Jean Rabe - Death March

Direfang moved forward as his kinsmen started the killing.

The first dwarf fell before Direfang cleared the far bank.

The dwarves’ battle cries were brief. Only one remained standing by the time Direfang lumbered to the edge of the copse. He was a young, stout dwarf, the hobgoblin saw, and the muscles of his arms bunched as he swung his hoe around like a scythe. The dwarf’s wide arc caught Chima in the stomach, ripping through the green dress she’d coveted. He picked her up on the blade and effortlessly heaved her over his shoulder. She landed in the low branches of a pin oak, her arms twitching and rattling twigs as she died. Leftear howled his anger at his friend’s death as the young dwarf ripped open the belly of another goblin, then one more.

To Direfang’s eyes the dwarf was obviously more than the simple farmer he’d initially appeared and far more skilled than his dead kinsmen. The dwarf flipped the hoe around and struck a female goblin in the forehead with the handle, cracking her skull, then rapped her in the temple so hard that blood ran down her face and she crumpled. The dwarf spun the hoe again, once more using it as a scythe and slaying one of Saro-Saro’s clansmen. Then he advanced on a hobgoblin, using the handle end of the hoe as a spear.

Goblins flowed around the last dwarf, trying to avoid the deadly hoe and awkwardly navigating through the trees, some of them stopping to stare up at the leaves and to feel the bark. Many of the goblins had been born in Steel Town and had never seen trees, save the pines to the far north of the camp, and they could not hide their amazement. Other goblins continued past their wide-eyed fellows, breaking through the copse and seeing a village shaded by the eastern slope of a jagged peak.

They whooped loudly at their discovery, and Direfang hurried to catch up to them. He glanced once over his shoulder, seeing that the defiant dwarf was finally being brought down by the odds, the hoe yanked from him as he was brutally torn apart.

Direfang lengthened his stride, ignoring the ache in his twisted leg and blinking furiously in a failed effort to clear his vision.

“Stop! No more killing!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “No more blood! Listen! Stop!” He wanted someone in the village left alive to talk to, to ask about the mountains and the land beyond them.

He shouted “Stop!” until he was hoarse. And eventually the goblins did stop-just short of the village. Anxious, the goblins raised and lowered their knives, shifted from one foot to the other, or craned their necks this way and that to get a better look at the dwarf homes. They whispered among themselves, the noise like a swarm of locusts. And though it was difficult to make much sense of what the goblins said, Direfang knew they were excited at the prospect of what might be gained and what they might kill.

Behind him, Direfang heard the whoops of the goblins still beating on the corpse of the last defiant dwarf and his dead fellows. He glanced over his shoulder and saw goblins stripping clothes and boots off the corpses and snatching the farm implements the dwarves had used as weapons. Farther back, other goblins were still splashing in the stream and drinking their fill.

They were more of a mob than an army, the eight hundred or so goblins and hobgoblins who followed him. They were difficult but not impossible to control. They had held together up till then, as he’d demanded. But they likely would not hold for long.

Again, Direfang wished leading them were not his burden.

“Why stop?” Spikehollow had come up next to him, where Direfang had paused to look over the dwarf settlement. Spikehollow looked eager to charge into the village. “Why stop here, Direfang?”

Direfang didn’t reply, but he limped forward, gesturing as he went that the goblins and hobgoblins should stay put. He reached the front of the mob and started counting the buildings.

There were fifty small homes, sturdily built from blocks that had been chiseled out of the mountains and mortared together with a white paste. The roofs were for the most part thatch, more tightly woven than any of the roofs in Steel Town had been. A few were made of slices of shale, also mortared together and looking like fish scales.

“Skull man!” Direfang bellowed.

None of the homes had wood doors, as the Dark Knights had used. But they all had goat or sheep hides covering the openings and more hides hanging across the narrow windows. Several of the hides had symbols painted on them-anvils and hammers and other things Direfang could not recognize. One house had a riot of purple and yellow flowers growing around it. Another had a large pot outside of its door that contained a bush covered with red berries. Smoke rose from the chimney of only one home, and the hobgoblin sniffed to tell if something were cooking over a fire, but the scent of his wet kinsmen overpowered all other smells.

A large garden filled the center of the village and wrapped around most of the homes, with paths cutting through it leading to doorways and toward the trees and the stream. The crops were thriving. Cornstalks in a section to the west stood taller than Direfang; bushbeans to the east were fully leafed, and each plant appeared as big around as a barrel. There were vegetables Direfang had never seen before: bright red and yellow pear-shaped bulbs, and bumpy, purple bulbs as big as his fist. One section was filled with dark red berries growing on slender, thorny vines.

“Why wait?” Spikehollow had edged up close behind Direfang. “Raid the village. Take the food. Take everything.”

“Everything, everything, everything,” Leftear growled, not far behind Spikehollow. “For Chima and Grok and Durth and Bignose,” he said, naming the goblins the young dwarf had killed. “Everything.”

“Skull man!” Direfang repeated. “Come here now!” He heard goblins grudgingly move out of the way for the priest, some of them cursing the Dark Knight and spitting, and others talking excitedly about the imminent raid on the pretty village. “Skull man!”

“I’m here, Foreman,” Horace said, hurrying up, his dark skin gleaming. He’d cleaned himself in the stream, and water dripped from his shoulders.

Direfang pointed to the far eastern edge of the village, to what held most of the goblins’ attention. Past the massive garden, a boulder had been carved into the shape of an anvil. It was roughly eight feet tall and a little more than that in width. Its sides were polished and shone darkly, and they were etched with symbols that Direfang suspected were words, but he was too far away to read them. Circling the anvil were a few dozen dwarf women and children, kneeling, eyes closed, and obviously praying.

“Easy to kill, those short, fat people,” Pippa said gleefully. “Saro-Saro says that-”

“There will be no more killing,” Direfang growled. “Skull man?”

“They are worshipers of Reorx,” said Horace, staring at the huge boulder and the dwarves praying. “What else do you want to know, Foreman Direfang?”

Direfang raised an eyebrow. He knew about some of Krynn’s gods, primarily Zeboim, from the priest; and Takhisis and Chislev, from some of the Dark Knights in the mining camp. But he’d not heard of that one, the god of the dwarves, Reorx.

“Is Reorx a god only for dwarves?” the hobgoblin asked. “Does Reorx demand the dwarves pray at that rock?”

“The gods are worthless,” Spikehollow spat. All of the goblins and hobgoblins who followed Direfang considered themselves godless. The gods had done nothing for goblin-kind, had allowed them to be enslaved and to be bullied by practically every race on Krynn. “No god will save those dwarves. Attack now, Direfang?”

The hobgoblin shook his head irritably.