The tromp of enormous, clumsy feet woke them in the morning. The ogres were coming!
Hastily Smash and Tandy got up. Smash felt a smidgen stronger; perhaps his soul had grown back a little while he slept. But he was nowhere near full strength yet. Knowing the nature of his kind, he worried some about that.
The Ogres of the Fen arrived. Small creatures scurried for cover, and trees angled their leaves away. No one wanted trouble with ogres! There were eight of them-three brutish males and five females.
Smash gazed at the ogresses in 'dim wonder. Two were grizzled old crones, one was a stout cub, and two were mature creatures of his own generation. Huge and shaggy. with muddy fur, reeking of sweat, and with faces whose smiles would stun zombies and whose frowns would bum wood, they were the most repulsive brutes imaginable. Smash was entranced.
'Who he?' the biggest of the males demanded. His voice was mainly a growl, unintelligible to ordinary folk; Smash could understand him because he was another ogre. Smash himself was unusual in that he could speak comprehensibly; most ogres could communicate verbally only with other ogres,
Suddenly Smash was fed up with the rhyming convention. What good was it, when no one who counted could understand it anyway? 'I am Smash, son of Crunch. I come to seek my satisfaction among the Ancestral Ogres, as it is destined.'
'Half-breed!' the other ogre exclaimed. 'No need!' For Smash's ability to talk unrhymed betrayed his mixed parentage.
Smash had never liked being called a half-breed, but he could not honestly refute it. 'My mother is a curse- fiend,' he admitted. 'But my father is an ogre, and so am I.'
One of the crones spoke up, wise beyond her years. 'Curse-fiend, human bein',' she croaked.
'Half man!' the big male ogre grunted. 'We ban!'
'Might fight,' the child ogress said, eyes lighting. It was true. An ogre could establish his place in a tribe by fighting for it. The male grunted eagerly. 'He, me!' He naturally wanted to be the first to chastise the presumptuous half-breed.
'What are they saying?' Tandy asked, alarmed by the increasingly aggressive stances of the Fen Ogres.
It occurred to Smash that she would not approve of a physical fight. 'They merely seek some ogre fun,'
he explained, not telling her that this was apt to be roughly similar to the fun the lions of the den had had with him. 'Fun in the Fen.'
She was not fooled. 'What ogres call fun, I call mayhem! Smash, you can't afford any trouble; you're only at half-strength.'
There was that. Fighting was fun, but getting beaten to a pulp was not as much fun as winning. If anything happened to him here, Tandy would be in trouble, for these ogres were not halfway civilized, as Smash himself was. It was galling, but he would have to pass up this opportunity. 'No comment,' he said.
The ogres goggled incredulously. 'Not hot?' the male ogre demanded, his hamfists shuddering with eagerness to pulverize.
Smash turned away. 'I think what I want is elsewhere after all,' he told Tandy. 'Let's get away from here.' He tried to keep the urgency suppressed; this could get difficult in a moment. At least he was not caged in, the way he had been with the lions.
The male made a huge jump, landing directly before Smash. He poked a hamfinger at Smash's soiled orange centaur jacket. 'What got?' he demanded. This was not curiosity but insult; any creature in clothing was considered effete, too weak to survive in the jungle.
Smash raged inwardly at the implication, but had to avoid trouble. He stepped around the ogre and went on north, toward the Fen.
But again the male leaped in front of him. He pointed at Smash's steel gauntlets, making a crudely elaborate gesture of pulling dainty feminine gloves on his own hairy meat hooks. The humor of ogres was necessarily crude, but it was effective on its level. Smash paused.
'Me swat he snot!' the ogre chortled, aiming a wood-sundering blow at Smash's head. Smash lifted a gleaming fist of his own, defensively.
'No!' Tandy screamed.
Again Smash had to avoid conflict. He ducked under the blow in a gesture that completely surprised the ogre and continued north, inwardly seething. It simply wasn't an ogre's way to accept such taunts and duck away from a fight.
Now one of the mature females barred his way. Her hair was like the tentacular mass of a quarrelsome tangle tree that had just lost a battle with a giant spider web. Her face made the bubbling mud of the Fen seem like a clear mirror. Her limbs were so gnarled she might readily pass for a dead shagtree riddled by the droppings of a flock of harpies with indigestion. Smash had never before encountered such a luscious mass of flesh.
'He cute, cheroot,' she said.
That was a considerable come-on for an ogress. Since there were more females than males in this tribe, there was obviously a place for Smash here, if he wanted it. Good Magician Humfrey had evidently known this, and known that Smash needed to settle down with a good female of his own kind. What the aging Magician had overlooked was the fact that Smash would arrive at half-strength, and that Tandy would not yet have found her own situation. Thus Smash could not afford to accept the offer, however grossly tempting it might be, because he could not fight well and could not afford to leave Tandy to the ogres' mercies. For a female went only to the winner of a fight between males. So once again he avoided interaction and continued on. north.
Then the male ogre bad an inspiration of genius for his kind. 'Me eat complete,' he said, and grabbed for Tandy.
Smash's gauntleted fist shot forward and up, catching the ogre smack in the snoot. The gauntlet made Smash's fist harder than otherwise and increased the effect of its impact. The creature rocked back, spitting out a yellow tooth. 'Delight!' he cried. 'He fight!'
'No!' Tandy yelled again, despairingly. She knew as well as Smash did that it was too late. Smash had struck the ogre, and that committed him.
Quickly the other ogres circled him. Tandy scooted to a beerbarrel tree, getting out of the way.
Smash had never before fought another ogre and wasn't quite sure how to proceed. Were there conventions? Did they take turns striking each other? Was anything barred?
The ogre gave him no chance to consider. He charged, his right fist swinging in a windmill motion, back and up and forward and down, aimed for Smash's head. Smash wished he had the Eye Queue so that he could analyze the meaning of this approach. But dull as he was now, he simply had to assume that it meant anything went.
Smash dodged, ducked down, caught the ogre's feet, and jerked them up to head height. Naturally the ogre flipped back, his head smacking into the ground with a hollow boom like thunder, denting a hole and shaking the bushes in the neighborhood. The watching ogres nodded; it was a good enough counter, starting things off. But Smash knew that he had substituted guile for force, to a certain extent, finding a maneuver that did not require his full strength; he could not proceed indefinitely this way.
The ogre bounced off his head, somersaulted backward, and twisted to his big, flat feet He roared a roar that spooked a flock of buzzards from a buzzard bush and sent low clouds scudding hastily away. He charged forward again, grabbing for Smash with both heavy arms. But Smash knew better than to wait for an ogre hug. His orange jacket would protect him from most of its crushing force, but he would not be able to initiate much himself. He jumped high, stomping gently on the ogre's ugly head in passing.
The stomp drove the ogre a small distance into the ground. It was the first motion of the figure called the Nail. The ogre had to extricate his feet one by one, leaving deep prints. Now he was really angry. He turned, fists swinging.
Smash parried with one arm, using a technique he had picked up at Castle Roogna, then sent his gauntleted fist smashing into the ogre's gross mid-gut. It was like hitting well-seasoned ironwood, in both places; his parrying arm was bruised, and his striking fist felt as if it had been clubbed. This ogre was stupid, so that his ploys were obvious and easily avoided, but he was also tough. Smash had held his own so far only because he was less stupid and had the protection of his centaur clothing. If jacket and gauntlets failed him-The ogre caught Smash's parrying arm in a grip of iron or steel and hauled him forward. Smash parried again by placing his free fist against the ogre's snoot and shoving. But he quickly became aware of his liability of half-strength; the other ogre could readily outmuscle him. Worse, the ogre also became aware of this. 'Freak weak,' he grunted, and lifted Smash into the air.
