The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  He stared at Yvon. At the last moment Yvon remembered to duck his head. "Thank you three times, Your Magnificence, thank you." When he lifted his eyes again, the Baron had already turned to the wounded mammut and gave orders there.

  Yvon slowly unclenched his fists. Baron Culufre would be a hard man to dislodge from the valley. But Gruethrist had settled the valley. He was a hard man too and knew the country better, if only he could escape the castle.

  The dust rose up Yvon's nose, carrying with it the smell of mammut and cattle, and his ears were filled with the sounds of herders and soldiers and a lone man's keening weep.

  "Bran, my friend," Sebius said at his side, "I am very glad that no harm came to your niece. And more than glad that you will help us find our way here. The Baron will certainly reward you, as will I."

  Yvon drew a deep breath, and became aware that he'd been holding it. "I am grateful for your aid already. Nothing more is required."

  "Perhaps, when the herds are settled, your niece will permit me to visit you and pay her my respects. I owe you compensation for leading her into danger today. It was not my intention."

  "And thus requires no forgiveness. It is forgotten as if it never happened. But you will be welcome when you come." Welcomed with a sharp blade perhaps. Although Sebius might prove a useful hostage too, if the chance presented itself.

  "We will talk again," Sebius said. "I beg three pardons, but you will excuse me now? I must see to calming the herds. Please excuse me."

  Yvon bowed slightly. "A lady comes and goes about her land as she wishes."

  Sebius grinned smugly and hurried off.

  Yvon turned to Xaragitte. He reached out to her and she withdrew, bouncing Claye against her shoulder to still his hiccups.

  "Where is our bag?" she asked. Looking after their possessions, as was her right and duty.

  Yvon's head swiveled as if he expected to find the bag nearby. He didn't remember dropping it, but he no longer carried it either. They'd need the blankets to survive the colder nights up in the mountains on their way to Lady Eleuate's. "I beg your pardon, m'lady," he said, mortified.

  He ran in search of it at once. Retracing his footsteps proved nearly impossible, but he saw two ragged boys tugging at something where the cattle had been and when he took it from them and chased them off, it proved to be the bag, trampled by cattle and ripped open by their hooves. He peered inside. Their blankets were still there, but the bowl he'd stolen was shattered into a thousand shards. A bad sign, he thought, as he shook the fragments into the churned ground.

  His way back through the crowds of animals and people was blocked by the mammut handlers leading their charges toward the river's edge. The Baron's wizard held the hem of his silver-threaded robes out of the mud as he walked along with them to sing the demons at bay. He was a middle-aged man, young for his role, and therefore powerful. No doubt assigned by the Empress herself, another gift to Culufre. Or Sebius.

  The eunuch stood with Xaragitte. "The tuskers are heading down to the river," Yvon called out. "Going to bathe?"

  "Yes, yes," Sebius replied. "The Baron has decided to call a halt for the night, and so arrive at the castle tomorrow when he'll have the complete day to settle affairs there, instead of at dusk tonight. I came to inquire if you and your niece might join me for the evening meal?" Yvon felt like a man sinking in quickmud. "We ..."

  Sebius stood formally, right arm across the waist, left arm extended, as a woman did at the threshold of her house. "The campfire is my home tonight. M'lady Pwllya is invited with her child and escort to partake of the best my humble table has to offer."

  Xaragitte straightened her shoulders, flipping Claye around in her arms to face the eunuch. "We are honored to accept your invitation, m'lady."

  Sebius clapped. "Most, most excellent. Now I beg you, yet again, to excuse me."

  Xaragitte glared at the eunuch's back as she hurried away. "I hate her," she said, rocking the child on her arm. "She means to rob Lady Gruethrist."

  The experience with the mammut seemed to have changed her attitude. "Let's just eat her food and sleep a bit," Yvon said, "so that we'll have the strength we need when we must escape."

  "I'm strong enough now to do whatever must be done," she replied. "Let me know when you are too."

  She turned her back on him and carried Claye away.

  At sunset, they sat a little apart from the herders on a hillside above the river and ate porridge mixed with strips of meat so salty it was impossible to tell what animal it had once been. Yvon scooped his into his mouth with his fingers and thought it delicious, eating slowly to be gentle on his recovering stomach. Xaragitte set her bowl down to play a clapping game with the baby.

  Claye leaned his head back, his mouth as wide as a nestling bird's. He wagged it from side to side and said "Ahhhhhh!" Xaragitte opened her mouth all the way too and leaned toward him, pulling his hands to the sides and pretending to chomp on his nose. He giggled, and she clapped his pudgy hands again.

  Yvon watched them, thinking about the rhyme. Any story told about two gods in any of their guises was always, really, about the third. The goddess Bwnte might bake the moon, and her son Sceatha, god of war, might spit it out. But in another story, Verlogh, god of justice, gathered up the fallen crumbs and planted them in the ground where they sprouted up as people.

  Claye closed his mouth more with each repetition, imitating his nurse. When his lips were tight shut, she kissed his mouth and told him he was a good boy. He tucked his chin into his chest, grinning, but she set him down to rub her chest just above her heart. Claye grabbed a handful of porridge from Xaragitte's bowl and flung it on the ground.

  Yvon started up. "Hey! Don't let him waste that!"

  A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Sebius's high voice said, "No, no, no, that's fine. With such a lovely child, how can anything be wasteful?"

  Xaragitte sucked Claye's hand clean in her mouth and wiped it on her skirt. She stood, lifting the little boy. "I'm glad to see you, m'lady Sebius," she said, without a trace of gladness, "so that I may thank you thrice for your hospitality. But the day has tired us, and we should sleep."

  There was a different imperial plural in her voice, thought Yvon: the royal we of every mother and her child. It did not include him.

  "Of course," the eunuch chirped. "Is there anything additional I may do?"

  "You've done too much already," she replied. Taking her blankets from the pack, she went a short distance away. Yvon watched her go, wondering what had happened to the cheerful woman he had once watched from afar in the castle.

  Sebius lay her staff on the ground and sat beside Yvon with her own bowl of food. "I see how she looks at you, and how you look at her."

  Yvon jumped a second time. "What do you mean?"

  Sebius smiled around a mouthful of food. "It is obvious that you are not her uncle, and also that the child is not yours. You stand like a beggar outside her door."

  A saying among men, out of place on the lips of a eunuch: A woman's body is her home-only those that she invites inside should enter: "It's not like that between us."

  Sebius laughed aloud, covering her mouth to prevent spilling the porridge. "Did I tell you? The divination bones foretold that I would meet a man in this valley named Bran, and he would make my fortune for me."

  A shiver shot up Yvon's spine. Like most knights, he stayed away from divination. A man could go forward into battle with a clear heart only if he didn't know the outcome.

  "So, to bind our friendship," the eunuch continued, "I will give you this advice. A woman outside her home, out in the wilderness, is always anxious. More especially if she has a child with her. You, my friend Bran, should deliver the lady Pwylla to her family. Then return to help me, and I will see that you have new clothes." She gestured at Yvon's filthencrusted trousers. "The very finest! Also many gifts to give to her and her baby. Then she will see the old jewel set in a new broach."

  Yvon grunted noncommittally.

&
nbsp; Sebius made a knuckle-rapping gesture. "Knock, knock. Come in!" Laughing, she scooped more food into her mouth.

  While they were eating, a small group of soldiers came over and set up camp near the herders. Or near to Yvon and Xaragitte. Even though there was only twilight in the sky now, Yvon thought he recognized the soldier from that afternoon, the one who'd noticed Yvon's concealed sword. Sebius scowled at their proximity, as if it were a slight on the way she controlled the herders, and rose at once to go complain. She was so incensed she forgot to pardon herself from Yvon's presence.

  Yvon rose, took his blanket, and went over to sit beside Xaragitte. The move brought him closer to the eunuch and the soldiers, but he couldn't hear the particulars of their argument. The soldiers clearly refused to budge, and though it was already dark, Sebius turned and stomped off toward the Baron's tent down by the riverside.

  Yvon gathered up the rest of the eunuch's meal, along with Xaragitte's, and packed it away in their bag.

  Xaragitte turned slowly in her blankets so she wouldn't disturb the sleeping Claye. Her face turned toward Yvon, and not even the shadowy light could soften the pain in it.

  "What is wrong?" he asked, reaching out his hand.

  She lifted her arm to ward him off, then touched her fingers to her chest. "M'lady Gruethrist, she's all twisted up in here. It hurts so bad."

  "But she's still alive?"

  Xaragitte shook her head. "She's struggling, but whether she's struggling to live or to die, I cannot say."

  She appeared to be in so much pain, and her pain ached in him, so he reached out to her again, to soothe her.

  "Don't touch me!"

  "I only meant to-"

  "We're cursed," she said. "The castle burned down because of us, and then the mammut tried to kill me and Claye, and-"

  Yvon's hand shot up to indicate silence, and he glanced in the direction of the soldiers nearby. Their faces were lit by the glow of their fire, and their laughter carried across the night air. "Have a care with the things you mention," he said quietly. "The wrong word, wrong name, could see us killed."

  Xaragitte shuddered, shrunk in upon herself. "The way you killed that poor boy outside the castle? He would have let us pass if I had done the talking. His face, oh, his poor face, all smashed in."

  Yvon peered at her closely. Perhaps she had a fever, more worried about some dead man than him. "He served the Baron-he would have killed us."

  "Not all the world is killing," she said, but something softened. She lowered her head onto her arm. "There-they've eased it somehow," she said quietly.

  The distant laughter ended. Yvon looked over at the soldiers' camp and saw them spreading their own blankets. One face stared away from the fire into the dark, in their direction. It would be easy enough to murder an old man, a young mother, and her child out here in the wilderness. One could cover up any manner of crime, bury the evidence under the leaves in the forest just over the hill, and then tell the eunuch that her charges had wandered off. Yvon had seen such things done before. He rose up, stretched, and then sat on his haunches.

  Claye woke up, lifting his head abruptly. Seeing Xaragitte there, he grinned and giggled, and tugged up a handful of grasses from beside the blanket. Xaragitte yawned, and eyes half-closed, stretched her hand out to him with one finger extended. Claye smiled at her, dropped the blades, and poked his finger toward hers.

  "I don't know why we prolong this dance of masks and costumes," she said softly. Her shoulders started shaking. "I've never felt so tired, not even after my daughter died-"

  "Listen to me." Yvon leaned forward, talking to her the way he'd talked to too many soldiers on too many campaigns. "We swore to Lord Gruethrist that we would save his lady's son from the Baron, and I can't do it alone. You're tired, and you hurt because something bad has happened to someone you love. But you have to be strong."

  Claye's large eyes watched Yvon intently.

  "If anything happens to you," Yvon said, "then Claye doesn't eat. So you have to be strong."

  Xaragitte stopped crying, exhaled. Absurdly, she laughed at Yvon, then yawned again. Her hand moved to cover her mouth, then sagged to the ground as she fell asleep.

  Claye immediately crawled away from her.

  "Hold on, now," Yvon whispered, and stuck out his arm to block the child's path. Claye pealed in laughter, twisted, and squirted off in the opposite direction.

  Yvon moved to block him again, and Claye turned it into a game. Soon Yvon was crawling around on his hands and knees, constantly herding Claye back toward his slumbering nursemaid. When the child started to grow frustrated, Yvon reached in and tickled him. Shrieks of laughter rose from the hillside, and a mammut pealed back in reply across the nightfall.

  Yvon glanced over at Xaragitte. Even that sound failed to wake her.

  "Mahmah," Claye shouted, to catch Yvon's attention. When Yvon looked at him, he rolled over onto his pudgy knees again and giggled, looking over his shoulder.

  "Oh, you can't escape from me," Yvon whispered, and they started all over again. This was good, Yvon thought. This was what he wanted. They could turn the baby over to Lady Eleuate, wait for Lord Gruethrist to settle things with the Baron, and then he and Xaragitte could start over on their own. He held on tight to that image.

  After a while, Claye paused unsteadily on three little limbs, rubbed one tiny fist against his eye, and yawned. Then he scooted over to Xaragitte. He tugged at her bodice strings, shoved them in his mouth, and whined.

  Yvon hesitated a moment, then untied the strings himself. He brushed the cloth back with his fingertips, then slowly, gently, cupped her breast to lift it free. Claye pushed past Yvon's hand, rooting around with his nose in the pale flesh until his mouth found her nipple. He sucked happily and soon dozed off cuddled to his nursemaid's bosom.

  The sky's deep blue purpled into black. The cool air raised goosebumps on his skin, so Yvon took his own blanket and covered Xaragitte and Claye with it. Then he sat there, cloak folded around his arms and legs, guarding.

  His chin drooped toward his chest and stayed there.

  He slept, and in his sleep he dreamed of Xaragitte. She was with him, and he with her, in the way of men and women, and it was good, balm on an old wound. She moaned in pleasure as he thrust against her, but the dream shifted toward something else, some shadow moving in the darkness, the sound of feet through grass, and his eyes snapped open. He was aroused, though he still sat apart, hunched over his knees.

  Xaragitte groaned, like she had in his dream, and yet nothing like that either. It was so dark he could scarcely see her. But something was wrong.

  "Knew you weren't no uncle," said a voice, fishing for a response that would let him pin their position.

  Yvon hunkered motionless and silent. Slowly he slid his knife from its sheath and waited.

  "Leave her door open for me when you're done, you dead man," the voice said again, a little louder. He stepped forward from the darkness and paused uncertainly, sword poised before him. A knight? No. From his size and the way he moved, Yvon recognized the soldier from this afternoon. Some knight must have lent his approval to the murder along with the sword. That happened sometimes. He took two more cautious steps toward Xaragitte, sword raised. "You hear me?"

  Yvon pounced, hitting the man hard just below the ribs, wrapping up his arms, and slamming him to the ground. The air rushed out of the soldier with a "Whoof!" and his sword flew free. Yvon slipped his blade in quick and slit the throat. The man's face froze, and the expression poured right out of it along with the blood.

  He stood up and checked to make sure that no one else approached. A few distant snores sounded in the night, but nothing more. He regarded the dead soldier. That was the way he should have handled that puppy of a knight at the castle. He felt angry, frustrated, and tired. He bent again, slashed the man's drawstring, and yanked his pants down to his knees.

  He found the man's knife and thrust it into the pelvis, between his legs, so that it stood knob
up into the air. "You cowardly little prick," he murmured.

  After wiping his blade carefully on the dead man's clothes, he searched the pockets for valuables and found none. He turned to wake Xaragitte. They needed to escape before the Baron's soldiers woke.

  She was sitting up, staring at Yvon. She cradled the sleeping baby in one arm, retying her bodice with the other hand. In the darkness, Yvon had no indication of how long she'd been watching or what she'd seen.

  "The bond is broken," she said. "Lady Gruethrist's lifespark has been fully extinguished."

  Jaye dangled like a dead weight at Xaragitte's breast, little nouth agape, one arm dangling toward the ground.

  Yvon shoved their blankets into the pack. "We have to go now," he whispered. He said nothing about the soldier he had killed or Lady Gruethrist.

  Xaragitte nodded and stood. Her shoulders sagged as soon as she slipped Claye into the sling.

  "I could carry him," Yvon offered.

  "I'll carry him. You lead us to safety. That's what you promised to do."

  "I will." Although he didn't know how. They needed to cross the bridge at the castle to take the trail to Lady Eleuate's keep, but they would surely be stopped there and likely recognized. If they took the longer way around, crossing the river nearer its source in the mountains, by the time they circled back, the Baron's men would already have taken it.

  Yvon led them quietly away from the army and followed the trail along the high slope beside the river. He went as quickly as Xaragitte could walk, paying more attention to her than the path, and thinking about how to cross the bridge, so that he didn't see they were surrounded until the first shadowy forms stepped out of the trees around them.

  A woman stepped forward, one of the army's camp followers. The other shadows resolved into old men and adolescent boys bearing staffs and short knives. Yvon's hand slipped to his sword. If he hurt one or two, the rest would scatter.

  "Hold," the woman said. She approached Xaragitte, stroking Claye's cheek with the back of her hand. "Boy or girl?"