The Prodigal Troll (14 page)

"Are you sure?"

The goat bleated continuously now. Probably frightened by the storm that was blowing up.

"It will only take a moment," she said.

He flipped over on his side. He heard, as if far away, the branch scrape free of the door, and air stir as the wind blew through the open doorway.

"Maa-!" The goat stopped its noise.

Good. She'd gotten it, then. Yvon let go and sank back into sleep's deeper current.

Xaragitte screamed.

Heart kicking like a rabbit caught in a snare, he rolled over too fast and banged his head into the wall. He twisted the other direction, got on his feet, and staggered to the door before he realized he'd forgotten to grab his sword.

The blood in his veins turned to ice. His hands braced the door frame.

Crouching over the dead goat was a dagger-toothed lion.

He'd forgotten the vultures.

Xaragitte stood halfway between the house and the dead nanny. She took one trembling step backward, and the lion lifted its head to growl. Raw flesh plopped out of its mouth, fell slap on the ground.

Yvon tried to yell out to her not to turn her back on it, but his tongue cleaved to his mouth, and she spun around.

The lion leaned back on its squat legs-

Xaragitte took a step and a half toward him, and Yvon's whole world shrunk to the terror compassed by the pale moon of her face.

-and pounced.

Yvon's hand fastened on a chunk of wood from the stack beside the door, and with a roar of his own, he hurled himself at the lion, landing one blow square across its flat snout as it hit Xaragitte between the shoulders, knocking her to the ground.

The lion crouched on Xaragitte's back-she was screaming-and barked at Yvon in surprise. He swung again, another blow on the bridge of the lion's nose. The dry wood cracked and fell to pieces. He reached down to pull Xaragitte to her feet, back to the safety of the house, when the lion swiped him with a paw.

Agony knifed through his arm and chest as he smashed into the ground. The lion leaned over Xaragitte, the twin daggers of its teeth angled to rip open her back.

Yvon surged to his feet, the shattered club still clutched in his fist, and charged the lion with a yell.

The lion sat back on its haunches and roared.

Yvon's yell shriveled in his throat, and his charge stumbled to a dead stop. The roar shivered through him just like the bell ward on the night they'd escaped the castle, turning his joints to jelly and his will to dust.

For a brief second, absolute silence.

Then the baby cried inside the cabin, Xaragitte sobbed, and Yvon gulped, staring down the cavernous jaws of the beast as its nauseating hot breath washed over his face. Yvon raised the stub of his club and started forward.

The lion turned, snatched the goat with its powerful jaws, and shook it once, snapping the rope that held it to the tree. Then it vaulted away into the shadows.

Rain teardropped out of the clouded sky for a few seconds and then started to fall in earnest.

Yvon sagged, sat down hard. Blood spilled from the slashes in his forearm and side. The pain flashed far away, like lightning from a distant storm, then hit him like a roll of thunder so his whole body trembled.

He groaned and wobbled to his feet.

Xaragitte was flat on her stomach, arms covering her head, sobbing and gasping. Her dress was shredded across the middle of her back, the white cloth cut in strips, tatters so mixed with blood and skin that Yvon could not tell which was which.

"Hold on," he said. "I'll be right back-you hold on!"

Her body convulsed with each panting sob; her legs twitched. It was bad.

He looked at himself. His skin was torn to the rib. If nothing was broken he was lucky. A deep cut on his arm went down through the big muscle, but it was his left arm, luckily, and the blood came out steady, not in little pulsing spurts.

He rushed into the house. Claye wailed, dismayed, alone, afraid. Yvon ignored him, found his knife, and cut off one sleeve, tying it as tight as he could around his arm to stop the bleeding. Claye crawled over and clung to his leg. Yvon shoved him away and grabbed the blanket.

He ran back outside and knelt by Xaragitte in the pelting rain. "I need to sew up those wounds," he whispered. "But I don't have needles or thread."

"I'm thirsty," she said, her voice quivering.

He cupped his hands, trying to catch water from the sky, but it ran through his fingers before he could bring it to her lips. The ground beneath her was quickly turning to mud. "I have to get you inside," he said, pressing the blanket against her back, trying to stanch the flow of blood.

Claye's crying jumped up a pitch, slicing through the rain.

"I need to go calm Claye," she said, the words coming out of her mouth as the barest whisper. "Can't you hear him crying?"

"Easy, easy, now," he said, all his attention focused on taking care of her. "Let me help you."

He raised her gently to her feet, and caught her when her knees buckled. He propped her up and they limped side by side into the house, her feet slipping in the mud.

The rain abated for a moment, and an odd kind of thunder rolled down from the hillside. A humanoid shape stood there, dimly outlined between the trees against the blue-black sky. Yvon's feet stopped moving, and he nearly let go of Xaragitte.

She sagged in his arms, gasping as he caught her. "What?" Her voice was shrill, panicked. "What is it?"

The silhouette reared up, extended its long arms like some grotesque mockery of a man, and then slammed them on the ground. It stood as though listening, then turned, and disappeared over the ridge into the forest beyond.

"Nothing, nothing to worry about," Yvon said, helping her into the house.

But the source of the smell in the house became clear. The creature he had just seen was a troll, and it probably used this space as a den sometimes. Of the three things Yvon feared and hated, he'd rather face a mammut or a demon.

Xaragitte was weeping uncontrollably as they stumbled through the door. Claye lay on the ground, his body arched and rigid, eyes squeezed shut, torrenting a scream.

Yvon restrained Xaragitte as she lurched toward the child, pain knifing through his arm and ribs. "You can't pick him up!"

"Just"-she gasped-"help me sit beside him."

Yvon eased her down beside the wall, kneeling beside her to prop her up. She murmured mollifying words as Claye rolled over, trying at once to climb into her arms. She groaned in agony, flinching, almost blacking out as she fell backward.

"Get away!" Yvon reached around her to push Claye down. His hand formed a half-fist, clenched in pain. He wouldn't let anyone or anything hurt her again, not even the baby.

She inhaled sharply, pulling herself upright. "Don't-hurt-him!"

Her words emerged so quietly they all but disappeared as Claye's cry rose in pitch and volume until it sounded like a river in flood. He scrambled for her arms again. Yvon stretched out his hand, to hold the baby off more gently. But Claye grabbed a fistful of skin and hair, and pulled himself hand over hand up Yvon's arm, like a man scaling a rope, until he grasped Xaragitte by the neck and clung there.

Nothing Xaragitte did comforted Claye. Her singing and her soothing strokes were to no effect, nor would the boy take her breast. He cried like a lost child, forlorn.

The rain poured through the roof, soaking everything. Yvon couldn't tell what was wet with rain and what with blood. He leaned against the wall and Xaragitte, like a buttress holding both of them up. The pain stabbed at him. He wanted to move.

Outside, he heard the troll drum its chest again. It sounded nearer. He looked at the wide-open door, and then over at his sword lying half-sunk in a muddy puddle. His hand jumped to his throat. He still had two charms as well.

"M'lady," he said very softly.

"It's raining," she mumbled, trying to rock Claye. Then she started to sing, in a wheezing off-key voice.

"M'lady, I have to look outside."

"Kady was a soldier," she said softly, eyes unfocused.

"I have to block the door again."

"He would have been a knight. Lord Gruethrist was going to make him a knight." She glanced at Claye, who sucked on his thumb, eyes closed. "You're Lord Gruethrist now. Will you make him a knight? Sir Kady, the barrelwright's handsome boy."

Her voice was weak. A shudder racked her body. Yvon put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she flinched away.

"I'm going to stand up now, and step outside, and then I'll be back straight away," he said.

"Death follows me, just like Bwnte," she said. "Bury me deep; let new life sprout up again like a seed."

"No one needs to bury you yet," Yvon said, turning away. He gritted his teeth to bite back the pain when he picked up his sword, pulled it from its sheath, and shook the water off it.

Xaragitte's head leaned sideways in his direction. "We all die. You too, even you." She sang it. "You too, even you. You too, even you."

He shook his head, shivering at her voice, and went to the threshold. He stopped to kick aside the branch he had used to block the door. A stick that puny wouldn't last two seconds against a troll. He needed something larger.

The stark shapes of the trees pricked the dark, clouded sky like a hedge of thorns. The rain had tapered off to a few scattered drops. Holding his sword before him, Yvon stepped outside. He didn't see any sign of the troll on the ridge. One cautious step was followed by another, and then he hurried away from the house, turning in case the troll came out behind the corner-nothing there.

He stopped and tugged on the cords that held the last two magic ampules, letting them rest outside his shirt. He could use them on the troll if it came too close.

With one eye to the ridge, he searched for a fallen branch big enough to block the door. When he found one as thick as a man's forearm and twice as long as a man was tall, he couldn't hold it with his left arm. He had to switch his sword to his left hand, where fingers gripped it numbly, and drag the branch in the crook of his right. Still it kept slipping away. It took a long time to get it all the way back to the cabin's door.

Panting hard, he dropped it outside and stepped through to see that Xaragitte and Claye were safe. He saw Claye lying on the ground in the corner.

"No no no."

Xaragitte's voice made him jump. She stood just inside the door, leaning against the wall. He felt a sharp pain in his heart as he saw her.

"M'lady, you shouldn't be on your feet." He lifted his hand to touch her.

Her eyes narrowed. The pain twisted suddenly sideways.

He teetered forward, sword dropping from his fingers, and looked down. The hilt of Xaragitte's knife protruded from the left side of his chest, between his ribs. He tried to grab it, but his fingers didn't work.

"You're not my Kady," she said. "You tried to hurt my baby. You slapped my baby down."

Her face turned to black dots as Yvon collapsed. Looking up from the floor he saw only her red hair, suddenly bright as flame, like a halo of fire, as if Bwnte herself, the goddess of fertility and death, were in the room.

"No, you'll never hurt my baby again," she said. Her voice sounded far away, like it came from the bottom of a well. Then the walls of the well caved in and everything went black.

Far away, muffled, as if it came through a mound of dirt, he heard Claye crying.

"Mamamamama!"