The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  "Sit very still then and you'll be fine. There's nothing to worry about with a wizard along." He smiled, and hoped his grin wasn't too ghastly. Then he took his spot in the small boat's bow. "We're ready," he told Banya.

  Singing aloud now in an eerie rhythmic chant, the wizard shoved the craft offshore, wading knee-deep before he climbed aboard. The current pushed the boat downstream, so that even while Banya thrust his pole quickly and expertly they did not go straight across.

  Halfway to the other side, the goat stamped its feet in complaint. "Maaaa! "

  An incandescent glow, as long as the boat, surfaced nearby. Xaragitte gasped as it slithered across the watertop.

  "Don't look directly at it," Yvon hissed. "They can bewitch you in a fingersnap."

  She squeezed her eyes shut and cowered protectively around the baby. Which showed she had more sense than Yvon, because he couldn't take his eyes off the monster. His hand drifted to his sword. You could kill a demon with a sword-or any other weapon-if your will stayed free long enough to use it. And if you dared the wrath of the gods.

  Two more luminous serpentine trails curled toward them. Then the morning sun bloomed suddenly over the ridge, transforming the surface of the water from polished black to liquid light in a blink. Yvon lost all sight of the demons and started scanning the river frantically to find them.

  Far away, he heard Banya chanting round in circles; Yvon's thoughts spun in circles too, his hand gripped convulsively on the hilt of his weapon.

  Something tapped him on the back.

  He found himself staring transfixed over the edge of the boat into the scaly face of a demon. Its hooded head swayed on a thick-muscled neck that protruded well out of the water. The sawtoothed mouth gaped and closed, slit eyes piercing Yvon's soul. As he drew back in revulsion, the flat nostrils flared on either side of the axe-shaped head. Yvon's own nose choked on the demon's sickly sweet scent.

  Something hit him hard between the shoulder blades.

  He looked up. Banya, still singing, had smacked him with the pole. They had reached the far bank, and the wizard wanted him to leap out and pull the boat ashore. Yvon yanked his gaze away from the demon, crabbed his way around Xaragitte, and splashed ankle-deep into the icy water. Grasping the prow of the boat, he heaved it in close to the shore.

  Banya's song wavered for a split second as he lost his balance. But he steadied himself with the staff and continued to sing. His voice was strained.

  Yvon noticed the two other demons, heads thrust out of the water like branches from some submerged tree. "Come, come quickly," he called to Xaragitte.

  She stood, her face still huddled against the covered baby. Yvon helped her out of the boat and up the steep embankment. She didn't say a word about his hand upon her arm. He was too shaky to feel any reward. The goat tried to butt him as he hefted it onto the bank and handed the leash to Xaragitte. When Banya finally climbed out, Yvon towed the boat completely free of the water.

  The song faltered and ceased. The demon shook itself, twisting its head around until it spied them.

  "Begone!" Banya shouted. He thrust the butt-end of the pole at the demon, who reared back and barked. Then it sprayed a mist from its hood, snapped at the pole, and disappeared into the river with a splash.

  Yvon searched the water, but the other two demons were already gone. He and Banya hid the boat under some brush atop the bank.

  Claye sat upright in Xaragitte's arms, a look of intense concentration upon his chubby-cheeked face. "He couldn't stop listening to your song," she told the wizard.

  "Well, that's the whole, unblemished purpose now, isn't it?" Banya said, sitting down hard on the grassy slope and rubbing his neck. He leaned backward, closed his eyes, sighed. "May the crows squabble over your meatless bones, Yvon. You let the demon make you dream."

  Yvon grunted acknowledgment.

  "Nearly fell into the water, where you would have been killed. I had to hit you three times with the pole before you felt it once."

  "I've never had good luck with the demons," he admitted.

  "Maybe it's your destiny. No man can run away from his destiny. Have you ever seen a rabbit run when it's startled?" He made an arc in the air with his hand. "Runs in a circle, comes right back where it began. Wait there and you can always catch it. The gods do that to men too."

  Xaragitte shifted Claye to her other hip, then sat down. The goat grazed at the end of its tether.

  Yvon plopped down beside Xaragitte. He could've fallen asleep in an instant, and not just from the lingering effects of the demon. Just as he was letting his eyes drift closed, trumpeting echoed up the valley walls again. A sound like that could carry for miles, but Yvon shook off his torpor and stood.

  Banya sat up too. "You need to go."

  Xaragitte got to her feet, smoothing her skirt.

  "Which way?" Yvon asked.

  Banya pointed to some low hills at a right angle to the river. "Head easterly and north along the ridge, around the hollows tucked back in the hills. More than a few old farmhouses you could live in. But the farther you go, the more likely you are to run into cats and dogs, all kinds. Keep that in mind if you sleep outside overnight."

  Yvon knew all that. "How dangerous are the peasants?"

  Banya looked away from him. "There's more than a few old warriors who took part in the rebellion, but I don't think they'll recognize you without your braid. Most of us westerners look the same to them." He jerked his chin toward the canyon. "I'm going to find someplace to lay low. You two need to go."

  "Thank you," said Xaragitte. "Three times I bid you comfort in your home. May it shelter you and bring you comfort."

  "Fare you well," Banya said. "Whatever path you choose, fare well." He went back down to the riverbank, humming.

  Yvon turned toward the mountains, opening his water bottle for a sip and passing it to Xaragitte. "We should press on until we find some shelter," he said. "By midmorning, if no one's following us, we'll be able to take a short break."

  "How will we know that no one's following us?" she asked, pausing to shorten the goat's leash.

  "Maaaa!" Claye looked at the goat and grinned.

  "We won't unless we see them first," Yvon said, "and if we can see them, it'll be too late."

  It hadn't looked like a canyon at all from the riverside, but just over the hill it broadened out into meadows that rose almost above the mountains themselves. Dawn flooded over the dead and winter-trampled grasses, warming Yvon. Xaragitte unwrapped the blanket from her shoulders, and he stuffed it into their bag. They followed deer trails easterly and north, as Banya suggested. Although they saw no peasants, they saw signs of them: distant spirals of smoke, trees blazoned with messages, the foundations of a house destroyed during the rebellion. Halfway to noon, they came upon an abandoned orchard of plum trees. Even the bare branches made Yvon hungry. Eating Sebius's food with the Baron's army had reminded him how good it was to eat.

  "Can we stop for a while?" Xaragitte begged.

  "I was thinking we should," Yvon admitted. His body screamed for rest. He tied the goat to one of the trees. "You nap first. I'll sit guard in case anyone comes."

  Xaragitte sat down and fed the child while Yvon went to refill their water flasks at a brook a hundred feet away. When he returned, she was curled on her side, arms stretched out protectively around Claye. He too slept, a little trail of milk dripping from the corner of his open mouth. Yvon propped himself against a tree beside them and remembered the dream he'd had of her the night before. It would be good if it could be like that between them.

  The next thing he noticed was Xaragitte's shriek.

  He leapt up, drawing his sword as he awoke. Spinning in a circle, his heart pounding, looking for the soldiers or for peasant warriors and not seeing them, he shouted, "We're fine, we're fine-there's no enemy! We're fine!"

  "We don't matter," she screamed at him. "Where's Claye?"

  He was nowhere around. Sword in hand, Yvon rushed frantically through
the grove, shouting the child's name. Xaragitte's voice rose from the other direction, and in between their combined cries, Yvon thought he heard a click. Following the sound, he spotted the baby near the brook, pounding two stones, then making a splash in the water.

  A little dark-haired, dark-eyed peasant boy crouched beside him.

  "Here!" Yvon shouted. "He's over here! Hey!"

  The last was directed at the little peasant boy, who'd picked up a stick and raised it over his head. But the sound startled Claye, who flopped over backward and began to wail.

  As Yvon leapt forward to grab him before he could roll into the stream, another voice sounded.

  "Sinnglas!"

  A peasant woman, hugely pregnant, wobbled along the stream's bank. She wore a deerskin dress, decorated with glass beads, silver, and pieces of fabric, her lustrous black hair held up with a comb of carved bone. A second boy a few years older ran along beside her. Yvon stopped, lifting his eyes to scan the landscape for any men.

  Xaragitte arrived, running to snatch up Claye, crooning soothing words that calmed no one.

  The peasant woman frowned at Yvon, and asked Xaragitte something in a sharp tone.

  "What's she saying?" Xaragitte asked, rocking Claye.

  "I don't know," Yvon said, dropping his sword's point. He saw no one else nearby.

  The two little boys were maybe three and five years old. The older one directed the younger one around. The little one still held onto his stick. He looked over at his mother, then hit his brother. The bigger child grabbed the stick away and tried to break it over his knee, but without any luck.

  The peasant woman said something else to Xaragitte, then, with both hands resting on her belly, called to her boys again. "Damaqua, Sinnglas!"

  She toddled off without another glance at either Yvon or Xaragitte, her boys running after her.

  Xaragitte jogged Claye in her arms, still trying to cheer him. Yvon paced beside her. He saw no sign of any other peasants. Overhead, black slashes spiralled in slow arcs. Vultures. Seven, eight. "Nothing happened," he said firmly. "We're all fine."

  "We need shelter," Xaragitte snapped. Her eyes had dark circles around them, and looked haunted. "You must find us shelter before nightfall."

  Yvon met her gaze and nodded.

  "You must."

  "I will," he said, sheathing his sword.

  They heard the goat bleating as they returned to the plum grove. Claye stopped crying and twisted his head around curiously at the noise. Yvon didn't mention the vultures. If there was carrion, that likely meant lions or wolves. He hoped that it was wolves.

  After gathering their few belongings, they set off again. Meadows that had once been cleared for farming were now overgrown with small trees, still leafless. They startled a small herd of deer in one of the abandoned fields they passed through, and Yvon wished for a bow. Food would be scarce to come by until after the plants bloomed. At least they had the goat. One way or another, that would help them get by.

  He expected to find numerous houses, but they had vanished like the families who'd built them. The two of them simply trudged on, forcing one foot past the other league after league, long into the afternoon without a break, until Xaragitte spotted a dark square on the lip of a small hill ahead of them. She raised her hand, and Yvon said, "Maybe."

  He walked faster, but as they came close he saw it was only a pile of charred, decaying timber.

  Xaragitte stared at it, frowning. Thinking perhaps of the more recent fire at the castle. "It has walls, at least," she suggested. "Perhaps we should stay here tonight."

  "No," Yvon said. He had a bad feeling about the place. Those broken walls were no protection from determined man or beast. "We'll head that way, checking the hollows back in the hills, like Banya suggested. There's bound to be something better close by."

  Then he led them on a weaving trail, checking every cleft in the hills for some sign of former habitation. But though they passed more orchards, bits of fence, and, once, a plowframe shorn of its blade and perched upon a rock, he found no place that could shelter them. Worse, they'd had little to eat since dinner in the soldiers' camp the night before, and though they drank from clear streams that flowed out of the mountains, the cold water in Yvon's stomach only fed his hunger. Xaragitte did not complain, but she began to lag, shuffling her feet blindly forward. They had come at least ten leagues since Banya's house. Yvon doubted she had ever walked as far in a week as she had the past two days.

  Long shadows stretched from the trees like fingers reaching out to grab them. Yvon walked beside Xaragitte, to catch her if she stumbled, wondering at first how much farther she could push herself, then marveling again at how pretty she seemed to him, even footsore and exhausted.

  She noticed him staring at her. "Sir?"

  He quickly shifted his eyes away. "Yes?"

  "Would you mind carrying Claye for a bit?"

  His throat tightened. "Not at all."

  "I can carry the bag instead."

  "It's a feather on my back."

  The sling was awkward, and Claye squirmed and squealed, so that Yvon had a hard time arranging everything to his comfort. The knot in the sling dug into his collarbone every time Claye straightened his legs, so, after a few times of this, Yvon reached in to tickle Claye's ribs. Claye giggled and curled up, making Xaragitte smile, so Yvon tickled him for that reason too. Claye grabbed a fistful of Yvon's beard and tugged.

  "Hey," Yvon said, prying the baby's fingers loose and smoothing his beard across his chin.

  Xaragitte laughed at him. Then she sang:

  Yvon glanced at her sideways to see if she meant anything with that innocent old rhyme. But he couldn't tell. The sun squatted low in the western sky and Xaragitte lifted her eyes to it, her smile fading along with the light. "I don't think I can go on much farther."

  A wind out of the southwest rustled the treetops. The raggedtoothed edge of a dark cloud chased after it. Rain was coming. Yvon pointed to a cleft between two hills ahead of them, a darker shadow in the gloam. "If we don't find someplace there, I'll build a bower to shelter us for the night."

  "I know you'll do your best."

  He could go one more night without sleep to sit guard. As they climbed over the last rolling hill, he steeled himself to the work of cutting branches. By Verlogh's justice, he-

  "Bwnte's harvest." Xaragitte's hands covered her mouth.

  They were both thinking of gods, and by the mercy of two gods, it was a house. Surrounded by trees, set back in the deep shadow at the top of a long slope. They stumbled toward it, Yvon slowly, encumbered by the baby on his chest and the goat, who dug in its heels and refused to go any farther. As Xaragitte surged ahead, he shouted.

  "Careful-something may be inside!"

  She tripped to a stop. "Oh. I hadn't thought of that."

  "Here, you take the boy." He handed over Claye and tethered the goat to a tree-it promptly knelt down, its tongue hanging out its mouth. Then he drew his knife. "I'll have a look around."

  The house appeared to have been abandoned but never attacked. It had been a prosperous little dwelling. The door had iron hinges, and rust flaked off, metal squeaking, as he pushed it open. Two dark shapes flew at his head, and he ducked out of the way as they shot off into the trees.

  "What's that?" Xaragitte called, panic in her voice.

  "Doves," he answered, peering inside. "It appears that's all that's in here. But let me finish searching."

  There was just the one large room, with a half loft for sleeping over the rafters. One very rickety table was propped up against a wall in the corner, but there was no other furniture. Thistles sprouted from the piles of bird droppings on the floor, and the ashes in the fireplace had turned to dirt. He looked up and saw dark blue sky through the roof, but when he leaned his shoulders against the walls, they didn't budge. He wrinkled his nose. There was an odd smell, sharp, but he couldn't place it. He went to call Xaragitte and saw her silhouette blocking the doorway.

&n
bsp; "Are we going to stay?" she asked.

  "There's only a roof over the one corner here, but the walls are sound. It'll do. I'll start fixing the roof tomor-"

  "Come back out. Let's do this properly."

  He ducked his head to her as she stepped aside. Once outside, he turned to face her. "Lady, I give you this abode, a place to put down roots, a tree to shelter and to comfort you."

  She stood at the crooked threshold, right arm across her waist, under Claye, and extended her left hand inside. "Sir," she said. "Welcome to my home. Though it is your nature to roam, know that you are welcome at this hearth and table. May chance often bring you here."

  He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he ducked his head a second time. "M'lady."

  The wind rushed and shook the trees above them.

  As she entered first with Claye, Yvon grabbed loose branches from the ground and tossed them in a pile by the door. They could use them for firewood later. When he found a stout branch the right size, he followed her inside and used it to block the door. Xaragitte had already unpacked their blankets and sat nursing the child. She'd chosen the spot where the intact roof still sheltered her, leaving Yvon partly under the hole if he didn't mean to crowd her. He sniffed the air again. It smelled like coming rain, and he couldn't find the other scent at all.

  In the total darkness, she said quietly, "Do you think we'll ever go back?"

  "Yes," he answered, spreading his blanket. He removed his sword and knife, placing them beside him; then he pulled off his boots. "Certainly we will."

  He lay down and closed his eyes at once.

  Xaragitte whispered, "Whatever will we go back to?"

  aaa!"

  When Yvon first snapped awake, he thought that the sound came from Claye. But when he rolled over, he saw Xaragitte and the baby curled up under their blanket. Claye chuckled, then emitted a laugh, although his eyes were closed. Yvon smiled. What a happy baby he was who giggled when he dreamed.

  Yvon rolled over and pressed his head into the crook of his arm. He was poised on the precipice of sleep-

  "Maaa! "