by Logan Jacobs
I bundled up my cloak and leaned against it while I dug through my pack for some of the strips of dried meat, and then Merlin came up to beg for his share. I passed him a section of dried meat, and he took it up into the lower branches of the pine to nibble at it in peace.
"You know, there is something rather charming about this rustic look here," Maruk said thoughtfully. "Perhaps we could incorporate a few elements into the decor of our guild hall."
"What do you mean, 'here?'" Lavinia asked, one brow arched. "Are you talking about the forest?"
"The forest, that human camp," Maruk replied. "I mean, it's a bit rugged, but there's potential. With the right accents, I think you could really elevate a simple pine table or animal hide throw rug into a very classy centerpiece."
"I never thought you would be the one advocating we drag the flayed skin of some dead animal into our home, Maruk," Lavinia said as a smile curled up on her lips. "I'm proud of you, really. You're showing real growth."
"It's not too late to go back if you want to get one of those gryphons," I said with a grin.
"Now, see, that would be a statement piece if there ever was one," Lavinia declared.
"One of these days, Lavinia, you'll learn to have an appreciation for art." Maruk sniffed in a self-important way as he brushed down the fur of his cloak with one hand.
"Is that a threat?" the ladona woman asked with a sly wink at me, and Maruk rolled his eyes.
We carried on companionably like that, and once we had finished eating, we packed our belongings up again and prepared for the final stretch of the day's journey.
"We'll be in the mountains before nightfall," Lavinia said. "We can look around for a cave or somewhere to camp for the night."
"Does it have to be a cave?" Aerin asked with a suppressed shudder only I caught.
"That would be the easiest way to ensure we're not going to wake up buried underneath a foot of snow," Lavinia replied, her brows raised. "These clouds don't look like they're going anywhere, and it's only going to get colder the higher up we get. We're in for an icy night, at least."
"It just seems like we've been hanging around a lot of caves lately, that's all," Aerin said as she crossed her arms over her stomach, "and it doesn't usually go very well."
"Relax, we'll check for bears before we settle in," the ranger replied. "Come on, we're losing daylight."
"It’ll be alright," I said quietly, so that only Aerin could hear as I put my arm around the elven woman’s shoulder. "We can stay near the entrance, we just need something over our heads."
Rejuvenated by rest and food, we set a fairly quick pace as we set off again, but we hadn't gone very far before Lavinia slowed suddenly.
"Is something wrong?" Lena asked as the archer knelt on the path and pressed her gloved hand to the ground.
"There's another trail," Lavinia reported with a frown. "More of those sick people."
"Corulin did say the illness affected people in waves," I reminded her. "Maybe whoever this was had been part of that first group to fall ill."
"I guess so," Lavinia replied as she stood again. "They're not far, judging by the prints. Looks like there are six or seven of them."
I turned to Lena. "Do you have any more of that vapor?"
"I don't," the alchemist answered with a shake of her head. "Just those two jars."
"Couldn't you make more?" Aerin asked.
"If we were back in the city," Lena replied. "I don't have all the ingredients with me here, though."
That was too bad. The vapor proved to be extremely useful, but it wasn't our only option to deal with the sick clanspeople. I could still disorient them with an illusion if necessary, and now that we knew there was no chance to reason with them, we could sneak by easily enough. They hadn't cared about us at all until we'd tried to stop them, anyway.
"It's alright," I said. "We might not even need to distract them, we could just pass by. Let's keep going."
We had gone only about a half of a mile before we stopped. The pine needles ahead were all churned up with clumps of mud, and there was a bit of bloody, torn fabric on the path. I may not have been an expert tracker, but even I could tell there had been some sort of struggle here.
Lavinia held up a hand to signal for us to stop as she approached the scene with careful steps. She walked around the edge of the path so as not to disturb the tracks while she examined them, her brow furrowed in concentration.
Although there was no other sign of the afflicted here or whatever had attacked them, I kept my hand on the hilt of my dagger and listened carefully to the eerie silence of the forest all around us while Lavinia read the trail. We'd expected the sick people would make easy targets for predators, and that was the most obvious explanation for what had happened here. There was no carnage, no sign of the people except for that little bit of fabric, but they might have been chased into the forest by wolves or carried off by gryphons.
I knew Lavinia would have considered those possibilities as well, however, so if she still thought there was something to examine here, I trusted her judgment.
The ladona woman shook her head and frowned as she returned to us.
"It's hard to make out the details," she said, her tone somewhat bitter. "The pine needles are good for concealing the tracks. There was some kind of fight or an attack, but it wasn't by an animal."
"What do you mean?" Maruk asked. "Are you suggesting that a person did this?"
"I don't know," Lavinia snapped in frustration, but then her expression softened somewhat. "I can't explain it, I just know what it looks like."
"What does it look like?" I asked.
"It looks like they were taken," the ladona woman answered. "The people, the sick people, I mean, they obviously struggled, but then their tracks just stop, and I can't make sense of the other tracks on these stupid pine needles. There's not enough blood for them to have been killed here, but there's no sign they ran off the trail into the forest, either. It's like they vanished."
"We know the gryphons were hunting them," Aerin put in. "Maybe another flock caught up with this group and flew off with them."
That seemed like the most likely explanation to me, but Lavinia shook her head. "You saw how many feathers those things shed when we fought them. There are no feathers here. That's not it."
I frowned as I moved forward to get a better look at the churned up earth in the middle of the path for myself, but it just looked like a mess of old pine needles and mud. If not gryphons or wolves, what else might prey on the sick people?
An idea suddenly struck me.
"Trolls," I said aloud, and the others turned to me.
"What did you say, Gabriel?" Aerin asked, but the look on her face suggested she'd heard me and only wished that she hadn't.
"Something took these people, right?" I asked. "It wasn't an animal, and we know there are mountain trolls in these parts. A few trolls would be strong enough to carry off six or seven humans, wouldn't they?"
No one said anything, but the look on the others' faces was confirmation enough that this was the case.
"That could be it," Lavinia said in a low voice, and then her red eyes flicked over to the tracks again. "I think that's probably it."
"Those poor people," Aerin said quietly. "We'll have to tell Corulin what happened."
"Are we sure they're dead?" I asked then. "If they were taken, they might still be alive."
"If they were taken by mountain trolls, I'd say their chances are slim," Lavinia replied. "If they're not dead already, they will be soon."
"Shouldn't we at least try to find them?" I pressed. "If any of them are still alive, we could save them."
The others' faces were grim, but then Maruk nodded.
"I agree with Gabriel," he said firmly. "I think we ought to try to find them, at least."
"I think so, too," Aerin put in. "They have families who miss them. At least we should be able to tell them for sure what happened."
"We don't have a clear tra
il," Lavinia warned. "They might not be easy to track."
"We trust you, Lavinia," I said, and I put my hand on the ladona woman's shoulder.
Her eyes flicked down to my hand, but then she nodded.
"Alright, I'll do my best," she promised.
Chapter 16
We followed the trolls’ path through the forest and into the mountains, but the way forward was slow. It seemed that one of the creatures’ natural abilities was to move through the landscape and leave little to no trace, a trait which I supposed made sense with the fact that they were ambush hunters, at least according to my field guide.
Even Merlin had a difficult time following the trail, though we had hoped the puca’s keen sense of smell might help direct us, and my ability to sense magical creatures seemed to be dampened somehow as well. I figured my intuition earlier had been informed by my magic, at least in part, when I’d worked out that it was probably trolls who kidnapped the ill people, but it was difficult to know for certain if my magic was truly aiding me now or if I simply wanted it to.
Still, as we made our way out of the foothills and onto the cold rocky slopes of the mountains, I had a feeling we weren’t far behind our quarry. We’d forgone our earlier plans of searching for a place to camp for the night in favor of tracking down the trolls in the hopes that we wouldn’t be too late to rescue the ill people. As the afternoon progressed into evening, the mountain winds turned bitterly cold and bit through even the thick fur-lined cloaks we’d gotten from Corulin’s clan.
"Alright, for our next bounty, I vote we go somewhere tropical," Maruk grunted through gritted teeth as he hoisted himself up a steep stone ledge.
"I’m all for that," Aerin agreed. "You think there’s a bounty out for helping baby sea turtles get to the ocean? I wouldn’t mind helping out some baby sea turtles."
The wind shrieked like a banshee as it tore mercilessly across the mountain face and drowned out Maruk’s next words. For the past two hours, our world had been nothing but cold gray skies above and even colder gray stone below. As we navigated the often-treacherous hike, I wondered how a mountain troll would manage the same feat while carrying a struggling human.
At least, I had to hope the humans they’d kidnapped were still capable of struggling, and one grim thought, a memory of something I’d read, kept that hope alive. According to a few anecdotal accounts listed in my field guide, mountain trolls preferred their food to be fresh. It wasn’t unheard of for them to carry off live sheep or other animals back to their lairs rather than to slaughter their prey wherever they found it.
"Look here," Lavinia called back above the screeching wind.
As the rest of us pulled ourselves up the slope after her, I saw what had gotten her attention. There was a small speck of blood on a rock up ahead. No more than a single drop, but it meant we were on the right track, and I knew we couldn’t be very far behind the trolls now.
My breath sawed in my throat as we continued the ascent up the narrow switchbacks along the cold stone face of the mountain, and every exhalation came as a puff of steam in front of my face. Even if the trolls hadn’t killed the ill people, the cold might. The group we’d saved from the gryphons wore coats and warm clothes, at least, but what was sufficient protection in the forest wasn’t necessarily enough here on the bare mountain face, especially now that the sun was about to set.
Lavinia was leading the way, but she stopped up ahead and turned back to face us. As we all gathered around in a huddle, our collected breaths steamed in the air between us.
"I think we’re close," the ranger told us. She nearly had to shout to be heard above the constant howling of the wind, despite the fact we were no more than a foot apart. "I’m going to scout ahead. Wait here."
"Are you sure that’s a good idea?" Aerin asked.
"What?" Lavinia’s face was scrunched into a frown.
"I said, are you sure that’s a good idea?" the elf repeated louder.
"I’ll be careful," Lavinia replied.
"Aerin’s right," I argued, and then I shook my head to get my point across in case the wind snatched my words away. "We should all go together. It’s too dangerous to get split up now."
Lavinia’s frown deepened, but after a moment, she nodded.
"Just be quiet!" she insisted.
As we began to pick our way up the path again, I noticed some of the rocks along the edge of the trail were strangely uniform in shape, and I realized they were, in fact, broken and weathered stone bricks. It was difficult to make out much at a distance since all the gray stone blended together, but I thought I could see the remains of a stone structure in the distance. There was almost nothing left, just a few bricks still stacked on top of one another, the rest long since scattered and returned to the mountain from which they’d been hewn, but the nearer we got, the clearer it became.
It might have been an ancient castle, or perhaps an outpost of some kind, but whatever the building used to be, there wasn’t enough of its history left to go on. What it became, on the other hand, was abundantly clear.
My reading told me that mountain trolls typically lived in caves due to the species’ intolerance for sunlight. They would emerge at dusk to hunt and return to their lairs before dawn, though in areas with more consistent cloud cover, their active hours could fluctuate somewhat. These trolls had obviously converted the ruins of some human or elven structure into a home of their own, and I imagined Maruk would have a thing or two to say about their taste in decor.
We crouched behind an outcropping of rock while we tried to get the lay of the land, and even from my rather awkward position, I could see that the ground ahead was littered with bones. Some had been smashed completely, little flakes of white mingled in with the gray pebbles underfoot, but others were preserved and used as decoration. Several skulls, humanoid and animal alike, lined up along the remains of the low stone wall, and rib cages of varying sizes were propped up on sticks like ghastly lanterns.
Behind me, I heard Maruk groan as he caught sight of the bones, and Lavinia turned back to give him a silencing glare.
Despite the carnage, there was no sign of the trolls themselves, and I began to wonder if perhaps there was a lower level to their lair that we couldn’t see from here when one of the creatures moved into sight from behind a crumbling wall.
There were some sketches in my book, but they still didn’t prepare me for the sight of a troll in the flesh. It had to be as tall as Maruk, possibly even taller, though it was partially hunched over even as it walked. Its features were largely humanoid, but the lower part of its face jutted out like a muzzle, and its gray flesh looked as rough and hard as stone. Jagged tusk-like teeth protruded from its lips, and its brow was bent in a permanent frown. Its arms were too long for its body and its hands too large. As it reached up to scratch at its neck, I saw that each of its fingers was tipped with a long claw like those of a bear.
Lavinia had already pulled her bow over her shoulder and nocked an arrow when the troll suddenly spoke.
It wasn’t any language I could understand, though when the goddess Theira transported me to this world, she’d ensured I would be able to communicate. In fact, the troll’s speech hardly sounded like a language at all. If anything, it sounded like someone was grinding two rocks together.
A moment later, another troll that remained out of view answered the first, and I didn’t need to be able to understand the creatures’ speech to pick up on the annoyance in the troll’s tone. Then the second troll stepped into view, and slung over its massive shoulder was one of the sick people we’d been tracking from Corulin’s clan.
My heart hammered as I squinted and tried to get a better look, to determine if the person was still alive or not. We were too far away for me to be able to see if they were breathing, but I thought I glimpsed the faint glow of the person’s mana in their chest, and I had hope.
Lavinia still had her fingers wrapped around her bowstring, but she looked back at me expectantly.
I gestured for her and the others to follow me back down the path, just far enough away that we could speak without risking that the trolls would hear us.
"I can take those two out before they even realize we’re here," Lavinia said quietly. "I’ve got a clear line of sight."
"But we don’t know how many there are," Aerin argued. "If we kill those two now, we could just be giving away our position to all of their friends."
Unlike the trolls that lived near rivers and in swamps, mountain trolls tended to live in groups, but their numbers could range anywhere from two to a dozen.
"We shouldn’t launch an attack until we have a better idea of what we’re up against," I said. Then I reached into an inside pocket of my pack and drew out a length of fine, almost translucent fabric. It was the invisibility cloak I’d gotten from the Shadow Delves, and I was glad I’d thought to bring it with me now.
"I’ll go on ahead and try to find out how many of them there are," I said as I shook out the folds of the cloak and threw it around my shoulders. I could still see my body, but I could tell from the way Lena’s eyes widened that to everyone else, I was invisible from the neck down.
Though she’d been the one to first advocate for caution, Aerin looked nervous now, and she pressed her lips together. "Maybe one of us should go, instead."
I wasn’t really surprised by the healer’s reluctance over my plan. She could be downright paranoid when it came to protecting the world’s only manipulator, and I guessed I should be grateful she hadn’t tried to physically restrain me yet.
"I’ll be fine, Aerin," I assured her.
It wasn’t just that the cloak was mine, I wouldn’t have minded lending it to one of the others, but I knew I was the best person for this job.