Douglas Niles: Winterheim

“The queen has a good idea, my lord. The sight of the axe will surely raise morale all along the barricades, and it could serve to terrify the slaves, as well. Your palace guard is ready to move-two hundred ogres, armed and eager for battle. They will follow the axe-er, the queen!”

“Very well,” the king ordered, suddenly grateful for the respite from matters of war. He waved his wife away. “Go, go make your gesture, your attack, and see if you can drive them back from the gates. Return here when you are done.” He couldn’t resist an added, sharp admonition. “This time, do not expose the axe to the chance of capture!”

“As you command, my husband,” said Stariz, flinching at his words, then bowing deeply. In another moment she was gone, zealously clutching the axe and followed by Forlane and a retinue of palace guards.

Still agitated, the king started to pace around the throne room. He found his eyes wandering, again, to the solemn figure of the human woman who had been captured with the axe. Her hands had been chained as a precaution, and she was seated on the cube of stone that the queen had wanted to use as a chopping block. A pair of grenadiers, swords in hand, flanked her and watched their charge with determined attention.

The king stalked over and tried glaring down at her, his hands planted firmly on his hips. Several questions had occurred to him, and he decided that it was time for some answers.

“Why did you come here?” he demanded. “Was this rebellion your doing?”

She shrugged. “Wasn’t the rebellion inevitable? My companions and I did not come here to incite your slaves to revolt, but surely you must have realized that you couldn’t keep that many people under your heel forever. There are more humans here than ogres by far. Think about it!””

“Why must they revolt?” he asked. “I feed them, allow them to live and breed. Those who work hard are rewarded. It is not a bad life!”

“It isn’t close to freedom, even for those who live that blessed existence,” she retorted sarcastically. “What about those who suffered the lash or the sacrifices demanded by your pitiless queen? People will not live in slavery forever. As I said, it was inevitable that they revolt.”

“Many of them have been killed, and many more will die before this is over!” he argued. “It is pointless!”

“Perhaps to you, but not to them,” the woman said quietly. He was startled to see tears in her eyes, and he felt strangely uncomfortable.

“What about you?” Grimwar Bane asked, turning to the Highlander king. “How do you explain yourself?”

Strongwind shook his head with an air of sadness. “I should have died on Dracoheim,” he said. “None of this would have happened. They came to rescue me, but I’m not worth all these lives! It was a mad quest, and I would give anything to send them all away from here!”

“Maybe there’s more than just lives at stake, whether it be your life or the lives of a thousand slaves,” Bruni suggested gently. “What if many are freed because you were brought here?”

“That would be a worthwhile gain,” Strongwind agreed wistfully, “but I don’t see how it can occur.”

“It will never happen,” Grimwar Bane interjected sternly. “My grenadiers will prevail!”

“Perhaps the mere chance at freedom is worth the risking of life,” Bruni replied sharply. “I know that would be my feeling, if I was out there.”

“You are a strange enemy,” mused the king. “You say things like that, knowing that I hold your life in my hands. Do you not worry about enraging me?”

She shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “Perhaps I am beyond worries such as that.” A hint of a shy smile appeared on her round face It made her look very appealing, Grimwar thought. “In any event, it’s the queen’s capacity for rage that has me worried … not yours.”

Grimwar Bane chuckled in spite of himself, before turning to resume his pacing. The queen. Yes, her capacity for rage was worrisome to him as well. Abruptly he turned back to the slave king.

“Did you kill your mistress, the lady Thraid?” he demanded of the human.

Strongwind glared fierecely back at him, the first hint of spirit and emotion that the man had displayed since being brought here.

“I have never killed a woman, be she human or ogress,” he retorted angrily, “and I never will, unless I have a chance to drive a blade into your wife’s black heart!”

This was an honorable credo to Grimwar. The ogre king had to believe the human, but so many questions remained unanswered. If anything, he had more now than when he began to talk to these maddening humans. How could that woman be so calm? Why did she intrigue him so?

What in Krynn should he do now?

Captain Verra was shocked by how quickly his plans had unravelled. The thousand Seagate slaves had been freed, with the loss of every one of the two dozen ogres he had put in charge of guarding the gate. He had never envisioned an attack coming from outside the huge slave pen.

The lumber yards, too, had been swept up in revolt. At least the ogres there had been able to retreat with some modicum of discipline. The rest of his troops he had summoned from their posts on the harbor and market levels, lest they all be destroyed. Now the remnants gathered around him, six or seven hundred red-cloaked brutes, well trained and heavily armed.

“What word of the rebels?” he asked one of his sergeants.

“They have moved past us and up through the city,” reported the veteran. “Only a few are left holding the market.”

“How far will the main force get?”

“I heard a smash of stone moments earlier, Captain. It seems likely that the gates above the Terrace Level have been closed. Surely they will be stopped there.”

The ogre soldier nodded, beginning to form a plan. “There are a thousand ogres from the palace guard above them. If we can attack from below, the wretches will be trapped on the terrace. We’ll wipe them out!”

“Aye, Captain-a great plan!” agreed the sergeant, with an eager bob of his tusked face.

“Send a detachment to the Moongarden Road,” the captain added. “Two hundred grenadiers should be sufficient. I want them to block the corridor, and if any humans come up from that way they are to be driven back to the food warrens, hunted down, and killed.”

“As you command, Sir!”

“Now, form the men into ranks,” roared Verra, his optimism recharging. “We’ll clean them out of the market and head on up from there!”

His veteran troops responded with precision, forming three long lines. “Forward, my brutes!” the ogre captain bellowed. “Attack without mercy!”

With a roar of enthusiasm, the scarlet-clad grenadiers rushed forward to obey and to kill.

“We can’t get through!” Black Mike declared, trembling with rage. “To come so close and be stopped like this! Chislev curse them!”

He and Moreen were gathered with Kerrick and Barq One-Tooth a short distance back from the stone debris that had fallen across the ramp. More humans had joined them, including many house slaves from the ogre dwellings on these levels. They thronged in the passageway but had no way to progress any farther upward into the heart of Winterheim.

Moreen scowled and looked over the makeshift army. Its numbers continued to swell as more and more slaves streamed into the mob from the lower levels of the city.

“We have to do something!” she snapped.

“That’s for sure,” Tildy Trew said, coming back from the lip of the atrium, where she had been looking down toward the harbor level. “It looks as if the grenadiers have gotten organized. They’re on the move. They’ve already retaken the marketplace, and now I think they’re coming this way.”