40. Dead Flesh

“Of the two traits that are commonly attributed to trolls, I know only one of them to be true. They do have a fondness for eating dead flesh, perhaps because it is easier to digest, but the notion that they can only speak with the voice of something they have ate seems to have no grounding at all.

I suspect this rumour spread to give credence to folk who hunted otherwise docile creatures of wax.

It both angers and perplexes me that even if this were true, trolls sound far more like goblins than young children.”

Fragor hummed to himself, a ponderous hum as far as those came to him, of high and sharp notes. He carried around the tall torch that he had found on the floor, silver-wrought and burning eternal. It would slide down his grimy grip, so he often had to strike it against the ground, making a metallic and reverberative sound.

He lived in a cavern, his cavern, with three ways in for visitors, and no ways out for Fragor, unless he meant to crush himself into the stone and become very thin, so that he could go and see what other things resided in the darkness. Or else he could walk out the cavern mouth, which seemed to go nowhere when he looked, beyond a large frozen river below, and he was unsure whether he would survive the fall.

Fragor often considered the merits of either escape, but he decided in the end that it was better to live in a cave, with a silver-wrought torch, to be safe, then it was to risk his life outside, and perhaps accidentally venture to a place that didn’t like trolls.

Fragor made an angry hum, abrupt, shrill and resonant. He felt hungry, so he walked over to his pile of food, which lay stacked on the cavern lip that overlooked the glacial valley. Dozens of goblins were frozen in the tangle of limbs and flesh, each coated in snow and hoarfrost.

He often paid his food little notice, beyond to drag some out and swallow it, but he saw something different about a pair of bodies off to the side, how large they seemed, and how fresh, how one had hair that reminded him of his torch.

“Izz Mao?” Fragor asked, his voice high and childish. “Words? Words. Man words.”

Hjorvarth murmured when the troll gripped his legs, but didn’t stir as he got lifted over a waxy shoulder. Engli woke when it came to his turn, but he kept his mouth closed and only peeked at the dark green skin of his captor.

Fragor walked over to his stone pen, and sat both men against the cavern wall. He placed his silver-wrought torch into a fissure near them, so that they would have light to see by when they woke. Fragor then went back to gather up some goblins for his visitors to eat. He hummed happily, piping and stochastic, as he tore limbs from frozen torsos and gathered them up in his dark and waxy arms.

Engli sucked in nervous breaths while he searched his torch-lit surroundings.

The cavern clearing ended in two plateaus that seemed to serve as walls, leaving only one way in and out. A boulder sat atop the entryway, as if poised to roll down and seal them off in a stone prison.

“Hjorvarth,” Engli whispered.

Hjorvarth had slumped over, his propped elbow stopping his head from hitting the floor.

“Hjorvarth.” Engli pushed on the huge man’s shoulder. “Hjorvarth.”

Hjorvarth murmured, and raked at his beard. He appeared a man half-dead, clothes torn to reveal pale flesh, blackened and bruised, scratched and bleeding.

“Hjorvarth.” Engli slapped him across the face, then tried a second time but Hjorvarth caught his wrist.

Hjorvarth worked his tongue against his cheek. “What?”

“There’s a troll in here, caught us and dragged us here. It keeps making this noise, or maybe there’s more than one.”

Hjorvarth spat blood onto the cavern floor. “I can’t really hear you. I can’t see much either.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Where’s the Sage?”

“Gone to the Lady’s Shadow for all I know.” Engli pushed up from the ground, and lifted the knife from his belt. “We need to—”

Fragor’s stomping footfalls preceded him. He stepped into the stone pen, having to squeeze through the entryway. “Words. Man words. I have words and food for you.” He tossed the gathered limbs, and they knocked against each other and rolled across the cavern floor. “Eat it. Eat it up. It good. Food for you.”

Hjorvarth blinked up at the troll, seeing one or three of them, featureless faces of dark green skin, marked only by the crease of a wide and toothy maw; overlarge torsos all fat and lumpy, wax surface cracking and seeping liquid with each unneeded movement.

Engli smiled up at the giant troll. “Could we cook it?”

“Cook?” Fragor’s shapeless face creased into confusion, seeping a sheet of dark ooze that soon hardened. “Not known word. Eat. Eat. Eat!”

“My thanks,” Hjorvarth said, his voice haggard. He reached over on hands and knees for a frozen arm. He sat back with a groan, then brought it to his lips and pretended to chew. “Do you have any more?”

“More?” Fragor’s mouth drew up into a huge smile, almost splitting his head. “Man greedy. More!” He hummed in humour. “Done. I do it.”

Fragor hurried back the way he had come, crossing through his cavern, back to the open mouth of the cave and to the goblins he had dragged from the pile. Frost had begun to melt, pooling around the bodies, so they glistened with the distant light of the tall silver torch. Fragor grabbed four whole ones, a pair for each shapeless hand, and made his way back to his new friends.

“Troll!” came a shout from the darkness.

He paused in the stone entryway, and turned to the sound. “Man? What doing you out in dark? Stay near light!” Stones scrabbled above Fragor, and a few clattered down onto the troll’s dark wax head. He looked up to see Hjorvarth pushing on the boulder. “Man… more than one? What doing you up there? Stay away from stopper rock!”

Hjorvarth set his feet, getting enough of a hold on the great ball of stone to urge it forward. It rolled off with a noisy grinding, crunching against the wall, and then smashed into the cavern floor beside Fragor.

Fragor’s violent hum resounded through the dark cavern. “Man bad! Bad man!”

Hjorvarth clambered down to the other side of the pen, hoping that the boulder would hold the troll.

Fragor bulled into the great stone and it rolled easily away, nearly crushing Engli before he dived clear. “Men bad! No words for men. No foods for men. Dead for men!” He stomped forward, ahead of a fissure in the cavern wall that offered chance of escape.

Hjorvarth took up his stolen silver axe. “Run for the wall, Engli!”

He charged forward as the troll tried to chase the blond man. He lashed out with his axe, slashing into a thick leg, hewing so far through waxy flesh that he severed the limb.

Fragor slumped onto half a leg, rising again now dark liquid flooded out from the wound. Wax hardened to form a new foot, propping the troll up as the old limb melted into a smoking and corrosive puddle. Hjorvarth hacked through the new limb. Splashed wax clung to his clothes and burnt through fur and flesh. He gritted his teeth and tried to step clear of a sweeping limb, but the troll knocked him off-balance and stole his senses.

Fragor grabbed the huge man by the arm, and lifted him up like a child’s rag doll.

“Hjorvarth!” Engli ran up and dragged a knife through its wax back, leaping clear as a gout of dark liquid splashed out from the wound.

He stabbed once more with his knife, but molten liquid ate into iron and burned his gloves. He tried to rip those off, only to suffer a heavy punch.

Engli’s teeth snapped together, air crushed from his lungs, now he slammed into the pen’s stone wall.

Fragor turned his faceless gaze to Hjorvarth. He grabbed the huge man with both hands. The troll’s large mouth creaked open to a maw full of hundreds of broken and dirty teeth, to a stomach broiling with dark, putrid wax.

Hjorvarth squinted down, and laughed, entertained by some wry and tired thought in his mind that he was about to suffer the same fate he hadn’t managed to spare Geirmund. Hjorvarth recognised the blond man crumpled on the floor though and the sight made him maddened. He remembered the silver axe in his limp grip, and shifted his weight, swinging his legs back to kick the troll’s chin, lodging his boots into the waxy flesh.

Hjorvarth brought down the axe, splitting clean through the black wax head. The silver blade buried into the troll’s mouth. Letting go the shaft, Hjorvarth stomped on the weapon to drive it deeper, forcing it through the troll’s teeth and into the wax belly.

Fragor screamed, dropping the man now he tried to wrench the weapon free. He let wax slough from his hands to get a better shape, but still couldn’t manage a grip. He roared in agony and fear. He smashed his face into the stone walls of the pen, finally managing to push the silver weapon free through his wax skin.

Molten wax pooled all over the cavern floor, sizzling before it hardened.

“Engli!” Hjorvarth stumbled over to blond man and hauled him upright. “Get up!”

Fragor had to change his shape, had to be smaller, to make up for his lack of wax. He solidified in the same featureless shape, though now stood only as tall as Hjorvarth. Fragor considered running over to the goblin pile to eat himself bigger, but decided instead to attack the man that had caused the troll such pain.

Hjorvarth faced Fragor as he charged. They traded blows while the troll tried to beat the huge man to death, while Hjorvarth made effort to shield his body and force his way towards the silver axe. Hjorvarth took a blow to the jaw, forcing his head back against the wall. Knees buckled and he lost sight of the cavern around him. He managed to bring his hands up in time to block a waxy foot.

Hjorvarth held his arms up against more blows, softened by merit of the malleable wax, but he had no strength to stand or to counter them. He struggled not to collapse. Firelight swept over the shadowed cavern and lent an orange glow to his bruised and bleeding face. The light grew brighter now Engli charged towards the troll with the silver-wrought torch.

Fragor turned in time to be skewered through the middle, forced further back until the torch’s silver shaft smashed into stone and pinned him against the cavern wall. Engli grabbed the silver axe from the floor, and closed before the troll could work his way to the torch’s burning end.

“Wait!” Fragor shook his featureless wax head. “Man stop!” He shuffled back onto the torch, back to the cavern wall. “Leave me! I up. I up give. Give up!”

“What?” Engli tightening his grip on the axe. “You tried to kill us! To eat us!”

“You tried to kill us—me!”

Hjorvarth heaved breaths on the floor, watching the two blurry figures shout at one another. “Kill it, Engli. A troll can only use a voice that it’s taken.”

“Leave me!” Fragor pleaded, voice high and childish. “I be good now. I now good!”

Engli raised his axe and the troll melted into a puddle of wax. He leapt back from the spreading black pool.

“Look!” Fragor exclaimed, his words now meager and screeching. “I so small now. I hurt not!” A tiny wax figure walked out from the glossy pool with small splashes. “I be good, so good. Please no death for me.”

Engli’s spent adrenaline turned to nauseating poison in his veins. He couldn’t look down at the thing, couldn’t stand to hear the desperation in its voice. “Do you know the way out of here?”

“Hole in wall,” Fragor said. “It goes not I ‘member. I think… to… Agak? Ogog? Gob Gob Gobins?” He upturned tiny palms. “Maybe spidy spidy spidies?” He shook his head. “No, no way.”

Hjorvarth staggered over to the pair. He glared down at the troll with exhausted eyes that reflected the torch’s light. “Troll.”

Fragor looked up at him. “Me?”

Hjorvarth stomped down. He sighed, trudging towards the fissure in the cavern wall. “Let’s go.”

Engli stared down at the crushed wax for a long moment. He tried to prise the silver torch from the wall, then gave up and followed the huge man into the darkness.

***

Sybille trudged forward, her face throbbing with pain, her ankles aching with the weight of a fetter.

“Dead flesh?” The old man ahead frowned at the plump man he was bound to. “You cracked, lad? Put that thing to the snow.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The plump man’s chin creased now he smiled back at Sybille. “Look.” He proffered a desiccated hand. “Dead flesh, for the trolls. They love dead flesh. As long as I have this the trolls will come, and they’ll—”

“Eat us?” Sybille asked. “That’s what happened to my brother.”

The old man barked laughter. “Exactly that, you simple fool. Your plan could be a sure thing and it wouldn’t make it no better.”

The plump man’s rounded features lapsed to sadness, and he hid the hand under his tattered brown cloak. They carried on in a silence of rattling shackles, haggard breaths and murmured conversations. There had been an old man that sang a dirge for his fallen son, but one of the goblins had hacked his head off. Sybille thought the old woman she could hear wailing would go the same way. “Stop!” came a harsh order, and the line of villagers staggered to a halt.

Raguk Trolleater strode down from the head of the column, appearing as an adult among children. He and his clan shared the same fanged teeth, ferine eyes, and bony frames, but he dwarfed them times over. He had long fingers like an old man while they had short, clawed hands.

Sybille thought the goblin a terrifying oddity, not because of his unnatural height, but because he had garbed himself in the bones of humans and animals, in tendon necklaces, threaded through ears, bones, thumbs and desiccated penises. She felt no better about the hunched goblin hobbling behind him.

Mulu the Undying had already scooped out one man’s eyes for looking at everyone and everything. The man had screamed himself to death after that, but the shaman had scooped out the second for the sake of symmetry.

Sybille averted her gaze with the rest of the villagers as the unalike pair moved past. She could smell rotting flesh. Her stomach seized when she realised that Raguk and the goblin scouts would meet not far from where she stood. She tried to slow her breathing now they stopped beside her and grunted greetings.

“What is it?” Raguk snarled. He dropped to one knee to better see them. “What word of the fire?”

“Balluk.” The goblin closest bowed low, nearly nosing the stony ground. “Balluk set the fire.”

“Balluk?” Raguk asked with indignation. “He wishes war with me?”

“I…”

“No,” the standing scout said. “Balluk gone. Balluk gone with all clan.”

Raguk bared fanged teeth, then scrutinised Mulu. “What do your spirits say, shaman?”

Mulu the Undying murmured to himself, fondling the breastbone pendant that hung from his neck. Scars ran all over the goblin’s pale flesh in mad swirls and patterns. A newly-cut wolf skin covered his hunched shoulders. “They… are frightened.”

“Frightened?” Raguk cocked his head. “Of what?”

“Spirits roam the hills,” Mulu intoned. “Burn dead men to stop them rising, or eat them up if you despise them.”

Raguk hauled the shaman into the air and the bloody pelt slid free. “Listen to me,” he grated, “you misshapen worm. I am not some fool to be taken at ease with fire rhymes. I am not the simpleton that Lazuk was. Tell me what you know, if you know anything at all, or I will break your back and leave you for the wolves.”

Mulu the Undying met the wild red eyes with an icy gaze. “Balluk sends a message.”

Raguk Trolleater let the shaman drop. “And what message is that?”

“He is warning you… that Dalpho is coming.”

Sybille saw sudden fear, and a question slipped from her lips. “Dalpho?”

Raguk glared at both of the scouts, who looked at each other in fear and desperation. He then turned towards Sybille, and leaned closer until his bony nose pressed into her swollen cheek. “Need your tongue cut out, girl?”

Sybille managed to shake her head. Her eyes watered and her stomach turned at the smell of fetid flesh. She could see one of his eyes, burning with rage.

Raguk’s laugh laced her cheek with spittle. “Dalpho is an enormity much like a whale. More grey than green. He is likely not even a goblin. He is likely an abomination of a creature dreamed up by—” He stalked back to Mulu, grasped the goblin by his bony shoulders. “Dreamed up by some meddling shaman.”

Mulu’s gaze froze in terror. “Raguk, I—”

“We must march if Dalpho follows.” Raguk grinned, releasing his grip. “But if I do not witness that monstrosity, waddling across this plain when Sun rises, then we will soon see how true your name proves.”

Mulu the Undying bowed. “You will see him.” He lifted the wolf skin from the floor, wrapping it about his wrinkled neck.

Raguk stared at Sybille for a long moment before stalking back to the front of the column. “Move!”

The group of tired-eyed and broken-souled villagers marched faster than they had before. They were pushed and scratched and whipped for slowing or tripping. An old woman collapsed ahead of Sybille and the scouts, at Raguk’s approval, broke her chains and pulled her aside for a meal. Sybille scratched at her neck, remembering that old man wailing beside her, singing about his fallen son, blood splashing when Raguk held the man down and hacked through his neck.

The villagers then journeyed to the end of the wintry corridor and up through the Troll Mountains, a snowy region of uneven ground, dipping and rising, flanked on either side by tiered plateaus and mountainous stretches that housed dozens of cavern mouths. All of them seemingly abandoned.

“So much for your trolls,” the old man said quietly.

“Wait till it’s dark,” the plump man replied, “and then I can leave the hand out.”

“Be quiet,” Sybille hissed. “Please be quiet.”

The old man frowned. “You should take your own advice, girl. You almost got yourself pulled to pieces asking questions about things you don’t need to know.”

Sybille looked to the stony ground at her feet. She worked her tongue against her cheek, not painful anymore, too cold for it to hurt her.

“I still don’t believe you.” The old man scratched at tangled hair. “But say these trolls do appear, what do we do then?”

“We would just—” The plump man seemed to disappear from view.

Raguk hoisted the screaming man over his head, bending him.

Sybille watched as bone crunched and a broken spine jutted out from the man’s back. She turned to the old man but he got ripped away as well. She closed her eyes and had to listen to the screams of the victim and the witnesses. Flesh tore. Goblins jeered and howled. Joints popped and thin bones snapped amid sucking and chewing.

“Move!” Raguk roared.

Sybille opened her eyes, almost tripping on the dead hand lying on the floor. She picked it up, flesh wet and spongy, and hid it inside her dress before stumbling forward. She glanced back at the ragged line of desperate villagers, boots worn, toes bleeding, fingers blackened by the cold. She knew there used to be so many more of them, and wondered without much regret if they would eat her next.

They trudged onward into a darkening night, even as they were battered by a rising wind and chilled by falling snow. The weather added to the drudgery of their desperate march, made flesh as cold and hopeless as the soul. Sybille clutched at the dead hand all the while, as if unwilling to relinquish an old friend.

“Stop!” Raguk commanded. “Make a fire! Make a camp!”

The prisoners stood like statues in the wind, turning their lifeless gazes towards the darkness. Goblins growled and screeched, taunting the manlings and their own kin alike. The lupine clan began their fire making and, after a deal of smashing stones and rubbing sticks, the villagers saw the weak flames of fledgling fires.

Sybille stared instead at a small wooden post, carved with swirling lines and a single open eye. It served as a Marker to Muradoon, to keep the Troll Mountains free of malicious spirits. She found herself stumbling over to it, not really hearing the goblin screaming behind her. She smashed the desiccated hand into the post, both breaking and staking the severed appendage.

“Need to die, girl?” Raguk Trolleater growled in her ear.

Sybille craned her neck to gaze up at the flesh-adorned goblin. She curled her bloodied lips into a smile. “Not yet.”

He loomed over her, red eyes wide with anger. “Go.” He swept a huge arm towards the villagers, who now shivered around a tiny fire. “Go back to your herd.”

***

Hjorvarth and Engli had fled into a narrow tunnel that wasn’t getting any wider.

“He might have helped us,” Engli said, more out of guilt than sense.

Hjorvarth only grunted in answer. He’d turned sideways to make progress on their path, but stones still pressed in on his hips, thighs and shoulders, steadily abrading flesh. He was genuinely afeared that he might find himself stuck or have to travel back.

“We could have asked him which way to go.”

“It meant to keep us as pets,” Hjorvarth assured, stopping. “Or eat us at a later day.”

“He seemed harmless enough.”

“People used to say the same about me.” Hjorvarth forced himself forward despite the growing pain. “Does the tunnel soon widen? I am beyond tired.”

“Er… no. Oh, wait, yes. For a little while at least.”

“That would be good. Were I not now stuck between one jagged wall and another.”

“Oh,” Engli said, stepping closer. “Do you want me to pull you?”

“No,” he answered. “Go on ahead and see if the path is worth following. I don’t want to be forced through only to have to repeat the task on the way back.”

Engli didn’t like the idea of going on his own, but he obliged all the same, forging forward into the blackness. “I’ll be back soon.”

He followed the path for a while longer, arms out so he could feel for width, and the tunnel opened out into a long cavern. Distant flames lent light to three ways ahead: a curving slope led up to a wide plateau on the left, which overlooked the narrow middle path; on the right, a steeper slope gave access to a high ledge that rose above the rest.

Engli began his ascent of that, needing to use the wall to keep from slipping.

He furrowed his nose at the smells of rotting meat and goblin filth. He clambered nearer to the top, and heard the soft hissing of breaths. He managed to reach the ledge, where a small goblin slept. He crept forward while the goblin’s slow breathing shifted to sniffs. He drove his boot into its mouth, crushing the jaw.

Engli stomped once more for good measure, then filched a crude dagger of stone from the goblin’s tendon belt.

He had sight of the fire below, which lent a warm glow to crude tents made from animal skins stretched over bones or sticks. Engli saw that the ledge jutted over the plateau, so he decided to try climb down. He kept a hold of the edge, finding footing on the stone below, scattering debris with a scrabble and clatter.

Engli winced at the sound, but managed to drop down. He staggered when he landed, nearly falling back to the middle path below. He managed to steady himself.

Engli crept forward into the encampment, and made his way under the flap of the largest tent, seeing a scrawny goblin sleeping beside two smaller ones. He stifled his breathing as he walked over, knelt down on top of the largest goblin while they all started to sniff and squeak in sleep. He drove the dagger into the goblin’s head, then did the same to the one beside it and caught the third one by the throat as it woke. He smashed his fist into its skull until it stopped struggling.

He stole a stone club from there, and went into the other tents to bludgeon the rest to death. He then walked out towards the fire, startling at the sound of movement.

Engli lashed out with a mad growl, but a firm hand caught his wrist.

“I squeezed through,” Hjorvarth said with a deadened stare. He swayed slightly where he stood, his chest and back smeared with fresh blood. “They’re all dead?”

“They are.” Engli let the club drop from his shaking hand. “Should we keep moving?”

“I can’t. I’m going to rest.” Hjorvarth had the pallor of a corpse, spared by his thick and filthy beard, by the mottled red and purple staining his flesh. “You can go on if you want. Or you could sleep for a while too,” he suggested. “But if I don’t wake then you have my blessing to leave me.”

Engli met the words with confusion. “I’m not just going to abandon you.”

“I know.” Hjorvarth placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Try to wake me before you go.”

***

Sybille watched the embers of the fire. She listened to people whisper.

They thought Gudmund of Horvorr would come and save them, or that a band of men from Wymount would storm forward and skewer Raguk and his clan with spears and harpoons. Sybille thought the fisher folk might be better served fighting Dalpho, if he really was a whale of a thing.

She turned her gaze to the broken Marker of Muradoon, ripped from the ground after she had skewered the dead hand. She blinked to clear her blurry vision, seeing false shadows looming in the darkness, lumbering forth through the sifting snow and fluttering winds.

Sybille shivered, rubbing her eyes only to find that the shadows appeared larger, more substantial. A scrawny goblin studied the shadows as well. He opened his mouth to scream only for a waxy black hand to grab him by the head. The troll tossed the goblin into a toothy maw, grinding him to pieces, trudging forward with five other black and waxy kin. They crossed from the wintry darkness and into the wind-whipped firelight.

“Trolls!” Sybille found she was standing. She glanced back at the horrified villagers shackled behind her. “Don’t run. Stay back from them, but don’t run.”

More trolls crossed into the panicked encampment. Goblins screeching pierced through the shrill song of the weather.

Raguk Trolleater’s red eyes snapped open. He rose up from his sitting, and witnessed his clan scrambling away, throwing ineffectual stones at slow-moving lumps of black wax flesh. “Gather on me! Stand and fight!” He strode over to the fat goblin that carried his giant axe, having to kick him into the snow to rip it off his back. “Cut them off at the legs! Destroy them all!”

A dozen goblins had gathered around him. They dipped their heads and readied their weapons.

Raguk led the way towards his herd of manlings. He came up behind a troll, and swung an overhead swing that split it in half, spilling black liquid onto a few manlings that started to smoke and scream. The troll almost came apart, but black wax pooled between its middle and knitted it back together.

Raguk leveled the same blow and the troll ran short of wax. The creature hardened into two useless husks. He rounded on another troll that his clan held at bay. They tried to club and poke it as it grabbed them up and gobbled them down.

Raguk hacked off a wax arm, sparing a grabbed goblin. He then swung low, killing the same goblin, hewing through both of the troll’s legs.

He felt a waxy hand on his shoulder, so spun round with all his might and cleaved a troll through the middle. Molten wax belched out onto Raguk’s chest. He growled and leapt back, bringing his axe down on the troll’s head to split it into four useless pieces.

Raguk wrenched his arm free when another troll grasped at him. His red eyes widened now he saw all the trolls around him: dozens of the black wax creatures lumbering through and rolling over the goblins of his clan, picking them up, crushing them to pieces with hundreds of teeth.

He turned to flee, but stumbled into a wax torso.

Raguk Trolleater stepped back, raising his axe for a downward swing.

A troll ripped one of his hands from the grip, and forced the limb into its closing mouth. He snarled, and ripped the limb free from the grinding teeth. He glimpsed his fingers, ragged and bloody, shredded to the bone, before another troll pulled out his feet.

Raguk roared on the floor, scrabbling and kicking, making a desperate scramble to escape between two trolls.

One stomped down on Raguk’s back, then another kicked him in the head. They started to eat the fearsome goblin in shared effort. They ripped the necklaces of desiccated flesh from his neck.

Sybille watched him struggle.

She listened to the grinding and crunching after he had stopped screaming.

When the trolls were finished, there was no trace left of Raguk, or of his clan, beyond smeared blood and broken bones. Only Mulu the Undying remained, hunched over a modest fire, whispering rhythmically into the flames.

Sybille had come to stand behind the wolf-cloaked shaman.

She drove a knife into his wrinkled throat. Mulu grappled with her, so she pulled the blade out and stabbed him in the nose. She stabbed until all the life was bled from him, until he had no eyes or throat, until the flimsy grip of the knife broke.

The wind died abruptly, leaving a wide and open silence.

Her fellow prisoners regarded her with mute horror.

“No one is coming,” she declared. “We must march to Wymount!”