The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  He stood there, dumb, confused, as Sinnglas and the other warriors came over the wall. One of them silenced the woman as others killed the two men. They attacked the defenders from behind, and Squandral and Custalo and all their men came over the barricade on the other side.

  Something inside Maggot became the shell of a tortoise or a snail, something very hard. He seemed to himself to be moving slug-slow while everyone around him darted like bats in the sky.

  In a matter of moments, the warriors murdered every man, woman, and child. Maggot watched them drag a small child out from under a bed before they killed him. Then they knocked down the fence, driving the cattle into the fields, plundered the bodies, and began to rob the houses.

  Maggot staggered back to the wall, tried to climb over it, and fell, weak, on the other side. He stood up, wiping his arm against his mouth to take away the bitter taste of bile that suddenly filled it.

  As flames leapt from the remaining rooftops, Maggot ran out across the fields. He wasn't running away. He was only running to find Pisqueto, only running to find himself.

  innglas and Pisqueto sat cross-legged by a cold fire, apart from the other men. Maggot squatted troll-like near them. He scratched under his arm, scratched his crotch, sniffing the night air for carrion or other scents. The dusk soothed him with its promise of night.

  "This time I will prove myself," Pisqueto was saying to Sinnglas.

  "You've proved your courage many times now," Sinnglas replied. "No one doubts you."

  In the weeks since that first dawn raid, their band of warriors had attacked several more settlements. The new settlements were well defended, and though the two sides had traded insults like trolls before wrestling, little had come of it. Because the raids had gone badly, the other warriors blamed the men from Damaqua's village, especially Sinnglas, for starting talk of war and sat apart from them. Maggot had not missed the killing when the new raids failed, but Pisqueto had risked his life in each confrontation, getting in harm's way of the invaders' arrows to taunt them.

  When Sinnglas and Pisqueto finished eating their small meal, they scrubbed their teeth with green, ribbed reeds collected from the stream. Maggot picked up a reed and followed their example.

  "I've shown that I don't fear the Lion's men," Pisqueto said. "But I have yet to prove that I can do any harm to them."

  Sinnglas sighed. "Already I must go and tell our mother that one of her sons has left his bones in a foreign land. Do not make me take twice that news to her, little brother."

  Pisqueto turned his head away and rubbed the palm of his hand against his eyes. The iron arrowhead had pierced Keekyu's skull, making him the sole death in that first raid. At least, Maggot thought, among Sinnglas's people. Everyone in the settlement had died.

  He flared his nostrils, sniffing again.

  With another sigh, Sinnglas turned his head toward Maggot. "There are two worlds, one seen and one that is unseen. Which one do you walk in, my friend?"

  "What do you mean?" Maggot asked.

  "There is the world of the seen-you, me, the tree, the stones. I walk through it. Then there is the world of the unseen." He made an exaggerated sniffing noise, mimicking Maggot. "Your spirit, mine, the spirit of the tree, the stone. Sometimes our body is in one place, but our spirit another, seeing things of the spirit. Gelapa, the wizard of our village, spends most of his time in the unseen world. He says the medicine water of the invaders takes him there. While there, he is able to see the unseen-"

  "Hmmm?" Maggot asked.

  "The spirits of the dead. The weather before it comes."

  Maggot continued to scrub his teeth. "No, I smell the weather more than I see it. Today the air smells wrong. Sharp, like rain, but no clouds in the sky."

  "Heh. Gelapa is a wizard of the unseen world." Sinnglas pursed his lips and raised his chin in the direction of the ampules on Maggot's chest. "Those are the weapons of a wizard of the world of the seen. Is that what you are?"

  "No." Maggot shook his head emphatically. He found himself saying no frequently, though his skill with the language continued to improve. "These remind me of someone."

  "This is why I ask," Sinnglas said. "Our situation does not look good to me. I am left out of the war councils, which are ruled by old men. They think in old ways."

  "And that is bad?"

  "It will be very bad."

  A piece of the reed had broken off and stuck in Maggot's back teeth. He fished for it with his tongue. "But more warriors, they come to join us."

  They had trickled in since that first attack, from other far-flung villages and from the ranks of those who had not joined the dancing at first. Their numbers were now higher than Maggot could count. Many fistfuls of fists, though Damaqua had not been among the late arrivals.

  Sinnglas looked out over the encampment of warriors. "When the invaders attack us tomorrow morning, they will come in great numbers, more than ours. They have two and three men to our one, and war mammuts with them."

  Maggot had been out to see them too. The army of the invaders carried banners with a golden lion on a field of green. The Lion. No wonder Sinnglas's people feared it so. "If it so bad, why do they come to join us?"

  "What else can we do?" He indicated the charms around Maggot's neck a second time. "Maqwet, my friend, are you sure you do not know how to use those to help us?"

  The reed came loose from Maggot's teeth, and he spit it out. Once he had not known how to clean his teeth either. Someday he might know how to use them. "No."

  Pisqueto snapped the reed in his hand. "We will show the invaders how real men fight."

  Sinnglas looked away. "We will certainly meet the Lion with the weapons we have."

  At sunrise, they heard the mammuts trumpeting as the invaders' army marched up the valley.

  Squandral, Custalo, and the other old warriors had chosen a spot where the valley rose gradually into thick forests. They created natural-looking breastworks of fallen trees and branches, cunningly rearranged to provide dead ends and shifts in cover all along the trail. Their men concealed themselves in small groups through the woods, while Squandral and some of the others built a fire on the hilltop.

  Sinnglas gathered the men of his village, the warriors who had danced that first night, and spoke privately to them.

  "Those of you who wish to stay back with the old men are welcome to. No one will call you cowards. But someone must go forward, to be the point of the spear. The war mammuts will come first, and unless someone hamstrings them, they will destroy our breastworks and our defenses."

  Pisqueto thumped his fist on his chest. "They will say that those who faced the mammuts showed great courage."

  The men nodded at this, some reluctantly, but one by one, they agreed to follow Sinnglas. He led them down the trail to a place of thick underbrush, with spaces scooped out beneath. Maggot thought it might have been a giant skunkbear's den, or maybe even something made long ago by a group of trolls. There was no scent or scat about the place to tell him, nothing but the dusty scent of old leaves, but it had that feel.

  "We'll hide here," Sinnglas told them. "And under those thickets there. But hold your blow until the vanguard is nearly past us. Then strike quickly and hard."

  Maggot lay on his stomach and crawled into the big hole under the brush, choosing it for its familiarity. He settled into the dark shade with several other men, and covered himself with leaves as if he were going to hide from the sun to sleep.

  He had no chance to rest, though. They heard the invaders coming from far away, shouts and branches breaking and metal rattling, and then they saw a cloud of dust along the trail. Two armored mammuts came into view, each one with a man perched just behind its ears. Pikemen surround the mammuts, bristling like an angry porcupine.

  There was a gap between this group and the main army on foot behind them. Maggot's position made it impossible to count their numbers precisely, but he saw there were many more than the twelve of them waiting to attack. His grip on his hatchet
felt too tight, so he let go and rubbed his fingertips against his leg to loosen them.

  The mammuts came close, showing the shorter, cleaner fur of summer. Sun glinted on their armor. Maggot counted feet as the pikemen went by: twenty-three feet-he was sure he had missed one. One man passed close enough that Maggot could see the white knob of a bunion on his inside toe. They were in no formation. Some carried their pikes over their shoulders and others carried pikes at their sides.

  As the last feet passed by, Sinnglas gave a shrill whoop.

  The men screamed with him as they burst from their hiding places, and the scream had the same effect on the soldiers that a lion's roar had on its prey. Half froze where they stood, and a couple went down with arrows in them. Maggot saw one fall under Sinnglas's warclub, and Pisqueto flung himself on the stunned pikemen with fury.

  Maggot charged for the nearest mammut, intending to drive his hatchet into its leg to cripple it, when a man turned to block his way. Maggot knocked aside the half-raised pike and struck at the man's head with his hatchet, knocking him down. A braided man attacked him with a sword. Maggot deflected the blow with his hatchet, but the impact knocked the weapon from his hand. Maggot grabbed the other man's wrist, drawing his knife and stabbing. The blade chinged off his iron shirt. Maggot stabbed again, this time at the throat, his cut partially deflected by a collar.

  Sudden bellowing raised hackles on Maggot's neck.

  Kinnicut, the wide-shouldered smith, had driven a long-handled axe under the knee of one of the mammuts. The shaggy beast dragged the bad leg, screaming in fury, lashing out with its trunk.

  "Go, go!" Sinnglas shouted.

  Kinnicut ran for the woods, with other men leaping into the thickets. The soldier crawled away clutching his bleeding throat, trying to regain his feet. Maggot spun-

  Pisqueto grappled with one of the pikemen.

  Screaming, Maggot slashed at the back of Pisqueto's attacker. The blow staggered him enough for Pisqueto to jerk free. Then Maggot saw reinforcements running to the aid of the invaders, and the remaining pikemen clustering together to charge them, and Sinnglas was screaming at them to run, run; so he grabbed Pisqueto by the arm and dragged him off the trail, and they fled.

  They hurdled the breastworks when they reached them, and turned to see what they had done. Two, maybe three bodies lay in the open glade. The rest of the invaders had taken up a defensive formation around the other mammut. The injured mammut, blind with panic, tried to escape, dragging its crippled leg behind it. The rider behind its head had lost his goad and did all he could just to hold on.

  Two of Sinnglas's men were too injured to fight any more. One suffered a deep sword cut that had shattered his collarbone. The other had lost fingers from his right hand. He wrapped a cloth in knots around it, his face pale and sweaty.

  "The mammuts," Sinnglas directed. A few bowstrings sung immediately around Maggot, but he left his bow over his shoulder-his aim had improved but was still not that good.

  One or two of the arrows landed in the mammuts' hides just as the Lion's archers started shooting back at Sinnglas and his men. At the sound of the twanging bows beside it, the injured mammut lost control, grabbing the rider from its back with its trunk. The small man's shriek cut short when he smashed into the ground, was lifted, and smashed again. The hobbled mammut then attacked the invaders. Their line broke, but re-formed after the animal ran past them down the trail.

  Some of Squandral's men charged in a brief counterattack that achieved little or nothing before they ran back uphill and resumed their defensive positions.

  The rest of the enemy forces came up. After taking a long time to organize themselves, they began a slow advance behind a wall of shields. The invaders' archers poured a steady volley of carefully aimed arrows at the warriors. Their attention focused on Squandral's part of the barricade across the main trail. Maggot took his bow-it had been Keekyu's, the one he'd tried to train Maggot with-and stuck up his head, shooting blindly before he ducked again. The invaders were packed so tightly it seemed impossible to miss. But he never saw what happened to his arrow. His stomach bubbled like a sulfur spring. He wanted to stay at Sinnglas's side and help him, but he wished they were both elsewhere.

  One of the men in their line grunted as an enemy arrow came straight through the pile of branches, deflected in such a way that it lodged in his thigh. By this point, the enemy were less than two hundred feet away.

  "Back to the next set of trees," Sinnglas said.

  Maggot helped the man with the broken collarbone, not carrying him, but propping him up and pushing him along. Pisqueto was the last to leave, firing arrow after deliberate arrow. The enemy archers noticed him, and half a dozen bolts protruded from the trunk of the tree he hid behind. Only when the last of the men were behind the next bunch of trees did he come running back to join them.

  The enemy paused at the edge of the woods, reorganizing. They were very slow, very deliberate in everything they did. Maggot peered through the green treetops at the sky. Somehow, the morning was already half passed.

  Pisqueto crouched next to Maggot. "This is not good."

  "How many arrows do you have left?" Maggot asked, fitting one to his bow.

  "None." He said it simply. Maggot divided his partial quiver in half and passed a bunch of them over.

  "Keep them," Pisqueto said. "Watch my bow while I go find some. Keep it for me if we have to run."

  Maggot nodded understanding.

  Pisqueto crawled back in the direction he'd just come from. In the light that fell through the trees, Maggot marked the indistinct shapes of the enemy soldiers. Sounds of heavy fighting came from the right flank, where Squandral had withdrawn his men to a ridge. Bellows thundered through the woods closer by-the second mammut had broken through Custalo's lines and now roamed somewhere behind them, smashing their breastworks. Sinnglas's group was left of the center. On the far left flank a few southerners guarded a ravine.

  Pisqueto was out on his belly sifting through the leaves when an arrow bolted into the ground beside him.

  "Look out," Maggot shouted.

  A handful of enemy archers had taken up positions behind the trees that Sinnglas's men had just abandoned. Pisqueto pulled the arrow from the ground, rolling for cover as Maggot and a few others shouted and shot back. But Sinnglas regarded his brother and did not raise his own weapon.

  "It's going to be a long day," he said. "We'll need arrows more than we need men to pull the bowstrings before it's over."

  Maggot counted things the same way.

  Pisqueto zigzagged back to the breastworks and vaulted over the logs. He came back up beside Maggot and retrieved his bow.

  "How many?" Maggot asked.

  Pisqueto held up the quarrels. "Five."

  They'd shot off at least four at the enemy, but Maggot would count the small gains where he found them.

  The two sides traded shots for a short time, shooting whenever an enemy stuck his head up over the fallen trees or stepped into the open. Then whoops sounded from the far left flank, and the southerners flooded through the woods behind Maggot, retreating for the center of the line.

  Without knowing what had happened, Sinnglas gathered the men from his village and fell back to defend a new position, but everything was confusion. Some of the men became lost. Maggot could no longer find the man whose fingers were cut off, and someone else was missing too. Sinnglas grabbed some of the southerners as they ran past, shouting at them, calling shame on them for fleeing, commanding them to stay. Some kept running, but some stopped. A group of six, led by a man who knew Sinnglas, joined them. And then their group, swollen to fifteen, was in the front of the battle as three times that many invaders pressed through the trees.

  The exchange of arrows went quickly, as if everyone on both sides was in a hurry to expend them and close hand-to-hand.

  A dozen pikemen advanced behind others holding shields. Their weapons were long enough to thrust through the barricade of logs and brush, but t
hey were walking upslope. Maggot crouched, squeezing his arms under a fallen tree. At the last moment, when they charged, he screamed, thrust upward with his legs, and hurled the tree at them. It shattered their line of pikes as it rolled down the incline. The invaders broke and scattered, except for a shield carrier pinned beneath the log and quickly stabbed to death by one of the southerners.

  The invaders quickly organized another charge. Maggot hacked away at a shaft thrust at him through the branches, but the end was sheathed in metal and turned aside his knife. One man came over the barricade and went down in a pile with Pisqueto. Sinnglas's men broke and ran, retreating again.

  They were being crowded together with Squandral's men and Custalo's, all toward the center, but there was no longer any center, and Maggot and some of the others, in their mad dash for cover, ran through the enemy's broken line, scattering in half a dozen directions downhill.

  Leaping over fallen trees, branches whipping his skin as he crashed through the brush, the charms leaping at his throat, Maggot stumbled to a stop when he entered a clearing that contained the fallen mammut. One of the invaders lay dead on the ground nearby, within the circle of trampled grasses.

  A group of invaders, four footmen without armor, ran into the clearing on the other side. Maggot took cover behind the arrowpricked corpse of the mammut, the only barrier between him and their spears. They glanced at him and ran on through the clearing without attacking.

  Maggot sheathed his knife. Gripping a handful of red fur, Maggot pulled himself up onto the dead animal's flank to retrieve some arrows. He tore three of them free before he realized he'd lost his bow and quiver. He must have thrown them down when he started to run, but he couldn't remember.

  From his high perch, looking off through the woods, he thought he saw Sinnglas alone against some invaders. Throwing down the arrows, he jumped to the ground and ran to help.

  Instead he found a solitary warrior, one of the southerners, beset by an armored knight and two spearmen. The southerner spun, swinging his warclub in huge arcs, to deflect the weapons thrust at him. Blood streamed from several wounds. Maggot lowered his head and charged like a bull bison into the spearman who attacked from the rear. The man bounced off the ground as Maggot grabbed a jagged-edged stone and swung it at the man's head. The man rolled aside, and the blow missed.