Two hours before sunrise. Village of Cobble Home, high in the Jagged Jaw Mountains; Velmura 3 rd , Year 1824 in the Second Age of Kings

  Hemlin crouched behind the cart near the edge of the village. He and Melindra were both nearly out of breath; he had never run that fast before.

  He peered across the open field to his north in the direction of the wall. Of course he couldn’t see the gatehouse through the darkness; the lampposts from the village behind him cast light no more than fifty feet into the field between the village and the wall.

  He could here men shouting, fewer than before, and steel clanging. He heard the hounds snarling, then an impossibly deep grunt, or maybe a word.

  Melindra caught her breath and immediately began to cry. “What were those things?”

  “Ogres, I think,” the boy responded, his voice trembling.

  The girl made a strange whining sound and began to sob harder.

  “You have to be quiet!” Hemlin snapped as quietly as possible. “They will hear you and find us.”

  Melindra clamped her hands over her mouth, her body trembling as air hissed through her fingers.

  The gatehouse alarm bell rang; it sounded like a deep gong. Another ring followed, then a third.

  The boy’s blood ran cold. Three rings means ogres. I was right.

  He did not celebrate the correctness of his assessment. More than anything he wished he had been wrong.

  Every hound in the village began to bark and bay following the alarm bell. Big Myrrhan Shepherds, they feared no natural creatures

  Many voices also arose from the village. A woman screamed. Men could be heard making the muster call. Children cried. The streets quickly became crowded as the women, children, and elderly made their way to the gathering hall and the militia men raced to the armory.

  To the north the voices of the men and the clanging of metal blades were gone. The boy heard a high-pitched yelp, then another followed by silence.

  The deep voice spoke. Another even deeper voice responded.

  The fact that he could hear the voices from this distance and with all the noise from the village behind him sent another chill up the boy’s spine. It reminded him of how big the ogres were; the two he’d seen stood half again taller than the guards at the gate house.

  He recalled the sight of the massive, oaken doors, splintering and breaking open the wrong way. The image of the hideous, deformed creatures with eyes of pure malice forcing their way through the wrecked doors gripped him so tightly he struggled to breathe.

  A group of men with spears, a few other men holding torches among them, ran past the cart from the village. A dozen men and change, this was the night’s ready crew, awake and armed should the gatehouse call for help. Hemlin saw small horns worn around the neck of a few.

  His heart sank as he watched the group of militiamen speed off in the direction of the wall. The alarm bell had sounded to warn the village of ogres, but the breech horn had not been blown.

  Probably the men with the horns at the gatehouse had all been killed before they could sound off. At any rate nobody in the village knew the ogres were inside the wall.

  Those men who had just passed the cart likely thought they were going ahead of the larger group to help fortify the wall.

  A score of hounds tore out of the village, barking and baying. They quickly caught up with and passed the running men.

  Hemlin held his breath as he watched the torches move farther and farther away towards the gatehouse. He heard the dogs snarling viciously ahead of the torchlight; clearly they were attacking.

  What could only have been an ogre cried out. It sounded angry. There was something else in the voice as well; maybe surprise, or perhaps pain.

  A dog yelped out in the darkness; the sound ended abruptly.

  Suddenly he heard men shouting. He saw an immense silhouette in the torchlight about one-hundred yards away.

  Steel clanged. Men hollered. Dogs bayed and snarled. Ogres grunted and cursed.

  A horn called out from the field, sounding off loud and long.

  In the village square the cellar doors to the shelter beneath the gathering hall were held open by two young men. The line of women and children and a few elders reacted with gasps and murmurs and hurried steps as the horn in the distance stopped suddenly.

  “Let’s go!” A man directing the line into the shelter called. “Everyone keep moving.”

  Ardin, his bow in hand, looked to the north, where the horn had sounded.

  “That horn wasn’t at the gate,” he pointed out. “Too close.”

  “Must have come from Lanin’s group,” another archer replied. “They went on ahead.”

  “Let’s get out there,” said Ardin.

  “We wait for the others and go together,” said an older man.

  A larger group of spearmen was already moving away from the village square with thirty or more dogs in tow. Men pulled themselves onto horseback nearby and turned their mounts in the direction the spearmen traveled.

  No more men shouted in the field. The torches were all gone except one, which lay on the ground illuminating a patch of bare ground.

  There were still dogs barking rapidly and baying. Occasionally they stopped, a couple of seconds later snarling fiercely only to stop again; after a couple more seconds the barking resumed.

  Hemlin had known these dogs his whole life and seen them fight many times. He knew the pattern of sounds meant the hounds were threatening and harassing the ogres, then darting in for a quick attack only to retreat again to a safe distance and resume their harassment.

  It’s how they dealt with adversaries they couldn’t overcome. They were brave, but not stupid.

  The ruckus of the dogs grew nearer after each pause. The ogres were heading into the village.

  Hemlin’s heart almost stopped when he realized the wagon they hid behind sat in a straight line between the gatehouse and the central avenue of the village behind them.

  “What is it?” Melindra asked; she had stopped crying and was studying the boy’s expression.

  “We have to go, now.” He took her hand and pulled her along the wall of the long outbuilding, which was a guest stable.

  He heard and felt the rumble of more militia coming from the village. He quickly shifted to his right to make a wide turn around the tavern on the northwest corner of the main village.

  Melindra kept up with the boy step for step, not letting go of his hand. The two youngsters knelt behind another cart after rounding the tavern.

  The alley where they hid ran east-west and immediately opened onto the main, north-south avenue of the village. They watched another militia company, thirty or more spears and a dozen torches, with a similar number of dogs jog past.

  Hemlin dared to let hope ignite in his belly.

  That fledgling hope was immediately snuffed out as a deep rumbling sound came from the north. He felt the ground vibrate and no longer heard or felt the running of the militiamen. He still heard their dogs baying. The ogres had stopped sneaking and were charging the line of militia exiting the village.

  They’re too fast to be that big! The boy’s mind protested the speed – not to mention stealth – with which the ogres had covered the ground between the skirmish in the field and the village outskirts.

  A sickening thought occurred to him. If we’d delayed just a few seconds by that first cart they would have gotten us.

  The sound of the ogres running was joined by the shouts of the men, though the latter were much muted by the former. Then a new sound emerged from the monster’s thunderous footfalls; a deep bellowing that rose in volume but not pitch and became a sustained, terrible chorus of roars.

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  Hemlin felt the roaring in his sternum. The sound vibrated inside his skull.

  The voices of the men, even the baying of the hounds, was swept away by the unholy vocalization. Melindra began to cry hysterically.

  “You have to shut up!” the boy frantically demanded.

  He slapped both of his hands over his own mouth in a near-panic, for he had not meant to shout. Not that it mattered; the air remained thick with the ogres’ battle roar.

  A group of horses galloped past on the main avenue. Hemlin counted ten. Each rider wielded a heavy horseman’s mace.

  The spark of hope reignited briefly within the boy, but wavered as he realized he never heard the horses coming through the roaring of the monsters. Finally the roaring ended, replaced immediately by the chaotic sounds of battle.

  Men cried out in panic, dogs and horses snarled and neighed. These sounds were interspersed with heavy thumping sounds, like an ax hitting a tree but much louder.

  Hemlin felt Melindra trembling, doing her best to cry silently. A strange hiss-whine sound escaped her mouth periodically, prompting him to squeeze her hand very hard and say “quiet”. On wobbly legs the boy stepped from behind the cart, hauling the girl onto her feet and almost dragging her to the corner where the alley met the avenue. Through the gaps between homes and other structures he could see the torches and silhouettes of people around the gathering hall; the village folk were piling into the shelter.

  Hemlin peered out of the alley to the north, where he immediately saw the fight taking place in the shaky torchlight beyond the reach of the village lampposts. As torches fell or were carried off by fleeing men the battle scene shifted constantly.

  Three ogres towered over the militia, swinging weapons the size of a man. A horse toppling backwards on its hind legs eclipsed the scene briefly. The ground was littered with prostrate men, dogs, and horses. Two men, flailing wildly, sailed through the air and out of the illuminated area. A smaller ogre, perhaps seven feet tall, staggered off to the side, half a dozen hounds latched onto its body and limbs.

  He tugged Melindra’s hand and started to step onto the avenue when the air in front of his face whistled and whooshed. Startled, he stopped short of his first step, causing the girl to crash into him from behind. He belatedly registered the twanging of bowstrings off to his right.

  “What are you doing?” Melindra complained.

  Hemlin pulled her back into the alley as more bowstrings sounded and another volley of arrows sailed past. A smacking sound, and any small cracking noises followed the second volley. These odd sounds were punctuated by a deep, irate grunt to the left.

  Hemlin looked back to his left, which was north and almost fell over. Standing in the lamplight of the main avenue about forty yards away was an ogre, breathing heavily and holding a club made from a fence post.

  Clothed in a ragged tunic that looked like burlap and covered in lumps and tumors, the thing stood taller than the lampposts, which Hemlin knew to be eight feet. Bulging eyes sat crooked on its melon-shaped head and a gaping mouth exposed a few big, square teeth and a large set of canines at the bottom corners.

  An arrow shaft protruded from its belly and another from its right thigh. The thing seemed entirely unbothered by these. A few more arrows were stuck in its club.

  The boy heard the archers off to his right, who undoubtedly were headed to the fight on the edge of town when they caught this ogre inside the village.

  “Shit,” said one archer.

  Hemlin heard scampering feet.

  “No, damn it!” another shouted. “Get back here!”

  “Loose!” came another, sterner voice.

  A second later roughly a dozen bowstrings called out, and another volley of arrows whistled by the alley. The boy watched in terror as the ogre swung its club wide and swatted the arrows out of the air with the same smacking and cracking sound he had heard previously.

  The monster flinched, and Hemlin saw a new arrow shaft sticking out of its chest. The ogre growled like a bear, only deeper, then rushed forward.

  Before the boy could even think about moving the monster passed in front of him in a blur and crashed into the small group of archers. Cries of pain, shrieks of terror, the sound of snapping bows followed.

  An awful stench took the boy’s breath. His eyes watered and he waved his hands in front of his face. He had heard ogres had a powerful stench about them.

  Now peering to his right through watery eyes Hemlin saw the ogre holding a man aloft as he tore one arm, then the other away from the body. The monster then dashed the man’s head against a nearby stone cottage.

  The ogre lunged, stepping over two bodies to grab a fleeing man by the hair. Lifting the poor fellow off the ground, the ogre half-turned and threw the man in an overhand motion. The man screamed as he sailed high above the rooftops and came down on the far side of a row of houses.

  The boy followed the doomed man’s trajectory arc until he vanished below the roofline. After the man thrown by the ogre was gone, Hemlin’s eyes naturally focused on the foreground, where he met the eyes of a man not too many years older than he.

  His eyes wide with terror the man knelt partially in shadow. He clutched his spear and leaned into it for support.

  He’s a militiaman and he’s hiding. A rage came alive in the boy. That coward was hiding while his fellows in the militia died trying to protect the village.

  Suddenly the boy’s heart softened, as he wondered what he would do in the man’s place. He’s afraid, like I am.

  The citizen-soldier’s eyes locked onto Hemlin’s for half a moment, unblinking and twitching. Then he looked up and to his right, as if suddenly noticing something. His jaw dropped and his expression turned to absolute horror.

  For a second Hemlin didn’t understand. Then he saw it detach from the shadows to his left.

  The boy pissed himself and began to tremble uncontrollably.

  Behind him Melindra uttered a broken gasp that became another odd, shrill whine. She saw it too.

  If she makes that noise again I have to strangle her, or it will hear her and come over here.

  Twice the height of the ogre with black scaly hide, the thing from the shadows shambled on two legs. It moved awkwardly, its legs and body writhing in a grotesque rhythm, but it was fast. Before the hiding spearman could make a sound – his face stretched to release an involuntary scream – the creature scooped him up with a massive talon. Into the shadows the thing returned, never making a sound from the time it emerged to the moment it vanished.

  Hemlin turned without a word and went back down the alley, pulling Melindra behind him. She sobbed uncontrollably but he didn’t have the wherewithal to shush her. He couldn’t feel her hand in his, nor could he feel the ground below or the shaky legs that carried him over it.

  They went left in front of the tavern which took them to the outer perimeter of the homes in this part of the village. They passed behind several homes before stopping.

  There in the shadows they remained for a time.

  The village on the other side of the house came alive with commotion; men and horses racing up and down the streets, the constant baying of the hounds, interspersed with ferocious snarling and rapid barking. The sounds of battle seemed to fill the village; bodies colliding, swords clanging, whistling arrows, screams of the wounded and dying.

  The awful voices of the ogres overpowered all other sounds each time they spoke or shouted. Their laughter was particularly unnerving. as is often the case with evil creatures.

  Ardin limped backwards down the side street, his bow raised. Several men rushed past him, the were bloodied and unarmed.

  Ahead on the main avenue an ogre discarded a human corpse like a piece of litter, then bent down and tore the door of a house from its hinges. It tossed the door aside and crouched to look through the open doorway, then stuck its arm inside up to the shoulder.

  The sound of men running and the deep laughter of other ogres came from the next street over. The militia had been routed, broken even.

  Two of the hounds came into view on the avenue ahead. They dragged an ogre, still living but badly hurt.

  The ogre rummaging through the nearby home withdrew its arm and picked up an enormous axe. The thing stood ten feet tall and the axe was as long as a grown man. It lunged after the hounds, who released the ogre they were dragging and started off in either direction.

  Ardin loosed his arrow while the ogre looked down on its fallen comrade, and laughed. The thing laughed at the misfortune of its brother. With a thump the arrow entered the monster’s right eye.

  The ogre went stiff on its feet and staggered back rigidly. Still standing, it wobbled in a circle back and forth. Ardin put another arrow in its groin for good measure, producing a strangely high-pitched growl from the monster before it fell like a straight tree to its left. It crashed on its side to the ground, its arms stiff and straight in front of it.

  A hand slapped Ardin on the shoulder. He jumped and went for his dagger/

  “Nice shot Ardin!” a familiar voice congratulated him. “Too bad you weren’t pulling those off earlier.”

  The archer scowled as he turned. “What kind of thing is that to say?”

  “I don’t know,” the other man admitted. “Can we just agree I’m not quite right in this moment and move on?”

  Ardin nodded.

  “It’s over,” said the other man. “We need to get out of here before we end up dead too. Before that other damned thing shows back up.”

  Ardin shuddered as he thought about the tall, black creature that came with the ogres. The way it moved ran chills all over the young man. Again and again he saw it in his mind, casually grabbing grown men and disappearing into the shadows with them.

  “What in hells was it?” he asked as he turned to accompany the man in the other direction.

  “The old man thinks it’s a Ghrast,” came the reply.

  “A Ghrast,” Ardin repeated. “A combination of a troll and an ogre? That’s a fairy tale.”

  “You saw it just like I did,” the man replied as they reached the village outskirts. “Did it look like a story to you?”

  From the darkness on the edge of the lamplight stepped a creature easily eighteen feet tall, its skin covered in bumps and square scales. It’s arms hung down to its knees and its legs were spindly and bone-like.

  It moved so quickly Ardin didn’t have time to be afraid right away. As he met the thing’s gaze his mind registered what was happening; the fear came then but it was too late.

  The eyes were purplish-red, set close over a downward hooking nose. A wide grin of sharp teeth grew wider and the sound of many whispering voices spoke a word to the archer.

  Ardin froze in place, gripped by the holding magic the creature spoke. He and the other man were yanked from the ground by the wicked talons of the Ghrast. Unable to move or make a sound, but fully aware of his fate, the archer was carried off into the night, food for the nightmare thing that stalked the shadows.

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