by E. E. Knight
“Probably some young buck from Newcrossing trying to see his girl in Glenn Eoiye,” Rainfall said, picking up the hat. “That’s a new red feather in his hat, quill cut to write her love notes or a Letter of Intent. In a year, it’ll be a sad song, and in ten, they’ll have new names in the old tune.”
His Elvish fell effortlessly onto her ear with six months of practice. She responded easily: “I don’t suppose a company will be formed to kill the troll and avenge him.”
“Thane Hammar isn’t that energetic. Let’s see if we can learn more of the sad tale.”
They followed the tracks back to the bridge, and Rainfall gaped at what he saw. One whole side of the bridge’s superstructure had been torn away from the wooden repair in the center.
“Oh! I’d have an earthquake come if it would just seal that wretched troll in his cave. This is a month’s labor. I’ll have to hire timberers and see about chain and staples.”
Wistala checked the road for traffic before she ventured out onto the bridge. She crossed the arches, the high-running river filling both banks below, to closer inspect the damage.
“A rider comes,” Rainfall said, but Wistala already heard the hoofbeats and scuttled over the edge of the bridge on the downwind side. There was the briefest of ledges there so men might anchor themselves and inspect the stones at the bottom, and she could easily grip it with sii and saa.
She heard Rainfall call a greeting and recognized the Hypatian tongue used by men in these parts. The rider trotted on without reply. Wistala waited some moments as the elves reckoned time before climbing back up and employing her nostrils.
“Not so much as a wave of his hand,” Rainfall said. “And he wore the garb of a high tradesman. A man with an eye toward commerce is usually better mannered.”
“I found something under the bridge,” Wistala said. “I think it tells the tale of the young man with the red feather. The troll lurked under the bridge for some time, and had been there much before. Smears of droppings are all along the pilings.”
“It’s been a hard winter. Maybe it had trouble finding enough pigs and goats for its appetite. Ah well, the waterfowl return, and it’ll get its fill of them. I must get the bridge repaired. A bad storm now could blow the wooden span to bits.”
Birds and words! Wistala thought, with her tail as stiff as an icicle. He’s got the advantage of the troll, and he doesn’t even consider how to use it.
Wistala watched the labor for the next few days, from the felling of two great trees for lumber to the sawing, the ironmongery both in the barn and at the bridge, and then placing the new beams with the crane. The last fascinated her, and Rainfall attempted to explain it over dinner with a great deal of talk about fulcrum points and levers and counterweights and blocks, but as soon as she learned one working of the crane, it seemed to force the previous one out of her head.
It wasn’t until she watched it at work the next day that some of his discourse made sense. After the workmen had gone—few dared labor long past noon, as they had to travel home on foot, save for a blacksmith or two who lodged with Rainfall at Mossbell—she stayed up and asked a few more questions about the crane.
“Ah, you’re getting it. You’ve no mind for theory, but when you see it in practice, you learn like lightning. I’ve noticed that with your Elvish, as well. Just when I thought you’d never get the hang of the extrafamilial oratory, you—”
“Bother oratory forms for now,” Wistala said. “The crane looks like it can go to a great height, above most treetops. Could it lift a tree upright?”
“Easily. Vertical, horizontal. Vertical is actually easier to maneuver; you don’t have to have stabilizing cables, as the shape of the tree works for you.”
“I’ve got an idea for your crane. But it would have to happen soon. And I expect you’d have to get a group of men willing to brave a shot at the troll.”
“Whatever can you mean, Wistala?”
“Get a piece of paper. You shall draw as I speak.”
Four nights later, with the bridge still unfinished in its repairs, so excited was Rainfall by her idea, Wistala walked Avalanche back and forth across the bridge.
Nerve, Wistala, where is your dragon courage? A drakka should be firebellied on the night of such a hunt, such a challenge.
The crane stood at the north end, hidden in the trees by the hard climb of stairs leading up the side of the cliff. It held a long, thin, straight pine, shorn of many but not all of its limbs. The wider bottom end had been sharpened, and ax-heads, saw edges, spear-points, and knife-blades stuck out from the bottom in a ring, like porcupine quills, though all had been blackened by soot so as not to catch the light. If it weren’t for the intermittent drizzle, she’d be able to see Rainfall atop the crane. But she wanted bad weather for this job to help mask sounds and smells.
Avalanche wore a thick blanket of quilted leather folded and tied across his back and neck, and grumbled a good deal about being out in the wet and not being near the mares of some of the men—only a handful had been willing to take up with Rainfall, mostly friends and relatives of the snatched young man. Not that Wistala had met any of them; her role in all this would hopefully remain secret.
Wistala walked again to the south side of the river, and thought she saw a bulge in the river, but it was hard to tell. She pulled on Avalanche’s reins—
“Careful!” Avalanche objected.
—and walked him to the side.
Yes. A dripping arm clung to the side of one of the stone arches. It moved, pulling up a sodden shape.
Her hearts pounded.
Father always said this was the worst moment. The moment before action was inevitable, that there would be no further delay, and from the next beat of your wings you were committed. The moment of choice.
She stood frozen. So big. It will be fast if it can run.
If she could commit herself with words first, maybe the rest would come easier: “It’s time, Avalanche.”
There. I’ve said it.
“Now for battle?” His tail flicked up, a white battle banner.
“Now for battle. All you have to do is run from the troll.”
“Brave Master Eyen rode battle. Troll came. Brave Master Eyen fell. I ran then.” His ears drooped a little, but maybe it was because of the wet.
“This time I want you to run,” she said, jumping as lightly as she could onto Avalanche’s broad back. Even with her scales, she couldn’t weigh as much as a young elf warrior arrayed for battle. “The best thing you can do is run. Faster you’re out of its sight, the better. Now walk on.”
Avalanche walked, but she could feel him holding himself back at every step. According to Rainfall, the stallion had spent his colt-hood and youth in training, learning to run at other horses and enemies, and the old instincts were coming back with action in the air, though there were wiry gray hairs mixed in with his softer ones on his mane and tail these days.
Wistala was grateful to ride Avalanche. She wasn’t certain her feet would be as sure as the stallion’s, walking along a bridge toward the spot—just across from the repaired timbers—where she knew the troll lurked.
But she was committed. Avalanche would walk her into peril whether her feet were willing to go or not. She felt her griff extending and contracting nervously, she tried to hold them tight against her neck hearts to stop the rattle.
They clomped across the wooden timbers, a dragon-length expanse covering the fallen arch. She felt certain her hearts were on the verge of quitting.
The snake-head orb at the end of its tendril lay on the side of the bridge, motionless, looking like a forgotten drinking gourd left by some traveler. Though she could smell the troll now, as could Avalanche. But he moved on, stepping faster if at all, with sure-footed courage.
Wistala’s claws set themselves into the leather quilting.
She heard the troll shift weight.
“Now, Avalanche!” she squeaked, in Drakine, but she slapped his muscular rump with her tail.
Avalanche let out a cry and leaped forward onto the stonework, hooves slipping just a little in the wet. Wistala hung on for all she was worth, but far better than the excitement of the run was the absence of fear.
The troll’s dreadfully huge three-digit hand just brushed Avalanche’s tail as it came down, and she felt no fear. The body, all gaping mouth and terrible stench, heaved itself onto the bridge behind them, and she only looked with amazement at the length of its forelimbs illustrated against the familiar width of the bridge.
She urged Avalanche on with another tail-slap.
The troll began to run after them. It used its long front legs and short back limbs in pairs long-then-short, long-then-short, in a strange unbalanced sort of run that made her think of a goose taking flight across a still lake, with wings beating strong and feet frantically working.
Avalanche was almost at the far end of the bridge when Wistala jumped off, giving him a last flick of her tail. She skidded to a stop on the wet bridge stones.
The troll came, Wistala thought its gait ungainly compared with that of a horse—even a dragon-dash was a thing of beauty compared with the troll’s careen.
She jumped to the east rail of the bridge, where her rope was tied. This wasn’t part of her original plan, but an addition of Rainfall’s, who didn’t like the idea of her belly-flopping into the river, even with the banks in spring flood.
Now to attract a troll!
She stood on her hind legs and extended her neck as far as she could. Her griff bristled, and she rattled them against her scales for all they were worth.
Tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-TCHK!
Her ears rang with the sound. The troll pulled up, confused by the sound, its waving orb-topped tentacle turning her way, backside expanding and contracting as it breathed.
Avalanche disappeared into the distant rain.
The troll set its arms and legs, ready for anything, battle or flight.
“Here’s a mouthful for you!” she shouted. She gripped the leather wrap on the line and dropped over the edge.
She felt the heat of her passage even through the protective grip—again, no fear in her hearts but the odd words friction heat crossing her mind, even with the troll gaping over as she dropped away.
It reached for her and missed, but caught up the line. By the time its slow brain made the connection and it began to draw up the line, Wistala was almost at the river.
She dropped into the water.
A hominid wouldn’t have been able to make it to the cut stairs, but drakka were strong swimmers; they could clasp their limbs to their side and put their whole body into the effort, sucking air through the nostrils. Wistala was bothered by the cold more than by the current—it brought back awful half-memories that took the courage out of her.
She reached the landing and pulled herself up, weary as though from a long dragon-dash.
The troll marked her movement, and it reached out with one long arm for the stairs and swung itself down.
“That’s right,” Wistala croaked, a puny vocalization that didn’t even disturb a stalking bird three rocks away. She drew breath and roared her best battle cry.
The orb turned down on her, and the troll hurried its climb. When the troll filled the view between her landing and the suspended pine trunk above, she called on her flame.
She didn’t aim her sole effectual weapon at the troll. She loosed it out, as far out into the river as she could. It struck the water and formed a pool there, floating downstream with the current.
She could never be sure what happened next, save that Rainfall saw her orange-red signal and cut the tree trunk free.
Perhaps it was the number of camouflaging branches left on the trunk that made a sound. Perhaps the tightly stretched cable’s parting at Rainfall’s ax-blow—it made a crack like a nearby lightning strike according to her host, who was in a position to know. Or perhaps the troll’s sense-orb could see in all directions, rather than only one—no one had ever lived long enough in the company of a troll to conduct any studies.
Wistala’s brain had no time for perhapses—as soon as she gave the signal, she jumped into the river.
The troll shifted as the tree-trunk fell. Rather than hitting it squarely, the projectile opened a gash in its side. This just enraged the troll rather than skewering it. Luckily for Wistala, it took its temper out on the tree, which had lodged itself in the shallow water of the riverbank. The troll picked it up and cracked it against the cliff side, again and again until only a shard remained in its grip.
Only then did it notice the arrows and spears from above.
Brave or foolish, Rainfall’s gang flung spears and fired hunting arrows down at the troll as Wistala made it to the first pillar of the bridge. She saw a spear lodge in the troll’s back. The sense-stalk stood straight up, and it began to climb.
The next thing Wistala knew, she was climbing. Using the deep crevices between the joined stones, a skilled man could make the long climb, but it would take him ten times the effort it took Wistala, with her four shorter limbs and thick muscles. She crawled up the bridge’s support like an ant hurrying up a grass stalk, her pace not greatly reduced from what she could achieve on flat ground.
But she was only halfway up when the troll reached the men.
One, a lumberman, judging by his broad leather girdle, tried his axe on the troll’s hand as it came to the cliff top. She heard the sharp thwack of the blade as it bit into the troll’s fountain-size hand even from her distance. The troll’s other hand came up and struck the lumberman such a blow, he exploded into pieces.
She passed over the bridge-rail to find the troll standing on the cliff top, searching the tree line for the fleeing men. It flushed a man and ran him down on the road, where it smashed and then swallowed him. A group of horses fled screaming from the woods, one or two pulling men along.
Wistala wasn’t sure what she could do, but she hurried toward the north end of the bridge anyway. She had one good gout of flame left in her fire bladder, if not two; she’d eaten heartily for months, and there was still an angry liquid ball inside her, waiting to get out.
She’d diverted the troll before; perhaps she could again, long enough for it to lose track of the men. . . .
A white flash on the road ahead. Wistala, gulping air as she ran, recognized the shape.
Avalanche!
The stallion—with blood in the air, even on a rainy night, and the frightened calls of mares behind him—had given in to instinct and stood his ground, eagerly pawing at the road.
The troll rounded on the stallion.
“Come on! Beast!” Avalanche neighed. Then he screamed and reared up, front hooves cutting the air before him. “Try to take of mine. I’ll kick your teeth out!”
Wistala dragon-dashed, her vision red with lost breath. The troll’s air sacs bulged from its behind; she could see flaps of raised skin like a pinecone opening and shutting as it tried to catch its breath—or was it damaged in some way? No matter—she homed in on the deep whooshing sound.
Then the troll lunged forward, its gait even stranger because of cradling its wounded hand. . . .
The troll reared up and reached for the horse as Avalanche charged. But the stallion danced sideways, and lashed out with a hind leg, kicking one of the thin forearms. Avalanche reared up and struck the troll in the mouth-without-a-face that constituted the front of its body.
The troll backed up and lifted itself.
The sense-orb hung over all like a watchful bird. As the troll’s mouth dropped open, seemingly with the idea of swallowing Avalanche whole, Wistala slid to a stop and spat her fire, as though trying to get an extra few tail-lengths of distance into it by letting momentum carry the contents of her fire bladder up her throat, accelerated by ring after ring of throat muscles.
The sense-orb whipped around, and Wistala caught one glimpse of a wide-open eye? nostril? ear? in the center of a wormy fringe—
The fire struck the troll in i
ts breathing sac.
It spun, tucking its hindquarters and covering the breathing spicules with its rear legs. An elbow knocked Avalanche aside, and the stallion crashed down, as though tripped. The troll jumped awkwardly away like a spastic frog, stomping on Avalanche in its flight, beating at its hindquarters with its rear feet where Wistala’s flame clung and dripped and burned.
It made for the river, by plan or blind flight of instinctive pain. The troll hurled itself into the trees along the roadway and fell in ruin, its limbs no longer capable of supporting the mouth-body. The sense-orb looked this way and that at the twitching limbs before it, too, collapsed.
Wistala couldn’t stand and gape—she hurried to Avalanche.
Avalanche fought for breath, his tongue extended and bloody foam on his lips and the roadway. At her approach, the stallion raised his head a little.
“Beast?”
She realized it wasn’t an epithet, but a query. “It’s dead. You killed it.”
“Kicked its head in. Warned it.”
“Yes, you did. I heard.”
The head fell back to the ground. “The mares. Hear them?”
Wistala couldn’t hear anything but the soft rainfall.
Avalanche let out a friendly nicker, sightless eyes rolling this way and that. Then his struggling body ceased to move, and the horribly lolling tongue went still.
Wistala flung herself across her old stablemate, determined to fight off wild pigs, crows, bears, and set Bartleghaff himself ablaze if any but Rainfall came to claim the body.
Chapter 13
Rainfall took her to a quiet corner of the estate, a long-sloped hill overlooking the river gorge. It was a scenic spot, but too rocky to be of much use.
Trees thrived there. Well spaced, with thickets of wildflowers all around, bursting with the blues and yellows of spring.
With them was a windburned lumberman named Jessup driving a team of timber-horses pulling a haywain bearing Avalanche. He had been introduced to her as the younger brother of Lessup, the brave lumberman who’d taken his ax to the troll’s hand.
