Escape (The Prisoner and the Sun #1)

by Brad Magnarella

  “I’ve wanted to hunt, but my companion forbids it.”

  “Forbids it?”

  “He made up rules. Three of them.” Troll ticked them off, feeling a pang of guilt with each one, as if he were betraying Iliff somehow. But when the man’s face tensed in irritation, he forgot his guilt.

  “What a companion!” the man said. “Does he wish death on you both? No use for people. Ask him how he would ever have learned to forage if the woman hadn’t shown him. Ha! No hunting, no wandering. What does he allow you to do?”

  Troll told him of the sack he carried, though not that it was full of gold treasures.

  “You? A beast of burden?” He laughed and shook his head. “That is like taking a great spear and plunging it into the dirt and calling it a post. A shame he doesn’t see this. All right then, let’s get you some food.”

  The man stood and shouldered the bow and quiver. He headed into the trees. Troll followed close behind.

  “Step where I step,” the man said. “I have many traps about.”

  They arrived shortly in an area thick with trees, but from where the fire could still be seen. What Troll at first mistook for a deadfall turned out to be a primitive lean-to. Several skins were laid out beneath, and stored along the inside walls were tools and hunting implements. The man bent down to place his bow and quiver inside.

  “Do you live here?” Troll asked.

  “I’m a hunter. I go wherever there’s game.”

  “What do you catch?”

  “In this place? Some fish, but mostly hare. Their holes are everywhere. You should have seen some on your way to my fire.”

  Troll was disappointed with himself that he hadn’t. He looked around the man’s rugged encampment and felt something like longing.

  “The hare feed on a sweet grass that grows here in the summer,” the man went on. “In the winter they eat the bark off the saplings. They’re easily caught with traps and smoke.”

  The hunter moved to a tree, untied a cord from the trunk, and fed it out. Troll followed the cord with his gaze, up and over a high branch from which something descended in a slow spin. When it was within reach, the hunter grabbed it and cut the end of the cord. It was a bundle of long-eared animals.

  “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll show you how to clean them.”

  * * *

  They sat near the lean-to and worked in the dark. The hunter gave Troll a knife, which he handled clumsily before becoming accustomed to its grip and motion. The hunter showed where to cut and how to pull the skin, remove the innards, and separate the parts. The hunter sharpened several sticks and demonstrated how to skewer the meat so it would not fall into the fire.

  As Troll worked, thick tongue clamped in the corner of his mouth, he anticipated his return to camp, where he would at last have the chance to feed and succor Iliff, to prove himself a worthy companion. At the same time, he did not want to leave the hunter’s company. Not yet.

  “Why is your fire so far from your camp?”

  The hunter looked toward the clearing and then away. His beard gathered around his darkening features. “I’m being pursued. Hunted.”

  “What hunts you?” Troll asked in alarm.

  “There’s old enmity here between the hunters of the forest and those that claim to be its stewards. One of their number stalks me.”

  “Are you safe here?”

  “For now.” He looked sidelong at Troll. “Though when I saw you creeping from the river, I thought for a moment that I’d been found.”

  He gathered the spits and handed them to Troll. “Here’s your food,” he said. “And now you may borrow of my fire. My bow and quiver will remain safely stowed this time, I promise you.”

  Troll slumped his shoulders as he took the spits and mumbled his thanks. He stood looking at the man for a moment longer before turning toward the fire. After a few steps he spun about. The man, who had begun cleaning his knife, raised his eyebrows.

  “What more can you teach me?” Troll blurted. “About hunting and trapping and… and preparing food.” Troll looked at the shelter. “About building one of these. Please, I learn quickly. I want to stay in the forest. I want to live like you.”

  The hunter looked amused for a moment, then became serious. “I can teach you these things. But we must meet at night and in secret. No one and nothing can know where I am. Not even your companion.”

  Troll nodded.

  “There’s a chance I’ll be found here.” His face became grave. “If that happens while I’m teaching you, I will expect your help.”

  Troll had not stopped nodding. “Yes, yes, I swear it.” At that moment, he would have done anything for him.

  The hunter took his knife and drew the blade across his own hand, opening a dark red line. He signaled for Troll to do the same, which he did. The hunter grasped Troll’s hand firmly so their blood could mingle. Troll felt the fire in his stomach surge forth again, fed now by the hunter’s vitality.

  “There,” the hunter said. “I’ll wait for you here tomorrow night.”

  Troll retraced their path to the fire. As he approached the river, a glowing bough in one hand and the meat-laden spits in the other, an icy rain began to fall. Troll looked up and watched the pellets cut through the plume of his breath. He listened to them batter the littered earth. Poised between the hunter’s camp and his own, Troll thought it good that the icy rain should fall. It would be easier to impress on Iliff the need to stay put for a while.

  Chapter 21

  For their shelter, Iliff and Troll chose a small clearing hemmed by a thick stand of trees. The winds were tamer here than along the river, and though they could not see the river, they could hear its faint rushing.

  Troll wanted to build a lean-to, but Iliff convinced him that a full enclosure was better for keeping out the wind and elements and protecting the fire. They carried coals from their former camp and sustained their new fire pit with logs that burned slowly and split and spilled finally into fresh beds of embers.

  The shelter rose over the course of several days. They made many trips into the forest, Troll for young trees, and Iliff for a plant whose stalks could be opened and the stringy insides braided into lashing. Troll stripped and shaped the saplings into long poles and drove them deep in the earth around the fire pit. Iliff lashed the poles into a dome-shaped frame. It was large enough for Iliff to stand inside and Troll to squat, and to store their few possessions.

  Covering the frame with thatching took another few days. They found a meadow where long, dry grasses bent and shivered in the wind. Troll tore up the grasses in fistfuls and bundled them into bales, which he hauled back to the camp. Iliff lashed the grasses to the frame. He began at the bottom and with Troll’s help worked his way to the top of the dome, lapping each new layer over the one beneath. They left a small opening at the very top for smoke to escape.

  When they were done they went inside and built up the fire. The winds howled and raked the shelter but did not enter. Their space was warm and still. The dried grasses emitted a sweet fragrance.

  “Home.” Iliff smiled. “For now, anyway.”

  Troll nodded and went about preparing the fish he had brought back the night before.

  Iliff reclined on his bag. For the first time he welcomed his weariness. Indeed, the past days had been good. The food and fire had restored his constitution; the labor had turned his mind from fear and doubt. He had even begun to believe that they were not lost or being pushed back. After all, they had food now, and shelter. They would sit out the season and move again when the weather warmed. They would continue on their quest.

  He could not have done it without Troll. Iliff watched his companion work his stone knife along the inside of the fish and open them into halves. He seemed so different a creature now than he had just days before: larger, stronger, in nearly every way more capable. He hunted each night, always returning with catch or kill that was more than enough for the following day. He cleaned and cooked what they ate. Smoke
d and dried what they meant to save.

  But Iliff was also confused. He remembered Troll’s early failures at hunting. What had happened? What had changed? Iliff could only guess that necessity had awakened these abilities in him, somehow.

  He smiled ruefully as Troll set the filets over the fire. He recalled how he had treated Troll in the last months, denying him even the smallest freedoms, the least dignity. No wonder his companion had been so miserable. His recent easing of the hunting and wandering rules had seen a profound change in Troll’s mood. He had not grumbled once while they built their shelter. He worked diligently, his every utterance positive and constructive. Iliff even caught him humming to himself a few times, his tenor uncertain but spirited.

  Iliff chuckled now. Yes, they were going to be all right out here.

  * * *

  Troll waited until Iliff fell asleep each night before leaving their camp. He would creep to the boulders along the bank, stop and listen back, then cross the river to the hunter’s camp.

  The camp was well hidden, and on the first night Troll could not find it. The fire that had burned the night before was nowhere to be seen. He sniffed the air but was unable to pick up the hunter’s musk. Too much wind. He had begun to despair when a voice hailed him. He turned to find the hunter kneeling beside a tree he had passed only moments before.

  “Ha!” Troll cried. “There you are!”

  The hunter signaled for silence and returned his attention to the ground where he appeared to be working on something. Troll stepped up, wondering how he had failed to spot him there.

  The hunter spoke in a low voice. “There’s more to hunting than chasing and killing. You’re well suited for both, but you’ll starve if that’s all you can do.”

  The hunter was kneeling beside a hole at the base of the tree. A hare’s hole, Troll guessed. He finished sharpening one end of a small stick to which he now tied a length of cord. The other end of the cord was knotted to a pole on the ground, levered at its middle and far end by pegs in the earth. The hunter pulled the cord and forced the pole into a bow. He then pushed the sharpened stick into the ground, just deep enough to hold the tension. The cord stretched across the mouth of the hole.

  “The animals you will hunt are adept at surviving. They’ll be aware of your presence before you are of theirs, and they’ll flee and hide. If you pursue them outright, you’ll only waste energy.”

  Troll remembered his first attempts at hunting with some embarrassment.

  “A hare’s burrow is always two holes, never one. Do you know why?” Troll shook his head “So it can’t be trapped. If it senses danger from one hole, it flees out the other. You can almost always count on a hare to do this. And there’s your advantage.”

  Close to the cord on the bowed pole, the hunter tied a second cord. He knotted its other end to a thick stick. He had Troll lift a slab of rock and position it on edge, just beside the hole. The hunter set the stick at an angle beneath the slab, and had Troll lower it until it was propped against the stick. He adjusted the tension on the cord and backed away.

  “There,” he said. “The trap is set. The hare escapes by this hole and trips this line here.” The hunter used the tip of his knife to trace the taut cord to the small stick in the ground. “That throws the pin, which releases the spring stick”—he indicated the bowed pole—”which pulls away the support, which sends the stone crashing.”

  Troll stood and looked over the contraption. What at first had appeared nonsensical—sticks and cords and a stone—began to come together. Now he could see how the trap worked. Yes, that does that, which does that, and then that.

  “Come,” the hunter whispered. He led them a short distance to another tree with another hole at its base. The two crouched beside it. “Remember to never pursue the hare outright, it will only flee. You must make it believe it’s in danger and have your trap ready at the only place it can flee to.”

  Troll nodded.

  “Now go on,” the hunter said. “Give it a fright.”

  Troll lowered his head to the dark opening. The warm scent of hare made his head swim. He roared into the hole, his breath hammering the still air. A second later the slab crunched to the ground. Troll rushed back to the trap. Only the head of the hare, with its large, startled eyes, had made it beyond the stone. The hunter lifted the slab and pulled out the fresh kill. He held it up for Troll to see. It was a large one.

  They spent the rest of the night setting traps. It was slow, precise work, but bit by bit Troll got the hang of it. He learned to fashion his own pin, pegs and spring stick, learned to set the trigger, fix the tension, and position the slab over the support stick. Just before dawn Troll had his first kill. He bounced on his toes and beamed at the hunter, who nodded.

  “You’ll be a fine hunter,” he said. “Tomorrow night we fish.”

  They divided their catch of hares, and Troll returned to camp to clean and cook his share before Iliff awoke.

  The next night the hunter led Troll upstream to where the river fell into a deep pool. He showed him how to build a trap on the edge of the water using thin interlacing sticks. The sticks were angled to allow fish to wriggle into an enclosure, but not to escape. They baited the trap with hare intestines and came back before dawn to find several large fish thrashing inside.

  Troll returned to camp with the catch, which he cleaned and cooked just as the hunter had taught.

  On the nights that followed, the hunter showed Troll how to trap birds and other game using a variation of the hare trap, with bits of meat lashed to the trigger pin for bait. He showed him how to use fire and smoke to flush small game into the open. By the time Troll and Iliff’s shelter was completed, Troll could do all of these things on his own. He brought back more and more food.

  “You have the skills to hunt and survive,” the hunter told him one night, “but you still don’t know how to fight. I could have finished you easily that first night.”

  And so the hunter began to devote the hours between setting the evening’s traps and collecting the morning’s spoils to training Troll in combat. He showed him how to escape the hold of teeth and claws, how to use an opponent’s momentum against it, how to exploit its most vulnerable parts—its eyes, its throat, its viscera. He taught him to exhaust an opponent’s vitality and finish it off.

  Each night the hunter pushed Troll harder and, it seemed to Troll, more cruelly. “Face me!” the hunter would shout when Troll was panting and doubled over with exertion. “Your opponent’s not going to allow you a rest!” And in this manner, Troll became stronger and more agile. More deadly.

  One night, after Troll had succeeded in pinning him several times, the hunter laughed and clapped his back. “Good, very good. Now wait here. I’ve got something for you back at my camp.”

  He returned with what looked like a long stick. “I don’t envy the animal that engages you in close,” he said. “But it’s the weapon that sets the hunter apart.” He handed the stick to Troll. “This is yours.”

  It was straight and solid with a sharp, serrated stone head. Troll held it to his shoulder and tested its weight. He had never owned a weapon before.

  “It’s called a spear,” the hunter said. “Now let me show you how to use it.”

  Chapter 22

  With the shelter completed and Troll providing their food, Iliff found that there was little to do. After breakfast each morning he would step out of their shelter and look around at the landscape, as gray and wind-torn as ever. He found it hard to imagine the place bursting into colorful life again, of ushering them along as it had before. But he had the time and resources now to wait and hope, so that is what he did.

  Iliff passed the few hours of daylight adding thatching to the shelter and making small repairs. Sometimes he took short walks, his boots crunching over dried litter and the remnants of frozen rain. He weaved in and out of the skeletal trees like the winds that rushed past him.

  He longed to be moving again, to have a destination. At tim
es he envied his companion, especially when he recounted all he had seen and accomplished the night before. It seemed odd to Iliff that he should envy such a creature, but his companion had a purpose now. He too had a purpose, yes, but his was more an idea. Troll had been right about that, he thought. For what he sought could not be caught and held. He could not even see it. It was not a thing against which his abilities could be measured or that could give him a definite sense of where he stood. He had no idea where he stood, and that was what made him so anxious to continue.

  “How much longer is the season?” Iliff asked one night after dinner.

  “I don’t know. I think we’re still in the middle of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  Troll said nothing.

  “Will you tell me when you do know?”

  Troll grunted and nodded.

  “Because there’s no sense in settling in if we’re going to pick up and move shortly.”

  Iliff looked beyond Troll to the primitive shelves his companion had put up, crowded now with carved sticks and bones, lengths of cordage, sheets of stitched animal skins, and containers of all shapes and sizes. He watched Troll paw through them.

  “Where are you getting all of these things?” Iliff asked.

  “I made them.”

  “Yes, but where did you learn to make them? Certainly not in the mines.”

  Troll shrugged his shoulders. His black tangles of hair hid the side of his face. Something about his posture recalled in Iliff’s mind the morning he had confronted him over the heartsick woman.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” Iliff asked.

  Troll looked over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  Iliff opened his mouth, but the bluntness of Troll’s tone and visage made him hesitate. “I don’t know, it just all seems so… I mean, what would you think if suddenly I were able to hunt and trap and dress my kill, never having done these things before?”