Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4)

by Michael G. Manning

  “Drink never last,” said Clegg, waving a hand dismissively. “Not worth our lives.”

  “I can keep bringing it. Every week, as much as you want, for years.”

  The old troll’s gaze became menacing. Leaning down, he brought one eye close to Will’s face. “Your life worth that? You trade it for wine?”

  Will blanched.

  “Maybe you think your life worth more, but not troll’s?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Will, realizing his mistake. “My offer was offensive. I’m desperate and I can’t think of anything else, but I have to try. If there’s anything I can give you, please tell me.”

  Lrmeg raised his voice, barking out a long sentence in troll. Will had learned a small amount of trollish, but not enough to understand the gist of his meaning. “What did he say?” he whispered to the ring.

  Arrogan whispered back, “That the demons are weak and they should take the wine. He thinks Clegg is being too cautious.”

  Clegg rebuked the senior troll, then turned his attention back to Will. “Life for a life.”

  Unsure where the chieftain was going, Will nodded hesitantly. “That’s true.”

  The ancient troll stared at him with an evil gleam in his eye. “No, Grak-Murra—this is the trade. You pay a life for each troll.”

  “You want me to trade humans to you? I can’t do that,” protested Will.

  Clegg laughed, then pointed at Will’s troll son. “Gan very smart.”

  The ring exclaimed loudly, “That’s disgusting!”

  Still confused, Will asked the ring, “What does he mean?”

  Before Arrogan could respond, Clegg answered for himself. “Troll children are more than their father. They receive blessings from the flesh that make them.” He pointed at Gan once more. “Gan knows many words for young troll child. Wizard smart, Gan is smart. See hat?”

  Will stared at Gan and finally understood the meaning of the troll’s odd headwear. It’s a makeshift wizard hat. At the same time, he realized what Clegg wanted in exchange for troll warriors to fight against the demons. His stomach turned over, and he fought to keep from expelling the oatcakes he had eaten just an hour ago.

  For once, even the ring didn’t laugh. “By the Mother! You know what he’s talking about, don’t you, Will?”

  He tried to swallow, which was difficult because his mouth had gone dry. “Yeah.”

  “Screw the world,” said Arrogan. “I say find a new one. I can help you with that. You can get Selene and Erisa and whoever else you want to save and take them somewhere safe. Nobody will blame you.”

  “How good are troll warriors?” asked Will. “Do you think they could take on a demon-lord?”

  “Absolutely horrifying in battle, and no,” replied Arrogan. “Although it would be fun to watch.”

  Clegg smiled, baring a mouth full of sharp teeth. “If no wizards, no fire, trolls kill anything, fae, demon, elf, man, or beast.” He poked a long claw into Will’s chest. “You stop magic, troll kill anything.”

  “How many do you think we need?” asked Will. At the same time, he was mentally working out the mechanics. Calves, thighs, upper arms—that would be six. Ten would be better, though. Maybe two per thigh and calf?

  “You’re serious?” exclaimed the ring.

  Will deactivated the limnthal. “Just to be clear. You’re sending adult trolls, not the new ones, right?”

  “Yes,” said Clegg. “Lrmeg and Gan will go for free. Other troll warriors will go, one life for one warrior.”

  He felt remarkably calm, although he was beginning to notice a faint tremor in one leg. Damn, this is going to hurt. “I’ll need to drink first—no, scratch that. I’ll need to get some medicine.” Will was pretty sure his mother would have tincture of poppies. He just needed to borrow it without letting her know the reason.

  Chapter 56

  Three days of travel through the endless swampland of Muskeglun had put Will in a foul mood. Fortunately, he didn’t have to walk, but his current mount stunk worse than any he’d ever had before. He looked over Gan’s shoulder and wondered how fast they were moving. The troll’s long legs ate up the miles with deceptive ease. He just smells so bad.

  For his part, Gan seemed quite happy to be carrying Will in the makeshift basket on his back. The troll took it as an honor of sorts. Or perhaps he was simply happy to have a chance to bond with the Grak-Murra.

  Lrmeg walked alongside them, and ten other troll warriors followed in their wake. Will shuddered when he remembered how he had gained the exceptional entourage. The tincture of poppies had helped, but it hadn’t been enough to stop the pain completely. He’d decided to produce the lives that Clegg wanted all at once, and initially it hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected.

  The trolls had been surprisingly civilized about the whole thing, perhaps because Will was the first human to ever volunteer. They’d cut the samples off and allowed him to place them under his skin wherever he chose. That part wasn’t too painful, ten small cuts, mostly on his thighs, calves, and arms.

  Much worse was the removal after five or six hours. While he would have preferred to have his mother’s skilled hands do the cutting, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. Instead he’d told her that the trolls wanted the tincture and that he would be leaving via another exit from Muskeglun.

  Will had taken out a regeneration potion and talked things over with Clegg well before taking an exceptionally large dose of the poppy tincture. The chieftain had assured him he would cut carefully and that he would able to manage the job without letting Will bleed to death before giving him the potion.

  And Clegg had lived up to his promise.

  Will was still alive, physically unscarred, though he was sure he would have nightmares in the future. It had hurt like hell, even despite the medicine, but he’d been through worse. Being whipped was definitely worse, and the vampires were even worse than that, he decided. Eventually, he figured he would rank it as the third-worst experience of his life, or possibly the fourth. Sacrificing the Duchess Arenata might have been worse, even though it didn’t hurt me physically.

  The longer he thought about it, the more terrible things he remembered, and before long he wasn’t sure if it even belonged in the top ten. “What does that say about my life?” he muttered aloud.

  Lrmeg looked over at him and uttered something in trollish.

  Will didn’t even bother getting Arrogan to translate. Trollish was a fairly straightforward language. He’d learned a bit during his previous two visits, as well as some minor studying in between, but the past two days had done wonders for his vocabulary. He wouldn’t be discussing abstract concepts or philosophy any time soon, but he could manage simple questions and statements. Lrmeg had merely asked what he was saying.

  Rather than try to answer, Will simply asked a question in trollish. “How far?”

  Lrmeg’s answer was equally simple. “Soon.”

  Will sighed. He’d known that already. Clegg had told him that the trip was roughly three days (by troll), but he had hoped that Lrmeg would have a more specific answer now that they were getting close.

  Two hours later and Will woke from a semi-doze when he heard an exclamation from one of the trolls. Looking ahead, his eyes came into focus and he saw a strange pile of heavy, moss-covered boulders. Given that all he’d seen for the past few days was stagnant water, tall trees, and heavy underbrush, the stone stood out. There was nothing like them in the vicinity, and they were piled up to a height of twenty feet. They were obviously a deliberate marker.

  He wondered why the trolls had marked this congruence point but not the one closest to their village, but he didn’t trust his skill with trollish enough to try and ask the question of Lrmeg. Maybe they only mark the ones far enough away that they might be forgotten, he hypothesized. Maybe he would ask Arrogan or Clegg about it someday—if he survived the coming conflict.

  The trolls stopped, and Will found the telltale shimmer of the congruence point after o
nly a few seconds of searching. Again, he wanted to ask more questions of Lrmeg, but his language skills probably weren’t up for the task. Clegg had told him that the congruence point hadn’t been used in a long time, but that could mean almost anything when talking to a troll whose age was measured in thousands of years.

  All Will knew for sure was that it should take them to the southern marshes in Darrow. The southern marsh was formed by the delta where the River Myrs, which flowed from the central hills of Darrow, let out into the Central Sea. Depending on exactly where the congruence point opened, they would probably have a day’s travel north to reach the capital itself.

  A day by horse, Will corrected himself mentally. Given the incredible stamina of the trolls, it was possible that their ordinary travelling pace would get them there faster. They just had to follow the river upstream until they found the river road, and it should be an easy trip from there.

  He would be eternally grateful to get out of Muskeglun. The endless swamp had begun to erode his morale, in part because the lack of ambient turyn was exhausting, but also because of the persistent heat. And the mosquitos, Will observed, who could forget the goddamn mosquitos?

  Will had never brought a group of people through a congruence point before, much less a group of trolls, so he decided to experiment a little. He took Gan across first, then went back for Lrmeg and one of the others. He put his hand on Lrmeg but just had the other troll stand close by. Only Lrmeg crossed with him, so on his next crossing he had the ten remaining trolls hold hands in a circle, with Will forming one of the links.

  Trying to get ten nightmarish trolls to hold hands like schoolchildren threatened to give Will a bad case of the giggles. His language skills were barely up to the task, and the trolls obviously thought his request was strange, but after a series of odd looks, they complied. This time, all the trolls crossed over.

  That answers one question, Will noted. Physical contact is required to bring someone else across. Even as he thought that, however, he found himself breathing deeply in a purely emotional response to the clear, fresh air of Hercynia. A week in the fetid stench of Muskeglun had nearly been too much for him.

  The influx of ambient turyn was also a great relief. During his most recent time in the troll plane, he had discovered that he no longer needed to refresh himself with elixir of turyn nearly as often as he had the previous time—apparently his body’s efficiency at surviving on very little turyn had improved—but even so, he had burned through most of the stockpile of turyn elixirs he had saved up during the previous year. He’d had to drink one roughly every three hours to remain functional.

  The southern marsh in Darrow was somewhat similar to Muskeglun, but it felt much better to him. The air was cleaner, the turyn much thicker, and the mosquitos less of a problem. The mosquito improvement was mainly because he no longer had to conserve his magic, so a pest-repelling spell was the first thing Will did after arriving.

  Although he’d thought that choosing their direction of travel would be simple, it turned out that the water in the marsh didn’t move enough for him to figure out which way the sea or the river lay. If it had been a cloudy day that might have been a problem, but since he could see the sun and knew the time of day, he was able to figure out which way was northwest.

  They traveled the rest of the day, not stopping until night fell. Though trolls didn’t tire easily, they did need sleep, as well as food. The latter was something Will worried about, for his allies’ prodigious physical strength and stamina was sustained by an equally prodigious appetite. In Muskeglun they satisfied their hunger by hunting the vast and prolific fauna that seemed to be everywhere, but they had eaten everything they carried with them two days ago.

  They’d eaten every bit of the stored food Will kept in the limnthal the next day. Today they’d gone hungry and, in the morning, they would need to hunt. Lrmeg had been unbending in his description of how important it was that they eat, and Arrogan had reinforced the opinion when Will had asked him about it later.

  “It’s the same with people,” said Arrogan. “You’re just a few meals away from desperation. Trolls have bigger bodies, and they use a lot of energy. You’ve already seen that they’re fairly civilized most of the time, but you don’t want to see them when they’re hungry. Speaking of which—I hope you’ve given some thoughts to the dangers of bringing trolls into Hercynia.”

  “I have,” said Will, “but I couldn’t do much about them, other than telling myself we would have to be careful.”

  “Careful isn’t a word you can associate with war. Chaos is, and in the chaos it’s easy to miss things—like a piece of troll getting sliced off and left behind.”

  “If it happens, it still isn’t an instant catastrophe,” observed Will.

  “Young trolls aren’t like the ones going into battle with you.”

  “I don’t know,” said Will. “Gan is barely a year old and he seems very well behaved.”

  “He takes after his mommy,” said Arrogan with a snicker. “But in all seriousness, Clegg wasn’t exaggerating. Gan is a troll prodigy—most of them can’t talk at his age. If you cut a few pieces off of these trolls with you and leave them laying around, they won’t turn out like your troll love-child.”

  Will winced. “Can you stop saying that?”

  “What? Love-child? Should I call him a bastard, like you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Now you’re just being rude.”

  “You’re the one who went back and made ten more,” said Arrogan. “I’ve long thought you might turn into a name for the history books.”

  “Like you, the Betrayer?” asked Will sarcastically.

  “Better than Troll-fucker,” snapped his mentor.

  “Stop! That’s not even how it happened,” protested Will.

  Arrogan didn’t relent, though. “Don’t lecture me. I know very well how baby trolls are made.”

  “I’m going to be sick if you keep that up,” said Will. “I made sure it wasn’t done the usual way. Clegg collected the pieces, and I made the cuts and placed them in. It wasn’t anything disgusting like you’re thinking.”

  The ring made gagging noises. “Now I’m going to be sick.”

  “How did we wind up on this subject anyway?” asked Will.

  “Oh! I was warning you about troll offspring. So, if you leave pieces of these trolls laying around on the battlefield, they’ll turn into little feral troll beasties in a matter of days. If they’re from small pieces, they will have little to no memory of their original larger selves, and as they eat and grow, they won’t have the guidance of other trolls to teach them anything. They can reach full size in a few weeks if they find enough food, but they’ll be entirely uneducated. We’re talking about powerful, dangerous, nearly unstoppable killing machines with an animal cunning that will grow to near human-like intelligence over the span of several years.”

  “Still doesn’t sound as bad as the vampire plague we were worried about last time around,” offered Will.

  “You’re right about that. It wouldn’t be as likely to get out of control, but you could still have years of wild trolls killing and pillaging through the countryside until they were all eventually found and burned. After this war is done, you’ll need to have the areas where these trolls have fought carefully searched. In fact, it’s yet another reason you have to win. If you lose, the victor isn’t likely to clean everything up.”

  “If I lose, the world ends, remember?”

  “Pfftt! Judging by past examples, it will take the demons a century or two to finish their work here. Plenty of time for future heroes to rise and finish what your idiot ass failed to do. Let’s not make it harder for them by giving them wild trolls to worry about on top of the demon invasion.”

  Will thought about that for a minute, then asked, “What do you really think of my chances?”

  The ring didn’t say anything for a while. “They’re better than zero.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Your p
lan is solid, though we both know plans don’t last long in battle, but you were smart enough to keep it open-ended and flexible. Even so, it all comes down to you and these trolls at the end. Demon-lords are more than just extremely powerful, magically potent, physical juggernauts. They’re also very old and cunning. Madrok is their leader, so it goes without saying he’s got sharp wits and millennia of experience.”

  “I’ll have a new spell as well,” Will reminded.

  “There’s always a new spell,” said his grandfather. “As far as I know, no one has ever tried it the way you’re thinking, but that doesn’t mean much. Madrok has lived many times longer than I did. It all boils down to you beating him in three ways. You have to be potent enough to stop his magic, your allies need to be strong enough to fight him to a standstill, and then you have to be smarter than him. I think you have a chance with the first two, but the last one—that’s expecting a miracle.”

  Will drew a deep breath, then let it out dramatically. “Damn. I’m just filled with hope after hearing that.”

  “Sorry. I call them as I see them,” said Arrogan. “Maybe I’m an asshole, but you won’t ever be able to accuse me of blowing smoke up your ass.”

  “I guess that’s why I appreciate your advice,” said Will. He deactivated the limnthal and then switched his focus to the heart-stone enchantment that linked him to Selene. Seconds later, her face appeared in front of him.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  He gave her a look that Arrogan would have been proud of. “Exactly where we discussed. I couldn’t contact you while I was in Muskeglun.”

  A fire appeared in her eyes, but Selene didn’t vent her ire at his waspish response. As usual, she was better than that. “It’s ready,” she replied, her tone cool and businesslike.

  “Already?”

  She nodded. “Janice was a considerable help. She’s extremely knowledgeable.”

  Will smiled as he agreed, “She’s smart as a whip and talented to boot.”