"What're we supposed to do?" Grump closed his eyes and lifted his chin, breaths wheezing in and out his nostrils. Each heartbeat was the Hunger calling. Each thought a murderous mural of blood and bone. "My goats. Patches. He's sick ... weak ... can't defend ... the humans ... they destroy ... they kill...." His voice deepened into a low, vicious growl. "They take what's mine...mine...MINE...."
Boil shuffled back, a nervous knob sliding down his throat. "Grump? Your arms are all, ah, veiny and, um, lumpy. Take a deep breath. Don't, ah, don't let that famous troll—"
"Shut up, goblin," Grump snarled.
Boil's pointed ears drooped. He edged back until the ferns curtained over his frame. "Grump...."
The world became a red veil. His tomatoes burned. His carrots simmered. His onions blackened. His coriander turned to ash, all at the hands of these cursed fair folk.
"They take everything from me. Always, they take everything." Grump's lips contorted. His arms shook. "They will pay tonight."
Grump spun around. Boil squealed, grabbing his leg. "Grump, the girl! You'll hurt Rose."
His Hunger hissed and faded like a bonfire in a rainstorm, but it refused to die. He reached into his pocket and pulled the infant from it, swiveling to Boil. "Watch her. Do not move or I will hunt you next. I swear on every star in the sky, I will break and bleed you if you so much as think about disobeying."
Boil wrapped his arms around the little girl and pulled her beneath the ferns. "I promise I won't go anywhere," he whispered, his eyes still wide and ears practically touching his shoulders they drooped so far.
Grump twisted around and gripped his shovel in both hands. Its wood was a calming force. The Hunger had abated, if only for a moment. With a single quick nod to himself, Grump burst around the tree and barreled into the flames.
So many years spent tending his beautiful patch, so many nights watching his world grow, and now all of it shriveled and blackened against the raging heat of the fire spreading through the manicured rows. Scorched and shriveled tomatoes fell from twisting vines. Leaves simmered and twisted. The fire consumed everything. Everything.
Beyond the vegetables, his flowers burned. He planted the shovel's blade into the earth and leaned on its handle. "I did nothing to them. I did nothing! Why? I've killed no one, insulted no one, stolen from no one." He trembled on the handle, pressing its wood against its brow. "I cared for this place, and it cared for me. Why couldn't they just leave me alone?"
Smoke and heat choked the air and stung his eyes. Tears came to his lids. One fell onto the earth and disappeared in the soil. The tears dried as his thoughts darkened. His restless Hunger came to a frothing boil.
“Kill the men,” it sang. “Rip them to shreds. Let their blood douse these flames while their screams douse your rage.” He would smile at their corpses, laugh as he mixed their bones into his stew and danced around their fire.
"No. No! The goats, you fool. Save the goats!" Grump smacked the heel of his palm against his temple and shook his head. He lurched into the inferno and heaved a smoky breath that singed his lungs, but he ignored the pain.
Flames licked his skin, and it peeled back and blistered at their hot kiss. He fought through the torching agony, trying his best not to stop at every bushel and blossom to pound away the flames. More important things waited. Six very important things, trapped in a pen.
With a single great leap, he tore through a wall of fire and smashed onto the ground. Tongues of flame lingered on his shoulders and caressed his head, but they faded in trails of smoke behind him.
Grump shot straight up and twisted around, brandishing the shovel like a mighty broadsword. The familiar pen waited just before him, its fence cracked and broken and not a single goat within it. Along the great sloping wall of the first mountains of the Granite Ridge, the mouth of his cave lay bare.
"I never closed it," he said. "I always close it!"
But he knew he hadn't. He remembered sauntering from the cave after Boil's surprisingly rich stew and greeting his garden in the fresh night. Talking to the goblin had distracted him, put him off balance. Now look what chaos it brought.
"Patches?" he called.
Only the crackling fire responded. He sniffed the air for a sign, but the smoke stole every beautiful aroma he knew. His gaze swept over the destruction. He wrung the shovel in one hand and scratched the scar ribboned over his chest with the other.
Years ago, he stumbled onto this tiny sanctuary wedged between two hostile lands, nothing but grass and wild shrubs and stubborn soils. Long nights he spent, knees buried in the dirt, digging trenches, carefully planting seeds in the earth and laughing as the first sprouts snaked their way into the fresh air. He hadn't had the courage to raid the human farmlands for goats yet, but soon the winter came and when the nights were long he took the risk. He still remembered coming back with his first one, how her hooves had kicked and bruised his ribs. She bleated the whole night until he fed her. After that, they were fast friends.
"Ash," Grump moaned. "Now it's all ash."
Fire snaking up a redwood tore him from his thoughts. One of its branches popped and fell, collapsing in a plume of spark and ash.
"Grump!" Boil's frantic shout drifted through the flame.
He gave one last, longing look at his cave. All his thimbleweed stores were in there. He had maybe a pipe's worth on him, but nothing more.
"Grump! Please!"
He clenched his teeth and turned away from the cave, plowing through the fire, eyes locked onto the tree where he left the infant and the goblin. "I'm coming! Hold tight!"
Another branch came crashing down. Embers bit like a thousand bees against his cheek and blistered shoulder. Inky smoke filled his lungs, and his vision faded. He reached out. His hand found the redwood trunk.
Grump swung around and dove beneath the smoke.
"Boil?" He coughed and slapped at the noxious air. "Boil!"
The goblin appeared through the ferns, struggling to keep Rose in his short arms. "I heard men coming. It's gotta be the blackthorns! We've got to get out of here. There's a path through the mountains not far up the cliffs. If you can get us there, I can get us to the peaks where they can't follow!"
"How do you know where all these paths are?"
Boil thrust Rose in Grump's arms. "I'll explain later." He swung onto Grump's good shoulder and pointed to the imposing, craggy slope. "Now go!"
"I’ll kill these humans for what they've done." Grump took a heavy step toward the forest. "Slaughter them."
"Stop letting your ... you-ness get to you. Think! You want to go face a bunch of steel-bearing men who set this trap? Maybe take a few out over what, a garden?"
"It wasn't just a garden. It was more than that!" Grump whirled around and slammed his fist into the redwood. Bark exploded around his hand and gashed his knuckles.
Boil's face paled for a moment. Then, it twisted in a snarl that flashed his pointed teeth. "It was just a stupid garden and you're just being a stupid troll! You want to go rushing off into the woods and leave me and Rose here, fine. I hope it feels good to kill a bunch of stupid humans for burning your plants. Just know that you going off to die kills us, too. I can't take her through the forest and I can't drag her up the mountain. They'll kill you, kill me, and then they'll take Rose. And when you're dead, there'll be nobody left who remembered the troll and his stupid garden!"
Grump's knuckles cracked as he squeezed his shovel. Boil lifted his chin defiantly. "What? Gonna kill me before you go get yourself killed? Fine. I've got nothing left if I can't get Rose back to the wizard anyway. Might as well bash my skull with that shovel so I don't have to face the flames. You know you want to. So just ... just get it over with."
Grump huffed and snarled. He ripped the shovel from the trunk and turned to the Russet Woods. His enemies waited out there. Vengeance waited out there. So did death. Then, he turned from it. "Rose needs me, doesn't she?"
"Yes, she does. I need you too."
"I don't
care about you. Rose needs me."
"Rude. Well, you'll need me to get to the wizard, so you might as well accept the fact that you and I are a team. Only I can take you through the old kingdoms. Only I've been to the Grand Mountain."
"Unfortunately." Grump looked toward the imposing peaks. "You really know the way through the Ridge?"
"There are many forgotten roads through it. I didn't want to take this one, but I don't think we've got a choice. There're things up there. Things greenskins and fair folk fear."
"I hear them sometimes, howling." Grump stared at the dark spears tearing the twinkling sky. "Hungry."
"Maybe it won't be so bad. The stories...."
"Are true enough if the humans won't go near the slopes." He exhaled through his nose and looked square at Boil. "And you swear to me this wizard will grant me a wish?"
Boil nodded and slapped his chest. "On my honor as a greenskin."
"Goblins have honor?"
Grump was sure Boil had a smart remark, but he didn't wait to hear it. In one smooth motion, he turned his shovel upside down and slid the handle through the loop sewn into the back of his overalls. He slipped Rose into his chest pocket and bounded toward the mountain as the fire raged, flames igniting the canopy and lighting the forest like a sunrise. Boil wrapped his arms around Grump's neck and hacked through the smoke. Grump shielded Rose with an arm so the heat blazed against his flesh and not the child's.
Tears wet his cheeks. The smoke blackened his vision more than a starless night. He flew blindly toward the slope, feet pounding, knees aching. Each breath came harder than the last. His heartbeat thundered in his ears like the furious war drums he remembered from the swamp.
No, I will not think of them. Grump squeezed his eyes shut. Never think of them.
He roared and vaulted into the air, bursting through a wall of smoke and landing on rocky earth sloping upward like a blanched tabletop shattered and upturned after a drunken brawl. He ran more on instinct than anything, sharp rocks slicing into his bare feet.
Up and up he climbed. Treacherous stones tumbled down the slope. He fell more than once and gashed his knees and cut his palms until they were slick, bloody messes.
Boil leaned to Grump's ear. "Stop here for a second and rest. We're above the fire now and out of human reach."
Grump halted on a precarious ledge jutting high over his ruined home. Clean winds whistled around him, chilling his sweat and cooling his burns. The moon watched from just above a summit, illuminating a thin cloud shaped like a tuft of the coriander he loved.
"We made it, Grump." Boil slapped the back of Grump's neck. "I knew you could do it."
"Don't hit me, annoying little goblin." He peeled Boil off his back like a swimmer might remove a leech and tossed the greenskin to the rock.
Boil landed spryly on the ledge and wiped ash from his singed and smoking clothes. "I don't get why you've got to be such a downer all the time. I'm never mean to you. I cooked you breakfast even."
"Yes, well you and your little adventure just cost me everything I loved, so pardon if I don't treat you like royalty. You're lucky I didn't smash you. I'm sure it would've made this journey more pleasurable and safer in the long run."
"Oh, well thank you, kind Grump! You're so very kind for a—"
"Troll!"
The word echoed up the mountain and stole the relief soothing Grump's muscles. The Hunger woke. Grump swung around, clenching his shovel as he peered down at the flames.
Below, a figure stood at the edge of his garden, a human by his frame. A cloak masked most of the figure, but the hood thrown back over his shoulders revealed the man's face in the simmering firelight.
The human flashed the white wall of his teeth in a snarl as he jabbed a finger at Grump. "Monster!"
"Did you burn my garden?" Grump roared.
"Give her to me, abomination!" he replied.
A pang of rage slapped Grump's heart. "My garden! Are you the blackthorn who burnt it?"
"Yes, I burnt it, but I'm no cowardly assassin, you raging beast! Troll, come down and face me. Let me show you what true Hunger is like. Or are you a coward?" The stranger thrust his arms wide. His cloak flapped, a steel breastplate momentarily glinting beneath the folds. "Trolls don't run, they fight. Come fight me then!"
"I am not a monster," Grump growled.
"No, you aren't," Boil said. "They're the monsters here. We don't burn forests just to giggle at the flames. Let's go, Grump. The humans can't follow us this way. They'll have to take a longer, safer road, if they can take one at all."
"What is he if he's no blackthorn?"
"Part of the Order by the look of it. They're a different kind of bad and no friends of ours. I'll fill you in when we get some distance between us and you find a safe place for sunrise."
"Do you see his face? My eyes still sting from the fire. Tell me what he looks like."
"Why does it matter?" Boil asked. "I see him well enough."
"I just saved your life, that's why." Grump plucked the goblin up by his shirt collar and thrust him over the ledge. "Go. Describe."
The greenskin muttered something under his breath, dangling over the precipice. "He's a tall fellow with hair like dry grass that he ties back. Stands like he's worth something. Ugly, but then again all humans are. Bright eyes, but they're angry. He's got a beard a dwarf would laugh at, but I think it's decent for a human."
"Something more. I need something more. How would I find him in a crowd?"
"Looks like he has a scar that splits his right—no left—eyebrow." Boil leaned forward, squinting down the slope. "From a fierce battle probably. Yeah, it definitely is. Scars are so unbecoming on fair folk."
"Light human hair tied back and a beard to match, arrogant, and a scar on his left eyebrow?"
"Yup. He's got two swords, too. Odd thing for a human in armor. They typically favor shields when they go to war."
"Because he's not going to war. He's going hunting. Thank you, Boil. Now let's get out of here." He turned from his home, closing his eyes and imagining the garden he loved and not the one he ruined below.
"I will never have peace in Oya. She was right," he sighed.
"Well?" the hunter screamed. "Come at me, troll!"
Grump glanced behind him. "We're not done, human. This was my garden, my home, and you took it from me. I will take the life from you in turn."
He faced the human, pulling Rose from his pocket and holding her high. "Once I have the child safely beyond your reach forever, that is."
"You've made a grave mistake," the hunter said. "I will hunt you through all the lands of Oya. I will track you day and night. No cave will offer you quarters, no shadow safety. I will find you before you reach your horde, and I will take back what's rightfully ours."
"Rightfully yours?" Grump snorted and flashed a smile. "She is mine now. Mine. If she was yours once, then I'm glad to take her from you. You will never have her back."
"You fool. You are an utter fool."
"And yet I stand beyond your reach. Until we meet again," Grump called.
The man backed into the smoke, his eyes never straying from him. The bellowing black swallowed the human, leaving Grump and Boil alone.
"Let's go, then," Grump said, tossing Boil onto his shoulder.
Together, they scaled the slope into the Ridge. They had a long way to go before they would find shelter from the dawn. Grump patted his chest pocket, feeling the comforting weight of Rose resting snug in the fabric. He would need to fashion a more suitable satchel to carry her, perhaps something from the tough grasses on the mountain woven together and slung over his shoulder or behind his back.
Tomorrow, he would make the satchel. Tonight, he needed safety from the sunrise and a moment of peace.
Grump only had enough for one good bowl of thimbleweed. His mouth watered at the thought of a good puff, but smoking with the ruins of his life behind him felt wrong on so many levels. He'd save the stuff for a happier day. Perhaps the day he go
t his wish.
"I'm sorry about your garden and your goats," Boil said.
"Me too, Boil. Me too."
"But you know those goats aren't dead. Humans don't kill things like that willy-nilly. Just each other. More likely they just—"
"Please be quiet. For a little while."
The goblin nodded, and they climbed the rest of the night without another word between them. Grump repeated Boil's description of the hunter over and over. It dulled the pain of that night, and let him focus on what waited ahead. He would never forget that man. One day, when their adventure came to a close and the wizard granted his wish, Grump would find that human, and he would kill him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Whistle and the Wind
Mists in the granite ridge came whipping from all directions like cool tongues lashing on Grump's cheeks. The jagged, unyielding rocks kept the trees from growing higher than his knees. Tough grasses and thorny weeds sprouted from boulders sharp as swords, lashing his shins as he slowly ascended the mountain.
"Like a scar down a giant's back, the Granite Ridge splits Oya in East and West, old and new," Boil said.
Grump adjusted Rose's bag over his chest. Over the past few days of their torturous climb, Grump had spent what little time he had weaving a satchel from the grass and root. The little girl slept comfortably within it, nestled against his ribs. She was a ball of pulsing warmth that brought some comfort and eased the pain of losing everything he'd come to love.
"We should be nearing the peaks soon," Grump huffed. He tripped on a boulder and sent it crashing down the slope. It disappeared through a layer of fog, thunking and clunking into a soupy oblivion.
"Can't you be any quieter?" Boil asked, his ruby eyes darting up the slope.
"I'm as quiet as a troll can be in these damned mountains. We're made for forests and trees, not rocks and ... rocks. Maybe you'd like to carry me and Rose for a while and see how much like a feather you fall?"
"No, no, you're the muscle, remember? I'm the brains."
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