by Jon Wilson
the old man’s eye. He looked at the girl
standing next to him.
Polefe was his own age, and years
before they had been fast friends. She was
tall and lanky, with no chest to speak of and a
careless, striding walk. Her face was pretty
but not in any particularly feminine manner.
Her nose was long and her chin abrupt. She
had dull, chestnut hair, cut short and lying flat.
Holt had never imagined marrying anyone, but
at least here was someone he did not loathe. They waited until almost all the men had
gone, and then walked slowly back through
the gates. Neither spoke until they were well
within the square. Polefe scanned the village,
gazing attentively at the thatched roofs and
the dirty walls, the broken fences and the
muddy walks.
“What did you say to the Danann man?”
She did not look at him when she spoke. Holt considered. He no doubt had Gabin
to thank for everyone sharing the knowledge
that he had gone into the shed behind the
stables. But what could he say? They would
not believe the truth any more than they could
believe their filthy imaginations. “I asked him if
he thought more trolls would come.”
She turned a terrified look on him. “What
did he say?”
Holt shrugged. “The same as Gar. It’s
been a long winter.”
He left her and returned home.
His aunt and mother were still working in
the kitchen. His brother sat in the corner
herding a slothful corn beetle. His father was
just finishing up washing in a bowl near the
door. He instructed Holt to do the same, there
was no telling what filth those trolls had
brought down from the mountains with them. As Holt splashed the tepid water on his
face, he heard his father say to his mother,
“We’d better offer something to eat to that
man.”
But his aunt piped up excitedly, “Why,
the ranger’s gone. Left right before midday.
Not a word to anyone.”
His father muttered something about
foolishness and not waiting for the new day,
but it was plain they were just as happy to
have the Hyr-Danann gone.
Holt finished up washing and left the
room, his mother’s voice trailing after him,
“Don’t forget to wipe your face! You’ll catch
your death leaving it wet like that!”
Tearing off his outer vestments, he
mounted the ladder to the loft he shared with
Gabin and plunged headlong into the
blankets. He buried his head, stuffing his
mouth full of the quilts as the sobs fought to
break free once again.
Chapter 3 When Holt awoke it was very dark, and he lay for a moment disoriented. He had been dreaming of the trolls and fancied he could as yet hear their death knells reverberating through his brain.
And then he heard a real scream—a fresh, terrified, human scream. He struggled from his bed, descending the ladder in one bound. More sounds met him as he stumbled through the dark, gathering his coat and boots: men yelling, children crying. They floated, detached and confusing, echoing through his house. Just before he reached the kitchen, he was struck by the feeling that he was alone in the dwelling. His brother, certainly, had not been in his bed.
As he ran into the kitchen, the first thing he noticed was the open door, swaying eerily on its hinges. A strange light played upon the threshold, a dancing, golden glimmer that was at once familiar and repellent. He slowed, crossing uneasily to the doorway, and looked outside.
The world was ablaze. The stables, the great hall, dozens of homes and storehouses, all were engulfed in roaring flames. Holt fell out into the yard, unable to believe his eyes. The night was glowing as if the sun had reappeared, steeped in blood. People ran to and fro—at first, he thought, to combat the flames, but then he saw they were not alone. Other things were out there as well.
Some he recognized immediately as trolls, others were not so familiar. Small, twisted figures danced around the flames. Some wielded clubs, others carried sharpened spears and knives. A cry brought his attention to the yard beside his house. His aunt Dela struggled, screaming beneath a tiny black shape that straddled her back, hacking savagely away with a sharpened stone.
He started instinctively toward her, only to be brought up suddenly by another sound nearer at hand. He turned to find himself faceto-face with one of the horrible creatures. Crouched on the fence beside him, it looked like some hideously deformed child: furry, gray, with long, sharpened canines and blind, tenebrous eyes.
Holt froze, unable to decipher the tumultuous thoughts of terror and revulsion that flooded his brain. He stood, helpless as the thing hissed and sprung.
The force of the attack carried Holt over onto the ground with the creature latched firmly to his chest. The wind driven from his lungs, he lay gasping for air. The monster slowly lifted its fist and Holt saw the wicked blade glimmering in the orange light. His eyes grew wide, even as his mouth stretched to voice a scream he had no breath to articulate.
And abruptly the monster was gone, knocked aside in a flurry of movement that further served to disorient Holt. He looked up just as his mother’s hand appeared, clutching hold of the scruff of his neck. She hauled him to his feet, tugging him along across the yard.
He did not look around, so difficult was it simply keeping pace with her. Something was banging against him as he ran—his brother Gabin, clutched tightly beneath his mother’s arm. The younger boy’s face was limp and ashen, his eyes dark. Looking closer, Holt discerned the small body was drenched in blood.
Holt felt the urge to retch. Too many things—the fires, the smoke, the stench and the screams—overwhelmed his senses. He could not focus on anything except his brother’s lifeless form. His feet tripped him up again and again. Only his mother’s maniacal grip kept him upright. He skidded and danced like a drunken puppet until they abruptly stopped and he struggled to peer around Gabin’s head.
They were surrounded. Directly before them a troll blocked their path, wielding a long, thin spear. To the left and right were two of the smaller creatures, each with a weapon of its own. For the first time Holt became aware of the plank his mother was carrying. It was splashed with blood and fur, and Holt wondered how many other horrors she had encountered before rescuing him. Still, it looked ridiculously inadequate in the face of their current dilemma.
The troll barked, feinting with its spear. Abruptly Holt’s mother lunged to the right, swinging her board. The small creature evaded the attack with a malicious giggle, and the woman broke to the left, hoping to squeeze herself and her sons between the two monsters. With a gasp she came up short, and Holt felt the hand leave his collar. His mother sank to her knees clutching the shaft of the spear that was lodged in her belly as he watched in stunned silence.
Gabin’s body fell to the ground and was immediately set upon by one of the small monsters. Holt’s mother reached out to grasp the dead boy’s foot, slouching herself to lie lifeless in the snow. Holt had no time to react before the troll leapt forward, knocking him backward with a swing of its powerful arm.
He rolled across the frozen ground, landing in a heap against a small bank of snow. His mind reeled from the blow, flashing with stars and explosions and the image of his mother dying. He lay there, waiting for the monsters to finish him off, feeling dead already.
Chapter 4 Sitting in the white room, on the icy throne, he surveyed the carnage. A cold wind howled around him, an incorporeal minister of war, heralding the casualties and blood
letting. Time and again the dismembered corpses would rise through the floor and melt away, staining the ice pink, but he trembled neither from cold nor fear. No tear escaped his eye. No cry sundered his lips. He wore a pallid mask; it clung tightly to his face. And it spared him these human frailties. Through it, finally, he could bear to see clearly.
After a time, the pieces became jumbled, the arm of a troll might thrust out from beneath the eviscerated torso of Lotte Johns or the head of the butcher roll down beside the feet of his sprawling aunt, until at last they stacked themselves in a steaming mound at his feet, radiating like fire, losing their heat to the utter chill of the room. He wanted to lower himself into them, bathing himself in the fading warmth of their blood and reversing what he already felt happening to himself—what he knew was happening too quickly because it had festered so long. They climbed toward him, layer upon layer of burnt offering, and he saw them as if they were his last hope of redemption. But he also knew it was too late for him, and too late for them— what warmth remained within them spread as thin as their blood upon the snow. And his own flickering heat was trapped tightly behind the cold mask, crystallizing like the tears in his eyes, burning like the screams that seemed to meet his unrelenting lips and retreat, scorching their way back down through his lungs in search of his soul.
He lifted his head suddenly, gasping for air. He lay at the edge of the yard, his hands buried in the snowdrift. He blinked the remaining flakes of ice from his eyelids. He wondered, without stopping to consider it, how much longer he might have needed to lie there before he would have suffocated. Then he pushed himself higher still and scanned the yard.
They must have thought him dead, because the monsters had moved on. Noises unlike anything heard in his worst nightmares filled the night, and clouds of smoke billowed above him glowing like boiling amber. Out of the corner of his eye he spied two shapes a short distance away, black as coal against the ice. He blinked once more and climbed first to his hands and knees and then to his feet, staggering in the opposite direction, toward the screams and the fire.
The ground itself seemed intent upon fighting him. He stumbled time and again, occasionally striking a knee upon the frozen dirt. Figures sped by him, on either side as he kept purposely in the open, fearing the shadows along the walls and windows. Most were engaged but otherwise indistinguishable. He saw two men hacking away at a fallen troll, wielding their axes with maniacal indiscretion. He saw a woman he thought he must know, but whose face was a twisted mask of terror, rush by him dragging a screaming child. He saw other villagers, far more of these than anything else, falling prey to their monstrous attackers, dying helplessly in the streets, screaming.
He wondered at the screams. What were they yelling for? Was it mercy? Could you plead mercy to a monster that did not speak your language, to whom, in fact, the idea of mercy might be utterly alien? Or were they calling for help? And help from whom? As likely the person nearest them had fallen already, his own cries unanswered too long. Or was this simply the sound of death? Holt had seen a woman die once, an old woman, but she had been asleep, and had only stopped her labored breathing. She had not screamed. No, these were more like the cries he had heard another woman utter. This woman he had not seen, but her voice carried through the shuttered windows and made the men grumble who were gathered there, waiting to see the baby.
“Holt!” The word echoed around his addled skull, and he thought he had once known what it meant. Suddenly a hand gripped his shoulder. He allowed himself to be turned, peering languidly up into the terrified eyes that confronted him.
Someone else was crying, bawling like Holt had wanted to bawl only hours before. He looked down at the girl and pitied her lack of blankets. The hand on his shoulder tugged at him. A command barked in his ear. “Come!” The little girl was hauled along as well.
“Where?” There was another voice, strained though unmistakably adult. Holt did not bother to search the glistering darkness for a face with which to match the sound. They were all strangers to him now. Had they, in fact, ever been otherwise?
“The livery,” the voice of the man pulling Holt replied.
“No, it’s gone!” the other voice told
them. “There’s families in the hall.”
“You’re insane. We can’t fight them.”
The man seemed to be shaking his head
violently, forcing his bulging eyes to take in
the scene around him. “The cellar at Fitts’.”
They began moving again. “There’s food
there. We can lock ourselves in.”
“We’ll burn!”
But apparently it was decided, and for a
moment Holt was allowed to again ponder the
screams. Finally a shadow fell over his face,
and he found himself being hauled through a
doorway. At once he began to struggle. He
heard his own lips uttering incoherencies. “Holt, stop!” The man attempted to
adjust his hold, to secure a tighter grasp of Holt’s collar. That was all Holt needed to
make good his escape.
Dashing back out through the doorway,
he did not turn when the man shouted after
him. He did not slow even though he could
sense he was not pursued. He would not go
into the shadows. He would not let himself be
closed in, trapped. He ran along the wide
thoroughfare that opened onto the square,
gravitating toward the larger, blinding beacon
like a moth to the flame.
It was the great hall that burned so
brightly. From the looks of the corpses
outside the wide doors, it appeared some
sort of stand had taken place there. Holt’s
gaze followed the line of broken bodies, only
just aware that nearly none were human. The
trail led north, across the edge of the square
to the cluster of small storehouses on the
west side of town. There, a monumental
struggle as yet seemed in progress; the
sounds from that direction were different. He could see a line of trolls, perhaps a half dozen, their furry backs to him, shoulders hunched. They faced one storehouse door, a tiny, inconspicuous, stone-walled structure built into the ridge which formed the natural
wall protecting that side of the village. Holt moved toward them. Half way
across the square he caught a glimpse of
what the trolls faced off against.
Kawika, the Hyr-Danann ranger, was
blocking the door. He held a troll in his arms
like a mother might a sleeping child. The
monster’s mussel gaped, and three spears
lodged in its belly. Before the surrounding
trolls closed in again, blocking the ranger from
Holt’s view, he realized the dead monster was
serving as a shield, absorbing the attacks of
its comrades’ weapons. Holt rushed forward,
grabbing up a trollish spear and screaming his
own fury, for whatever it was worth, into the
night.
When the stone head of his weapon sank into the first troll’s back, Holt’s cry caught in his throat. His eyes sprang wide. It had felt just like jabbing a stick into a ripe tomato: some slight resistance at first, then a horrifying explosion of momentum nearly
pulled the spear from his hands.
The troll spun, jerking Holt forward. The
creature roared in anguish, reaching behind
itself, searching for the source of its torment.
Holt stumbled, crashing into another troll. In
the jumble of their reconnoiter, the monsters
were as ready to attack one another as the
ranger. A powerful elbow, as crushing as any
club, struck Holt’s left arm. He sprawled
; toward the storehouse door, sliding on the icy
ground.
Holt scrambled to get to his hands and
knees, his chest burning for more air. He
flopped and gulped like a landed fish. When
he finally managed to look up, it was to stare
directly into the bulging eyes of another troll.
The monster seemed to float over him, mouthing a silent warcry. Then it spun off to the side, and Holt realized he lay at the ranger’s feet, or rather the man had leapt forward to stand over him. Holt caught the movement of two men, Wyn and Jal, names suddenly matching faces again, emerging to
guard the storehouse door.
The ranger dispatched the remaining
trolls quickly and hoisted Holt into the air.
“Very bravely done,” he said, though there
was little praise in his tone.
Holt just wanted to be put down. He
struggled, and the ranger set him roughly
back on his feet.
“And stupid.” Kawika shoved Holt
toward the storehouse door. As Wyn and Jal
took charge of him, handing him over to
others inside the building with even less
ceremony, Holt heard the ranger shouting
instructions to the men. Holt tried to listen, to
find out what was happening, but someone
else began speaking in his ear.
“Oh, Holt, Holt, thank the stars you’re
safe.” It was Gazina, Farmer Naxon’s wife.
She pulled him to her sagging bosom as if he
were her own. “A nightmare! A nightmare!” Holt struggled to free himself from her
embrace. She went on muttering, more to
herself than him, he realized quickly. He
looked about the room. There were nearly a
dozen people huddled among the supplies,
mostly women and children. Besides Wyn and
Jal, the only other men appeared to be
Dooble and Xan. The former was suffering
from a nasty gash above his left eye and lay
with his head on his sister’s lap, mumbling
feverishly. If Holt were any judge, and he
decided the previous ten minutes had
certainly qualified him as one, Xan was
already dead. Holt tried to distance himself
from Gazina while maintaining a close