David Chandler - Den of thieves

“In there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Croy said. “If he’s at home.”

“I’ve heard… stories. I think maybe we should run away after all.”

Croy strode into the pipe, the sloshing of his steps like thunder crashes. “I thought you might. Come-if you dare.”

Malden followed, not wanting to be thought a coward. He was ready to dash back out of the pipe at the first sign of danger, though. Children in the Free City of Ness knew what was inside that pipe, even if the adults claimed it was just a tale. Growing up, he had learned not to believe. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Before coming down to Swampwall, Croy had stopped in a chandler’s shop and bought a pair of candles still strung together by their wicks. Now he cut them apart with his belt knife and lit one with his tinderbox. The flickering light did little to alleviate the pipe’s gloom, but it gave Malden something to follow.

Underfoot, the water was moving at a steady rate, pushing Malden’s feet backward as he tried to slog forward. It was hard work just to stand up. If anything, the current grew stronger the farther in they went.

Ahead, the pipe curved to the left and Croy followed, putting one hand against the bricks to steady himself. Malden hauled himself along with both hands and kept up as best he could. Around the curve they saw that bars had been embedded in the pipe’s walls, forming a natural fence against anyone so foolish as to try to come into the city from the river beyond. Detritus and bones-animal bones-had built up into a thick scurf at the base of the grating, so the water crested as it flowed over and around the debris. It plashed as it came and made it impossible to hear anything, and it took a while for Malden to realize that Croy was talking to him.

“-not here, I’m afraid,” the knight repeated. “Have to-back later-”

Malden nodded in agreement and turned to rush out of the pipe, glad to have an excuse to leave. He hurried around the curve, the current pushing him along faster than he could run on his own-and then tripped and fell to all fours in the water.

His heart thudded painfully in his chest and he couldn’t breathe.

At the exit from the pipe, not more than fifty feet ahead, a massive figure was silhouetted against the incoming sunlight. Malden could make out few details but he was sure it was far too big to be human.

Malden looked to right and left, but there was nowhere to go. The grating behind him blocked that route of escape, and the monstrous thing at the mouth of the tunnel would surely catch him if he tried to run past it. He reached for his bodkin but didn’t dare draw it-what use would it be against this massive beast?

At his side, Croy peered ahead toward the light, shielding his eyes with one hand. He said something, but in the roar of the water Malden couldn’t hear him at all. The knight lowered his hand, then shouted some kind of strangled war cry “Gurrh!”

— and dashed forward, right at the beast, which lifted its arms as if to crush him in a vicious embrace. For the first time Malden saw it was holding something huge, like a tree branch or a stone club.

Pressing himself up against the mineral-stained wall of the tunnel, he closed his eyes, dreading the inevitable crunch as Croy’s bones were shattered inside his body. The fool didn’t even have his swords.

But the sound he heard next, amplified and distorted by the weird acoustics of the tunnel, was a joyful one. It was the sound of booming laughter and astonishment, the noise of old fellows well met.

Malden opened his eyes and saw the most surprising thing he would encounter that day. Croy and the beast were clasping hands and japing with each other.

“Malden,” Croy said, “come out already. Come and meet my old friend, Gurrh.”

Malden staggered forward, pushed by the current, and stepped out into the light beyond the pipe’s mouth. He got his first good look at the monster and nearly soiled his breeches, even if it was a friend of Croy’s.

It stood eight feet tall and had the same general shape as a man, though it was far broader and its muscles were as big as those of a horse. It was covered from crown to sole in coarse black fur, matted with grease, and stinking of death. Only a small patch of skin, from nose to forehead, was exposed, and that was as white as the corpse of a dwarf. Its eyes, while merry, were the size of saucers, and its nose was crooked and bent to one side. On its forehead and around its eyes were inscribed some ancient runes.

The thing it held, which Malden had thought was a club, was in fact the carcass of a river otter missing its head. From the look of the stump, the beast had already gnawed the head off, perhaps by way of breaking its fast.

“Thou,” the creature said, with a deep, rasping voice, “art a friend of Sir Croy?” It stuck out its free hand. “Then in the Lady’s name thou art well come into my home, gentle. I am called Gurrh; a common sort of calling amongst my clan.”

The clan of ogres, Malden thought. This creature, with its honeyed words, was an ogre. There could be no doubt. Tentatively he placed his own hand inside the palm of the giant. The ogre took it carefully and shook it gently.

“But… how?” Malden asked.

He might not know many of the details of Skrae’s history, but he had the broad outlines down pat. He knew that when his ancestors came over from the Old Empire they found this continent already occupied by the elves and the dwarves. Centuries of warfare had been necessary to clear the land for human habitation-bitter centuries, when the likes of Hazoth scorched whole mountains from the face of the world and dug out broad valleys with their magic, when the seven Ancient Blades were forged to fight the demons that roamed the night. At the end of that hellish time, the elves had found themselves unable to resist the onrushing wave of human might. They made pacts with their own ancestral enemies for aid-the goblins, the trolls, and, most fearsome of all, the ogres. The hairy giants were unstoppable in battle, it was said, their tough hides proof against iron blades and axes. They were able to catch arrows out of the air and throw them back at the archers, or to simply pick up human warriors and pull them to pieces with their bare hands.

He had believed that ogres were gone from the world. They had fought tirelessly, but the elves who commanded them were driven from existence, betrayed by the dwarves they’d once considered their allies. The dwarves had always been practical folk, and knew when to make a treaty with humankind and call it a day. The ogres had been too disorganized to keep fighting on their own. The wizards of that time slaughtered them remorselessly, hunting them down wherever they hid, until none were left. Oh, there were stories of survivals, of individual monsters still roaming the wild parts of the woods, but those were just stories. No one believed them.

“I thought the ogres were as dead as the elves,” he said.

“Wherefore hath I survived, when all others like unto this favor hath vanished, as smoke into the air?” Gurrh asked. “When at last the killing was done, when the age of man had come, some few of us did still live. The merciful king Theobalt-may the Lady hold him to her ever-abundant bosom-came unto that wretched scattering and bade us bow at his feet. Many there were who refused, and rose up, and were slaughtered in their turn. Yet not all.”

“He swore an oath of loyalty to the crown,” Croy explained. “He was given a pardon for all past crimes, under the condition that he would serve the king whenever he was called upon. He took the Lady into his heart and was given a place to live. Here.”

“And the Burgrave knows he’s here? And hasn’t sent pikemen and priests to roust him?” Malden asked. “No offense meant, Sir Ogre,” he added, looking up into the giant’s face. The ogre smiled, showing a double row of huge peg-shaped teeth.