Don't Feed the Trolls

by Jacob Peppers

  Then he realized that there was, and he smiled. He knew that Dannen had told the creature that they had no food to offer it, likely because the man was being pragmatic, no doubt worried that their meager supplies would not last the trip down the mountain. He understood the man’s choice, but he understood, also, that Dannen had not been cast out by society like Tesler and Bumblebelly. Indeed, was a famous hero, one even Tesler in his lonely ramblings had heard mention of more than once in his youth. What could a man like that, then, know about that aching loneliness, loneliness that opened up a hole in a man—or a troll—one that seemed to grow with each moment spent without companionship?

  Nothing, that was the truth. In most things, Tesler would trust Dannen, for the man was older than he himself, wiser, with experiences that he had never faced, but in this, Tesler thought that he knew more. It was good, after all, to be pragmatic, logical, but it was also important to show compassion, when one was able. “Bumblebelly,” he said, “you were mentioning the fact that you were hungry, were you not?”

  “Always hungry,” troll agreed sadly.

  Mariana was staring at him, but Tesler pretended not to notice. Instead, he nodded, reaching for the pack containing his bedroll and his share of the rations. He would not ask the others to contribute, but surely he could give the poor beast some of his own food. Dannen could not object to that. He rooted around in his pack until, after a few moments, he found what he was searching for, withdrawing a small bag of dried meat. “I would share my food with you, if that’s okay,” Tesler said. “It isn’t much, but perhaps—”

  Before he could even finish, the troll bounded forward with a speed that was at once surprising and more than a little frightening, snatching the parcel from his hands and stuffing it—bag and all—into his mouth. Its great teeth crunched and, in a moment, it swallowed Tesler’s entire supply of rations, grinning widely. “Thank you so much, friend,” the troll said. “Very kind, very ni—” Suddenly, the troll cut off, and something strange happened.

  Its entire body seemed to spasm, as if in the grips of some great ecstasy, and there was a rumbling sound, so loud that Tesler began casting his gaze around, sure that some beast, a wolf or a bear, perhaps, had found its way into the troll’s lair.

  He saw nothing, though, and when the sound came again he turned back to the troll realizing that the thunderous sound had come from the creature or, more specifically, its stomach.

  “Meat,” the troll said, and its yellowed eyes seemed to shine. “Meat is good. Fresh meat, though. Fresh meat best.”

  Tesler frowned. There was something strange about the way the creature was talking, its voice deep and gravelly and…hungry. Something strange, too, about the way it studied him with its jaundiced eyes. At first, Tesler couldn’t quite put a word to what he saw in that gaze, but then, as the creature licked its lips, he did.

  “Tesler,” Mariana said quietly.

  “Just a moment, Mariana,” he said. “Bumblebelly,” he went on, looking back at the troll, “is everything okay?”

  “Tesler,” the woman said again, “I really think we should—”

  “Bumblebelly hungry,” the troll said—growled, really. “Bumblebelly always hungry.”

  The creature’s gaze cast about, as if searching for something, a tenseness to its posture that had not been there before. Then, its eyes alighted on the great club lying on the cave floor and it started toward it in lumbering, eager steps.

  “Tesler,” Mariana said, her voice near a shout now.

  “Yes?” he asked distractedly, watching in confused fascination as the creature reached down and hefted the great club it carried before turning back to him, its teeth bared.

  “Run!” Mariana shouted.

  ***

  “I was thinking, what we could do, is maybe make a game of it. Tell Bumblegut—”

  “Belly.”

  “What?”

  “His name, the troll,” Fedder said. “It’s Bumblebelly.”

  “Right. Anyway, I was thinking that we could ask him if he wants to play hide and seek, right?”

  “Okay…” Fedder said, clearly not following. “Though, to be honest, Butcher, I’ve never been much good at that game.”

  “Damnit, we’re not going to actually play,” Dannen said, “that’s the whole point. We’re going to get him to count to, I don’t know, say a hundred, then we’re going to haul ass out of here toward the village the guard captain told us about.”

  “Oh,” Fedder said. “I see.”

  Dannen frowned. “You have a problem with that plan?”

  “I don’t know, Butcher,” the mage said, avoiding his eyes. “Just seems kind of cruel, don’t it?”

  Dannen blinked. “You think it sounds cruel.”

  “Maybe…or sad? Just think, that ugly fucker is going to be looking for us all over the mountain, and he’s never gonna find us.”

  “The gods willing.”

  “What I mean, well, a thing like that, it’ll hurt his feelings, won’t it?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Look, Fedder, I’m a lot less worried about that troll’s feelings than I am about me—about all of us—not getting chewed on. Or do you want to be part of the next bag of bones he pulls out when he’s got a visitor?”

  “Fine,” Fedder said, “I’ll do it, I’m not sayin’ I won’t. Just…sort of—”

  It was about that time that they heard a great bellow from inside the cave. So loud, so powerful, that Dannen found himself glancing up to see if there were storm clouds gathered overhead and that the sound he’d heard had been thunder instead. But when it came again he realized that it was definitely not thunder and that the sound, without a doubt, came from within the cave. It was a sound, he realized, and to his great misfortune, that he knew all too well. The bellow of an angry troll.

  He turned back to stare at the cave entrance and, as he did, a pale-faced Mariana and Tesler appeared at the entrance. Their bags were slung over their backs, their expressions terrified, but what drew Dannen’s attention the most was that they were running as if the God of Death himself—or alternatively, a pissed-off troll—was chasing them.

  “What is it?” Dannen shouted at them as they drew closer. “What’s happened?”

  “Some fool,” Mariana snapped, managing to shoot a scowl at Tesler even as she ran, “decided it would be a good idea to share some of his food with Bumblegut in there.”

  “Bumblebe—” Fedder began, then cut off at an angry scowl from Dannen.

  “You mean you fed it?” Dannen demanded.

  Tesler winced as he and the girl came to a panting halt in front of them. “He…he seemed so sad, so lonely. I thought maybe I could give him something, that at least he could have something to eat.”

  “The woman’s right,” Dannen snapped. “You are a fool.”

  “But…what happened?” Tesler asked, “I don’t understand.”

  “What happened?” Dannen demanded. “You fed it, that’s what happened. Everyone knows, lad, you don’t feed the trolls. You never feed the trolls.”

  Just then, they were greeted by another bellow from somewhere inside the cave, and Dannen didn’t think he imagined the sound of heavy footsteps coming toward them.

  “Well,” Fedder said, “seems our game of hide-and-seek is out, Butcher.”

  “Yes,” Dannen said, “seems like we’re about to be playing a very different game—tag.”

  “So…what do we do?” Mariana said.

  Dannen spared a moment to cast another withering glance at Tesler, the man looking ashamed, but let him be ashamed—better that than eaten. Not that the second option wasn’t still on the table. “We do what any sensible person does when confronted with an angry troll—we run. Unless,” he growled, eyeing Tesler, “you want to make friends with it some more, maybe sit around and chat while it has its dinner.”

  Tesler blanched. “I…I’m okay with running.”

  Dannen grunted, securing his own pack on his shoulder. “You�
��d damned sure better be.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dannen had never liked running. As an activity, it ranked right up there, at least in his mind, with punching himself in the fruits or maybe giving himself a good, repeated slap in the face. However, as miserable an activity as he thought it was, it was considerably more bearable than being eaten alive or, alternatively, being smashed to death by a giant club. True, he’d never been much into exercise, but he was into living to see tomorrow, and there were few things more motivational to make a lazy man exercise than an angry troll with dinner on its mind.

  So he ran.

  He ran as fast as he could down the mountain path, sure that at any moment, his foot would catch a patch of ice or a loose stone, and he would go spilling over the side of the mountain to land among the shattered debris of one bridge or the other. Still, he did not dare slow, for he could hear the furious, enraged bellows of Bumblebelly behind him, and a quick glance showed the troll less than fifty feet away, waving its great club furiously as it came on.

  Perhaps Bumblebelly was different from his kind in many ways—or at least in the very noticeable way that he hadn’t tried to eat Dannen and the others as soon as he met them. But it seemed that he shared this in common with the rest of his kind—eating meat, even dried, tasteless jerky, sent him into a ravenous rage, not assuaging his hunger but instead bringing it to new, impossible heights so that all he thought about, all he cared about, was eating.

  Unfortunate, that. Equally unfortunate was the fact that it didn’t take long until Mariana and Tesler’s youth—and likely the fact that they hadn’t spent the last several years drunk in one tavern or another—showed, and they both passed him. As they did, Dannen considered tripping them but decided that trying to do so would just as likely end up with him being the one to fall. He liked the young man and woman well enough, even though it seemed they had decided to join Fedder on his seemingly unending quest to see Dannen die in the most terrible way possible. But like or not, when it came to avoiding getting chewed on by a troll, a man could be forgiven for being a little selfish.

  Soon they were past and out of his reach at any rate, though, so he scowled at Fedder running beside him, his long legs doing, it appeared, what Dannen’s own did with half the work. “Still think it’s rude to leave?” Dannen demanded in a hoarse, breathless shout.

  “Maybe,” Fedder shouted back, “but I reckon there are worse things than being rude.”

  Dannen couldn’t disagree with that—after all, being chewed on by a hungry troll seemed quite a bit worse—and he decided he’d give the mage shit later, assuming there was a later. For now, he focused on ignoring the freezing cold wind whipping at him, cutting through his clothes like thousands of daggers, and just running.

  He wasn’t sure how long they ran—he’d never been able to keep track of time when running, for in his experience, the time that it felt like had elapsed, after about five minutes, was forever, and that never really changed. Instead, he was forced to measure the passage of minutes, of seconds, by his body’s protests.

  Panting like a dog? Check. Ten minutes. Who are you kidding? Two minutes, two minutes at most.

  Covered in sweat despite the cold, a sweat that only makes the cold worse? Check. Five minutes.

  And, of course, there was the stitch in his side, one that started small, like a hard poke of someone’s finger but one that increasingly grew until the poker wasn’t content to use his finger anymore but had grabbed a dagger instead. And five minutes or so after that, the asshole came with a battle axe.

  And then, as if the gods themselves were watching his suffering to their amusement and decided to see just how far they could push it, the path on which they ran led up a hill. Dannen tried not to look, instead studying the ground at his feet. Partly, this was because he wanted to make sure not to step on a piece of ice or loose stone but mostly it was because he thought that should he look up at the hill, he’d likely throw himself over the edge of the mountain just for a chance to rest.

  As he was beginning to think that he could run no more, troll or no troll, he risked a glance up the hill and saw that Tesler and Mariana had stopped at the top, not looking back at him and Fedder but instead beyond the hill at something Dannen couldn’t see. Dannen wanted to shout at them to keep going, but he simply didn’t have the breath. It took all his concentration, all his energy, just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, each shambling step he took up the hillside a small miracle, one he didn’t think would possibly happen until it did.

  In time, despite his growing belief that he would spend the rest of eternity running up the hill as some grand torture—one he likely deserved—he reached the top and came to a panting, gasping, wheezing stop beside the others. “We…need…to go,” he gasped. “The troll—”

  “Is gone,” Mariana said, smiling, and not the least bit out of breath, damn her. “Haven’t seen him for some time now.”

  Dannen frowned, glancing back in disbelief and was shocked to see that the woman was right. The troll was nowhere in sight on the hill, nor beyond it. “You mean…I ran…for no reason?”

  “Not for no reason,” the woman said, her smile changing to a definite smirk as she studied him. “Besides, the exercise might do you good.”

  Dannen considered drawing his knife and giving the woman a good stab, see how she liked that for exercise. The problem, of course, was that he didn’t have a knife. And that, even if he did, the woman would likely just beat the shit out of him with those rods she carried, and he didn’t care for a good ass-kicking on top of everything else. He settled for a scowl.

  “Butcher,” Fedder said, slightly more winded than the girl but not hanging on by a thread like Dannen, “might be you ought to take a look at this.”

  Dannen gave the scowl another second, let the girl know how he felt, then walked up to stand beside the Firemaker. He glanced in the direction the big man pointed and, in an instant, all of his anger vanished. In the near distance, no more than a couple of hundred feet away down the hill on which they stood, was a village, no doubt the village of Alberdine that the guard captain had told them about. “Thank the gods,” he breathed.

  “Well, sure,” Mariana said as she came to stand beside them, her voice thick with sarcasm, “them being such sports and all.”

  Dannen was usually the first in line to call the gods assholes—and meeting them had done nothing to change his opinion on that much—but just then, he didn’t care. All he cared about, all he could think about, was the village. The village that would have an inn, the inn that would have a warm, comfortable bed—though truth be told he’d settle for a lice-ridden stack of hay at this point. And, he was confident, the inn would also have ale. After all, what else did people living on an out of the way mountainside have to do besides drink? Probably, the drink was how they’d ended up settling in such a freezing, inhospitable area in the first place.

  Just a few seconds ago, he’d thought he couldn’t walk another foot, no matter the motivation. Now, though, he decided that he could after all, could at least walk a couple hundred. “Come on,” he said, not bothering to try to hide the grin that spread across his features, one shared by his companions, even Mariana. “Let’s go say hi.”

  ***

  As they drew closer to the village, Dannen’s good mood began to evaporate like mist at the sun’s coming. Partly, this was because there was a stone in his boot, one he couldn’t seem to dislodge no matter his efforts and which contrived to poke annoyingly at the middle of his foot. But there was something far more bothersome about the village itself.

  The buildings stood as they should, a nice path cutting into the village, one mercifully free of stones and, as he’d hoped, Dannen saw the sign of an inn on a building toward the village center. All good signs. The bad one, though, was that, as they drew closer, there was something obviously missing—namely, all the people.

  Normally, Dannen was fine without people as, in his experience, people had a ten
dency to make a man’s life miserable, trying to kill him at worst or, at best, being annoying. But this was different, and as they stepped inside the village proper with still no signs of life at all, he felt his dreams of ordering an ale from a friendly innkeeper and having a peaceful, long night’s sleep, fading along with his mood.

  Clothes were hung on lines to dry, and a few small, lazy drifts of smoke rose into the sky from chimneys, but of the people of Alberdine, there was no sign. The others obviously noted it too, for a quick glance showed that their own smiles had faded as they began to look around with confused, wary expressions. Dannen understood that well enough. The world was chock-full of surprises, that much was sure, but they were rarely good ones.

  “What are you thinking, Butcher?” Fedder asked, and Dannen didn’t like the way the man’s voice seemed to echo in the space, making it seem even more empty.

  “Maybe…” Tesler began in a hopeful tone, “maybe they’ve all gone out?”

  “Gone out to where?” Dannen asked.

  The man opened his mouth as if to answer then closed it again.

  “What do you think happened?” Mariana asked.

  Dannen examined the buildings nearest him, frowning. No signs of a fight or a struggle, but he began to note something else, too. He saw a few cracked pots, some clothes and even coins spilled here and there. He couldn’t know where the villagers of Alberdine had gone, but they’d packed in a hurry, that much was clear.

  “Come on,” Dannen said. “Let’s go to the inn. Might be they weren’t able to take the ale with them.”