The Prodigal Troll (31 page)

Maggot thought that he would like fighting. From what Sinnglas told him, it was a kind of wrestling like his old bouts against Fart and other trolls. "I will fight with you."

Sinnglas squeezed Maggot's forearm. "This dance will let us see if all of my people feel as you do, or if they would rather hide in the woods like deer, a few here, a few there, always frightened of the Lion's roar."

Drums sounded outside, a rhythm tapped and cut short. The wave of voices rose and fell. The wizard had ceased speaking.

The men inside the lodge stamped their feet impatiently and flexed their arms. Naked from the waist up, each man carried a warclub, bow, or other weapon. Some wore no more than the basic cloths, and a little paint. Others wore decorated bands about their arms and thighs, and several had rattles tied in bundles about their calves.

They were all ready except Sinnglas, whom Maggot had delayed. Sinnglas tied a set of copper bells, tarnished green with age, below his knees. He jingled when he stood and walked to the head of the line waiting at the entrance. Then he ran through the entrance. The others followed him, screaming.

Maggot exited last, walking, silent. The dark blue of evening bruised the eastern sky.

Sinnglas's shrill cry continued as he led the runners outside the circle of people. Over a hundred people gathered, the whole village, until the elder men of the council came out of the lodge and stood in the circle. Squandral joined them, gazing down the beak of his nose like an eagle perched on the mountainside. The trollbirds hovered at his shoulders. Narrow-faced Menato scanned the crowd until his eyes lit on Maggot, paused, and moved on. When Damaqua finally emerged last, he stood there solemnly, lids half-closed like an old troll asleep on his feet. Tanaghri, his advisor, slipped away.

Sinnglas led the dancers around the outside one last time, stopping when he reached Damaqua. The jingling and the rattles fell silent. They stood there, the two brothers facing one another. The crowd murmured and shifted. Sinnglas opened his mouth to say something.

Damaqua stepped aside first.

Sinnglas gave a frightening whoop, which was answered by the others as they poured into the open circle. There was a collective exclamation from the audience to which Maggot added his voice. The drummers were seated off to one side next to Gelapa. Four men sat at two drums, like the one Maggot had stolen, only shorter and squatter. They began to pound and sing as the feet of the dancers resounded upon the ground.

"Heh," someone said behind Maggot.

He jumped, spinning to see Damaqua's advisor, Tanaghri.

"Tell Sinnglas that he should enjoy his dance tonight," Tanaghri said. "Let the young men feel good. But the council will send a mes senger down to the Lion's men to warn them of his coming. It will be best if he turns them elseway, over the passes, to attack the farms of our ancient enemy."

"I to tell him should go now?" Maggot asked, so flustered he couldn't put his words in proper order.

Tanaghri snorted. "Only a fool needs close instruction. No, tell him alone, later, when the dance is done."

He turned away and passed through the crowd again.

The rapid song paused-Maggot spun to see the drummers and dancers waiting. Just as he drew breath to ask someone about this, the music and dance resumed at a faster pace, building to a crescendo. When it ended the dancers paced, heads down, in a tight knot until Sinnglas whooped, the others answered, and the drummers began a new song.

The dancers pounded their heels upon the ground in time with the music and struck exaggerated poses with their weapons. One man listened and another watched, one man struck with his club while another cut with his knife and others drew their bows. Kinnicut, the blacksmith, wielded his iron-headed war hammer as though he stood at his pounding stone. Sometimes they attacked and sometimes defended.

It was not the way that Maggot would hunt a lion.

But then his way, dropping from a tree, was the troll way, and he wanted to learn to be like people so he could find the woman again and show his interest to her.

The dancers continued until their bodies glistened with sweat. Maggot had never hunted animals or wrestled another troll where the action continued as long as this. Sinnglas extended the time between songs when the men stalked menacingly within the circle. But again and again he raised his voice, the dancers answered, and the drummers played.

As the seventh or eighth song-a rapt Maggot had forgotten to count-built toward its culmination, a tapping sound came from the circle of observers. The drummers stopped instantly, mallets poised in the air. The dancers paused too and stood relaxed, breathing deeply.

The interruption was made by Kagesh, one of the council members. "All my friends and relatives," Kagesh said. "This dance pleases me, and I hope it will continue unabated. I give thanks to the wardancers for the spirit with which they perform their duty to our people. When I was a young man, I was the greatest dancer in the village. No one could surpass me. So I know that it is thirsty work. To the dancers I give this flask of medicine waters, to allay their thirst when they are done."

Some of the people laughed or clapped, and some of the dancers smiled. But not Sinnglas, who had many times decried the invaders' medicine waters. Keekyu, often the brunt of his brother's complaints, stepped forward and politely accepted the gift on behalf of the dancers.

The drum sounded, Sinnglas whooped, and the dancers responded. The performance resumed. During the next dance, there was another tap and another lapse into silence.

Tanaghri stood at the left hand of Damaqua again. "All my friends and relatives," he said. "It is fitting that the dancers should perform tonight, for we have among us the eminent Squandral, who has gone to war in his own day. I want to recognize the women who assisted in the preparation of the feast that honored Squandral. We did not eat so much food, or so well, when I was a young man. Since I cannot give presents to them all, I ask that one comes forward, she who was greediest and ate most from the pot."

The crowd laughed at this, and one bent old woman was pushed forward by the others, shuffling over to Tanaghri to accept his gift of a silver coin. She held it up and grinned with gap-toothed goodwill. The people applauded. When the old woman stepped away, the drummers resumed, the dancers cried out, and the cycle repeated.

More interruptions followed, many of them barbs exchanged between the older men or comments honoring the singers and dancers. The speakers gave away medicine weed and silver coins and other items, some to the singers, some to the dancers, some to one another, as twilight fell. Maggot soon realized that the speeches gave the dancers a chance to rest, and encouraged them, so that they could keep up their performance. When they danced, Maggot found himself pounding out the rhythm with his own feet.

Then Damaqua tapped, and the drummers and dancers fell silent. Sinnglas froze in midmotion, forgetting to relax.

"All my friends and relatives," Damaqua said in his fluid, resonant voice. "I would like to recognize my brother Sinnglas, the leader of this dance. Maybe you remember our father, who was wise and had long vision so that for many years he served as our First." The word he used was not First, but that's how Maggot understood it. "I would like to present Sinnglas with this medal, on which the Empress's face is printed, to remind him of what our father wore all those years he lived in peace with the invaders."

The medal hung on a ribbon around Damaqua's neck. He lifted it over his head and offered it to Sinnglas, who stood motionless with his warclub raised above his head. Damaqua walked into the circle, medal dangling from his fist.

For several seconds, the only sounds to be heard were the rapid chirps of the crickets and the distant burps of frogs.

Sinnglas covered his brother's fist with his hand. One of the drummers started pounding again, and after missing several beats, the others joined in. But Sinnglas did not let go of his brother's hand, or else his brother would not let go of the medal. And because Sinnglas made no sound, the other dancers stood still amid the drumming.

Maggot shifted, fidgeted, until his eyes met those of Sinnglas's wife, and he saw her worry and fear for her husband, her embarrassment by this thing done wrong, and then Maggot found himself pushing through the silent throng of watchers until he ran into the circle, raising the war whoop in Sinnglas's place.

As he started pounding his heels in imitation of the dancers he had watched so carefully, one voice took up the cry with him-Pisqueto. Then Keekyu, then the others. They all commenced dancing. When he completed the circle, Maggot saw Sinnglas take the medal from his brother, hang it about his neck, and join the dancing, and he felt glad.

He slashed with his knife, reliving his struggle with the lion, showing them all his skill and fearlessness before they went to hunt another lion. He dropped to his knees, nearly tripping the man behind him, wrapped his arm around an invisible throat, and plunged the knife between its ribs.

The dance went by more quickly when one participated. The tempo increased sooner than Maggot expected, but before the song concluded Sinnglas jumped to the side of the drummers and tapped wood for silence.

"All my friends and relatives," he said, panting, bending to untie the bells from his legs. "My wise brother Damaqua recalls our history for us. He reminds us that the long period of peace we had with the invaders began with a period of war. To show him that we must be like our father, and move through war to peace again, I give him these copper rattles. If he has not forgotten the ways of our people, perhaps he will come back into the circle and show us how to dance."

Laughter, and even applause, answered this turnabout, some of it from Squandral's two men. Damaqua accepted the rattles with an expression as blank and ominous as the sun. He did not put them on.

The drummers resumed. Sinnglas whooped, and this time Maggot fell in with the others. While he danced, he felt larger than Ragweed, or Big Thunder, capable of anything. His glance caught Pisqueto's coal-dark eyes, and he saw the same thing reflected there. Caught up in emotion, he missed Squandral tapping for silence and stopped only when he heard his voice.

"All my friends, all my relatives," he said, speaking loudly, through his mouth, so that Maggot understood his words. "In all my years, I have never seen a war dance as memorable as this one. My praise goes out to all the dancers. Like one of those within the circle, I am a visitor here in your village. I speak of the one called Maqwet, who came out of the mountains, I am told, in the same way that First Man did."

Maggot stood straighter. He didn't know why the story of First Man had come up again. He'd told the trollbird, Menato, that it was untrue.

"While I do not have any tooth or tusk to give him," Squandral said, "if he plans to stay among us, he must learn to put something on his head. So I give him this cloth and ask him to wear it when he goes down among the invaders."

He unwrapped the red length of fabric from around his head, and a single braid dropped loose. A warrior's braid.

Sinnglas whooped immediately, before the drummers struck a single beat or Maggot could accept the proffered cloth. First Gelapa, the wizard, and then Damaqua, and then most of the other council members withdrew into the lodge. The drummers refused to continue without their leaders present. Pisqueto and some of the others danced without the drummers, singing the war songs themselves. Others stood there, confused.

Sinnglas ran over and embraced Squandral. "You are with us then? You will join us in this war?"

"Though it breaks my heart in two to do so," Squandral said loudly enough for others to overhear. "I thought I had seen enough of war, but the invaders treat us badly. Some of their men burned with the fire water, and set upon a group from our village. They killed my niece and her husband, and their little child. We asked for justice, but Baron Culufre says he can do nothing. I will join you until my family is revenged and the invaders know that they cannot treat us so."

"With you by my side, the enemy will fall before us."

Squandral grunted noncommittally. "Our chances were not good the last time, and that was thirty years ago, when I was a young man. Our losses were great, and we were weaker when the war was done than when it began. We have not grown greater since, but the invaders spread like locusts in the summer. Yet, if we do nothing, I fear our people will disappear completely."

"It is what I have been saying. Damaqua will change his mind now. He will join us."

"I will carry the hatchet into our village," Squandral said loudly. "And I will send Menato south with it to Custalo. Together we shall have at least fifty warriors. We had many more than that the last time we fought the invaders, and their numbers were much less."

Sinnglas made a sharp cutting gesture with his hand. "The wolverine feeding at the carcass of a deer has many fewer teeth than the pack of wolves around him, yet holds onto his own. It is not our size that matters, but the strength of our attack."

"Still, our women and children should prepare to flee into the mountains."

"That will be wise," Sinnglas admitted. "We should strike quickly, with surprise."

"That will be wise also." Squandral said something through his nose that Maggot didn't quite catch.

"I did see the snakeskin fall," Sinnglas answered. "Did the wizard say whose death it presages?"

Squandral shrugged. "All men die. Let us hope it is a good death, whoever's it is."

They said their farewells then, and Sinnglas and Maggot returned to the lodge of his wife's family. She put out two bowls of food. Maggot ate while Sinnglas removed his regalia. Their children, a little boy and a little girl, peered at him with awestruck eyes from behind their mother's skirts while she presented Maggot with a bearskin bag. He peered inside and found more food. He scooped some out with his fingers. It tasted like parched corn, but it was sweet like the maple syrup. He shoved several fingerfuls into his mouth. Her mouth dropped open aghast, but Sinnglas laughed out loud.