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The sods didn't notice, or didn't care, but I'd never smelt violent death before. I gaped like an erdlu hatchling and coughed up acid from my gut.
"You from around here, boy?"
I turned toward the voice—
And saw what the trolls had done to her, to my Dorean. Dead or alive, they'd torn away her wedding gown and bound her to the post beside the village well. Her face was gone, her breasts, too; she was clothed in blood and viscera. I recognized her by her long, black hair, the yellow flowers in it, and the unborn child whose cord they'd tied around her neck.
A scream was born in my heart and died there. I couldn't move, not even to turn away or fall.
"What's your name, boy?" another sod demanded.
My mind was empty; I didn't know.
"Can't talk. Doesn't know his name. Must be the village loon."
"Hungry, loon?"
Another voice, maybe a new one, maybe not. I heard the words as if they came from a great distance. A warm, moist clod struck my arm and landed in the dirt at my feet. My mind said stew-pot meat, but my heart said something else. More clods came my way, more laughter, too. I began to shiver uncontrollably.
"Clamp your maws!" a woman interrupted sharply.
Hard hands grasped my shoulders and spun me around. I lost my balance and leaned against the woman—the best of a sorry lot of humanity—I'd attacked with the rock. She was shorter than I, but numb and hopeless, I needed her strength.
"Dolts! Can't you guess? This was his village, his folk—"
"Why ain't he strung-out dead, like the rest of them?"
"He's the loon—"
"He ran off. Turned his yellow tail and ran."
I stiffened with rage, but the woman held me tight. Her eyes told me to be quiet.
"He got conked, that's what," she said, defending me.
Her hand brushed my hair. It was a gentle touch, but it awakened the pain both in my skull and in my heart. I flinched away with a gasp.
"Clipped him hard. He's lucky he's not dead or blind."
Lucky—the very last word I would have chosen, but it broke the spell that had bound my voice.
"My name is Manu," I told them. "This place was called Deche. It was my home until the trolls came this morning. Who are you? Why are you here? Why do you eat with the dead?"
I knew who they were by then. There was, truly, only one possibility: These were the soldiers of the Troll-Scorcher's army. They'd pursued their enemy—my enemy—back to the Kreegills.
"Where are the trolls? Have you avenged our deaths?"
There were more hoots and wails of laughter until an otherwise silent yellow-haired man got to his feet. The mockery died, but looking into this veteran's cold, hard eyes, I was not reassured.
"You ain't dead yet, farm boy, 'less you're tryin' to get yourself killed w' fancy words."
He had the air of leadership about him, just as my grandfather had had. The woman beside me had gone soft with fear. His stare lashed me like a whip. I was expected to fear him, too. And I did. I'd measured myself against the Troll-Scorcher's soldiers and knew myself to be less than the least of them in every way save one: I was cleverer. I could see them for what they were. They scorned me, so I stood tall. They mocked my speech, so I chose my words with extra care.
"I'll speak plainly: We farmers are told the-Troll-Scorcher's army swears an oath to uphold our race and pursue each and every troll to an unhallowed grave. I see how you uphold the folk of Deche; now show me the trolls in their unhallowed graves."
The yellow-haired man cocked his fist, but my clothes were stained with the blood of my kith and kin. While I met his stare with one of my own, he didn't dare strike me.
"Where are the trolls?" I demanded. "Have they returned to the plains? Have they ravished Corlane as they ravished Deche?" Corlane was another Kreegill village, somewhat higher in the valley. "Have they vanished into the mountains above us? I know their old places. I can take you to them."
Behind my eyes I saw the folk of Corlane not as I had known them, but as my own people were: mutilated, faceless, and bleeding. I felt nothing for them; I felt nothing at all, except the need for vengeance.
"You can slaughter them as they slaughtered Deche."
"Slaughter!" the yellow-haired man snorted. "Us? Us slaughtering trolls? Risking our lives for the likes of them... or you?"
There was a secret in his eyes. I saw that, and a challenge. He'd answer my questions if I had the guts, the gall, to ask them, but he didn't think I'd survive the knowing. Perhaps, I wouldn't have if he hadn't tempered me, then and there, in his contempt.
"Why are you here?" I demanded, returning to my earlier questions. "Why do you feast with the dead as witnesses?
Why don't you hunt and slaughter the trolls who hunted and slaughtered us?"
The yellow-haired man smiled. His teeth were stained, and one was sharpened to a fang point. "That's for the Troll-Scorcher, boy. He's the one, the only one, who slays trolls. We hunt 'em, boy, an' hunt 'em an' hunt 'em, but that's all we do. He comes an' scorches 'em. We touch one gray wart an' we'd be the ones getting cindered-up from the inside out. I seen it happen, boy. This"—he cocked his callused thumb at poor Dorean—"this ain't nothing, boy, compared to scorching. Trolls could take you an' yours a thousand times, an' it don't matter to me, so long as there's trolls for scorchin' when he comes."
I stood mute, strung between disgust and rage. The woman beside me squeezed my arm.
"It's the truth, boy," she said.
Swallowing my disgust, I let my rage speak, soft, slow, and cold. "Where is Myron of Yoram?" I asked. "When does the Troll-Scorcher come?" I thought I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it.
Another smile from the yellow-haired man. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. We been following these trolls since the start of High Sun." The grin soured. "He knows where we are, boy. He'll come when it suits him, not before. Till then, we follow the trolls an' we follow 'em close, so no man knows we're here."
"I'm a man," I said, "I know."
He drew a bone knife from his belt. "Trolls leave meat behind, not men."
I should have died. Everything I loved and cherished had already died. Their shades called me through the darkness. I belonged with Deche, with my family, with my beloved. But my rage was stronger and my thirst for vengeance against trolls, men, and Myron of Yoram couldn't be slaked by death. A voice I scarcely recognized as my own stirred in my throat.
"A good-for-nothing farmer's boy? What can you do, boy—besides dig furrows in the dirt?"
"I'll keep him," the woman, still beside me, said before I could speak.
"Jikkana! Jikkana! You break my heart," another man cried out in mock grief. "He's a boy. He won't last ten nights in your bed!"
She spun around. "My second-best knife says he lasts longer than you did!"
Her knife was never at risk.
A lavender glow had appeared above the painted mountains on the eastern wall of Hamanu's cloister. The quiet of night gave way to the barked commands of the day-watch officers taking their posts along the city's walls. Another Urik morning had begun. Setting his stylus aside, Urik's king massaged his cramped fingers. Bold, black characters marched precisely across several sheets of pearly vellum. Several more lay scrunched and scattered through the neglected garden. Two sheets remained untouched.
"I'll need more vellum," Hamanu mused, "and more time."