Chapter 17: 16. Three Trolls

The three trolls spread throughout the woodland at the next pulse of Aletheia’s light. They moved quickly, but Corvo saw that two had crude axes, and a third wielded a spear with a bone point. Most were bare-chested, wearing cloth around their waists, and they were huge—taller than Mother, taller even than Trito. Their hides were green and brown interwoven in patterns, like camouflage the color of the surrounding trees.

Each had tusks hanging from its mouth.

They said something in a coarse language as darkness fell again. Then they were invisible, at the edge of Mother’s magelights.

Heavy footsteps crunched through leaves around the edge of the shadow.

“Stay between us,” Dorian said. “Light them up!”

Aletheia conjured a flurry of new lights in her hand and tossed them farther out into the trees, lighting up more of the woods. The three trolls appeared again; they took up positions around Dorian and Aletheia, surrounding them, making sure they had nowhere to run.

“We don’t want to fight!” Aletheia shouted.

The biggest troll, the one with the bone spear, snorted. It was hunchbacked and laden in muscle, like a bull, but close to the shape of a human.

And when it spoke, Corvo now understood its words:

“Silly lights shine in eyes of trappers,” it said. “Humans bring sun to earth, try to set woods aflame?”

The rumble of its bass terrified Corvo. The noise echoed like thunder and shook his chest. He grabbed hold of Aletheia’s waist.

“Why can I understand them?” Dorian whispered.

“Why do you think? Negotiate,” Aletheia said. She readied her bow but didn’t aim another shot. “We don’t want to harm the woods. The lights are—to keep predators away.”

The trolls orbited in a circle around them. At the circle’s center the party spun to keep facing the trolls, stepping always slowly to the side.

The big one snorted again. “Keeps some predators away. Draws other.”

“Only insects are drawn to light,” Aletheia said. “Is that what you are?”

“You’ll piss them off!” Dorian hissed.

“We didn’t come to fight,” she said, ignoring him. “We have a child with us. Our warriors are away.”

“Many weapons for no warrior,” the biggest troll said. It came to a stop and stepped forward, into clearer light.

The grooves of its chest were inlaid with blue ink. Between each muscle was a scar, some in the shape of blades and others in the unmistakable pattern of a predator’s jaws.

Two tusk-shaped points had healed on its thick neck.

“I’m a hunter,” Aletheia said. “He’s an old man. That’s all. We were left to look after the child. There’s no honor in killing us.”

“Human is right,” said one of the other trolls. “They smell weak.”

“No!” said the third. “Four horses. Good meat.”

“Quiet!” said the biggest. It approached Aletheia.

She raised her bow. An arrow was drawn.

A normal bow couldn’t be held back like that for long. But Corvo had seen before that her Elven bow was not normal.

“You can take the horses,” she said.

“They’ll think we’re weak," Dorian said. "They’ll come back for more.”

“For more what?” said the big troll. “Humans have no flesh. Taste like worm.” It grumbled—and then nodded. “We take four horses.”

“No!” Aletheia said. “We need one. You have to leave us with one. That’s all. Take the other three.”

The troll was feet away from her now. It looked her over, and it shook its head.

“We take four.”

“You can’t take all four,” Aletheia said.

They stared into each other’s eyes. The troll’s face was carved everywhere with scars and tattoos. Its eyes were green and full, like a dog’s, white only around the edges.

“Are four horses worth your lives, troll?” Dorian said. “Suffice yourself with three.”

“Don’t!” Aletheia whispered—but the troll ignored her.

It looked over her shoulder. “You think you take our lives?” it said. “You think you win fight?”

One of the others laughed, a noise like rocks falling from a mountainside. Corvo cowered, sinking lower to the ground; whichever direction he looked there was a troll above them now. He begged, quietly, for Mother to come save them.

“No! We’re not fighters!” Aletheia said.

By then the troll was close enough to touch the horses. It reached for Mother’s mare, Sinir, with the silver coat. Its huge hands wrapped around her mane, and it looked to Corvo.

But it did not have hatred in its eyes. It was like an animal, disinterested, not threatening. It gave him a nod. His spear lowered. “My wife will make this one to fine cape. Pretty silver, like gray wolf," it said.

“Not her,” Aletheia said. “You can have the others. Not this one.”

The troll’s tusks seemed to invert into a strange and inhuman frown. Its eyes sank, and it cocked its head.

“We take silver horse,” it said. “Leave brown with human.”

“Let her go,” Aletheia said. She pulled her arrow back another inch. “Not her.”

Two trolls had come very close to Dorian behind them. He backed up with his sword at the ready, until he hit Corvo’s back.

“It’s not worth it,” he said. “It’s done.”

Aletheia shook her head. “Let her go.”

The big troll smiled. The Elven bow and its arrow did not intimidate it. So it glanced away, and it tugged Sinir toward the woods.

Aletheia let her arrow slip.

The bow was almost silent from any distance, but the arrow whistled for a fraction of a second, for just long enough to be heard.

It hit the biggest troll in the neck. The tip sliced through its throat before coming to a stop, buried up to its fletching. The force made the troll stumble backward; blood poured down its throat, flowing in rivulets along the tattoos across its chest, channeling into old scars and filling them like puddles in a rainstorm.

The others erupted in screams.

Aletheia pushed Corvo to the ground. He fell face-first into grass and tasted mud in his mouth.

Behind them Dorian parried downward strikes of axes from both of the smaller trolls, backing up with each strike. He nicked one with a cut along the bicep, but the other came too quickly upon him; it swung at him, and he could do nothing but turn, scrambling, and run.

Aletheia shot two arrows into the chest of one of the smaller trolls. It stumbled, turning its attention their way, and roared.

It marched in their direction.

“Run,” she said. She grabbed Corvo and lifted him up. “Run!”

Corvo ran. He scampered out of the way, beneath the hooves of Sinir, and toward the trees. The troll didn’t care about him; its attention was on Aletheia.

She shot it again. And again. But it did not slow down. It had five arrows in its torso by the time it reached her. She toppled backward, shooting one last time, when it grabbed her around the neck.

It brought its tusks to her face and roared. It heaved her two feet off the ground.

She dropped her bow and grabbed its forearm.

Her hands glowed red. Smoke poured into the air, along with the smell of burnt flesh, as the troll’s hand erupted in flame.

It roared in pain. But it didn’t let her go. It tightened its hold and punched her, hard; blood trailed from her nose, and the fire consumed them both, jumping from the troll’s wrist and to Aletheia’s shirt.

Suddenly the flame disappeared. Then Corvo blinked, and Aletheia disappeared, too.

The troll looked one way and then the other. It raised its axe above its head and shouted, “Witch! No honor!”

She materialized behind it, landing the wrong direction, but swiftly spun around to face it again. She drew her sword; she thrust her free hand in the troll’s direction, and as it turned, she let a torrent of golden fire stream from her fingertips.

The troll was completely engulfed. Corvo’s eyes burned in the brightness.

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But it still was alive. It charged her again, and she retreated.

They disappeared behind one of the horses. Corvo couldn’t see what happened next.

He looked to Dorian instead.

He dueled the second troll with his sword. The huge creature took swipes at him with its axeblade like a bear with its claws. He ducked beneath one cleave, parried another, and dodged a third. Twice he landed thrusts through the troll’s torso—and twice he pulled his blade free without the troll slowing down.

These creatures were not smart. They were not fast. They were not agile. But they were strong, and they were very tough.

On his third thrust, this time aiming for the troll’s heart, his blade became stuck. He tugged the hilt to free it, but it would not budge.

He took too long. The troll grabbed him and pulled him in close; and although it didn’t have room to hit him with the axe’s head, it used its haft to butt him across the forehead.

He stumbled backward, dazed, just as the blade came free. The troll prepared a massive downward swing—

There was no time for anything else. Dorian grabbed the tip of his blade with his left hand, raised it with the flat upward, and braced to catch the blow.

The axe cut his sword in two. The force was deflected at the last moment, but Dorian pulled his arms away with the shattered half of a blade in one hand and a useless hilt in the other.

Corvo had to do something. He looked around and found a rock. When he found one big and heavy enough, he threw it at the troll over Dorian.

It landed yards away in the grass, harmlessly thumping into a pile of mud.

Corvo tried again. He found another rock, this one smaller, and wound up his arm—

The rock left his hand, sailing toward its target, when it bounced off a burly, bloodstained chest.

Something stepped in front of him.

It was the biggest troll. Gore still flooded from its throat, spurting in rhythm with a slow heartbeat. But it reached up to the arrow in its throat, wrapped its hand around the shaft, and tugged. And tugged. And tugged.

The arrow came free.

It tossed it aside and sneered. Then it raised its spear.

Corvo screamed and ran. He turned and fled into the woods. He didn’t stop to look over his shoulder, but he heard the cracking of sticks, and the heavy respiration of an inhuman creature, and when he reached the edge of his Mother’s magelights, he saw an enormous shadow descend over him—a shadow with two tusks.

He kept running. He didn’t think about entering the darkness, but sprinted as fast as he could into it. He ran until he couldn’t run any more, until his lungs burned, and until his foot found an exposed root in the dark.

He tripped onto his face. He hit his head on a rock, and one of his baby teeth fell from his mouth. He tasted his own blood on his tongue. His head hurt badly, but he was too afraid to cry. He did nothing but try to lift himself back up, when at last he looked behind him.

The biggest troll stood over him.

It lowered its spear to his chest.

“Traitor pup,” it snarled. Now the troll's eyes showed pure bloodlust. It was furious, raging, and unthinking; it had the look of a rabid animal, acting only out of anger. It wanted nothing in the world but to cause pain and suffering. It would kill Corvo in a single second.

But Corvo's attention was no longer on the troll. He shook his head and screamed, but not for fear of the troll; he was looking over the troll's shoulder, at the shadowy shape in the woodlands behind it.

Two red eyes hung over troll's head. And when it saw Corvo’s gaze looking over it, it turned, and it saw the shape, too.

The shape of the Shadow Man. But he was bigger than he ever had been before, taller even than the troll, and he moved like he weighed ten thousand pounds.

“Why would you hurt my little crow?”

The troll must have been surprised, for it recoiled when it saw the shape. It roared for a final time, and it leaped forward. Its tusks pierced the Shadow Man’s chest, and it clawed at him with its massive hands.

But the shadow was not affected. The troll’s body entered the darkness like it was nothing more than that. It fell forward, not hitting anything physical, and landed on the ground.

The Shadow Man reached for the troll with its two huge arms, far too long for the shape of its body. Yet when he hit the troll, he became solid—he was solid now, before Corvo, like the shape of a monster painted black.

Physical. Real.

“You cannot have him,” said the shadow. “He is my boy.”

The Shadow Man took the troll by the neck. It tightened its grip, its hands spreading like tentacles around its throat until they became an indistinct black ring, thick in a full circle, choking like a collar.

The troll swung and kicked at the shadow. But its blows did nothing.

Yet the troll had impossible fortitude. It was easily overpowered by the Shadow Man, but a minute passed, and it did not die.

Corvo did not wait around to see what would happen. He jumped up, finally, and sprinted past the two as they grappled—back toward the magelights.

And as he breached the light again, he heard one last thing from the distant dark behind him:

“Corvo! Don’t you want to stay to play?”

A pile of smoking charcoal left a vaguely trollish shape on the ground near the horses. Three of the four panicked, kicking against the trees they’d been tied off to, but Sinir was still calm.

One troll was left. It was on its back, on the ground, and was held there by invisible bindings. It still managed to lash out at here and there, but Aletheia and Dorian stood several feet away and out of range.

“Burn it!” Dorian said.

“It takes too much,” Aletheia said. She seemed to be hit by a punch, even though she was far off from the troll. “Stop! It’s over! Stop fighting, you idiot!”

Another punch. Her head snapped to the side, and blood leaked from between her lips. But she straightened and made a gesture at the troll, and it was restrained more tightly.

She leaned down and picked up an axe from the ground.

“Dismember it,” she said.

“Let! Go!” the troll screamed.

Dorian hesitated. But he nodded and took the axe from her.

He dismembered the troll while Aletheia held it immobile with her magic. The axe fell in huge downward chops. When its head and all for limbs were hacked off, Dorian dropped the axe and collapsed, exhausted, to the ground.

Aletheia looked over her shoulder. “Where’s Corvo?”

Dorian looked up. “Corvo?”

“Corvo!” she screamed. She had seemed calm and focused in battle, but now she began to jitter. She looked in every direction, and again she screamed, “Corvo!”

He had hesitated at the sight of the still-living troll. But now that it was still, he sprinted toward her. He jumped onto her, nearly bouncing off, and fell at her feet, grabbing her legs.

She dropped her sword and embraced him. She gave him a drooly kiss across the forehead.

“What happened?” she said. “Where did you go?”

“The Shadow Man!” Corvo said. “The big troll followed me, and it was dark, and then I tripped, and look! My tooth fell out!” He opened his mouth to show her. “And then there was the Shadow Man behind me, and I was scared because he was big, but then there was the big troll, too, and he was bigger than the big troll, and he grabbed the big troll, and the big troll tried to hurt him, but he couldn’t, and then—and then—”

“Slow down,” she said. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” She kissed him again. “What did the Shadow Man do?”

“He saved me!” Corvo gasped. A glob of bloody spit shot from his mouth and onto Aletheia’s face. He wasn’t hurt badly, but his eye was bruised, and his mouth was full of blood from the lost tooth. “Look! My tooth!”

“It’s okay. You’ll get new ones.” She let her head fall against his, panting, and laughing in shock—but she hissed in pain a moment later.

He looked down to see her arms. She had been burned badly by her own magic. The armor in the sleeves of her jacket, chainmail, was revealed as the leather and cloth burned away up to her wrists. The flesh beneath was red.

She let him go, flinching again in pain.

The tips of her hair, down along her chest, were frayed. They smelled like smoke.

She pulled off her jacket and the padding beneath, so that she wore only a cloth binding around her breasts, and threw the rest aside.

Her entire chest, up to her neck and down to her belly button, was checkered with the grill-patterned scars of bad burns left by superheated chainmail. But those burns were old—the ones along her arms were new.

“Once you’ve salved yourself,” Dorian said. “I could use some help.”

Corvo looked to him.

A troll tusk was impaled in his left bicep. He tugged at it, but it didn’t come loose.

Aletheia fetched her bag. She retrieved medical supplies and quickly salved her burns, taking a swig of a thick red potion, before calling Corvo over to her.

“Help me, okay?” she said. “Wrap this linen around my wrists. My hands, too.”

Corvo hesitated. He was not old enough to do this—he didn’t know why, but he was certain of it. It wasn’t right. He should have done nothing but watch.

But he did what he was instructed to.

“Hands, too.” She yelped in pain as he did, but she encouraged him, and soon she was covered.

She sighed then—and she turned her attention toward Dorian.

“I can’t get the damn thing out,” he said.

“How bad does it hurt?” she asked.

“Well—I didn’t notice till after the troll was dead, and I saw it was missing a damned tusk.”

“Is that bad or not?”

“I’ve had worse,” he said. “But I’d like it out, thank you.”

She grabbed hold of the tusk and tugged. But she cringed in pain to use her burned hands, and it did not budge.

She sighed again. Then she grabbed the tusk, despite the pain, and closed her eyes.

It slowly disintegrated. Starting from the top, the white horn dissolved into ash upon itself, down past her fingers, into the wound channel, until finally any trace of white was gone.

Only then did the wound begin to bleed.

Dorian cringed away. “Damn it! I’ve seen that spell before! You could’ve turned my whole arm to ash!”

“So?” She fell backwards. Corvo ran to her, to make sure she was okay, but she only gestured for him to cuddle against her. "Come here."

So he did.

“Eris is never gonna leave you alone with me again,” she said.

He stared into her face. But he said nothing, instead settling his head against her breast. To him she had done nothing wrong. She had kept him safe.

He loved her almost as much as Mother.

“I’d be more concerned with convincing her not to turn us into toads for Corvo's missing tooth,” Dorian said. He dressed his own wound and downed the rest of Aletheia’s red potion. “Lioness! You drink this filth?”

“She won’t be as angry as she would have been if they’d taken Sinir.” She sighed. “It almost worked. If you hadn’t… it would have worked.”

“What?” Dorian sat down near them. He was still alert, glancing at the trees around them. “You insulted them. You called them insects. Seems like a poor plan to me.”

“They’re forest trolls,” Aletheia said. “They’re honorable. Rook told me about one he knew, once, and I met another one a few months ago. I was trying to convince them that it wouldn’t be honorable to fight us. That’s why I called them insects. They aren’t mindless—they’re like knights. They don’t want to kill the defenseless. And it almost worked, until you dared them to fight.”

Dorian let out a long, slow sigh. “I see. But you’re a magician. They knew there were magelights. They could see your eyes.”

“They’re not mindless. But they’re not smart.”

Dorian was quiet for a while. “You shouldn’t have used that translation spell on me, I suppose.” He wrapped his arm in the bandages. “I don’t have much of a talent for negotiation.”

“You just need to study your trollology.” She kissed Corvo again.

He laughed despite himself. “You’re in a good mood, considering we just sidestepped death.”

“Death doesn’t scare me,” she said. “Not my death.”

“Still scares me,” Dorian said. “Maybe I’m just closer to it. At my age, you start to think about those things. You don’t feel invulnerable anymore.”

“You’re not closer to death than me,” she whispered

He glanced toward her. “What?”

She hesitated, but finally sat upright. “Did Eris never tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About what happened in Darom.”

Dorian thought about this for a moment. “Only that she and Rook killed a vampire. That’s the story, isn’t it? With Jason Kalamos?”

Aletheia shook her head. “There’s more. I—I don’t want Corvo to hear about it.”

“I want to hear,” Corvo said, still holding her.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older. I mean it. I promise. But… not now.” She closed her eyes for a moment, but they opened again suddenly. “What happened to the troll the Shadow Man stopped?”

Suddenly both adults looked at Corvo. He shrugged cautiously.

“I ran away,” he whispered. Shouldn’t he have? Should he have stayed instead?

She glanced off into the woods.

“He might be back,” she said. “If it didn’t kill him.”

She climbed back to her feet. The camp had seemed safe and comfortable in the wake of the fight, but now the relief of victory faded, and chill silence took its place.

She drew her sword and handed it to Dorian.

“Can you lead us back to where you saw the Shadow Man?” she said to Corvo.

“I don’t want to go back,” he whispered.

“I’ll make it bright. I promise.” She snapped her right hand; two new yellow lights appeared above Corvo’s head, following him whenever he stepped forward. “But we have to make sure the troll won’t regenerate. Okay?”

Corvo shook his head. But when Dorian put a hand on his shoulder, he nodded instead. There was no choice.

The shadowy woodlands all looked the same in the dark. But Corvo soon found the footstep of the big troll, and then Aletheia took over, following its tracks into the brush.

The three of them stalked cautiously ahead.

A hundred steps later, they stopped.

Aletheia gasped. “Corvo! Don’t look!”

She tried to grab him, but she was too slow; as her hands fell to cover his eyes, he saw exactly what she didn’t want him to.

The viscera of the big troll had been spread throughout the woodlands. Nothing of its body remained in one piece. And across the ground, around trees and twigs and shrubs, gore and entrails had been arranged to spell out two sentences in Kathar script:

“I keep my crow safe. You put him in danger.”