The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  Maggot lifted the primitive weapon to strike again, but the second spearman rushed him. Maggot threw the rock. It hit his attacker below the chin, snapping him backward. Maggot picked up the fallen spear and aimed it at the armored knight, who stepped forward with his bloodstained sword. They were both screaming at each other.

  The roar in Maggot's throat choked off in midbirth.

  The knight lowered his sword to a defensive position as his cry also broke.

  It was the man Maggot had seen in the camp by the river, the one he called First. His head was covered by a helmet, but the braid showed, and the beard was cropped shorter, but there was no mistaking him. The green cloth of his shirt was embroidered with a golden lion.

  They exchanged a small nod of recognition.

  A cluster of knights and spear carriers appeared out of the trees, raising an exultant cry. The warrior Maggot had rescued tugged on his arm, and they ran, fleeing through the pine trees, upslope around the ravine.

  How had First recognized him?

  How had he not known the woman he wanted was one of the invaders? He should have guessed earlier, when he saw the mammuts.

  At the top of the hill, the warrior leaned against a beech tree and slid down to a sitting position. He left a red streak of blood on the smooth white bark. Lifting his water flask to his lips and drinking, he offered the same to Maggot, who gulped thirstily.

  "Heh!" the man said. "Rescued by the giant."

  Maggot had heard the word before, but Sinnglas was reluctant to speak of it. "Giant?"

  The man stared at him oddly. "In the mountains, the giants who walk in the darkness, leaving no shadow behind them. Who hurl stones on men and play the war drums."

  "Trolls!" Maggot said.

  The man wrinkled his brow at the unfamiliar word. "Giants," he repeated slowly. "You are as large as one, and you throw men and stones around like they do. You fight like a giant."

  Maggot thought about the man's description. The scent of wrongness that he had not named became clear to him. "No, the giants never fight like this," he said. "Not among themselves. They would talk and vote, and then follow the First or go their separate ways. This fighting, is a wrongness to it."

  The man laughed and then winced. He held out his palm, whispering, "Wait ... wait ... there!"

  Maggot followed his gesture. Only a few hundred feet away, a large group of the enemy approached, having followed the wide, concealed path offered by the ravine. When Maggot looked back, the other man's chin rested limp against his chest, eyes open.

  He ran off alone through the trees, headed for the high ground. The sun sat directly overhead, shining down piteously through every break in the canopy. The air had become stiflingly hot, and thick with silence, pierced only by the occasional scream or distant trumpet of a mammut. He saw movement atop a flat ridge that thrust out from the mountainside.

  Maggot climbed up the steep slope, through tulip trees that rose a hundred feet or more into the sky. One huge tree had blown down lengthwise across the ridge's edge; its uppermost branches tangled among other trees and kept it from slipping away. Maggot heard arrows zip over his head at attackers behind him. When he climbed over the fallen log, he nodded to the archers. He saw Squandral and Custalo with maybe sixty or seventy men. Squandral glanced at Maggot's bare head and turned his face away.

  Sinnglas sat with Pisqueto and five other men from their village, including the man who'd lost his fingers, but not the one with the broken collarbone. Maggot joined them. The men were binding their wounds, except for Pisqueto, who, uninjured, sat repairing the fletching on an odd assortment of arrows.

  Sinnglas acknowledged Maggot, then pointed with his chin to several places over the ridge. Maggot observed the invaders forming into organized groups in the cover below. The shaggy red mammut moved between distant trees.

  "Do you have food in your bag?" Sinnglas asked. "Eat if you do. If not we shall find some for you."

  Maggot checked. He did. He showed Sinnglas a ball of the cornmeal and molasses before he put it in his mouth. "I have some to share if others need it," he said as he chewed. "How did the fight go?

  Sinnglas shrugged noncommittally. "Women in at least eleven lodges across the villages will rend their clothes and scream when the news reaches them. Perhaps more. Most men will have scars to show they were here today. The invaders have lost more men than we have. But then they have so many more men to lose." He stopped, and stared off into the sky. When he spoke again, his voice dropped. "Truly, I did not think they would come in such numbers nor prove themselves so brave."

  Maggot swallowed, then sucked on his fingertips. "This fighting cannot go on, Brother."

  Pisqueto looked up from his work. A faint smile played briefly on his lips before evaporating like a drop of water on a warm rock.

  "Truly today you have been my brother," Sinnglas said. "But your words strike as hard as any weapon. We cannot go on fighting. Even the old men know this."

  This admission relieved Maggot. "What do we do now?"

  "Squandral argues that we should sue for peace, much as he and my father did thirty years ago. He argues that we have proven ourselves as men, and the invaders will show us the respect due to brave men."

  "Heh," Maggot said. "That would be good."

  "I do not think that is the direction this river runs." Sinnglas indicated the charms around Maggot's neck. "I ask you one last time: will you not use the invader's magic against him, to help us?"

  Maggot covered the forgotten ampules with his hand. "I do not know how."

  Sinnglas tapped the ground with his knuckles. "Then we must flee for a safe place. The men we fight today move like a storm coming over the hills. We are helpless to stop it. Once we cross over the ridge behind us, we can follow the wall of the mountains north. We can cross through the high gap, into the next valley, and return south to our families. It is a longer way, but safer, and with luck and the blessings of the spirits we can return before the Lion's army comes. We will have to pack up our village and move. Perhaps over the mountains, toward the sea."

  He did not sound hopeful as he said this. Maggot considered it for a few moments. "I do not want to go in that direction."

  "I had hoped you would come with us, my friend."

  Pisqueto set down his arrow and his feathers. "No, Maqwet is right. I, too, will stay with Squandral and fight."

  "Brother!" Sinnglas's eyebrows drew up in alarm. "Think of our mother-come, flee with us, and plant your anger as a crop you will harvest next year and the year after that." He twisted his head back to Maggot. "Will you also stay with Squandral? Have you no mother? Will she not weep to see you throw your life needlessly away?"

  "My mother-" Maggot stopped.

  Sinnglas and Pisqueto watched him closely.

  "My mother was to me like rain to growing things or darkness is to roots. She sent me in this direction, to join men like myself. I think she would"-he couldn't think of the word in Sinnglas's language, not even the equivalent, so he used the troll word-"roll-over-and-over-in- the-odor-of-grief to see what I have seen today. To see what I have done. I will not war anymore."

  "I will stay and fight at Squandral's side," Pisqueto said. "Until the last invader is killed or they let us live in peace."

  Sinnglas's lips thinned. "Very well, then. Every man must follow his own path as he sees it laid before him, whether it leads to war or away from the lodge of his mother."

  Maggot gazed upon the army gathering in the woods below, searching the faces for First. The air had the dry, sharp fragrance of summer, filled with the buzz of flies and the whir of insects.

  "I will go part of the way with you," he said. The woman he wanted was not in either of these armies. Nor was there any lion here for him to slay to give her. "But when you cross the mountains, I will turn back and go west."

  "That will take you into the heartland of the invaders."

  "Good," Maggot said. He sat cross-legged, rubbing his tired hands together. Pisquet
o picked up his arrow, and resumed tying feathers to its shaft. Sinnglas stirred, and then let himself settle down to the same absolute stillness as Maggot.

  "Heh," he said finally.

  ate in the afternoon, the invaders made one concerted charge up the hillside, with the pikemen behind the shields pushing as far as the fallen tulip tree that blocked the ridge.

  Maggot stood between Sinnglas and Pisqueto, batting aside the pikes and thrusting back the shields with a long branch to create openings for their spear and arrows. His exhilaration slowly exhausted itself until he was leaning on his branch during the increasingly longer periods between assaults. When the attackers slid down the slope again near sunset, Maggot palmed the sweat off his forehead and body. Only a very few warriors yipped in celebration.

  Maggot turned to Sinnglas. "Will they go away now?"

  "No, that was just to pin us here," Sinnglas said, rolling his shoulders. "The knights and the mammut will attack us up the long trail tomorrow morning while those below cut off our escape."

  The mountain loomed behind Maggot.

  "So we will leave tonight," Sinnglas said quietly. "As soon as the moon is gone down."

  "Heh," Pisqueto muttered nearby. Picking up his remaining arrows, he met Maggot's eyes and lifted his chin toward Squandral's men.

  When Maggot thrust out his tongue, a smile flickered over Pisqueto's face and disappeared-all the youthfulness had gone out of his expression. Catching himself, Maggot shook his head, and Pisqueto ran off to join Squandral's men without saying any farewells. Leaning on the tree and studying the woods below, Sinnglas didn't see his brother's departure.

  Maggot massaged his sore neck and looked at the sky, wishing for darkness.

  Sinnglas, with Maggot and nine other men, offered to guard the breastwork against any night attacks. In the full dark, while most of the warriors snatched fitful sleep, the eleven men slipped over the side and ran down toward the enemy camp where the slope widened into a rolling meadow below the trees.

  Gathering speed as they ran, Sinnglas's men vaulted a thin line of guards at the bottom of the hill and ran through the camp, screaming and striking random blows at sleeping men. Maggot's heel landed in someone's stomach, producing an audible exclamation, but otherwise he did no one any harm. As the invaders raised a cry and rushed to defend themselves, Maggot and the others dashed across the meadow and were free.

  The running figures rejoined each other. As Sinnglas led them north, along a narrow, tree-covered trail in the shadow of the mountain, Maggot counted everyone and hurried up to Sinnglas's side.

  "There are only nine of us now," he whispered.

  Sinnglas grunted. "Like Pisqueto, others have chosen their own paths again."

  He led them north through the chilling night, along narrow, treecrowded trails in the shadow of the mountain, ever higher until they reached a flat knob above the trees that Maggot would not have recognized as a gap. Sinnglas, however, picked out a treacherous, curving route to the cold summit. From the top, a mist-filled valley opened below, and beyond it, looming like a wall against the dawn, another long ridge of mountains.

  Across that second ridge of mountains lay the way back to the Deep Cave band of trolls. Breathing that familiar air, Maggot's footsteps faltered. He stopped.

  The other men passed him, until Sinnglas paused, no more than a dark shape farther down the barren trail. "Will you not choose differently, and come with us?" Sinnglas asked.

  Maggot's hand went to his chest to grasp the charms that hung there on their silver threads. He did not know which way to find the woman. But he knew he must go back and try.

  "I did not come this far to go back," he said with a little half shrug, rolling his shoulders forward and then forgetting to relax them again.

  Sinnglas lifted his chin. "The spirits will bring us together again. There will always be food for you in my home."

  "And for you in mine," Maggot answered as he had heard others say.

  Sinnglas's face widened into a grin. "Send word when you have found that home, Maqwet. My brother."

  The two men walked to each other and gripped forearms. Letting go, Sinnglas turned and rejoined the others. They ran down the mountainside until they disappeared like shadows slipping into deep water.

  Maggot shivered. He was alone again. He shook himself to dispel the cold like a coat of dust, and turned back, slouching forward as he ran.

  Sleepy shreds of fog, too weary yet to rise with the sun, obscured the mountainside down among the trees. Maggot ghosted his way through this distanceless world, unsure which path he followed across the steep slopes. He went downhill, taking vertical paths when he came to dead ends, leaping out onto the branches of trees, then shinnying down the trunks when he could find no other way.

  The fog burned away toward noon, but a great weariness settled on Maggot. He found a hollow spot on the slope, halfway above one trail, halfway below another, where something had once been washed away. He buried himself beneath a pile of leaves and branches, plummeting into heavy, thoughtless sleep.

  Hushed voices woke him. He rolled over, still blanketed in lethargy, not knowing how long he'd slept, and wondered if he should investigate.

  He heard the voices again-they were speaking Sinnglas's tongue. He could make out the word invaders.

  Slowly poking his head up through the leaves, Maggot heard the voices come from the trail above him. He glimpsed a few heads passing between the trees. The men were moving toward the fighting, or where the fighting had been.

  He eased out of his hiding spot, climbing up the hill for a closer look. Bits of light penetrated into the gauzy air between the high treetops. The men-no, boys: they appeared to be as young as Pisqueto or youngerstood uncertainly on the trail, discussing whether they should go on. At first Maggot took them for stragglers, warriors separated from their village leaders. But as he crept along the hillside, he saw two quivers on most backs and no sign of bandages. They were latecomers, probably from the villages south of Custalo's, boys just arriving to join the war.

  Stupid people, not knowing the war was over.

  Maggot crouched across the trail and pulled himself up the slope, crossing over until he found a rotted log above them. He put a foot on it to see if it would rock-it did-and then he kicked it over the edge. As it crashed down, he drummed out a troll's warning on his chest.

  Below him, the boys ran back the way they had come. Maggot hurled stones through the trees at them, stopping only to pound his chest and holler again.

  When they had retreated out of sight, he hunkered down and slouched forward, resting on his hands. The war was over.

  He sniffed the air for something to eat. Remembering, as if from a dream, the bag at his belt, he scooped all the remaining food into his mouth and swallowed it in a gulp. He threw down the bag and went searching for something to drink.

  Sinnglas had traversed the distance from the scene of the fighting to the gap in the mountains in a single night, but then he knew where he was going and ran with a purpose. Maggot meandered on the way back, on and off the trails, stopping again to nap beneath a log when he felt tired.

  He moved more purposefully when the sun hunted over the western horizon, until he sniffed faint smoke and followed it to a small clearing nested in the hillsides.

  Maybe thirty warriors were gathered around a small fire. They passed a pipe around the circle, the smell of it staining the air. Maggot looked for Pisqueto, but many of the younger men were gone. Perhaps they were dead, and perhaps they only lured the invaders in another direction.

  we must gather our families, and flee across the mountains," Custalo was saying, loud enough for all the men to hear. "There is no shame in the wolf, when he runs away from the lion and its dagger teeth."

  Squandral took the pipe and puffed at it deliberately before speaking. The flickering firelight exaggerated the sharpness of his features.

  A tightness cramped in Maggot's belly. He crept close to the circle, and squatted, suppr
essing the sound of his grunt.

  Passing the pipe to the man beside him, Squandral gestured sharply with his hands. "They have insulted us again. This time we must hunt the Lion down and kill it. Let us go back now and attack the invaders, striking them in the night-"

  Maggot's ball of steaming dung hit the side of Squandral's head and splattered on the trollbird, Menato, who sat beside him. Men scattered, jumping up and grabbing their weapons.

  Stupid people. Maggot drummed a rude tattoo upon his chest and keened mockingly before crouching down and running off to a new location. The men froze where they stood, wrapped in the fire's honeygolden glow like flies trapped in amber.

  "It is one of the giants," Custalo said. "For the last four or five years, they have been an affliction on my people, coming in the night to steal our clothes and weapons."

  "That does not sound like the giants," Squandral said. Or at least that's what Maggot thought he said; his nasally voice was hard to understand.

  "We fear you not!" Menato shouted, still scrubbing furiously at his face.

  Squandral waved him to silence. The broad-shouldered, craggyfaced old man lifted a hand to shield his eyes. It held an arrow. He stared into the darkness with the bow in his other hand. Maggot, now almost behind them, pounded his chest again and watched them spin. Squandral's arrow came first, followed by several others, but Maggot had moved away instantly. The missiles shot through the brush or sailed above his head and into the night.

  After several moments of silence, one man asked, "Do you think we hit it?"

  "Perhaps it was only up to mischief and we have driven it off," Custalo suggested. "That happens also sometimes."

  Squandral hushed them all to silence, then gestured to Menato, who kicked the small fire. The sparks scattered, spinning upward as they cooled to cinders and the light of the fire sputtered out.