Don't Feed the Trolls

by Jacob Peppers

  “As for you,” the duke went on, “and your…miscreants, I will deal with you and your disrespect later.”

  Dannen glanced up at the approaching dragon. “Don’t worry about it Your Dukeness. I look forward to it, of course—though likely you won’t have to bother as we’ll all be dead. Anyway, for now, why don’t you get out of our way and let us work, huh?”

  He could hear the man grinding his teeth, but he turned and half-stormed, half-fled away toward a squat, stone building which was just about the ugliest—and smallest—not to mention unnecessary—castle Dannen had ever seen. Dannen watched him and his hangers-on go, their relief to be escaping immediate death by dragon plain on their faces.

  Dannen frowned, thinking that, if he wasn’t quite as big of an asshole—and not quite as stupid—he could be going with them, hunkering down in a nice comfortable castle instead of preparing to face off against a beast out of nightmare. Still, he told himself that to be an undead dragon, one first had to be a dead one, so at least there was a precedent for it being killed. Assuming, of course, that it hadn’t died of old age or, more likely, by choking to death on the body of the last would-be hero to stand against it.

  He sighed, glancing at the others to see that they were all watching him, as if he had a solution, as if anybody could have a solution for a creature that looked as if it could swallow damn near the whole town if it had a mind to. He sighed again. “Come on,” he said, “best we find out how those ballistas are gettin’ on.”

  He led the others toward the squat, ugly castle where he’d seen the guard captain walk, but they were stopped by two frightened guardsmen. “W-what’s your business here?”

  Dannen blinked, suddenly finding it difficult to speak, for there was no way that the two men had not overheard his conversation with the duke.

  “What’s our business?” Firemaker bellowed, as always, showing a complete lack of patience for fools or…well, anyone really. “Well, right now it’s a big damned dragon, isn’t it? Or did you two silly bastards fail to notice?”

  The two men cowered—and whether that cower was from the Firemaker, intimidating to say the least, or the undead dragon flying toward them, was anyone’s guess—but the speaker shook his head. “C-can’t let you in. It…that is, safety reasons.”

  “Safety reasons?” Firemaker bellowed. “I’ll show you safety, you son of a bi—”

  Dannen caught the big man by the shoulder, stopping him. “Take it easy, Fedder. I think we’ve got enough of a fight on our hands already without lookin’ for more, don’t you?”

  The mage grunted, glancing between Dannen and the two guards. “I figure we got time, Butcher. Won’t take but a minute to set these bastards strai—”

  “Let them through!” a shout came, and they turned to see the captain they’d spoken with moments ago appearing at the base of one of the castle turrets.

  Fedder grunted, satisfied. “Seems this village isn’t completely full of fools after all.”

  The two guards wisely chose to say nothing, moving to follow their commander’s orders and, a moment later, the gate was opening, and Dannen was leading his companions through. Fedder paused, though, not quite finished. “Best watch this gate real close, boys.” He made a show of glancing back at the dragon who had flown considerably closer, far too close for Dannen’s liking. “Might be you’ll be havin’ to keep a new caller out real soon. You know,” he said, leaning in so swiftly that one of the men let out a cry, taking a step back, “for safety reasons,” the mage finished with a growl.

  Dannen met the mage’s satisfied expression. “Are you done?”

  Fedder wilted a little. “Yeah, I reckon,” he muttered.

  “You sure?” Mariana asked in a mock-innocent voice. “Don’t want to sit around and have a bit more of a chat with the fellas? Might be a nice distraction while we’re all getting chewed on, what do you think?”

  “I’m done, damnit,” Fedder growled.

  “Good,” Dannen said, “then it’s time to run.”

  And run they did, charging toward the captain standing at the base of the tower and up the steps to where a ballista was currently being rolled into place, the war construct being turned by several sweating guardsmen as they tried to position its aim toward the approaching dragon.

  A short run, but Dannen was out of breath by the end of it though, thankfully, not nearly as much, he noted, as he would have been a month ago. As it turned out, there wasn’t much better exercise than weeks spent running for your life. He frowned, glancing at the captain. “Thought you said there were two of them?”

  The man cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed. “Yes, sir, there were. But it seems that our engineer forgot to keep it up and….well, I’m afraid it will be of no use to us.”

  “Perfect,” Dannen said, “and I imagine you’re probably low on shot for the catapult too?”

  The captain’s eyes opened in obvious surprise. “How could you—”

  Dannen waved a hand dismissively. “Just the way it works is all. How many shots?”

  The captain winced again. “Two.”

  Dannen grunted. “Well. Guess it could be worse.”

  “Not much,” Mariana murmured, and he scowled at her before turning back to the captain.

  “Anyway,” Dannen said, “I guess we’d best be firing them then.”

  Indeed, it seemed they were nearly ready to do just that, for the guardsmen stood up from where they’d been hunkered at the labor of wheeling the great catapult into place according to the barked instructions of a man Dannen did not know. A man who he figured could only be the town’s engineer and, judging by his protruding gut—proof of a liking for ale that Dannen understood—likely the same man responsible for the fact that they only had one ballista and two shots available to them.

  A conversation needing to happen with that one then, particularly since Dannen could smell the alcohol on his breath even from here, but that was someone else’s problem—the gods knew he had enough of his own. At least they ought to, considering that they were the ones who’d dropped the damned things in his lap.

  The engineer glanced at the dragon, not seeming nearly as afraid as those soldiers around him—another indication that the man was well and truly sloshed—shouting orders as he did, the men making minute, nearly imperceptible adjustments according to his words. Dannen, hearing the obvious slur in the man’s voice, stepped forward. “Hey.”

  The man turned, scowling at him. “Ain’t got time to talk. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a gods forsaken undead fucking dragon coming at us and—”

  “I noticed,” Dannen interrupted, “but it seems to me that you’re a bit off on the left, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the man spat belligerently, “I didn’t realize we had another engineer visitin’. Tell me, what academy did you attend?”

  Dannen frowned, but the man was already turning away, back to the soldiers. “Hold there, you eager sons of bitches!” he shouted, and the soldiers backed away. The man turned back to him, favoring Dannen with an arrogant smirk, before moving forward and firing the ballista. Dannen watched along with the others with held breath as the first of the great stones flew through the air toward the undead dragon bearing down on them. The dragon did not bother to so much as shift as the rock—seeming particularly minuscule and insignificant compared to the hulking figure—flew harmlessly wide on the left.

  “Yep,” Dannen said, walking up to stand beside the engineer who was gawking at the sky, at the soldiers and the catapult as if trying to decide who to blame. “Seems to me you were a bit off on the left.”

  “J-just a measurin’ shot was all,” the engineer managed, trying for confident but failing miserably as the fear had managed to finally sink into his drink-addled mind. “We’ll get ‘em on the next one, and if not, on the one after that, certainly.”

  “There’s not one after that, you silly bastard,” Fedder growled. “There’s only the one—”

  Dannen
held a hand up, silencing the mage. “You’ve got one shot left, man. Now, I’m asking you, can you forget how drunk you are for a minute and save your town or not?”

  The man’s eyes came into focus then, and he took a slow breath, clearly gathering himself. Then he nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Dannen said. “Now, if I can make a recommendation—let’s aim for one of the damned thing’s wings, eh?”

  The engineer grinned, a mad gleam in his eye, and that was alright, was better than arrogance or fear anyway. “You got it.”

  He started shouting orders again, directing the already weary soldiers to begin sliding the catapult into place once more and aiming it to his specifications. When he was satisfied and, Dannen hoped, a bit more sobered, he ordered the soldiers to launch.

  The great stone hurled through the air and, unlike the first, Dannen was gratified to see that this one, was at least headed in the general direction of its intended target. And, drunkard or not, it became apparent that the engineer knew his business, for the stone flew unerringly, striking the undead dragon at the bone which connected its skeletal wing to its skeletal body.

  The creature was close now, very close, but it was still high above them, so that it was difficult for Dannen to see if the launched stone had any effect, but the creature seemed to fly on after the impact, and he was just beginning to despair when he realized something. The creature wasn’t flying anymore—it was falling.

  Relief flooded through him at that, but it—like the shouts of celebration from the soldiers around him—was short-lived as they all seemed to realize, as one, that the undead monstrosity was nearly right above them now, above them and falling and that meant—“Run!” he bellowed. Either because of his order or, more likely, because they weren’t complete fools, the soldiers’ shouts of joy turned to shouts of terror, and they all charged for the single door which led down to the tower’s base.

  Dannen had found, in his life—and the current situation proved the point further—that panicked men rarely made good decisions, so instead of proceeding in an orderly line that would have likely allowed most, if not all of them to reach safety in time, the men instead mobbed the doorway, kicking and screaming and trampling one another in an effort to be the first one out. Which, of course, meant that none of them were getting out, at least not quickly enough. He scanned the area quickly, the rushing wind from the dragon’s rapid descent loud in his ears, and saw that the castle wall was roughly fifteen feet below them.

  A long, no doubt painful drop, but one that was—at least slightly—preferable to death by falling dragon. “The wall!” he shouted as loud as he could, the sound of the falling dragon buffeting him. Then, without the time—or inclination—to see who was following him, he ran for the edge of the stone tower.

  He focused on reminding himself to roll on impact, to absorb some of the shock of it as he charged toward the tower edge. Was so focused on it, in fact, that he misjudged his leap or, more particularly, misjudged the space between the crenelations of the stone tower. He had intended to leap through one of those gaps but instead his back foot—the toes of it, at least—struck the tower top as he sailed past. He felt terror—and more than a little pain—lance through him as his attempt at a graceful jump turned very quickly into a widdershins tumble through the air where he went upside down, continuing to spin until finally landing flat on his back.

  Pain rang through his body as he struck, and he felt the way a horseshoe must feel as the smith brings his hammer down, shaping it. The air was knocked out of him in a whoosh, and he lay gasping for breath, wondering if he was still alive, wondering—if he was—whether or not he should be glad of that fact.

  A moment later, he heard a grunt followed by a loud impact that could only be Firemaker. Lying there gasping, he became aware of a pressure on his chest. A light pressure, not painful, really, but that was little comfort. He had seen men be struck before in battle, by hammers or trolls or a thousand other things—had even seen a man kicked by a pissed-off goat once—and sometimes those men got up, dusting themselves off and thinking they were fine, except for a little pressure. They’d walk around for a time, laugh and talk and celebrate living only to fall dead a short time later, killed by some internal injury.

  Was that what the pressure was, then? Had one of his ribs cracked and was now poking into his lung, his heart? Dannen was no healer, but he was quite certain a man needed both. So, despite the fact that he wanted little else but to lie there and try to find where all his breath had gone, he groaned, opening his eyes to stare at his chest, frightened by what he might find.

  But what he found was most certainly not what he expected. No bloody bone protruded from his chest, no piece of stone had lodged itself in him. Instead, a squirrel crouched on his chest, looking at him. And not just any squirrel this, but the one he’d seen Tesler carrying around for so long. Never would have thought he’d come to a place in his life where he could distinguish one squirrel from another but he could distinguish it, just as he could distinguish the arrogant smirk on its fuzzy features.

  “Oh, fuck off,” he rasped, and the squirrel seemed to grin before scampering away.

  Deciding that he wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, Dannen rolled onto his side to try to gain some semblance of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was Fedder lying a few feet away. The mage was flat on his back, blinking up at the sky with a dazed expression on his face as if he’d never seen it before and was trying to decide what it was.

  Tesler was kneeling a short distance away.

  “E-everyone okay?” Dannen managed.

  “I reckon that depends on your definition,” Fedder grunted. “Alive, anyway. Mostly.”

  Dannen grunted what would have been a laugh if he’d had any breath. “Tesler?”

  “I’m fine,” he said distractedly, looking up at the perfectly good tower they’d just leapt from. “But where’s Mariana?”

  Just then, a form sailed from the top of the tower. It was the girl, Mariana, flying through the air, her hair whipping behind her, and by some trick of Dannen’s addled mind—or perhaps by some trick of her own—the woman appeared to be grinning from ear to ear. As if there was nothing she liked better than leaping from castle towers, and she’d just been waiting for the opportunity. She landed in another second, dropping into a roll which brought her to her feet a short distance away from Dannen and the others.

  And yes, there it was, a fool grin plastered on her face. “That was fun!” she shouted. “Can we do it again?”

  “She’s magnificent,” a voice breathed from nearby, and Dannen glanced over to see the man, Tesler, staring at her.

  He was about to say that yes, she was magnificent, a magnificent fool, but just then he became aware that it had grown dark, very dark. Odd, that, considering that they should have had several hours of daylight left. Still, he thought it worth checking, so he turned over—groaning at the accompanying pains of doing anything quite so bold—to stare into the sky and saw, much to his absolute, wide-eyed, batshit terror, that the sun had not set after all. Instead, what had caused the shadows to lengthen, blocking out the light, was the form of the monstrous undead dragon as it plummeted toward them.

  No time to run, no time to dive for cover—even if there was any on the walls, which there was not. No time to do anything at all really but scream in bloody terror. Which he did.

  Then the dragon finished its ungainly, flopping descent, part of its body—hard to tell which part as it was only bone with scraps of flesh clinging to it, and it didn’t matter much in any case—striking the tower.

  There was a great, thundering roar as if some great beast bellowed its fury. And then the earth shattered. Or, at least, it seemed to. Certainly, that general area of it which Dannen currently had the misfortune to occupy did. There was a great, rending, crushing cacophony of sound. Stone and dust and bits of bone exploded seemingly in every direction. And among that wild debris before he closed his eyes and curled into an
unashamed fetal position, Dannen saw soldiers and parts of soldiers, sailing through the air much like Mariana had moments before though, it had to be admitted, lacking some bit of the grace she’d displayed.

  Then he closed his eyes. He gritted his teeth, and he prayed. And he cursed.

  Mostly, he cursed. Debris rained around him as the stone on which he lay rippled like water when a rock—or, as it happened, when an undead dragon half the size of a castle—dropped into it. It seemed to go on forever, his ears picking up great whumpfs as stones the size of carriages struck the area round him. And screams, of course—there was no shortage of those.

  Eventually, though, the hellish thundering subsided, and Dannen was left gasping and choking on a great cloud of stone dust filling the air, obscuring his sight as he slowly opened his eyes. He stumbled to his feet, or at least meant to, but instead found himself lying on his stomach, his face pressed up against the cracked stone of the tower wall.

  The second time worked out better.

  When he made his way to his feet, he glanced around, but could make out nothing at all through the thick curtain of dust which concealed the source of the screams and shouts he heard all around him from view. “Fedder!” he bellowed, but he might as well not have bothered as he could barely hear himself over the din, let alone expect the mage to hear him.

  He stumbled through the dust, his hands out in front of him, walking gingerly in case he should happen upon a hole in the wall or on the edge itself, searching for his companions. A slow, shambling, halting walk, pausing each time his foot struck something. A large piece of stone here, a sword there, and a particularly long pause as his foot struck another foot. A pause which grew longer as his addled mind tried to puzzle out where the rest of the body—the body that he was quite certain ought to be attached to it—had gone.

  Then, deciding some questions were better left unanswered, he stumbled onward, cursing himself, the dragon, the dust, and, in case he missed something, the world itself. Finally, the air began to clear, the dust settling, and in doing so it made visible the totality of the carnage which had been visited upon his surroundings. “Gods be good,” he breathed, staring around himself. Complete devastation everywhere, huge chunks of stones scattered about like the marbles of a child at play, and plenty of bodies, too. Some moving. Most not.