The war council disbanded. Brogan clapped Cookie hard on the shoulder and walked with him out the door. Fiona watched them leave, all five showing confidence, preparation. Her council had this night under control.
Five down, forty-five to go.
Her pep talk plan had been derailed, but once more, there was time to kill. The ambush wasn't far away; with five hours yet to midnight, they didn't need to ready for pack out for another three hours. She could spend some of that time motivating them ogre-by-ogre. She stepped out to tour the camp.
Her first stop was a visit to the smith, grinding sharp edges onto weapons, a spray of sparks from his wheel lighting up the night. "Good work, Akzer," Fiona said, making a fist and giving him a curt nod.
Brogan was responsible for bringing Akzer to the revolution. He'd come across the ogre assiduously executing a spiral search pattern expanding out from his shack, hunting for his sister who had vanished earlier in the day. Brogan had explained to the bereaved brother witch way she'd gone, after witch Akzer enlisted instantly.
The ogre had made his living supplying iron implements to the mythical misfits that didn't have access to town smiths. Brogan helped him hoist his wheel and anvil into a cart. The smith and his understudies had been invaluable to the Cause, stocking the armories and arming the stocky.
Akzer pulled the axe's blade away from the wheel and set it handle-first into a bucket of weapons beside him. The wheel hummed, its tone lowering as its spin decayed. "It's gonna work tonight, Fiona?" he solicited uncertainly. "I wanna see these blades wet with blood. I wanna see my sister."
Ogres didn't often form strong bonds with their parents, on account of Leaving. But strong sibling bonds were not uncommon, perhaps because of the shared ordeal. These two might not see each other but once or twice a year, but from their earlier conversations, Fiona had no doubt Akzer would chance a hundred pumpkin grenades and not quit before freeing his sister. "You'll be with her tonight," Fiona said, projecting complete confidence. One way or another. Akzer gave a grunt, turned back to his work; he pumped the wheel with his foot and collected a dull sword from the bucket.
·❧·
She rounded a tree and found Krekraw seated on a bench next to a stack of leather straps and gauntlets, working oil into them. "Ready for action?" she said, radiating contagious energy.
Krekraw wasn't infected. "Aye," he said, his voice high, thin, and dull.
"Tonight's the big night. You doing alright?"
"Aye," he answered dully, not making eye contact, instead focusing on the strap he rolled over a rod.
There were a lot of ogres to inspire, but no point in moving on with the work not done. Fiona threw a leg over the bench and sat down heavily on it. The bench wasn't impressed; Krekraw was one of the biggest ogres in the Resistance, thrice her weight and then some. She delivered a friendly blow to his shoulder, hard enough to force his attention. Krekraw's head swung in a slow arc, nose low, and he looked up at her from under his brow.
"What's on your mind? Can't lead a battle if I'm missing critical information."
"s'nothin," he answered, making to turn back to his work. She could see the distress in his eyes.
His mouth made a thin line, but no noises. Fiona gave him a little space to breathe.
Then, balancing kindness and firmness, she dug back in. "Talk to me, soldier."
A small sigh escaped his big nose. He looked down to his lap. "You sure there's enough of us? There's a lot of witches out there."
"You're good for more than one witch, Krekraw," Fiona chuckled.
She settled into a thoughtful tone. "I played a lot of solitaire growing up, and it taught me something: you have to play the hand you're dealt. We have a winning hand tonight."
Krekraw sighed aloud. "What if … what if …" His hands stopped working the leather. "What if I get hurt? What if we fail?"
This massive hulk, who could probably crumble rocks for a coffee cake topping, was afraid. And had the courage to say it.
Fiona was torn. Part of her wanted to show compassion, to feel his fear. But her inner captain would brook no quarter; there was no way she could allow herself to experience doubt, at least not consciously. "I hear you. I understand. They've hurt a lot of us," she said, doing her best with the hand she was dealt. "But we have to succeed. And tonight, we've got the upper hand. We're in a better position than we've ever been in this war," Fiona said, again trying to infect him with her optimism.
"Aye, a'right," he said, a little tiny bit brighter than before.
"Who are you fighting for?" she asked him. "What brought you here?"
Another long pause. She waited him out.
"I'm here 'cuz we hafta, cuz it's fight with youse or get picked off alone."
Fear drove this ogre. Most ogres thought the idea of knocking heads was a jolly good time, but not everyone. For this ogre, being in the army was terrifying; the only reason he was here was because it was scarier to be alone.
"We'll take care of each other," she said. He nodded. "I know you're not feeling like the scariest ogre, but we need you out there tonight, Krekraw. I need you."
He nodded again, this time with more conviction. That'll have to do. Fiona rose from the bench and said "Good work prepping the gear. See you at muster."
·❧·
Fiona made her way through the camp, appraising and praising the preparations, building up enthusiasm. She spotted Tweedledee and Tweedledum sitting in the low crook of a swooping cedar branch at the perimeter of the camp, pointing at others and kibitzing. Those were nicknames, of course: The pair of adolescent lads had naturally gravitated to each other as soon as the second had arrived, earning them their matching nicknames. Teenagers were a funny sort: on one hand, they were as enthusiastic as any to the Cause; in a way, it was a family to replace those each had undoubtedly recently lost. On the other hand, they were at peak adolescent hubris. Snark and sarcasm were still brand new and terribly clever to them. She made a plan to orbit past them before she was done.
She came upon an ogre repairing some ghillie suits, weaving them back together with supple ivy vines to prepare them for the camouflage phase of the ambush. "Hey Fiona," he said through his teeth, looking up at her, thick bone needle gripped between incisors while his hands worked the disguise. "This is gonna be a big victory!"
It was good to find someone already in top spirits. "I can't wait, Gnimrahc."
"I bet you're gonna sleep in tomorrow!"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You haven't slept in weeks, Fiona. Or as long as I've been in your squad, actually. Every day you're out of the camp, recruiting or getting supplies or whatever it is you do, and then every night you're here working out, prepping, giving one-on-one combat training. You've been awake every night I had watch duty, and none of the other guys has seen you so much as take a catnap."
Fiona took a controlled breath. "Yeah, this is worth it. I'll sleep when I'm dead," she said flippantly. "You keep at it then. We'll all be taking a load off tomorrow." She turned on a heel and moved on quickly. That observation was too close for comfort.
·❧·
Ugerke hammered a rivet, securing a pot lid as a makeshift patch to a battered shield.
Fiona propped a foot up on a nearby boulder, her shadow announcing her presence. "Good work. We're gonna need every weapon in the arsenal tonight," Fiona offered, feeling her out.
"Looking forward to it," Ugerke replied gruffly. "Can't wait to get somethin' done."
Ugerke was the only ogre to have escaped Rumpelstiltskin's capture. "Ugerke, you've already done everything for us." It was difficult to learn much about the witches' battle tactics. Ogres who hadn't yet found the Resistance were isolated in ones and twos and ignorant of the threat. That made them vulnerable to air superiority and rarely left anybody behind to describe the skirmish. "If it weren't for the intel you brought back from the fortress, half our ogres would already be captured by pumpkin bombs."
Ugerke stopped hammering and set down her mallet. Her voice softened and she looked up. "Say, Fiona."
"Yes?"
"Three weeks ago, when I came back with that report on the castle..."
Fiona clenched her jaw, then turned up her lips to hide her discomfort behind a rigid smile as she recalled the conversation.
〰〰〰
Ugerke, an ogress constructed out of leathery meat and raw courage,after escaping from the stronghold,had turned right around and made it her mission to reconnoiter Rumpel's keep, returning to danger several times a week. When she brought back her report a few weeks ago, the ogresses had met up under the forest canopy in an area of smooth soil. Ugerke had scratched out a detailed map into the dirt, comprehensively describing the paths that sentries and others took around and within the premises.
Fiona, interrogating Ugerke on the details of her hand-drawn map, had been drawn to the peculiar layout of a particular terraced defense emplacement on the seaward side of the building. Something bothered her about them. Something primal, something distant. As they proceeded through the day's intelligence, Fiona kept returning to that pattern on the plan, the series of geometric galleries cascading down the hillside.
The gardens.
Her blood had run cold. They were the gardens of the castle she'd grown up in.
Fiona had worked a lot of things out about Rumpel in the time since creating her own freedom and finding her people. She knew he'd managed to depose her parents and was responsible for the sad state of the kingdom of Far Far Away.
But she had put so much behind her. The silver lining of her parents being gone was that they couldn't see who she'd made of herself and recoil. There was such a vast distance between the world she now occupied and her youth as a little girl that she had never made that connection before. Those emplacements were the castle gardens.
Little Fiona had spent countless hours crawling, toddling, clambering, sprinting among the topiary lions and magnificent marble statues on pedestals. Even after the enchantment had limited her outdoor play to daytime, she'd found every nook and cranny, every hiding place in those gardens. She was pretty sure that even the royal gardener couldn't have found her in her favorite spot, the hollow in the greatest oak.
The pathways drew themselves onto the dirt map; bushes sprouted from her imagination. Her eyes swelled.
"...Fiona?" Ugerke had prompted. Fiona snapped back to reality; the spectrum of flowers and sunlight-dappled trees collapsed back into the brown earth. She'd been in a daze and had disappeared from the conversation.
"Uh, yes," Fiona stammered. She looked up at the ogress, who recognized some transformation in her countenance.
Ugerke frowned, dropping an eyebrow. "What is it?"
"I..." Fiona struggled to bring the tactical context back into her mind. "I think this is good work."
"Uh, yeah," Ugerke replied. "We were talking about these carts here and what they were for." She looked at Fiona with concern.
"Right!" Fiona said. "Yes. It was good work noticing them."
"What is it, Fiona?" Ugerke's tone cut through the facade. "What are you hiding?"
"It's nothing, Ugerke. I just … nothing." The recollection had come out of the blue; Fiona was shaken that she'd let it show. It was a tiny hint, a crack that could split open. If any of these ogres knew she was the heir to this broken kingdom—
"Why are you blocking?"
"I'm not blocking." Fiona stood up and turned away, signaling that the conversation was done. It was conspicuously abrupt, and a terrible way to treat her friend who was doing her best to help. But better to come off rude than risk bringing the whole house of cards down on her head.
Ugerke stepped around to face her. "Oh, yes, you are." Her shaggy eyebrow was knitted together in concern for Fiona's wellbeing.
Fiona's mouth drew out into a stiff line. "Ugerke, I'm warning you..." Fiona stepped around her and made for the center of camp.
The whole situation had thrown Ugerke off balance. Fiona had earned her respect as a tough-as-nails warrior, and earned her trust as a friend. Giving her this treatment felt wrong. Fiona had marched off in silence, trying not to dig herself into any greater danger.
〰〰〰
That was the conversation Ugerke was referring to that had set Fiona's jaw on edge this night. It had been a disaster back then because it had caught Fiona by surprise. In the weeks since, Fiona had done her best to mend the relationship. Ugerke was back to business as usual, bringing in the goods on witch patrols and siege weaknesses at the castle. She'd never brought the topic up again—no doubt for having been so sharply rebuked the first time—so Fiona assumed she was out of the woods.
But here it was back, on the most important night of the campaign, when Fiona was supposed to be in the business of boosting morale. She'd need to find her way through this conversation without dumping on her prize scout and friend. "Yeah, Ugerke. I'm really sorry about that. I was having a tough day, and I shouldn't have treated you that way."
"Hey, I just wanted to say I'm sorry I pushed you into a corner." Ugerke leaned a little closer to Fiona. If Fiona had been anyone else, she'd have thrown an arm over her shoulder, but everyone knew that's not what you did with Fiona. "I just want you to know that, whatever it was, you can trust me with it."
Fiona's jaw relaxed a bit; her lips grew into half a smile.
Ugerke's face relaxed, emanating confidence that she'd repaired her faux pas, even if she couldn't figure out what it was. "Whenever you're ready."
"Thanks, Ugerke. And someday, I will. But tonight, there's only one thing I want." Fiona felt a wave of relief; this particular flaming arrow had swished just past her ear.
"Me too, Fiona. We aren't done until we free those prisoners." Ugerke slammed a fist into the shield with a bass clank. Fiona's eye twitched; that had to hurt. That ogress was ready to dispense some justice.
"Alright!" Fiona said with an encouraging grin. "Save it for Rumpel. Keep at it."
·❧·
Fiona stepped away smartly, letting some controlled breaths out through o-shaped lips. There were just a couple knuckleheads left to check in on: Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Fiona plotted a course through the forest beyond the perimeter to arrive with surprise, hoping to keep them off their high horses.
As she got close enough to eavesdrop, she wasn't even a little surprised to hear them talking smack. "Fiona's kinda small to lead a battle," said 'Dee, puffing up his chest.
"Sez you, she can toss a whole tree on ya like it's a kiddie caber," answered 'Dum. He wasn't wrong.
"Yah but who knows how much practice she has at tactics?"
Fiona took one more silent step behind them and gently knocked their heads together, releasing a satisfying "clock" sound. "And you rapscallions need to practice your situational awareness!" she said brightly.
"Oww!" they said in synchrony, 'Dee rubbing his mostly bald noggin, 'Dum cradling a tender ear.
"Come on, tough guys. No time for sitting around prattling like princesses. I need you down there getting ready. Let's get some shields polished."
Tweedledum put the heel of his hand on the branch and pivoted down to the ground. Trying to save a little face, he objected, "Isn't that just busywork? Shiny shields don't hurt people."
"But they intimidate people."
Tweedledee slipped off the branch and smacked 'Dum on the rump. "Come on ya layabout," he prompted, eager for Fiona to see him as the leader of the pair. He shouldered his pal into motion and they trotted down the hillside at a brisk clip. As 'Dee's voice faded, Fiona caught him bragging to his buddy, "D'ya hear that? She called me a scallion!"
Fiona brushed imaginary dirt off her hands and folded her arms, leaning back in satisfaction. Those boys will be okay. Fiona made for her tent at the other edge of the encampment.
Author's Note: If you're enjoying reading this story, even a little bit, I'd enjoy it if you could throw me a review or a PM hello. It's nice to know there are other ogres hiding here and there in these woods.