Don't Feed the Trolls

by Jacob Peppers

  Dannen used his free leg to give the hand wielding the knife a kick and the blade—as well as a few of the undead soldier’s fingers—went flying over the edge of the bridge, vanishing down the several-hundred-foot drop. He tried to pull his leg free of the creature’s grip, but for a being who possessed no visible muscle—except those small bits which hung in tatters about its body—the soldier was surprisingly strong.

  “Bastard,” Dannen hissed, giving the creature’s skull a kick which rocked it backward, yet still it refused to let go. Frantic now as the approaching avalanche thundered in his ears, growing louder by the instant, Dannen gave the creature a second kick, then a third, and finally managed to knock it free, sending it hurling over the edge of the bridge to follow its knife and fingers down into the waiting abyss.

  Dannen didn’t look back at the avalanche—didn’t dare. Instead, he turned and ran, falling several times in his haste only to scramble his way to his feet and start sprinting once more for the relative safety of the opposite mountainside. He saw, in the distance, that the others had already reached the opposite end of the bridge and were now standing and shouting at him. He could not hear their words, not over the all-encompassing thundering of the avalanche, but their waving arms and desperate gestures made their meaning clear enough—run. As if any man, facing such a force, would do, could do anything else.

  Dannen ran. He ran the fastest he could, cursing what remained of his gut with each step, cursing each ale and each idle, drunken night that had led to his woefully bad shape but, mostly, cursing Fedder. He knew that he wasn’t going to make it in time, knew that, any moment, he would be buried beneath tons of snow, either killed on impact or left to freeze to death or suffocate while his companions tried in vain to dig him free.

  Then, suddenly, just when he thought the avalanche was directly behind him, could almost feel its breath on the back of his neck like some great beast chasing him, the great thunder grew silent. Dannen took several more running steps then paused, looking behind him and seeing in disbelief that starting only a few feet away from where he now stood, the entire length of the bridge was covered in at least ten feet of snow, the undead soldiers which had populated it moments ago nowhere in evidence, buried somewhere beneath those great white drifts.

  He was left panting, his throat raw from the cold and the exertion, staring at the great mounds of snow, shocked to still be alive. “Lucky,” he gasped, shaking his head. And that, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the moment when the bridge gave a terrifying, stomach-clenching lurch, and he stumbled, nearly falling. There was the sound of tortured metal but, this time, it was not a creak, instead it was a loud, sharp snap, and suddenly Dannen noticed that the bridge was no longer level, taking on a definite tilt to one side.

  He stared at the bridge for a brief moment, uncomprehending. Then, realization dawned. The bridge might have been built to accommodate a lot of people at once, might have been wide enough for two wagons to travel abreast, but its builder, the guard captain’s cousin, had apparently not planned for it to support dozens, perhaps hundreds of tons of snow. “Oh, shit,” he breathed.

  Then he was running again, doing his best to ignore the stitch in his side and the throbbing ache in his leg from where the stone had struck him. This he managed with moderate success—bowel-gripping terror had a way of helping a man to shake off life’s minor annoyances. However, he was not quite as successful at ignoring the way the bridge swayed and bucked beneath him like some great horse who had taken it in mind to throw its rider as quickly as possible, a throw which, considering that the bridge—and Dannen—was suspended at least a mile over the valley floor, would be considerably…final.

  His breath came in ragged gasps, pluming out in front of him as he ran, frantically trying to keep his footing, all too aware that should he fall, there was a far greater fall waiting for him. He was close to the end of the bridge, close enough that he could hear the others shouting frantically at him, could see their terrified expressions as they waved him on, when suddenly the metal structure gave the worst lurch yet, and he was thrown from his feet, hurled forward as if flicked by the finger of some angry god.

  He rolled across the metal, ice-covered surface, grunting and groaning at the impact, until finally coming to a stop and rising again. He spared a moment now to glance back and for a brief instant felt a terrible confusion. The other end of the bridge—which had stood connected to the far mountainside moments before—had vanished. But no, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t vanished. Instead, it had fallen, giving way beneath its incredible burden. In fact, it was still falling and even as he watched, the middle of the bridge—where he’d been less than a minute ago—plummeted.

  Dannen let out a squeak of pure, unmitigated terror and turned, resuming his desperate sprint. He was less than half a dozen feet away from his companions and the safety of the mountain side when the bridge gave a sudden lurch and he knew, without turning to look—not that he had the time to do so, even if he’d wanted to—that in a moment, the part of the bridge on which he ran would follow the rest into the waiting abyss.

  So, knowing there was no time left, Dannen gathered himself and calling on all the strength he could muster, launched himself into a leap toward his waiting companions only an instant before the bridge disappeared from beneath his feet. The entire structure gave an incredible clatter as it broke apart and plummeted into the chasm below.

  Dannen had a brief moment where he felt as if he were flying, where he felt that he would easily clear the six-foot gap between him and his companions. But in another instant, reality, gravity, and his woeful shape, exerted themselves, and then he wasn’t flying at all but falling, falling in the direction the bridge had gone and with predictably similar results, once he’d landed.

  With a frantic shout of terror, he threw his hands out as wide as he could and his fingers touched the stone of the mountainside. The ground was slick with snow and damp, and his right hand slipped away. His left, though, gripped desperately onto a small outcropping of stone which protruded out of the mountain. Not much, but enough to offer him something to hold on to.

  Yet before he could even go so far as to feel a brief relief, or perhaps hope, his numb fingers began to slip, his grip slowly loosening on the stone no matter how much he tried to tighten it. Dannen screamed for one of his companions, but whether or not they had even survived the cacophony—or perhaps been struck down by some flying debris—he had no idea, for he could see nothing but the side of the mountain against which he was pressed. That, and of course the imposing drop below him, one that went so far that the ground at the chasm bottom was covered in fog and not visible. Not that it needed to be, for Dannen knew that, unless someone had stacked a hundred feet or so of pillows down there, beneath the fog—and somehow he doubted it—then the distance of the drop could be described in two simple words: far enough.

  He screamed and shouted for help, his voice hoarse with the cold and his panic, screamed even as his fingers began to give way. And just as he felt his grip slipping away completely, when he knew that his numb fingers could hold on no longer, he thought of Clarissa, and of how much harm a man can do without ever meaning to.

  Then he wasn’t slipping any longer but slipped in truth, not dangling over a massive precipice but falling into it. He let out one final scream, reaching vainly for the rock that he knew he could not catch again. But while he did not catch the rock, he did catch something. Or, perhaps, it was more accurate to say that something caught him, something which halted his fatal downward momentum, and he looked up to see Mariana’s head and shoulders poking over the side of the mountain, her hands latching around his wrist.

  The woman was obviously straining, her tongue sticking between her lips, but she gave a great, hissing tug, and disappeared back behind the cliff face. Dannen had time to let out a grunt of surprise before he followed a moment later, his face and the entire front of him scraping roughly against the hillside.

  In another instant he was
over the edge, and he rolled off her so that both of them lay on their backs, panting desperately. Dannen did not speak, only lay there, stunned to still be alive. Finally, when the worst of his terror and panting subsided, he turned his head to face her. “T-thank you,” he rasped.

  Mariana turned to regard him and at first gave him a warm, pleasant smile, one so very different than the usual arrogant, knowing smirk she wore and in that instant, Dannen felt as if he were seeing Mariana, the real Mariana, the one she always kept hidden from the world, for the first time. But a moment later, that face was gone, replaced by the familiar smirk. “Don’t…mention it,” she panted. “From what I seen this mornin’, the mage would have been pretty…upset, if I let you fall, and an old mopey giant is…the last…thing I need.”

  Dannen opened his mouth to speak but, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a shout from near by, beating him to it. “Butcher! Butcher, gods, man, are you alright?”

  He turned his head to the side to see Fedder hurrying over, Tesler behind him. “Come on, Butcher,” the mage said, reaching down, “let me help you up, where are you hurt?”

  “It’s fine, Fedder,” Dannen began, “I’m fine—” But his words turned into a grunt as the mage grabbed hold of him and lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a child, sitting him on his feet before examining him, tutting over him like some mother over a child who’d taken it in mind to play in the dirt.

  “Can’t imagine what you were thinking, hanging around on that bridge for so long,” Fedder murmured, still fussing over him, his hands searching for some wound.

  Dannen noted the way the woman, Mariana, grinned at him from where she still lay on the ground and frowned. “Fedder,” he said, “I’m fine, really, I—Fedder.”

  The man finally stopped pawing at him and grunted. “Sorry, Butcher. Just…thought we’d lost you, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’m okay, really. Still, I appreciate your concern.”

  “A-and you, Mariana?” Tesler asked. “A-are you, alright?” He reached out a tentative hand, clearly meaning to help her up, but Mariana slapped it away, rising to her feet on her own.

  “I’m fine,” she said gruffly.

  “Oh,” he said, wincing at the not-so-subtle rebuff. “Well…I mean, good.”

  “Is it?” she said, a clear challenge in her voice.

  The man’s eyes went wide, obviously realizing that he had done something wrong but, like so many men in their time, having no idea what that might have been. “I…I just mean…I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Okay?” she said. “In the last two days, I, we have been chased out of a town we saved basically at sword point, forced to travel up a mountainside in the freezing cold, attacked by the undead, and then nearly buried in an avalanche. Does any of that sound okay to you?”

  Tesler winced. “Well, no. I only meant…you know, I’m glad…” He paused, glancing at Fedder and Dannen, clearly embarrassed, before clearing his throat. “That is…I just meant that I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said dryly. “Lucky me.”

  Fedder grunted, slapping the young man on the back hard enough to make the squirrel tumble from his shoulders. The beast caught on the front of Tesler’s jerkin and pulled itself back up onto its perch, chittering angrily. “Come on, lad,” Fedder said, apparently deciding to ignore the creature’s anger, “I dropped my pack somewhere around here during all the panic. What’s say you help me find it?”

  “I…that is, of course,” Tesler said, obviously relieved at an opportunity to escape Mariana’s scowl, and Fedder met Dannen’s eyes for a moment before turning and leading the youth away.

  Dannen tried to make it a point to avoid messing about in other people’s business, particularly when those other people were an assassin who he’d seen dismantle men like she was reading instructions, and a madman with a squirrel who, unless he completely missed his guess, had just finished murdering half a dozen soldiers, giving them a little chew, too, while she was at it. Still, as much as he preferred to keep himself to himself, he turned and raised an eyebrow at the woman who was still staring at the young man’s departing back. “Well done,” he said, “you really showed him.”

  She turned to frown at him. “What’s that?”

  “Just impressed, that’s all,” Dannen said. “I must say, that was damned effective. I bet he’ll think twice before he gives a shit about you in the future.”

  She scowled. “And what do you know of it?”

  “Pissing people off?” Dannen grunted a laugh. “Girl, I was doing that long before you were ever born. Sort of made a career out of it, you might say, and with the scars to prove it.”

  She frowned, saying nothing, and he sighed. “Look, my point is, the man likes you, alright? He likes you and, unless I miss my guess, you like him too. So maybe stop with the whole bitch routine, eh?”

  Her fingers twitched, as if considering going for the iron rods at her side, and Dannen cursed himself inwardly for getting involved. In the end, though, the anger faded from her expression. “I don’t exactly play well with others. Anyway, my trainers always told me it was dangerous to let someone get too close.”

  “These wouldn’t happen to be the ‘trainers’ from the Assassin’s Guild, would they?”

  She frowned. “Well…yes.”

  “And you figure, what, exactly, that there couldn’t possibly be anyone better to take advice from about life than those who spend their own focused on death?”

  She grunted. “When you say it like that…still, they said it was dangerous letting people too close, that if you didn’t let anyone close, they couldn’t hurt you.”

  Dannen barked a laugh. “Well, that’s a damn fool thing to say, isn’t it?”

  She scowled again. “Why?”

  “Why? Well, of course people can hurt you without getting close, girl. I’d think an assassin would know that better than anyone. I mean, shit, what do you think bows and arrows are for?”

  She opened her mouth, perhaps meaning to retort, but in the end closed it again, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Anyway,” he said, “it’s none of my business but why not take it easy on the lad, alright? It isn’t as if we don’t have enough shit to worry about already.” He left her there, turning and walking away toward where Fedder and Tesler were standing, the young man shooting not-so-covert glances the woman’s direction.

  Dannen ignored it. He had done what he could—either the woman would listen or she would not. It was an unfortunate quality of humans—perhaps gods as well—that, more often than not, the only lessons that took were the ones learned the hard way. Anyway, he had more important things to worry about than the complicated dance of love that was so common in the young, one where neither party had even the vaguest idea of what they were doing but went on dancing anyway despite the fact that, more often than not, they’d both end up falling on their asses in the end.

  “So, Butcher,” Fedder said as he approached, “what now? Do we go back to Palden, take our chances with that asshole of a duke?” He frowned. “Not that I wouldn’t like to have a bit of a conversation with that bastard.”

  “No,” Dannen said. “No, we do what we came here to do—we cross the mountains.”

  Fedder grunted, glancing over at the chasm. “I don’t want to be a downer here, Butcher, but it seems to me that crossing a bridge that no longer exists might prove a bit tricky. Unless you packed a pair of wings that I ain’t aware of, anyway.”

  “He means the other bridge.”

  Dannen glanced over to see that Mariana had walked up to stand beside him. She met his eyes for a moment, an unreadable expression on her face before turning back to the mage.

  “The other bridge,” Fedder repeated. “And I don’t suppose you’re talking about the bridge the guard captain cautioned us against usin’, the one he said might fall down at any moment?”

  Dannen nodded. “That’s the one.”

  Fedder frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then fina
lly shrugged. “Well, sure why not?”

  Dannen could think of plenty of reasons why not, namely that he’d already had one bridge collapse beneath him today and it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat, not if he could help it. The problem, of course, was that they weren’t exactly spoiled for options. “Alright then,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “Let’s go.”

  It took another couple of hours of trudging up the mountain path to reach the bridge the guard captain had mentioned. The good news was that the snow had slackened off, the wind too, so that Dannen almost imagined he could feel his toes and his fingers again. The bad news was that, if anything, the guard captain had undersold the state of the plank bridge. A quick glance showed that several of the planks were missing, and that the ropes which held it suspended over the chasm were frayed. All in all, the thing looked like a good breeze or a loud word would send it hurtling into the chasm.

  He glanced back at the others and saw them studying the bridge—if such a dilapidated structure could still be referred to as such—with dubious expressions on their faces. “Best we cross one at a time,” he said.

  “Or not at all,” Mariana muttered.

  Dannen grunted. “Anyone got any better ideas?”

  No one did, of course. Dannen nodded. “Alright then, who wants to go first?”

  No one did, of course.

  They all glanced away, pointedly refusing to meet Dannen’s eyes, and he sighed. “Well. Guess that’s me as gets the honor then.”

  He started toward the bridge then paused, staring at it, at the way it swayed gently in the wind. He didn’t feel guilty about that pause, though, thought that if the state of the thing didn’t give a man pause then he was looking for a way to die. He told himself that he didn’t have a choice, that it was either this or a headsman’s axe, but the first step onto the rickety planks was no easier for all that.