That night, trapped in the iron bear trap, he would never forget. Watching the sky blush with the sunrise, thinking he would never see his goats again, knowing that the first glimpse of the morning sun would be his undoing....
"Concentrate!" he hissed, and the memory vanished from his thoughts.
Grump darted through the woods, keeping clear of the game trails snaking through the roots and grasses below. Every so often, stars twinkled through the patchwork canopy, and he'd glimpse the moon's slender crescent grinning like a fairy while she played her ivory harp.
Soon the canopy thinned, the redwoods shrank, and the grasses grew. Grump spotted the tree line and leapt from a low branch, thumping quietly onto the ground. He pressed the point of his shovel into the dirt and twisted the wide blade. The kingdoms of the East lay beyond those woods, full of fair folk who hated trolls.
His nostrils swelled with a deep breath. Grump frowned, his brows knitting together in a deep wedge. He paused mid-sniff and narrowed his eyes, tasting the odd scent carried by the wind.
Something acrid soured the air. Grump bit his lip. He wiped a clammy palm across his overalls. He knew this scent. Burning. Wood burning. Grass burning. And something else, also burning.
Trees walled off the plains beyond, blocking even his vision—though trolls relied more on what their noses told them than what their eyes said, and whatever his keen nose detected came from the rolling flatlands ahead.
"Farmers probably made a mess," he said, edging toward the forest's end.
"Or maybe one of those mages who fancies himself a wizard caused a ruckus," he wondered, nearing the last line of trees.
The smell was overpowering. It woke a trollish instinct chained deep within him. He hated it. He feared it. Yet, it drove him onward.
A lump like granite clung to his throat. He forced the sinking feeling down and stepped to the last wall of trees barring him from the world beyond. Shifting hues of firelight filtered from the plains.
"I know that smell." Grump snapped his eyes shut. "Please, no. I … I shouldn't see. I can't see...."
“But you must,” it whispered. “We are troll.”
Grump's hands trembled as he stepped into the unbroken night of the lands of men. The Hunger woke fully from its slumber and rippled through his blood, singing a song of death that was sweet like honey to his soul.
"I am troll," he whispered as he opened his eyes. "I will never be more than troll."
A dome of stars peppered the sky, clustering in a sugary lavender scar that divided the night like the Granite Ridge divided Oya. The Grey Plains extended to the horizon, rippling with hills like a linen sheet flapped over a fresh bed. Normally, these hills would sway with the pale grasses that gave the plains their name. Not tonight.
Grump fell back into a redwood and swallowed, lifting his chin to the devastation that had turned the Grey Plains black. Corpses littered a battlefield specked by tongues of fire. Men in steel and reinforced leather lay in crumpled heaps beside horses with dulled eyes and mouths opened in silent screams. Crows circled high above. Some already feasted on the dead.
The scar on his chest throbbed, burning like hot iron against his ribs. Grump placed a hand over the old wound and groaned through the wall of his teeth, closing his eyes and thrashing his head about as he fought the Hunger. Some men might still live. He could bend them, break them, bleed them like a stuck pig and dance over their corpses. Yes, he would find the survivors, and it wouldn't be hares in his stew for dinner that night.
"No!" Grump spun to redwood and beat his brow against the bark. "You will not control me. I am more than troll. More."
The Hunger clawed at his blood. It mocked him, told him he was troll and nothing more. Echoes rattled his thoughts, teasing words and poisoned insults taunting him to action. That mockery twisted into screams, cries, pleas. A maelstrom of rage and terror. Red, wet red, on his hands, and death sweetening the air.
"No...." Grump pressed his hands against the bark. "You are not my master. I will not let you control me. I learned. I learned!"
The Hunger's pull weakened. Terrible thoughts faded, and memories vanished into the murky well of days long passed. His scar cooled, and Grump knew tonight it would not take him.
He exhaled through his lips, and his breath bounced off the bark and washed over his cheeks. He squeezed the tree and straightened. "Be strong, you fool. You need fox daisies, not corpses. Let these fair folk spear each other into oblivion. You've got a sick goat and a garden that needs tending."
With a quick, solid nod, he faced the charred, shallow grave that was the battlefield. His stomach twisted and blood warmed, but this time he kept the Hunger in the deep part of him where it belonged.
Grump passed a soldier painted red by his own vital fluids, a shattered arrow driven through his eye. Beside the body, a flag lay in a pool of mud. A roaring lion sewn with gold thread with wings like a hawk signified the soldier's kingdom. If Grump cared at all about humans, he might have learned this kingdom's name. He didn't, and they all sounded the same to his ears anyway.
"Lions aren't no scary creatures, soldier," Grump said as he stepped over the corpse. "You want to strike fear into your fellow man, sew a troll on that flag next—well, never mind. Go to your gods in peace."
He trudged through the battlefield, using his shovel to move the gore from his path. It didn't take long to find the daisies, although a mangled horse had nearly flattened the whole bushel.
Grump ripped a handful from the soil, shoving root, stem, and blossom in clumps into his pockets. This would be enough to cure Patches and dose the others against the illness. Hopefully, it would be the last time he would step foot on these bloody plains for a long while.
Like bears, trolls could cross great distances quickly, and so Grump raced back toward his redwood kingdom. He bounded into the cool shadows and took a deep, relaxing breath. Wind whistled through his ears and toyed with his lips. Tension flowed from him on his sigh.
Before he returned home, he took a last look at the battlefields. "Humans and their wars. You call me monster, but look what you've gone and done to one another! Good riddance to you now, and if I'm lucky, forever. Have your war. I'll have my radish stew."
Grump mumbled to himself as he journeyed back to his little sanctuary wedged between the mighty trees and mightier cliffs. Humans had their own problems. Grump would keep to his own. Chickweed had sprouted in his cabbages, and he needed to weed the vegetables, make medicine for the goats, and cook his stew all before morning came.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sunrise
Patches quit coughing a few evenings later and went back to his usually rambunctious self, leaving Grump to tend to his garden in relative peace. Still, he couldn't quite find the calm he desired. His thoughts, both waking and asleep, swirled around the scorched battlefield rotting so close to his quiet woods.
"The fair folk shouldn't be this close," he huffed, slapping his folded arms on his burly chest.
The Russet Woods held no gold or glory for them, and while a redwood might be an enticing thing to chop for wood, humans believed—somewhat rightly—that darker things than bandits and mercenaries stalked the forest at night. What was more terrifying to a human than a troll that could chomp a full grown man in half?
Grump shuddered at the thought of human flesh. Gross stuff, all of it. He never understood how his family stomached them. Then again, he never really understood anyone from his family.
"Not like it matters now anyway," he said, rubbing an aching shoulder.
He pulled his antler pipe from his pocket and turned it in his hand. Grump pursed his lips, considering whether or not it was time to smoke a good bowl of thimbleweed. He hadn't smoked in a while, but now that his Hunger pestered his thoughts and warmed his blood, he remembered how the weed tamed the beast so the gardener could garden.
"No, not yet. Not yet. You know how that stuff can be." He closed his eyes and passed his tongue along a tusk. "It'll addle you
, make you want it more and more."
The pipe fit snugly back into his pocket. He patted his overalls and ambled from the garden, heading for a redwood. The tree's tough bark felt firm and strong beneath his mighty grasp. And so, like he did each night since that day he discovered the bloodied fields, he climbed the soaring pillar.
His garden, the boulder, the goat pen, it all shrunk beneath him as he climbed higher and higher. He reached the first lower branches and pulled himself up. These lower limbs were thickest and easily held his weight, but the higher he climbed, the more they bent and groaned, protesting the creature they supported.
At last he reached the topmost branches and parted the curtain of leaves sweeping over his brow like a dome of paper cat's paws. He thrust his head above the canopy and stared out at the rolling blanket of the Russet Woods flowing like a wave crashing upon the beach of the distant Grey Plains. Beyond the woods, an incomprehensibly vast field of rippling grasses spread into the horizon.
Clouds patched a glittering sky already blanching from the threat of a rising sun. Grump narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. He spotted the blackened earth of the battlefield. Beyond it, he supposed he spied the flickering campfires of whatever tattered remnants of the human armies lingered in the hills.
"Blasted humans," he hissed, spittle spraying the leaves before him. "Why don't you leave? You spread like a mold over all the land, giving no good troll a night's peace!"
Movement caught his keen eyes, not from the plains, but from the forest. Something of a rough and tumble nature disturbed the trees. A flock of birds cried out and flooded from the canopy. If he'd had a longbow, he might've struck one of the fowl for dinner.
"What in the blast hells could it be now?" A terrifying thought struck. "Can they know I'm here? No, they don't. Even if they did, they would never come this close to the Ridge."
Grump bit his lip and frowned. He brought his hand to his throat and rubbed the sinewy muscles. "Or would they?"
Anxiety tightened his chest. His gaze dropped to the canopy, searching its rippling leaves. "They'll take my garden. Kill or capture my goats. They'll ruin everything that's mine." Hunger raced through blood, and his thoughts twisted to violence. "No, they won't. It's my home. Mine."
Grump's heartbeat quickened. He launched himself from one branch to the next, zipping through the woods nearly as fast as a horse's full gallop. Hands gripped creaking branches. Leaves slapped cheeks. Wind roared. And then, he spied what disturbed his lands.
Grabbing a branch with both hands and flipping around it, Grump landed feather light on a shadowy perch without so much as a single leaf bobbing out of place. The redwood's foliage slid around him like groping palms, and Grump vanished within the darkness.
A wagon—a human wagon—lumbered awkwardly through the woods, rolling and romping over knotty roots and lichen-splattered stones. A horse-drawn wagon, plain even to a troll's eyes, thumped and clunked over root and rock. Six soldiers surrounded it, three on each side. A stocky man thick around the waist and moving like someone riddled with nerves and sweaty fear led them. A dirty, hooded cloak that bore the wear and tear of battle cloaked his features, but Grump smelled dread oozing from his pores as sickly-sweet as honeysuckle in spring.
The wagon with its escorts approached. At least men dressed for battle couldn't climb trees, much less a redwood. Grump was safe, tucked in the shadows high above. Judging by the direction they traveled, they headed for the Ridge. Odd that a wagon would roll through the woods when the Winding Road was the only safe passage through the peaks. Humans controlled that road. Why not take it instead of risking this journey?
Wood cracked, and the wagon shuddered, angling awkwardly. One of the soldiers cursed and bent to a wheel. "Axle's shattered on a godforsaken root!"
"Fix it, man!" The leader barked.
A grumble rumbled from deep in Grump's chest. Of course their stupid contraption broke in his forest. It wasn't made for wheels, and wheels weren't made for it. If he wasn't so certain the fair folk would attack him on sight, he'd happily carry the wagon from the woods and dump it on a road far beyond his borders.
"You hear that?" a voice asked, barely louder than a whisper.
Grump sucked in his breath, his muscles freezing hard as stone. His gaze cast frantically about, searching for the source.
Shadows here. Branches there. Leaves, leaves, and leaves everywhere.
A form shifted beneath him, just beneath him. Grump's eyes widened into two full round ponds of terror as sweat beaded on his brow. How did he not smell them?
You fool, he thought. You should've stayed home. Now look at the trouble you're in!
Two men crouched less than an arm's length from where he hid. They wore leathers stained black and studded with metals that drank the starlight. Hilts and handles protruded like growths from their hips and backs, hinting to the steel hiding beneath their midnight cloaks.
"No, what'd you hear?" the other man asked.
"It sounded ... I don't know, like a breath. You don't think…?"
"You let your fear ruin this mission for us and they'll have our heads. I'll nail your throat to this tree if I have to! After that stunt you pulled in Glenloch, you deserve a good flaying."
Those words shut the other man up even as terror raced through Grump's blood. His Hunger sunk its claws into his heart. So soft and breakable, these men. Even in their armor and holding their long knives, he could twist them in half and watch their blood splatter to the ground before they so much as screamed.
No! Grump clenched and unclenched his sweaty fists. He stood still as ice in the shadows of the canopy and kept his unblinking eyes on the pair just beneath him.
Farther below them, the soldiers busily went to repairing the broken wagon. The hooded leader raised a hand, and his men immediately snapped straight to attention.
"Something's not right," he murmured. His tattered cowl washed across the high branches. "This forest's too quiet, and it's not for our passing."
One of the guards surrounding the wagon slipped his sword from its scabbard. "They say a monster lives in these woods, Captain Holger. A smith in Glenloch told me it eats children who wander too close to the forest. Told me the bark's red on these trees from the blood in the earth that feeds 'em."
Grump rolled his eyes.
The guard beside the man nodded his agreement and whipped out his sword. "Aye, the barmaid at the Snoring Satyr told me the same." He wiped his brow and cast wide eyes around the woods. "This forest has an ill spirit. We can still go back to town and wait for the others, like the Council ordered. I don't want to end up roasting on some monster's spit."
Grump pursed his lips. He had half a mind to jump down there and offer them a fine stew for dinner. Let them look in his eyes and say hare, cabbage, and boiled carrots are meals made by monsters.
The hooded leader—Holger, they called him—clenched his fist and whipped his cloak aside, revealing an enormous scratched and dented war hammer hanging from his hip. "Calm your fear, men," he said, surveying the trees. "The dream … it was clear. This is the path lit by amber."
His words trailed, and silence weighed the air. One of the other men cleared his throat, backing toward the wagon. "We are not alone. I ... I sense something in the woods."
The other soldiers stiffened, including Holger. The humans in black perched below Grump shifted, quietly pulling blades from their sheaths. "Must have some magic in his blood," one whispered.
His partner nodded. "All these amber assholes think they've got a wizard for a granny. Get ready."
Captain Holger slowly unhooked his hammer. He dipped his head. "I feel them too. My dream led us on this path, men, and I am certain it is still the righteous one we walk. Do not doubt the light of amber, no matter how dark the night may seem. This is what we trained for, prayed for. Remember that!"
His men closed ranks around the wagon.
"So be it then." The captain stiffened, swinging the hammer onto his shoulder. "Praise most
high to the children of amber!"
"Praise most high," the soldiers roared. "May amber ever light our days!"
Holger slowly lifted his gaze. "And give us strength to burn the black."
With a great roar he smashed his hammer against the ground, and the air bellowed like thunder from a storm's belly. Heat rocketed through the canopy. Grump barely kept his balance on the limb. The men in black beneath him caught themselves, but their once dull metals now glimmered like they were painted with starlight.
One of the men hissed and hit his fist against the tree. "Gods damn those righteous assholes. I guess we should get this done and over with, huh?"
His partner shrugged. "Do we have a choice? Signal the others."
"Right then." The man hooted like an owl.
Hell broke loose in Grump's once quiet woods. The men in black swooped from their perch on thin ropes. Other dark figures whooshed onto the frightened men like a plague of locusts.
Steel clashed and rang. Bones crunched, and men screamed. Holger smashed his hammer into an assassin's stomach, and the man spewed blood. The captain's brick of a fist shattered the human's jaw, sending him flying backward.
Grump's Hunger sang a song that rang through every fiber of his being, swelling his arms and bulging his veins. He exhaled through his nostrils and trembled. It took every ounce of his strength not to whoop and leap into the fray, crushing both groups into glorious, bloody heaps.
Do it, the voice within him whispered. You know you want this. They are soft. Open them. Grind their bones. Smile at their screams. It is who you truly are. You are troll. Be troll!
Grump turned and bashed his head against the trunk. His vision flared before refocusing. He launched from his branch and swung to another, making his way to the forest floor just beyond the battle's edge. "I am more than troll. I am more than troll. I am more than troll!"
He stomped away from the scene, the sounds of clanging steel and screaming men racking his nerves. He swept behind a trunk and braved one last look at the ambush. Merely seconds had passed, yet now only Holger remained, surrounded by three of the men in black.
Grump & Rose Page 19
