“Do you see the king here now?” growled the high priestess, her voice rumbling with menace.
“N-no,” replied the ogre hesitantly.
“Then if you know what is good for you, you will bring these two prisoners to the temple of Gonnas so that the Willful One may observe their fate and slake himself upon their blood!”
“The gates are opening!” cried Black Mike, who had been pacing back and forth before the upper barricades. “Stand ready, me mates!” The rebel leader raised his sword and strode up to the gap, other humans pressing behind.
Kerrick looked up to see that indeed the heavy portals that had blocked their advance upward from the Terrace Level were rumbling apart. Before he could call the slaves to rally to the attack, however, the growing gap was filled by a sight that filled him with dismay.
“Behold the Talisman of Gonnas!” crowed Stariz ber Bane.
The golden axe blazed in all of its fiery glory as she advanced, waving it over her head. She brought the weapon down in a sweeping slash, driving the shining head through the rebel leader’s skull. Black Mike fell dead, and the nearby humans recoiled with a gasp.
A throng of ogre warriors behind the ogre queen cheered lustily, and as soon as the gap was wide enough they began to press through, stabbing with spears and chopping with their great halberds. Some of the slaves turned and ran. Those few bold humans who tried to stand were quickly cut down, bodies scattered haphazardly as the gates pushed open still wider.
More and more of the brutish attackers crowded into the gap, quickly shoving forward, starting down the ramp, driving the panicking humans before them. A brave woman ran forward, screaming in hatred. She stabbed with a spear, but the weapon was brushed aside by a looming grenadier. That ogre smashed her skull, using the hilt of his sword in an almost casual backhand blow, and she fell like limp doll, her head bouncing roughly off the floor.
Kerrick tried to hold his own ground against the attackers. He chopped at an ogre, forcing the creature back, leaving a gory cut in its face. Beside him, Barq One-Tooth wielded his axe with savagery, while Moreen shouted and cajoled in an attempt to bring more humans into a massed line.
The ogre attack was too forceful. Several more men fell, badly wounded or slain, leaving Barq and the elf alone on the wide ramp. Knowing they would be surrounded in a second, the two fighters had no choice but to fall back. Still they fought hard as they retreated, made the ogres pay for each footstep of ground. Stabbing and chopping in unison, the two warriors forced the enemy to at least measure the speed of their advance.
Nevertheless, the slaves were for the most part milling about in growing panic on the broad avenue next to the atrium, and the ogres pouring through the now wide-open gates waded into them with glee and savagery. The melee roiled across the road, fighters of both sides mingling in hand-to-hand combat. Here and there a formation of slaves made a bold stand, keeping the attacking guards from sweeping across the entire Terrace Level, but in most places they broke and ran. Some fled down the ramps toward the lower levels of the city, others ran through the streets and alleys of the city, seeking shelter from the imminent onslaught.
Kerrick looked for the ogre queen, hoping for a chance to surprise her with an attack. Perhaps he might even regain the axe. Unfortunately, she had not followed the attackers through the gate. She seemed content to urge them on, from the safety of the rear. He saw the gleaming fire of that axe and heard her shrill commands, but he could only curse in frustration.
“It’s like Tildy said. More ogres are coming from below,” Moreen reported after a quick glance over the rim of the atrium.
The elf shook his head angrily, and it was only then that he noticed the bat fluttering past his scarred ear.
Slyce huddled miserably against the wall of the Moongarden corridor. The ogres had charged past and were doing their best to kill all the humans who had brought the gully dwarf to this interesting place. He saw Mouse and Feathertail, humans who had been nice to him, fighting against much bigger ogres. Slyce even tried to help, lunging forward, trying to stab with his big knife, but he tripped and fell, the knife went flying, and the battle quickly swirled past him as the humans were forced to retreat. Now it seemed as if they would be driven all the way back to the Moongarden.
He hid behind the body of a dead ogre, crouching in the space between the corpse and the wall, watching wide-eyed as the melee moved down the corridor, farther and farther away. Finally he was left in silence except for the groaning of a few badly wounded ogres and men.
Slyce scuttled away from the battle and in moments found himself inside the largest place he had ever seen or even imagined. There was more fighting going on here, so he continued to run up a ramp that led away from the big flat space where ogres and humans chased each other around.
Some more fighters started to come up that ramp, ogres marching shoulder to shoulder as if they were chasing him. Slyce scampered farther and farther up, around the wide circles of the ramp, higher and higher into the ogre city. He came to yet another place where there was a big fight going on, but he saw some gates that were open. There were bodies around those gates, but nobody seemed to be paying attention right now. He ducked on through and continued higher.
At least here in the upper part of the city there didn’t seem to be any fighting at the moment. There were sure lots of ogres, he noticed. All the humans seemed to be hiding, and the big brutes were running this way and that, many of them carrying sharp weapons.
For once, Slyce was grateful that he was a very small gully dwarf, since he had no difficulty hiding in the shadows when the ogres came rushing past. Still he headed higher until he was at the very top level of this huge place. Here he ran away from the ramp when he heard more ogres coming up from below. Now he was on a wide street, with a ledge and a deep drop on one side, and many fancy buildings on the other side.
There was nowhere else to climb, so he decided to stop and find a hiding place. He saw a big statue of a proud bull ogre wearing a cape and a crown. That stone image would conceal him from the street, and the gully dwarf squatted behind it, wide eyes staring this way and that.
Big doors opened right across the street from him, and to his surprise he saw a person he recognized, all tied up in chains. It was that big Arktos woman-Bruni! — and she marched past with a bunch of ogres on all sides of her. She was being taken with another human, a blond-bearded man, down the street, to the ramp down to the next lower level. A fierce ogress led the way, and she carried the same golden axe that the humans had brought with them from Brackenrock.
They looked terribly frightening. Slyce didn’t know what to do, so he simply kept his head down. After they went away, he scuttled across the street into a dark alley that looked like an even better hiding place. Here he curled up against the wall, a little ball of misery, and fell asleep.
“That was Dinekki!” Kerrick said.
“What? Who?” demanded Moreen.
“It sounds crazy, but she’s that bat that was flying around here! She was chirping in my ear. I had to listen carefully before I could understand her. She told me that she found Strongwind and talked to him, and he told her something that might help us out!”
He saw the fluttering brown creature swirling about, then watched as it darted away along the Terrace Level promenade. “Let’s go!”
“Where?” The chiefwoman was still angry and frustrated. “Explain this to me!”
“No time-come this way,” the elf said impatiently. “Follow me!”
Moreen, Barq One-Tooth, Tildy, and a hundred or more armed slaves followed him as he gestured and took off at a trot. The battle on this level of the city had broken into small pockets as the humans had scattered and the ogres clustered around the gates to the higher levels. A few patrols of heavily armed grenadiers could be spotted here and there, attacking the slaves where they found them, but for the most part they seemed content to let the force ascending from below handle the main fight.
The bat wove and bobbed through the air, leading them along, finally circling frantically at an intersection. When the elf got close Dinekki flew off down a side street, and Kerrick led his group of fighters down the lane and into the courtyard of a large building fronting a wall of the city’s bedrock.
