Don't Feed the Trolls

by Jacob Peppers

  “That skittish little bastard has saved my ass on more than one occasion,” Dannen said. “And he deserves more respect than that.”

  “Deserves it, does he?” Hank asked.

  “That’s right.”

  The old man let out a sigh. “Look, Butcher, I get it, alright? I was at this hero business for a long time—before you were even born, ‘less I miss my guess. And a word of advice. Take advantage of the…perks while you can. Sooner or later, you’ll get too old or too fat or just too damned tired to keep at it, and people will begin to forget you. Doesn’t matter how many statues the sculptors sculpt, how many paintings the painters paint—they’ll forget. So get what you can while you can, that’s what I say.”

  Dannen stared at him, thinking. He wanted to hit the man in his grinning face, but he had told Mariana he wouldn’t fight, and so he would not. Instead, he shook his head, looking at this man, this hero who he had idolized for so long—and not feeling admiration, not now, only disgust. “You’re right,” he said. “Honor is dead.”

  He turned and made to move toward the door but paused as the old man spoke.

  “Well, screw you then,” the old man said. “You think I give a damn what you think? You, a fat bastard who probably doesn’t even remember which end of a sword is up?” He waved a hand dismissively. “Out of here with you. Just tell that whore, if she’s ever lookin’ for a good time, I’ll be around.”

  Dannen turned back. “You’re right.”

  “Oh?”

  “I am fat. And maybe I don’t know which end of a sword is up. But I know another thing too.”

  “And what’s that?” the old man sneered.

  “I know that right now I don’t need to.”

  He lunged forward, his fist taking the old man in the face. Honor let out a squeak of surprised pain and fear, tumbling backward out of his chair and upending the table as he fell sprawling on his back. “Huh,” Dannen said, staring at the pathetic man lying there with a bleeding lip. “It’s a shame.” He glanced over at the upended glasses, their contents leaking onto the wood floor. “You spilled your ale.”

  And with that, he turned and walked out the door.

  ***

  They were waiting for him a short distance outside, all of them watching him as he came to stand beside them. “Everything alright?” Fedder asked.

  “Sure,” Dannen said, “it’s fine.”

  “Are you certain?” Mariana asked with a small smile. “I only ask because I thought I heard a scream.”

  “A scream?” Dannen asked. “Huh. Weird.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, still smiling as she glanced at his hand, the knuckles of which were scraped, perhaps on the old man’s teeth. “Weird.”

  “And Honor is…he’s okay?” Tesler asked.

  Dannen grunted. “Honor’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Fedder asked. “Damn, Butcher,” he said, “I’d best go check, make sure there ain’t nothin’ can link you to—”

  “No, no, damnit,” Dannen said. “I meant…he’s fine. Just…just a bit worse for wear, is all.”

  “Worse for wear,” Mariana repeated dryly.

  “Not as much as he should be,” Dannen said. “Like you said—the man’s an asshole.”

  “If you’re gonna go around punchin’ all the world’s assholes,” she said, “might be we should get you some gloves. Maybe some water. I imagine you’ll be at it for a while.”

  They were all staring at him then, smiling, even Tesler with a subtle, quiet grin, and Dannen felt at once pleased and embarrassed. Mostly embarrassed. “Oh, come on, damn you. We need to get going. We hang around much longer, the undead or that damned troll will show up.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried,” Mariana laughed. “If they do, well, you can always punch them in the face too.” She sobered a moment later. “Sorry,” she said, “that, you know, he wasn’t what you thought he was.”

  “People rarely are,” Dannen said. “Anyway, I was a fool and ought to have known better. The heroes are never real—you’d think I’d have learned that by now.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  They all turned to glance at Tesler, the man not looking embarrassed for once but sure, confident.

  “What’s that, lad?” Fedder asked.

  Tesler smiled. “I said you’re wrong,” he repeated, meeting Dannen’s eyes. “Sometimes, the heroes are real.”

  Dannen sighed, shaking his head. He’d complained a lot—sometimes inwardly, sometimes not—about the companions Perandius had saddled him with, but he realized now that he’d been wrong to do so. “Come on, you bastards,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But the truth, when all things were considered—namely the freezing cold temperatures and their exhaustion—was that they did not get far. Only so far, in fact, as the first abandoned home that looked big enough to accommodate them.

  Dannen led the way, feeling like an intruder, which, of course, he was. It was strange, walking into the home, stranger even than the inn or the village itself had been. Strange to see a table with several bowls of food—some sort of meat stew, it seemed—all still almost completely full. Strange to see the clothes scattered across the floor, ones the family, before fleeing, had apparently decided weren’t worth bringing.

  Dannen saw a fancy dress lying near the door to one of the bedrooms. A fine dress of expensive make, at least for an out-of-the-way village such as this one. He wondered at that, wondered what the mother—for surely the dress had belonged to her—had felt about the garment. Likely, it was one she’d taken care of in normal times, only wearing it to the finest of events lest she spill something on it or ruin the fabric in some other way. A fine garment, one that would have cost the family no small amount of coin. Had it been an anniversary present, perhaps, one the husband had given her in better times? Probably it had been.

  A treasured symbol of the love they’d both shared, now cast aside as if of no worth, for in times of dire stress wishes and hopes often gave way to cold pragmatism. He wondered at the dress, wondered, too, at the small ragdoll lying underneath the table, discarded or forgotten in the family’s haste to get out of the village. Fleeing from danger into more of it and them with no way to know and no other option even if they had.

  The doll was worn, the dye coloring it faded, not from mistreatment, he thought, but from much use. A favorite toy, perhaps, one the child slept beside every night, one she tucked in with her, one whose presence assured her that the monsters she imagined in the darkness could not get her. The child comforting and being comforted by that.

  And what would the child think when she realized they had left her doll behind? What would she have to comfort her as they marched further into danger? Would she reach for it in the darkness when she felt the monsters’ breath on her neck only to realize it was gone and that she was alone with the monsters? Would she then scream and cry out for help? Probably she would, and Dannen thought she would be right to do so.

  “You alright, Butcher?”

  He started at the sound of Fedder’s rumbling voice and turned to see the mage and the others watching him curiously, realized that he had been staring at the discarded doll for over a minute. “I’m fine,” he said, though the truth was he wasn’t fine, couldn’t remember, in fact, the last time he had been. He wondered too, if, the world being what it was, anyone was fine, certainly no one that had lived as long as he had was.

  He glanced at Fedder, but if the empty, abandoned house affected the mage in the same way it had Dannen, he hid it well. He surveyed the room for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face, but not the kind of expression that reflected sober, difficult thoughts like those Dannen had been entertaining. Instead, the mage looked around with his hands on his hips, as if he were considering buying the place. “Well,” he said finally, “it ain’t much, but I reckon it’ll do.”

  And with that, the mage moved toward the table and sat down at one of the empty chairs, so recently
vacated by the family who had lived here. As he did, his foot touched the doll, and he frowned, bending over and retrieving it from where it lay beneath the table. Fedder lifted it, staring at it with a curious expression on his face. Dannen wondered if the big man was thinking much of the same thoughts as he had himself, wondering at the family, at the child who had left the doll, wondering if—

  Just then, the mage grunted, tossing the doll carelessly away, and Dannen decided that he probably wasn’t having the same thoughts after all. He wondered, as he watched the mage slide one of the abandoned bowls closer to himself, how the man, confronted with such sadness, such tragedy, could let it slide off him so easily, like water from a slate roof. He wanted to dismiss the man as selfish, uncaring, but he had traveled with Fedder for a long time, and he knew that was simply not true.

  Fedder took a bite of stew from the bowl then grunted. “Cold. But good.”

  Dannen wanted to scold the man for that, for eating someone else’s food without seemingly giving a single care to what had happened to the family, but he did not. Partly, that was because he knew that, logically, his being upset or not would do nothing to change their fate. Mostly, though, he was hungry. So instead of scolding the man or calling him out, Dannen moved to the table and took up his own chair, grabbed his own bowl, and began to eat.

  A moment later, Mariana and Tesler did the same, the man, at least, managing to look ashamed as he sipped tentatively at the bowl. Dannen, though, once his empty stomach had tasted something besides the hard bread and dried meat on which he had subsisted for days, could not manage even that much. It was all he could do, in fact, to keep from making pleased noises—like those currently coming from Fedder—as he shoveled the food into his mouth with indecent haste.

  They did not speak while they ate, each of them enjoying the fare far more than they would have under normal circumstances and when his own bowl was empty it was all Dannen could do to keep himself from lifting it and licking the inside like a dog. Soon, everyone was finished with their meal. Everyone, at least, save the young man, Tesler, who continued to sip almost daintily at his food.

  Dannen stared at the man, at the bowl he ate from, and seriously considered snatching it away, for while the soup had been good, it had only gone a small way toward satisfying the gnawing hunger in his gut.

  “So, Butcher, what’s the plan?”

  Dannen blinked, reluctantly pulling his gaze away from the bowl and the man who, in that moment, he felt was committing a crime for eating it so slowly. He turned to Fedder. “Plan?”

  “Sure,” Mariana said dryly, “I admit, I’m fairly new to this whole ‘heroing’ thing, certainly haven’t been at it as long as you relics, but it seems to me that a plan could be good. You know, assuming we all don’t want to end up as playthings for an evil necromancer.”

  Dannen wasn’t sure how he ended up being the de-facto leader of the group—certainly, if there’d been sign ups, he’d never been told and, if he had, he likely would have run as fast as he could in the other direction. But it was done now either way, and they were all watching him. “What choice do we have?” he asked. “Perandius said that if the north falls the world will fall, so we head for the capital.”

  “Which, for all we know, could already be overrun by an undead army,” Mariana said.

  “Yes.”

  “The same undead army,” she went on, “that, according to this god of yours, sent the entire forces of the north fleeing back to the capital in the first place, with their tails tucked between their legs.”

  “That’s the one,” Dannen agreed. “There a problem?” And although he asked the question casually, he didn’t feel casual, not at all. The truth was he was more than a little frightened that the woman, that all of them, would decide they had better things to do than get murdered by a horde of skeletons and would wish him luck before promptly giving him the finger and running away as fast as their feet could carry them. After all, the gods alone knew why they’d stuck around this long. Dannen certainly didn’t, not anymore than he knew why he was here and hadn’t slunk away long before now.

  He didn’t know what difference one more person would make when going up against an undead army—likely just another potential victim, and therefore a potential soldier for the necromancer to appropriate once he’d gotten the whole killing thing out of the way. But he was still frightened by the idea of any of them leaving.

  Mariana, though, only shrugged. “I just won’t be making any plans for after, that’s all.”

  “I think she means because we probably won’t survive,” Tesler offered.

  “Yeah,” Dannen said, “yeah, I picked up on that.”

  “Anyway,” Mariana went on, “so we go to the capital of the north—”

  “Urkenvald,” Tesler supplied.

  Mariana frowned. “Right, so we go to Urkenvald, and then what?”

  Die probably, Dannen thought.

  “Thought we all knew,” Fedder said. “We’re gonna rescue King Ufrith and his people.”

  “Oh,” Mariana said, “right. A good plan, and of course I, an amateur, wouldn’t dream of questioning two old vetera—”

  “Not so old,” Fedder said, frowning.

  “Two very old veterans,” Mariana continued as if the man hadn’t spoken, “but there seems to be just one minor detail that seems to have been overlooked. Namely, the damned undead army which, if what the god told you is true, is currently camped outside the capital. It seems to me that the army—and the two brothers who lead it—might just have something to say about us arriving unannounced and uninvited.”

  “If it’s any consolation, lass,” Fedder offered, “I doubt there’ll be all that much talking involved.”

  “Right,” Mariana said, “probably easier to let their horde of undead do their talking for them. Sure is a long way to travel to get chopped into pieces by—”

  “Enough.”

  Dannen had been thinking it, had even gone so far as to open his mouth to say it, so he was more than a little surprised—a surprise obviously shared by the others—when he realized that it hadn’t been he who’d said it. Instead, it had been Tesler. Slowly, he and the others turned to look at the man who did not look embarrassed or nervous as he often did. Instead, he looked annoyed.

  “What?” Mariana asked, not in a voice that was angry—or at least, not mostly that—but instead in a voice filled with shocked disbelief.

  “I said, enough,” Tesler repeated, meeting her eyes. “We knew what we faced long before now, and it does us no good to complain about it—unless that complaining leads to an answer to the problem instead of just more complaining. And…” He paused, turning to look at Fedder. “We’re not here for jokes either. People are dying, maybe a lot of them. It doesn’t seem right to me to make light of it, not when we’re sitting here warm and snug and safe.”

  Dannen could have argued that last bit, for as far as he could tell and from what he’d seen of the world, a man was never really safe, not so long as he was breathing, but he let it pass, mostly because he didn’t want the lad to turn his frown on him.

  Fedder grunted. “You’re right, lad, of course you are,” he said, “that’s my fault.” Then he turned and glanced at Mariana with a raised eyebrow and Tesler shifted his attention to the woman as well.

  The assassin frowned for a moment, avoiding their gazes, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Then finally she sighed. “Fine. I was just saying we ought to iron out some bit of the plan, that’s all. I’m…” She paused, clearing her throat. “I’m sorry.”

  Tesler gave a single nod then turned to Dannen with a questioning look in his gaze, as if wanting to know if he was satisfied or not. “Look,” Dannen said, “I get it—I can think of some places I’d rather be right now than on the side of a mountain, fleeing from the undead into more of them, but here I am. Here we are. I’ve done some things in my life I ain’t proud of, ran when I should have stuck, let terrible things pass because I was too drunk or too l
azy to do something about it. But not this time. This time, I’m going to help or die trying.”

  Mariana opened her mouth to speak, no doubt to utter some clever rejoinder, but she glanced at Tesler then closed it again, frowning. “I’m going to keep trying,” Dannen went on, “because I promised Perandius that I would.”

  “Marching to almost certain death to save a king you never met?” Mariana asked.

  Dannen considered that for a moment then slowly shook his head. “No. I’m not going to save a king. I’m going”—he gestured at the discarded doll lying on the ground—“to save the kid who owns that doll. I’m going because I gave my word. Besides,” he finished, “what else do I have to do?”

  They all looked thoughtful at that, and Dannen spoke again. “Look, I’m the one who gave his word, not you all. You’re not obligated to do anything except die, sooner or later, and if you go with me, chances are that’ll be sooner. There’s nothing stopping you from leaving, if you want to, not any of you. The gods know I’d hate to see you go, but I wouldn’t hold it against you either. There’s plenty of ways to die in this world—on that, at least, the gods seemed more than thorough—and I can’t imagine death by skeleton horde bein’ very high up anyone’s lists. But if you’re going to go, do me a favor and go now, eh? We can part ways here, and I’ll wish you well.”

  They were all silent at that, and he turned to Fedder, his eyebrow raised in a question. The mage grunted. “Oh, get off it, Butcher, you know I’m comin’. Beats puttin’ on a show for gawking townsfolk and giggling kiddies any day. Besides, you wouldn’t last the week if I wasn’t here with you, makin’ sure you stay relaxed and don’t do anything rash.”

  Dannen blinked. The mage accusing him of acting rashly was up there with the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard in a life full of ridiculous things, so ridiculous, in fact, that, for a time, he wasn’t able to speak. By the time he could, Tesler beat him to it.