by Wil McCarthy
Nobody seemed happy with that answer, and for a moment all eyes were on Timlin. His face, though no longer bleeding, was swollen and dark. He looked like mud, he probably felt like mud, and they would have left him behind if this weren’t an emergency, and if Timlin’s own daughter hadn’t been one of the nabbed. More than anyone, he was entitled to an opinion about this. But Timlin just shrugged.
“Argur’s plans have never failed me.”
And then, unaccountably, all eyes were on Nortlan.
“What do you think, O wise rabbit?” Jek demanded.
Nortlan shrank back for a moment, afraid of saying the wrong thing. But then a thought occurred to him and he said, “They could be watching us right now. If we want our girls to stay safe, it matters what we do. It matters how we look.”
That seemed to unsettle everyone. Now all eyes were on the forest, suspicious.
Finally, it was Tom who said, “Listen, we’re wasting time here. I’m following Argur up into the pass.”
“And me,” echoed Timlin.
“And me,” said Nortlan.
But Jek said, “Should we wash our hands first?”
This annoyed Argur greatly, because they were in a hurry, but the spirits did want human beings to wash their hands whenever they passed moving water. And now did not seem like a good time to be angering the spirits!
“All right,” he said. “Make it quick.”
* * *
This interested Harv, because he suddenly became aware of the smell of these men—a sort of peppery, chicken-soupy, vaguely shitty odor that implied it had been a long time since any of them had truly bathed. But perhaps dirty hands were a source of infection? These people accumulated a lot of cuts and scrapes and bruises over the course of their daily lives, so perhaps the tribes with handwashing customs lived and reproduced better than the ones without?
Harv also noticed the smell of the “troll”—quite clearly a Neandertal man—which was quite different. Shittier, for one thing, but also sharper and muskier—like the sweat of horses, or a dog’s bed that had been cleaned, imperfectly, with vinegar. And through Argur’s highly attuned senses he fancied he could even smell the creature’s fear, like an undertone of hot copper plumbing.
* * *
And so they washed their hands, keeping suspicious eyes on Lug all the while, and then they were all moving again, their armor and weapons rattling.
“Thank! Thank!” said Lug, over and over again, his voice retreating into the distance as the ten of them marched over the bridge and on up into the unknown.
* * *
Trolls were capable of moving silently, but they were also capable of making a lot of racket—their shrill voices bickering as they crashed through bushes and the lower branches of trees, or splashed their way across the stream where it widened to fill the entire pass. And the stream, too, was capable of moving between its banks with barely a whisper or gurgle. At other times it growled and roared its way over rocks or down steeper slopes. And the mountain air sometimes carried sound well, and sometimes not, and sometimes the walls of the canyon were steep and close together and full of echoes, and sometimes they were far apart and gently sloping and full of pine trees. And sometimes the wind through these trees whistled or hissed, and sometimes it made no sound at all.
And so at times they could clearly hear the trolls up ahead of them, and it seemed the distance was quickly shrinking. At one point, where the pass was unusually straight and long, they could even see the okor rounding a bend up ahead. Close enough to see! But at other times there was no trace—not even smashed undergrowth—and it seemed the humans were falling behind. And at still other times the Knights of Ell had to stop and rest. To drink some water, to eat a bite of food, to catch their breath and take a load off their feet and shoulders for a little while. And this was a problem, because they knew full well that the trolls—strong and stubborn and tireless—would never stop. So the men urged each other onward, and Nortlan followed bravely, apparently too proud to admit his endurance was failing—which it very clearly was.
And then the sun itself began to fail—first slipping behind the wall of the canyon, then slowly dimming and reddening the bright clouds above it. And then the sky began to dim, and as far as Argur could tell, they were nowhere near the High Vales that were supposed to be back here somewhere. The fact was, the residents of Nog La were not travelers. Why should they be, when trading parties came to them? Although, now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been many trading parties coming from this direction lately. In any case, not even the Knights of Ell had ever ventured back this far; they didn’t really know how long it took to get anywhere. Not really.
And then it began to get dark, and then it was dark, and the canyon—which had seemed so empty during the day—began to fill up with animal noises. Was that howling wolf close by, or somewhere far up the pass? That yipping fox? That unfamiliar low-high-low shriek that was hopefully just some kind of bird?
“We need to stop,” Tom said.
A minute later, when everyone was still walking, as a sliver of moon appeared over the canyon wall and the stars began winking open overhead, he said it again: “Argur, we need to stop. I already can’t see anything, and we need to gather firewood and set up some fortifications.”
“Fortifications?” Nortlan asked.
“To protect the camp,” Tom said. “I’ll show you.”
“We can’t stop,” Argur protested. But that sounded wrong even to him, so he followed it with, “Not for long, not for the whole night. At dawn we need to get moving again. You know the trolls are still moving right now, and will be for some time.”
“Probably not all night,” Tom said.
“No,” Argur agreed. “Not all night, but long enough to burn all the advantage we gained today. We’re going to have to be faster tomorrow.”
“Well, perhaps we shouldn’t have brought the rabbit,” Jek observed in his infuriatingly slow voice.
“He walks as fast as you,” Timlin said, through swollen lips. “And complains less.”
“All right,” Argur said. “Let’s find a flat spot. Gower and Snar, collect firewood if you would, please. Jek, if you dig a fire pit; I’ll gather stones to line it. Can you clear the area, Ronk? And Perry? Tom and Nort, I agree, you should fortify us. Timlin, you look like mud. Get your armor off and sit down.”
As they set up camp, it occurred to Argur—not for the first time, but for the strongest time—that the knights were spread too far on this problem. Chap had run off to warn the lake villages, and both Pagel and Max had run to Sunset Castle. Gouch was home with a sprained wrist, and Timlin was here with a swollen face, not in much condition to fight. Nortlan had never been in a fight, and as far as Argur knew he couldn’t even use a sling or leverthrow. And the entire complement of Sunset Castle was presumably dealing with the boolis problem—spirits knew what they were going to do about that. So, counting Argur himself, that left only…seven? He counted again and came up with six. Tried still again and came up with eight—a number so large he’d only counted to it a few times in his life. But then he realized he’d counted Timlin by mistake, and decided it really didn’t matter. Point was, there were not enough knights here, and they were tired from hiking uphill all day.
It didn’t give him a good feeling. The trolls had been greedy enough or desperate enough to attack in daylight, and also smart and brave enough to send a boolis thundering into Nog La as a distraction. If they also outnumbered the humans…
But while he fretted and gathered up rocks, other men did real work. Tom showed Nortlan how to cut and sharpen three chest-high green branches (not straight spear poles, but just ordinary crooked branches), and tie them together into a little tent structure with two points facing up and outward, and one facing down and back, buried into the soil. Camp fortifications looked silly, because a wolf or a troll or a hostile human being could leap right over. But Argur had rarely seen them do so, because tripping in the attempt could be extrem
ely painful, or even fatal, and any time spent slipping between the fort sticks, or knocking them aside, would provide ample alarm to the men within. So, foolish or not, the fort sticks served their purpose. It made him wonder, for just a moment, how many things in life were like that: symbolic barriers that somehow worked. He should discuss it sometime with Nismu, for it seemed to him that wizarding must rely on a similar principle.
Or something like that. Once Argur had the firepit stones laid out, he started to help Tom and Nortlan with the pretend-yet-real fortifications. But oh! The panic of the day had worn him out as much as the walking, and by the time Ronk and Perry had shaved some kindling and struck a spark to it, he could barely keep his eyes open long enough to assign guard duty.
“Ronk and Gower, until the moon is there in the sky. Tom and Nortlan, until the moon sets. Snar and Me, until first light. Then we all get moving.”
As he laid out his cloak and arranged his bed for the night, by the flickering light of a blossoming campfire that crackled with sappy green pine, his mind kept working on one simple thing: if the trolls weren’t already home, to whatever hole or deadfall they lived in, they’d be stopping soon to set up a rude camp of their own. Either way, Dele would be at their mercy. He couldn’t bear the idea, and yet still he somehow fell asleep almost before he’d closed his eyes.
* * *
Sometime in the night, he awoke to the sound of heavy breathing. And then the sound of kicking and grunting, and a yelp. He turned, and saw Jek lying away from the fire, in the jumping shadows, with his dick in one hand and a little hardmud woman in the other. Broad-hipped, broad-bosomed, and narrow waisted—the sort of figurine unmarried men liked to carry around with them as “good luck tokens” or “fertility charms.” To please the sprits, yes, but these little mud women always seemed to be at hand when the bachelors emptied their balls. Argur had never seen the need, but of course he had Dala.
Gower was standing over Jek, threatening to kick him again.
“Hey!” Jek protested. “Private time!”
“Show some respect,” Gower hissed, clearly trying to be quiet. “Our girls are being fucked by strangers right now.”
“Private time,” Jek said again, less emphatically.
“Respect,” Gower answered, “or pain.”
Grumbling, Jek put away both his little woman and his little man.
Argur’s mind protested: there was no evidence that the girls were being fucked right now. Gower had no right to say that. His mind had a lot to say on this subject, but his eyelids were so heavy that he couldn’t hold them up for long. They pulled closed, and dragged his face back down into the nestles of his blanket. Sleep was a mercy.
2.5
It was still dark when Argur was awakened by Tom and Nortlan, and once he’d shaken off the spirits he crawled out from his bedroll into night air that was unnaturally cold and damp for midsummer. He and Snar stomped themselves warm and then stood an uneasy watch, neither one talking, just listening to the owls until dawn began to break.
Hootoo! The owls said to one another, which in the language of Nog La was both a sound of derision and one of warning. You’re in it now! Hootoo! Hootoo!
As the sky grew brighter, the walls of the pass became more visible, and something caught Argur’s eye that, for a moment, made him raise his spear. Monster! But no, it was only the bones of a monster, jutting out from halfway up the hillside. His grandfather had once told him there was a dead dragon up here in the pass, and the ground had partially swallowed it up. But it didn’t look like that to Argur. For one thing, it looked like the ground had been washing away from it, uncovering something that had previously been completely buried. And the skeleton wasn’t emerging from dirt, but from the actual sandstone beneath it! For another thing, the bones seemed profoundly lifeless. Were dragon bones made of stone? There were no shreds or traces of hide or sinew or cartilage on any part of it. This thing had been dead for many years, at least. Probably a lot more than that.
“Dragon bones,” Snar said, following Argur’s gaze.
“Mmm,” Argur agreed.
“I don’t like it.”
“Nor I.”
The creature was on its side and still partially buried, but it looked to be taller than a boolis, and two or three times as long. The arms were short and thin, with knifelike claws, and might almost have fit onto the body of a cave bear, but the leg bones were as huge as a mammoth’s. A long, snakelike tail projected out behind it. Its head was the size of a human being, with teeth the size spearheads. It could bite a man in half as easily as Argur could tear the flesh off a goose leg.
“I thought dragons had wings,” Snar said.
Argur shrugged. “Not always.”
“Not always? That doesn’t make any sense.”
And that was true; it didn’t. But they had more important things to attend to this morning, so Argur drew out his flute and, after blowing a few melodic notes, leaned out over the sleeping Knights and blasted out a shrill tone.
“Arise, Knights of Ell! We have daughters and nieces to rescue!”
They awoke, startled and grumbling. And then, as they slowly got to their feet, one by one in the rising light of dawn, they saw the dragon as well.
“Oi!”
“Wow.”
“Hmm.”
“Hootoo! We’ve been sleeping under that?”
And then Nortlan: “Dragon bones! Oh mud, it’s so big. I thought they were smaller.”
“I thought they had wings,” Gower added.
Then Nortlan asked, “Argur, have you ever seen a live one?”
“No,” Argur answered curtly, gathering up his things from around the camp. “They’ve never been seen in Nog La. Or anywhere I’ve heard of, for many generations. Look at this one, buried in stone. How long would that take?”
“Interesting,” Nortlan said, just standing there staring at the thing.
“Pack up,” Argur told him. “You can look at it on the way down, once Dele and the others have been rescued.”
The Knights rarely camped, but when they did they made a practice of cleaning up as completely as possible, leaving no way for possible enemies to estimate their numbers or their strength. The fire was thoroughly extinguished, its stones scattered. Piss and shit were covered with dirt to disguise their scent from predators. The fort sticks were disassembled and snapped in half and tossed in the stream, where they immediately began slithering and bouncing their way downhill, toward Nog La.
The men washed their hands, and then they were off, gnawing on ogabred as they hiked upward.
“We need to move,” Argur told them. “We’ve lost too much time already.”
But they made good progress, and soon came upon the place where the trolls themselves had camped. It was a mess; if the Knights preferred to clean up after themselves, trolls took the exact opposite approach: the ground was littered with gnawed bones and bits of raw animal pelt, turnip greens, and little piles of shit. Their still-smoldering campfires reeked of urine. We were here, the campsite announced, and we don’t care who knows it.
“Argur, look,” Nortlan said, pointing. On the ground was a little hardmud ball, somewhat larger than a sling bullet, with lines carved around it. “Isn’t that Dele’s?”
Argur stooped and picked it up. “Yes. I think it is.”
“It’s someone’s,” Tom said dismissively. “Trolls couldn’t make that.”
“Did she leave it here on purpose?” Nortlan asked. “For us to find?”
But no one answered. Did it matter?
“Let’s keep moving,” Argur said.
Before the sun was halfway to its peak, the pass finally flattened and turned downward, and then opened out into a much wider valley. They had reached the first of the High Vales. From the pass they could see the whole valley spread out in front of them, with a kind of footpath or game trail leading down through it, perhaps connecting to the pass at the valley’s far end. The valley had its own roundish lake near the center
, making it look like a miniature version of Nog La, though with a lot more meadow than forest.
“Does anyone see them?” Tom asked, looking down into the High Vale.
Nobody answered. It was a good half-day’s march to the valley’s other end, and not even Perry (who had by far the best vision of anyone in Nog La) would be able to see human-sized figures that far away.
“Or hear them?” Argur added.
Again, no one answered, but there was a general grumbling of assent: the questions were reasonable. The trolls hadn’t marched all night, but had stopped and camped sometime well before midnight. This meant they must be down there somewhere, probably between here and the lake. And the view from up here was bound to be better than the view from the valley floor, so it made sense to pause here and really look and listen.
“I do see smoke,” Perry said, “But it’s not a camp. It’s a village.”
“A human village?” Jek wanted to know.
Perry shrugged. “I assume so.”
“Humans must live closer to Nog La than the trolls do,” Nortlan stated. “Or nobody would ever come to visit us at all.”
Unconvinced, Argur said, “Let’s check it.”
So they made their way downhill, following the path toward whatever Perry had seen. In a while, all of them could see it, and before the sun reached its peak, they could see it clearly: a collection of ten round huts, made of bent wood and bundles of grass, with cured yellow leather over the top for waterproofing. They were nearly identical to the houses within Sunrise Castle, and the nearby lake villages. (The houses on the Sunset Castle end of Nog La tended to be oval shaped, with piles of stone at their bases, and a single straight log down the middle of each roof, but that was mostly because the wind spilling down from the valley and into the River Lands didn’t let them make the houses quite as wide, so they were made longer to compensate.) Furthermore, the village was surrounded by larger versions of the fort sticks Tom and Nortlan had set up last night. Again, not foolproof—not nearly as reliable as a castle wall—but still a message to anyone who might think about raiding here: We’re well equipped and well prepared. Do you really want to chance it?