Layer 27: Roar Recruits

Brogan awoke groggily and painfully as he felt his bruised ogre body being jostled. He opened his eyes to behold his surroundings. They were not comforting. He was locked in a cage built into a wagon that was currently traveling down a bumpy dirt road through a twilight-lit forest. The cage was only a few feet high, making it hard enough for an ogre of his size to even sit up, but it was even more cramped since he found he was not alone; there was another ogre locked in with him, a bulky female in a torn and dirty dress with a long broad face topped by a mop of dull, mussed auburn hair – a face that currently sported a black eye.

“’Morning, Sleeping Beauty, how’s your head?” she said sarcastically. “Or I guess I should say ’Evening, since the sun set a few minutes ago.”

“Who’re you?” Brogan asked, rubbing his throbbing shaven head and finding a large, sore lump atop it.

“Name’s Gretched,” she said. “And you’re?”

“Brogan,” he replied.

Gretched nodded. “Wish I could say it’s a pleasure, but—”

“How’d I get here?”

Gretched shrugged. “Don’t know all the details. As for me, after I fought a bunch of witches that attacked my home and eventually knocked me out with some sort of exploding pumpkins I woke up alone in this cage. Then a while back we made a detour where we met up with another group of witches in front of a burning hovel. You were lying in front of it. They loaded you in here with me and then that group flew off and we got back on this road.”

“That hovel –” Brogan said, his recent memories fading back in “—my home—”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Gretched said.

As the memory of the violation of his beloved abode came fully back, Brogan felt his ogre rage grow. “Why those – those – AAARGH!” he yelled, and struck the side of the cage with all his might, not even hearing Gretched’s “No, don’t—”

The violent action caused the wagon to shudder, but the cage bars held. In response, the tip of a whip suddenly flicked down through the front bars of the cage, stinging Brogan on the back of his head as it cracked. “Quiet, you!” a scratchy female voice sounded from above.

“Ow!” Brogan said, his hand flying to the back of his head, feeling the new welt forming where the whip struck. “Why, you …” Brogan unleashed a string of invectives that only caused whoever was sitting above him – the driver, he assumed – and one other female beside her to start cackling with laughter.

Gretched waited patiently as Brogan’s tirade eventually wore down, and then said, “Yeah, I went through all that, too. They’re witches, in case you haven’t figured that out.”

“You could’ve warned me.”

“I tried.”

Brogan grumbled incoherently for a moment and then asked, “Well, what do they want with us? What’ve we done to witches?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “They’re not much for conversation. All I got out of them is they’re taking us to see the new king of Far Far Away.”

“New king? You mean it’s not – what’s his name –”

“Harold.”

“Yeah. It’s not him? He died, then?”

“I guess. I don’t know. I don’t exact subscribe to the local newspaper. The witches said the new king’s name’s Rumpled-something-or-other. Really weird name.”

“Huh. I thought that there was another heir out there somewhat – Harold’s daughter.”

“The one in the tower.”

“Yeah, her. I wonder what happened to her.”

“Halt!” a new female voice commanded from somewhere up ahead.

“What the Samhain is this?!” one of the witches above them said as the wagon ground to a halt, the draft horse drawing them whinnying in protest as the driver jerked back on the reins.

Brogan shifted his position so that he was staring forward through the bars past the front of the wagon. Gretched did the same, and the two ended up jostling each other in the cramped quarters, and each gave an irritable shove of an elbow in the other’s ribs. But then they were transfixed by the unexpected sight before them, a sight made even more surreal by the long shadows cast by the twilight.

Standing in the middle of the dirt road some twenty yards hence was an ogress and a witch. The witch was wrapped in chains, with a gag across her mouth: a fact that did not appear to be preventing the witch from trying to speak, and speak words that Brogan assumed would not be complimentary in view of the look on the crone’s face. Since the chains were wrapped around her legs as well as her arms it might have been difficult for her to remain upright but for the ogress standing beside her. The ogress had her left arm draped around the witch’s shoulders and was holding her uncomfortably tight; what looked even more uncomfortable for the witch was the large knife that the ogress held near her throat with her right hand.

“Let them go,” the ogress said coldly, “or we’ll find out if you bleed green.” To emphasize the threat, the ogress thrust the knife a little closer to the witch, touching the skin of her throat with its blade. The captive finally, wisely, shut up and stopped struggling.

“What does that little fool think she’s doing?” Gretched scoffed.

Brogan tried to ignore Gretched as he beheld the unfolding confrontation. True, although the knife-wielder was taller than her prisoner, she was relatively short for an ogress. And although she had the earstalks, bulbous nose and broad dimensions of an ogress, they were not as exaggerated as, say, the ogress beside him. But the look of scorn and determination in the face beneath that flowing red hair, and the chutzpah it took to even attempt such a maneuver – yes, indeed this bore hallmarks of the female of his species, despite Gretched’s pragmatic distain.

There was silence from above them for several seconds. Although the ogress stayed her ground and her face retained its scornful, determined expression as she held the blade steadily against here prisoner’s throat, Brogan could hear the quickness of her breath and see the part of her leather-vested chest visible beyond her Wiccan prisoner heaving with that mixture of excitement and anticipation that, as an ogre, he was familiar with from being in several outnumbered confrontations himself. Besides the knife, the ogress had a circular metal shield hanging on the wrist of her left arm, the one with which she held the witch. A studded mace hung from her belt on the opposite side.

Then cackling laughter again sounded from above, followed shortly by the sound of swooshing as both witches took off on their broomsticks. A moment later Brogan could see the witches as they hovered, one some fifteen yards up and to the ogress’s left, and the other about the same height to her right. The ogress looked back and forth between the two. “I’m warning you—” she said, but Brogan felt his heart fall as he detected the slight hitch in her voice.

“Don’t be stupid,” one of the witches said. “You didn’t really think we’d agree to your idiotic threat, did you?”

“I thought you might like to save one of your own by simply releasing two ogres who’ve done you no harm,” the ogress replied.

“Well, you thought wrong,” the other witch said. “It’s all right. Yaga understands. Don’t you, Yaga?”

The eyes of the witch in the ogress’s clutches grew wide with fright and she shook her head as best she could.

“Fine,” the ogress said, and then drew the knife away from the witch’s throat and jammed it into a scabbard strapped to her thigh. Her prisoner looked relieved for a moment until the ogress shoved her face-down onto the ground. The ogress then readied the shield on her left arm and pulled the mace from its belt hook with her right hand. Looking defiantly between the two witches she said, “Have at thee!”

Gretched sighed and shook her head sadly. “Looks like we’re about to have company in here,” she observed. “Fortunately she’s small. That is, assuming she survives this—”

“Shut up, Gretched,” Brogan snapped, turning his head to face her. “She may be a bit small, but she’s twice the ogress you are.”

Gretched’s face turned dark green and her eyes narrowed. A growl emanated from deep in her throat. Brogan narrowed his own eyes and a similar growl sounded from his throat. The two stared at each other for a few seconds until the grating voice of one of the witches caused them both to face forward again.

“Give it up, sister,” the witch hovering to Fiona’s right said. “You just bought yourself a ticket to ride down the long and winding road to Far Far Away. Just drop the weapons and we’ll make it an easy one.”

“Never!” the ogress spat.

“Fine,” the same witch said, even as the other witch, to whom the ogress wasn’t paying attention, quickly reached into the mini-cauldron attached to her broomstick.

“Look out!” Brogan and Gretched called out in concert even as the witch threw something down toward the ogress. It looked like a large red apple, but it was trailing smoke. Showing remarkable reflexes, the ogress spun to face the threat and used the mace to bat the ‘apple’ away as it reached her. It flew far into the woods where it began gushing noxious smoke. Meanwhile, the ogress followed through her mace-batting by letting the shield slip down and off her other arm until she was holding it by the rim. Swinging herself back around, she flung the shield upward with a grunt. The disk flew directly at the bomb-throwing witch, who realized too late what was happening. The shield caught her in the abdomen, knocking her off of her broomstick. Both the witch and the broomstick fell to the ground.

The remaining witch gawked at the scene in astonishment for a moment, and then hastily fumbled in her own mini-cauldron. She pulled out the front part of a chain with a small metallic skull’s head attached. She twirled it over her own head a couple of times and then hurled it downward toward the ogress. As it flew toward her, the metallic teeth chattering, the ogress stared at it, a determined scowl on her face, and dropped the mace. As the object reached her, the ogress deftly grabbed the chain just behind the ‘neck’ of the skull with her left hand before it could latch onto or encircle her, then held it aside as she reached up and grabbed further up the chain with her right hand. She gave a mighty yank and suddenly the witch found herself hurtling down the path of the chain directly toward the ogress. Not thinking quickly enough to release it, the witch soon found herself within arm’s reach of the ogress, who released the chain and, yelling “Hi-yah!,” nailed the witch on the chin with a solid punch. The witch, knocked out cold, toppled off of her broomstick and onto the still prone body of the chained Yaga, who grunted in protest. The broomstick buried its tip in the ground a couple of feet away.

Panting heavily, the ogress stared down at the two bodies below her. For just a moment the scowl on her face lessened and a brief grin seemed to flicker at one corner of her mouth.

Brogan and Gretched just stared at the scene in amazement for a moment, and then Brogan clapped. “Bravo! That was great!” he called out.

The ogress’s head jerked upward in his direction, as if wary of another attack. But after a moment her harsh features mellowed into a shy smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Hang tight, I’ll have you out in a minute.”

The ogress then leaned down, picked up and re-attached the mace to her belt, and then rummaged through the pockets of the witch she had just felled for a few seconds, but didn’t appear to find what she was looking for. Frowning, the ogress looked over to where the first witch that she had defeated still lay on the ground beside the shield and near her broomstick. The ogress got up and walked over to her, then squatted down, slid the shield handles back up her left wrist and then rummaged through that witch’s pockets, eventually pulling out a key on a large circular key ring. The ogress shoved the key ring between her belt and tunic and then picked the witch up, slinging her easily across her shoulder as the witch gave an apparently unconscious moan. The ogress then picked up that witch’s broomstick and walked back over to where the other two witches lay. She tossed down the broomstick and unceremoniously dumped the witch from across her shoulder onto the other two, causing Yaga to mutter great muffled curses yet again. The ogress then took out the keychain and approached the wagon.

“Here we go,” she said as she unlocked the heavy lock.

“That really was great!” Brogan said again. “Where did you learn moves like that?”

The ogress shrugged shyly as she pulled off the lock and opened the cage door. “I’ve just fought witches before,” she said. “I expected what might be coming.”

“Fought them – when?” Brogan asked, hopping out of the cage, quickly followed by Gretched who then stood beside him.

“When one of them and Farquaad’s soldiers attached my folk’s home,” she said. She gestured to the shield and mace. “The soldiers – discarded these in the fight.”

“You took on a witch and a squad of soldiers…alone?” Gretched said, astonished.

The smaller ogress shrugged modestly again. “Well, I had—”

“Are you nuts?” Gretched added.

The smaller ogress’s face suddenly hardened and she stared at Gretched. “As I was saying,” she said coldly. “I had some help. Another witch, in fact. Not all of them are like that lot back there.” She nodded back over her shoulder toward the downed witches, but as Brogan followed her gesture he saw that the one that had been dropped with the shield was on her knees beside one of the mini-cauldrons, and there was a pumpkin bomb in her hand.

“Watch out!” he cried.

The small ogress’s eyes widened and she twirled to face the witch just as she flung the bomb in their direction. “Behind me!” the ogress commanded, leaping toward the bomb. She landed in a couching stance and started raising the shield, but hadn’t quite completely covered her face when the bomb exploded right in front of her. The blast blew her backward where she thudded into Brogan, who grunted as the wind was knocked out of him and both ogres tumbled to the ground.

Brogan, pinned by the now semi-conscious ogress, looked over toward the witch. She was pawing in her mini-cauldron again. Brogan had started shaking the ogress to revive her when suddenly Gretched snatched the mace from off of her belt and, giving a fierce ogre roar, charged toward the witch.

The witch was visibly taken aback by the sight of the roaring beast brandishing the studded club and rushing toward her. She pulled an object from the cauldron – not a bomb this time but some sort of bottle. “Ethay ellhay awayyay!” she cried, and threw the bottle to the ground. It smashed, releasing a great gout of smoke and flame which covered all three witches and their paraphernalia and forced Gretched to stop just short of the conflagration. When the smoke cleared a few seconds later, there was no sign of any witch, broomstick, or cauldron. They had been transported away.

Gretched’s shoulders slumped. She turned back toward the other two ogres and shrugged disappointedly.

“Blast, they got away,” the smaller ogress said groggily as she pushed herself up off of Brogan’s chest and into a standing position where she wobbled on her feet.

“Hey, careful now,” Brogan said, scrambling to his own feet and taking her shoulders to steady her. “You took quite a wallop – uh – say, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Fiona,” the ogress said hazily as she still appeared to be trying to force herself back to full consciousness, “my name’s…Fiona.”

“Fiona,” Brogan said, “my name’s Brogan, and that foolish witch-charger over there is Gretched.” He winked at Gretched, who responded by rolling her eyes as she trudged back toward the two. “Gretched, our rescuer here’s name’s ‘Fiona’.”

“Fiona,” Fiona repeated, and suddenly her eyes opened wide. “Did I say Fiona? I didn’t mean to – oh well –” she sighed resignedly. “Yes, my name’s Fiona.”

Brogan looked at the still confused ogress with concern. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Maybe you should lie down for a while—”

“No, no, I’m fine now, thanks,” she said and gently pushed his hands off of her shoulders.

“Fiona?” Gretched said as she rejoined the other two ogres. “Say, wasn’t that the name of Harold’s daughter, the one that got locked away in some keep somewhere? Brogan and I were just taking about her when you showed up.”

Fiona, whose wits seemed to be nearly all returned, shrugged. “Yeah, so my mother heard it and liked the name.”

“An ogre naming their kid after some silly human princess…just seems odd,” Gretched said.

“It’s no more ‘odd’ than any other ogre name,” Fiona retorted. “That I share it with some ‘silly human princess’ means nothing; that’s not who I am.”

Gretched held her hands up in concession. “Hey, take it easy, sweetie, ain’t no skin off my nose. Fiona it is.” Gretched then noticed that one of her hands still held the mace. “Here,” she said, holding it back toward Fiona, “this is yours.”

Fiona shook her head. “Nope,” she said, “you certainly looked like you knew how to wield it. Keep it. It’ll be useful in our new army.”

“Army?” Gretched said, suddenly wary. “What army?”

“Us,” Fiona said with a gesture that took in the three of them. “Rumpelstiltskin, a nefarious imp who’s somehow weaseled his way into the kingship of Far Far Away, for some unfathomable reason has declared war on ogres. He’s launched a witch hunt, but in this case it’s his witches that are doing the hunting; he’s employing a legion of them to raid our homes and round us up to be imprisoned or worse. I’d tried to find your homes to warn you and talk to you about it there, but I was too late and they’d already gotten to you, so I pulled that little stunt you saw on the road. But they’ll be after us, now – and not just us three but any ogres that Rumpel and his witches can lay their warty little hands on. We need to form a resistance force to oppose him.”

“Whoa!” Gretched said, and again offered the mace to Fiona. “Count me out.”

“But Gretched,” Fiona implored, “you charged so bravely—”

“It was a calculated risk,” she said. “And I’m calculating that the odds on forming some hair-brained ogre army, let alone training it and keeping everybody marching to the same tune while you’re heading them into combat aren’t particularly good. No thanks. Far Far Away is to the west, so I’m heading east.” She looked at Brogan. “You coming, too?”

Brogan looked from Gretched back down to Fiona. “Please,” Fiona said to him. “Look at you. You’re big and strong and appear more than capable of easily handing multiple witches at a time when they don’t have the drop on you.”

“But it’s not just witches, is it?” Gretched challenged. “You say this Rumpel…whatever’s the king of Far Far Away, the biggest kingdom in the land, so he’ll have regular soldiers as well as witches. That’s two forces right there. And from what you said about your little encounter with Farquaad’s troop, Duloc’s not going to be too thrilled with us either. Tell me, is there another army or two they might send into battle against us?”

“It’s not going to be a ‘battle’ per se,” she said. “At least not at first. We’ll nip at their heels, raid them, hit them where they’re not looking and then pull back before they can counter, doing that time and again until we’ve sufficiently weakened them or we get a crack at Rumpel himself. Guerilla tactics.”

“‘Guerilla tactics’, eh?” Brogan said, and chuckled wryly. “Well, considering some of the insults I’ve heard directed against us, that’s appropriate.”

“So you’ll join?” Fiona said to Brogan hopefully.

Brogan sighed. “Sorry, Fiona,” he said. “I appreciate the rescue. I really do. But I’ve got a sister and baby niece not too far from here. If things are as bad as you say they are, they’ve got to be my top priority.” He looked between the two ogresses. “You two are welcome to come with me until we get there, but then I’ve got to take them east—”

“Baby niece…” Fiona said reflectively. “Is their place about five miles north of here?”

Brogan stared at her. “How did you know—”

“I’m sorry, Brogan. They’re not there.”

Brogan felt a chill. “What do you mean, they’re not there?”

“That’s another of the ogre homes I visited too late. It looks like it was hit a day or two before your place.”

“No,” Brogan said, his mouth going dry. He rasped out, “Are they—”

“Still alive, as far as I can tell,” Fiona said quickly. “The place was pretty much ransacked and partially burnt, but there were no signs of anyone…being left behind.”

Brogan felt his head swimming. “Thank Heaven for that. But that means they’re prisoners…oh no…” he gasped out.

“‘No’ is right,” Gretched said. “I’ll bet she’s making the whole thing up to trick you into joining her fool army.”

Brogan looked at Fiona, expecting the smaller ogress to be angered if the accusation were true. But she just shook her head sadly and slipped her fingers under the wide belt along her left hip. A moment later she withdrew a small patchwork doll. She tossed it to Brogan, who caught it gingerly with both hands.

“Is that hers?” Fiona said softly.

Brogan recognized the doll, so tiny in his huge hands. He tried to answer, but the words caught in his throat. He nodded.

“I found that on the ground among the remnants,” Fiona said. “I kept it because…well, it reminded me of a doll I used to have when I was a child.”

Brogan looked up at Fiona, and he felt a different type of fire start to burn within him. “Where have they taken them?”

“I’m not sure,” Fiona said. “But from the discussion I had with the witch that helped me before, she said they’re concentrating the ogres they capture from all around this section of the kingdom in a detention camp at a place that the map refers to as ‘Witches’ Wasteland’ before shipping them on to Far Far Away itself. That camp’s about twenty miles northwest from here. That information was confirmed by that witch you saw me holding captive.”

“Confirmed by her?” Brogan said. “Why would she do that?”

“I threatened to waterboard her,” Fiona said.

Brogan nodded understanding.

“I’m planning to raid the camp,” Fiona said, “free the ogres there and hopefully recruit some more volunteers. But I need the help of a couple of good soldiers. I was hoping that would be you two.”

“You…you’re planning to raid a detention camp? Guarded by witches?” Gretched said incredulously.

“That’s right,” Fiona said matter-of-factly. “It’ll be harder than what I just did here, of course, but that’s why I could use—”

“Yeah, and about what happened here!” Gretched said. “Some plan! You kind of lucked out, didn’t you, when they refused the trade of that witch you were holding for us?”

Fiona looked at her steadily. “Actually, I would have been greatly surprised if they accepted,” she said.

“You mean you expected them to do what they did?”

“Of course,” Fiona explained. “By making the offer, I put them in the mind that their disregard for the well-being of their fellow witch in attacking me gave them the upper hand. Their actions then, which they thought were unexpected and thus put them off their guard, turned out to be exactly what I expected.”

Brogan couldn’t help but laugh. The two ogresses looked at him. While looking at Gretched, he nodded toward Fiona. “She’s smart, too,” he said.

“Then you’re with me?” Fiona asked.

Brogan looked down at the doll in his hands. “For a while,” he said, and then stuffed the doll into a pocket. “Until I place that back into the hands of my niece. But then I have to get her and my sister to safety.”

Fiona frowned, and then turned to Gretched. “Well, what about you?”

Gretched propped her hands on her hips. “And why should I join you?”

“Because she just maybe saved your life?” Brogan suggested.

“Just so I should immediately throw it away?” Gretched retorted.

“How about for honor?” Fiona asked.

The other two ogres stared at her.

“Honor?” Gretched scoffed. “Among ogres?”

“Yes,” Fiona said defiantly. “Honor among ogres. Look at us. For too long now we’ve been listening to what the humans have been saying about us. What they’ve been calling us. The big, stupid, ugly brute spiel. And we listened too well. We started doubting ourselves. Maybe they were right, we thought; maybe we were just ugly brutes and deserved nothing better. We like to be independent anyway, but over the generations we allowed their persecution and our love of privacy to drive us into utter isolation. We started regarding our differences as defects. But they’re not. We have much to be proud of. We’re self-reliant, we establish homes, raise families, and endure in the face of hatred and bigotry. We’re not only just as smart, but we’re stronger and more attuned to nature; we adapt and don’t destroy. Being an ogre is an honorable thing, and that honor’s something that they can’t take away from us if we don’t let them. But we lose that honor if we continue slinking away when the forces of hatred and bigotry threaten. That threat has never been greater than it is now. Now is the time to honor our special place in nature; to stand up, say ‘No more’, and fight. Fight not just for ourselves, not just for our families, but for ogres everywhere, so that we all might at last stand tall, push back against the prejudices, and take rightful pride in what and who we are: a people who deserve nothing less than the same freedom and equality as any other species. Not just for the ogres of today, but for the generations yet to come. That is the cause in which I believe. But for that to happen, it needs to start with us. With us three. I need you. It would be an honor to serve with you. Are you with me?”

The two ogres stared at Fiona. After a moment Brogan smiled, looked over at Gretched, and said, “She’s silver-tongued, too.”

“Those folks of mine I mentioned, along with the witch that helped us,” Fiona said to Brogan, “I sent them off to relative safety so I could form an army. If we can likewise send your family to some safer place after we rescue them, will you join me? Remember, if we don’t stop Rumpel, there may come a time where no place is safe for ogres.”

Brogan looked at her for a few moments, contemplating her speech. “I’d never thought of being an ogre quite the way you spoke of it,” he said. “It feels…right. Yes. Yes, I’m with you.”

“For the duration?” she pressed.

“Yes,” he said, “for the duration.” Then his smile deepened. “On my honor as an ogre.”

Fiona smiled back, and then looked over at Gretched. “And what about you?”

Gretched looked back and forth between the two of them. “You’re both crazy, you know that?” she said. “You’re a couple of loons. Me, I don’t have any family nearby. I still think the smart thing for me’s to move to the east, find a nice spot somewhere out of the way where people won’t ever think to look, and ride it out.” But then she seemed to consider it some more. “But you know,” she said, “it really would be nice to live in a world like you described. It really would.” Then she looked more sharply at Fiona. “But there’s one trait you forgot to mention about ogres in your little speech, missy.”

“What’s that?” Fiona asked.

Gretched smiled. “We do love a really good fight once we’re in one,” she said.

Fiona smiled back. “So…you’re in?”

“Oh, why not?” Gretched said. “Heck, I only had another thirty or forty years left to live anyway. Now, what brilliant military maneuver do you have planned for this camp raid?”

“Here,” Fiona said, “let me show you.”

With that Fiona took her knife from its scabbard and knelt on the ground. Brogan and Gretched knelt beside her and watched in the dwindling twilight as she began sketching her plan in the dirt.