“He doesn’t need it.” The Shadow seemed to sigh. “It’s a play for the throne.”
“Yes, you told me. But I don’t see.”
“Check the patents.”
“The patents… the patents of nobility? I’d have to search for days. And even then, it’s hard to read. The king said his cousin’s not anyone to worry with. Said he left the family years ago. It’s a distant cousin at that.”
“Check the patents.”
Nacer sighed.
“At least this whole troll things over with,” he said, almost to himself. Then realized it was to himself.
Epik tiptoed under the guard’s nose—though not literally. Once the boots were off his feet, the halfling in him took over; he merely walked below the guard (a good distance from his nose) and hightailed it to the corner of an alleyway to regroup.
The man was a part of the Palace Guard, charged with protecting the city, the king. What could Epik do to compel him to leave his post?
Epik summoned the most girlish scream he could muster. “Help!” he squealed. “I’m being attacked. A rapist.”
“Help!” he added again for good measure.
Nothing.
He peaked around the corner. The guard stood there, unmoved.
“Help?”
Still nothing.
Epik searched the alley for inspiration, but there was only a bit of rubbish and some old vending carts. Donuts, he read.
Epik pitched his voice from another direction.
“My morning batch of donuts!” he yelled. “Unhand them, you thief.” Then Epik tipped the cart over and yelled, “and rapist,” for good measure.
He held his breath.
The sound of boots on cobblestone filled the air.
Epik ran down the alley as fast as he could, through a mist to the next street. And this was where the plan fell apart—or the lack of a plan. Now that he had caused the diversion, where was he to go? Where were they supposed to meet back up?
22
The Way of Shadows
“Peg!!!!” Al yelled, anguished.
These men, those dwarves, would pay.
Another bolt caught Kelly in the chest. She roared with pain.
Al searched for his son, but Bould was nowhere to be found. “Kelly,” he called, “ we must go back. Run!”
He took several swipes at the fallen men, the rangers, who rolled dramatically out of the way. Then Al retreated into the mist. Kelly followed, gasping for breath.
“After ‘em,” Two-finger yelled.
“No,” Collus help up his left hand. Stop, he urged the traffic behind him. “They have an advantage in this mist. But dawn approaches.”
The ranger sheathed his sword. He nodded to the successful dwarves, still reeling. Pride and glee covered their blood spattered faces. Inky black tar mixed with their own deep red blood.
“Damn,” Two-finger said. He held up his hand. “Lost another finger.”
“Now you really are two-fingered.”
“Ha,” he said, not laughing.
“What happened?” Brendan asked. He looked worse than any of the dwarves by far. His uniform and chest plate were covered in blood and muck from being thrown to the ground several times.
“Oh, she bit it off,” Wellspoken said.
“That’s a she?” Brendan said. “How can you tell?”
“They fight meaner,” Bill, the one-eyed dwarf, said. Black blood gleaming in his now white and black beard, he smiled before wiping a bit of muck from his forehead.
The men and dwarves moved to the embers of what was left of their fire and began to stomp them out.
“What about the other?” Todder asked, gazing back to the city.
“You and your men wait here for it,” Coe said. “I don’t know about you three,” he said to the dwarves, “but I could use a drink.”
“You owe me one too,” said Wellspoken. “For skinny breeches.”
Todder watched them retreat through the mist. The small crew of Watch looked to him for counsel.
“They’re just leaving us?” Brendan said. “They can’t—”
“They can,” the sergeant spoke.
“What’s so different about them?” Brendan tossed his crossbow to the ground and kicked the dirt. “Why should we stay here to die? I’d like a damn drink too.”
“The difference is,” Todder said, “we took an oath.”
The guard’s footsteps died away. Now it was just Epik… And the mist.
He listened for any sign of Gerdy or Gabby.
Nothing.
He could meet them at the Rotten Apple. Gabby would have to get out of the city anyway, and it was about as far from Kings as possible. Epik wondered if he would go too, to finish his training—or start it.
The high rises of Madhattan were barely visible in the fog, even the red lamps on the top of each were invisible in the dense soup of the cloud. A rap of shoe on pavement made even pace behind him. The guard? His friends? He stopped short and put his back to a building wall, waiting to see who it was.
“Lil’ man. Epik,” an unexpected voice whispered but also kind of shouted in the darkness.
“Myra?”
Her form manifested through the fog. “I thought I lost you there.”
“That was you?” Epik said lividly. “What about the guard? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, he only made it to the alley. I tripped him and that hat of his went flying.”
“But, what of Gabby? Gerdy? Where are they?”
“Went off the other way.”
“You could have stopped me.”
“Well you was runnin’,” she said.
“What are you doing here, Myra?” Epik asked again. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure why he was so heated. Why did it matter? She was here now. Myra, blonde haired bombshell that she was, living, breathing, talking, and she was with him, alone. But again, he got the uneasy feeling that this wasn’t exactly what he wanted at all. Not anymore.
“Saw you two sneakin’ off from the Apple. Couldn’t let you have all the fun. Gerd’s always trying to protect me. Not lettin’ me go to street fights or wrastlin’ matches with her.”
“Gerdy watches street fights?”
“Participates!” Myra said, matter-of-fact.
“If you were following us, why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you distract the guard? We could’ve used your help.”
“Tried,” Myra said. “Offered him a little fun. Lifted me shirt there so he could see it. Like talkin’ to the Wall, it was. Think he may swing the other way, if ya know what I mean.”
“I dunno,” Epik said. “I’d have to see him with his sword.”
Myra laughed.
They passed Myra’s building without talking. At night the city could be as full of people as the day, sometimes more so. But not this night. Not after the trolls.
“We can cut through the park,” Myra said, crossing the road.
“What about the children?” Epik said, worried.
“Don’t mind them. Their bark’s worse than their bite, itten it? I saw some this morning that looked in a right state.”
“Right state?”
“Sick or somethin’.” Myra shrugged.
The fog grew thicker in Primary Park. Tendrils of it wove through branches of trees and over the small duck pond in its center. Each lamppost, when they came to one, looked as if it was the only one in the entire world—like it wasn’t meant to be there, belonging to a different place or time.
“Are all little people like you?” Myra asked.
“In what way?”
“So—” she started, but stopped as the ground shook beneath them.
A small troll, which by human standards was about as tall as a man, and by Epik’s standards was a giant, jogged gruffly into the lamplight. It held a large brown sack that’s contents seemed to be moving.
Myra screamed.
Epik jumped to muffle her, but it was too late. The troll sprang for t
hem. It padded on all fours, its long arms dangling to the ground, running like a triple sized silverback gorilla. Its thick jowls opened; yellow, dull fangs gnashed at the air. It opened its sack in triumph, galloping toward them, trying to sweep them both in with one paw.
Epik chose that moment to dive and roll away, yanking Myra by the knees with him. They rolled behind a thicket of bushes.
“Run!” Epik said. “I’ll hold him off.”
“You and what army?” Myra said.
“I’ll manage. Run!” he said again.
Myra stayed rooted to the spot. “Everyone’s always thinkin’ I’m some lil girl. Can’t defend me self. Gerdy, Dad, even little half men. I’ll show you,” she said. She shimmied out of the brush, then started toward the beast. “Oy!” she yelled. “Let’s see what you’ve got. I've dated men bigger than you.” She pointed to the mossy growth covering the troll’s troll-hood. “Bigger there too,” she said.
“Myra… Mye!” Epik pleaded.
The troll charged. It was easy. He yanked her up in his fist and threw her in the sack, then smothered the bag closed, searching the bushes for Epik.
Epik felt his pockets, remembering too late that the wand was with Gabby, but finding the dart. He took it out. It was heavy in his hand, filling the palm of it. Just like hitting a bullseye, he thought. He could aim for one of the troll’s eyes.
Then he remembered that Gabby had helped him there too. Or had he only veered Coe’s darts off course? There was only one way to find out.
The troll got closer, trying to sniff the halfling out. But Epik’s scent blended nicely with the trees, revealing nothing. Epik chanced a peek around the trunk. The ugly beast shook the bushes with his empty club-like hand. Frustrated, it shook the sack, causing the contents to squeal and scream. The troll grinned at this, laughing, then continued the search, turning over mounds of dirt and crushing bushes.
Epik waited. He’d read about moments like this. Fight or flight, it was called. And he, a halfling was there fighting.
Finally, the beast’s face came into full view. Epik stepped out from between the thicket and trees, he bent his legs, narrowed his eyes—just as Gerdy had taught him. He aimed, and he threw. The dart landed with precision on the opposite eye from which he had aimed. Black tar blood gushed out as the troll’s eye socket; it hissed in pain. The troll dropped the bag, bringing both hands to his eye for a second and letting several children spill out. The troll roared nastily at this. Finding the halfling with his remaining eye, he snorted, gutturally. Then, like a boulder, the troll charged Epik’s way, yanking up his sack in mid stride—and to Epik’s horror, Myra was still inside, unable to get free. The handful of children left on the ground began to scatter, running in all different directions.
This was it. Epik had nothing left.
He waited for the troll to tackle him, to scoop him up in the sack. Anything.
He waited some more.
From the other side of the park came another troll grunt. Both Epik and the troll turned to see, but there was nothing there, just trees and shadow.
The troll turned again, charging. From by the lake, another troll sound. They turned again. Nothing. But from beside Epik, a voice whispered in his ear. “Run, ya idiot.”
The hair in his ears prickled. He’d heard that voice before. But where? Epik turned. There was no one.
He ran.
23
The Eye of the World
The watchmen waited for the troll to return, the one that had entered the city and got past them. Todder prayed that the others would stay well enough away licking their wounds.
It wasn’t a large troll, as trolls go. Between Brendan, the other three lads, and himself, Todder thought they stood a chance. A small one. Maybe this was like a war, if you gained enough insight with each near miss of death then it became easier to fend it off—or meet it head on.
“The trolls,” Charlie said. “Why do ya think they chose now to start attacking the city. Trolls have been holed up in the mountains for years. Only heard mention of ‘em in storybooks… And zoos.”
“They’ve got a troll in the zoo?”
“Not our zoo but there’s a cave troll at the zoo in World’s Eye. Me dad and I went when I was a boy. King Simmons’ home city, you know. His brother’s the king.”
“Aye,” Todder said.
“So does that mean we’re like related? Our kingdoms?” Brendan asked.
“I think all the kingdoms are somehow. It’s how they keep the lineages all pure—marrying their brothers and cousins and all. Keeps us folk in our place, ya know. Though, I heard the common folk have it a lil’ worse in King’s Way.”
“It’s all the same,” Todder grumbled. “Word’s Eye, King’s Way, Foghorn, Dune All-En. They’re just names. Even the historians will likely lose track, one day.” He had the weary tone of all twenty-year veterans. The fact that he was the only twenty-year veteran made it doubly so.
Charlie maneuvered his pike to his shoulder. Todder searched his brain for a clue on the other two boy’s names, but nothing came. If he ever made it further than Sergeant, which odds of that were about as slim as his waistline, he’d mandate some sort of name tag system. Stick them right on the breastplate or something.
“It’s been ten years, it has,” Brendan said. “I guess it’s trolls this time.” He looked at the crumbled wall. “Instead of a gunpowder treason.”
“A troll as a king?” Charlie laughed. “I don’t think that’ll fly.”
“It was just gunpowder,” Todder said. “The one before that was the treason.”
The lads ignored him.
“Not as king,” Brendan shot back. “The only requirement for the proverb is the king is deposed. Another will pop up from somewhere.” Brendan took his crossbow from his belt, a new bolt gleamed, loaded in the mechanism. He took off the catch. “And it won’t be a troll,” he said.
And if the timing worked out, the troll would have run back past them at that very moment. But timing doesn’t work so well, even in second drafts. They waited several more minutes before any sign of the troll’s inevitable reappearance. Once spotted, the beast didn’t want to stop for a fight. Its eye wept with black tar-like blood. It carried a wholesale size burlap sack, lumpy with whatever it was that the troll had taken.
People, Todder thought.
“Hold your line,” he said. It sounded like a militaristic thing to say. “We’ve only got one chance to stop it.”
Yes, he thought; Todder was beginning to get the hang of this military thing after all. It had only taken twenty years.
Epik found the back door in the alley beside the bar unlocked, and he burst inside, struggling for breath. The kitchen was empty but for the sound of muted voices from the main bar, lingering in a murmur before ceasing entirely. Snow ran through the curtained entrance. “Where—where are they?” she asked, searching the cluttered room for Gerdy, or Gabby or both.
“They’re not? They aren’t back?” Epik’s heart sank.
Snow backed away, back through the curtain, leaving him there in the kitchen alone. He saw some of the fire in her eyes—like Gerdy’s—or maybe it was the other way around.
“Jed,” she called, “the damn halfling’s back.”
Jed faltered, stepping through the curtain just after, easing the weight off his back leg. The way the dwarf looked at Epik sent more shivers down his spine than the troll had—this wasn’t the even fatherly overprotection. This was real protection.
“Myra,” Epik panted. “The troll’s got Myra.”
“Myra?” Jed growled. “No, I’m worried about Gertrude. Myra said she was going home, where she ought to be. It’s you two that snuck out—out on some fool’s errand no less. Yet, somehow only one fool has made it back alive.”
“No,” Epik said firmly. He took a deep breath. “Myra, she followed us,” he said, pleading.
“Sayin’ that’s true,” Jed continued his line, “then where’s Gerdy?”
“We… w
e got separated.”
“I’ll expect you find a new job tomorrow,” Jed said. “Come in and get something to eat, to drink. Did this lil’ escapade of yours even work? Where’s the wizard?”
“With Gerdy.”
“Damn!” Jed waddled back to the bar.
Epik expected to find the bar emptier than it was. Coe, Rotrick, and two dwarves feasted at the middle table. By the lamp at the bar, Snow worked with a sewing kit and bandages on a third dwarf. She held a needle in her teeth like a toothpick, lacing thread through it with one hand while unfastening a jar with the other. She made quick work of the wound, stitching the dwarf up against his protests.
“It’s fine; it’s fine,” Two-finger said. Snow rubbed ointment into the open wound. “Nothin’ a bit of sucking’ on it won’t fix. How’d’ya think I mended the other two?”
She glared at him. Then took the needle and began to stitch the skin together. The dwarf didn’t flinch. Epik considered passing out at the sight of it but thought better.
Jed sent him a pint down the bar. “Drink,” he said. “And pray that girl makes it back, or it’s more than your job you’ll lose.”
Altogether it seemed a bit unfair. Hadn’t this whole plan been Gerdy’s? Or at least sixty-forty.
“What about Myra?” Epik said.
“These men,” Jed pointed to the table and the bar, “they’ve been dealing with the trolls tonight. We’ll put them on it. Send word to her father too.”
A thud came from the back door. Jed spun around on his heel and went through the curtain.
“You get to keep your head,” he yelled back to Epik. Epik leaned over his stool, peering inside the kitchen. “Now, I’m—“ Jed started, before being wrapped in a hug. Gerdy lifted the dwarf off his feet. For a moment, he seemed at a loss, but the words scrambled back. “Now, I’m not harboring no fugitive,” he said to the wizard. “Don’t know what you got in her head, in that halfling’s head. But we don’t want no more of it. Don’t care if you’re innocent or not.”
Hero in a Halfling Page 16
