Troll Shaman
Chapter Two
It was nearly midday, but Isabo Cullen was well on her way to being drunk. She never used to drink, but then her father betrayed all of humanity by seeking peace with trolls. That seemed reason enough.
In honor of the truce between humans and trolls, the drinking shop owners called their establishment “Promise of a New Day,” but then the plank over the door holding the rickety structure’s name cracked down the middle. Promise of a New Day quickly became the Broken Promise. It fit.
A large shape lurched past the doorway, momentarily dimming the windowless, low room.
“Would ya look at that, Hupp?” she said to her companion, with a glare at the few other customers. “A troll walks by, and no one bats an eye. I can smell the stinking thing from here.” She threw a coin on the table, snatched her sword, and lurched up, knocking over what remained of a pitcher of ale. Timid muttering rose from several of the tables and chuckles from others.
The skinny bartender leaned across the bar. “Now, lass, you best put that blade away. Don’t you start no trouble.”
She laughed and staggered out. “Let’s go,” she called to Hupp. “There’s too many troll-lovers here.”
The beefy fighter nodded, swallowed the last of his ale in one great gulp, and followed after her, eyeing the other patrons darkly.
Isabo turned toward the bridge that now spanned the deep canyon across the Roaring River. Ahead of her in the distance was a troll that might have been the one that passed in front of the Broken Promise. She sniffed the air to verify the particular bit of trollstink and went after it. The creature carried a basket on its head that would have taken at least two humans to carry. The container fairly overflowed with fresh and dried fruit and vegetables.
“Where are you going with that food, you maggot-breath monster?” she called at the troll. “And what clan are you?”
The creature snarled and reached for a blade that it no longer carried, steadying its load with the other hand. It grumbled low in its chest and turned to face her. “What is that to you, hooman? I am Burawn, of the Gray Face clan. I traded metals and wine for food and healing herbs. You will let me be.”
She snorted, planting her fists on her hips. “I do as I wish, troll. These are human lands. Just keep walking on across that bridge, while you still can.”
From her left, she caught a woman’s hurried gasp and then a shocked muttering. Someone didn’t approve of the way she talked to the troll. But from a doorway to her right, she heard snickering and a low, “That’s right, filth. Keep walking.”
The troll sneered, adjusted its basket, and turned away toward the bridge.
Hupp stepped to her side. He leaned close and whispered, “It’s just like in the bar: some of the locals want peace with the trolls, but a good many want to keep fighting. Those two in that doorway look to have blades. If you kept pushing that troll and it made trouble, I wonder if they’d have come out to join the fight.”
She nodded at the man. “Remember where you saw them. We can come back later and do some recruiting.”
Isabo had come to like the young fighter assigned as her bodyguard, though she’d rankled at the very idea of needing someone to watch her back. Hiram Tanner, now second-in-command of her Troll Slayer Army, reported veiled and not-so-veiled threats against her for opposing the peace. She’d grudgingly agreed to have someone accompany her. Kurtis Hupp was the best man for it. The son of a butcher, he had no love for trolls. He’d watched his childhood friend Finn Zollar get sliced in half by the beasts.
She eyed the troll making its shambling way to the bridge, its basket overflowing with foodstuffs.
“There’s your father,” Hupp said, pointing.
Gabriel Cullen walked idly toward the bridge. He stopped to chat with a sausage vendor and a young troll.
Isabo snarled, fingering the livid scar that ran from her ear to her chin, and ducked into a narrow alley, pulling Hupp with her. She spoke to her father when she had to, and not otherwise.
Peering out, she said. “He should stick that troll. But look, no sword. ‘We’re all friends now.’” She spat. “Next, he’ll go to the middle of the damned bridge and stand there like a fool, not knowing which side he belongs on.”
Sure enough, he turned and walked toward the crossing.
Isabo drew Hupp deeper into the alley as he passed.
“That sickens me,” she said as he passed. “He’s blind to what these creatures are. We’ll have to fight these beasts again, and soon.”
Hupp nodded thoughtfully. “Aye, but I’m worried at how many people won’t fight when it comes to it.”
“They’re blind, too. They’ll learn that trolls don’t change–beast are beasts, and always will be.” She glared at the bridge, then sniffed. “Come on. Let’s walk through the market. I thought I caught a whiff of Stone Breaker stink earlier.”
“Stone Breakers? Here? They didn’t agree to the treaty. What would they be doing here?”
She cursed and chewed at her thumbnail. “Who knows? Spying, maybe. Taking advantage of the peace to trade? We need to root them out before they get the idea that we’re not going to do anything. I warned my father this would happen, but he didn’t listen.”
They stepped from the alley and plunged into the haphazard sprawl of the market village.
***
Isabo paused at a knife sharpener’s tent, sniffing the air for the distinctive Stone Breakers tang. She cursed and glared at the mix of humans and trolls milling in the late-morning sun. Three Valleys and Gray Face trolls muddied the air, making it difficult to isolate the scent she hoped to find.
Difficult, but not impossible, she mused with a smile. And there it was: just the barest remnant of foul odor. She tasted the air again to be sure, and the realization hit like a physical blow—she’d smelled this particular beast before. It was one of the creatures she, her father, and Arden Luck had tracked on the plains west of Haywold last year. The vile thing had been in the party that had killed Emmet and Vana Pinchbek on their isolated homestead.
Isabo had gone to Haywold to gather a group of fighters, while her father and Arden continued to track the trolls. The two men had walked into an ambush. In the apparent confusion that followed, Luck was slain, and her father had either been captured or had gone with the trolls voluntarily. Probably the latter, she mused, because he later betrayed the humans of the Uplands by colluding with the stinking beasts. But there had been a battle, and several of the Stone Breakers had been killed. Willim Tallard, a tracker and her father’s friend, had found two sets of troll tracks leaving the site: a larger group of Three Valleys trolls with her father, and a single troll’s tracks heading off in a different direction. That single troll had been here, in the market.
She glanced at the vendor sharpening a heavy cleaver. The man looked up and gave a gap-toothed grin. “Here, Miss, catch a look at this here edge. Afore I started, you couldn’t ‘a cut butter with it on a hot day. No, not if it was ever so. But now, mind you, y’ could slice a mountain in half.” He put the blade down and stood awkwardly, revealing one leg missing below the knee. He shoved a well-worn wooden crutch under his hairy arm and took up the blade again. “Now watch and be amazed,” he said, eyes gleaming. With a practiced hand, he drew the cleaver over his arm, shaving the thick hairs away cleanly and leaving a wide bare patch of mottled skin. “Now isn’t that glory for you, Miss? Clean as a baby’s backside!”
She resisted the urge to brush him. They needed to find the trolls. Instead, she nodded appreciatively. “You should join us. We could use a master armorer.”
Hupp cast her a questioning glance, then unsheathed his broad machete-like blade. “Could you put a good edge on this?”
The man looked at the darkly stained blade with an appraising eye, then back at Isabo. His eyes went wide, and he quickly glanced around to see who was nearby. In a low, husky voice, he whispered, “You’re them Troll Slayers, ain’t ya? I don’t want trouble, mind you, but I’m on your side. They say the world is changing, and I’m all for peace”—he patted his stump of a leg—“but it weren’t no human that took my leg, if you follow me.”
“We follow you,” Isabo said. “I’m serious about what I said. We could use someone with your skills.”
“It true, then,” he whispered. “You’re building an army.”
Isabo shrugged.
“Well, my missus would be having kittens if she heard I was helping you against the trolls. She wants peace. We all do, I suppose, but to my thinkin’, it came too easy. Not everybody forgives and forgets, if you catch my meaning.”
Isabo nodded.
“Can you leave your blade with me?” the man asked. “I’ll have this as sharp as you need in no time, or my name’s not Ivo Cutler.”
Hupp started to agree, but Isabo stayed him with a hand on his shoulder. “He may have need of it shortly, Master Cutler.”
A sudden light came into the man’s eye, but he glanced up to see an enormous troll with a heavy canvas-wrapped parcel approach the stall.
“Where is fruit seller?” the creature asked in broken Common Tongue.
Cutler pointed southward and said curtly, “That way, past the bridge.”
They watched the beast lumber off in the other direction. After a moment, the man gave a crooked smile and said, “It’s actually behind the leather worker’s place across the way, but I’m sure that hulking creature’ll find it in due time.”
Isabo motioned for the man to take a seat. “How much of your custom is with the trolls?”
“Not much, truth be told. Most is with the real people—the humans what lives with them.” He glared up at the mountains that rose eastward across the canyon. “Somewhere up there, them troll beasts make iron, but they aren’t very good at it. Only a couple of them ever brought blades across the bridge, and the ones I saw, well, I’d be ashamed to cut my bread with them. Their blades ain’t strong, so they make them thick. They can sharpen ‘em up well enough, but then they don’t hold an edge.” Reaching into a box on a side table, he pulled out a pair of heavy shears. “One of their slaves, Riko, left this for me to see what I could do.”
Isabo examined the tool. It was sized for a human. She guessed they were pruning shears, for trimming branches or roots. The metal had an odd coloring, a deep gray with flecks of rust-color.
“The fellow wants me to work the blades, to get them to stay sharp. I’ll have to take it back to Pineholme, to my forge, so I can have a proper go at it.”
So, trollish iron isn’t very strong. There has to be a way to take advantage of that.
She’d have to come back for a longer chat with Cutler and the blacksmith.
“I’m obliged to you,” she said, handing the shears back. “We’re looking for two trolls that were in the market this morning. They weren’t from the Three Valleys or Gray Face tribes. They were Stone Breakers, from up north. Have you seen them?”
Cutler shook his head. He picked up Hupp’s machete blade and began drawing a heavy file across it with rhythmic, even strokes. “I don’t know Stone Tossers from Three Whatsits; a troll is a troll. Now you mention it, though, there was a couple of them hanging around Butcher Figg’s stall up the road. In fact, at first light, they was talking to him. I think they sold him a blessed great hindquarter from an auroch they killed.”
Isabo shared a glance with Hupp. This was news. The Stone Breakers hadn’t agreed to the Ounwe-damned treaty, but here they were, bold as brass, taking advantage of it to trade. She reached into a pocket and laid three silver coins on the bench. “You’re a good man, Ivo Cutler. We’ll talk again. We need to visit the butcher and find those cursed creatures.”
The man nodded politely and handed Hupp back his machete. “Give me some time with that blade when you can. I’ll make it so sharp you can cut rocks with it.”
***
Isabo had met the butcher Figg before. It had been he who had suggested a way to hang dead trolls to drain the most blood from them. Apparently, trollish coin was now more valuable to the man than their blood.
He had indeed purchased a good-sized haunch of fresh auroch. Already, various cuts and joints were arrayed on shelves or hung from hooks outside the butcher’s shack.
“Where are they, Figg? Where are the trolls that sold you this meat?”
The butcher looked up from his customer. His eyes went wide as he recognized who was addressing him.
Isabo and Hupp stood with their hands resting on their sword hilts.
“Now, uh, Miss Isabo, don’t trouble yourself none. I’m a tradesman, that’s all. I have to feed my family—and all the rest of these good people, too,” he said, waving an arm at the small crowd of shoppers, both human and troll.
“They’re Stone Breakers, Figg. They didn’t sign the treaty, so they can’t trade.”
The butcher cleared his throat and shuffled from side to side, like a child caught stealing candy. “How was I to know?”
She cast an eye at the trolls in the crowd. “Shall I tell your customers about the last conversation you and I had? At the inn, after the battle with—”
Words tumbled out of the man’s mouth, and he wrung his hands. “There’s no need to be hasty, Miss. They went north, not a quarter of an hour ago. There were two of them. Sharga and Umek were their names. If you run, you can still catch them. They were carrying heavy baskets of bread and potatoes.”
Isabo turned to Hupp and pulled him aside into an alleyway. “Messick and Garnay are in the village, probably at Mother Amity’s. Go rouse them out. Do they have troll blood on them?”
Hupp nodded, but gave a doubtful look. “Both have at least a little. First Sword said everyone was to carry some. They won’t have much, but between the four of us, we should have enough to take down two trolls.”
“They are more than two. They sold Figg a hind quarter from an auroch. Where’s the rest of it? My guess is that the ones we saw are going to meet up with more of their clan. It doesn’t make sense that those two brought down an auroch, cut it up, and dragged part of it to town by themselves. The rest of the stinking creatures are no doubt stuffing themselves with what they didn’t sell. We have to let the two of them get far enough out of town that their screams won’t alert anyone, but not so far that we’ll meet up with the rest of them. Go get Messick and Garnay. Just north of town is that low hill. I’ll see you there in a quarter hour.”
Hupp nodded and jogged away into the village.
***
Outside of town, the breeze blew steady and clean from the west. The cloying, acrid stink of trolls gathered together was gone, leaving only the scent of the two who had passed northward recently. Isabo knelt over a clump of crushed bluestem, carefully tasting the air. Again, she recognized the distinctive tang of the Stone Breakers, including the creature that had been at Pinchbek’s farm.
From behind her came the thudding of three sets of footsteps. She smiled as they paused about twenty feet away. Hupp knew better than to disturb her when she was tracking prey using the scent-gift.
She stood and turned. Her fighters waited patiently at the bottom of the low hill. “Ready?” she asked curtly.
Hupp nodded toward his companions. “Aye. They both have enough troll blood, dried or in vials, to take down the trolls. I told them what we’re up against.”
Galen Messick was a bowman and carried a full quiver. A large, bone-handled knife hung at his side. Isaac Garnay was a left-hander and wore a sturdy sword. Both were locals, added to the Troll Slayer Army at Pineholme before the attack into the mountains last year.
“Right,” she said. “The two came through here no more than a half hour ago. When we catch them, kill the bigger one. Messick and Hupp, that’ll be you: blood shots to the face and neck. I’ll question the other one, and then we toss them both into the canyon. Now, blood your arrows. Then wrap everything up tight so it doesn’t make noise when we run. We’ll move like blazes to catch them up. Any questions? I didn’t think so. Prepare your gear, and let’s move out.”
With smooth efficiency, Hupp and Messick prepared their arrows while Isabo and Garnay applied a thin smear of troll blood on their swords and knives. Isabo had barely counted fifty to herself before they were ready and sprinting northward.
***
The chase didn’t last long. Within a half hour, Hupp had spotted the two creatures plodding northward in the distance, near the canyon’s edge. Isabo waved her fighters down into the shelter of a shallow watercourse.
“What do you think, about five hundred yards?” Isabo whispered.
Hupp raised his head over the low bank and nodded. “It’s too bad there aren’t trees or more hills to give us cover. If we’re in the open and they look back, we’re spotted.”
She scanned the terrain ahead and thumped the ground with a fist. “Ounwe’s teeth. Well, there’s no sense wishing for what you don’t have. How close do you two need to be to have a good chance at hitting them?” she asked her bowmen.
Messick licked a finger and held it up to gauge the wind. “Well, Chief, normally I’d say a hundred yards. Them trolls are big brutes, though, and make for an easy target, but the winds near the edge are right gusty.” He considered. “Say, seventy-five yards to be safe. Outside of that is iffy.”
She looked at Hupp, who nodded. “I’d agree with that. You said to hit the bigger one first, and they look to be walking close together. We still might hit the short one.”
Isabo shrugged. “Either one will be fine. Just leave one to interrogate. They’re carrying baskets of food and trade goods, so try not to hit the baskets.”
“Then let’s aim for the big one,” Hupp suggested. “He’s easier to hit.”
Garnay suddenly pointed back toward town and whispered. “Look! Someone’s coming this way!”
Isabo shot a glance southward. “Ounwe’s tears!”
Sure enough, a lone figure could be seen making its way toward them, but it was too far away to identify.
“Garnay, stay here. Whoever it is, don’t let them get any closer. Got it?”
The man nodded.
“Hupp and Messick, let’s go. Run quick, but quiet! Signal me when you’re close enough to loose an arrow.”
They sprinted, keeping low to the ground. To Isabo’s relief, the trolls trudged on doggedly, oblivious to the three figures racing up behind them. She prayed her people had packed their gear tightly to keep it from making noise that might reveal their presence.
As they drew near, she caught the trolls’ scent. It was the same two she’d detected in Bridge Town. One of the creatures, the shorter one, paused to adjust the basket on its shoulders. She feared her bowmen might have to chance a long-distance attempt, but the troll rolled its shoulders as if working out a kink, hefted the basket, and marched on.
Hupp finally raised a fist, slowed, and nocked an arrow. Messick did likewise. Both men drew a few calming breaths, nodded to each other, and drew their bowstrings.
“Loose!” Hupp whispered, and both arrows whistled through the air. They each quickly nocked another arrow.
Both trolls suddenly stopped and turned, alerted by the sound.
Messick’s arrow glanced off the larger troll’s basket and sailed into the canyon, but Hupp’s flew true. It embedded deep into the creature’s arm with a satisfying thwack. The troll screamed as if all the demons of the Seven Hells had been set loose on it.
Isabo raced in, sword raised for a piercing blow. Even from this distance, she could see the hideous growths that sprouted from the monster’s arm. It clawed at the wound and staggered wildly.
She sniffed, drawing in the heavy scent of trollstink, but with the wind from the gorge, she couldn’t tell which was the one she’d nearly encountered before.
The uninjured beast dropped the basket it was carrying, spilling the contents on the rocky edge of the precipice. It turned to flee, but tripped on a broken sack of potatoes and lurched into its companion, sending it tumbling over the edge.
With a horrifying, screeching howl, the wounded troll disappeared into the chasm.
Isabo swung for the remaining troll’s throat, but it leapt backward, caught its huge feet in the basket, and tumbled, disappearing over the edge.
She moved to stand on the rocky edge, peering down on the shattered troll bodies a hundred feet below.
