The Wastes

by Alexey Osadchuk

  “What’s that?”

  “Youngling,” Gorgie snorted in reply and took the first step into the clearing.

  We hurriedly crossed the meadow and stopped next to an unknown creature which the Great System identified a few seconds later as a level-two forest troll youth.

  As an aside, if not for the system information, I’d hardly have called this creature a youth. It was at least as large as Bruni, who died back at the Bridge of Bones. A large heavy torso, rough gray skin, thick appendages, a bald slightly flat head — so, that’s what a forest troll looks like. Beyond that, the “tyke’s” broad maw was packed full of sharp triangular teeth, while his wide fingers ended in twisted claws — I could only imagine what his daddy looked like.

  “By the way,” I turned to the gremlin. “Your little theory that trolls have dark origins doesn’t hold water.”

  “Why?” Mee asked.

  “This, hm, kid is not at all like an otherworldly beast. All these orcish legends are just empty rumors and hokum.”

  The gremlin sighed sadly and said:

  “I feel bad for him. I wonder what happened to the poor guy?”

  “Based on the tear wounds on his back, some animal must have attacked him,” I posited.

  The harn got right up to the troll and cautiously sniffed the wound. A moment later, he told us the kid had been attacked by a warg. The harn also said the youngster crawled here from the south.

  “I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the shaman’s bodyguards must have done this to entertain themselves while the shaman did his thing. Honestly, there is one important question bothering me though. If this is a child, where is his mother? Still, to be frank, I am not exactly burning with desire to meet this little bruiser’s family.”

  “I want to heal him,” Mee suddenly spat out.

  “Have you lost your mind?!” I asked, astounded. “Look at this monster! One swipe of his big old mitt and you’re a dead gremlin.”

  “Yeah, but what if he doesn’t attack?” the gremlin glanced at me with hope. “After all, Gorgie didn’t kill you. He was half-dead when you found him, too. You told me yourself...”

  I shook my head.

  “No comparison. That was a coincidence. Beyond that, if the amulet hadn’t worked, the harn would have devoured me.”

  Gorgie stayed out of our conversation. He was walking around the meadow and sniffing lazily.

  I glanced doubtfully at the troll’s big old carcass, then at the gremlin.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes,” Mee nodded decisively. “He’s scary and his size is frightening, but he’s just a child. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try to help him.”

  I took a heavy sigh and scratched the back of my head. Well, we were looking for a helper. What happened to the easily scared gremlin from before? It must have been more influence of his improved Mind.

  “Gorgie!” I called the harn. “Come over here. Little Mee is about to do something stupid. If his patient suddenly attacks, you know what to do.”

  After that, I prepared to hit the big creature with Lightning. Let him wake up. If it doesn’t work, we can at least earn a couple tablets and esses.

  “Go ahead,” I nodded and took a couple steps back.

  Mee slowly extended both hands forward and activated the spell. A bright green wave broke free from his hands and gushed toward the wounded troll. The healing progress had begun. If the gremlin ended up with a pet, this would be quite the trick...

  “Well, how’s it going?” I asked a few minutes later.

  “His supply was almost down to zero,” Mee answered, pointing at the wound:

  “The regeneration process has begun...”

  I looked where he pointed.

  Truly. The tattered edges of his wound were changing color right before my eyes. The shivering dark spots on his flesh started oozing a cloudy yellow fluid. A horrid smell of rot struck my nose.

  While watching the Regeneration in action, I swore that I’d get myself a characteristic like that I ever got the chance. The muckwalker ability was nice of course, but there wasn’t always water nearby.

  A few minutes later, when all the pus had come out, his flayed flesh started slowly growing back together. And eventually, all that was left of his once fearsome wounds was some crude scoring.

  Mee turned his head in my direction and smiled happily. At that very moment, the troll opened his eyes. And the first thing he did when he saw us was give a protracted howl.

  I even winced it was so loud. Meanwhile, the gremlin stumbled backwards in my direction. Finally, the troll shut his mouth and tried to raise himself up on an elbow.

  — Attention! Your Mind score is high enough to activate the “Language of the Forest Trolls!”

  — Would you like to activate it?

  Acquiescing, I turned to Mee:

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

  The frightened gremlin shook his head.

  “He just called his mommy for help!”

  Then, to back that up, several voices howled back from deep in the forest.

  Chapter 15

  “DID YOU GET an amulet of domestication?” I asked Mee, who was shivering in panic.

  “No,” he replied.

  “That means it didn’t work,” I muttered, looking at the troll who was slowly coming to his senses.

  “Hrn!” Gorgie was alarmed and telling me that our patient’s relatives were already nearby.

  Seemingly, they had us surrounded.

  “Let’s get out of here!” I announced.

  “What about the youngster?” Mee asked.

  “Will he survive?”

  “Yes,” our healer nodded.

  “But we won’t if we don’t get out of here.”

  After an hour of aimless wandering through the forest, we realized we would never get away. Slowly but surely, we were being driven into a trap like wild animals. Even the harn’s animal senses were no help.

  Our pursuers knew this area like the backs of their hands, and functioned like a single organism. The harn was seemingly probing for a new way to go when the trap suddenly slammed shut. If Gorgie were on his own, he’d probably have been able to escape the tight constricting ring but, alas, my Speed left something to be desired. What am I even saying?! I was anything but fast.

  “Stop!” I leaned against a tree, breathing heavily and looked at my friends. “We’ve really... Done some running... I bet they could have attacked a while ago. It looks like they’re trying to drain our energy supplies... To make it a sure thing.”

  “Hrn,” Gorgie agreed.

  “Then what should we do?” Mee asked.

  “Let’s do something they aren’t expecting. We’ll pick a good spot and hunker down for a fight.”

  Alas, a few minutes later, we realized we wouldn’t find one. We’d have to make do with what we had. To be more precise, it was a small hill overgrown with young trees and with little ravines on two sides. It was a middling place for defense, but still better than meeting the troll family out in the open.

  By the way, speaking of them... Based on the frequent barks and howls they were exchanging, they must have realized we’d stopped moving. It all seemed very strange to me. Our legends and fairy tales always portrayed the trolls as these stupid, dumb creatures that were easy to trick and not hard to run from. I’d like to look into the eyes of the clever bastard that came up with those old wives’ tales. Or better yet stick him in the Stone Forest to have him run away from the “stupid, dumb creatures” himself. Here we were clearly up against a well-organized opponent that made rational use of their advantages.

  Not an hour later, the ring closed around us and started gradually contracting. The trolls were no longer roaring and howling. They were coming our way fairly quickly, as the frequent snapping of tree and bush branches attested.

  Based on the stream of information coming from Gorgie, I concluded that there were at least twelve troll
s.

  My hands quivering, I’m squeezing my Blots. I only have five of them left. I look at the gremlin. He’s all quivering anxiously just like me. I notice a guilty look on his face. Uh, nope. That’s not gonna fly.

  I placed a hand on Mee’s little shoulder and as calmly as possible, said:

  “Brother, look at me.”

  Mee raised an eye timidly.

  “Stop blaming yourself.”

  “But...” he tried to object.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” I interrupted as softly as I could. “As a matter of fact, all you did was help a suffering child in need. Yes, he didn’t behave the way we were hoping. But who could have known they had everything down so pat? The most I was expecting was for your patient to attack us, not for him to summon his whole family. Actually, I’m sure they’d have sniffed us out sooner or later anyway. That means healing the young troll didn’t really change anything. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Mee nodded.

  “That’s great,” I smiled. “Better get ready for battle. They’ll be here any minute now.”

  Giving the gremlin an approving shoulder pat, I nodded at the harn. He by the way, was absolutely calm. A bit of the willies excepted. That’s normal before a battle. Our main fighter’s general sense of ease calmed us down significantly.

  When I told Mee the trolls were well-organized, I was distantly thinking over how the shaman and his bodyguards were able to just wander these woods unpunished. And how they ever got their hands on the young troll in the first place...

  But I wasn’t able to finish the thought. Big huge silhouettes started to appear beyond the trees around our little hill.

  One... Two... Three... I counted up to a total of sixteen. Levels ranging from eleven to seventeen. And as I expected, the troll child was just a smaller version of his adult counterparts. None of them were less than ten feet tall. Sloping shoulders, broad ribcages. All of them were armed with long knotty wooden clubs. Their sharp claws and fangs looked pretty scary as well.

  I felt all the hair on my body stand on end. Seemingly, the goddess Fortuna was not on our side this time. We weren’t likely to be emerging victorious from this one.

  I traded glances with Gorgie.

  “When I give the command, you grab Mee and run as far from here as you can,” I told him mentally.

  The cat tilted his head in surprise and gave a dismayed growl.

  “I hope you don’t go wild after my death and eat him,” I joked.

  The harn just snorted back and turned away showily, as if to say, “it’s still too early to bury each other.”

  Heh, I wish I had your confidence...

  Meanwhile, the trolls started coming out from behind the trees. I took a look around. The giants looked like huge boulders come to life. One troll stopped directly opposite the narrow rise we took to the top of the hill. He looked especially boulder-like. Level seventeen. A head taller than the rest of his tribe. The largest and seemingly most dangerous. Beyond that, based on the way the other trolls treated him, the big guy was in charge.

  His small closely-set little eyes were glimmering in rage from beneath his protruding brow. It was like I could feel his hatred in my skin. The harn and I exchanged glances.

  “Let’s kill that one first,” I muttered.

  Gorgie growled back, agreeing.

  Why haven’t they attacked yet? The answer to my question came a moment later.

  Another figure stepped out from behind the broad backs of the big fanged brutes. Short and gaunt. On the backdrop of the boulder-like giants, he looked out of place. I might have even called him a different species.

  But on closer inspection, I concluded he was also a troll. Based on the light wrinkly skin and gray fur on his back, shoulders and chest, this was an old man. Clearly a local elder of some kind and perhaps, which would be worse for us, a shaman as well. He was wearing a few bone pendants on his neck. And the long crooked staff in his powerful mitts was topped with what appeared to be the skull of a monster. That did not add to my optimism.

  The hunched old man took one more step and I was able to see his level — twenty.

  Bad. Very bad...

  Looks like we just stepped in some shit. A level-twenty possible mage supported by sixteen powerful warriors? No. We can’t win here.

  What happened next made me rethink my opinion about what Mee did.

  “Why are you here, Farhas?!” the largest troll suddenly barked gutturally at the old man. It was clear the big guy was not a fan of the elder’s meddling.

  The harn, gremlin and I exchanged glances of incomprehension. Either I was missing something, or we just found an unexpected ally.

  “I want to look on the kind souls who healed my grandson, Erg,” the old troll answered calmly. And the whole time his eyes were fixed on us, watching to see what we’d do.

  The giant troll snorted like a bull and answered wrathfully:

  “You’re only guessing that!”

  The old troll snorted mockingly.

  “No, Erg. I know. Or do you doubt my abilities all of a sudden?”

  A moment later, we watched the hefty boulder-like troll lower his head in shame under the gaze of the hunch-backed old man.

  “But they defiled the Tree of Spirits and the Altar!” one of the trolls shouted. The rest started stirring and grumbling, supporting the shouter.

  I can’t say what came over me, but I could not keep quiet.

  “We didn’t defile anything!” I shouted as loud as possible.

  For the record, the language of the trolls was even harder on my throat than that of the orcs.

  To say the forest giants were stunned would be to say nothing. The way they were staring. Their mouths agape.

  “As a matter of fact, that isn’t all!” I continued with strain. “I don’t know who had the bright idea of making blood sacrifices to an otherworldly portal, but you should all give that blockhead a good pummeling! And the altar of the hunters where we found your dying boy has also been badly desecrated!”

  For a second, the trolls looked like stone statues. Then the old man, his head tilted to the side, took a few steps forward.

  “Erg,” the old man’s voice was calm, but for some reason a chill ran down my spine. “I need these outsiders alive. At the very least, until I can figure out what this boy is talking about.”

  * * *

  “Who are you and how did you get here?” Farhas asked, intrigued. We were standing a few paces away from one another, separated only by a narrow rise in the very center.

  The elder was the one who initiated negotiations. He was just painfully interested in what I had to say.

  We agreed to a ceasefire for the length of our discussion. Honestly, it was just a verbal understanding, no official oaths. So I was ready to summon the Ysh spirit and hit the old man with lightning at any time.

  “We are peaceful travelers,” I answered. “We make for the west.”

  “Why are you going through our forest?”

  “The steppe is teeming with orcs right now.”

  “And you figured you could make it this way?” the old man chuckled.

  “Yes, that was the plan,” I nodded. “Our chances of avoiding an encounter with wolf riders on the steppe were exactly zero. But here...”

  “Your chances were no better here,” the gray-haired troll interrupted. “I trust you’ve come to realize that?”

  “Well, if your grandson hadn’t started shouting after we healed him...”

  “Oh!” he smiled. “You can’t even imagine how greatly your encounter with my grandson increased your chances of survival.”

  I can’t say exactly what was written on my face, I can only say the way I felt. It was something akin to disarray and internal contradiction. I was talking to an entity with, to put it lightly, a repugnant and — why hide it? — frightening appearance. In other words, a monster that was used to scare badly behaved human children at night. But at the same time, this entity was e
xpressing himself no less eloquently than an Orchusian clerk. There could be only one explanation on that account — a high Mind score. Based on the look in Farhas’ eyes, the expression on my face was more than telling.

  “It’s hard not to be happy to hear that,” I answered and nodded behind him: “But it looks like not all your tribesmen share that perspective.”

  The old troll waved it off carelessly.