by Wil McCarthy
There were things here that he was not understanding, and he didn’t like that. The job of a Knight was to kill things, capture things, drive things away. The job of a headman was to talk and understand, and Argur realized he had always been a much better Knight than headman. But what did that even mean? That he’d killed and driven away things he should have talked to instead? Did one negotiate with a snow leopard?
He saw Tom whispering in the ear of Jek, and then, when they were safely out of trollish earshot, Tom said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Are we circling back for an uphill advantage?”
“No, we’re going down there. To talk.”
“Talk about what? Argur, they have your daughter! And if they attack us downhill, from the cover of trees, while we stand around in the open…”
“They’ve had plenty of opportunity.”
“They were outnumbered and surprised!”
“Hardly.”
And then Nortlan said, “They have magic.”
To which Jek replied, mockingly, “Ooh, magic.”
“They have wolves,” Perry said. “And strong women, maybe? If they’re concentrated together like that, we don’t have an advantage. It’s better if they do come down and attack us on the grass. Pick them off as they come.”
Clearly, no one was going to wait until they got down there to start talking, so Argur told them, “They’ve got our own girls taking their side. Our bruised, nabbed girls. I want to know how the trolls did that.”
“Magic, obviously,” said Nortlan.
“Maybe,” said Argur, “Or maybe we don’t have the whole story. We need to go back up there, sit down around the fire, and let somebody tell us what’s going on.”
“And drink gargo and hold hands until they slit our throats,” Tom sneered.
“I think we can kill them all,” Gower said, “and I think we should.”
Tom nodded to him, punched him in the arm approvingly, and murmured something to him that Argur couldn’t quite catch.
“They haven’t killed us,” Ronk said. “Bad luck if we’re the first to draw blood.”
“They nabbed our girls!” Timlin shouted, probably loud enough for the trolls to hear.
“Quiet,” Jek told him.
“Hey! Hey!” Argur whispered loudly. “Everyone close your lips! We can’t all talk at once. Rabbit, what do you think?”
Nortlan paused, looking around at the men before saying, “I think those wolves could eat a lot of rats.”
“Meaning what?” Tom demanded. “We should invite them all to Nog La? Trolls are cannibals, did you know that? They eat their dead. They eat our dead.”
“Not often,” Perry said.
“Everyone, be quiet!” Argur repeated. “You’ll get your turn. Nort, speak.”
Nort looked around again, uncertainly, before answering. “If they want to talk, we should talk. I think we could learn a lot from them. Their magic is…impressive. But we’d have to offer them something in return. Not our women! Right? Not our women. But something. It doesn’t look like they’re doing so well up here.”
“Good,” Tom said. “They don’t deserve to.”
Argur glared at him, and then said, “Your turn is now last, Tom. Speak out again, and your turn is never. Perry, what do you think?”
Perry looked thoughtful for a long moment, like there were many factors to consider, and one of them was not wanting to give offense to the men whose daughters and nieces were still up there.
“Speak!” Argur told him impatiently.
“You’re not the only one who needs to think,” Perry objected. “I…I think these are dangerous creatures.”
“And?”
“And what? They’re dangerous. Very brave hunters, but also sometimes thieves and poachers and scavengers and cannibals. Their skin is the color of worms, Argur.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Perry shrugged. It appeared he’d said all he needed to.
Argur sighed, then looked to Timlin, who said, “It would be dangerous to leave them alive. Also dangerous to fight them on their home terrain. But we can’t leave the girls with them, obviously. Or the women they’ve cursed into loving them.”
“Hmm. And?”
“Well, we should threaten them. I don’t know why we haven’t threatened them, Argur. Maybe kill one, as an example.”
That sounded like a particularly bad idea, but Argur wasn’t yet ready to start making statements of his own.
“What about the little children?” Ronk asked, when it was his turn. “They look human to me. What bad magic turns them into trolls as they grow?”
“What are you saying?” Argur asked.
“I don’t know which ones we should take with us when we go.”
“Hmm. Hmm, yes. It’s a troubling question. Snar, you’ve been quiet. Do you have an opinion?”
Snar had a faraway look as he answered, “I think…I think…there’s a boolis coming this way.”
He pointed.
“Oh, mud,” Perry said, following his gaze. “He’s right.”
Now everyone looked, and indeed, there was a little white blob down there on the grasslands, that was moving toward them rapidly. Argur squinted, and could see that it was, indeed boolis shaped. He even fancied he could hear the slamming of its feet against the ground as it ran.
“Hmm,” he said, trying to sound calm. There was time. It wasn’t upon them yet. “Let’s put the troll camp between us and it, shall we?”
“My daughter’s in that camp,” Timlin reminded him.
“Boolises don’t go in caves,” Argur said. “The girls can hide back in there. I want the trolls and wolves to deal with this thing, not us.”
“It could tire them out,” Tom said approvingly. “Maybe even thin their numbers.”
“We don’t have much time,” Snar pointed out.
“I agree,” Argur said. “Run!”
Most animals had poor eyesight, and while most also had a good sense of smell, that was not a good way to identify the precise locations of things that were far away. Nevertheless, the boolis seemed to know exactly where they were. It charged toward them in bursts, stopping every so often to lower its head and paw at the ground in a territorial display, and then thundered into motion again.
The Knights were not at their swiftest right now, cursed with weariness and going uphill all loaded with gear. But still they ran, strung out in a line like knotted rope, and worked their way back up, to the right of the troll camp and then just above it. As the men arrived, one by one, they froze in place, grabbing trees and panting, trying not to give the boolis any moving targets to pick up against the background litter of the forest.
Annoyed shouts rose up from the camp itself; Argur’s plan had worked. The boolis was now charging the trolls! However, the giant beast seemed to think twice about this. Its run slowed, and then stopped. It stood below the camp, breathing heavily and pawing the ground, just outside of stone-throwing range. Apparently, it knew exactly what it was dealing with, here.
“Fair’s fair,” Tom murmured, looking down with satisfaction. “Come on, charge!”
But one of the trolls stepped forward, holding a spear at waist level, making stabbing motions. And then sang in its shrill voice: Ohhhhh-aaaaaah! Ohhhhh-aaaaaah!
The boolis seemed to recognize that as well; it pawed the hillside for an angry moment, and then began to retreat. After a moment, it turned around and actually began, slowly, walking back down the hill where it had come from.
Argur eyed the troll and wondered about this magic of theirs. Did they learn it? Were they born with it? Were the animals born recognizing it, or did they need to be taught the meanings of different songs? Argur had fought against trolls five times in his life, had even killed one once. He had chased them away more times than he could count, and he had talked to them…once? Two days ago, when he spoke to Lug, at the bridge?
From the camp below, Moti called up: “Rude men! Did you think that would work?
You send a boolis to trample these men, who command the wolves of the forest?”
Argur, panting for breath, called back, “Sorry! It chased us.”
“Yes,” Moti said. “They do that. Are you surprised?”
“It surprised us, yes,” Argur answered carefully. Then he said, “Tom, we need to… Tom?”
Looking for his friend, he turned around just in time to see Tom’s club swinging into the side of his head.
The world blinked for a moment, and Argur was on his knees, barely. One light breeze and he’d be on his side. He struggled to understand what had just happened: Tom stood over him with a club. For what? Attacking what?
“Tom?”
“That’s going to hurt more than I intended. I was trying to hit you across the back of the skull.”
But that didn’t make any sense. Why would Tom hit Argur with a club?
Tom nodded, a sorrowful look on his face. “This, too.”
And swung the club again. This time, Argur had a moment to comprehend that Tom’s turn to speak had finally arrived.
“Oh, Tom,” he had time to say, before the club connected and he went down.
The world blinked again (or did it?), and he thought he saw Nortlan standing over him asking what happened, what happened, and then a murky figure was swinging the butt end of a spear and Nortlan was down on the ground as well, and then somehow Argur was crawling. Did that make sense? He wasn’t sure. And then he found himself looking out between the edge of the hill and the red-and-yellow rhino-hide canopy jutting out from it. Through this sliver he could see men and women and children, or perhaps trolls and trollettes and troll-lings, milling around in evident alarm. Like ants or bees or swimming ducks.
“Load darts,” said a faraway voice. “Drop everything that doesn’t look human.”
And then there was a thumping sound, and someone was screaming, and blood somehow splashed across Argur’s arm. And then the wolves here howling, and the trolls were screaming in their ugly-high voices, and then Dele was down there, holding her arms out and shouting no, no, and there was a rather delicate-looking female troll behind her and she was shielding it. It warmed him to see her acting with such foolish bravery, if only for a moment, but then (did the world blink again?) there was a dart sticking out of her chest. And that definitely did not make sense.
“No,” he told the world. And then, as he watched his daughter fall, spurting blood from her chest and mouth, he explained it more emphatically: “No! Not that at all.”
And when that didn’t work—when she hit the ground in a pile of awkward limbs, her eyes staring blankly at the sky—he did the only other thing he could think of: he closed his own eyes and let the weariness send him to the spirit world.
* * *
That night, beside the campfire, Argur slowly remembered how to count. There were one-two-three-four Knights of Ell: Snar, Jek, Timlin, and Gower. Or actually it was five, counting Argur himself. Tom, Nortlan, Ronk and Perry were nowhere to be seen.
There were one-two-three-four-five young women: Moti, Val, and Maga, plus two he didn’t know. Dele, too was nowhere to be seen. Moti and Maga would not stop crying, but Val and the others seemed to be mostly all right.
There were no trolls here, male or female.
There were one-two-three-four-five young children: a girl and a boy with black hair, and a girl and two boys with orange. None of them had mushroom-white skin. These, also, would not stop crying.
Above him was a red and yellow canopy of rhino skin.
Argur could make no sense of any of this, and so he rolled over and went back to sleep.
2.7
The next morning, almost as soon as Argur had opened his eyes, the girl named Val came over and wordlessly offered him a skin of water. Sitting up awkwardly, he accepted it and drank quite a bit. His throat was dry, his skull a throbbing mass wrapped in painful, swollen flesh. He could only open his eyes partway, and although his arms worked, they seemed clumsy and far-off.
“How are you feeling?” Val asked him.
“Bad,” he told her truthfully. He touched the side of his head, and felt bandages there. Bandages and a lump the size of a goose egg. About right, yes, for the hits he’d taken. And then he asked the question: “Dele?”
With immense sadness, Val shook her head. No, no Dele.
The answer hit him like autumn leaves, swirling and scratching and then gone. He was hollow, as if his gutted carcass had been sat up. He was pain wrapped around nothing at all.
Val looked him over for a few moments, and then asked, “Would you like some food? A nice bit of fatty ham?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. He barely understood the question.
He looked around and saw his men packing things up, as if to travel. Around the edges of the camp there were five piles of stones and dirt. Fresh graves. There were drag marks everywhere, leading out to piles of dead trolls, dead wolves. Dead vultures, even.
“Trolls bury their dead,” he tried to say to Val. It was wrong to leave them out like that, to rot. On the occasions when the Knights of Ell killed a troll, they always buried it, lest its spirit—or its living relatives—seek vengeance. But his voice was slurred, incomprehensible even to himself, and Val just looked at him strangely.
“Can he walk?” Gower asked Val.
She looked at Argur. “Can you?”
That question made more sense, so he put a hand down and tried to lever himself off the ground. She bent to help him, and in a little while he was up. Leaning heavily on her, but up.
“He’s going to need help,” she said.
“I’ll help him,” Gower told her.
“We’ll take turns,” Jek said. “It’s a long walk.”
“Mostly down,” Gower said. “But all right. Turns.”
And so they walked. Not quickly, because the little children were even slower than Argur was, and they were too big to be carried by the young women for any great distance, and yet they refused to be carried by any of the Knights, whom they seemed to regard as terrifying figures. Argur didn’t blame them. Their entire tribe had just been murdered, and they themselves were being nabbed. Maybe in the future they wouldn’t remember this day. Maybe. But for right now they were on a forced march, among enemies.
“You missed quite a battle,” Jek told him at one point, as he helped Argur up the rocky pass.
Argur only grunted in reply. A part of him wondered exactly what had happened: who had killed whom, and in what order. Who had fought bravely, and who had tried not to fight at all. Who had participated in his betrayal—was he also among enemies? But he was hollow, now, and couldn’t really bring himself to care.
The woman named Moti seemed to be in a similar mood; mostly out of breath on their long hike, and occasionally overflowing with tears, she no longer appeared haughty or angry. She no longer appeared to be anything at all.
They must have passed the High Vale village somewhere along the way. Moti’s village, and that of the two other women Argur hadn’t met. And yet, these women walked on with the Knights, toward Nog La. Perhaps it was the best of their limited options: go home to the families who’d sold them, or go along with the men who’d tried—however badly—to rescue them. Who had in fact—however badly—succeeded.
The day was a blur to Argur, as though he’d spun himself dizzy and was wandering crazily not only across the ground, but through time. The group was headed downhill now, and each of his steps landed heavily, his sandals slamming and tugging at his feet. He was tired and in pain—every step and every moment were an agony beyond anything he’d previously imagined. And yet, he didn’t seem to mind very much, and the end of the day seemed to come so quickly that at first he thought they’d only stopped for lunch.
But no, it was dark, and they were all sitting around a fire again. Or was it two fires? One for the knights and their daughters, and one for the women and children of the trolls. Enemy camps. Which one did Argur belong in?
“In all, we came out o
f this pretty well,” Jek’s voice was saying, distantly. “At the beginning we were down three people. Now we’re down five, and up ten.”
“Close your lips,” Gower told him.
“It’s like we’ve created some people out of nothing.”
“Close them or I’ll smash you.”
And Snar was saying, “We lost knights and gained babies. You call that good trading?”
To which Gower said, “I’ll smash you, too! Take watch, both of you. Lips closed. And Jek, if you make love to that hardmud woman tonight I’ll jam her straight up your ass. Promise.”
And then it was morning again.
* * *
Argur’s spirit had been knocked out of his body, but not fully into the spirit world itself. It might have stayed that way until his body finally died, but instead parts of it began to return on that second day; he needed less help walking, and he kept better track of time. Better track of other people’s conversations, too; when Jek told Snar that he’d heard a smorkbird up ahead, Argur actually answered with, “No, that’s a spearsbeak.”
“What?” Jek said, looking at Argur in surprise.
“Gloomier than a smorkbird,” Argur told him. And then, after a moment’s thought, “And lonelier.”
“So,” Jek said. “You’re in there after all.”
“Mmm,” Argur answered, looking away. His attention had its limits.
And yet, it was not the only conversation he was drawn into that day, and when it became clear that the group could actually make it all the way back to Sunrise Castle before the sky grew fully dark, he actually exerted some leadership, saying: “No, let’s not. Sad news is best delivered in the morning.”
So they camped again, stopping early, setting up fortifications even though they all agreed this stretch of canyon had been quite well patrolled over the past few days, and was unlikely to contain any nasty surprises. “But we have toddlers,” Argur said, to general agreement. With an open camp, it would take almost nothing for a snow leopard to slip out of the shadows and drag a child off into the brush, possibly without anyone even noticing.