They would have, gladly, but a rumbling like approaching thunder growled all around them. Debris from above pelted down on them, and the cavern's floor heaved and rose, pitching them into the center, where they piled up in a writhing, struggling mass with the Highbulp buried somewhere within.
Then, with a tremendous roar, the hole in the ceiling split wide, the cavern's floor heaved upward, the very world seemed to belch mightily, and the hilltop above erupted in a gout of gravel, pyrite fragments, dust and tumbling gully dwarves.
The Highbulp found himself airborne, and shrieked in terror, then he was falling, and thudded onto hard ground beneath a smoky red sky. Someone landed on top of him, and others all around. For a time he lay dazed, then he raised eyes that went round with wonder. He was on a hilltop, surrounded by other stunned gully dwarves, and all around was confusion. In the distance to the east, the horizon and the sky above it were a cauldron of blazing, writhing flames, where smoke and black clouds marched across a howling sky. And in the opposite direction, to the west, mountains were exploding.
"Wha' happen?" several voices echoed one another. "Cave all turnippy," someone said. "Burp us out."
For long minutes, the ground beneath them shook and danced, and they hugged its surface in panic. The sky rained dust and cinders on them, and huge winds howled overhead. Then there came a lull, the quaking subsided, and dark raindrops thudded into the dust around them.
One by one, the gully dwarves got to their feet. They crowded around the Highbulp, making it almost impossible for him to get his feet under him.
"Back off," he growled. Those nearest backed away, creating a ripple effect in the crowd that knocked some of those on the outside down again. Gorge stood up, tried to dust himself off, and a large raindrop splattered on his nose. He looked around at his gathered followers, squinting in the darkness that had replaced the brilliant light.
Lightning split the sky overhead, illuminating everything, and Gorges latest belch turned to a shriek of panic. All around them were Talls — humans — armed men with swords and axes that glistened in the storm light — armed, determined human slavers… and there was nowhere for the gully dwarves to run.
The rains came and went and came again, scouring a savaged land that never again would be as it had been before. Gray morning light shone on silent chaos, a land rent and ripped and devastated, a landscape of desolation, where huge boulders lay scattered upon silt-buried slopes, a place of sundered silence in a land torn and rent by cataclysm.
Mountains no longer had the dagger-spire silhouettes of yesterday, but instead presented cratered and tumbled faces to the dawn. Their slopes were strewn with boulders. Jagged shards jutted like teeth from the pitted flows of settling topsoil scoured from ravaged ranges above.
On one such slope a searching falcon circled near the surface, drawn by scurrying rodents among the stones. The bird spiraled downward, gliding just above the stones, then beat its wings and darted away when something moved in a place where nothing should be.
The falcon beat away, and behind it a grotesque, recum bent figure stirred. Half buried in silt, it had seemed only a fragment of thrown rock — until it moved. It stirred, shifted a portion of itself upward, and drying mud sloughed away to reveal a large, rounded head surmounting great, knotted shoulders. It raised its head and opened puzzled eyes, peered this way and that for a moment, then pushed its huge torso upward on massive arms, and the rest of it became visible. Legs the size of tree trunks bent and flexed, and the creature paused on hands and knees to look around again, then shifted to a sitting position.
Big, calloused hands went to its head, and it closed its eyes in momentary pain. A growl like distant thunder escaped it. Its grimace revealed teeth like yellow chisels, in a mouth that was wide and cruel.
The jolt of pain passed, and the creature sighed, opening its eyes again. Something had happened. Something inconceivable that seemed at the edge of memory but was just beyond recall. In a muttering voice as deep as gravel in a well, it faltered with words. "Wha… what? What happen? Where?" Wincing at the effort, it tried to remember… and could not. Only a word came to memory, one significant word. A name? Yes, a name.
His own name. Krog.
Sore and shaking, he stood. Small, unseen things scurried away among the tumbled stones.
KROG. "I… am Krog," he muttered. It was true. He knew that, but nothing more. His name was Krog, but what had happened to him? Where was he? And WHY?
"Who am I?" he whispered. "Krog… what is Krog? WHO is Krog?"
The battered landscape told him nothing. In the distance, where dawning grew, were smoke and haze. In the other direction were high mountains, but they meant nothing to him. Everywhere he looked, he saw a bleak and sundered landscape that was the only landscape he knew because he remembered no others.
It was as though he had just been born, and abruptly he felt a terrible loneliness — a need for… something… for belonging. There must be someone somewhere, someone to care for him. Someone to teach him, to help him understand. There had to be someone.
He turned full circle, big hooded eyes scanning the distance. Nothing moved. Nothing anywhere suggested that there was another living creature other than himself.
"Not right," he muttered, the words a low growl that came from deep within a great chest. "Not just Krog. Not all alone. Has to be… somebody else here."
He started walking on unsteady legs. All directions were the same, so he went the way he had been facing, with the mountains to his left and the gray, hazed morning to his right. Ahead was a caprock hill, and he headed toward it. Remembering nothing except his name, knowing nothing except that he had awakened from nowhere and was headed to a place, aware of nothing except his aching head and the driving need not to be alone, Krog went looking for someone.
"Even the mountains are different," one of the men said, pointing with a coiled whip at the distant peaks standing against a high gray sky. "What in the names of all the gods could have done this?"
Those nearest him shrugged and shook their heads. Men of the tribe of Shalimin — reviled by those who knew them as "the raiders," or "marauders," or, simply, "the slavers" — were men who knew the ways of the wild, not the ways of the world. The changes they saw now in that world were abrupt and massive; the night of change had been terrifying. Yet, whatever had done it, now it seemed to be past. And if sawtooth crags now stood where before had been dagger-spire peaks, if what had been meadows now were fields of strewn stone, if entire forests that had stood yesterday now lay fallen and desolate, it was not theirs to worry about.
It was over. The world was still here, and they still walked on it, and it was time to regroup.
"You!" one of them shouted, brandishing a whip. "Back in line and stay there!" Ahead of him, a small, terrified creature scurried back into its place in the ragged line proceed ing northward. "Gully dwarves!" He spat. "We won't show much profit from this haul, Daco."
"Better than nothing, though," his companion said. "They can be sold for simple work. They're strong enough to tote and fetch."
"They won't bring a copper a head." Daco sneered. "Slave buyers know about gully dwarves. They're unreliable, they're clumsy, and they can't be taught anything useful."
"Devious, I've heard," someone added. "I wouldn't want one for a slave of my own. Always plotting and scheming. They'd be a danger to have around if they could concentrate on anything for more than a minute or two. You, there! Get on your feet and walk! Nobody said you could stop and sleep!" He turned to the flanker opposite him. "See? That's what I'm talking about. The one with the curly beard there… just like that, he was taking time out for a nap."