by Frank Tuttle
Time passed. Then the bells on the Square boomed once, marking the half-hour.
My back ached and rain was running down it and no hat in the world can keep a driving rain out of your eyes.
“I’ve had it, boys,” I said. “Early or not, it’s time to go and knock on a door. Shall we?”
They rose. I watched them tower up and up and took what comfort I could from their bulk.
“We go forth as one,” boomed Mister Smith.
“Our cause is just,” said Mister Chin.
“Our hearts are brave,” said Mister Jones.
“My ass is wet,” I said.
We walked out in the rain. The street was empty. The warehouse was dark.
Mama Hog’s bracelet got hot. Not hot enough to burn me, but hot enough get my attention. I swatted it and yanked on it, but I swear it pulled itself tighter.
Mister Smith saw. His claws came out, and he barked something to the other Misters.
Dark, windowless warehouses loomed around us like canyon walls. The rain sleeted down sideways, soaking man and Trolls alike. Up close, I noticed that water slid off the Misters without wetting their fur.
Hut two three four. We’d fallen into step, gods know why—too much Army time, on both sides, I guess.
A light flared in the double-doors ahead. The window wasn’t glass, just a slitted square of close-set iron slats, but I could see a silhouette beyond it. It might have been Liam, or it might have been the Regent; no way to tell but one.
I stopped. The Misters stopped with me. “You boys keep an eye out,” I said. “And beat it back to the mountains if I’m not back by the twelfth bell.”
“We will not abandon you, Finder,” said Mister Smith. “We came for what is ours. We leave with the bones of our kin, and we leave with you. Tell them.”
The light in the door flickered and guttered like a single candle. Mama Hog’s bracelet felt like it was trying to crawl around widdershins on my wrist.
I pulled down my hat and marched to that door.
It opened before I reached it. Somebody had oiled the hinges, because it opened without a sound.
I stepped inside. The candle sported a pale hand and part of an arm; it beckoned me forward and drifted down a dark hall.
I followed. I’d gone maybe ten feet when my candle-bearer reached a waist-high basket and put the candle on the lid. Then he vanished, quiet as the ghost he probably was.
I walked to the basket. My own footsteps crunched and squeaked, loud in the tomblike silence. I picked up the candle and lifted the lid.
There, wrapped in red velvet, was a head.
Liam’s head.
His pale, dry eyes rolled, seeking mine, meeting them. His mouth made empty words I could not read.
I was just about to say something—what, I’m not sure—when the candle flame puffed out, the door behind me slammed shut and a bag with a cord sewn into its mouth fell over my head.
The cord went tight. I kicked back behind me and flailed with my fists and none of that stopped the darkness from dragging me under.
Chapter Four
“Wake.”
Something slapped me.
“Wake.”
Again, a slap, and a torrent of cold sour water. I coughed and spat and opened my eyes.
And wished I hadn’t. I was propped up in a chair. Across from me was a desk—a big, dark, polished desk that had no business sitting in a leaky room in an abandoned warehouse—and behind the desk was the Haverlock himself.
I knew him, though I’d never joined him for a glass of sherry or a dinner with the Regent. The few half-dead I’d ever seen before had been the out-and-about variety. The half-dead who’d joined the Army had been the young ones, the ones not yet mad with bloodlust, not yet rendered insane by the very thing that kept them walking.
This half-dead was old. Old and mad and hungry, all dry ashen skin and flexible bones and fingers tipped with claws. His clothes would cost me a year’s work but they couldn’t hide the price he’d paid for a shoddy brand of immortality.
He looked into me with those dead white eyes and tiny black pupils.
My mouth went dry. The Haverlock lifted its corpse-black lips in a smile.
“Came to take my trophy,” it said, its voice a dry airy rustle. “Came to my House to steal.”
I wanted to say something, but found the words wouldn’t come.
“Brought Trolls against my House,” it said. “Brought Trolls and traitors. Did you find the head we left for you, Finder? Will it make your Troll friends happy?”
It giggled. And it reached forward, long black nails at the ends of longer white fingers.
Mama Hog’s bracelet moved on my arm. I jerked back, scooting the chair half a foot.
“Nowhere to run, Finder,” said the Haverlock. “Trolls can’t help you. Watch can’t help you. Friend Liam can’t help you. Did he try to warn you, when you found him? Did he tell you I knew of his treachery, knew of his plot?”
I wondered what time it was. Had I missed the twelfth bell? Was I still in the same warehouse?
The Haverlock saw. It smiled an open-mouthed smile, and where Liam’s mouth had looked almost normal the Haverlock had a headful of crooked, dirty yellow needles.
I bolted, cussed, fell. My ankle was tied to the desk. It wasn’t moving.
Somewhere—it sounded like below us—there was a loud crack, as of thick timbers breaking, and a thud. And then another blow shook the building, strong enough to start a slow rain of dust from the ceiling. And then, muffled but unmistakable, I heard a Troll’s war-roar.
“My Trolls,” I managed to say. “Tired of waiting.”
The Haverlock giggled, child-like. “They die, too,” he said. “We’re ready. Ready for two Trolls, ready for three, ready for ten.” He stood.
“I’ve only got three,” I said. “Three Trolls. At least one of them is a wand-waver. You ready for Troll magic, Old Bones?”
If the Haverlock heard or understood, he didn’t acknowledge me. He just strolled around the desk and came at me, yellow teeth bared, fingers twitching spasmodically.
Mama Hog’s bracelet moved again, spat a fist-sized rain of pale blue sparks. I felt a thousand little tickles, like it had grown feet and was trying to get away. I jerked up my arm.
Mama Hog’s bracelet squirted baby lightning at the half-dead. The Haverlock grinned and his cold, hard flesh touched mine and in an instant he had the bracelet in his gaunt, long-fingered hand. “Stupid little man,” he said, as the bracelet sizzled and glowed. “Foolish little man. You think this trinket can save you?”
He crushed it, flung it aside.
Something still moved on my arm. I chanced a glance and there it was—a long, thin critter like a centipede, but slimmer. It was fast. It scuttled up my shirt to my shoulder, coiled like a snake and launched itself at the Haverlock’s dead face.
You’d have thought I’d thrown a bucket of daylight. The Haverlock’s dead white eyes got wide and he batted the air with those claws and backpedaled so fast he tripped on the desk and went down flapping and kicking.
Then he shrieked, longer and louder and higher than any human ever had, ever would.
I bent down, found the rope around my foot. The knot was tight and hard. I yanked and heaved. The desk was heavy. It didn’t budge.
The Haverlock leaped to his feet. Dark oily spittle was running down his chin. I didn’t see the worm, and from the way he kept turning and looking I knew he didn’t either.
He glared at me, teeth bared, and bunched for a dive. I pulled so hard my shoe came off ahead of the rope.
The Haverlock dove. He broke the arm I raised, but then the wall behind us exploded and Mister Smith snatched the Haverlock up in his massive Troll hands and brought him down head-first on that polished ironwood desk-top.
And brought him down again, and again.
“Go now,” boomed Mister Smith. Down came the half-dead. Black fluid sprayed. “The Misters will see you safe.” The Haverlock
still writhed and grappled.
Thunder rang out, right under my fundament, and light flared so bright below me I saw every crack between every board in the floor. Another crack and flash ripped through the warehouse, and a Troll laughed. Tiny wisps of smoke began to coil up and out between my feet.
I got up. My left arm hung limp and numb. Black dots were swimming across my vision. “We haven’t gotten what we came for,” I said.
“We go to House Haverlock,” said Mister Smith, between lifts and falls of the still-twitching Haverlock. “We search there.”
The room pitched and yawed like the deck of a troop ship.
“No need,” I heard myself say. “I know where your cousin’s head is.”
Mister Smith eyed me over the ruin of the eldest Haverlock, gave him another slam for good measure. “Are you well, Finder?” he said.
I laughed. Sizzles and roars under us spoke of Troll magics. More timbers burst, below, and the floor dropped several inches before catching. One of Mister Chin’s tame bubbles floated up through the floor, made a quick circuit of Mister Smith and I, and then sank back through the floor in search of paler prey.
I wobbled my way across tilting, popped floorboards to the other side of the desk.
On the right-hand side were six drawers, all too small to contain a Troll-head. On the left were four drawers—and a single enormous cabinet. A sane man might keep a keg of beer or a wastebasket or a barrel of snacks in it.
The thing Mister Smith was smearing all over the room hadn’t been sane for a long, long time.
I tried the big cabinet door. It wasn’t even locked.
I opened it, moved a cloth and there it was.
“When you’re done with him,” I said. “Help me lift this out. Need two arms, got one.”
Mister Smith grabbed Haverlock by either end and pulled. I turned my head until it was done.
The floor shook. The thunder rolled. I stood there blinking and gasping and sorting out storm-sounds from Troll battle magics. The Misters were making a mess. I hoped they were winning.
Mister Smith turned that desk around with two fingers. He looked down, sang something short in Troll and closed the drawer.
Then he turned those big owl eyes on me. “You have done as you said, Finder. I thank you. Here.”
Three lumps of gold appeared in his bloodied Troll paw.
“Your fee.”
Maybe the Troll nightstick around my neck joined with my newly acquired concussion to play tricks on my eyes. I didn’t see three fist-sized chunks of gold in Mister Smith’s four-fingered hand. I saw one of Mama Hog’s wear-worn cards. I blinked, and there it was again, turned over so I saw a bony finger, crooked and beckoning.
“Keep it,” I heard myself say. “No charge. No fee. Not this time. Can’t buy my soul, Mister Smith. Shame on you for trying.”
Then the floor buckled and fell and the last thing I remember about that night is Mister Smith smiling at me.
Trolls really, really shouldn’t smile at people they like.
I woke up. That surprised me so much I sat up and opened my eyes.
Home sweet home, my tiny room behind a room. Someone had shoved the bedding back in my mattress and sewed it back up. The door to the office was upside down, but back on its hinges, and closed.
I swung my legs around, snarled when I rediscovered my broken left arm and spent a few minutes scratching under the splint.
Mama Hog’s short fat shadow slid under the door. “You awake, boy?” she barked.
“No. Go away,” I said.
She opened the door and shut it quickly behind her. In her hands she held a steaming bowl of soup and half a loaf of fresh baked bread and she’ll never ever look that good again.
“Brought you some food,” she said. “Don’t you go puking it up, you hear?”
“I hear.” I sat on the edge of the bed. I was wearing my other pants and I wondered if I’d been dressed by Trolls or fortunetellers.
“The Misters?” I said, grabbing a spoon.
Mama Hog’s warty face split in a grin. “They’re Trolls, boy,” she said. “Took twenty-seven half-dead and mashed them flat. Twenty-seven!”
I whistled.
Mama Hog rattled on. “Mister Smith, he came marchin’ back here with you in one hand and his cousin’s head in the other. You’ve never seen the like, boy—and the other two, they were singing some Troll battle song, all thunder and bellowing. Woke up half the city and scared the Watch near to death. Pissin’ their pants, boy! You shoulda seen ’em run!”
I shoved bread in the soup, sopped it up, made it disappear.
“Where—”
“Don’t choke, boy, don’t choke,” said Mama Hog. She lost her grin. “They’re gone,” she said. “Gone back East. Got to do some heavy purification rituals. They touched the undead, walked our sewers, handled our money.”
I swallowed hard. “When did they—”
“Yesterday,” said Mama. “Noon. After the Watch came sniffing around. Mister Smith gave them that gold around his neck to pay for the damages they did. Then he warned them to keep off your back, and they took off for Troll country.” She smiled. Not a grin, but a smile, and for an instant some of the ugly vanished. “He told me to watch after you, Markhat. Said you were clanless no more.”
I put down the soup. “He said that?”
“He did,” said Mama Hog. “Left you something, too. Here.” She held out an egg-sized chunk of smooth white river rock. “Take it. Tell it to speak.”
I took it. It was heavy and cold. “Tell it to what?”
Mama Hog rolled her eyes. “Tell it to speak. Say ‘Rock, speak to me.’”
“Rock,” I said, “Speak to me.”
Troll grumbles filled the air. “Greetings, my brother,” said Mister Smith. “Forgive our hasty departure. It was necessary, but unhappily so. Mister Chin, Mister Jones and I would have shared with you one last meal of the catfish, had circumstances permitted.”
“We will honor your memory,” said Mister Chin.
“You are welcome among us,” said Mister Jones.
“I have warned your Watch, and the half-dead Houses,” said Mister Smith. “You fought by our side. You fought for the soul of one of our own, one who could no longer fight for himself. You walked with us, through darkness, and when you looked upon the yellow metal you turned away.”
I remembered that, and winced.
“I name you Markhat of Clan—” the translator stopped using Kingdom and choked out a long, wet Troll word. “In all things, we are brothers, now and forever. May your shadow fall tall and your soul grow to meet it.”
“Goodbye, my brother,” chorused the Misters, unseen. “Walk brave, in beauty.”
Silence. Mama Hog took the empty bowl and the dirty spoon from me. “You don’t look much like a Troll,” she said. “But I reckon looks can be misleading. Can’t they?”
I put the stone down. I was tired, and my arm was broken, and the lump on the back of my head started throbbing, but I felt good—better than I’d felt since the War.
Memories stirred. “What was in that bracelet you gave me, Mama?” I asked. “Looked like a bug. Scared old man Haverlock so bad he got himself killed.”
Mama Hog grinned with both her wide front teeth. “Fooled you both, didn’t I? Bracelet wasn’t worth squat. Some flash, some heat—bet he tore it off hisself, before he saw the worm.”
“He did.” I shuddered at the recollection. “He acted like I had snakes in my pockets.”
“We call ’em corpse worms where I come from,” said Mama Hog. “Just one of ’em gets in a half-dead, and pretty soon he’s so full of worms he’ll bust wide open. We don’t have no vampire troubles in Pot Lockney, boy,” she said.
I grunted. Mama Hog stopped, half-through the door. “Them Trolls left you something else,” she said. “When you get your legs back come and see. Took two Trolls to haul it across town. Took me two hours to wipe off the mess.”
I didn’t need to go
look. I had seen past Mama when she’d barged in—the Haverlock’s fancy ironwood desk sat in my office.
It’s a fine big desk. I keep Mister Smith’s talking rock in the top right-hand drawer and a keg of Keshian ale in the big cabinet to the left.
And when people ask me how much the desk cost, I just smile and tell them a dear old friend left it to me when he passed away.
It isn’t the truth, exactly, but it’ll do.
About the Author
Frank Tuttle discovered writing at an early age. Later, when Frank figured out that writing did not in fact involve mixing seahorses with caustic lye compounds, he began to enjoy writing. And when Frank was first paid to write about things that never happened to people that never existed, he knew he’d found a vocation to take the place of professional carnival weight-guessing.
Frank is a hairy, nine-foot tall hominid weighing nearly six hundred pounds who makes his home in the heavily-forested wilderness of the American Pacific Northwest. And he wishes all you people would stop trying to film him, and that business of making plaster casts of his footprints is really beginning to cheese him off.
To learn more about Frank Tuttle, please visit www.franktuttle.com. Send an email to Frank at [email protected]. Send money to Frank anyway you please, but quickly.
Look for these titles by Frank Tuttle
Now Available:
Dead Man’s Rain
Can a haunted man help the dead find peace?
Dead Man’s Rain
© 2008 Frank Tuttle
Markhat is a Finder, charged with the post-war task of tracking down sons and fathers gone suddenly missing when an outbreak of peace left the army abandoned where they stood. But now it’s ten years on after the war, and about all he’s finding is trouble.
This time, trouble comes in the form of a rich widow with a problem. Her dearly departed husband, Ebed Merlat, keeps ambling back from the grave for nocturnal visits. Markhat saw a lot of during the war, but he’s never seen anyone, rich or poor, rise from the grave and go tromping around the landscape. But for the right price, he’s willing to look into it.
