A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Another group of trolls eventually came down off the field, more battered and bloody looking, with burn wounds, and Sunnil could only surmise that they were the defeated remains of the formation she had earlier seen defending the hillside. These were let freely into the group with the others, and given some of the food and perhaps a cup of tump or beer. It was all very solemn and quietly done. When Kulith had fully refreshed himself, he put aside his cup and the food and used one of his hands as a signal.

  “Goblins and thyrs leave us,” he said. “We have troll business to discuss.”

  The leader of the goblins signaled around, whistling to his guards, and they all went off, back though the trees. Just the trolls and their two captives were there in the clearing, on the edge of the fields, just a stone’s throw from the waters of the Dimm.

  “If a troll is powerful enough to rule, let it be the best troll,” Kulith shouted out. “That is what Sterina’s doll said to me on Doom Wall. I am that troll, but it is not enough.” He drew out the Tuvier Blade and now it sparkled and burned with golden fire before them all.

  “This is not enough!” he said to them as they beheld its miracle. He used the sword now to point around at all the other trolls, going from the left until he had almost made a complete circle. “All of you, together,” he said, “now that is enough.” He sat back down with the burning blade displayed out in front of him.

  “We saw something today that many of us did not like,” Ovodag continued on for him, stepping out from the rest to look around. “Trolls, not proper fighting trolls, but garrison trolls let goblins shoot them up with arrows, and they cowered back. What are the little buggers thinking about that right now? I am sure that if they saw it, they are thinking about it a little.”

  “I have all the goblins together now, except for those on the Sword, Big Stone and the Face,” Kulith said. “I am going to throw all the thrings off the Stones just like what Old Roarer said would happen one day. I will seize the dead penny and stop the corpse carts. We will push the thrings back down into the swamp like the Mancans once did, and rule then over the Dimm. ”

  “The little buggers know that the great thrings were going to make them fight in another war in the Golok March. They are with us now against the undead. What if someone says to them that the trolls aren’t really needed either, or that it’s the trolls and not the thrings who are the problem? There aren’t as many of us as there used to be, thanks to the hoarding of our women and slaves, and there were never enough of us to start with. What kind of a chance do we have if we are seen as weak right now?”

  “Have the word go out that trolls are not to fight trolls in massed groups anymore,” Kulith told them. “We have been fighting in the West Lands for years, spread out to command and protect the little buggers from the stone men. Also, not all the trolls should take part in the battles to come. We need to send word to those who do not want to fight, and to those that stand against us still, and tell them to move aside when we come. This will make sure that there are at least some trolls left in case we fail. If the thrings somehow win, then we will not totally disappear.”

  “One last thing,” Kulith said to them. “Many ask why we do this now? Why not wait and do this some other day? It is because Sarik killed himself and his captains out in the West Lands. Sarik was past reason, and their leadership is weak now. The little buggers do not fear the thrings like they once did. Where will their punishment come from? From Sterina? From Vous Vox? Those two have never been very strong and let Sarik pass along as he wished across the entire Dimm. It is now, because it is now! If the trolls are stronger than the thrings that remain, then it is they who should rule the Dimm!”

  He walked back and forth looking at them all, and then said, “Go back and spread the word out, and have those that have not picked what to do give me some word back. I will make sure that the White Knife is in control here, and then we will start to assemble along the north edge of the Tooth Swamp. Thousands of thring lances are being made right now over on North Stone and on the Shore. When they are ready we will march with them down through the swamps and stones onto Big Stone. We will siege the Stone Pile and take it and the dead penny away from Vous Vox.” He let them think about it, in a prolonged silence, as he looked around again at them.

  “Go now, those that will not return with us to Doom Wall. Send us your words and we will call you back as it is needed, and as is your want.” Kulith sheathed the Tuvier Blade. He took a cup of tump and walked away, out of the milling circle of trolls, back into the woods. “Little Toad, archer, bring me meat!” he called back to them.

  They went to the fires and picked up a couple of the roasted birds and a great slab of donkey steak and carried them to him. He had found another log and was sitting down on it. In the clearing they could see ahead, groups of goblins were watching others fight duels over some of the sows and items that had been taken at Snake’s Head. Sunnil handed him one of the ducks and they left the rest where he could get at them in turn. He ate most of the duck off its roasting stick and then turned back to look down through the trees at the fights.

  “Are they leaving or just talking?” he asked the two, about the trolls.

  “They are leaving, or have left,” she told him.

  “Good,” he said. “Then they will remember most what my brother and I said, and not what they say to each other. Keep watching them: this is not something that another troll can do for me.” They did that, as he ate the ducks one at a time, with a careful picking out of the bones.

  “They are gone,” she finally told him. “The goblins have come back now and are looking for you.”

  “Good,” Kulith said. He picked up the donkey steak, took a great bite out of it, and turned to go back to the camp.

  “Why not release us now?” Sunnil asked him. “If you no longer have any troops out in the West Lands, surely my ransom would help pay for this campaign?”

  “And trust you?” Kulith asked back. “Just like I tell trolls to not all fight at once, I do not want to lose a way out of this forest. Little Toad told me she would give me anything back on the Shore when the Vagrim was about to eat her. Things go bad for humans that do not keep their promises to trolls, you may see. Remember the Vagrim, and remember that I did not have to fight him. I fought him for you because you promised me, Little Toad.”

  She was stuck for what to say back to him. Saying that such a promise made under duress was of no value would just weaken her position, and make him very angry. He made a snorting laugh, as if he understood what kind of corner she was presently in.

  “We will wait,” he said, “and see what the replies are to your letters.”

  It took a week for the army to march back up the Long Bone and across the swamp bridges, then move by raft back to the shore of North Stone. There Kulith learned that thrings using fire had penetrated into some of the villages, warrens, and even into Doom Wall itself where they had burned down Sarik’s old mansion and about a sixth of the other buildings. Now the little buggers were incensed, because the promise of what they could buy with their loot at Doom Wall after raiding was seen as something that the thrings had long ago guaranteed to them.

  Kulith occupied another hall to the south: part of a thring farming complex that the little buggers had gotten into already and mostly stripped bare. While feasting there, Kulith had heard the goblins repeatedly referring to Sunnil as a witch, and so he had sent them all away to do garrison on the wells. He replaced them with White Knife warriors who were grateful now and ready to show their loyalty to the troll lord.

  Two weeks passed with little change, and then new tents and fires began to appear in the fields around the estate. Sunnil one day looked out the windows of the tower room she had been put in and saw long lines of brown leather and gray homespun shelters going up, with strange flags and pennants flying above. She knew as she looked out the windows that he had not told his allies to meet him here on North Stone, but instead on an island they had referred to as the
Bean. Between the south side of the Bean and another island called Big Stone was a submerged roadway ford about three miles across, with some small islands sticking up from the water here and there. It was referred to as the Wet Way, and the area was otherwise a great morass of trees and bogs known as the Tooth Swamp.

  Then it began to make more sense to Sunnil. Scores of carts and wagons began to arrive, all stacked with lance shafts of pine, ash and maple, some sharpened on one end, and some sharpened on both. These didn’t go into a ditch, a defensive work, or get used as the poles for the shelters, as she have expected. Instead they were meant to be weapons. Kulith brought Sunnil and the archer out of the manor and showed them off.

  “No better arm is there when fighting hordes of thrings,” he said, “except maybe fire, which we cannot use well out in the swamp. You will see. This is how we will win our war against Sterina. Stab them though the body and they cannot attack. Stab them through the head and it unmakes them. All is going as planned.”

  The carts kept arriving, only now some carried cut wood, vats of oil, or pots of brimstone. The goblins began to create a great stockpile of all this material, spread out so that it could not be attacked by the thrings and burned all at once.

  The trolls, thyrs, and goblins began practicing with the sharpened shafts, by stabbing the thrings attacking the wells, piercing them through and making them immobile as Kulith had said, sometimes also piercing the shaft into the wet ground and standing the dead up there in place. Then they went and got oil or wood and burned them individually, or easily moved them by using the poles and burned them on bonfires, or in pits.

  In a show of status, one of the troll chiefs sent Kulith a daughter of his to find favor and support. This devilish looking thing became a presence at the manor, ordering Sunnil and Edou about on chores when not fawning on Kulith or sporting with him in one of the bedrooms. One day she seized Sunnil’s hair as she went by and took from her the golden jewel with the long pin, and she then wore it on the side of her own golden mane, done up part way in a braid as it fell over and down her back.

  Ovodag arrived with some of the troll and goblin chiefs the next day and they all went out and looked over the preparations for the campaign. It was a large party, with several of the most important leaders there with their henchmen, and they all wanted to be assured of the eventual success of it. When they were done, Kulith told his prize sow to go on ahead back to the manor, to start a feast with the others and wait for him there. Only Sunnil, Edou, Ovodag and a few of the White Knife guards stood behind.

  “There is one way we can still lose this,” Kulith told Ovodag, who was now wearing one of the improved leather jackets of armored plates they were fashioning for the trolls. Over the front of it hung a great chain of gold links that might have once been a bishop’s belt.

  “What more do we have to do?” Ovodag asked him, folding his arms across it.

  “To maintain this campaign, one of us must be on the spot to make sure there is meat and drink always going to the horde or the buggers will get hungry and desert us. Even then, there will be too many of them to always feed. But if they have meat, bread, and a little tump every third of fourth day, then we will be able to march them all the way down to the Stone Pile, and hold the siege.”

  “You want me to run the supplies across to you from the shore of the Dimm, from North Stone?” Ovodag asked, a bit cross. “Might Hovus Black Smile or Zerod be a better pick as quartermaster to this army?”

  “Are they stealing from us much?” Kulith asked Ovodag, who shook his head back in negation. “Well, that is because they respect me, and they respect you. Do you think they will respect someone else and not take what we are gathering and do something stupid with it when we are three or four Stones away? It’s only a matter of time until that happens.”

  “Remember our father, when we found out that the Growler had gotten his body back and turned it into a thring? You wanted to go visit it, to do a memorial. You put a shirt of decent chain mail on it that either of us could have used as armor in the West Lands, so it would just last a little longer when the humans began to chop it up. I thought that was a stupid thing to do then, but now I think about it differently. Sometimes, doing something like that will get you killed.” Ovodag growled at him, his top lip curling up over some of his larger fangs into a snarl.

  Kulith raised an open palm in peace. “But sometimes also, sentiment and loyalty like that can save many, and make things that are otherwise impossible here possible. Do you trust Hovus Black Smile? He’s a stomach troll, and bound to eventually do whatever it tells him to. And Zerod will try to seize Doom Wall for himself as soon as we leave North Stone, and then he will get all the goblins against him and maybe start a fight between them and the trolls.”

  “You are not needed on Big Stone,” Kulith told him. “It’s that we cannot destroy the Stone Pile and Vous Vox without you staying here, or going somewhere else, when it is needed. Or, at least it will all be in doubt. I have all I could want for now, and I will have to eventually go and trade this girl back to the stone men for her ransom, or it will be botched. We will need to keep the thrings off the Stones and rule the bugger tribes so that everything does not go back to the way it was. Who is going to do that?”

  “Go to the Bean then, and use the vanguard to start the march on the Stone Pile,” Ovodag replied, reluctantly after a pause. “I will stay here in the while and make sure that you are provided for.”

  Kulith had started as such a provider for Sarik’s horde and been raised up to lead it after a series of failures under other trolls and goblins. It was critical to Kulith for Ovodag to now do it as he proposed. He would have to be with the army in case they encountered any greater thrings, which he knew they surely would. Ovodag could do what else was needed, and Kulith knew he could rely on the other troll’s hatred of the thrings, and some passable loyalty.

  “We are fighting now to not fight again for nothing,” Kulith said to him. “Do you want to go down into Bezet and raid for Sterina, and then give her over all of your plunder?”

  “No,” Ovodag said firmly. “To the Dark Dealer with her.”

  “Then this is what we must do,” Kulith stated. “Now I’m going to go back to the manor and eat and drink, and perhaps play with the chief’s daughter some more. Tomorrow we will start moving the supplies down onto the Bean.” He looked over at Sunnil and Edou. “Pack our things up. I want to get an early start.”

  There was nothing much to pack up but his chests of armor, weapons, the campaign tent, and several casks of tump. They followed Kulith back to the manor, across fields of oat and corn stubble. The White Knife goblins went after them, and finally Ovodag snarled, and went his own way.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  KULITH

  THE SHORE OF THE BEAN

  They were attacked by small groups of spoilers in long boats who landed on the shore as they made their way down the curving island known as the Sword. Both shores of it were usually visible from the road that ran down its crown, of striped cliffs of chalk and sandstone, of concealing banks of reeds that went out into the water, and of beaches of muddy pebbles. Every two or three miles a warren stuck up from the fields and trees on the high ground, these more like small castles than cairns of piled stone, but mostly they were old and rotten. Some of them put up white smoke immediately as the bugger horde neared, and some of them fought for awhile until they were overrun. The warriors that were left quickly went over to Kulith’s alliance in order to survive.

  There were thring fires also, slowing burning up their supply of impalement piles, but also diminishing the enemies’ army. They always seemed to need more of everything, and they would often find what they needed carelessly sitting somewhere almost unattended, while other things they did not need were pushed into their already busy hands. The water was usually polluted by the time they got to it, and so barrels always had a use.

  That had made it more difficult, and Kulith determined to try to send some
of their supplies including casks of water by boats and barges over the eastern surface of the lake, which they mostly controlled. Ovodag came down with the first convoy, and the thrings seemed to eventually leave them alone to advance their horde as they wished to the south shore of the Sword. The Bean, a smaller island named for its shape, sat there waiting for them, and just beyond it was the Tooth Swamp.

  The Bean was at a point where the Sword and another stone called the Spear came close together, and the buggers from both of these commands joined into one greater horde, and camped in the tens of thousands. Kulith had no sense of what to then do, but he knew that if he did not move them quickly south, they would run out of food. He used one day to inspect them and adjust the encampment to take full advantage of the trolls, and the different types of weapons the horde’s warriors fielded. The next day he handed out thousands of impalement poles to the ones who could use them best and sent them out across the Wet Way, toward the distant shore of Big Stone.

  It was called the Tooth Swamp because of the great white calcite pillars and white boulders that stood up from the water, between the mangroves and willow trees, on the small islands, and along the sunken roadway. Many had fallen at some time in the past and their remnants had been collected and piled up to create the roadway of the ford, with boulders and gravel piled on top of that to make it level. The thrings came up from the water to prevent the crossing, but they were seen and impaled, with the trolls quickly moving back to the center of the formation to get more poles as they used theirs up. Soon there were hundreds of floating white corpses on the gray surface of the lake. It would have been suicidal with smaller numbers, and without using the power of the trolls, but by that afternoon they had thousands of white bodies to collect, most still struggling to try and attack them, but unable to do so.