by John Dalmas
* * *
When they reached the Valley Highway, the travelers turned west instead of east. From time to time they talked. Among other things, they discussed the situation in the Sisterhood, and Macurdy asked Vulkan what he thought of Sarkia's proposal. Vulkan replied that compared to the voitik threat, the future of the Sisterhood was unimportant. If Macurdy went with Varia to the Cloister, Vulkan said, it would be well to do it with the Voitusotar in mind, and the defense of Yuulith.
The Voitusotar. Macurdy couldn't imagine them actually invading Yuulith. They were too susceptible to seasickness. They died of it. They didn't even ride horses, let alone ships. Someone else might invade across the Ocean Sea, but not the Voitusotar.
And then, having thought it, he remembered his dream.
But whoever invaded Yuulith, if anyone did, it seemed to him the Sisterhood's Tiger and Guards units could be useful in its defense. Vulkan agreed. Especially, he said, since the Sisterhood's predominantly ylvin ancestry should provide meaningful protection against voitik sorceries.
* * *
With few exceptions, the travelers they met had heard of the man traveling with a great boar. With, but not on. And they didn't know that the man was Macurdy. Certainly all had heard of Macurdy, but none recognized him. After so long, none had expected him to return to Yuulith.
At first none realized what approached them. A man on a small horse, they thought. When finally they realized, most were within eighty yards, with only time to get off the road. A man passing on a giant boar was even more awesome than someone simply accompanied by one.
Not till late was Macurdy recognized. Someone who'd seen them in the crossroads inn, he supposed, for the man pulled off the road and waved, greeting them by name as they passed.
They stopped again at the inn, for supper and the night. This time the stableboy ran not to the stable but into the inn itself, where he hid. For this time there was no horse, and he was terrified at the prospect of grooming the giant boar. Macurdy ordered supper, then sat outside on the broad low porch, to eat with Vulkan, who was having cabbages and potatoes. Bit by bit, the men inside came quietly out to watch. Before they were done, several had asked respectful questions, first of Macurdy, then of Vulkan. The giant boar answered as appropriate, letting them experience his mental voice within their minds.
At the break of dawn they left, northward on the North Fork Road, instead of continuing west. This was country Macurdy knew well, from the revolution.
* * *
By midday, Macurdy and Vulkan were well into the forested Kullvordi Hills, where they turned off on a narrower road, rockier but less rutted. Here Macurdy dismounted, and they continued, now only Macurdy visible. Reports of them might well not have penetrated this country lane, and he didn't want to panic the locals.
He recognized the place when they came to it. As was typical in these hills, the cropland and hayfields were in a valley, and the livestock grazed the adjacent forest and grassy glades. The large house was of pine logs squared and fitted, and there were numerous log outbuildings.
A female servant answered his knock, and when he identified himself, hurried off to "fetch the missus."
The missus. The other time Macurdy had been there, his old friend had had three servant mistresses, instead of a wife. After a minute, Macurdy heard a female voice seemingly giving orders in an undertone. Moments later, a strong handsome woman stepped onto the stoop. A mountain woman, he thought. Her face and aura told him she didn't believe he was who he'd said.
Jeremid wasn't home, she told him. A troll had raided in the neighborhood, and he was off with a party of men, hunting it with hounds. "If they find it by daylight," she said, "they can kill it."
"Is there anyone who can take me to them?"
"To the kill where they started from, I suppose. From there you'd have to track them."
"I'll give it a try."
She called a servant, a youth who arrived with a limp, and gave him instructions. Then she looked at Macurdy. "Where's your horse? You didn't walk here."
He made a quick decision. "It's no horse I ride," he said. "It's a four-legged wizard, a great boar. He's covered himself with a concealment spell. We didn't want to alarm folks up here, where you haven't heard of us."
She frowned. "Concealment spell?"
"Brace yourself and I'll give you a look."
She peered around, not knowing what to make of this.
"Vulkan," Macurdy said, "let her see you."
And there stood the giant boar, the midday sun shining on his back. She'd had no preparation beyond Macurdy's few sentences, which she hadn't believed. Abruptly she stepped backward, the blood leaving her face. But she didn't cry out, didn't faint, didn't turn and dart back through the door. It was the servant who fainted.
After a moment she found her tongue. "Holy Brog'r!" she said, then turned to Macurdy. "And he's got a saddle on him. I owe you an apology. I didn't believe you were the marshal." Stepping back through the doorway, she spoke to someone in the room. "Kurmo, hang up your crossbow. It really is the marshal, and you'd never guess what he rode up on."
She shook Macurdy's hand like a man would have, or Melody. "My name is Corla," she said. "I'll take you myself."
After saddling her mare, she led Macurdy and Vulkan to the next farm, a mile up the road. She had them wait in the woods a short distance from the house, and rode up to it. When she'd prepared the farmwife for what she was about to see, she waved them up. Then she introduced Macurdy and started home again.
A worried-looking hired boy led Macurdy and his mount to the edge of the woods behind the field. There they stopped, the boy pointing toward a spring that flowed into a wooden watering trough. Near it lay the remains of a plow ox. Macurdy rode up to it, and looked it over, impressed. The troll had been enormously strong to dismember it as it had.
The boy had remained at the edge of the woods, either he or his saddle mule unwilling to follow. "Can I go back now, Marshal Macurdy sir?" the boy called. His voice broke, partly from fear, partly from puberty.
"How many men are tracking it?" Macurdy asked.
"Six I think. That's what left the house. Please can I go back sir?"
"Sure, go on," Macurdy answered, and the boy, turning his mule, trotted it briskly homeward.
The ox's left foreleg was missing, with most of the shoulder, as if torn off and carried away. Macurdy wasn't much of a tracker himself, but the trail of five or six mounted men shouldn't be hard to follow. The problem was speed.
It was Vulkan who dealt with that. He started briskly up the ridge, Macurdy on his back. «My nose,» Vulkan said, «is more sensitive to smells than most dogs' are. The troll smell itself calls me, despite the hours and horses that have passed.»
At times the trail was steep enough that Macurdy, riding without reins, gripped the ridge of coarse hair on Vulkan's shoulders to stay aboard. Then they were over the crest, and started down the other side. Here Macurdy was especially grateful for the stirrups. Few horses would willingly tackle so steep a slope head-on. Probably, he thought, the men had walked, leading their mounts.
"How far do you think it'll be?" he asked.
«Trolls are more intelligent than given credit for,» Vulkan answered. «Some more than others. Normally they avoid the vicinity of farms. Big game is their staple. Those which succumb to the temptation of livestock are usually hunted down and killed, sooner or later. Occasionally one becomes clever at avoiding hunters. This is an exceptionally large male, which suggests age, experience, and intelligence.»
"But they can't tolerate daylight, right?"
«It varies with brightness. At night their eyesight is excellent. In full sunlight they are blind. Even in shade they see only dimly; otherwise they could not be hunted down and killed. In the forest, by dusk, they see decently, and will travel in the evening. But at the first dawnlight, they know the sun will follow, so they find a place to hide. Under the roots of a wind-tipped tree, or in an old bear den, or under a dense
copse. Or in a cane-brake, if nothing better is available.»
Shortly they reached broken ground, with narrow ravines, rock falls, and bluffs. Briefly Vulkan paused for breath. «He has forced them to leave his trail,» he thought to Macurdy. «TrolIs have long, powerful arms. They can clamber up slopes impossible for horses, grasping trees to help themselves. The men have chosen to go around, some in one direction, some in the other, looking for easier terrain. The hounds will follow the scent. Lay low and hold on. I will try to follow it directly.»
The terrain was difficult even for Vulkan, who repeatedly had to leave the trail. At times the troll followed the contour, more or less. And it did all this last night, Macurdy thought, when no one was tracking it. It must have thought this through in advance, visualizing things that might happen.
Vulkan replied to Macurdy's unspoken thought: «They plan to a limited degree, varying with the individual.»
"How can it carry that foreleg here? Seems like it would need both hands to climb."
«It has carried it in its jaws from the beginning. Trolls walk easily on their two feet, but travel faster on all four.»
After a bit the terrain eased, the trail continuing more directly. "Are the hunters back on the trail?" Macurdy asked.
«They are following the dogs. Do you hear them?»
"No. Do you?"
«For the last several minutes I've been guiding on their baying. It is quicker.»
* * *
They'd been following the troll for nearly two hours when Macurdy first heard the dogs, the sound growing louder as Vulkan gained on them. Thunder rumbled, and he realized the day had darkened. Shortly, beneath the forest roof, it became dark as dusk, and still. Sporadic rain spattered on treetops.
The dogs ceased their trail call, the sound changing to excited barking that said they'd caught up to their quarry. He heard a roar, the scream of a dog, furious barking and raging, more screams. More roars, in two voices overlapping; it hadn't occurred to Macurdy that trolls might travel in pairs. Men shouted. A horse screamed, then another. Vulkan had increased his speed, and with no free hand to fend off brush, Macurdy lay low on the heavy shoulders. Ahead a man screamed, the sound cutting off sharply.
Macurdy's attention was on the noise of combat. He'd totally missed the wind thrashing the treetops. Now a wall of rain marched across the forest canopy, with a sound he could not ignore—like an oncoming train. The fighting was less than a hundred yards away when the deluge struck—rain, hail, leaves and twigs. Lightning stabbed vividly, thunder crashed, branches and pieces of tree trunk thudded to the ground. A wild-eyed horse dashed past, an empty saddle on its back.
Then, in front of him, Macurdy saw two huge shaggy forms. The lesser, beset by a trio of furious hounds, was flailing at them with the broken remains of a man. The other stalked crouching toward two men a few yards distant, one man with a shortsword, the other with a knife. Three horses were down; the others had fled.
Vulkan stopped so abruptly, his rider almost lost his seat. A single thought slammed Macurdy's mind: «OFF!» He dismounted, drawing his sword.
Then Vulkan charged the troll who swung the battered corpse, and struck the creature head-on, driving it backward, his powerful neck and shoulders slamming great tusks deeply into the troll's belly. Squalling, spilling guts, the troll grabbed Vulkan even as it fell, taking him down with it.
Macurdy's attention was on the larger troll. Raising his sword, he shot a ball of plasma from its tip, a ball half as large as his fist. Then turning, he aimed at the troll wrestling with Vulkan, but afraid of hitting the boar, he turned back to the other.
His plasma ball had struck through the larger troll's guts. Yet the creature seemed unaffected, except that it had paused in its attack. Before Macurdy could fire again, lightning flashed, accompanied by a stupendous bang of thunder that drove him to his knees.
A minute or minutes later, his wits somewhat recovered, he lurched to his feet, pelted by cold rain and acorn-sized hail. Vulkan had shaken free of the troll he'd disemboweled. The other troll had disappeared, though examination would disclose scattered fragments. The two other men were on the ground. One was struggling to sit up. Macurdy wobbled over to him.
"Damn it, Jeremid," he said, "don't you know enough to get in out of the rain?"
The man stared up at Macurdy. "You!" he husked. "Bhroig's balls! Where in hell..." Then he looked at Vulkan, who was also coming toward him.
"He's my buddy," Macurdy said, gesturing with his head. "His name is Vulkan. He's bigger than me and he's smarter than me, and I think he calls lightning down from the clouds."
«Not I, Macurdy.» The "voice" resonated in their minds. «I am only a bodhisattva and great boar. You are the Lion of Farside.»
* * *
Jeremid had a broken arm. One of the trolls had jerked a spear from a man's hands and slammed Jeremid with its shaft, breaking his humerus. So it was Macurdy who loaded Jeremid's unconscious hunting partner across Vulkan's saddle, and lashed him securely in place with reins from dead horses.
Before they left, Macurdy took time to examine the troll Vulkan had killed. Eight feet from heels to crown, he judged, and five or six hundred pounds, with fangs to match. The hands were bigger than any he could have imagined, and bore claws. It was female, and had been pregnant. The other, the male they'd been following, might have stood ten feet, and weighed eight or ten hundred pounds.
They headed back toward the farm, Vulkan leading the way. Macurdy brought up the rear, whacking off saplings here and there with his sword, and blazing an occasional larger tree, so others could more easily find the bodies and bring them out.
By the time they got to the farm they'd started from, the sun was shining, low in the west. And Arnoth, the man who'd started out tied across the saddle, was sitting on it.
* * *
Of the four men who'd died, two were hired men on Jeremid's farm, one was the hired man from the farm the troll had raided, and one was a neighbor from farther down the road. Arnoth was not visibly injured, but was weak and dazed, seemingly from the lightning strike.
Arnoth's hired man had left a widow and orphan. The child—the lad who'd taken Macurdy to the dead ox—was sent to notify the dead neighbor's widow. Jeremid promised to get word to relatives of both women.
By that time the shock had worn off, and Jeremid had more than enough pain in his arm. Macurdy set and splinted it, then began the healing. Unlike Arbel, he used neither flute nor drum. Guided by Jeremid's aura, he simply manipulated the energy field around the break, and over the rest of the body. Finally they started down the road to Jeremid's farm, both men walking.
After supper, they sat on the side porch, in late spring twilight that smelled of moist soil, growing plants, and livestock. Jeremid had a jug beside him for painkilling. Vulkan rested on the ground a few feet away. Sundown had invigorated the mosquitoes, and Macurdy had woven a repellent spell.
He'd already given Jeremid a brief summary of his years back on Farside. Now he described his visit to Wollerda and Liiset, and what Vulkan had said about a threat from across the Ocean Sea. "So we're heading north to see Varia and her ylvin lord. The empires need to know." He didn't mention Sarkia's message.
"Hnh!" Jeremid peered intendy at Macurdy. "And then what?"
Macurdy didn't answer at once. "I'll do whatever comes to mind," he said at last. "Something will. Some folks need a plan. But I seem to do best by doing whatever occurs to me. Sometimes it is a plan, and I follow it as long as it's working. But even then I do whatever seems best. There's no guarantees in life. I've learned that the hard way."
"I don't suppose you've got any attention on your ex-wife?"
"I haven't had much luck with marriages."
He'd answered without thinking, had been looking at his marriages as three tragedies: Varia kidnapped and lost to him, Melody drowned, Mary with her chest crushed. But his weeks with Varia had been remarkably happy, and he'd learned a lot from her. He couldn't imagine what he'd be l
ike without having had those weeks. And Melody? Her open jaunty manner, her reckless fearlessness, her passion for him... And finally Mary; not counting his time away at war, they'd had more than a dozen years together. Sweet years, loving years. Macurdy, he thought, instead of moping, you ought to congratulate yourself on how lucky you've been.
Jeremid's thoughts had turned to what Macurdy had told him about an invasion threat. "Looks like you might end up raising another army," he said. "You're probably the only one who can."
Macurdy nodded. "That's probably what Vulkan had in mind when he took up with me. Lord knows, life was easier for him before we got together."
Jeremid grinned, the same irreverent grin Macurdy remembered, but now it was to Vulkan he spoke. "Is that right? I thought you were the boss now."