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Desora goggled at the sprite queen, not certain she had heard correctly. “Another troll is on the trail ahead of us? It’s not yet dead? What do you mean?”
The queen rolled her eyes. She began drifting backward. “You understand my words. How is it that you do not understand my meaning?”
“I just—.” She clamped down those words and focused on the only thing that mattered. “Is the troll a threat?”
“Not that one, no. The others ahead of it, should they loiter or turn back, aye, they will be a threat.”
She started for Brax, remembered to curtsey to the queen, then she hurried back to her horse.
He tossed her reins over. “What is it?”
“Another troll ahead. Not yet dead, according to the queen. Not a threat. But others are ahead of it.”
“And the monster?”
Desora heaved up and settled in the saddle. “The queen didn’t mention it.”
Brax motioned to the rangers then followed her, his horse picking up to a bone-jarring canter then a smoother trot.
A few sprites lingered along the verge of the trail as they passed.
Brax reined up, and she followed suit, then she heard hoofbeats. Challoch came around the bend in the trail. The dense forest had muffled the guard’s approach until he was nearly upon him.
He pulled up, his warhorse snorting displeasure at the tightened reins. “Another troll ahead.”
“Only one?”
“Only the one. Badly wounded.”
“On its feet or down?”
“Trying to get up.” Challoch wiped a hand down his beard. “Be murder passing it, captain, but pass it we must. Valley’s narrowing, see.” He waved at the ridges on either side.
The steep ridges had closed in as they rode. Desora hadn’t noticed. Her memory had failed her again. Once she must have used land as a tactical defense, but that knowledge had gone. None of her glimpses of memory contained any strategy. Only memories of Brax, the occasional recall of past knowledge gleaned from her time at the Wizard Enclave, the rare flash of when she had wielded wizardry, those memories came to her.
Desora squinted, but the dense trees and the growing twilight defeated her efforts to see ahead. “I didn’t hear any roaring,” she inserted into Challoch’s clipped report.
“Are there other trolls?” Brax asked.
“Little one fled when I approached. Thought I saw a couple more in the trees, but I didn’t get a clear look.”
The other rangers reached them and stopped. They stayed abreast, spread over the width of the trail, two on either verge. Ivhart, Dunstan, Ferrac, and Serre, loyal to the Lucent Fae Maorn Harte, who ruled Bermarck to the west. The rangers rode with Brax on the Fae lord’s word alone.
Two guards. Four rangers.
And her, with elemental Earth.
Over the past days she had learned much about the elemental power. Snapping vines rooted in soil could bind and hang. Life potential burgeoned in a sphere and sprouted more binding vines. Spheres filled with rocks. Earth shake. Collapsing soil on a mountain slope. Cracking stone to bring down an arch.
“Family group,” Brax mused.
“That’s my guess. Matriarch, young mother, male or two.”
“One male dead on the trail.”
“And the other dying ahead of us.”
“I don’t like messing with female trolls. They go to their last breath. With a young one to protect, they’ll be vicious.”
“Aye, that’s truth, captain.”
“Can we circle around?”
“Be difficult right there. The valley narrows, like I said. We can go off trail for a bit. With dark coming fast, that’s asking for trouble.”
“The sprites can lead us,” Desora offered.
“Will they?”
“They are our allies.” She nearly quoted the queen again: A matter of honor between us, because Desora had helped the sprites when they were attacked by the monster and tried to help those injured on the trail.
“Then we circle around as much as we can. Would you tell the queen?”
The apiary was not in sight. “Where are the sprites?”
The men looked. “Didn’t see where they went, or when. Probably still looking for a campsite,” Ferrac offered.
Challoch shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They will find us easily. I’ll search for a path around.”
They stayed mounted as they left the trail. Challoch chose a route close to the descending shoulder of Trantorr Mountain. A different mountain than Selinnia crowded on the other side, just as steep, with red rock exposed on the arid heights. Behind the mountains on their right were the jagged peaks of the Weorth Mountains. They rode at the very north of the Wilding.
Twilight gloomed the forest. Ancient beeches stood straight, reaching for the sky, the patches that peeked through still blue and bright. The undergrowth clustered thick, but Challoch pushed through tangles, the breaking vines and withy bushes sounding loud, especially when they heard the groans of the dying troll.
Brax came second. His and Challoch’s big warhorses plowed a wide path for the range-runners that Desora and the others rode. Her gelding picked his way carefully through the tangle. The four rangers murmured quietly, barely more than whispers that she couldn’t hear clearly. She reckoned the men had no liking for this venture off the trail. She didn’t like it, but she saw no other way to bypass the troll and the lingering family group.
She kept peering into the glooming undergrowth on the right, where the trail was. She spotted no hulking shapes, heard no low growls or snarls, yet danger prickled the hair on the back of her neck. The trolls watched from cover. A wolf howl startled her, lone and lonely, distant ... but distance in a forest was hard to judge, for leafy trees and entwined undergrowth muffled sound. She couldn’t tell the direction from where the howl came, before them or after or on one of the mountains.
Nor could she tell if the wolf was animal or a shifted wyre.
The rangers stayed silent after that wolf howl.
Ahead, Challoch had stopped. Brax came beside him. They both peered at the ground.
Then Brax rode back to them. “Go back,” he said.
“What is it?” one of the rangers asked.
He shook his head. “Go back.”
Each ranger had to turn his horse and start back before Desora could turn the gelding then follow. Brax stayed on her horse’s rump. She could feel the destrier’s puffed breaths. She glanced back once, checking for Challoch, but she couldn’t see around the big destrier.
Returning was easy, for their push through the tangled undergrowth was clear to follow. The rangers milled around on the trail. “What next?” Dunstan asked. “We can’t go forward. We can’t go around. You want to go back?”
“We cannot go back,” Desora insisted. “We will lose too much time. That monster will be too far ahead of us to stop it when it reaches the valley. Mulgrum has no way to stop it. We barely stopped it.”
“It might not go to Mulgrum,” Ivhart said. “Could go straight across to Bermarck. Sentinels have power enough to fight it. We’ve got no power at all. Maorn Harte won’t let it hurt anyone in Bermarck.”
She scowled at him. “Might not go to Mulgrum? That’s a chance I do not want to take. Nor should we think the Fae sentinels can fight it. It would be cruel to let that monster enter Faeron without warning them.”
“How are we supposed to get ahead of it then?” he retorted. “We’re stuck in this Wilding.”
“Enough, Ivhart,” Ferrac said, voice quiet but filled with resolve. “We are Maorn Harte’s rangers. We owe allegiance to him, and that means we help the sentinels, not set them up for slaughter against that thing.”
“What can we do, though?”
“We’ve made it run from us,” Brax said. “Three times now. The High Meadow. At Horst’s palace. On the mountain.”
Ivhart snorted. “It didn’t run today. It fell when the land gave way.”
Cracking branches stopped the debate. Challoch pushed through the last of the tangle to gain the trail.
“What was that, back there?” Dunstan asked. “Why did you make us come back to the trail?”
Challoch glanced at his captain. When Brax gave a curt nod, he shifted in the saddle then leaned over the pommel. “Another troll. Dead some days ago.”
“Then it doesn’t belong to this grouping. We could have gone past it.”
“I wouldn’t,” the guard said. “I haven’t fought trolls much, but I know better than to fight them when they’re angered. They’ll be angry if we disturb the body.”
Ivhart snorted again. Dunstan frowned at him then looked back at Challoch. “Why don’t you want to disturb the body?”
“Little one,” was all the big guard said. “Death rites. Even the gobbers have left it alone.”
“The trolls that were with it will be long gone,” he argued.
Challoch shrugged. “I’d rather face the dying troll. You want me in van, captain?”
Brax nodded. “Swords out. Arrows nocked. Light’s going. Let’s move.”
Desora had no sword or bow and arrow, but she had elemental Earth. A rock sphere would be her weapon against trolls, but she couldn’t evoke the sphere then hold it as they rode forward and past. She drew Earth, though, letting its energy glimmer around her hands and up her arms.
Brax rode ahead of her, Challoch ahead of him, the four rangers coming behind, two abreast on the trail.
She didn’t watch the forest. She peered around Challoch’s mount for bare glimpses at the trail ahead.
The dying troll looked like the dead one, all pale and dark greys, the warty skin catching the last of the sunlight, its clothes dark and shapeless. She didn’t see the source of the blood until they neared the moaning creature. The monster had torn off one arm.
As Challoch rode close, snarls erupted from the other trolls hidden in the entangled verge on the right. The guard stopped. He brandished his sword. That didn’t stop the snarls.
Brax pushed up beside him. Desora hung back a little, ready to evoke the sphere and fling it at whatever hid in the vine-grown bushes. “Go ahead,” he ordered his friend. “Keep left. Slow. Sword aloft.”
The wolf howled again. It sounded as distant as before. She shivered, and her apprehension shifted to the horse. The gelding tossed its head and stomped a hoof.
Challoch started up, following Brax’s orders. The snarls from cover increased. A growl broke out, a steady menace. Before the guard reached the troll, he drove his horse into the bushy verge. The destrier broke branches and vines. They sprang back weakly once his horse passed.
The troll tried to claw away from the horse, gaining a few inches. He left a red smear on the ground. Then he collapsed. His moans stopped. The snarls halted briefly then resumed.
“With me, Desora,” Brax said quietly. “Right with me.”
She urged the gelding forward. The destrier started, and her gelding kept with it, head tossing when it neared the troll. The undergrowth tried to spring back once Brax passed, but her horse was there, keeping it bent forward. The broken branches scraped through the thick cloth of her skirt. The vines reached for the Earth power shining from her. She knocked them away.
Then she was past, and it was the rangers’ turn.
They aimed their arrows at the other side of the trail, at the trolls that hid in the undergrowth, still snarling and growling.
The troll on the trail had collapsed. It no longer moved or moaned, just lay still, breath rattling in its throat, blood pumping onto the dirt.
“Hurts me,” Ivhart said after, when they had gathered and were pushing the horses to a canter and the clear trail, “not killing it. Wouldn’t even defend itself.”
Desora nearly turned to glare at the ranger. Then Serre said, “And the others would have been on us in seconds.” He lifted his voice, to carry forward to Brax. “That was more than two females and a little one, captain.”
Brax twisted around. “Aye. Six, probably.”
“So we’d have a real fight on us, Ivhart,” the usually quiet ranger remarked. “We need every bow and sword against that monster. How many do you want to lose before we get to it?”
Ivhart didn’t respond.
He didn’t have time to. With jittering cries, nine gobbers dropped out of the trees. Two landed on the rangers. The others missed their leaps. They hit the ground then sprang up and bolted for the horses, claws extended, ready to rip flesh.
