Matt looked about quickly. All around Sir Guy and himself, a long slope of rubble trailed down to the earth, spreading out on all sides. The talus slope had come down, burying them almost to their chins. Sir Guy's horse barely held his head above it.
The ogre brayed huge, harsh laughter. "Eh, may that serve ye! Fools, to enter my mountains!" He hefted a sword and stepped forward, an ugly gleam in his eye. "To let others know to fear for their lives and turn back, mayhap I should hang a sign at the mouth of this pass-your heads!" He leaped, swinging a side-hand chop that would have bisected a rhino quite neatly.
A sheet of flame filled the hillside, hiding the ogre; Matt heard him bawl in anger and pain. The firestorm snapped out as suddenly as it had come, showing the monster a good twenty feet further away, rubbing burns amid a flood of curses.
"Aye, you mistook," Stegoman rumbled, behind Matt and out of sight. "Be mindful of me, foul ogre; come not near my knights."
The ogre answered with another spate of curses, but he didn't step closer.
Matt heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks, Stegoman."
"'Tis your due, Wizard. Would I could aid you more in this."
"You can't?" Matt looked down at the apron of rock before him and frowned. "I see what you mean. A lot of those rocks are going to have to be lifted out, aren't they?"
"Aye," Stegoman rumbled, "and my claws are suited to digging, but never to lifting."
"Definitely a problem." Matt chewed at his lower lip. "We do have to get out of here, somehow."
"Nay, ye do not." The ogre stepped forward, just outside of flame-range, and sat down with the air of a man who has come to stay. "I canna come near ye whilst the dragon is near; but ye canna come out. 'Twill take ye some while to die of hunger and thirst, but die ye shall. Then shall I have your heads."
"'Ware, foul parody of man!" Stegoman bellowed, and his head thrust forward into Matt's vision. .
The ogre hiked himself back a few feet and leered up at the dragon. "Nay, ye dare come no further away from them-for if ye do, I'll dodge past ye, to strike off their heads."
Stegoman roared out angry flame, but it was just punctuation, and when his fire died, the ogre still sat there, laughing.
Matt frowned, trying to figure it out. "You're one hell of a fighter - and you seem to have a pretty good brain. Why are you hiding out here, waylaying travelers?"
"Do not make mock of me!" the ogre bellowed, surging to his feet. "Is it not enough to be cursed with this form? Must ye now sneer at me for it?"
"He does not sneer," Sir Guy said, thin-lipped.
The ogre swung around toward him, staring in surprise.
The knight softened his voice. "My companion is a strange man - he seems to see only the abilities underlying the form. His question was honestly meant."
"Do ye think ye talk to a child?" the ogre growled. "Nay, I'll not be cozened!"
"Think what you want," Matt said, "but Sir Guy's giving it to you straight. Sure, you're ugly as sin - but the way you fight, I'd think any baron would be glad to have you in his army. Have you tried to enlist?"
"What need to ask?" the ogre grated. "Since men cast me out, they'd not wish me back."
"Cast you out?"' Matt raised an eyebrow. "For real? Or did they just make you feel unwanted?"
"'Twas a full outcasting." The ogre frowned, puzzled. "What manner o' man are ye, that ye ken not the rite?"
"Rite?" Matt frowned, turning toward Sir Guy. "This is an actual ritual?"
The knight nodded. "With bell, Book, and candle."
"The priest it was who led it." The ogre clamped his jaws shut, his face hardening. "I was a child like any other, though somewhat longer of leg and arm. Yet when I came thirteen, and hair began to grow all o'er my body and my eyeteeth to lengthen, they cried I was possessed. Aye, they swore I was a thing from Hell, and even my own dad did beg me to quit his house. Yet I did fear, what would his neighbors do to him, for fathering such a monster as I'd grown to be?
"So I stayed. Therefore did they all, goodfolk, beseech the priest to cast me out. He came, with armored soldiers at his back, with a reed of holy water and a candle lit, intoning verses from his Book. I knew that where one soldier's beaten, twenty more do come; soon or late, they'd bear me down. So I turned and walked out from that village.
"Then, two nights later, hiding in the wood, I heard some villagers speak of how they had burned my father's house and driven him to the Church for sanctuary. I came back then and burned their roofs about them. Thereafter I foreswore all folk and did come here."
"So." Matt pursed his lips.
The ogre's eyes kindled. "Aye, that is the way of it! That is myself! What words are these?"
"Shakespeare's, from Richard III." Matt had thought the quote might go over.
"His name was Richard? Mine is Breaorgh; it matters not! We are the self-same person!"
It was useful to know the ogre's name - but more useful for him to identify himself with Richard, Shakespeare's most evil king.
Richard hadn't always been the epitome of evil, though, even in Shakespeare's plays - he'd come by it gradually. Reverse the trend of the Bard's verses, and Matt might reverse Breaorgh's temperament.
Breaorgh nodded vigorously. "Aye, aye, 'tis me! For grief I've known, that should loose a flood of tears! Yet I'll withhold them, so revenge may burn!" And he took his unharmed broadsword by the point and drew it back, like a dagger ready to throw.
Matt put his next choice of verse in, fast.
Breaorgh's lip curled. "Aye. Thus are they all, the small men. They term me monster; but when 'tis time to show their courage, they show their backs instead."
"Do I mistake?" Sir Guy breathed, round-eyed. "Or have his fangs grown shorter?"
"They have." Matt felt relief starting to weaken his knees. "Look closely, there-he's shedding. And his eyes are receding. See, once he identified himself with Richard, whatever I did to Richard would be done to him - and I've been taking Richard backward. He may have been a monster in Richard III, but he was warm and human when he started off as a teenager in Henry VI, Part II."