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Oh, he was an imposing figure—our champion, Myron of Yoram, dressed in riding silks, watching us parade across the choking dust from the back of his half-tamed erdland. He had magic, no doubt of that.
Every year he'd haul a few trolls to the muster. He'd truss them up and scorch them good, right in front of us. Flames would leap out of troll eyes and ears, out of their mouths when they screamed. Our champion would do the same with any poor human sod who'd earned his wrath—usually by killing a troll without permission.
We were impressed by what Myron of Yoram did to the trolls, but it was what he could do—would do—to us that had kept the army in line for generation after human generation.
Things were begi
Everyone had to be careful. Everyone had to post guards at night and sleep with a weapon or two beneath the blankets. Bult's band was no exception, and I pulled my share of nights on the picket before Jikkana died. Afterward, I took the picket by choice, one night in four—as often as a man could stay awake all night and still keep the pace. I wanted to be alone. Jikkana's death had raised the specter of Deche and Dorean in my dreams. I didn't want to close my eyes or sleep. Hunting trolls—following their bands and hoping the Troll-Scorcher would do us the honor of killing them— wasn't enough. I wanted my own vengeance.
I wanted to kill trolls with my own weapons, my own hands.
I didn't have long to wait.
It was Nadir-Night of Priest's Fury, another year half-gone to memory, and the troll-hunters of Bult's band celebrated the holiday as they celebrated everything: they drank until they couldn't stand, then lay on their bellies and drank some more, until they'd all passed out around the fire. I thought about leaving. Bult and the rest were the dregs of humanity, and they were the only folk who knew my name. In those days, with trolls and deserters both prowling, a solitary man's life wasn't worth much. I took a picket brand from the fire, wrapped the smoldering tip in oilcloth, and, with my blanket and club tucked under my arm, climbed a nearby hill to keep watch.
The trolls knew our human holidays and our human habits; we'd all lived together peacefully until the wars started. If I'd been a troll, I'd've taken advantage of Nadir-Night, so I was expecting trouble and was ready for it when I heard straw crunching beneath big, heavy feet. Our picket drill was simple, and I knew it well: at the first sound I was supposed to tear the cloth off my brand, then wave it in the air. The flames would alert our band and blind the trolls, whose night vision was better than ours, but vulnerable to sudden flashes of bright light. Once I'd waved my picket brand, though, my orders were to run like wind-whipped fire. The whole band would be ru
I obeyed the first part of my orders, slashing the air to blind whatever was coming up my hill, but Bult and the others weren't going to run anywhere this Nadir-Night. And neither was I. Switching the torch to my off-weapon hand, I picked up a flint-headed club with a short, sharpened hook on one side of the flint and a chiseled knob on the other. I shouted, "Here I am!" and made the guttural sounds I'd been told were insults in the troll language.
The heavy-footed tread got louder, and a big chunk of sky grew darker as the troll hove into view. Like me, he was armed with a stone club, though its haft was thicker than my wrist, and the stone lashed to its tip was as large as my head. He shouted something I didn't understand while he brandished that club over me. I shouted something I can't remember. Then his arm drew back for a killing strike.
I'd get one chance, one swing. To make the most of it, I tossed the torch aside and put both hands on the shaft of my club. Against another human, the flint knob would have been the best choice: a human could stun a man of his own race with the knob, men take him apart with the hook. But against a thick-ski
My arm bones jammed my shoulders when the flint struck flesh. I nearly lost my grip. Nearly. Somehow I kept my hands where they belonged as hook went in up to the leather thong that lashed the stone to the shaft. The troll made a sound like a baby crying. His club grazed my arm as he toppled. He was dead before he struck the ground.
Staggering, because my heart suddenly refused to beat and my lungs forgot to breathe, I dropped to one knee and savored my victory by starlight. But the thoughts that rang in my mind were: What was his name? Did he leave anyone behind who would remember his name? The army Windreaver had loosed in the heartland wasn't made of outcasts, orphans and rootless veterans, like us. The trolls were totally committed to their cause. The bands we trailed were families with fathers and grandfathers, mothers and children.
I'd never know my troll's name or what had brought him, alone, to my hill, his death. Perhaps he'd gotten lost in the night. Perhaps he'd been chasing his own dreams of vengeful glory. But it was a safe bet that he wasn't the only troll in walking distance, and that some other troll was going to come looking for him.
Even if there weren't any other trolls nearby to put the tang of danger in my victory and cut short my celebration, the torch I'd tossed aside had set the straw-grass ablaze.
Fire was an enemy I'd known as long as I'd lived. Grabbing my blanket, I swung and stomped those flames until they were gone and every ember was dark. Then, on my hands and knees, I raked the hot ash with my fingers until it was as cool as the corpse behind me. Dawn was coming when I rested and drained the last drops from my water-skin.
As the first red streaks of daylight thrust over the eastern horizon, I gazed at my night's work: the fire I had extinguished, the troll I'd killed. He was young, probably no older than I—which made him very young for a troll. The warty calluses that armored adults of his race had scarcely spread up his arms. His face was smooth, with soft brown eyes, wide-open and staring at me. His open mouth asked why?
I had no answer. We were far from Deche; there was no cause for me to think I'd claimed vengeance against a troll who'd wronged me personally. Like as not, the troll I'd killed—the troll who would have killed me, I made no mistake there—had his own wounded memories and fought humans for the same reasons I fought trolls.
Neither of us was right, but I was alive. Nothing else mattered. I'd survived the massacre at Deche, and I'd survived a face-to-face combat with a troll. Destiny had plans for me. I believed that as strongly as the sun rose, but I had no hint of what lay before me.
Trolls were sun-worshipers. Every house I'd explored above Deche had an east-facing door with a rayed disk and an inscription chiseled into the stone lintel above it. I'd determined that before the Troll-Scorcher had come to the Kreegills, trolls had set the skulls of their ancestors atop their homes where the sun would strike them first and fill their hollow eyes with light.
My troll had fallen wrong-way round. Dawn struck his feet while his eyes were still in shadow. It was no desecration—not compared to what the trolls had done in Deche and elsewhere—merely an accident as he fell and died. But I had to prove myself better than the trolls, to justify what I'd done. I wrapped my belt around his ankles and hauled him around so the rays fell on his still-open eyes. In ashes