The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  Xaragitte shied at the sound of the high-pitched voice. Yvon continued walking.

  "You-old man!" The chief herder ran to intercept them. She couldn't have been a eunuch long, Yvon thought: she still had too much energy. Her grin was broad and genuine. "Greetings, greetings, greetings! I thought it was you, the old man afraid of lions."

  Yvon tensed. Did the herder intend a double meaning? Baron Culufre's emblem was the dagger-toothed lion-had she discovered that Yvon was one of Gruethrist's men already? "I'm just a simple farm-husband, fearing for another's livestock."

  "Yes, yes, yes. The Baron intended to pasture the herds in that direction, away from the village. But I conveyed to him your timely, welcome warning. Now he will send hunters up there in advance. We did not come prepared for such a wilderness as this, I tell you. We owe you many thanks."

  "None at all." Yvon walked faster.

  The herder fell in step beside them and politely avoided looking at Xaragitte. "You're here because you've accepted my offer, yes? The Baron generously rewards all those who serve him, and you have served him well already."

  "No, we simply happen to be going this way. It was news I was happy to share, as a lady gives water to a stranger who comes knocking at her door."

  "Is there anything at all I can do to help you?"

  Yvon's footsteps faltered, stopped. He glanced over at Xaragitte. "There is one small favor."

  The herder's smile grew wider. "Name yourself, then name your favor!"

  "You honor us, to ask our names," Yvon said, politely including Xaragitte. He recalled the shepherd boys from the day before-neither their accents nor appearance would match those names, but Yvon didn't expect a noble eunuch from the Imperial City to catch that. "I am Bran. I accompany my niece, Pwylla."

  The herder's expression grew grave and she stopped walking, indicating to Yvon and Xaragitte that they must do the same. "Please, continue."

  Yvon swallowed. "We've been afoot these four days, and I have no more food to gift her with, to my great shame. If you would be kind enough to provide my niece with a bite to eat, I will say prayers to Verlogh for you at the festival of justice."

  The eunuch lifted the carved horn to her lips and blew several short notes. When she was done, she lowered the horn and thrust out her hands. The intimate gesture surprised Yvon. He hesitated, then tucked his walking stick under his arm, extending his own hands. They gripped each other's wrists.

  "Well met, Bran. My name is Sebius. We cannot permit our new but beloved friends to venture so long afoot with neither sustenance nor drink."

  Two young, muddy boys, one dark-skinned and the other fair, ran up to Sebius. Others hurried over, but too late. She waved them off. The herder whispered her commands, and the two took off running in different directions.

  Xaragitte looked questioningly at Yvon, who made no response at all. She shifted Claye to her other hip and pulled the sweat-damp hair away from her face.

  "Aha," Sebius said, noticing the gesture. "The goddess Bwnte herself did not have tresses so red, nor skin as pale and freckled, when she walked disguised across the plains of Maedatup with her newborn son."

  A smile quirked across Xaragitte's lips. That resemblance was one of the chief reasons she'd been selected as nursemaid. Yvon felt worse and worse about this chance encounter. Three gods watching them.

  "Have you ever seen the mammuts before?" Sebius asked.

  "I have, a few times," Yvon answered, leaving off that he hated the beasts. There were only three things in the world he hated and feared, and war mammuts were one.

  "And you, m'lady Pwylla-you will not be offended if I address you so familiarly?"

  "N-no," Xaragitte answered. "I am honored."

  "Ah! Have you ever seen the mammuts before?"

  "No, never."

  Sebius clapped her hands together. "Today, you shall not only see one, you shall be conveyed like a princess upon one's back. It is my little gift to you, to ease your journey."

  "You do us too much honor," Yvon protested.

  "Not at all! For all I know, she is the goddess Bwnte, come in disguise once more, and I have a duty to help her."

  Xaragitte smiled at her. "Usually, men flatter me with that comparison when they seek the blessings of the goddess herself."

  "I am beyond reproach in that regard," the eunuch said, and they both laughed. "So it is agreed, then, yes?"

  Yvon wanted her to say no. A short time ago, she'd tried to stab him for suggesting they join the train of the army. Now she was ready to ride one of the Baron's mammuts. But the presence of the eunuch reassured her-she'd worked side by side with Kepit in Lady Gruethrist's service. She glanced at Yvon, her eyes as hard as steel.

  "We would love to ride on a mammut," she told Sebius. She tickled Claye beneath his chin. "Wouldn't we, darling?"

  Yvon's heart stopped in his throat as he half expected her to call the baby by his true name. Anyone who heard the name Claye would think of Gruethrist.

  At that moment, the first of the boys returned leading a mammut, a small beast, only ten feet tall and clearly old, no longer a fighting mammut. The red fur fell off in clumps, the way it always did in spring. Brass knobs covered the sawed-off tusks. Ropes girded about its waist held a bundle on its back. The handler was a slight lad not much older than the errand boys, which meant it was a trusted animal. But the shaggy beasts were too unpredictable, Yvon thought, no matter what their age or use.

  Sebius gestured to the handler, who clicked his teeth and gave a command with his feet behind the creature's ears. The mammut knelt to the ground.

  "This is Lady Pwylla," Sebius explained. "You will carry her today and ease her journey. Treat her as if she were the goddess herself."

  "It is my exquisite privilege, Lady," the handler said. Large ears stood out on either side of his head, twitching like a mammut's. "You may ride up here, seated on the Baron's tent."

  "I'll take the child," Yvon said, holding out his hands. At least he could protect the heir.

  Sebius tapped her heart. "Oh, no, no, no. No child in swaddling should be separated from his loving mother. The babe shall be perfectly safe."

  "Oh, yes," the handler added. "The babe will be perfectly safe up here. Giruma is a very gentle mammut."

  "I'll keep him with me," Xaragitte said firmly. "He may soon be hungry again." She turned her back on Yvon.

  He went to boost her up and so did Sebius. With one helping her on either side, she climbed onto the kneeling mammut's back and settled on the cushion of the pack it carried. When the animal stood again, she smiled nervously.

  "Onward," Sebius told the mammut handler. "We have very far to go today."

  "Be careful," Yvon said, walking beside the beast, but Xaragitte did not look at him.

  Sebius matched steps with Yvon, speaking in a low voice. "I must see to the strays-the other strays." She laughed, and although he didn't like being referred to as a stray, Yvon smiled in reply. "But later you will walk with me, yes, and tell me all you know about the valley. Yes?"

  "My knowledge is a drop of water in a broad river."

  "Ah! But a thirsty man is glad for even the smallest drop that wets his tongue. Do you have much experience with cattle?"

  "None at all, but for the team that pulls a plow." And that some forty years ago, as a boy. He saw no need to be so specific.

  "That is a difficult task," Sebius said, absurdly pleased. "You will talk to me, and perhaps in the weeks and months, nay years, to come we shall labor side by side. I cast divination bones before we departed the Imperial City, and they indicated that my future and fortune would be made by a man named Bran."

  Chills shivered through Yvon. "It's not an uncommon name."

  "But you are an uncommon man." Sebius continued to grin. "Yes, anyone can see there is something hidden about you. Make my fortune here as the bones foretold, and I shall see you never want for anything again."

  The other boy returned, bearing bowls of boiled oats mixed with maple
syrup. He gave both to Yvon, to preserve his dignity, and Yvon passed one up to Xaragitte. She murmured thanks.

  Sebius grabbed the boy roughly by the shoulder and shook him. "Fetch this lovely woman, the image of Bwnte herself, watered wine to drink. Not a drop for yourself or I'll have you beaten! And when you return, remain in her service throughout the day." The lad darted off, and Sebius turned to Yvon. "I must attend to other duties now, but I've marked the boy and you may order him about as you like."

  Yvon nodded acceptance of this around a mouthful of oats. He followed along behind the lumbering tusker, using two fingers to spoon the food into his mouth. He licked the bowl clean when it was empty and stuffed it in his pack.

  At the castle, their true identities would certainly be discovered. Yvon knew it. But if they arrived in darkness, and slipped away before the dawn, they had a chance.

  The mammut handler talked constantly with Xaragitte as the leagues fell away beneath their feet. Yvon helped her down at the noon halt. "You must watch what you say," he whispered, with a nod at the jug-eared boy. "He'll report everything to the eunuch."

  "He'll report that I love my baby and that my baby loves mammuts and silly songs." She changed Claye's position to the other breast. "What kind of name is Pwylla? It sounds like something you'd throw on a rug."

  He didn't have anything to say to that.

  "You have no honor at all, do you? You didn't have to give our names. But you lie, you break your word without a second thought-"

  "Just don't mention his name," Yvon said, tilting his head at Claye.

  She turned her shoulder against him. Every muscle in her neck looked taut and strained. "I said the baby's name was Kady. Kady, you hear me?"

  Her dead lover's name. "Fine. Good."

  "And I will say this for the Lady Sebius-unlike you, she has fed me and rested my feet."

  Yvon finished eating the food that Sebius's boys had brought them, but it no longer had any flavor. This was not how he had pictured himself and Xaragitte. He didn't know why it had gone so wrong between them or how he could make it better.

  Horns sounded, ending the halt almost as soon as it had begun. The Baron meant to push his men, and the men responded. Yvon respected that: battles were won that way. It was one more thing to report to Gruethrist when they met. Some of the mammuts bellowed in reply. Yvon helped Xaragitte back onto Giruma and walked beside the mammut as the march resumed. Xaragitte said something to the handler, and he goaded the old tusker up out of the rearguard.

  Yvon stretched his sore legs to keep up with them. "Ho, there!" he cried. "Slow down!"

  They didn't. Xaragitte clearly wanted to be away from him. The mammut lingered just at the edge of Yvon's view, Xaragitte's red hair bobbing along above Giruma's dark red fur. Yvon found himself walking among the cattle and the cattle herders. A small group of soldiers back in line considered him suspiciously. Soldiers had a way of recognizing one another, and so he tried, without much success, to carry himself less like a knight and more like a peasant.

  A fatalistic mood overtook him, brought on by Xaragitte's treatment and the size of the army. Several times his hand strayed to the hilt of his concealed short sword. He wondered, chance permitting, if he should try to murder Baron Culufre. There'd be no escape afterward. It was a poor alternative to retirement, to taking up house with a young woman, but it might be the best way to help Lord Gruethrist.

  With this in mind, he began to scan the army for the Baron; and so he missed the group of mammuts coming together near Xaragitte until he heard their trumpeting.

  He twisted at the noise and found he couldn't reach her. The horns of the cattle filled the intervening space like an army's spears as Yvon watched a large tusker approach the mammut which carried Xaragitte and Claye. The smaller Giruma stopped, curling its trunk submissively back on its forehead, but the big tusker still seemed agitated and reared. Its handler shouted, striking his little crook-shaped goad fiercely to no effect. A third mammut approached at a trot.

  The big tusker wheeled and attacked the newcomer. Ivory clashed on ivory, heavy feet pounded the ground, and men and beasts alike cried out as they scattered out of the way.

  Yvon dodged frightened cattle in his attempt to reach the woman and child he'd sworn to protect. He lost sight of them in the confusion, but he heard the animal screams, the angry voices of several men, and above it all a woman's piercing shriek.

  Other mammuts charged in with their beasts. When Yvon arrived at the tumult, one mammut was down on the ground, mouthing mournful sounds, its side slashed wide open. He pushed his way toward it, fearing-

  No pack. It wasn't the one that carried Xaragitte.

  He didn't see Xaragitte anywhere, couldn't pinpoint her screaming in all the confusion. He ran past a man on the ground, his right leg smashed into a bloody paste, and searched frantically among the milling mammuts and growing circle of soldiers, knights, and herders. Then he spied the huge tusker looming over all the others, and ran toward it.

  The handler gripped the monster's neck, fear carved on his face like a totem of the war god. Wetness seeped from the side of the mammut's head: it'd gone into musk, the most dangerous time for tuskers. The other mammuts crowded in to herd the wild tusker away from the wounded animal and the crowd. They formed one surging mass of red and brown fur until a single mammut lurched away in fright, its burden slipping from its back. Xaragitte clung with one hand to a tusk-slashed rope as the animal spun around; her other hand squeezed the baby tight to her bosom. The skinny boy hopped around below her, alternately yelling at her to jump and hold on. The handler couldn't force the beast to kneel. A loose rope tangled in the mammut's legs was panicking it.

  Yvon rushed over to catch Xaragitte at the same moment several soldiers did likewise. He shoved them out of the way to take hold of her, barely avoiding the mammut's feet as it bellowed wildly and reeled to one side.

  The soldiers, already tense, were ready to rescue Xaragitte from Yvon. But she draped one arm around him, sobbing as Claye wailed with her sympathetically. "It was awful, awful," she cried. "I'm cursed! Everything I do is cursed!"

  Several soldiers made the warding sign at her proclamation. Yvon might have echoed the gesture, but Xaragitte's knees sagged and he needed both hands to hold her up. One soldier started toward them. Glancing down, Yvon noticed that his short sword was partly visible. He shrugged his shoulder, shifting his cloak to hide it. The soldier hesitated, uncertain.

  Another mammut rumbled just behind Yvon, and a voice spoke, more lordly and commanding than any Yvon had ever known.

  "Is the lady injured?"

  Xaragitte stopped crying, though one last shudder rolled through her body. She immediately stepped away from Yvon. Yvon turned and froze. Even the baby's eyes widened and his cries suddenly became hiccups.

  For young Baron Culufre stood before them, atop a war mammut fit for a king. If not a god.

  He looked very much like the Empress, Yvon thought.

  laye's tears seemed to dry instantly on his face. He reached out toward the Baron's mammut. "Mahmah!"

  It loomed fourteen feet tall, clad from trunk to tail in iron plate and chain mail set with emeralds and lesser gems. Swords too large for any man to wield adorned its tusks. The Baron stood just behind the handler, so sure of his balance that he held onto nothing. His armor matched the mammut's, with jewels set likewise upon his breast and helm, though even the emeralds did not glitter as much as his bright green eyes. His braid was formed of many smaller braids, all bound together, as if he were an army of knights embodied by one man-which, as Baron, he was.

  "Is the lady injured?" he repeated in his deep voice.

  "She's frightened, that's all," Yvon answered, finding his tongue. His hand twitched toward his hidden sword, but he knew he could never strike and kill the Baron, not here, much less kill him and escape. The back of his neck itched. Remembering that he was braidless, he ducked his bare head and added, "Your Magnificence."

  "You serve
d her and the child well to catch them so. How do you serve Us?" The imperial plural.

  Yvon now doubted the resemblance to the Empress was chance. But before he could answer, Sebius appeared like a blister after a long march. "This is the man I told you of this morning, Brother. Bran, a farmer of this valley."

  Brother?

  Yvon looked again and saw the resemblance in the shape of their faces, their stature. It had been too long since he'd been in the Imperial City or followed the brackish currents of its gossip-were these two of the Empress's sons? Perhaps only favored nephews, children of her sisters. But certainly chosen for great things if one this young had been wedded to the aged Lady Culufre. Yvon was willing to bet the Baron's next wife would be some promising younger daughter of a minor house, named heir to the Culufre title. It explained the newness of the eunuch also. A man owned only what he could carry with him to hunt or war, but a eunuch had all the property rights of women, and the Empress's gifts to Sebius would be available to the young Baron Culufre. Sebius might even be the more favored of the two.

  This complicated Lord Gruethrist's chances for victory.

  "Ah, yes, We recall," Culufre answered. "Whither do you fare, farmer Bran?"

  Yvon struggled to recall what he'd told Sebius. "We go to rejoin my niece's family in the mountains."

  Culufre permitted himself a small, deliberate smile in Sebius's direction. "We appreciate the importance of families. It is Our great hope that We shall make life at this edge of the realm easier for all families. To that goal, We shall send Our mammuts on to visit Lady Eleuate. You shall travel with them, and tell Our men all you know of the surrounding country."

  Claye hiccuped in the silence that followed.

  Xaragitte stepped toward Yvon. She shook her head, stroking Claye's scalp, but whether it was to soothe him or herself, Yvon could not say.

  Culufre missed nothing. "Please inform your niece that she should not be dismayed. She shall not be required to ride Our mammuts again if they fill her with trepidation. But We enjoin you to travel with them, on Our behalf, to more quickly speed her to her family's domicile."