Krog squatted beside her, scratching his head in imitation. 'Who?' he asked.
'Highbulp an' th' rest,' she reminded him. 'Ones we been tryin' to find.'
He scowled — a frightening and fierce expression, on his face. 'Mama want find those ones?'
'Sure,' the Lady Drule said. 'Don't know where to look, though.'
'No problem,' Krog said, standing and pointing northward. 'They over there.'
'Where?'
'There. See smoke? That where other others go.'
He seemed certain of it, so Drule said, 'Fine. We go there, too. Highbulp prob'ly need 'tendin' to 'bout now.'
She called to the rest, and they set off northward — a nine-foot creature guiding, a long line of three- to four-foot creatures tagging after. In the distance, far across a wide, sundered valley littered with the debris of nameless catastrophe, was a ridge. Beyond the ridge, Krog said, were their lost people. It would take all day to get there, Drule guessed, but they had nowhere else to go.
It was midday when Drule and Krog rounded a spire of rock that might once have been a mountaintop, and came face-to-face with a stranger, a human, carrying an axe.
As any good gully dwarf would do, faced with an armed Tall, the Lady Drule shrieked, turned and ran. Behind her, gully dwarves scattered in all directions.
Krog looked after Drule for a second, thoroughly puzzled, then looked again at the bug-eyed man standing there, gawking up at him in terror. Krog shrugged eloquently, then voiced a mighty shriek, flung up his hands just as Drule had done, and pounded away after her. His shriek drowned out the screams of the man, who was now bounding away in the other direction, shouting, 'Ogre! Ogre!'
Some distance away, Krog found the Lady Drule hiding behind a clump of grass. Krog did the same, though his clump of grass covered no more than the lower part of his face and maybe one shoulder. He stayed there until Drule rose. Deciding the danger was gone, she went to regather her followers. Krog didn't know why they had been hiding, but whatever suited Mama was all right with him.
It was late evening. Hazy dusk lay in the long shadows of the Khalkists, and the smoke of campfires hung in the air when a gully dwarf named Bipp crept through the brush to the shadowed slave pen and looked inside. He squinted. 'Highbulp?'
Several faces turned toward him. 'Hey,' someone said. 'That Bipp.'
'What you doin' out there, Bipp?' another asked.
Bipp put a finger to his lips. 'Sh!'
'What?'
'Sh!'
'Oh. Okay.'
'Where Highbulp?' Bipp whispered.
'Right here, somewhere. Highbulp? Highbulp, wake up. Bipp here.' A pause, then, 'Highbulp! Wake up! Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp! Bipp here.'
'Who?'
'Bipp'
'Shut up over there!' a human voice shouted. 'Can't you little dimwits ever be quiet?'
At the sound, an armed guard at the far comer of the pen looked around, and Bipp flattened himself in the shadows. 'Shut up in there, or you'll wish you had,' the guard ordered.
Then Gorge was there, peering through the lashed-post bars. 'What Bipp want?'
'Lady Drule send me. She lookin' for you. Why ever'body here?'
'Can't get out,' the Highbulp said, peevishly. 'Talls got us incarcera… in custo… got us locked in for sell.'
'Oh.' Bipp studied the bars, shrugged, and turned away. 'Okay,' he said. 'Have nice evenin'. I go tell Lady Drule.'
In a moment he was gone, but behind him a babble of voices echoed, and a guard roared, 'You slaves heard what I said!'
A torch flared. A guard with a patch on one eye drew a sword and thrust it viciously between the bars. A human screamed, and the scream became a whimper as the guard withdrew the sword, bloody.
The man put away his sword, grinned at another guard. 'That ought to quiet them,' he said. 'Slaves don't need two ears, anyway.'
Atop the ridge, the Lady Drule and the others listened wide-eyed as Bipp made his report. He told them what he had seen and what he had heard, and there was no doubt what it all meant. Most of the males of the Bulp clan were prisoners of heavily armed Talls, and would be sold into slavery.
Drule scratched her head, wondering what to do about that, then gave up and went to find Hunch. 'You Grand Notioner,' she reminded him. 'Time for Grand Notion.'
The Grand Notioner was preoccupied, trying to repair the bindings on his feet after a long day's walk. 'What about?' he grumbled.
' 'Bout how get Highbulp an' all away from Talls! Pay attention.'
'Oh.' He thought about it for a while, then shrugged and pointed at the stick in her hand. 'Use bashin' tool, I guess.'
'For what?' Drule looked at the stick.
'For bash Talls,' he explained.
To the Lady Drule, that didn't sound like much of an idea, but when several long minutes of fierce concentration didn't produce a better one, she resigned herself to it. Bashing Talls, in her opinion, was a very good way to get into a lot of trouble, but maybe it was worth a try.
'Anybody wanna bash Talls?' she asked around, hoping for volunteers. There were none. She would just have to do it herself, then.
Nearing the foot of the ridge, Drule suddenly was aware that Krog was right behind her, mimicking her stealthy approach. She turned and raised a hand. 'Krog wait,' she whispered. 'I got somethin' to do.'
In a rumbling whisper, the big creature asked, 'What Mama do?'
She pointed toward the pen, where a guard was sitting on a rock. 'See Tall there? Gotta bash him. Now be quiet.'
'Oh,' Krog said. 'Okay.'
With Krog silenced, the Lady Drule crept on down the slope toward the guard. Even sitting on a rock, the man was taller than she was, and his ready sword glinted in the starlight.
Trembling with dread, Drule crept up behind him, raised her rat-bashing stick, and brought it down on the back of the man's head as hard as she could.
'Owl' the man said. His hand went to his head. 'What th' — ' He reached for his sword.
The Lady Drule tried to run, but tripped over her own feet and fell.
The raider guard spied her, spat. 'Gully dwarf!' He grasped the hilt of his sword… then raised his eyes to see the last sight of his life — a massive club descending on his skull.
The Lady Drule got her feet under her, started to run again, then saw the squashed body of the man sprawled across the rock. Krog stood to one side, disinterestedly gazing out over the fire-lit camp.
'Wow!' Drule breathed. Raising her rat-stick, she stared at it in amazement. 'Pretty good bash!'
Quietly, then, she crept toward the pen, bright eyes looking for other Talls to bash. Somewhere nearby, a rumbling whisper said, 'Ones with weapons first,D Mama.'
That, she realized, made pretty good sense. She wondered how Krog came to know such sound strategy. At the bottom of the slope, she began to circle the slave pen. The gully dwarves were all crowded into one comer of the wooden cage enclosure, spumed by the humans inside.
As Drule neared that comer, a voice whispered, 'There Lady Drule! Hi there, Lady Drule.' Another voice whispered, 'Highbulp! Wake up! Lady Drule here… Highbulp? Highbulp sleepy oaf. Wake up, Highbulp!'
Drule said, 'Sh!' and went on. Behind her, a giant shadow moved, but those inside were too busy watching her to notice it.
