The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  A grey shape vaulted over the parapet and landed splayfooted in front of the horse. It waved a club.

  “All right,” it growled.

  “Oh—” the horse began.

  The troll blinked. Even the cold and cloudy winter skies seriously reduced the conductivity of a troll’s silicon brain, and it had taken it this long to realize that the saddle was unoccupied.

  It blinked again, because it could suddenly feel a knife point resting on the back of its neck.

  “Hello,” said a voice by its ear.

  The troll swallowed. But very carefully.

  “Look,” it said desperately, “It’s tradition, OK? A bridge like this, people ort to expect a troll…’Ere,” it added, as another thought crawled past, “ ’ow come I never heard you creepin’ up on me?”

  “Because I’m good at it,” said the old man.

  “That’s right,” said the horse. “He’s crept up on more people than you’ve had frightened dinners.”

  The troll risked a sideways glance.

  “Bloody hell,” it whispered. “You think you’re Cohen the Barbarian, do you?”

  “What do you think?” said Cohen the Barbarian.

  “Listen,” said the horse, “if he hadn’t wrapped sacks round his knees you could have told by the clicking.”

  It took the troll some time to work this out.

  “Oh, wow,” it breathed. “On my bridge! Wow!”

  “What?” said Cohen.

  The troll ducked out of his grip and waved its hands frantically. “It’s all right! It’s all right!” it shouted, as Cohen advanced. “You’ve got me! You’ve got me! I’m not arguing! I just want to call the family up, all right? Otherwise no one’ll ever believe me. Cohen the Barbarian! On my bridge!”

  Its huge stony chest swelled further. “My bloody brother-in-law’s always swanking about his huge bloody wooden bridge, that’s all my wife ever talks about. Hah! I’d like to see the look on his face…oh, no! What can you think of me?”

  “Good question,” said Cohen.

  The troll dropped its club and seized one of Cohen’s hands.

  “Mica’s the name,” it said. “You don’t know what an honour this is!”

  He leaned over the parapet. “Beryl! Get up here! Bring the kids!”

  He turned back to Cohen, his face glowing with happiness and pride.

  “Beryl’s always sayin’ we ought to move out, get something better, but I tell her, this bridge has been in our family for generations, there’s always been a troll under Death Bridge. It’s tradition.”

  A huge female troll carrying two babies shuffled up the bank, followed by a tail of smaller trolls. They lined up behind their father, watching Cohen owlishly.

  “This is Beryl,” said the troll. His wife glowered at Cohen. “And this—” he propelled forward a scowling smaller edition of himself, clutching a junior version of his club—“is my lad Scree. A real chip off the old block. Going to take on the bridge when I’m gone, ain’t you, Scree. Look, lad, this is Cohen the Barbarian! What d’you think o’ that, eh? On our bridge! We don’t just have rich fat soft ole merchants like your uncle Pyrites gets,” said the troll, still talking to his son but smirking past him to his wife, “we ’ave proper heroes like they used to in the old days.”

  The troll’s wife looked Cohen up and down.

  “Rich, is he?” she said.

  “Rich has got nothing to do with it,” said the troll.

  “Are you going to kill our dad?” said Scree suspiciously.

  “ ’Corse he is,” said Mica severely. “It’s his job. An’ then I’ll get famed in song an’ story. This is Cohen the Barbarian, right, not some bugger from the village with a pitchfork. ’E’s a famous hero come all this way to see us, so just you show ’im some respect.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” he said to Cohen. “Kids today. You know how it is.”

  The horse started to snigger.

  “Now look—” Cohen began.

  “I remember my dad tellin’ me about you when I was a pebble,” said Mica. “ ’E bestrides the world like a clossus, he said.”

  There was silence. Cohen wondered what a clossus was, and felt Beryl’s stony gaze fixed upon him.

  “He’s just a little old man,” she said. “He don’t look very heroic to me. If he’s so good, why ain’t he rich?”

  “Now you listen to me—” Mica began.

  “This is what we’ve been waiting for, is it?” said his wife. “Sitting under a leaky bridge the whole time? Waiting for people that never come? Waiting for little old bandy-legged old men? I should have listened to my mother! You want me to let our son sit under a bridge waiting for some little old man to kill him? That’s what being a troll is all about? Well, it ain’t happening!”

  “Now you just—”

  “Hah! Pyrites doesn’t get little old men! He gets big fat merchants! He’s someone. You should have gone in with him when you had the chance!”

  “I’d rather eat worms!”

  “Worms? Hah? Since when could we afford to eat worms?”

  “Can we have a word?” said Cohen.

  He strolled towards the far end of the bridge, swinging his sword from one hand. The troll padded after him.

  Cohen fumbled for his tobacco pouch. He looked up at the troll, and held out the bag.

  “Smoke?” he said.

  “That stuff can kill you,” said the troll.

  “Yes. But not today.”

  “Don’t you hang about talking to your no-good friends!” bellowed Beryl, from her end of the bridge. “Today’s your day for going down to the sawmill! You know Chert said he couldn’t go on holding the job open if you weren’t taking it seriously!”

  Mica gave Cohen a sorrowful little smirk.

  “She’s very supportive,” he said.

  “I’m not climbing all the way down to the river to pull you out again!” Beryl roared. “You tell him about the billy goats, Mr. Big Troll!”

  “Billy goats?” said Cohen.

  “I don’t know anything about billy goats,” said Mica. “She’s always going on about billy goats. I have no knowledge whatsoever about billy goats.” He winced.

  They watched Beryl usher the young trolls down the bank and into the darkness under the bridge.

  “The thing is,” said Cohen, when they were alone, “I wasn’t intending to kill you.”

  The troll’s face fell.

  “You weren’t?”

  “Just throw you over the bridge and steal whatever treasure you’ve got.”

  “You were?”

  Cohen patted him on the back. “Besides,” he said, “I like to see people with good memories. That’s what the land needs. Good memories.”

  The troll stood to attention.

  “I try to do my best, sir,” it said. “My lad wants to go off to work in the city. I’ve tole him, there’s bin a troll under this bridge for nigh on five hundred year—”

  “So if you just hand over the treasure,” said Cohen, “I’ll be getting along.”

  The troll’s face creased in sudden panic.

  “Treasure? Haven’t got any,” it said.

  “Oh, come on,” said Cohen. “Well-set up bridge like this?”

  “Yeah, but no one uses this road any more,” said Mica. “You’re the first one along in months, and that’s a fact. Beryl says I ought to have gone in with her brother when they built that new road over his bridge, but,” he raised his voice, “I said, there’s been trolls under this bridge—”

  “Yeah,” said Cohen.

  “The trouble is, the stones keep on falling out,” said the troll. “And you’d never believe what those masons charge. Bloody dwarfs. You can’t trust ’em.” He leaned towards Cohen. “To tell you the truth, I’m having to work thr
ee days a week down at my brother-in-law’s lumber mill just to make ends meet.”

  “I thought your brother-in-law had a bridge?” said Cohen.

  “One of ’em has. But my wife’s got brothers like dogs have fleas,” said the troll. He looked gloomily into the torrent. “One of ’em’s a lumber merchant down in Sour Water, one of ’em runs the bridge, and the big fat one is a merchant over on Bitter Pike. Call that a proper job for a troll?”

  “One of them’s in the bridge business, though,” said Cohen.

  “Bridge business? Sitting in a box all day charging people a silver piece to walk across? Half the time he ain’t even there! He just pays some dwarf to take the money. And he calls himself a troll! You can’t tell him from a human till you’re right up close!”

  Cohen nodded understandingly.

  “D’you know,” said the troll, “I have to go over and have dinner with them every week? All three of ’em? And listen to ’em go on about moving with the times.”

  He turned a big, sad face to Cohen.

  “What’s wrong with being a troll under a bridge?” he said. “I was brought up to be a troll under a bridge. I want young Scree to be a troll under a bridge after I’m gone. What’s wrong with that? You’ve got to have trolls under bridges. Otherwise, what’s it all about? What’s it all for?”

  They leaned morosely on the parapet, looking down into the white water.

  “You know,” said Cohen slowly, “I can remember when a man could ride all the way from here to the Blade Mountains and never see another living thing.” He fingered his sword. “At least, not for very long.”

  He threw the butt of his cigarette into the water. “It’s all farms now. All little farms, run by little people. And fences everywhere. Everywhere you look, farms and fences and little people.”

  “She’s right, of course,” said the troll, continuing some interior conversation. “There’s no future in just jumping out from under a bridge.”

  “I mean,” said Cohen, “I’ve nothing against farms. Or farmers. You’ve got to have them. It’s just that they used to be a long way off, around the edges. Now this is the edge.”

  “Pushed back all the time,” said the troll. “Changing all the time. Like my brother-in-law Cheri. A lumber mill! A troll running a lumber mill! And you should see the mess he’s making of Cutshade Forest!”

  Cohen looked up, surprised.

  “What, the one with the giant spiders in it?”

  “Spiders? There ain’t no spiders now. Just stumps.”

  “Stumps? Stumps? I used to like that forest. It was…well, it was darksome. You don’t get proper darksome any more. You really knew what terror was, in a forest like that.”

  “You want darksome? He’s replanting with spruce,” said Mica.

  “Spruce!”

  “It’s not his idea. He wouldn’t know one tree from another. That’s all down to Clay. He put him up to it.”

  Cohen felt dizzy. “Who’s Clay?”

  “I said I’d got three brothers-in-law, right? He’s the merchant. So he said replanting would make the land easier to sell.”

  There was a long pause while Cohen digested this.

  Then he said, “You can’t sell Cutshade Forest. It doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  “Yeah. He says that’s why you can sell it.”

  Cohen brought his fist down on the parapet. A piece of stone detached itself and tumbled down into the gorge.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right. Bits fall off all the time, like I said.”

  Cohen turned. “What’s happening? I remember all the big old wars. Don’t you? You must have fought.”

  “I carried a club, yeah.”

  “It was supposed to be for a bright new future and law and stuff. That’s what people said.”

  “Well, I fought because a big troll with a whip told me to,” said Mica, cautiously. “But I know what you mean.”

  “I mean it wasn’t for farms and spruce trees. Was it?”

  Mica hung his head. “And here’s me with this apology for a bridge. I feel really bad about it,” he said, “you coming all this way and everything—”

  “And there was some king or other,” said Cohen, vaguely, looking at the water. “And I think there were some wizards. But there was a king. I’m pretty certain there was a king. Never met him. You know?” He grinned at the troll. “I can’t remember his name. Don’t think they ever told me his name.”

  * * *

  —

  About half an hour later Cohen’s horse emerged from the gloomy woods on to a bleak, windswept moorland. It plodded on for a while before saying, “All right, how much did you give him?”

  “Twelve gold pieces,” said Cohen.

  “Why’d you give him twelve gold pieces?”

  “I didn’t have more than twelve.”

  “You must be mad.”

  “When I was just starting out in the barbarian hero business,” said Cohen, “every bridge had a troll under it. And you couldn’t go through a forest like we’ve just gone through without a dozen goblins trying to chop your head off.” He sighed. “I wonder what happened to ’em all?”

  “You,” said the horse.

  “Well, yes. But I always thought there’d be some more. I always thought there’d be some more edges.”

  “How old are you?” said the horse.

  “Dunno.”

  “Old enough to know better, then.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Cohen lit another cigarette and coughed until his eyes watered.

  “Going soft in the head!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Giving your last dollar to a troll!”

  “Yeah.” Cohen wheezed a stream of smoke at the sunset.

  “Why?”

  Cohen stared at the sky. The red glow was as cold as the slopes of hell. An icy wind blew across the steppes, whipping at what remained of his hair.

  “For the sake of the way things should be,” he said.

  “Hah!”

  “For the sake of things that were.”

  “Hah!”

  Cohen looked down.

  He grinned.

  “And for three addresses. One day I’m going to die,” he said, “but not, I think, today.”

  * * *

  —

  The air blew off the mountains, filling the air with fine ice crystals. It was too cold to snow. In weather like this wolves came down into villages, trees in the heart of the forest exploded when they froze. Except there were fewer and fewer wolves these days, and less and less forest.

  In weather like this right-thinking people were indoors, in front of the fire.

  Telling stories about heroes.

  Vilma Kadlečková (1971– ) is a Czech writer of science fiction and fantasy who began publishing short stories in Czech fanzines in the late 1980s. Her first novel, Na pomezí Eternaalu, appeared in 1990 and was quickly followed by two more novels and a short story collection. Only one novel, Pán všech krůpějí (2000), appeared between 1994 and 2007, but since then she has been prolific, earning particular attention for her Mycelium saga of novels. The majority of her works belong to the “Legends of Argenite” cycle, tales that blend science fiction and fantasy. Her work has been recognized with the Book of the Year award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror as well as the Best Original Czech and Slovak Book of the Year 2013. “Longing for Blood” first appeared in English in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1997.

  LONGING FOR BLOOD

  Vilma Kadlečková

  Translated by M. Klima and Bruce Sterling

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: MAY 15, 636

  I WITNESSED HILDUR’S FALL. I watched in my Mirror as my sister chose her prey, hunted him down, killed him and drank hi
s blood. She’s no longer human. Her pretty mouth has become the bloodstained jaw of a monster. Her eyes glow like two coals. Even I myself have begun to fear her. Hildur, my dearest sister: Why has this happened to you? Why couldn’t you stop when there was still time? What agony it is to love you, and yet be unable to help.

  Weeks ago Hildur came up with her mad scheme: a plan she thought would finally free us of our fear and our curse. We Taskre women had always pursued our Quest secretly, hiding in our shadows, flitting through the hidden byways of the World Outside. We offered the Potion, and put the Question, only to men we thought were ready: powerful men, ambitious men, men who sought us out. Hildur was weary of our endless years of fruitless magic ritual. Rather than confronting men one by one, she began brewing the Potion by the bucketful.

  Hildur wrapped herself in powerful spells, descended in fearsome majesty on a lonely mountain village, and forced all the men there to drink. She left three dozen sobbing widows when she fled that useless massacre. It was far too much death, too much blood, in far too short a time. Her humanity crumbled, her soul shattered. Now she thirsts endlessly for blood.

  I hid the slaughter from the World Inside by cloaking the village in deep forest, but I can do nothing for my sister. Hildur is beyond help. She thought she could defeat the conditions of our Quest, and she has fallen beyond any hope of redemption. She has become one of the Beasts.

  When all this filth stains my soul beyond all cleanliness, when the evil and fatigue finally bring me down, then I will become like my sister Hildur. I too will long for blood.

  The cruelty of this knowledge has broken something inside me. My eyes slide from my all-seeing Mirror to the empty wall. I know that another long siege of insomnia awaits me, gray sleepless reveries crawling and seething with the Beasts of the World Outside. Once Hildur shared with me the terrible labor of enduring those dreams, but there is no Hildur any longer. I can hear the evil echoes of my future, ticking off my remaining days.

  What is left of our lives, our time, our world, once we yield to the taste for blood?

  I still have quill, paper and ink. I shall do what men and women, wizards and witches have done for ages to beguile the passing time: I will write. I, Ashterat the Taskre, am the eldest daughter of Mennach the accursed. I am the sister of Hildur and Shina, the heir of the Mirror and the Quest. This is the 15th day of May in the year 636 of Harkur. Today I am starting a diary.