Jean Rabe - Death March

He vowed to grab the next pair of shoes for himself if they came across another ogre village or patrol.

In the wonderful elf forest, perhaps none of them would need shoes. Perhaps the ground would be soft and comfortable to walk on, like a green carpet. And he hoped there would be plenty to eat. He would have to approach Mudwort soon about using her earth magic to find more beasts, a large herd of goats or sheep-something that would not be so difficult as the tylor to kill, something that would feed all the hungry goblins following him.

He stopped on a narrow promontory, staring down and ahead at what passed for a trail. Weeds grew in small pockets of dirt that had been caught in shallow depressions, but for the most part everything looked brown and dead. Some goats did come that way; he spotted their spoor, and if goats managed to negotiate that trail, goblins could too. But it would not be an easy path.

Direfang scratched his chin and glanced over his shoulder, seeing the three Dark Knights a dozen yards behind him and towering over the goblins. Even though the knights had been beaten down by the trek and were treated as slaves, they held their proud posture.

Direfang squared his shoulders and affected a similar mien. He looked as if he had been chiseled from a block of granite, compared to the humans. His features were rough and thickly scarred, his build was lean but muscular. The humans had smooth skin and features that seemed small and foolish. He didn’t like knights, and he hated what they and their kind had inflicted on the goblins at the mine. Direfang’s throat grew dry at the memories of watching goblins being whipped for not mining fast enough or not carrying enough rocks in their sacks.

He couldn’t get some of the horrifying images out of his head, and tears threatened his eyes.

“At least free now,” he muttered to himself. He’d tried to escape once before, many years earlier. And when the knights had caught him, they beat him until he couldn’t stand and poured salt in his wounds. They’d cut off his left ear and hung it on a thong around his neck, and they’d forced him to return to the mines immediately. Those who had tried to escape with him were killed, and Direfang was certain he’d been spared because of his strength and size; he was too valuable a laborer to slaughter. Too, he was certain he’d been promoted to foreman a few years after that failed escape because the knights had forgotten who he was and what he had done. Hobgoblins and goblins looked the same to men.

Sadness and anger rushed through him in waves, and the images from the mining camp became more vivid in his mind. All of the past several years-the beatings, the torturous hours of toiling in the belly of the Dark Knight mountain, the scant meals, the stink of the slave pens-all of it overwhelmed him and he sobbed.

“Think about the trees,” he told himself.

He brushed at the tears with his forearm and kept his back turned to the others so no one could see his weakness. It was a terrible thing for a leader to cry, he knew. It was bad enough that Graytoes continued to whimper over the loss of her mate.

Direfang tried nurturing his rage over the Dark Knights’ treatment of him and the others, over the number of goblins lost to the earthquakes and volcanoes, over the muddled attack on the tylor, and all the violent deaths at the hands of that foul creature. The rage inside him burned like a column of the wizard’s fire and finally chased away his tears.

“Should kill the three Dark Knights maybe,” he whispered to himself. It might get rid of some of the stench that hung in the air; the humans had a distinct, unpleasant odor, worse than goblins, Direfang thought. Direfang wondered if it was the scent of evil, as he knew of no more evil creatures than the Dark Knights who worked the slaves.

“Might feel better with the Dark Knights dead.” But the knights might still come in handy. The skull man was necessary as none of the goblins possessed his ability to heal wounds. And the wizard’s fire magic had proved useful. The one called Kenosh had not been particularly helpful, but he’d not yet given Direfang an excuse to kill him either. “Maybe kill some Dark Knights later,” he said. “The wizard and the other one.” That might help erase some of the terrible memories of being their slave at the mines. “But maybe keep the skull man for healing when we need it.”

He shifted Graytoes to nestle in his other arm. She could walk, but when she did she shuffled along mindlessly, and Direfang worried that she’d get trampled by her kinsmen or might fall off the edge of the trail. He felt responsible for her, for all of them; they’d designated him their leader.

“Didn’t want to be a leader,” he said. Graytoes looked up at him quizzically. He spoke in the Common tongue of man-both for practice and because most of his kinsmen didn’t understand the language. “Still don’t want to be a leader.”

Maybe the others followed him because they were used to him ordering them around in the mines. Or perhaps it was because of his size. At nearly seven feet tall, Direfang was an imposing figure, and the scars that riddled his body made him look even more intimidating.

“Moon-eye,” Graytoes murmured. Her shoulders shook as she broke into another wail. “Moon-eye …”

“Is dead,” Direfang finished for her, switching to the goblin tongue. “Moon-eye is dead and best left forgotten. Better to think about lots and lots of trees. There will be too many trees to count, Graytoes. And the shade will feel very good. We are going to a wonderful place, Mudwort says. Qualinesti.”

At last, the image of the trees took precedence in his mind, Graytoes quieted, and he marched along with a measure of ease.

The trail was riddled with knifelike shards of shale and limestone, however. Direfang himself couldn’t avoid all the troublesome spots, and behind him he heard goblins complain and cry out in pain; the wizard gasped and stumbled, the priest catching him. Good that the knights looked after each other, Direfang thought. Goblins might do well to look after one another.

“How much longer to the trees, Direfang?” It was the first time Graytoes had mentioned something other than her lost mate.

The hobgoblin shrugged. “Miles, Graytoes. Many, many miles.”

He knew how to measure miles but had no idea how many miles they’d actually traveled or how many miles they had yet to go. The mountains began far to the north of Steel Town and cut south into ogre territory, running well more than one hundred and fifty miles, if his memory of the Dark Knight maps he’d studied was true. Flat on the map, nothing more than brown paint that looked like earthworms, there’d been no hint how imposing and difficult to cross the mountains truly were. He’d lived in the foothills before Steel Town; it was where a hunting party of ogres had caught him. Scattered villages of ogres supplied the Dark Knights with slaves.

But those foothills were not so difficult to traverse as the mountains, and the goblins in the line behind him constantly complained about the arduousness of the journey. A part of him wished they would all go their own ways and leave him alone.

He paused and closed his eyes and tried to picture one of the Dark Knight maps. The Khalkist Mountains stretched into Khur, where ogres were the dominant population. Not even the large number of goblins and hobgoblins following Direfang would stand a chance against them. If he recalled one of the large maps correctly, the mountains curved like a fishhook around the eastern edge of the New Sea. He intended to lead the goblins around that edge and strike out west, avoiding the ogre country and cutting through the swamp.

“Wish I had a map,” he muttered.

“Map?” Graytoes tugged on his arm. “What’s a map? Direfang has talked about a map before. Is it a pretty thing?”