Troll Mountain

by Matthew Reilly

  Raf held it beside his own rope. By comparison, his rope looked frayed, crude and primitive. “I thought mine was good, but this, well …”

  “Your rope is good,” Ko said firmly. “Because you crafted it with your own hands. And besides, it’s rope. As long as it holds your weight, how pretty does it need to be?”

  Raf smiled. As he did so, he noticed in the corner of Ko’s shack six small green barrels with what appeared to be candlewicks sticking out of their lids. A strange kind of writing was painted on their sides. It read:

  Raf nodded at them. “What is in those barrels?”

  “Ah …” Ko smiled. “It is perhaps my people’s greatest invention, the secret formula for which I am privileged to know.”

  Ko went over to one of the barrels and lifted its lid. He extracted a handful of thick black powder. “It is called firepowder,” he said. “My old army would use it to hurl heavy iron balls great distances into the ranks of our enemies, to topple their battle elephants and bring down the walls of their fortresses.”

  Raf gazed at the black powder. “The powder catches alight?”

  “More than that. If you light their wicks, these barrels will combust mightily, creating most powerful blasts. This strange powder won my country many wars.”

  Raf nodded slowly, impressed. “Firepowder.”

  Ko leaned forward. “Speaking of winning battles, let me give you a third piece of wisdom, my young friend, given you will be fighting your own battle soon: to bring down a four-legged beast, you only need to injure two of its legs. This rule applies to battle elephants and mountain wolves alike.”

  Raf thought about that as he went to sleep that evening—for later on, outside the thin walls of the shack, beyond the closer noises of the swamp, he heard the rustle of branches and the grunts of a pack of large wolves, very near, and he was glad he had taken up the old man’s offer of hospitality.

  Chapter 6

  The next day, Ko offered to accompany Raf on his quest, at least for part of the way.

  “I know the Badlands,” he said, “and I might be able to help you at some of the more difficult swamp crossings.”

  Raf was glad of the assistance and over the course of that day, they made excellent progress through the middle regions of the Badlands.

  Ko did indeed know the Badlands well. At those times when the path was hidden beneath wide pools that had crept across it, Ko knew where fords lay, saving Raf the many hours it would have taken to skirt the pools.

  Ko walked with an easy lope, carrying his crossbow casually in his folded arms.

  At one point in their journey, when they had stopped to eat some lunch, Raf asked, “How did you come to be in these lands?”

  “Oh, I was part of a vast army from the east, led by a great warrior-king. Over the course of a long campaign, we conquered many lands and acquired many treasures.

  “I was a medicine man who tended to our soldiers when they were wounded or fell ill. Our army stopped its great journey of conquest a thousand miles to the east of here and when it turned for home, I asked the great king if I might remain in these parts. He granted me my request, and I ventured over many hills and valleys until I settled here in these Badlands with their splendid solitude.”

  “You don’t like people?” Raf asked.

  “I don’t like what people do to each other.”

  As the sun set at the end of that second day, black shadows extended across the track. The trees seemed to reach out for Raf, their branches gnarled arms, their twigs flexing claws. Ko didn’t seem to notice the grimness of their surroundings at all.

  As night fell, they came to the old Broken Bridge.

  “Broken” was an overly complimentary term, Raf thought as he looked at it.

  In truth, it was no bridge at all anymore.

  A broad muddy stream cut across the track here, part of the dry river that meandered down to Raf’s valley. Over the centuries, in times when the river’s flow had been stronger, it had cut a deep gash in the brown landscape, about thirty feet across and fifteen feet deep, with sheer muddy walls. The streambed itself was a muddy bog: moist, brown, and stinking.

  At some point in history, someone had bridged the stream, but the bridge had long ago been washed away or its planks pilfered for other uses, so now all that remained in its place were the stone pillars on which it had stood. They spanned the muddy streambed at regular intervals—intervals across which a man could leap with a bounding stride and good balance.

  Raf saw another thing in the mud of the streambed.

  Footprints.

  Only they were not human footprints.

  They were larger and deeper than human footprints, the stub-toed prints of trolls.

  Ko said, “The Broken Bridge is a great protector of your river valley, Raf. Trolls do not have the same kind of toes as humans. Theirs are smaller, less dextrous. The chief consequence of this is that trolls do not possess the same level of balance as humans. For a troll to leap from one of these pillars to the next would be a considerable feat, hence the relative infrequency of rogue trolls reaching your valley.”

  Raf nodded at the trollprints in the bog. “The prints only come halfway across the streambed. Why?”

  Ko nodded. “The mud of the streambed is deadly. It is gripping mud, with the texture and malevolence of quicksand. Once you are stuck in it, it slowly takes you under. The prints only come halfway across because by then the unwary troll is hopelessly stuck and the bog swallows him.”

  Raf stared at the muddy bog in horror. A bubble popped on its surface, as if it were alive.

  “Trolls are far stronger than humans are,” he said. “But they are not very clever, are they?”

  “Apart from the smaller field trolls, yes, that is correct,” Ko said. “In his ultimate wisdom, the Great Creator made sure that no one creature got every talent. Yes, trolls got immense size and strength, but as compensation for those talents, they have only rudimentary balance and limited intelligence. Humans received ingenuity but little raw strength. Wolves have cunning, and heightened senses of smell and hearing, but thankfully no opposable thumbs.” Ko smiled wistfully. “I like to think the Great Creator just wanted to make life in this world interesting.”

  Raf looked from the footprints in the mud to the rather sinister terrain on the other side of the Broken Bridge. The forest of thorns on that side seemed thicker, the shadows more menacing.

  This was becoming too real. Real wolves, real trolls, real darkness. Cold fear shot through him and for a moment he considered turning back. Boldly venturing out on this quest had seemed a lot easier from his hovel back in the valley.

  But then he thought of Kira, dying from the illness, and his resolve returned.

  He turned to Ko. “Are trolls naturally cruel? Ever since I was a child, I have been told that every troll is a monster bent only on feasting on human flesh and wreaking havoc and destruction.”

  Ko looked at Raf for a long moment before replying.

  “This is a most perceptive question, Raf. Many humans live their entire lives without questioning the ‘truths’ they’ve been told.”

  “And?”

  “Despite a mountain troll’s commanding physical size, its brain is small, so it is incapable of complex thought. This does not mean, however, that it is incapable of thought. Simple brains just think simply: eat, kill, gain advantage, but most of all: survive.

  “A troll eats humans to survive. A troll exacts tribute from humans to survive. Yes, some trolls are cruel, so their array of simple thoughts includes more wicked ones like: dominate, control, hurt, humiliate.”

  “So trolls are not naturally cruel?”

  “I don’t think so. A significant proportion of humans are cruel but that doesn’t mean all people are. It is only when the cruel sit in positions of power that cruelty can become accepted. This is as true for trolls as it is for people, but with trolls it can happen more readily as the simple-minded are more easily led.”

  Raf tho
ught about this, and then realized something.

  “I have seen good people stand silently by while a cruel chieftain beat a tribe member out of sheer spite. The others all accepted the cruelty for fear of being subjected to it themselves, not because they agreed with it. And they were shamed by doing so.”

  “Emotions like shame and guilt,” Ko said, “are the price of having a larger brain: the human knows he can choose to stand up to cruelty. The troll can at least claim limited mental faculties.”

  Raf said nothing.

  “An interesting theoretical discussion,” Ko said. “I haven’t had one of those in years. One of the downsides to being a hermit, I suppose.”

  He looked around them. “Now. We face a choice. We can cross the Broken Bridge now and make some headway into the farthest regions of the Badlands through the night, or we can camp here.”

  Raf gazed across the muddy stream at the forbidding terrain on the opposite bank. Night was almost upon them. The full moon was rising above the mountains.

  “What about the mountain wolves?” he asked.

  Ko shrugged. “At some point in your journey, you were always going to have to make camp close to the mountains, Raf. A quest would not be a quest if it were easy. If we stay on this side, we will at least have time to make a defense against the wolves. That is the best we can hope for.”

  “I think we’ll camp here for the night,” Raf said.

  “A wise decision,” Ko said.

  Chapter 7

  The sound of something large crashing through the undergrowth woke Raf.

  His eyes snapped open. It was still dark. He peered into the moonlit forest around him.

  Beside him, Ko was already awake. The old man’s head was perfectly still as he listened intently.

  The loud crashing noises were coming from the other side of the stream.

  Then Raf heard more noises: branches snapping, heavy footsteps pounding on damp earth, and then—suddenly, cutting through the still night air—deep voices.

  “There he is!”

  “Get him!”

  The voices had a depth that the human voice box cannot reach.

  “Trolls?” Raf whispered.

  “Yes,” Ko said softly. “Stay under your blanket and don’t move.”

  At Ko’s suggestion, they had been sleeping just inside the tree line on their side of the muddy stream, without a fire, and with dense layers of leaves covering their blankets, creating a kind of camouflage. Raf huddled under his leaf-covered blanket and stared across the streambed, thankful that it lay between him and whatever was coming through the underbrush—

  A huge gray shape burst out of the thorn bushes on the opposite bank and skidded to a halt at the edge of the foul muddy gorge.

  Raf gasped at it in wonder.

  By the light of the moon, he could see it clearly.

  It was six feet tall, with monstrously broad shoulders, monstrously large fists, a monstrously thick neck, and a monstrously solid head.

  Indeed, the only things about it that were not monstrously sized were its legs—they were disproportionately short, thick, stubby things that held up its huge upper body.

  It was a troll.

  This was Raf’s first glimpse of one since the day his parents had died. Only this troll, despite its imposing size, was itself frightened.

  It was running for its life.

  The troll stood at the edge of the stream, surprised to find its escape route cut off.

  The deep voices came again from the thorny forest behind him: “Here! Tracks! Heading toward the bridge!”

  “Where are you, Düm! We’re coming to get you!”

  Raf glimpsed flashes of fire in the forest behind the troll: his pursuers were wielding flaming torches.

  The fleeing troll looked this way and that, agitated and desperate, before realizing that there was no choice but to attempt to cross the muddy stream by way of the Broken Bridge’s leftover pillars.

  Raf watched as the big creature measured his first leap onto the nearest stone pillar: this appeared to require all of the troll’s concentration.

  The troll jumped …

  … and landed on the first pillar, swaying precariously but managing to regain its balance.

  It was at that moment that his pursuers—four other trolls—rushed out of the forest bearing torches in their enormous hands. If it was at all possible, these trolls were taller and weightier than the first one: they were almost seven feet tall, with broader shoulders and longer arms. But they still had the same stubby legs.

  The four pursuers spotted the first troll wobbling desperately on the pillar, high above the mud of the streambed, arms held out for balance.

  They howled with laughter.

  “Look at him! Stupid Düm!” one guffawed.

  “Don’t fall in, Düm!” another cackled. “That foul gunk beneath you is gripping mud!”

  Then a third pursuer threw something at the fleeing troll. It bounced off his back, spraying liquid, before falling into the bog.

  Raf saw it land in the gripping mud with a soft gloop: it was a goblet of some sort. Within seconds, the mud sucked it under.

  “Ooh-ahh, Düm! Don’t lose your balance!”

  Raf frowned. The four pursuers seemed to be, well, drunk.

  And indeed, just then, another of them took a lusty swig of foamy liquid from his own goblet before hurling it at the fleeing troll and striking him on the back of the head with it.

  “Na-ha! You got him in the head!”

  “Well, we know that won’t hurt him!”

  The fleeing troll—Düm, Raf guessed—risked another leap to the next pillar and made it, again struggling mightily to retain his balance where Raf would have found it quite easy.

  The pursuing trolls started throwing other objects at Düm: branches, stones. They bounced off his thick gray hide.

  And then one of the pursuers threw a larger rock.

  It hit Düm squarely on the side of the head, causing him to lose his balance, and he tumbled from the pillar, falling for fifteen feet, cartwheeling in mid-air, before he landed feet-first in the gripping mud, embedding his legs all the way up to the hip in the viscous goo.

  The look of pure fear that flashed across Düm’s face when he saw his predicament struck Raf to the core of his being.

  It was a look common to all creatures—man, deer, hound and, evidently, trolls—the look of profound terror that follows the realization that one is moments away from death and there is absolutely no escape.

  The four other trolls exploded with laughter when they saw him drop into the mud. Two more rocks were thrown.

  One called, “Maybe you should have thought about this before you spoke to Graia. Stupid Düm. See you in the afterworld, you foolish dragger.”

  A final rock thunked against Düm’s head and the four trolls lumbered off, crashing through the thorn bushes, heading back toward the mountains, leaving the troll named Düm to die.

  *

  Raf had watched it all with a kind of grim fascination and he was staring at the swaying thorn bushes on the other side of the stream when he heard the troll in the mud whimper forlornly.

  Raf slid out from under his leaf-covered blanket and moved to the brink of the stream.

  “Raf—!” Ko hissed.

  Raf just held up his hand.

  He looked down into the bog and saw the troll hopelessly lodged in it, panting as it struggled in vain against the gripping mud. With every movement the troll managed only to sink itself further into the ooze.

  It looked pathetic and terrified. It was going to die here, slowly and alone.

  “Hey …” Raf called.

  The troll jerked round in the mud, looking this way and that before it realized the voice had come from the southern side of the muddy stream.

  Its fearful eyes found Raf’s and in a single instant Raf saw a complex series of thoughts pass through them: this troll needed a human’s help, but given the history of human–troll relations, suc
h a thing was unlikely to happen.

  “Please help Düm,” it said as it sank another inch into the mud.

  Raf looked long and hard at the creature. He thought of his mother in the grip of a wild troll. He had never contemplated that his own first encounter with a troll might involve saving one.

  “If I help you,” he said, “you won’t hurt me?”

  “Düm no hurt. Düm promise no hurt.”

  Ko came alongside Raf and whispered, “Not all trolls fully understand the concept of a debt of gratitude, Raf. If you save him, he may not believe he owes you anything.”

  Raf pursed his lips, still thinking.

  Ko said, “This doesn’t have to concern you—”

  Raf spun to face Ko. “Yes. It does. I will not stand by and watch a creature die.”

  With those words, he pulled out his axe, tied his rope to its handle and, holding the other end of the rope, threw the axe down to the stricken troll.

  It landed in the mud next to Düm and he grabbed hold of it.

  “Hold on and we’ll pull you up,” Raf said.

  The troll obeyed and with slow, careful movements, Raf and the far more reluctant Ko pulled him through the gripping mud to their side of the stream. Once Düm was out of the mud and standing on more solid dirt, they used the rope to help him scale the sheer wall of the stream until at last the troll stepped up onto their bank.

  He rose to his full height, looming head and shoulders above Raf and Ko.

  There was a long pause as he stared at them.

  “Düm would be pleased to know your name, so Düm may thank you.”

  Raf smiled. “My name is Raf.”

  “Thank you, Raf. Thank you for saving Düm’s life.”

  Chapter 8

  Raf, Ko, and Düm were sitting around the remains of the fire. It was very late. The forest was dark and still. Raf stared at the huge troll with wary fascination. Düm looked big and powerful but quiet, not enraged and wild like the troll that had killed his parents.

  “Why were those trolls chasing you?” Raf asked.