He slept dreamlessly, awakening as easily as he'd fallen asleep. When he saw Ehren on the ground near him, he was glad. He'd started to like the man. He thought about his two friends—Sinnglas, one of the mountain people he had rescued from a flood, and Bran, a knight he'd rescued from Sinnglas. Maybe that's how it would be for him, he thought. He would rescue people, and they would become his friends.
Dawn brightened the eastern sky, promising another clear day. For trolls, dawn signaled death, an end to the safety of darkness. Maggot knew that people saw it differently, looked on dawn as a beginning. He looked at it hopefully.
And saw smoke on the horizon.
It had to be the hunters, and no more than a mile or so away. Perhaps as close as the meadow where he and Ehren had slain the bison.
He shook his companion awake. Ehren jerked upright, and Maggot pointed out the cord of smoke.
"They've followed us,” he said. “And they do not even care to hide themselves."
Ehren nodded, as if he had expected exactly this. In seconds they gathered their simple belongings and resumed their journey. Maggot willed his leg to work as it always did, ignoring the pain and refusing to favor it. While the birds were yet singing the morning in, they made their path across the hills until they came to a river.
Ehren led them upstream, seeking a good spot to cross. Maggot mistrusted the river—branches rushed by, the water seeming to flow both deep and fast.
Finally they reached a place where the river widened out. Large rocks protruding above the surface promised a path across. Ehren removed his belt and, holding his sword above his head, started wading instantly toward the other shore. The water lapped at his calves, and came up as high as his waist before growing shallow again.
Maggot followed after him, step by step, but Ehren quickly reached the other bank, and stood there, gesturing Maggot this way and then the other, trying to keep him to the path.
The icy river swirled around Maggot's legs, numbingly cold and as powerful as the wind in a storm. He had reached midstream, the water tugging at him like the hand of a giant, when his injured leg stiffened. Looking up, Ehren gestured both hands frantically to the left. Maggot took one step that way and missed his footing, so that he started sliding down into deeper water and could not stop the motion before his head plunged under.
The current wrapped him in a tight embrace and dragged him away.
* * * *
4.
Maggot tumbled, twisted, and bobbed to the surface, gasping for air, so far downstream that Ehren was only a tiny figure in the far distance for one blurred glimpse before the water swirled him under again. This time he tossed, unable to find his way up, until his lungs nearly burst. When his face felt open air, he opened his mouth and drank in all he could breathe and more water than he needed to swallow.
The buffeting water had torn the bundle of meat from him, but his quiver and bow were still slung over his shoulder. With his hands free, he paddled toward the far shore, intending to rejoin his new friend.
His attempt to swim kept his nose above water, but not much more as the water rushed him along. Realizing he could make no headway, he turned his attention to the dangers he hastened toward. Although he didn't know what waited below, he'd seen enough rivers to expect falls and rocks somewhere soon.
It was as if thinking made it so. The trees on the shore slid by faster than a deer could run. The land began to drop around him and the river roared more quickly, constantly tugging him under again. White spray leapt off boulders ahead, fanning rainbows against the sunny sky. Just before the boulders, storm-washed debris had piled up on a slight bend. Maggot wrestled against the current, winning the contest to come close enough to reach for a tree lodged there. He caught a protruding branch with one hand and pulled himself up with the other.
The sudden addition of his weight and momentum tore the log free. It swiftly unhinged from the bank and then went downstream with Maggot clinging to it.
The tree absorbed much of the impact as he bounced from one boulder to the next, lifting him up out of the whitewater for a moment, and then smashing him into it again. Above the roar of the rapids and his own groans at each shuddering blow, he heard the distant thunder of a waterfall.
Just as he was ready to take his chances by grasping at a boulder, the tree lodged between two larger rocks. Gasping for air, Maggot leveraged himself atop it. He had his weight balanced on one knee when the tree rolled, slipped loose, and slammed into another ledge of stone, throwing him free.
Empty water surrounded him; beyond the water were high walls of stone and a noise as solid as a wall as he rushed through it. He flailed, clutching for any handhold, twisting, water pounding into his nose, his throat, gagging him, his eyes blinded, until he did the only thing left to do—he rolled into a ball, his hands covering his head, elbows covering his face.
For a half-heartbeat he flew out of the water and a breeze raked needles across his bare skin. He opened his mouth, choking out water, gulping down air.
And slammed into water and rock that knocked all the air out of him again. At first he thought he was falling still, but then realized he was sliding, his body shooting down an angled groove cut by the river in the naked mountain stone. Sixty feet or more went by in a second, ripping the bandage off his leg and the quiver from his back and snapping the bow slung over his shoulder. He tensed for the impact at the bottom.
Instead he splashed into a deep pool. His feet touched bottom, pushing him up, and his head broke water, arms paddling away from the spray and thunder of the falls. He stretched out his legs when he started to sink and found he could stand and breathe. Though his legs shook like tallgrass in the wind, he staggered toward the shore.
He collapsed as soon as he made his way up the bank. Rolled over on his back. Pushed himself upright on his elbows with his head tilted back, grateful to be breathing.
Beyond the pool, the river carved a wider, tranquil course through towering hardwoods. When he looked back at the height of the cliff, and the peculiar shape of the falls, which were grooved at an angle out of one solid seam of rock, he knew he'd been lucky. He even thought he might come back and slide down them again for fun sometime. It wouldn't be so bad—if he skipped the rapids before the chute.
The pieces of his bow floated in the pool. Forcing himself to stand, he ventured out to recover them if only for the bowstring, which he'd find hard to replace. In the jumble of water below the slide, he also found the quiver, still tightly tied shut although the shoulder strap was missing. Even if the arrows inside were ruined, he still had the steel arrowheads. He could make and fletch new shafts if he needed to, the way Sinnglas and his brothers had taught him. His flint and steel were safe in the bottom of the quiver, and he was glad to have those too. His knife was lost, the cord torn from his neck with enough force to tear the skin, though he couldn't have said when that happened; he searched some time without finding it.
As he climbed from the pool with both his prizes, the bowstring and arrows, he began to shiver, his skin goosepimpling. Tucking the quiver under his arm, he sought a trail up the cliff. He had to claw for purchase with his hands and his feet.
Halfway up, he realized he needed to be on the other side or he would have to cross again at the ford above. Aloud, he mumbled, “Stupid Maggot."
So he descended to the pool again and swam across. It took all his strength to keep his head above the water.
Attempting the slope on the other side, he heard a voice, not from upstream, where Ehren might be searching for him, but lower on the river. There were several voices—men talking quietly—though no one was visible through the trees.
Without a single decent weapon at hand, Maggot hurried to the top and sought someplace to conceal himself. He considered climbing into a tree, since men seldom looked up as often or as carefully as they should. But his limbs still trembled with the cold, so he chose a crevice in the rocks along the riverbank. After squeezing down into it, he grabbed several fa
llen branches and dragged them in front of his hiding spot, hoping it would be sufficient.
Just as he yanked the last branch into place, a shout came from below. His tracks. He'd left them all around the pool.
Several long moments later, the first of the bearded hunters appeared across the river at the top of the cliff. Maggot could not tell if they were the same men who'd captured Ehren, or another group, although they were dressed similarly. The hunter looked for trails upstream, having mistaken Maggot's false start for his true path.
Then he stopped, and stared straight across the water at the spot where Maggot had hidden.
Maggot's skin itched all over. It might be better to take his chances being seen as he ran away from shore rather than get pinned in one spot while they shot arrows at him. He was braced to toss the brush away and pull himself out of his hiding spot, when he heard hard-soled boots scuffing across the stones directly above his head.
The hunter across the stream stood with one hand on the hilt of his sword. The two men exchanged a brief argument. Maggot saw only half of it, and understood none of what he heard, but it wasn't too difficult to guess what the debate concerned. Above him, the hunter shuffled one of his boots on the stone. The man across the stream shouted angrily, until he grew red in the face, jabbing his finger upstream.
Other men appeared on the far cliff, gathering around the leader until there were nine in all. The sun glinted off golden rings hanging from some of their ears.
The boots above him jumped from one stone to another, then fell silent. The leader on the other side waved his hand upstream, and the whole throng continued up the riverbank.
If Ehren followed Maggot downstream he was going to blunder right into the men he had so recently escaped. There were some on both sides of the river, though possibly fewer on this side, maybe only one. Maggot was glad, because that might give him a better chance.
The sun inched its way toward noon. Maggot, by a lifetime of habit accustomed to patience and moving at night, closed his eyes and rested before he set out to follow them and find Ehren again. He thought it better to wait than to stumble on them from behind, in broad daylight with no bow or blade. But the longer he waited, the more his shaking worsened, until even his teeth chattered.
He suspected the rocks, for holding damp and cold. Easing the branches away, he emerged from the shaded crack. But even the bright sun failed to warm his skin and stop his shivering. He followed the trail along the riverbank, limping without pretense, hoping that movement would drive away his chill.
All the aches and injuries had a wonderful concentrating effect, marshaling reserves of will to fight the periodic flushes of pain and to attack the path ahead of him. Still, by the time he reached the ford where he'd fallen in, the fever had fastened on him. He knew the symptoms too well.
Drinking as much water as his belly could hold, he sought a place to lie up until dark. He found an old tree, a mere husk, ten feet around at the base and completely hollow. He could just barely squeeze his broad shoulders through the crack. Brushing aside the forgotten hoard of some squirrel or other rodent, he cached his own meager possessions within. Then twisting inside, he curled his body up on the dirt floor, pulled the moldy leaves over himself for a blanket, and tried to rest.
Like the safety of night itself, rest seemed destined never to arrive.
In time he dozed, and while dozing, dreamed. But they were fever dreams, the voices of strangers calling out his name. He had the sense of something small gnawing at him, at his joints and flesh, especially his arrow-injured leg, devouring him in little pieces. A million tiny fingers tapped and scraped on the walls of his cave. He wondered where his mother was, and why she didn't bring him something to eat or warm him with her body.
When he opened his eyes, everything was dark under a drizzle of rain. A small, furry beast with red eyes and foul breath snapped at him through the crack in the cave, but he drove it back with a handful of arrows. As he jabbed at it, it split into two beasts, then four. He realized that these were the fever beasts, devouring him from the inside out, and he fought harder. The voices became those of other trolls, mocking him for being so small and weak and helpless.
At some time it ended and he fell, like a drop of rain, out of his nightmares and back into the deep water of sleep.
* * * *
He woke clutching the arrows. His long black hair lay in tangles over his face. A musty, moldy odor filled the air. He didn't feel rested at all, but that didn't surprise him. Almost no time had passed; the sun was still in the sky. Then he realized it was the morning sun, and the sky overcast with new clouds. He'd lost at least a day of time.
Yet the fever had broken. He was filthy and his throat was parched, so he went down to the river's edge. After drinking with the caution of a hunted animal, he cleaned himself. The wound on his left leg was red and swollen. He winced when he touched it—the skin broke and pus flowed out. Gritting his teeth so he would not wince again, he cleaned it as well as he could, scraping it out with one of the arrowheads until all the skin and muscle looked freshly raw.
He'd lost too much time. He had no idea where Ehren was, or if he had escaped the men who pursued him. He hoped his new friend was safe. He searched the riverbank, but the rain had erased their tracks. Maggot could find nothing to tell him where the men had gone, or what path they'd taken. He had nothing more to go on than Ehren's description of a mountain and a waterfall, which could be anyplace at all between where he was and the populated lands to the east.
He couldn't find Ehren. He couldn't help him either, not against all those hunters, as injured and hungry as he was.
"Good luck to you, my friend,” he said softly, in the language of the empire.
Then he turned west to avoid all men while he recovered. He became like a troll again, scavenging for things to eat as he traveled. One night became another, filled entirely with moving on and seeking food. He ate mushrooms, those he recognized, and chewed on acorns he found and a few scattered nuts. On the second day, he spied a snake lazing in the sun upon a rock, killed it when it bit into his hand as he grabbed it, and ate it raw. On the fourth, using the arrows as small spears, he waited for hours in the cold water of a marsh to kill a muskrat emerging from its den. It was enough to sustain him.
Without knife or bow, unable to run at his full speed, he found the game he would have preferred had nothing to fear from him. He saw deer, and once he came upon a herd of the flatback mammuts gouging mudholes in the soft earth with their long straight tusks. Every day he advanced toward the mountains, far away from the settled lands below, until he reached the first line of peaks. He climbed the highest ridge, and saw beyond them another set of mountains.
And down in the valley below, pale blue among the wild green, the shapes of buildings.
* * * *
5.
The city lay some miles away, but the sharp glare of the afternoon sun revealed it clearly. A distinctly square mountain rose in regular steps, surrounded by other geometric peaks. Here and there, through breaks in the canopy, Maggot saw a continuous line snaking around the perimeter of the buildings. So it was a walled city. Bits of bluish white flashed through the enveloping trees, enough to give the impression of a vast settlement.
Maggot scratched his head and sniffed the air, curiously.
The band of trolls he belonged to with his mother had lived in caves that stretched miles beneath the earth. When he first left his mother and went down into the valleys, he lived with Sinnglas's people, who had only the simplest of structures, long narrow bowers of bent wood hooded with braided mats or sheets of bark: very cavelike buildings, and comfortable to him. After he met Bran, the two of them journeyed down to the empire's outpost in the northern mountains. That city had been built of stone, mimicking the mountains. Just like the city below. He and Bran had been beaten, chased, and locked into a storeroom. Maggot had not cared for his experience there.
He almost turned and walked away. If his body ached
less, took less will to put in motion, perhaps he would have. He thought that there was something wrong here, a lack of movement, of smoke, of other signs of people. Then he saw a flash of bluish light near one of the structures, and an answering light across the city.
If he investigated the outskirts below, he might be able to scavenge new weapons for himself—a knife at least, perhaps a bow. Perhaps find something to eat that he needn't hunt first. Ignoring his misgivings, he headed into the valley.
By this time the sun rested low in the sky, spreading butterfly wings of scarlet and gold above the long shadows cast by the valley's western range. His path had carried him onto a finger of ridge that looked over a winding river on one side and the city on the other. The city was more difficult to see at this lower elevation. Some of the trees were fifteen and twenty feet in diameter, great poplars reaching up like columns that supported the sky.
He found a trail, a deer trail but a trail, that switchbacked through the trees down the cityside of the ridge. Following it, he passed piles of little round pellets—scat—all cold. Farther on, in a narrow place along a steep incline where the trail was worn down to bare dirt, he saw fresh tracks. They were hard to make out in the dusk, so he bent down on his hands and knees. Some of the tracks were five fingers wide—elk, too big for him to take down bare-handed. But mixed among them were smaller prints, three fingers or so. Likely enough, white-tailed deer. He took out an arrow and carried it like a knife in case he was lucky enough to encounter one.
At that very moment, an inhuman scream rose through the trees like a startled bird. Maggot froze, hunkering down. It came from the city, a loud cry that intensified into thunder and ended in a long, low fading rumble.
The arrow in his hand felt like a pitiful, inadequate weapon. When the sound stopped, it left behind silence. Maggot stared intently in the direction of the cry, but the darkness of the valley stretched out unbroken before him. He scarcely dared to breathe. One moment passed, and another. Far off, a bird cried whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.
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