The Lonely Troll

by Harpie Alexander

  Before she had the chance to stop herself, her hand drew up and she slapped the man across his face. His face turned to shock, then hatred and his cheek reddened instantly. It was a good hit.

  Serves him right.

  “Delilah!”

  The music stopped and Delilah felt everyone’s eyes on her. The grip on her shoulder lessened as she swung her neck toward the deafening voice that called her name. It was her father, who was descending the stairs from the second story. It was a private section designated for senior councilmen only. Not only did he appear enraged, but he was unbuckling his leather belt from his pants.

  He’s going to whip me...here...in front of everyone.

  Fear rippled through her body nearly crippling her, but she couldn’t go on like this. She refused. Her fate was inevitable. Either she would be forced to marry whoever picked her tonight, or if her father deemed the man in question was not worthy to be his son-in-law, he would hand her off to one of the older councilmen who needed a young, fresh bride. It wasn’t just a threat, it was her harsh reality.

  With her eyes wide on her father, Delilah took a step back.

  "Don’t you move one bit. It’s time you’ve learned your place in this town. Guards," her father ordered.

  Several men stalked toward her, but Delilah pushed her way through the crowd to avoid the humiliation her father had planned. He was one of the few descendants from the founding families, thus automatically a head councilman. He could punish her however he saw fit as was his right, and no one could stop him.

  Delilah kept her eyes on the only set of doors left unguarded. The servant’s corridors.

  As long as they don’t catch up to me I should be able to make it.

  With adrenaline rushing through her veins she raced through the doors and down the halls until she made it out to the fresh crisp air. Instead of heading straight into the street, she headed for the gardens hoping they would provide her cover.

  Delilah placed a shaky hand over her racing heart. She was in deep trouble and she knew it.

  "How dare you make a fool of me." Her father snatched a handful of her hair and yanked her toward the front.

  "Let go of me," she cried out. Pain rippled against her sensitive scalp. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this.

  "I’m never letting you go, daughter of mine," he spat, losing her head up to face the onlookers. "Citizens of Bethania, take a good look. A woman who doesn’t know her place shall be taught her place. My wife wasn’t an exception, and neither is my daughter."

  The crowd grew louder. Delilah grew more frightened. What had he meant that his wife wasn’t an exception? She had passed from the flu, hadn’t she? Her mother was a good woman, and despite what her father believed, Delilah knew she was a good person too. She didn’t deserve this. No woman did.

  She allowed her anger to take root, and for the first time in a long time, she refused to show her small voice to be swallowed by fear. "You’re insane. Ever since mother passed. You’ve been nothing but cruel!"

  "Don’t you talk back to me." He backhanded her with a free hand before holding up his belt. "Remember this?"

  She peered into his hateful eyes. There was nothing in them she recognized. Any love for her father had died the moment her mother did. She didn’t understand his resentment or his cruelty and she didn’t need to. She was done hiding. She was done being scared. She was done being his daughter.

  Delilah raised her hand and formed a fist before crushing it against his nose. He yelled in pain and released his home on her. She turned to run, but he grabbed hold of short of her fine dress. She fell to the ground. Her father leaned over her. He raised his arm ready to strike her again, but she lifted both her legs and knocked him back with a strong kick.

  The sound of air knocking from his lungs was she heard before the loud crack of him hitting the ground, hard.

  The sickening sound made her heart skip a beat. Everything went silent. She sat up and immediately looked at her father. A mixture of relief, worry, fear and horror washed over her at the sight of him. He lay motionless on the ground while a puddle of blood formed beneath him.

  What did he hit?

  Grabbing the sides of her temples, shock grabbed hold of her. She may have detested the man he became, but she never meant to truly hurt him, she just wanted him to leave her alone.

  Several men rushed to her father’s side. Some placed their hands on him checking for injury, while one cradled his head in their lap.

  "He’s dead," one proclaimed.

  “Oh no no no no,” she muttered beneath her frenzied breath.

  "Murderer.”

  One by one, people who were eagerly excited to watch her father dole out her punishment, changed their tune. Their postures were rigid, as if ready to attack. Their grim eyes only held accusations.

  Delilah scooted backward, her feet kept getting caught on the hem of her dress. "No! It was an accident. You saw…" her voice trembled. She wasn’t a murderer.

  "We saw you kill him," a man spoke out loud in anger. "This is punishable by death."

  People circled her. Chanting for her death. She didn’t know where she got the strength to move, but it was like the universe was on her side for the briefest of moments. Delilah made her way through the handsy crowd and ran faster than she ever had before while her mind fixated on three haunting words.

  Murderer.

  He’s dead.

  Chapter Seven

  Skarde

  “I cannot believe you brought one of them here,” Astur complained from the tunnel’s entrance, blocking the light with his bulky form while he tapped his black talons against the rocky surface of the cave’s wall. “Well?”

  Skarde snapped his head toward his friend who seemed overly interested, before glancing down at the shivering female. “I do not yet know if she will survive.”

  “Well if she is dependent on your healing skills, she’s as sure as dead.” He laughed.

  “I will not aid her.” Skarde grunted.

  “And yet you brought her here, and you sit at her side and cleanse her face. It seems you already have, my friend.”

  Skarde narrowed his eyes at his friend. He wasn’t aiding her...was he? “I simply wish to appease King Erike. Her death shall be quicker this way.”

  Astur waved his hand dismissively as if he hadn’t believed a word he said, then cocked his feathered head to the side. “Why bring her at all? You despise these creatures, and yet the first one you make contact with, you bring to your cave dwelling. Why?”

  “Not the first one,” Skarde replied, completely ignoring the questions being thrown at him. Dipping a small fur-lined cloth into a carved wooden bowl filled with fresh water, Skarde pondered the answers silently as he wrung out the cloth and wiped the female’s brow. Truthfully, he didn’t know why he carried her up the mountain like he had and brought her into his cave, or why he felt the need to care for her now. Sure, he didn’t want to let her die in that secluded area where nothing grew, but he could have easily just carried her anywhere else and waited for her to succumb to her death, or survive…and then take her life as he was supposed to.

  It appeared that his actions were just as strange and illogical as the past few days had been. He had yet to discover why the humans were here, if more would come, or why the prey on his mountain was becoming more and more scarce.

  “Semantics.” Astur shrugged his shoulders in nonchalance.

  “I thought you had plans to leave,” he deflected while dotting the cloth above the female’s brow before swiping it down along her cheeks, beneath her chin and finally above her breasts, cooling her fever and the sweat that came along with it. He hoped he would be finished with all this nonsense soon, he had much more important things that needed tending to.

  “You think I’d leave after spotting you carrying her all the way up a mountain? No, this is far too interesting to pass up. What is she to you anyway? Do you plan to mate with her?” Astur headed inside the cave and kneeled
next to Skarde and curiously regarded the female. He lifted a strand of her curly brown hair with a talon. “She’s very plain looking. And these filthy clothes…seem rather inefficient.” He grabbed a handful of the muddied peach colored fabric that was very wide and abundant at her feet and tapered around her waist. “So much material. ”

  Skarde batted Astur’s hand away from the female. “Enough. No, I do not plan to mate with her.” He paused, deeply disturbed at the idea. Mate with a human? The thought made him growl in disgust. Why would Astur think such a thing? He knew of his hatred for her kind.

  “She’s nothing to me. Do not mistake my hospitality as misplaced as it may appear. And as far as the clothes go, females probably wear it to keep the males away. I found two of them atop her after they managed to remove a good bit of her clothing. On top of what she wears, I found this.” Skarde held up a thin scrap of material shaped like a tube with one large hole the size of the female’s waist on one end, and an additional two smaller holes on the other. “What do you suppose this is?” He held the material out for the male to inspect.

  Astur took one look at the fabric, wrinkled his nose, then turned his face away as if offended. “Whatever it is, it smells of her. Even if she survives, I’m not sure she’s worthy of mating, especially with a scent like that.”

  Skarde ignored the comment, it was clear Astur had breeding on his mind. Furthermore, he was glad that Astur disliked her scent; had the Faulken claimed this female as his mate, the two would have fought to the death over her. And while Astur had a rather nasty injury on his wing, he believed the male would still win. It’s not that he didn’t believe in his own strength, but Astur was much older than him and had real battle experience beneath his wing.

  Anyway, he didn’t think the scent of her clothing or the female was that awful. When he first found her, sure, she smelled of a strong brew. Perhaps it was some kind of alcohol she had drunk or maybe humans bathed themselves in it. He wasn’t sure, but the pungent scent had worn off and underneath it lay an enticing, mouth-watering aroma of fresh berries. Skarde tucked the scrap of fabric back in his loincloth’s pocket, not wanting to lose it should she wake.

  Why does it matter? You will just kill her anyway.

  The female stiffened again. Her back arched up off the pile of furs Skarde laid her upon. “Not a…murderer. Accident,” she whimpered as a tear dribbled out from beneath her eyelid.

  “What does she speak of?” Astur turned his neck and faced him.

  Skarde’s brows furrowed tightly and he shrugged his shoulders. Truthfully, he had no idea and he strongly doubted it had anything to do with the males he found in the clearing with her. Based on the way she clung to him while he carried her, and her random mutterings, it seemed more than likely that while she fought off the effects of the venom, she was also suffering from vivid dreams that assaulted her mind.

  Skarde knew from personal experience there was no ale, or healing concoction that could erase plagues of the mind. While he was no expert as a healer despite his mother being one of several tribal healers, that never stopped him from trying to make a mixture of his own when he had a particularly nasty wound to heal. Over the years, he picked up a few tricks from trial and error, but the memories of his younger years were so far buried beneath the pain and suffering, they were hard to draw out.

  “Perhaps they were chasing after her. Now that I’ve had time to ponder about it, it makes sense. They all seemed to have been following her direction, and any of the others that traveled further up the mountain, has long since descended. Presumably because they lost sight of her,” Astur mentioned with a thoughtful look on his face.

  Skarde paused, cooling the sweat from her brow, wondering why they were chasing her to begin with. Leaning in, he said, “What have you done?” His eyes narrowed in suspicion, as if she would wake from her fever-induced sleep and attack him.

  He thought back to her words. Not a...murderer. Accident. Had she killed someone? It seemed a little far-fetched. She was so small. Even compared to the human males he found her with, she was at least a head shorter, and appeared to lack the strength to fend them off. Grabbing one of her small hands, he marvelled at the softness of her skin before he flipped her hand over several times.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Do these look like the hands of a murderer?” Skarde didn’t believe they were. They were soft, like she had never worked a day in her life. Looks can be deceiving...she may be weak, but she is human, and her kind was chasing after her for a reason. “Never mind.” Skarde dropped her hand, which fell beneath her breasts.

  Astur stood up. “Well, now that I have satisfied my curiosity, I will be on my way. If those humans are truly after this female, then it is likely that more will come. However, I’d prefer they didn’t make their way up here.”

  "Agreed," Skarde grunted as Astur waved goodbye and left the cave. His mood soured immediately. Was she really the reason the humans entered his domain? It was not only unforgivable but problematic. Astur was right. If they were after her, as long as she remained up here with him, they would most likely come after her.

  For a moment he considered traversing to the grasslands and leaving her there, but then decided it was a bad idea. If she somehow managed to pull through, then he’d be compromising his kind, especially given that she’d seen his face. If only he could count on her fever to assume it was a delusion of sorts.

  A hand reached up and clutched his arm for dear life. The female’s eyes were barely open, and her mouth was drawn tight in a grimace. “Thank you...for helping me,” she groaned with a sharp inhale, before her head lolled to the side and she passed out again.

  Everything in him stilled.

  She thanks me, yet I will be the one to take her life if she pulls through.

  Despite everything he knew, everything that he was taught, the small seed that sprouted in his mind from before that said she didn’t deserve to die, grew just a little bit larger. And that worried him.

  With hopes to clear his mind, Skarde stood up and headed further into the back of the cave to check on his hoard of supplies. There were several tunnels and other rooms of various heights and sizes. Essentially it was like a system of sorts and it suited Skarde perfectly. He could hide away during the winter months without worrying that someone or something would find him or his hoard of supplies.

  Upon arriving at his storage room, he counted what he had in stock. Several piles of dehydrated meat, a few bowls of nuts and seeds, one bowl of dried fruit and the most pathetic handful of fish tidbits he’s ever had in his life. In all honesty, given the unlucky few days he’s had at fishing recently, to have such a low reserve of fish was dangerous.

  He’d have to go out to hunt soon should he wish to replenish his stock in a reasonable amount of time, especially since he was so low on his much-needed varduush.

  Skarde sighed and rubbed his temples as he walked back to the main entrance. Strapping his spear to his back, he also checked to make sure he had his bone dagger. Stepping outside, he looked over his shoulder at the female. Certain she wasn’t waking anytime soon, he left his den to hunt, hoping his luck had changed.

  Chapter Eight

  Delilah

  She didn’t know exactly how long she lay with her hand cradling her head, but given how stiff her limbs were, she assumed it had been quite some time. Her body was undeniably sore, and not just from all the time she spent running, resting or the bruises that marred her skin. No, she was sure it had something to do with the fever-inducing snake bite. While she wasn’t entirely certain of the species based on the fever, chills, and convulsions, there was no other conclusion other than it was a venomous snake. And in all honesty, she wasn’t sure how she survived the bite.

  Clutching the side of her stomach, she sat up. The first thing she noticed was the pile of rather comfortable furs she laid upon, and immediately felt bad. They would require a good scrubbing after laying upon them for so long. Mud caked nearly her entire dres
s, and she was sure there was some in her hair as well from when she tumbled face-first into the wet earth. Delilah grazed her fingers across her face, thankfully not a single speck sullied her skin.

  She remembered the night she was bitten like it was only a moment ago. After running from whatever killed the junior councilmen, she had stumbled across an old sign. Her curiosity led her to the strangest of places, and as creepy as it had been, she was grateful for the shelter it provided from the elements. While it was still cold, at least she had a small reprieve to rest, that is, until she was bitten. As she laid in pain, she’d been certain she was going to die.

  Delilah closed her eyes and tried her darndest to remember the person who rescued her, but the only thing that came to mind was in her moment of desperation, she grasped their ankle and begged for help. Then much later, the feeling of being cradled in someone’s arms and the feeling of the damp cloth that swiped across her face and neck when her body was lit on fire.

  Giving up trying to access memories that eluded her, she reached for the large wooden cup that lay next to her. It was filled with cool, fresh water. She took a desperate sip to soothe the dryness of her throat. While she remembered her rescuer constantly wiping down the sweat on her face and neck, between her hellish nightmares, her rescuer probably thought she was too out of it to take any fluids.

  Next to the cup was a small bowl of dried out berries.

  “How thoughtful," she murmured, grabbing a small handful and ate them one by one, giving her stomach the chance to adjust to food.

  When she was finished, she decided it was time to get up. As sore and unwell as she was, the longer she was up, the better she started to feel. Besides, it wasn’t like she wasn’t used to it. Her father would whip her senseless some nights after working her to the bone, and then expected her to get up early the next day and do it all over again.

  "Hello," she called out. "I just wanted to thank you for saving me and taking care of me…the berries were delicious. I hope you don’t mind that I ate them all. "