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"The snakes weren't my fault!" Satia
protested.
"And they vanished after just a few minutes.
We didn't even have to fight them."
"Maybe you should go back to being a rich
merchant's daughter." Septimus's lip curled. "You were better at that."
"Enough!" Gneech barked. "You two, always
fighting! Traps are good. If we find no traps, then they had nothing to
protect--or someone been here before. Traps mean this right way!" His
voice raised into a screech as the little goblin beat both of them
lightly with the length of his weapon. "So you both stop fighting and
shut up, or the ogres will find us from you making . . . so . . . much .
. ."--Gneech's staff slowly came to a frozen halt, and his wide, flat
eyes peered down the corridor behind him--". . . noise. Uh-oh."
A group of ogres--a mobile mountain of
muscle with ten legs and enough wooden clubs to populate a small
forest--stood at the far end of the corridor behind them, quirky stares
on their deadpan faces. Only one of them, a big guy whose metal armor
was pained a lurid shade of sky blue, shoved his way forward until he
realized what they'd found. "GET THEM!" he roared, pointing.
"RUN!" Gneech yelled back as if it were a
battle cry of his own. "It's the Ogre King!" The goblin turned on his
heel and fled past the girl.
Septimus planted his feet and flexed his
arms as if he still had claws on every finger, ready to fight, but
Mosango swept the boy off his feet and pitched down the corridor after
Gneech, rushing past Satia in the blink of an eye. For a strange,
uncomfortable moment, Satia stared at the confused ogres, meeting eye to
eye with the big one in blue armor. She reached out quickly, before he
could speak, and jabbed the trap she'd just discovered. "Oops," she said
quietly before any of them could speak.
The roar of flame exploded out again, and
Satia dived away from the ogres, back in the direction that Gneech and
the others had fled. Gneech grabbed her shoulders to drag her along the
passage even as the heat wave of the trap scattered more ash above their
heads. "Good work! Only a moment now before the ogres come. Must run!"
He gripped her hand with iron fingers, dragging her up onto her feet.
She could see Mosango ahead, still carrying Septimus over one shoulder,
his sword out in the other hand.
"Gneech!" Satia protested. "We can't run
this way! We haven't been down this corridor! There are going to be more
traps!" she followed him unwillingly, jerking along like a puppet. "The
traps will kill us before the ogres do!"
"You have better idea?" The goblin's eyes
were wide and terrified, his knuckles white from clutching her hand.
Looking behind them as the green flame was dying out and all five ogres
plowed toward them, Satia had to admit that she didn't.
Mosango slowed to look behind him and Gneech
and Satia caught up. "Let me down!" Septimus screamed. "I'll kill them
all!"
"Keep going!" howled Gneech in return.
"They'll kill us all!"
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