For a moment, anger kindled in Torbjorn’s heart against his brother. But then, Storfjell sobbed again, and Torbjorn knew that worst of all those things was that Storfjell must have known how bad it would be. He must have known what he was doing to the clan when he’d burned the churns. His sobs were all the proof that Torbjorn needed of Storfjell’s sorrow.
“You did what you must, Brother,” said Torbjorn. He meant what he said. Storfjell had given them a way out. Had they stayed in the village, they would have been slaughtered. Now that they were far away, tasting the last of the butter, Storfjell’s tears crashing to the snow, Torbjorn knew that it was true. He knew that there had been no other way.
“Or I have traded a quick death for a slow and painful one,” sobbed Storfjell.
“There will be ways!” said Torbjorn. He did not know how, but their clan would learn to survive again. They would find a new livelihood. Yes, they were without churns or lands now, and their homes had all been burned, but Torbjorn vowed in his heart to find a way for his people to survive. They must.
Storfjell put his head on his knees. His bread was untouched.
Just then there was a faint moan from far away. Torbjorn turned toward the sound. It was a high sound, long and loud, like something was in pain. Then there was another moan much like it at the same time, but deeper and shorter. Torbjorn recognized it now.
“Bovines!” said Storfjell. He stood up, shook off his tears, and strode toward the moans. Torbjorn packed up what few morsels of bread remained and followed. He knew the sounds of their herd. Those were the moos of bovines in peril.
Storfjell left the packed path and plowed through the waist-deep snow in the direction of the moans. The snow was thick, like wading through mounds of cold, dry beans, and the going looked hard for Storfjell. They came up and over a small rise that blocked their view of the forest until they got to the other side.
They slid down the far side of the embankment, plowing huge cakes of snow with them as they went. At the bottom, they stopped to listen. The snow absorbed most of the sound, leaving the forest eerie and quiet. Then more moans from the east. They were louder. Torbjorn and Storfjell were getting close.
The two brothers turned and followed alongside a slight depression in the snow. Torbjorn had to lift his knee up straight out of the snow to pull his foot free with each step, so it was slow going. Something about the snow underneath was softer here; it made it feel like the ground was lying to him.
They slogged forward until they got to a set of pines growing tightly together. Torbjorn could hear the gurgling of water somewhere in the forest, though he couldn’t see any streams. The moaning grew more desperate. Now he was certain the bovines were in trouble; he urged Storfjell to hurry.
Past the pines, the ground fell away steeply. The snow had collapsed there, so that a ledge of snow was left overhanging a bare dirt cliff face about as high as Storfjell’s head. Roots grew out of the dirt and curled into the crisp thin air. At the foot of the dropoff was a stream that ran from underneath the deep banks of snow.
Torbjorn stood carefully behind his brother – he did not want the ground to collapse beneath him – and leaned out ever so slightly to get a better look. Down below, standing knee-deep in a cold mountain stream, were two bovines, shivering and wet, with steam rising off their backs.
They were milk-bovines: one a spotted brown, the other reddish. The reddish one was the very same Torbjorn had kissed on the forehead when he’d left the herd back in the valley of Smordal.
“The spotted one I believe is called Smakkerdette,” said Torbjorn. “And the red one is Melkhjert.”
Smakkerdette mooed pitifully; Torbjorn almost began to cry like Storfjell had. He swallowed his feelings; he was a warrior now, and there was no place in a warrior’s path for weakness, only action.
Without waiting for Storfjell, Torbjorn leapt down the embankment, skidding along the dirt to slow his fall. He managed to hit a spot of soggy ground next to the stream, where his feet sunk into the mud. The reddish milk-bovine looked at him sadly, her nostrils flaring.
Torbjorn had spent enough time with the herd to sense a bovine’s mood. “Poor, sad bovine,” he said, and patted her head softly. He stroked her ears, and she nuzzled her muzzle into his side.
The spotted brown bovine was pawing at the earth on the other side of the bank. The snow had collapsed there too, and there were big sheets of ice floating, up-ended, in the stream. “The snow here betrayed them, and they fell,” said Storfjell. The bovines must have strayed from the herd and been trapped there.
Torbjorn reached out to the spotted brown bovine. She was a strong, beautiful beast, with toned shoulders and haunches that flexed every time she pawed the stream, and dark eyelashes that were long and curled upward, like she’d been decorated for the village festivals Torbjorn had seen in Viksfjord.
“Here, push her up the bank, and we will set them both aright on their eight hooves again!” said Storfjell.
He wrapped his arms around the spotted brown Smakkerdette, set his feet as well as he could in the mud, then lifted. She was not like lifting a butterfly, but Torbjorn was a Smordaler, fed on the Nectar of Moo which came from the bovines who grazed in the crisp green clover of Smordal. Years of nourishment gave his incredible eight-foot frame great strength.
Smakkerdette’s hooves came out of the water. She was probably six boulders in weight. Torbjorn had lifted sheep before, and goats he could toss over the pond into the pasture to save himself the trip, but a bovine itself he had never hefted. She was heavy.
She mooed and then stuck out her tongue, but did not protest more.
He pulled Smakkerdette over to his side of the stream, and, bending at the knees, hunched himself lower so he could lift her from below her belly. He heaved her up above his shoulders to the ledge above him, and strained to hold her in place.
“Pull,” he said through gritted teeth. Storfjell hugged Smakkerdette around the middle, then hoisted her up the rest of the way and set her onto flat, snowy ground. She sank up to her shoulders.
Torbjorn leaned back against the dirt to catch his breath. His arms were throbbing with the exertion, and his neck was tight as a wound chord from clenching his jaw.
“Well done, Brother!” said Storfjell. “Now again!”
Torbjorn puffed. He was not sure he could. Storfjell should be the one below; he was the largest brother. Nevertheless, Torbjorn patted Melkhjert on the head, and whispered in her ear. “This is to save you, my glorious bovine,” he said.
She smelled his hand, then bit him gently.
“By the world!” cried Torbjorn. The bite did not hurt, but it was unexpected. He never thought of himself as being a succulent leaf of clover.
“This Melkhjert likes you!” said Storfjell.
“Hmph,” muttered Torbjorn. What a fine way to show it. He considered biting her back. Instead, he bent his knees and caught her around the ribs and lifted, just as he’d done before.
Melkhjert was even heavier than Smakkerdette. But Torbjorn had a better plan this time, and he leaned up against the ledge for support. It worked, and he was able to pass Melkhjert to Storfjell with only half as much trouble as before. She let out a long, breathy moo. Torbjorn felt a little like he was squeezing moos out of a goatskin flask. He almost laughed at the thought, but he could not spare the breath.
“Now, help me, Brother,” said Torbjorn. He reached his hand up and Storfjell grabbed his wrist. Storfjell pulled. Torbjorn kicked up the dirt, and scrambling, landed fairly easily with his top half in the snow on the ledge.
Melkhjert clamped the hem of his cloak in her mouth and pulled, as if to help Torbjorn up. He stood. “She is clever,” said Torbjorn.
“Perhaps the cleverest of all the herd, if you ask Mooverk,” said Storfjell.
“At least all of the clan does not banish us,” smiled Torbjorn.
“Yes, now we have friends,” said Storfjell. His eyes turned up at the corners. He was smiling inside.
/> Smakkerdette turned and mooed at them, nuzzling Storfjell’s woolen pants. “And of course we will not forget you,” said Torbjorn. It was somehow comforting, to have members of the herd with them. It felt in a little way like a piece of home. Two outcast brothers with two bovines that had strayed from the herd.
Storfjell led the two bovines back toward the path. The brothers kept Melkhjert and Smakkerdette behind them in single file while Storfjell broke through the snow. It was slow going. Smakkerdette’s legs sunk down like posts in the ground more than once, and she nearly landed on her chin twice. It made Torbjorn wonder how anything four-footed ever walked at all.
When they got back to the main path they rested. Torbjorn could hear the din of camp being set for the night above them on top of the granite cliff.
“Storfjell, it is our clan!” said Torbjorn.
“Aye,” said Storfjell.
There were commands coming from a strong voice – probably Mannkraft’s – and the stamping and mooing of cattle, and the felling of lumber. It was hard to hide an entire village of men, women and children as it moved through the forest, even with the snow buffering the sound.
“Perhaps we should take these bovines to them,” said Torbjorn.
Storfjell shook his head. “No. Not unless we were to do it in secret. The clan has spoken against us, and we would not kindle their wrath further.”
“Then we can make camp here tonight as well, at the base of this cliff,” said Torbjorn. He wondered if he’d ever see his family again.
“Yes, we will rise early and leave the bovines with the herd before our clan wakes.”
They used their knives to cut fresh boughs from the fir trees to lay on the cold snow. The boughs would help keep them dry as they huddled through the cold night.
And night was coming. The sun had already begun to dip toward the horizon and cast that grey spell of twilight. The trees and shadows mingled together as the colors faded. In a few hours, the sun would be gone, and night would swallow the forest.
The bovines stood nearby as they worked. It reminded Torbjorn of all the times they’d worked together in the fields.
All at once, Melkhjert’s tail stiffened and she turned on her hoof. She stared into a copse of trees in the forest downhill from where they stood. The mountain was divided there. A protruding vein of granite, no more than twice Torbjorn’s height jutted out of the ground all the way from the copse to the wide cliff where Storfjell and Torbjorn had made camp. Melkhjert mooed. This time it was a soft high-pitched moo that sounded like a warning.
“I do not speak the Bovine like Mooverk,” said Storfjell, “but I fear our hoofed companion is warning us.”
Smakkerdette stamped her feet like she was agitated about something as well. Just then, the boulders moved. It was difficult to tell in the grey light, but Torbjorn was almost certain that the trees moved with them. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. “What magic…?” he said.
Then the boulders moved again along the granite vein. He was certain this time. “Storfjell, there is something there.”
Storfjell nodded, raising his spear and pulling a small axe from his belt. Torbjorn unsheathed his knife.
They stepped back until they were hidden against the tree trunks, and shushed the bovines. Melkhjert and Smakkerdette got quiet. Something was amiss.
The rocks stopped moving, and the trees with them, and all went deadly silent. Then, two sets of glowing, burning-red coal eyes suddenly opened in the darkness. It was like staring into a furnace of melting heat and brimstone. It was the eyes of the trolls.
Chapter 12 — The Trolls
Torbjorn flattened himself up against the tree so hard, he nearly pressed himself into the bark. All hope he’d had that they’d outrun the danger snapped and shattered into fear. Warriors were one thing. He and Storfjell maybe could even fight half a dozen of them at a time. But these were trolls, and to face a troll was death.
“They must’ve climbed up the cliffs,” whispered Storfjell. “The men could not, but these creatures are born of rock and earth. Such is their kinship with it, that they have no fear of the precipice.”
“What will we do?” asked Torbjorn. It was a moment when he realized that he needed his brother, and for once, he was glad that he was not the oldest.
Storfjell held up his hand for silence. The two trolls scraped across the rocks like boulders tumbling slowly up the hill; in the waning light, it seemed that the granite itself was moving. Torbjorn might have believed his eyes were fooling him, had not the trolls opened their own burning eyes, which glowed in the twilight and spoke of red-hot Muspelheim, the Fire Realm itself.
The rocks led to the wide cliff, a direct and clear path to the camp above their heads.
“Our clan. Do the trolls know they are there?” whispered Torbjorn.
“I think not yet,” said Storfjell. “They wander, tasting the rock for signs, but they do not know how close they have come.”
Torbjorn thought of Father, Mother, and his sisters above. They would be caught by surprise. Mannkraft would surely fight the troll and be slain. “We cannot let them get to the camp, Brother,” said Torbjorn. “We must fight them first.”
“Torbjorn, you and I, great men of Smordal could not defeat even one troll. To battle a pair of them is folly,” said Storfjell.
Torbjorn felt fear grow up his back and choke his neck. Courage, like your fathers have, he thought. “Then we will lead them away. If they taste rock and stone, then we will give them our scent to follow through the forests, and we will lead them to forgotten paths.”
Storfjell looked Torbjorn in the eyes with his silvery bushy eyebrows furrowed and clenched. “Should we go down that path, we may not return,” Storfjell said.
If we do not, thought Torbjorn, they will sing songs of our deed. But they would return. They had to.
Storfjell’s face went soft. He hooked his axe on his belt, and threw down his spear. He tightened his cloak, bent low, and with a huff heaved Smakkerdette over his shoulders like a sack of grain, her front legs dangling over his right shoulder and her hind legs over his left. He held tightly to her ankles.
It looked almost comical to Torbjorn, to see a bovine on his brother like that, with her udder dangling on his chest like a bouncy sack.
“We cannot leave these behind, or the trolls will slay them,” said Storfjell.
Torbjorn nodded. He too crouched down and heaved Melkhjert over his shoulders the same way. She was heavy, and pressed him into the snow. It would make walking hard, but he would have to manage.
Storfjell picked up a rock as big as his fist, and curled his arm back. “Get ready,” he said. He heaved the rock up in a long arc toward the trolls.
Torbjorn watched it curve downward then smash into the stone right between the two monsters.
Both troll heads snapped around and looked straight at Torbjorn and Storfjell with glowing red brimstone eyes that seemed to pour fire out of them. The trolls’ mouths peeled back and opened, hissing and rasping with a loud, threatening growl that echoed through the forest.
“Fiends of stone!” cried Storfjell. He turned to Torbjorn. “Run!” he said.
Torbjorn had already started. He pushed off the snow, and darted to the southeast, somewhere between the beaten path and the depression in the stream where they’d saved the bovines. He wanted to make sure they stayed far enough off the path that led to the clan. They would have to run through the fresh snow.
He plowed through the drifts, pushing aside barrelfuls of snow with his thighs at each step. Melkhjert bobbed up and down on his back, her ribs and hips jamming into his shoulders as he ran. Not fast enough, thought Torbjorn. He could feel Storfjell right behind him. And behind his brother? The trolls were certain to be there, with grasping claws and chomping jaws. He charged harder still through the snow into an opening between the trees.
The forest was filled with deep, guttural growls and the sound of splintering wood behind them. There was no doubt – the trolls w
ere giving chase. Torbjorn chanced a look back.
A stone’s throw behind his brother the fir trees quaked, shivering from their trunks up their branches and into their needles, until with one great crack the foremost tree splintered to pieces and fell as the trolls smashed it aside.
And there they roared.
For the first time, in the waning twilight, Torbjorn could see under the open sky just how monstrous they really were. The troll in front was a dark grey rock color. Matted, deep green pine needles stuck out of his rocky back – the perfect camouflage in the forest. The one behind was slightly smaller – though still enormous – his rock-skin light brown and dotted with tiny flecks of muted red.
“Run!” cried Torbjorn, doubling his pace.
He turned and plowed forward in the snow, away from the trolls and deeper into the forest. The needles on the trees clawed at his face and tangled in his beard as he charged onward. His back began to feel hot, and his skin roasted under his furs so that he could not wait for the sweat to come.
He and Storfjell ran on, minute after minute, Torbjorn trying to breathe at a steady pace, trying to resist the urge to stop and walk. Torbjorn chanced another glance back while he ran – this time, he could not see them, though he could still hear their roars in the distance behind them.
He whipped past the trees, and out into another clearing. For the moment, there were no trolls in sight. Torbjorn was beginning to feel tired; he could feel himself getting slower.
His next step broke through the packed layer and went deep into the airy snow beneath. He lost his balance, tipping sideways and nearly dropping Melkhjert.
Melkhjert mooed softly. It was a tender moo, almost like she was urging him onward.
“I’ll lead. Come, Brother,” said Storfjell, and passed him by, breaking into the snow and forging a path ahead of him.
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