11th Enyara, 998 NE
“You’re awful quiet, missy.”
The bargeman behind her kept his voice hushed, despite the clamour of the other deck passengers. Em was sitting on the lip at the stern of the boat, leaning down to dangle her hand in the water rippling in the vessel’s wake. The spring weather was warm, and the liquid pleasant to the touch.
“Yah? Vould you vont me to make as much noise as zem?” she asked, not turning.
The young bargeman chuckled, and fell silent, poling at the bank without further comment as they went around the bend; she could see his long stick out of the corner of her eye, stabbing at the walls of mud and weeds, keeping them from sliding into the tangles of thorns coating the levee.
Once again she sensed his interest in her; she’d known about the attraction for days now. The clean-shaven, pleasant-faced man had hardly been able to hide his covetous looks and, truth be told, she didn’t exactly hate it. He wasn’t bad looking, if a little short for her, and she found that it was nice to be reminded of normality like this. The way he tried to hang around near her whenever his work allowed, tried to make small-talk… A lot of the boys back home had been attracted to her, but her tough exterior had always scared them off. Now, everything was different. Now, she didn’t feel so tough.
Mama and Papa were back there behind her in their accustomed spot on the starboard side, just another pocket of silence amidst the swarm of activity buzzing across the deck. Some of the travellers making their way to Mund were small-time traders with a few bags or crates of goods, and these people looked bored, flipping through the pages of books or chatting idly with those nearby – but many were immigrants just like the Reyds, and most of these were excited, excitable people, giddy at the prospect of entering the capital city, finally making a life for themselves in the jewel of the world. The youngsters in particular were unbearable, constantly questioning their elders and refusing to take the first or even fiftieth answers they were given – a trio of giggling girls, a couple of years younger than Em, were especially demanding, daydreaming loudly together about what they’d do when they finally arrived. (Mostly seducing the heirs to vast fortunes and finding the most beautiful horses to ride…) Hence her seeking out the relative calmness at the rear of the vessel, her hand in the cool water.
Em had no such hopes as the others. Mund was supposed to be a grinder of men, and everyone knew it, as much as they might deny it to themselves. None of them onboard this barge would ever be rich or famous. None of them would ever be anything. Even Papa knew it. If it weren’t for… what had happened back home…
Papa wanted to leave, so we left, she reminded herself. As bad as Mund is, it can’t be as bad as the cannibals. It doesn’t matter the cost. Life will be hard, but it will be life.
She was young, filled with all the same vibrant energy as all the other girls in the Realm. She wanted to look to her future; select her destiny; contend with fate. She didn’t want to be rich and famous, but she wanted be someone. Maybe even have a husband and kids, someday. Her brothers… She was the only one left to give her parents grandchildren, now. The burden of maintaining the line of her family had fallen to her – and with her the Reyd name would die…
She wanted to live.
She looked at the bargeman over her shoulder and cast him a coquettish smile.
He would’ve been her type, if he were a bit taller, a bit less stout. He had a fair complexion, and nice hair, a cool, confident smile…
“So no book, today, miss? Found something else you’d rather look at?”
He indicated the Briarflow passing beneath them as he spoke, but his eyes twinkled; she understood his hidden meaning and her smile broadened.
“Perhap zere is something,” she admitted – then fate struck the first blow, destiny deciding to be a complete jerk: the barge lurched, coming to a sudden stop. This toppled her backwards into the boat, off the edge of the vessel; she banged her head on the deck and landed in a twisted heap.
Embarrassment swept over her, igniting every parcel of her exposed skin with burning fire. She did her best to laugh as she started to disentangle herself from her dress and the bit of rope her foot got caught in. It was important, to be able to laugh at yourself; that was what Mama had always told her.
At least I didn’t fall into the water, she thought ruefully – and when she caught a glimpse of her would-be-suitor, she felt even better about her predicament. The sudden lurch had unbalanced him too, and the young bargeman teetered right on the very lip, one foot in the air to help him find his equilibrium as he leaned into the riverbank with the tip of his pole –
“Trolls!” someone howled.
At first it didn’t sink in – Em scrambled to her feet and moved across the deck towards her parents without thinking her actions through, knowing only that she had to come close to them: Papa would know what to do; Papa always knew what to do –
Then, over the milling, teeming crowd, she saw them.
The trolls were unthinkably tall; they were lean and stringy-looking except for their protruding bellies, their knotted muscle, the overlarge heads. The flesh covering their bodies was hairless, silver-black like fish-scales, the surfaces of their limbs marked with ridges similar to tree-bark. And, by the looks of things, they were damming-up the river – they’d hauled trees from somewhere, and were throwing them sidelong into the water’s course.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Right here the Briarflow was cutting through a wide, featureless moor, with some low hills she didn’t know the names of sitting on the horizon whenever it came into view over the riverbank. Sources of cover like groves and hollows were few and far between, from what she’d seen of her surroundings. There was no house to go to, nowhere to flee to, no escaping their doom.
Papa wouldn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything anyone could do. They’d fled Onsolor, running from the cannibals straight into the clutches of creatures that wouldn’t even cook them first. They would be eaten alive, squalling child and roaring adult disappearing alike into those monstrous, fang-lined holes…
She watched as the front of the barge buckled under the weight of the first troll, the monster leaping fully onto the deck, swiping out with all its limbs.
People were hurled, screaming or already comatose from injury or sheer shock, into the waiting arms of the trolls on either side. They chewed their captives, looking on while the one on the barge made its way up from the prow towards the stern, knocking the travellers off into the water by the dozen. Fanged mouths split open across their faces, maws stretching ear to ear closing down on the heads of men, women and children.
Everyone ran for the back, except Em, who struggled against the flow of panicked flesh instead. Bit by bit she was approaching the lead troll but she didn’t even see it, trying as she was to find Mama and Papa in the crush of moving bodies –
A massive hand crunched down on her forearm, the pain of lacerated skin making her wrist burn and itch.
She swung her head up, taking in the titanic troll that’d jumped onto the deck of the barge right beside her. The titanic troll that was standing on two corpses, people who’d been alive until three seconds ago, when it decided to leap across from the riverbank.
It was flexing its arm. It was going to lift her into the air, consume her right then and there, or hurl her aside. Either way, she would be dead in seconds.
The unfairness of it all seared her mind. Dovans the Just had never answered her cries when her brothers were… when her brothers were taken, and she didn’t expect the god to change his –
The troll’s grip tightened; he raised her up, lifting her kicking and screaming into the air – and the world burst into colour.
That was what it was like – it was as though she’d been going around seeing in black and white until this moment. It wasn’t just the earthen walls on either side of the Briarflow calling out to her, or even the water beneath the barge – the air itself was alive, a pulsing, trembling entity, like she held a bird of unbelievable size in her hands, feeling its chest rising and falling.
For all of an instant, Em thought it was the god doing it, Dovans finally responding to her desperate prayer. But then she realised: Dovans wouldn’t have filled her heart with such hate, such a driving need for vengeance.
This is all me.
The air was too soft between her fingers, needing a more-delicate touch than she could apply, for now at least – and the earth was too heavy, too solid, too unresponsive at this stage. She could sense the fire, the unquenchable heat of wizardry, but only in abstract; it wasn’t there in front of her for her to grab, mould, wield.
The water. The water responded.
The elemental rose from the river, instantly depleting it, the barge sinking at least three feet in the blink of an eye. It must’ve been that sense of inequity, injustice driving her: when the watery creature rose from the Briarflow it used its gargantuan ‘arms’ of solidified fluid to pick up the troll holding her.
When the monster dropped Emrelet, she didn’t plummet, didn’t break her ankle when she fell back to the boat – there was no thump. She floated, a silken ribbon of breeze softening her descent. And before her feet even touched down lightly on the boards, the troll was trying to escape.
The elemental she’d instinctively conjured had a mind of its own; whether it was feeding off her unconscious thoughts or a separate, alien intelligence from the Plane of Water, she had no idea. Either way, it wasn’t letting the troll go without a fight. She found that it responded to her, its constituent river-water still at her command – when it reached out its vast, shimmering arms and squeezed the struggling troll she was able to tighten its dark grip, shear the monster in two.
But its blood fell, not as a fluid but as a rain of chips of red glass. She’d torn it in half at the stomach – its pelvis and legs landed on the edge of the deck, the upper body and head falling onto the bank – yet it was already healing. The legs withered away in seconds, shrinking to black twigs, like the severed legs of a frog left for hours in the sun. But the upper body – the troll dragged its massive, snapping head about and already the bleeding had stopped, pale, crablike flesh regrowing and hardening…
Before the two little fleshy sticks could fully-transform into new legs, she had her elemental reach out, take up the troll once more.
She cast about.
So many people were dead. So many more were doomed to die. Mere heartbeats away. Admittedly, some of the trolls were drawing away – those that’d noticed the gargantuan water elemental amongst them – but at least four of the trolls were facing the wrong way, too fixated on the kill to notice how to tables had turned.
No more.
Her mind worked its magic, and the river had an arm for each of them. Even the one that’d sprung clear off the barge onto the embankment, running away as fast as its loping legs would take it – the watery coil stretched out, far faster than even the monster could move, snaring it by its throat and reeling it in.
It made it look like the banks were growing on either side of the boat, the way the river-level sank down when she was calling on its reserves. More water came rushing in, of course, and she knew the earth wasn’t rising up – not because such a thing was impossible, but because she now knew that if it did, she’d be able to feel it.
Then the water flooded back. The elemental arms retracted. All at once the barge rose up to its previous level, and there were no trolls anywhere to be seen.
Perhaps she couldn’t see them, but she could feel them fighting it. They were dying down there, trying to thrash, failing to escape her grip.
Succeeding at drowning.
She found Mama and Papa – they were safe. Startled, but safe. Afterwards, she looked for the bargeman, expecting to find him amongst the dead – she was surprised to discover that fate had spared her that insult. He was there, alive and well, one of the many she’d saved with her miraculous new powers. He lined up like the others to thank and congratulate her.
She didn’t tell anyone it took a full five minutes, five long minutes before the last of the trolls ceased its futile writhing. She went about the barge, trying her hardest to ignore what she was doing with her power as she spoke to people.
Trying to ignore the question, hitting her mind like a hammer, relentless:
Why now? Why now? Why now?
And despite his gratitude the bargeman never looked at her the same way again; by the time they reached the immigrant-camps of Mund the taste of her newfound wizardry had already begun to sour.
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