King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

I ran across to the tunnel at the back and stood at the entrance. Men didn’t make these passages, nor troll or Grendel-kin, goblin, pixie or ghost. The air sat almost still, but moved even so, crawling from the tunnel. Cold air. Very cold.

“Jorg,” Row said.

“I’m thinking,” I said, not looking back.

“Jorg!” he said again.

And I turned. In the mouth of the tunnel through which we had come stood two trolls. I called them trolls to myself because they looked like the trolls of my imagination, not the rocky lumps the Danes decorated the landscape with, but lean dangerous creatures, dark-stained hide, muscles like knots in rope, laid along long limbs that ended in black talons. Crouched as they were their height was hard to judge, but I guessed eight feet, maybe nine. They moved with quick purpose, hugging the stone.

“Keep the arrow,” I told Row. I couldn’t see one arrow slowing either of them down unless it went in the neck or eye.

I would have called them monsters, leucrota, mistakes like Gorgoth, except that there were two of them. A pair speaks of design rather than accident.

“Hello,” I said. It sounded stupid, one thin voice in that great chamber, but I could think of nothing else to say, and fighting them just didn’t appeal. The only comfort to be taken was that both those pairs of black eyes were fixed on Gorgoth rather than me.

“Can’t you hear them?” Gorgoth asked.

“No,” I said.

The leftmost troll leapt forward without the preamble of feints or growling. He threw himself at Gorgoth, reaching for his face. Gorgoth caught the troll’s wrists and stopped him dead. Both monsters stood, locked together, leaning in, muscles writhing and twitching. The troll’s breath escaped in quick rasps. Gorgoth rumbled. I hadn’t seen him struggle with anything since he held the gate up at the Haunt. Every task since then, be it unloading barrels, shifting rocks, anything, hadn’t so much as raised a sweat.

Row lifted his bow again. For the second time I caught his arm. “Wait.”

They held each other, straining, the occasional swift readjustment of feet. Troll claws gouging the rock. Gorgoth’s blunt toes anchoring his weight. Muscle heaped against muscle, bones creaking with the strain, spit flecking at their lips as harsh breaths escaped. Moments stretched until they felt like minutes. My own nails bit into my palm, white knuckles on sword hilt; something had to give, something. And without warning the troll slammed into the floor, a beat of silence and Gorgoth let out a deep roar that hurt my chest and set Row’s nose bleeding.

Gorgoth heaved in a breath. “They will serve,” he said.

“What?” I said, then, “Why?

The troll on the floor rolled over and got to its feet, backing to its companion.

“They are soldiers,” he said. “They want to serve. They were made for it.”

“Made?” I asked, still watching the trolls, ready to try to defend myself.

“It has been written in their dena,” Gorgoth said.

“By Ferrakind?”

“A long time ago,” Gorgoth said. “They are a race. I don’t know when they were changed.”

“The Builders made them?” I asked, wondering.

“Maybe then. Maybe after.” Gorgoth shrugged.

“They are Grendel’s children,” Sindri said. He looked as if he thought he was dreaming. “Made for war in the ashes of Ragnarök. They’re waiting here for the final battle.”

“Do they know what made these tunnels?” I asked. “And where they lead?”

Gorgoth paused. “They know how to fight,” he said.

“That’s good too.” I grinned. “You’re talking to them in your head, aren’t you?”

Gorgoth managed surprise again. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I am.”

“What now?” Sindri said, still looking from one troll to the other, testing the edge of his axe with his fingers.

“We go back,” I said. I needed to muse and musing is more comfortable under a duke’s roof than on a windswept volcano or buried in fetid caves.

“Gorgoth, tell the trolls we’ll be back and to keep our visit to themselves.” I looked the pair over one more time. I wondered what kind of havoc they’d wreak on a battlefield. The best kind I thought.

“Let’s go back,” I said. And see if our perspectives have changed any after our climb.

19

Four years earlier

The forests in the Danelore have a character all their own, dense pines that make a perpetual twilight of the day and an ink-black soup of each night, moon or no. Old needles deaden every footfall and hoof, leaving the dry scratchings of dead branches the only sound. In such a place it takes no leap of imagination to believe every goblin tale of the long-hall. And in breaking clear once more into open air you understand that it was with the wood-axe man claimed these lands, not the battleaxe.

We came back to Duke Alaric’s hall early with the cocks crowing and every shadow stretching itself out over the grass as if to point the way. A ground mist still hung in shreds around the trees, swirling where the horses stepped. A few servants were on the move, to and fro between the great hall and the kitchens, stable-boys getting horses ready to ride, a baker up from the nearby village with warm loaves heaped on his cart.

Two lads from the stables took our horses. I gave Brath a slap on his haunch as they led him off. A light rain started to fall. I didn’t mind.

The rain made the stonework glisten, falling heavier by the moment. There’s a word. Glisten. Silver chains on holy trees, the gloss on lips for kissing, dew on spiderwebs, sweat on breasts. Glisten, glisten, listen. Say it until the meaning bleeds away. Even without meaning it stays true. The rain made the grey stone glisten. Not quite a sparkle, not quite a gleam, but a glisten to the soaked cobbles, a gurgle from gutters where the dirt ran and leaves twirled in fleeting rapids, bound for dark and hungry throats, swallowed past stone teeth. A piece of straw ran by my feet, arrowing the straightest path; a kayak on white water, it bobbed, plunged, surged, reached the drain, spun twice, and was gone.

Sometimes the world slows and you notice every small thing, as if you stood between two beats of eternity’s heart. It seemed to me I had felt something similar before, with Corion, with Sageous, even Jane. The air hung heavy with the metallic scent of rain. I wondered: if I stood out there, in the flood, would the rain wrap a grey life and make it shine? Should I stand, arms spread, and raise my face? Let it wash me clean. Or did my stains run too deep?

I listened to the fall of it, to the drumming, the drip, the pitter, and the patter. The others moved around me, handing over reins, taking saddlebags, the business of living, as if they hadn’t noticed me step outside such things. As if they couldn’t sense her.

Rike stumbled from the great hall, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Christ, Rike,” I said. “We’ve been gone a day. How did you grow a beard?”

He shrugged, rubbing at stubble near deep enough to lose his fingers in. “When in Roma.”

I ignored his bad geography and the fact that he even knew the phrase, and asked the more obvious question. “Why are you up?” On the road Rike always came last from his bed-roll and would never rise without some kind of threat or enticement.