Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “No, no,” Talfi interrupted. “I was going to. It just felt odd for a moment. It’s nothing foolish or shocking. I don’t even know why I dislike talking about it.” Talfi reached under his tunic and came up with a thin copper chain. A small silver amulet dangled from it. “I was wearing this when I arrived in Skyford, but I don’t know where it came from. My belly was empty and this would have gotten me enough money for a few meals at least, but when I tried to take it off, I felt … afraid.”

  “Afraid?” Danr leaned over to look at the amulet. One side showed a leafless tree with its roots and branches wrapped around three spheres. It was the symbol of the universe, of the Nine Gods, and of the Nine People. The other side showed a double-bladed axe crossed over a shield. The amulet was badly worn around the edges and was clearly much older than the copper chain.

  “Actually I was terrified.” Talfi ran a finger around the amulet’s edge. His eyes took on a distant look. “The idea of giving it away just about sent me to my knees. Even now, it feels weird admitting to you that I have it, and you saved my life. At any rate, I kept it and went hungry until I could beg some bread at Uncle Orvandel’s door. He had his fletching materials out, and I showed him what I could do, so he gave me work.”

  “It’s very old,” Danr observed without reaching for it.

  “Sometimes …” Talfi continued to trace the worn edge of the amulet, and his face turned darker, unhappy, and yet fascinated, like someone who couldn’t stop poking at an old wound that still hurt. “Sometimes, when I feel its edges, I get … shadows. A battle. Metal clashing. Screams. Blood. A lot of blood. And water. Like I’m swimming or drowning or both.”

  Danr didn’t know what to say to this, so he simply said, “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” Talfi’s eyes were glazing over. “So much blood. And sometimes I see a man with red hair and green eyes. He talks to me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

  “It sounds like someone put a glamour on you,” Danr said. “Maybe one of the Fae.”

  Talfi’s face cleared and he dropped the amulet back under his tunic. “I’m cursed.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Vik’s balls, who knows? I don’t know what being cursed feels like.” He sighed. “I want to find out what’s wrong with me.”

  Something clicked in Danr’s head again. “That’s why you were so eager to come here,” he said.

  “Nothing to learn in Skyford,” Talfi admitted. “What do I have to lose by nosing about here? I …” He hesitated. “I don’t suppose you know any trollwives. The ones who can still do magic?”

  Danr felt bad for him. “No. My father was a troll, but I never met him, or any other Stane. I’m sorry.”

  Talfi shook his head and put a smile on his face. “At least we have Aunt Ruta’s good food.”

  They made a party out of it, eating and talking late into the night while shadows danced to the music of the flames. Danr hadn’t known how hungry he was for companionship until he had it, and the company was more filling than any meat or drink.

  “What do you want for yourself?” Talfi asked over the bones of the salmon.

  Danr’s head was a little muzzy from the late hour and a full belly. “Want?”

  “Yeah. Want. One day, when your bonding runs out, you’ll be free. What do you want to do when that day comes?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be free.” Danr leaned back in the straw and stared at the ceiling. “Carl Oxbreeder keeps finding ways to add time to my bonding. He does it on purpose to keep me here.”

  “You can’t think that way,” Talfi insisted. “Trolls are supposed to live a long time, longer than humans. Eventually he’ll run out of excuses, and you’ll be free.”

  Danr shifted on the prickly straw. That was one of the thoughts that sometimes kept him awake at night, that he might live a long life under Alfgeir’s thumb, and when Alfgeir died, he would pass like an heirloom to Norbert. He didn’t often dare think about being free, no, he didn’t. But Talfi’s presence let him bend a few rules.

  “I’ll never be free,” Danr said. “It’s impossible.”

  “You aren’t a slave. When your bonding is up, you walk away. That’s the law. Why won’t you be free?”

  Danr looked at the stable wall, and for a moment it seemed he could look through it to Alfgeir’s house, where Norbert was sitting at his father’s hearth, probably drinking from a horn with silver feet and massaging his left arm.

  Monster. The word echoed in his head.

  “When I was six or seven, Norbert and I were playing. Vik’s gate, I don’t even remember what.” Danr sighed. “Norbert lost, and he got mad. He called me names—troll’s bastard, stony Stane. A kid’s chant. I got angry.”

  Even now, the memory dredged up a mixture of anger and a child distress, and Danr’s fists clenched.

  “What happened next?” Talfi asked.

  Danr stared into the fire. “He called my mother a troll’s slut.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. The monster inside me came out then.” Danr closed his eyes, remembering the awful words, the screams, the crunch of bone. “I yelled, but it came out more like a roar. I grabbed Norbert by the arm and swung him around and slammed him into the ground. Both Alfgeir and my mother heard and came running. I slammed Norbert into the ground again, and a third time before Mother was able to pull me off him. Norbert’s arm was both dislocated and broken. More than ten years later, it still hurts him.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Alfgeir was all for turning me over to the earl for hanging, but Mother begged him not to. She said I’d be his thrall like she was, and that I’d never show the monster again. I haven’t, either. She saw to that.”

  What he didn’t say was how often Mother had used that little incident to remind him how close the monster was. “You have to keep the monster half caged in,” she told him over and over. “Others don’t deserve to die over a few words—and neither do you.”

  And so he had kept the monster half inside him, always inside. But people always saw the outside. The half-blood.

  “Alfgeir and Norbert still remember,” Danr continued. “Norbert makes my life as bad as anything Lady Halza can dream up, and Alfgeir adds to my bonding every chance he gets. I’ll never be free.”

  “Huh.” Talfi rubbed his nose. “Still, he can’t really keep you forever. Even Alfgeir has to die one day. Or maybe you’ll just walk away.”

  Danr was still trying to imagine what it would be like to walk away and was coming up empty. You couldn’t just walk away from what you owed. The Nine would get you for it, in the end. But he didn’t say that aloud.

  They talked more. Danr wished the night could go on forever. In the end, however, fatigue forced both of them to roll themselves up in the ragged old blankets Danr had scavenged over the years. Danr, however, dozed only restlessly. In dreams, he was looking for both Talfi and his mother through muddy village streets. The mud pulled at his feet, and darkness lay thick around him. Even his trollish eyes could barely make out shapes. His mother’s voice echoed somewhere ahead.

  “Don’t be a monster!” she cried. “See the truth instead.”

  A hand landed on Danr’s shoulder and he jerked awake. In the dim light of the dying fire, he saw a hooded figure in a ragged scarf leaning over him. Aisa.

  “What—?” Danr gasped. On the other side of the fire, Talfi sat up, his brown hair mussed from sleep.

  “You must hurry,” Aisa said. “Quickly!”

  Danr came fully awake. “What’s wrong?”

  “The villagers are coming,” she hissed. “They want your blood.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Danr scrambled to his feet, heart already pounding, and flung his ragged cloak over his shoulders. Talfi did the same, though his cloak was new and unpatched. Cattle shifted nervously in the stalls. Aisa crept to the stable door and pushed it open a crack.

  “I see torches coming up the road,” she reported. “They are nearly here. A very e
fficient mob.”

  Danr peered outside. A half-moon shed plenty of light, and to Danr’s eyes, the farmyard was nearly bright as day. A line of yellow lights bobbed toward the main gate. Alfgeir’s house was between the road and the stable, and Danr wondered if the villagers would stop there first or come straight for him. Fear pushed bile up the back of his tongue.

  “Do they really want to kill?” Talfi whispered.

  Aisa spread her hands. “My mistress, Frida, sounded very angry, and she was the one who laid blame. The other men gathered to listen, and they were happy to become angry as well. Now they come with pitchforks and scythes and whips.”

  The blood drained from Danr’s face. His mind raced in little circles, seeking a solution. He could run for the mountains. But they were inhabited by monsters even worse than the wyrm he and Talfi had killed. He could sneak away and head south, farther into Balsia. But everywhere he went, people would recognize a half-troll monster.

  He could stay and fight.

  Danr swallowed, remembering Norbert and the way bone had grated against flesh under his hand. Don’t show the monster, Mother’s voice murmured inside his head. Monsters were evil, terrors, and whenever he thought about fighting, he saw his mother’s disappointed, fear-filled eyes. But if he ran away, what would happen to Talfi? He had given Talfi hospitality, and that made it Danr’s duty to defend him from harm.

  “We should run from this place,” Aisa murmured behind her veil of scarves, and Danr very much wanted to follow her advice. He wanted to run with Aisa somewhere safe, where just the two of them could spend time together, without worrying that his master or her owner would make demands or threats. Where the world was peaceful, and they might share an actual meal and have a conversation like normal people. He wanted to be normal with her.

  Instead he sighed. “I don’t see how we can run.” With a deep breath, he shoved the stable door open and strode outside, gathering the night in a pitchy cloak. The crowd of torches flickered in the dooryard. Danr stomped toward them, jaw set. His heart beat like a fast drum, and fear sang a shrill tune in his ears, but he kept moving. A hand plucked at his arm.

  “What are you doing?” Aisa hissed. Talfi stood beside her, looking frightened. “This way!”

  Danr shook her off, though his mouth was dry as sand. “Now that I’ve killed a wyrm, it’s time to face a mob.”

  A few more steps took him within hearing of the crowd. The men had stopped at Alfgeir’s hall. Danr picked out individual faces in the torchlight: Anders the thatcher, and Mikkel the pig farmer, and Henrik the butcher, and Soren the farmer, who had lost his father to frostbite last winter. And all the others he knew. They weren’t friends, but he had known them all his life. Now they were calling for his death. Anders carried a length of heavy rope.

  Danr was not surprised to see White Halli in the lead, torch in one hand, sword in the other. Golden firelight gleamed on the silver blade. Danr was surprised to see Rudin standing beside Halli. Rudin was Halli’s son, barely four years old. Before Danr could react further, Alfgeir’s door opened and the man himself stepped into the chilly night air, beard a-thistle with indignation. Norbert followed.

  “What’s happening here?” Alfgeir demanded. “What do you want?”

  “We’ve come for the monster who killed the Noss brothers,” Halli said. “Trollboy and his kin—” Halli spat. “—destroyed their house and crushed their bones.”

  “I did no such thing.” Danr moved into the circle of torches. The men in the crowd, perhaps a dozen in all, tightened their grips on their makeshift weapons. One or two stepped back, but the rest held their ground. The light hurt Danr’s eyes, but he refused to blink. Instead he folded his arms over his broad chest. “Why are you causing trouble, Halli?”

  “Did your pet witch warn you we were coming, Trollboy?” Halli said.

  Danr just stared at him, unmoving despite the tat-tat-tat of his heart. The word witch was filled with a danger all its own, and Halli was attaching it to Aisa. Witches were beaten, branded, and burned or beheaded. He thought of Aisa’s head rolling away from a bloody axe, and all his words shriveled away. Halli noted the silence with glee.

  “Dumb as a rock.” Halli turned to his son. “Take a long look, Rudin, and remember this day. The Stane are monsters, and monsters deserve to be exterminated.” He raised his voice. “Men, let’s—”

  “Touch one hair on his head, Halli,” Alfgeir said, “and I’ll take it straight to your father.”

  Halli and the men stared in astonishment. So did Danr.

  “Trollboy here does the work of ten men around my farm,” Alfgeir continued. “He’s stupid, he has no manners, and he’s filthy most of the time, but he isn’t a murderer.”

  Halli blinked. No one, least of all Danr, had expected Alfgeir to stand up for Danr. An air of uncertainty stole over the men. Several torches wavered. Norbert and Alfgeir’s two other sons, all heavily muscled from years of work in the fields, looked stonily over their father’s shoulders. Norbert rubbed his arm but remained silent.

  “Papa?” Rudin asked, tugging at Halli’s tunic. “Are you going to kill the Stane monster?”

  “We found troll tracks in the wreckage,” Halli said, trying to rally. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”

  “How do you know what troll tracks look like,” Alfgeir asked reasonably, “when no one here has ever seen a troll?”

  “The tracks definitely weren’t human!” Halli shot back. “And only a troll could have—”

  “Trollboy’s feet are human.” Alfgeir pointed. “Look.”

  Every eye in the crowd went to Danr’s feet. Danr wanted to clench his toes in embarrassment, but forced himself to remain still. His feet were large and the toes splayed outward, but they were indeed human. Danr realized he himself had no idea what troll feet looked like. Several men in the crowd began to mutter and the small crowd shifted about, losing cohesion.

  “Trollboy killed a giant wyrm on the road to Skyford today,” Alfgeir continued. “Go see the burn marks for yourself. Perhaps many creatures are coming down from the mountains. Only Olar knows why, but it has nothing to do with my farm or my thralls.”

  “Trollboy consorts with witches. His mother and that slave girl. Now he’s bringing the monsters down on us,” Halli said, though his words lacked conviction. Danr still flinched at the word witch. “The Stane are coming down here because he is one of them.”

  “Strange they should wait sixteen years to come visit,” Alfgeir drawled.

  “Who knows why the Stane do anything?” Halli retorted, though it was clear he had lost the support of the crowd.

  “My slave girl is a good healer,” added Farek, belying his wife’s angry words. “I wouldn’t count her a witch, exactly. Your Lordship. She cost a pretty penny.”

  “She knows things,” Halli said darkly. “Foreign things. Mark me, Farek—she’ll bring darkness on us.”

  “And what’s that to do with Trollboy?” Alfgeir put in.

  Rudin looked up at his father, confused. “When are you going to kill the monster, Papa?” he piped up.

  “Gisla!” Alfgeir shouted. The door opened, and Alfgeir’s wife appeared. Like Alfgeir, she was middle-aged and running toward plump. Her dark brown braids hung loose behind her, down for the night. “It’s a chill night. Have the boys roll out a barrel of ale for our guests. As the saying goes, ‘Ale is proof the Nine want us to love life!’”

  A little cheer went up from the men, and they gathered around the door. Danr stepped backward until he was out of the circle of torchlight. As Gisla served up brimming horns of ale in the dooryard, he turned to head back to the stable. Alfgeir caught him up.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded.

  “Yes, Carl Oxbreeder,” Danr said. “Thank you for … for supporting me.”

  “If I were you, I’d avoid that slave girl Aisa. You know what people say about her, for all that she brings healing. As the saying goes, ‘A bad friend hurts more than a good enemy.’”
<
br />   Danr remained silent. Nothing he could say would change Alfgeir’s opinion, so he didn’t waste words.

  “You still have six years and four months left on your bond, Trollboy,” Alfgeir said. “If they killed you, I’d be out all that labor. And speaking of which, I’m adding seven months to your bond—six for saving your life, and one for that barrel of ale.”

  “A barrel of ale isn’t worth a month’s labor,” Danr protested, forgetting himself. “It’s three days at most.”

  Alfgeir gave him an icy stare. “Do you want to challenge it before the earl, Trollboy?”

  “I …” For a moment, Danr wanted to say he would. Alfgeir was unashamedly breaking any number of laws. The earl would have to listen.

  To a troll. To a monster.

  Danr—Trollboy—hung his head. “I don’t,” he said.

  Alfgeir snorted and strode back to the impromptu party. Danr watched him go, hatred mingling with despair. He would never be free of his bonding. He would never be free of his monstrous stigma. He would never be free.

  Danr trudged back to the stables. When he pushed open the door, he found Talfi and Aisa waiting for him.

  “They didn’t hurt me,” he said heavily.

  “We heard,” Talfi said flatly. “Friend, you really need to go to the earl about Alfgeir.”

  “The earl won’t listen to someone like me,” Danr said quietly, repeating his earlier thoughts. “And even if he did, what would it get me? Once my bond ends, I have nowhere to go. I don’t own land, and no one will hire a monster.”

  “Didn’t we already talk about this?” Talfi asked.

  “You are no monster,” Aisa said at the same time. Her tone was sharp. Startled, Danr looked from one to the other, and it occurred to him that he was now entertaining two people in his—for lack of a better word—home. A slow flush crept over him, and he wished he had something better to offer them than the leftovers from the food Talfi’s foster mother had given him. Aisa was good and kind, and he was filled with a sudden desire to sit with her, put his arm around her, and feel her softness against him.