by Heath Pfaff
Haley had immediately fallen back and drawn her axe and the knife Xandrith had given her. She would have immediately gone in for an attack, but the sight of their assailant momentarily froze her in place. She knew exactly what it was the moment she laid eyes on it, but that didn't make it any less startling to see what she was seeing. Hearing stories about them and actually seeing one with her own eyes were very different things. Still, there was no denying what stood in the space between her and Kassa.
The troll was taller than it had looked while hunched over at the fire. What Haley had mistaken for the hunched back of an old man was actually the long and flexible spine of the troll creature. Totally unfurled it stood a good two feet taller than either Haley or Kassa. It had deep yellow-orange eyes with horizontal black pupils splitting the sickly color. Flesh the color of decaying leaves stretched across its body tightly, highlighting a powerful musculature and unusually heavy bone structure. It wore a hood over its head, but Haley could make out a set of horns curled from the top of its head to two sharp points just under its jaw line. The trolls arms and legs seemed almost too long for its body and its hands were massive, clawed things that gripped the hilt of the battle hammer with ease. As it looked at the two women it swung the weapon up over its shoulder without a care for its weight. If it held any fear there was none displayed in its posture.
"I thought I'd have to eat venison tonight, but it looks like I'm in luck." The creature spoke with surprising clarity, though there was a rattle and a hiss to its voice. It charged forward violently, ignoring Kassa and coming straight for Haley. Her training took over. The troll swung the battle hammer at her aiming for a powerful blow that would have killed the young woman if it had landed, but the giant weapon moved much slower than any of Kassa's daggers did during training. Haley side stepped and rolled under the incoming blade. This brought her immediately inside the troll's striking range. Haley lashed out violently with her knife knowing she was too close to use her axe. Her blade struck the left side of the troll's rib cage and she drew it back to strike again knowing that she was landing a killing blow. Both strikes should have torn through vital organs.
To her shock, the troll was still moving as though uninjured. It took one hand from the hilt of its weapon and backhanded Haley across the face. If not for the fox mask the blow might well have torn the good side of her face apart. As it was she was lifted from her feet and tossed backwards across the ground with her head reeling from the blow. Even after she stopped rolling it still felt like the world was tumbling around her. She pushed herself back to her feet and shook her head to clear the fog from her vision. Luckily Kassa had placed herself between the troll and the stunned assassin's apprentice because the creature had advanced as soon as she'd been knocked down. Kassa's sword flashed beneath moonlight, a silver blur as she struck and parried against the troll. She was holding her own, but the troll wasn't losing ground either. Haley dove back into the battle as soon as she was confident her disorientation had cleared.
"Don't bother to stab him in the chest." Kassa called to her as they moved in for another round of attacks. "Trolls have multiple hearts and only one of them is in a fixed location. You'd have to pin all two or three of them to kill the thing. It's pointless to try. Go for its neck."
The troll laughed. "Two little girls aren't going to be able to hack my head off. Why don't you just surrender now? I'll even kill you both before I start eating." It ended its decidedly bleak offer with more of its dry and papery laughter.
Haley slid her knife back into its place at her hip and took a two handed grip on her axe. She'd had enough of this creature. "I'm not a little girl!" She yelled and then she charged, swinging her axe with all the strength she could muster.
The troll's laughter snapped off abruptly as it jumped back in shock, not expecting Haley to move so quickly or so directly against it. It brought its hammer up defensively, but Haley was already over its defenses. There was a heavy thud as her axe struck followed by a surprisingly shrill scream as the troll thrashed around. Haley hadn't hit its neck like she’d wanted, but her axe had taken it full in the shoulder. If she'd hit a human with the same blow the arm would have come clean off, but the troll’s body was far sturdier. Her axe had passed all the way through to the bone and become wedged in deep. Haley recovered from her attack and landed her jump on the creature's left side. The troll’s injured arm fell limply to its side. It took her a considerable twist and pull, but her axe split free from the creature trailing a line of black blood in its wake. As Haley returned the axe to her control she thought Xandrith would have been proud of the way she’d torn her blade free. That was a lesson she'd only needed to learn once.
Kassa wasn't sitting idle either. While the troll was distracted she dove forward with a blow aimed right for the creature's neck. She hit with all of her might behind the blow, but she didn't manage to cut all the way through the troll's stump-like neck. Her sword hit bone and stopped. The troll’s laughter had stopped and he was now trying to back away from the two women. He lifted his hammer in his one good arm and used it to weakly shove Kassa away so that he could get enough room to swing the deadly weapon. Haley attacked him again before he could get the space he needed.
With both hands on her axe hilt she swung for the neck. She hit on the opposite side of Kassa's sword and cleaved far deeper than the other woman, but she was still unable to completely sever the creature's head. The wound she'd inflicted on its shoulder was already beginning to mend itself. The jagged edges of flesh seemed to reach for each other and pull themselves back into place.
"No you don't!" Haley yelled, pulling her axe free and swinging it in a gain. The trolls yellow eyes locked on her just before her axe struck home, hate burning up from somewhere deep inside the horrible monster. It was too late though. The second axe swing finished what the sword and first attempt with the axe hadn’t managed. The troll's head separated from its body and rolled across the snowy ground dripping black ichor in its wake. The body knelt to the ground, still moving as though alive. It even put out an arm as it fell the last few feet, but then it was still.
"Fucking trolls." Kassa said.
Haley kicked the body which snapped out at her leg with one arm as though it were reaching for her. She gave a shriek and jumped backwards. "It's dead, isn't it?" She asked and held her axe out in front of herself protectively.
"Mostly." Kassa nodded, and then after a moment she added. "I think."
"What was it doing out here?" Haley asked, still watching the body as though it might jump up at any moment.
Kassa's eyes were scanning the area as well as the dead body. "That's a good question. I've never heard of anyone encountering just one troll. They usually travel in hunting parties. It might be some kind of scout, but I can't imagine what it would be scouting. It seems to have been here a while."
"Could there be others around?" Haley asked, suddenly more interested in the surrounding woods than the corpse.
Kassa shrugged. "Possibly, but we probably shouldn't wait around here to see."
Haley nodded her agreement and then frowned. "But what about the meat?"
Kassa just sadly shook her head. "I don't think we should eat anything a troll was cooking. It said the meat was venison, but it might not be. Besides, who knows what it put on that meat."
"Shit." Haley cursed loudly. "All this work and no meat."
"Have a travel bread." Kassa offered.
Haley's expression darkened. "I'd almost rather eat the troll's mystery meat."
Kassa nodded. "I know how you feel."
Chapter 5
Hello Assassin My Old Friend
They'd been marching hard for nearly a week when their trail finally came to an end. The hoof tracks they'd been following had broken off from the main road several days before and followed increasingly smaller and smaller paths northward until they'd split off onto what appeared to be little more than a game trail. Haley and Kassa had debated over whether or not they were being misled for a while, but
they'd been cautious at all the branches. If they were being led astray whoever was doing it was better at hiding trails than they were at following them, and Kassa was quite adept at the art of tracking people. Their doubt had abated when the dirt trail they were following led them to a strange building set against the side of a rocky cliff.
The back of the building seemed to be built directly against the natural stone wall. The entire structure looked like some kind of expensive rural home a rich lord might keep as a hunting lodge, but there were aspects of the design that stood out as strange. The windows were narrow and unusually high up the walls, and the gate surrounding the house was made of heavy stone and stood unusually tall. The mansion looked as though it had been designed to double as a fortress, and that was before the guards were taken into account. The grounds were covered in armed men, and some unarmed men that looked suspiciously like mages. Everyone was wearing a plague mask of the exact same design as though they were part of a uniform. The masks were decorated with an inhuman, grinning mouth that covered the guards' mouths and noses. It served to make them look more intimidating than normal.
"This place is more defended than some of the Order’s towers I've seen. I don't think what we've found here is just some random trader's mansion." Kassa whispered to Haley.
"If Xan's inside, we need to figure out how to get in too." Haley looked doubtfully at the defenses. "If we take out the guards at the gate without those inside noticing we might be able to get a few of the others before they sounded an alarm."
Kassa looked incredulously at her young companion. "I think you're over estimating our abilities. We might be able to take out a few guardsmen without them raising an alarm, but we're never going to get through all those soldiers in the courtyard. It would only take one mage getting to us before we could disable his magic to stop us dead in our tracks. We need to think like Xandrith on this one." Kassa pointed to the top story of the building where there were some open balconies. "If we can sneak in close to the building we can climb up to those and go in through the top floor. It's a dangerous climb, but I think we can do it."
"There are wards on those balconies." Haley’s magic sensitive vision, awakened by Johndin during their training, showed the faint glow of magic coming from the doors on the balconies. "We can get up to them but we can't get in that way, not without alerting every mage in the entire building."
Kassa sighed. She'd forgotten about Haley's ability to see magic. It was an invaluable tool in this kind of business. Xandrith had been able to see the glow of spells as well, and Kassa's instincts that she’d inherited from him told her she should be able to see them as well. She couldn't, though. Xan had given her a great deal of his talent when he'd restored her life, but he couldn't give away his magic. "Is there any way to get through a ward without setting it off?"
Haley shrugged. "I don't know much about magic. I can cast a few simple spells, and I can identify a few more on top of that, but I didn't have long to study. I do know that magic and spells are all about maintaining a balance. You need to feed the spell enough power to keep it working, but if you flow too much energy into it then the spell snaps back at the caster. Maybe I could flood the spell with power and send it back to the originator?" She wanted to say that with more certainty, but she was really just guessing. In her head that made perfect sense, but she wasn't certain it worked that way. Shawl had never mentioned anything like that.
Kassa nodded slowly. "Well, we need to get in there somehow. At least if we're on the top level when things go wrong we won't immediately have to face all the people in the courtyard." She paused for a moment before grinning widely in an expression that looked somewhat hostile through the wolf mask. "This seems like a really bad idea, but for some reason I'm excited."
"Now who sounds like Xan?" Haley asked and returned the inappropriate grin.
With some semblance of a plan in place the two women made their way towards the outer wall as carefully and as quietly as possible. Haley had to use every skill she'd learned in order to follow Kassa who seemed to move quietly with the same practiced ease Xan had always shown. The younger woman again cursed the unfairness of the fates that had given Kassa all of Xan's skills with none of the necessary work and training to acquire them. They reached the outer wall without any trouble and moved slowly through the underbrush under the cover of the night that had fallen in around them. Kassa attacked the wall like she'd been born to scale. Haley watched her climb the first ten feet with the same ease she'd had when passing silently through the woods, and then it was her turn to try and do the same.
Haley locked her hands into the gaps on the wall and began to pull herself upward. The stone was like ice against her fingertips, numbingly cold, but she forced herself upward using her legs as much as possible to propel herself along the surface of the wall. After about fifteen feet she found herself catching up to Kassa. She slowed as she came up alongside the older woman who seemed to be breathing heavy. The ears of her mask had taken on a ruddy glow, which Haley was coming to recognize as the outward sign that Kassa's cheeks had reddened beneath. This time, though, it wasn't embarrassment causing the reddening.
"Are you alright?" Haley whispered to her.
Kassa nodded. "My body knows what to do, but I really should have worked out my climbing muscles more. I'm not as fit as Xan's memories think I should be. I just need to slow down a little bit."
Haley felt a slight surge of pride. She wasn't even winded yet. Her extensive physical training really had made a difference after all. "I'll meet you at the top." She whispered as she surged up the wall and into the lead.
"Be careful at the top." Kassa whispered after her. Haley heard and heeded the warning. There could be guards along the top of the wall that weren't visible from the ground. Climbing might be the easiest part of this breeching. She climbed the rest of the way up the wall moving as quickly as her freezing fingers would allow.
Haley stopped just below the lip of the wall and forced herself to listen very carefully. She could hear the telltale tap of footsteps moving along the walkway. They were approaching her at a steady pace. It only took her a couple of seconds to determine that it was one person dressed in what sounded like chain mail. Kassa was just pulling herself up to about Haley's foot when the guardsman passed, completely oblivious to the two people climbing the wall beneath him. Haley waited until he had gone and then pulled herself over the lip of the wall and landed on the walkway in a crouch, drawing her dagger in the same motion. She fastened her eyes on the guard walking away, expecting him to have heard her arrival on the wall walk, but he kept on marching away as though nothing had happened. Haley let out a shaky breath and then reached a hand over the wall to help Kassa over. The older woman took it with a relieved look.
"Are you going to be alright to climb down?" Haley asked. Kassa was sweating heavily despite the cold and the ears of her mask had turned a brighter red. Her breathing was fast and hard.
"I just need a minute to catch my breath and rest my arms. That was harder than I thought it would be." She noted as she forced herself to draw deeper and slower breaths.
"I'm not sure we have a minute. That guard could be back at any moment." Haley said uneasily, looking down the line of the castle wall the way he'd passed. He'd vanished into the obscurity cast by the darkness.
"Alright, alright. I'm good." Kassa whispered, stretching her arms and shoulders before slipping over the other side of the wall. Haley watched her go for a few seconds before joining her on the descent. At least they were on their way down now. That wouldn't require quite as much upper body strength though it could be hard on the joints. Haley stayed close to Kassa and watched her drop from grip to grip, her knuckles white with the effort of holding herself. Haley didn't say anything, but she was worried. She doubted Kassa would have the strength necessary to climb her way to the landing on the house. It wouldn't be as easy as scaling the rock wall. Handholds would be few and further apart.
The two women dropped t
o the ground soundlessly. Kassa's hair was clinging to her sweat moistened brow and her mask was indicating that her cheeks had gone from rosy to pale which was never a good sign. Haley restrained her instinct to worry. Kassa would know her own limits. At least Haley hoped that she would know her own limits.
They crossed the courtyard quickly and quietly, staying deep in the shadows as they moved. Kassa's motions were perfect, well practiced, and precise. That didn’t stop her shoulders from heaving as she caught her breath, and her arms seemed to hang too stiffly at her sides. If Haley could tell she was exhausted there was a definite problem. They crossed the open space between the wall and the house quickly enough, but it was clear that Kassa wasn't going any further. As they leaned into the wall to hide themselves, Haley noticed that Kassa was leaning entirely onto the wall. It was propping her up more than she was using it for cover.
"You're not going to make it up this wall." Haley decided it was best to state the obvious as bluntly as possible.
Kassa looked immediately offended. "I'll be fine, I just need a moment to catch my breath and let my arms recover."
Haley shook her head. "No, we both know that's a bad idea. What if we need to move quickly once we're at the top?” As she spoke Haley was keenly aware of the debt she owed the older woman. Kassa had gone far out of her way to help Haley, even going so far as to put herself in that situation with the healer. If Haley could help her here it was just one more step towards repaying that debt. "You could get killed if you can't keep up. You could get both of us killed. You're going to have to stay here." Haley went on quickly before Kassa could protest, she had no desire to be any harsher than she had to be. "I'll break in and then make my way down a few floors to where there’s a window large enough for me to sneak you through. Then I'll throw a rope down and help you in. We can look for Xandrith after that."
"And where are you going to find a rope? Do you think they'll just have one hanging around for your convenience?" Kassa asked, eyes still angry.
