Joji watched the kobolds stare at Walter, and the way their throats bobbed whenever their eyes wandered over the merchant's body. Hunger gave him an idea. If they already looked at Walter like food, then Walter might as well be useful and draw the ogres in.
He found a stick and dropped to one knee by the fire's thin glow. The tip scratched through the damp soil as he began to draw.
"First, Walter shows himself."
Walter heard that and felt a cold shiver crawl up his spine. Bait. He was going to be bait.
"Walter, do not think too hard on it. If we wanted you dead, we would not be going through all these schemes. Just listen for now."
"If you say so, Sir Knight," Walter said.
In the dirt, Joji sketched a fat little man with short legs and a round belly. Walter. Then he drew a stick figure with a flower on its head.
"This is you, Alaric," Joji said, tapping the figure. "You stay at the far rear and make every arrow count."
Then he drew himself as a stick figure standing in front of the big monsters, while around them he sketched trees with small dog-like figures perched atop trees.
"I go front. Kobolds stay in the trees. You throw mud. We'll use a whistle. A signal."
The elder kobold watched the crude lines take shape, his ears twitching at every new mark. Alaric said nothing. He only tracked the plan with his eyes.
Joji scooped boiling water from the pot with a cracked ladle and poured it over a patch of loose soil. Steam rose at once. He worked the mud with both hands until it turned dense and heavy, then rolled it between his palms until it held its shape.
"Equip the rest," Joji said, handing it to the elder kobold. "Ten each. Then we move."
The elder took it, and barked orders in his sharp little tongue. The kobolds hurried to obey, shaping more with quick hands while mud and steam passed between them like a rough little assembly line.
Alaric's eyes never left the dark.
"Let me scout ahead," he said.
Joji nodded and flicked a hand. "Go."
The original Joji of this world had wanted an army of monsters for a reason Joji now understood all too well.
These creatures had simple hearts. They did not scheme the way men did.
When they had a problem, they showed it plain. That kind of honesty was rarer than gold.
Not long after, a thin young kobold trotted over and called for the elder, holding a finished mud ball in both hands as though it were something precious.
The elder inspected it, then turned to Joji. Joji took one into his palm, weighed it, and gave a short nod.
"That will do."
A dozen minutes later, Alaric crouched beside Joji's stick drawing and added quick new lines to it. Joji looked up at once.
Alaric's sketched three hulking shapes, then marked them out.
"Joji, it's not just one. Two hill ogres. One cave ogre."
Joji frowned at that. Hill ogres were trouble enough, but cave ogres were another matter. Their bodies were sturdier, their eyes better suited to the dark, and unlike their duller kin, they knew enough to make tools and set traps.
"No need to panic. The plan needed no change," Joji said, wearing confidence like armor.
Alaric vanished into the branches and began leaping from tree to tree, light and silent as a hunting cat. The dog kobolds spread low across the forest floor, their quick bodies slipping between roots and ferns.
Joji hauled Walter onto his back once more and pressed forward.
Within a few hundred meters, the ogres' firelight began to bleed through the trees, a strong blaze that only made the surrounding shadows look deeper.
The kobolds peeled away first and started climbing the trees, their small hands finding easy purchase in the bark while the pale wrappings on their limbs flashed faintly in the dark.
Joji stopped behind a thick trunk and set Walter down. He gripped the merchant's shoulder and made him look ahead.
"Soon as you get their attention, we've got you. You understand?" Joji said to Walter, then looked at the kobold elder. "Remember. A whistle."
Both Walter and the elder kobold nodded firmly.
Walter understood well enough that Joji was not trying to needle him or get him killed. He knew enough about ogres to grasp the logic behind the plan.
If Joji showed himself first, they would treat it as a fight from the start and already begin weighing retreat. But if Walter stepped out first, hunger would strike before reason, and for a few precious moments, they would see food rather than danger.
Ahead, the two hill ogres loomed at nearly four meters tall, great slabs of muscle with clubs like torn tree trunks in their hands. Beside them stood the cave ogre, taller still at five meters, broader through the chest, its head tilted in wary thought.
Walter began to walk. Slow. Deliberate.
Joji watched him go and felt his own stomach tighten.
Walter stepped into the edge of the firelight. The hill ogres turned first, their mouths falling open at the sight of a fat man strolling into their camp like an invited guest.
The cave ogre's face changed next. Surprise gave way to calculation.
For one stretched moment, nothing moved. Then Walter waved a handkerchief like a lady beckoning a man to a midnight tryst. Hidden in the brush, Joji had to bite down hard to keep from laughing.
The ogres roared. Walter went pale and spun on his heel, running as if terror had lent him a new pair of legs.
"Help. Help. Help," he screamed, his voice cracking on the third cry.
All three ogres thundered after him. The two hill ogres swung their clubs even as they ran, smashing trunks and splintering bark in their blind fury, clearing a path by brute force alone.
The cave ogre could still see. The other two crowded close to it as they ran, pressing in as if its sight might somehow guide them both.
Walter ran as hard as he could through the trees, all while imagining how Joji had carried him across this same stretch on his back.
Even so, fear still gripped him. He kept crying for help until his voice turned hoarse.
Joji watched him draw nearer to the tree line, then pass even the first row of kobolds hidden in the branches.
At once, Joji shoved two fingers into his mouth and blew. A sharp whistle cut through the dark.
The kobolds moved together. Mud balls rained down from the branches, every one of them aimed at the Cave Ogre's face.
Joji threw as well. Mud burst across the creature in wet brown smears, coating its brow, and lashes.
Instinct made it throw its hands up, but it left just enough of a gap between its fingers to keep seeing what was happening around it.
That was its mistake.
It had made itself into a marked target.
From somewhere in the dark, an arrow whistled from Alaric's perch.
It slipped cleanly between those thick fingers and buried itself in the cave ogre's eye.
Purple blood sprayed at once. The ogre staggered, one eye ruined.