Don't Feed the Trolls

by Jacob Peppers

  She cocked her head, looking at him curiously. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Forget it,” Dannen said, waving a hand, “it doesn’t matter. My point is, you saw what the animals did to your men. Do you really want a second helping?”

  “Funny that you should put it that way,” she yelled back, “considering that I have eaten what might well have been the cousins of most of your allies there. And yes, your…army may have gotten the best of that first pass, but only because of surprise. After all”—she paused, glancing around her—“it’s not every day that one gets attacked by poultry. Anyway, they were able to build up momentum then—I doubt they will find the next pass quite so much to their liking. Do you hear that boys?” she yelled at her companions. “It appears we’re having bacon for dinner, and I’ve always had an urge to taste horse meat.”

  “Well, you won’t be tasting it from my horse!”

  Dannen and the others turned to see the villagers piling out of the granary, apparently having overcome their fear. The one who’d spoken was the same man who had challenged him and the others when they’d gone inside, and he led the other villagers to stand beside Dannen and his companions, giving him a nod.

  “Um…hi,” Dannen said, clearing his throat and glancing at the animals gathered around. “Sorry about…you know, borrowing your animals.”

  “These people came here and invaded our village, our homes. They killed Geller. And you all came to save us.” He turned and met Dannen’s eyes, giving him a single nod. “You have my horse.”

  Another stepped forward, this one a tall, thin woman, who nodded her head solemnly. “And my bull.”

  “And my ass.”

  They all turned to glance at the third man, squat and, by his bulbous nose and even more bulbous belly, an obvious lover of drink. The man fidgeted then nodded his head at a donkey standing placidly a short distance away who had taken the opportunity of the break in the bloodshed to crop at some grass. “That’s him over there.”

  “Aaah,” Dannen said, nodding slowly. “Right.”

  “I was gonna say…” Mariana muttered.

  The other villagers began to chime in then, apparently all too willing to sacrifice their livestock in the name of fending off the bandits and, judging by the makeshift weapons they carried—some with pitchforks but most with stout lengths of wood or rocks—ready to help them along. Dannen stared at them, surprised and touched more than he would have thought, before turning back to the bandit leader.

  The auburn-haired woman was staring at them—and the several hundred villagers standing with them—in surprise, and Dannen thought he could practically see her doing the math in her head, math that didn’t add up in her favor. Still, outnumbered or not, the men and women under her command had the benefit of wielding actual weapons instead of sticks and stones, so Dannen knew that, if she chose to push it, there was no telling which way the thing might go.

  In the end, though, she gave a small shrug. “Oh well. I suppose my friends and I have overstayed our welcome.” She turned to regard the de-facto leader of the villagers. “I am sorry—about the innkeeper, I mean. We’re bandits, not murderers, and that is not how we do things. Rest assured,” she went on, her expression turning grim, “that the perpetrator of that crime will be dealt with. Now,” she went on, glancing around at the bandits around her, obvious relief on most of their faces, “I think it best that we be going, lads and ladies. A fashionable exit as it were—”

  “No.”

  At first, Dannen had no idea from where the voice had come, but then he saw the man, Hank, climbing to his feet, his face twisted with fury. “No, you will not leave, not until it is done—you have been paid and now they”—he waved a hand in Dannen and the others’ direction—“must pay.”

  The woman arched a perfectly-shaped eyebrow at him. “I will not be told what to do by some old geezer with a mean streak. Anyway, if it’s any consolation, they’ll pay sooner or later—all the living do. Our punishment for daring to be born.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Hank growled. “You took my coin and are contractually obligated to finish the job!”

  “Contractually obligated,” the woman said, then gave a soft laugh. “Well, that has a fine ring to it, doesn’t it? Wonder how many women have heard those same words. Words to strike fear into the heart of the law-abiding, that’s for sure. Thing is…” She paused, glancing around at her companions with a small smile before looking back to the old man, “Well…we’re bandits, aren’t we?” With that, she turned back to her men. “Alright then. Let’s get out of here and—”

  Hank moved with a speed Dannen wouldn’t have credited him, drawing a dagger from his waist. Dannen tried to shout a warning, but the words had barely left his mouth before Hank, snarling like some feral beast, buried the blade in the woman’s back.

  Then Dannen was running. A pretty foolish thing, charging toward an insane man in order to save the leader of a bandit army that had been intent, only moments before, on killing him and his companions. Foolish, and it said a lot about Dannen’s life that it didn’t even make top five of the dumbest things he’d ever done, likely not even the dumbest of the day.

  He was still charging across the intervening space separating him when the woman staggered, letting out a surprised grunt of shock and pain. She turned drunkenly to regard the old man who was raising the knife for a second strike. Before he could land it though, Dannen, taking a lesson from Fedder’s book, charged into him shoulder first.

  It hurt. Like, really hurt. As it turned out, Dannen’s tackling days—if he’d ever had them—were long behind him. Some small consolation, though, was that as much as it hurt him, it seemed to hurt the old man more. At least, that was, if the shout of pain he gave before hitting the ground was any indication. Dannen glanced to the side to the bandit leader, staring with a look of bewildered confusion plastered on her face, a confusion he largely shared considering that he’d just done something particularly stupid. “You okay?” he asked dumbly.

  She gave him a smile. “Perfect,” she said before promptly and, perhaps, perfectly, collapsing at his feet.

  “You.”

  Dannen turned to see Hank climbing to his feet, not looking much worse for the tackle. Though, in fairness, the man had been no prize before then. “Look—” Dannen began, having no idea exactly what he meant to say, but it didn’t matter in any case, for he didn’t get the chance. The old man had managed to hold on to the dagger, and he promptly proceeded to try to sheathe it in Dannen’s chest.

  Dannen might have been a fool—the proof was such that there didn’t seem much point in denying it—but his survival instincts, honed over countless, more’s the pity, near-death encounters, were still intact. The old man drove the knife toward him in an overhanded stab, and Dannen caught his wrist before he fully realized what he was doing, turning the blade and burying it in the old man’s chest.

  Hank stared at the knife protruding from him then staggered before looking up at Dannen. “You…you killed me.”

  Dannen winced, nearly as surprised as the man himself. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “It makes—” The old man paused, hacking out blood, then fell to a sitting position. “It makes no…difference,” he said. “They know you’re coming, the brothers. They’ll…they’ll kill you. You…you’re going to die.” And with that, the man collapsed to his side and did not move.

  Dannen grunted. “Just had to go and spoil the surprise, eh?”

  Suddenly, a commotion rose around him, and Dannen looked up, expecting to see the bandits charging him, intent on finishing the job. Apparently, though, they’d had enough and instead of pressing the attack, they began scattering in all directions, fleeing the village. They were helped along by a pissed-off bull and a brood of chickens which, given their apparent bloodlust, Dannen thought might have more accurately been called a murder.

  It had been a confusing, frightening day all told, and Dannen thought he could
be forgiven for staring distractedly after the fleeing bandits and chasing chickens—after all, it wasn’t a sight a man saw every day. He was still staring at the slowest—and therefore most pecked—of the bandits disappearing in the distance when Fedder walked up beside him.

  Fedder grunted. “Tough chicks.”

  Dannen turned to him slowly, staring, to see that the mage was grinning widely. Mariana and Tesler stood beside him, the woman eyeing Fedder as if considering striking him with one of her weapons. In the end, she settled for turning and spitting on Hank’s unmoving body. “Crazy bastard.”

  “Yeah,” Dannen said softly, “but he wasn’t always so.” He thought that perhaps there was some deep lesson lying there at his feet along with the corpse of what had once been one of the world’s most celebrated heroes. Probably there was. But if so, he was simply too tired to learn it.

  “Thank you, strangers,” a voice came from behind them, and Dannen and the others turned to see the de-facto leader of the villagers—along with what must have been the entire village’s population—standing there. “I am only thankful to the gods for the happy chance that saw you arrive right after the bandits invaded our village.”

  Dannen shared a glance with the others, clearing his throat. “Right. Happy chance.”

  The man grinned. “Well, we’re in your debt, strangers, truly. We don’t have much, but what we have is yours. So how might we repay you?”

  Dannen glanced at the others, all of them looking as exhausted, mentally and physically, as he felt. Then he turned back to the man. “How about a drink?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As it happened, Dannen did get his drink. And then another. And another. And…well, suffice to say that over the next three days they spent in the village, he lost track. Still, he was careful not to allow himself to get too drunk. That being the reason, by and large, that he had found himself on this fool’s errand of a quest in the first place.

  Still, he told himself that he was owed a few drinks. The last months had been trying at best, and the last few days since the bandits had fled the village had been little better as he and the others searched fruitlessly for someone that might guide them to the capital. He’d been through the entire village now and everyone either seemed too busy or too scared to make the journey, meeting him again and again with refusals. Oh, they were polite, grateful refusals, but refusals just the same.

  And after each day’s fruitless attempts, he had returned here to this inn, to this table, and drank. There really wasn’t much else to do. He’d only just started on his first ale of the night when Fedder slid into the seat beside him with a sigh.

  “Any luck?” Dannen asked, though judging by the mage’s frowning countenance he thought he knew the answer well enough.

  Fedder snorted. “Luck. I’ll tell you something, Butcher, in the old days, a hero, after saving a village, could expect some damned fine treatment. Now, though…” He shook his head. “Makes me wonder what’s happenin’ to the world.”

  “Doubtless nothing good,” Dannen said. “Anyway, I’m to take it you didn’t have any luck with the stableman?”

  Fedder had a look on his face that said he wanted to punch something and wasn’t all that particular on what that something was. “However grateful these villagers are, I can tell you their gratefulness doesn’t extend to the price of their horses. It’s insane, the amounts the bastard’s trying to charge.”

  Dannen sighed. “So much for all that ‘you have my horse’ nonsense.”

  Fedder frowned. “What’s that?”

  Dannen gave his head a shake. “Nothing, doesn’t matter. Anyway, you can’t expect anything different, really. After all, small place like this, they need every animal they have just to survive—it isn’t as if the king’s got his royal stables here, is it?”

  “Survive,” Fedder repeated in a grumble. “They wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t saved them from the bandits.”

  Dannen raised an eyebrow, leaning in close to speak in a whisper. “Bandits who were here because of us. Also, as I recall, it was mostly Tesler did the saving. Or his animal army anyway.”

  Fedder grunted at that, siting back in his seat and taking a long pull of his ale. “An army of chickens and goats. I tell you, Butcher, I ain’t ever seen anythin’ like it.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Where is the hero anyway?” Fedder asked glancing around.

  “Still tending to the bandit leader, last I checked. She’s still unconscious, and the healer doesn’t know if she’ll wake or not, didn’t seem all too concerned about it either, you want to know the truth.” Dannen said.

  The mage grunted again, sourly. “Well. She’s a pretty one, I’ll give him that, but you ask me, the boy’s bein’ a fool. Why, after his damned heroics, there’s plenty of farmers’ daughters—conscious ones, mind—that’d happily bed him as their way of thanks. Shit, plenty of farmers would likely pay him for the privilege.”

  Dannen gave a laugh at that. The man wasn’t far wrong. If he and the others had been treated well after saving the village, then Tesler had certainly received the lion’s share of the admiration. Or would have, at least, had he bothered coming down the stairs long enough to be admired instead of camping by the bandit leader’s bedside for the last few days.

  “And the girl?” Fedder asked, pulling Dannen from his thoughts.

  Dannen shook his head. “Not sure. Sulking around here someplace, I imagine, same as she has been.” If the last three days had been an annoying exercise in aggravation for Dannen and Fedder, then they had been far worse for the woman whose mood—on those few occasions Dannen had seen her—seemed to grow worse and worse. There was a storm building there, one that was bound to break sooner or later, and he only hoped he wasn’t around when it did.

  “Well then,” Fedder said, “which would you choose?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh, come on, Butcher,” the mage said, grinning, “you know what I mean. Between the two, Mariana or that bandit leader. Which would you pick?”

  “To murder me? Hard to say. I imagine it would be painful regardless.”

  Fedder grunted, still grinning. “You ask me, some pain’s worth it. Anyhow, what do you reckon the lad will do?”

  Dannen shook his head. One of the few benefits of being an overweight has-been was that a man rarely had to worry about the attentions of a single pretty woman, let alone two. “Who knows. Whatever he does, likely it’ll end in disaster.”

  Fedder winked. “My kind of disaster,” he said, then he tilted his head back and took a long drink of his ale. “And you?” the mage asked when he was finished. “No luck at finding us a guide then?”

  Dannen snorted. “No.”

  “Well,” the mage said, shrugging. “Maybe we can talk to the lad, get him to have one of his chickens guide us.”

  “Or maybe not,” Dannen croaked. Most, perhaps, would have thought the surge of fear he felt at the mention of the village’s chickens ridiculous, but then they hadn’t seen what he had, and those same chickens had featured in his dreams—nightmares really—for the last few nights.

  “So what then?” Fedder asked.

  Dannen sighed heavily. “I don’t know.”

  ***

  He dipped the rag into the warm water again, then sat up, bringing it to the woman’s forehead and dabbing lightly at the sweat there. Since the bandits had fled, the villagers had acted as if he was a hero, but Tesler didn’t feel like one. After all, he had done nothing, nothing but convince the animals to help him—some of which hadn’t made it. And, of course, he had started a chain of events that ended with the bandit leader being stabbed. Mariana had told him he was being ridiculous, that he had saved them—only she’d used considerably more curse words—but he couldn’t help feeling guilty.

  And so he sat much as he had for the last three days, dabbing at the woman’s face and doing what he could to make her comfortable. He was gratified to see that her fever had subsided at least, h
er skin no longer hot to the touch.

  He sighed, kneeling over to wet the rag again, and let out a gasp as he rose and saw the woman studying him. She looked tired, exhausted, really, but her gaze was lucid, intelligent. “Well,” she said, “this isn’t exactly how I imagined getting you in my bed, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers, can they?”

  Tesler felt his face flush at that. “You’re awake,” he said.

  She gave a soft smile. “Would you prefer if I pretended not to be?”

  “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  “You will,” she said. She let out a laugh then groaned with a wince. “Sorry. As it turns out, being stabbed in the back—while a common enough occurrence in my…profession—isn’t anywhere near as fun as they make out.”

  Tesler winced. “I’m…sorry about that.”

  She frowned at him. “Why? Isn’t as if you’re the one did the stabbing, is it?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “Then why are you sorry?” she asked.

  Tesler frowned at that, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

  The red-haired woman grinned wearily. “You’re a strange one, aren’t you?”

  Tesler winced, the word recalling to his mind when he was chased from his village as a youth. They had called him much the same. Strange, odd, a demon. Hurling the insults while they hurled their rocks and their sticks. “I’ve…people have told me that I am.”

  She gave another soft laugh that ended in a groan. “Oh, don’t look so bothered. After all, all the most interesting people are. There’s far worse things, if you ask me, than being strange. Being boring, for one.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I would have thought you and your group would have gone by now.” She winked. “Or is it my good looks keeping you here?”

  Tesler felt his face flush. “We would have left, only we need a guide and horses to make the trip, and we’re having difficulty obtaining either.”