. “Faster!” he called to the goblins around him. Graytoes was not such a heavy burden, and she had stopped her whimpering. He fixed his eyes on the tops of goblin heads in front of him, thinking … escape … freedom.

“Moon-eye … where is Moon-eye?” Graytoes reached up to get his attention, touching the hobgoblin’s neck.

“Hopefully running fast,” Direfang returned, glancing over his shoulder. Moon-eye had vanished in the melee. Hopefully not dead, he added to himself when he heard another wave of screams behind him and an ominous crashing sound.

“The ground eats us!” The frightened voice was human, a laborer or a knight. The hobgoblin wished it to be the Skull Knight who took Graytoes’ child. “It swallows us like a beast!”

“Let it swallow the whole town,” the hobgoblin muttered to himself, running. Ahead, Direfang saw the goblins part as the earth directly in front of the running crowd heaved and buckled. A crevice opened; then one side of it rose up while the other side collapsed upon itself. Goblins tumbled over the steep side, climbing over each other and falling back down again, shouting and screaming. Another crack formed, opening just wide enough to suck several goblins inside then opening wider and folding on top of the trapped slaves.

Direfang cut a wide course around the gap and kept running.

“Moon-eye,” Graytoes pleaded, again whimpering. “Direfang find Moon-eye, please.”

The hobgoblin snorted in irritation, trying alternatively to keep his gaze locked ahead and on the goblins pressing so close that they threatened to trip him.

“Moon-eye-”

“Will live or die this night, Graytoes,” Direfang finally returned. “Die to the quake or the Dark Knights. Hush.”

“Moon-eye-”

“Hush, Graytoes! Hush and live.” Direfang had no intention of dropping her and leaving her behind, but he couldn’t stop to look for Moon-eye and didn’t want to listen to her distracting pleas anymore. He needed to listen for the Dark Knights and to the rumbling of the ground.

Grallik had been resting when the second major quake struck. Pitched from the bench he’d been dozing on, he was nearly trampled by a group of knights rushing past.

“The slaves!” one hollered to him. “They escape, Guardian N’sera! Hundreds! In this quake, they dare to run!”

The chaos that had filled Steel Town when the quake hit two days past paled beside the fresh commotion, Grallik realized as he futilely looked around for loyal members of his talon. The lone wall of the largest barracks shook and dissolved in a heartbeat, right before his eyes. The new well with its ring of stones shuddered, the stones toppling inward and spiderweb cracks emanating in all directions from the hole. The cracks sped toward Grallik as he dashed toward the slave pens. He was nearer to the pens than to the makeshift infirmary, where healthy knights were stationed to help protect Marshal Montrill and the other wounded troops.

The pens were Grallik’s priority, and he’d use whatever spells he could muster to impede the slaves running amok.

“Damn me,” he cursed under his breath. “Damn me to the bottom of the Abyss for not trying to recast the wards.”

The goblins bolting from the pens all appeared to be heading in a wave to the east, where the bulk of his wards and glyphs had been painstakingly and precisely cast … and obliterated, two days past, by the churning earth.

Steel Town-Hell Town-had gone berserk. Steam spewed up from a wide rent in the earth to the south. Behind him a woman screamed shrilly. A man called to her, then both voices were silenced after a thunderous crash.

Goblins dashed past and around him, terrified shouts mixed with repeated words Grallik couldn’t understand. To the south, in the farthest pen, he saw the mother goblins huddled with their babies. But there weren’t as many as the previous day, when he had helped set fire to the pile of dead goblins. So some mothers had already fled, with or without their caterwauling offspring.

Grallik had always feared the greater number of the slaves. He had had nightmares about the slaves rising up and crushing the Dark Knights, and dread gripped him as he neared the closest pen. There were still plenty of goblins inside, but many others were gone and the remaining ones might swarm him. He nearly stumbled as, again, the quake shook the ground.

The quake … one of the red-skinned goblins had warned there would be another one. The female goblin with the narrow-set eyes. He looked for her as he went, spotting several with dark red skin but none that he recognized.

“They all look the same, damn them!”

He guessed that well more than half of the goblins were already running away from the camp. He’d stop as many as he could using fire. Fire was his best weapon and the only significant magic that came to him instinctively. Reaching inside himself, Grallik searched for the magical spark that would release one of his more powerful enchantments. Closer, though, he needed to get closer. The mass of fleeing goblins was too far away. Just a little closer, he thought, just a-

The ground rocked violently again, and Grallik fell, the spell disappearing from his mind as he plunged into a crevice. Heart pounding in his chest, he flailed about with his arms and called out for his men. But his voice could not be heard over the noise of the earth, and he was drowned out by the shouts of everyone else in Hell Town. His fingers gripped the edge of the crevice, his body slammed against the side, and the air was knocked from his aching lungs.

Grallik’s chest felt as though it had dented from the impact, and his heart continued to pound thunderously. He tried to pull himself up, but the continuing quake made that impossible. His fingers felt numb as he hung on; he could see nothing but blackest night and dark dirt in front of his face. He’d swallowed a mouthful of earth, and spit and spit trying to get the remnants and the taste out.

“I … won’t … die … here,” he hissed. “I won’t! Damn the quake!” Suddenly he was seized by a coughing fit that made him feel lightheaded. “A spell, a spell …” There were reliable enchantments in the precious tome the first quake had swallowed. One, he knew, would have been just the right antidote, making him as light as a sheet of parchment and letting him float above the bedlam and out of the crack of earth. If he could just remember it. But he couldn’t; he needed his spellbooks with their many spells that would have captured the goblins in invisible nets, that would have trapped them in cages materializing out of thin air.

“Damn my addled brain!”

He knew for certain that not a single one of the glyphs and wards functioned. No flames from fiery columns snared the runners. No high-pitched alarms were sounding. A disaster was upon the place, and he, the temporary commander, the wizard whose magic had failed, was to blame.

He coughed again and felt himself slipping, his fingers grabbing at air as he slid down the side of the crevice and landed in a heap at the bottom, painfully twisting his ankle. Grallik had seen some crevices close up, so he did his best to scrabble up the side to avoid the fate of other victims. He forced himself to focus on his magical skills, searched again for the arcane spark within himself, found and nurtured it, sending the eldritch energy into his fingers.

“Like fire,” he breathed. “Be like fire.”

Grallik felt his fingers grow warm and sink into the dirt, giving him a better purchase. It was one of the simple enchantments he used to heat the rocks and leech the ore. He used it to heat his fingers so they could bore into the hard earth. Using the spell in that manner was painful to his flesh and reminded him of his youth when he was burned in the home fire. But dying would be more painful … and eternal.

With great effort, he began climbing and soon climbed high enough to poke his head above the crevice. A moment later, the rumbling abruptly ceased, and the earth began to fill up the hole beneath him. He struggled over the side, rolling away just as the ground heaved and settled again. Then he forced himself to his feet, crying out when he had to put weight on his twisted ankle. His ankle might be broken, he realized, but he must walk on it. He had to force himself.

“The slaves …” Above all, they were Grallik’s priority. In charge of Hell Town, he couldn’t afford to let any more of them escape. The camp could not function without the goblins. The stain on his career would be permanent.

Suddenly, he felt a renewed purpose. He felt revitalized. He stoked the magical furnace within himself, calling another fiery spell to mind, a cruel but useful one.

“No farther!” Grallik shouted at the slaves as loud as he could. In the same instant, he released the magic, calling up a sheet of flame that rose at the edge of Steel Town and cut through the wave of running slaves, instantly roasting a dozen of them and sending others scattering in a panic.

Grallik didn’t enjoy killing the slaves; if nothing else, he sorely required their future labor. The camp didn’t need any more charred bodies. But if he did nothing, they all would escape, the camp would wither, and the failure would be his.

The stench from the burning goblins filled his senses, and he had to fight to keep from retching. He coughed harshly as he concentrated on making the wall of fire longer and higher, stretching south to the pyre of corpses, joining with that fire, and turning the area into an inferno.

“I said no farther!”

The wall lit up the whole camp, revealing the scale of the destruction that Steel Town had suffered from the second quake. Nothing stood, not a single wall or post. A cloud of dust, bigger and higher than that from the first quake, shadowed all the knights and laborers who were picking themselves up and shuffling around the camp. Grallik imagined that was what the Chaos War in the Abyss must have looked like.

“Hell,” he said. “Hell’s come to Neraka.”

The fire wall continued to blaze, holding hundreds of goblins back and keeping them from joining their fellows, who were racing away on the other side of the conflagration.

Tears streamed down the wizard’s face from the acrid scent of burning bodies and the billowing dirt and the death- and dust-choked air. He glanced over his shoulder: not even the rubble of his workshop remained. All of it had been swallowed up by the angry earth. The mountain path, which he could see illuminated by bright starlight, had great gaps in it, as though a huge beast from below had clawed at the rocks and cut deep swaths in the path. The three entrances to the mine had disappeared, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.

He turned back to his flaming wall and limped in that direction. In the crush of goblins, he saw one of the Skull Knights thrashing about violently. The priest was grabbing slaves and pounding on them with his fists. Grallik spotted two other knights on the ground near the priest, and as he drew closer, he could tell they were drenched in blood, probably dead.

Grallik, limping, called another spell to mind. Words he’d learned in his earliest years in the Conclave spilled from his lips, and in response darts of flame flew from his fingertips and struck the goblins nearest the priest.

“Away from him!” Grallik shouted. “All of you, back into the pens.” Where the pens used to be, he decided, seeing only posts and rails strewn on the ground. It would be a challenge just to corral the goblins and find a means to contain them.

The crowd of goblins backed away from the Skull Knight, who knelt by his two fallen attendants. “Wellon is dead,” the priest called to Grallik. “Slaves will die for this, these miserable creatures. They will-”

“There’s been enough dying in these past few days,” Grallik said firmly. He kept a wary eye on the mass of trapped slaves, continuing to focus his spell on the flaming wall.

Footsteps behind him signaled the approach of a contingent of knights. No matter how many were coming, it wouldn’t be enough, Grallik thought. No standing pens, no working wards, too many goblins, half already gone.

“Guardian N’sera!” The out-of-breath voice came from Marek. “The slaves, what should we-?”

Grallik raised a hand to silence him. What should we do? the wizard thought. I have no idea. Instead, he answered: “Bring the other Skull Knights here. I know we have wounded brothers, but they’ve spells that will help quell this slave revolt now.” Then, softer, he added, “And this must be our priority, Marek. We cannot afford to lose any more of these slaves.”

“Contain the goblins, then see to the wounded,” the Skull Knight said, echoing Grallik. “As you command.”

“Aye, Guardian! I will summon the other priests!” Marek’s footsteps retreated as he shouted for the other Skull Knights.

Grallik concentrated on maintaining the wall. The stench from the burning bodies continued to assault his senses, and coupled with the pain throbbing in his ankle, the wizard was having a difficult time keeping his focus.

“Wellon and Hayson are dead,” the Skull Knight reported bitterly. “Both dead to these little butchers. And we were trying to help them! Heal them! Ungrateful monsters.”

The goblins were milling about, keeping their distance from the wizard and the Skull Knight but talking too, in their odd language, cut through with clacking sounds and hand gestures. Some wailed at fellows they’d lost to Grallik’s fire, and some merely shook their little fists at the Skull Knight.

Grallik suddenly spotted the goblin he’d been looking for, the red-skinned female who had tried to warn them of the coming quake. She had squatted, hands splayed atop the ground, her skin looking molten in the glare of the fire wall. Her lips were moving, but, of course, the wizard couldn’t hear her words with all the other racket. As he watched, his concentration divided between maintaining his spell and glancing at her, another goblin came to her side, one with a dull yellow hide and over-long ears.

His mouth dropped open when he saw the yellow goblin squat next to her, putting his hands on the ground too and speaking quickly and anxiously to the red-skinned one. Grallik’s flame wall clearly illuminated the little scene, though at first he thought the flickering light played tricks.

The ground seemed to bubble around the two goblins’ hands, then a hollow formed that stretched to the wall of fire and, to Grallik’s astonishment, tunneled under it. The hollow was just big enough for a goblin to squeeze through, and that was what the yellow-skinned goblin immediately did.

“No!” Grallik yelled, intensifying his spell. The fire filled in the hollow and rose higher, turning white with intense heat. All the other goblins edged past him, trying to escape the intense heat, and he watched with some satisfaction as they clustered in the remains of their former pens.

He looked around for the red-skinned goblin but couldn’t spot her. There were just too many goblins, a mass of shifting little bodies interspersed with the occasional taller hobgoblin. Had she escaped through the hollow path too? He prayed to his dark god that she hadn’t.

“Guardian N’sera! I need help moving these men.” The Skull Knight stood near his fallen attendants.

“You’ll have help, but be patient,” Grallik returned. He heard footsteps behind him again, at least a dozen armored men from the sound. He ordered the knights to pull the priest’s attendants to the center of the camp, to escort the priest away from the goblins, and to gather whatever wood they could find to try to reconstruct the pens.

Only one man questioned his order, a common laborer who’d joined the knights. He wondered whether ramshackle wood would hold the slaves if they saw another opportunity to escape.

“We must try,” Grallik said in harsh, hushed tones. “Do your best to build something strong. We have to keep the slaves penned in and keep alive the hope of rebuilding this place.”

The laborer nodded without enthusiasm. “Hell this place is,” he said. “Hell’s come to Steel Town.”

“Aye, that it has,” the wizard returned.