Draka

“Absolutely not!” Makanna hissed, her hands on her hips. She was still a little wobbly on her feet but she wanted to make a statement, I suppose. “Val almost died–”

“But he did not! And it’s less than a quarter!” Herald protested.

“–half of your arrows are gone, and we used our good potion! Besides, Draka’s hurt!”

That made Herald visibly hesitate, until I spoke up. “I’m not that bad,” I said. Makanna didn’t reply, but the look she gave me screamed, “Not helping!”

“Please listen, Mak,” Tamor said. “What happened here was a fluke! You saw how easily we took down that first troll. Just because we had some bad luck–”

“You don’t have bad luck!” Makanna shouted at him. “We fucked up!”

“Just because we had some bad luck,” Tamor repeated stubbornly, “doesn’t mean that we should give up entirely! Yes, the biggest, baddest bastard I’ve ever seen came on us when we weren’t prepared! Yes, Val got hurt, and that haunts me! But the troll is dead, and Val is not, thanks to you.”

“If anything luck was on our side. You think it was bad luck that let one stab of your spear ruin that troll’s knee?” I asked Makanna. She scowled at me. “Or that let me reach the troll right before he grabbed Val?” I glanced at Tamor. “Maybe luck can only get you so far, but fortune favours the bold, right?”

“Oh, I like that,” Tamor said under his breath.

“Focus!” Makanna said.

“This is what we do!” Herald said, and Makanna spun to face the renewed threat of her sister. “We take risks, and we get rich! We cannot give up every time there is a minor setback!”

“A minor–” Makanna sputtered.

“We’ve seen what they can do, now, and it’s five against three,” Tamor pressed on. “The chance of fighting two of them one after the other again is minimal!”

“Two of us–” Makanna said, whirling back towards her brother.

“You know, I could watch the ruin from before dawn, and make sure we get one that’s wandered off far from the others,” I said. “I blind it, Herald peppers it with arrows, and then you finish it off. We might even be able to do it without Valmik.”

It took a few more salvos, but eventually we wore her down. In the end Makanna’s pride and her greed were stronger than her caution. The finishing blow came when Herald alluded to some horse that Makanna had apparently had her eye on, and which she might be able to buy guilt free if we got a good haul from the ruin. She agreed to stay and fight on, on the condition that we plan every engagement meticulously.

“The Herald was right,” my dragon said out of nowhere. I hadn’t heard from her in what felt like ages. “Her sister did see reason.”

I committed fully to keeping Makanna onboard. The rest of the day and most of that night I alternated between napping at the temporary camp and patrolling the area. An hour or so before dawn I made my way to the ruin, confirming that all three remaining trolls were there. They’d taken the loss of two members in stride, having each claimed a larger area of the den for themselves

The trolls woke up before dawn, the first one waking the others by simply being its own loud, unpleasant self. A small scuffle broke out, the two that had been woken being very unhappy about the fact, but once that was settled they all left the den and headed out into the forest. They went roughly towards the points of a triangle, covering the maximum area either by cunning or instinct, so I followed the one whose direction took it closest to my companions.

This was the smallest of the original group, so I called the hulking beast Tiny. She was not only shorter, not quite topping eight feet, but thinner as well. I guessed that being smaller made her easy for the others to bully, which meant less food for her from the larder-slash-refuse pile, which meant that she stayed smaller, and so on.

Tiny made up for her size by being sneakier and more clever than I’d seen from the others. She didn’t just lumber around. I followed her until she spotted something, and watched with interest as she held up one hand, considering the wind then carefully sneaking around to keep herself downwind from her prey, which looked like some kind of land-dwelling beaver. While she stalked the beaver I watched her, curious about what she’d do.

With great care, Tiny searched the ground, then very quietly dug out a large rock. She found a spot she liked in some bushes, next to a narrow trail, and hunkered down. But she didn’t throw the rock at the beaver-thing, which was happily gnawing on a thick, exposed tree root. Instead she threw it in an arc, sailing high above the creature and crashing down on the opposite side of it from herself.

The beaver leapt into a run, right in Tiny’s direction. When it got close to Tiny’s hiding spot the troll crashed out, wrapping her arms around it and squeezing until something crunched. Well done, Tiny!

Tiny had to die.

Trolls were already nightmares with their size and the amount of punishment they could handle. A clever troll, this far south, was unacceptable, not because it was a threat to every human it might come near, but because it might wander into my territory. I didn’t like the idea of a bear wandering around my turf, and Tiny was infinitely worse.

Before I knew it my attitude had gone from following Tiny to actively stalking her. It was a bad idea. I knew that it was a bad idea and I did it anyway, with Makanna’s words the other night about being more careful either ignored or forgotten.

Tiny chowed down immediately. She ate quickly and messily, probably out of hard-won habit, and while she didn’t have my sharp teeth she more than made up for it in sheer strength. Human me would probably have thrown up, but as it was I watched with a sort of horrified fascination. I wondered what I looked like when I ate. I knew that it wasn’t pretty, but it couldn’t be this bad, could it?

A memory flashed of me tearing off the lower leg of a goat and swallowing it whole, skin, hoof, bone and all. No wonder the others always looked away ‘politely’ when I ate.

I hoped that Tiny would choke on a bone or something, but that, unfortunately, didn’t happen. A little after finishing she did, however, become visibly drowsy, probably something similar to how I went into a torpor after a large meal. And so, I hatched a plan.

Since Tiny was far from my companions and not heading in their direction, I risked leaving her for a while. I still needed to keep a general idea of where she was, but if I lost track of her it wouldn’t be the end of the world. My goal was simple: find something fairly large, and kill it. I decided on a combination of my old strategies. First, I sniffed around until I found a trail. Then I climbed a nearby tree and hung out there, invisible among the branches, until I heard something walking along the ground, not quite crashing along but not sneaking either. Looking down I saw a decently sized boar passing by, stopping to root around among the leaves every so often.

It didn’t stop right in the shadow of my tree, but it was close enough. In quick sequence I shifted, forced the shadow to deepen, then glided up until I was no more than a yard away from the pig. I couldn’t see it, since it stood in the light, but I could still hear it rooting around.

There was no sound when I shifted back except for the soft crunch of leaves under my feet, but that was enough for the alert boar to look in my direction. It saw me just in time to get a face full of venom. With a loud squeal it took off running blindly for a dozen yards before it crashed head first into a tree so hard that the branches rustled. It got up, wheezing, stumbled a few steps, then collapsed.

Very pleased with myself, I walked up to the dying boar and tore its throat out with my claws. Part one of my plan was done, and the blood that spilled on the ground was the beginning of part two. I grabbed the pig with my jaws and one hand, happy to have something between my teeth to bite down on as pain shot up my bruised side, and then began dragging the carcass in Tiny’s general direction, trying to keep downwind of where she should be.

I found Tiny again some time later. She’d spent what must have been a whole lot of effort digging out some kind of burrow, but had nothing to show for it. Don’t worry, Tiny, I thought to myself. You’ll have a whole pig to yourself soon.

With Tiny still busy I dragged my catch around so that I’d be upwind of her. Hopefully she wouldn’t smell me and be spooked, but that was a risk I’d have to take. I found a location I was happy with, and then I set up my ambush.

It was simple. I left the pig’s carcass in the sun, upwind from Tiny. Then I quite messily disembowelled it, only snacking a little before spreading the guts out in front of the pig. That done, I posted up in a tree and waited. Fortune was clearly on my side, because soon a breeze blew through the trees, bringing the scent of free pig in Tiny’s direction.

I didn’t have to wait long. Tiny came sneaking up to the small clearing, sniffing and looking around suspiciously. The fact that she never even glanced towards my tree suggested that I either didn’t smell strongly enough for her to notice me, or more likely that I was so covered in the smell of the pig that I was indistinguishable from the strong aroma that hung in the air.

Seemingly satisfied that she was both safe and lucky, Tiny rushed forward, shoving some of the pig guts into her mouth and then dragging the rest of the carcass into the bushes, where she began to feast with a sound like a chicken going through a garbage disposal. I waited patiently, wondering if there’d be anything left when she was done. She was a big girl, after all, even if she wasn’t big for a troll.

It was afternoon when she finished. It had taken Tiny a little over an hour to polish off a whole pig, but polish off a whole pig she did. My mind again drew some unflattering parallels between her and myself, but a bit of unpleasant self-reflection was worth it. Soon Tiny slumped down in the sun, propped against a tree. I could see her fighting to stay awake, but it was a futile struggle. After several rounds of her eyes slowly closing and then popping open, they stayed closed, and soon I heard a soft snoring.

She snored less than Herald, which was hilarious.

One thing about trolls that I was reminded of very quickly was just how tough they are. I did my thing, sneaking down and spraying venom in her face. I even waited until she inhaled for maximum effect. Then, before she had a chance to react, I gave her a good slash in the neck with my claws, which got her bleeding pretty badly. Of course, because she had her eyes closed in sleep she wasn’t blinded, and neither did she wake up in the confusion I’d been planning to use to put some distance between us. Instead she woke up in an immediate, berserk rage. Her eyes popped open wide, and she took a swipe at me that was just barely too slow to catch me on the head. I threw myself back with a hiss, managing to spit rather than spray a spatter of venom that didn’t do more than make her blink.

Still, she was bleeding heavily from the neck, and I could hear her wheezing. Time was on my side. I jumped back a bit to give myself space, then turned to leap up the nearest tree. If I could only –

I felt a painfully strong grip around my tail, and with a yank that made my hips pop, Tiny reeled me in. I felt her other hand on the base of my wing, and when she pulled I had no choice but to scrabble back or have my wing dislocated or broken. As she pulled me close I whipped my head back in pure desperation, and got a good look at her ugly mug coming down to bite me. Reflexively I instead bit her, right across the face. My upper jaw on one cheekbone, my lower jaw on the other, and dozens of sharp teeth digging into her flesh, I bit down for all I was worth.

Tiny howled. Or she would have if she could. Instead all that came out was a piping wheeze. She jerked her head around, but all that did was to rip my teeth around in her flesh. When that didn’t work she released her grip on my tail and wing, leaving me hanging from her face by the strength of my jaw.

Then she punched me.

One moment I was hanging from her face. The next I was on the ground, my vision white as I tried to understand what had happened. That was the second time a troll had hit me, and they were two for two in nearly knocking me out. I had a brief chance to gather myself before she kicked me away from her, into the shadow of an old, leafy tree.

I panted on the ground, desperately trying to orient myself. Looking around I found Tiny, grasping at her ruined face with one huge paw. Blood ran in sheets down her cheeks, her neck, and her chest, making the malevolent stare she gave me all that much more horrifying. As she started advancing on me I felt truly afraid for my life for the first time in…

Well, shit. Since yesterday, I thought. Probably not a good pattern.

I acted on pure instinct. I couldn’t get my feet under me fast enough to get up the tree, so instead I pushed at the shadows with all that I had, and began to shift the instant I felt the resistance of the light recede. I shifted just in time, and felt a moment of wrongness and disorientation as her huge paw passed through where my head should have been. Giving thanks to God, Baby Jesus, Thor, the Mercies, and anyone else who might possibly be listening, I flowed straight up the tree, as far as I could go, before shifting back.

I hung there, more tangled in than laying among the branches, panting and alternatingly cursing and congratulating myself. I’d added to my bruises and my head was still ringing, but I was alive and, again, nothing felt broken. Though that might be shock setting in, a treacherous little voice that remembered my first aid training said.

Tiny raged down below, smashing the tree with her fists, but she was weakening noticeably by the second. Soon she slumped to the ground, gasping and wheezing shallowly. A little after that, she stopped making any sounds at all.

I felt… ashamed. For a moment I wondered why I’d killed her. She hadn’t done anything to me. She wasn’t anywhere near my territory or anyone I cared about. She was in my way, that was all. She’d looked like she’d had a rough life, but she’d been smart… for a troll, at least. Maybe she’d had potential that other trolls lacked? Maybe she could have been something more. And I’d taken that away. Snuffed it out.

Then the feeling vanished. She was in the way. She’d probably eaten at least parts of the Three-ers. That was a pretty big deal. And she had been a terrible threat. What if she’d found a new male, and spawned a whole tribe of clever eight-foot monsters?

No, I’d been right to kill her. Maybe I should have waited, so that we could have done it more safely, but one less troll, at least here, was a good thing any way you looked at it.

After catching my breath I shifted, flowed down the tree, and shifted back. I didn’t even want to think about climbing with the way my sides hurt. I looked at the dead troll. The guilt was gone, but I still felt a kind of preternatural kinship with her. If I didn’t have the advantages that I did, with flight, being extremely stealthy, and then my shadow powers on top of that, would someone have killed me in my sleep by now? I was a monster by most people’s standard.

But then that feeling went away as well. There was no point in worrying about that. I needed to get back to my friends and rest. There were still two trolls out there, and then, hopefully, a treasure to dig out.

“Sorry, Tiny,” I said. Then I dug my way inside her ribcage and ate her heart. I was hungry, and it felt like a weirdly respectful thing to do.