Talos formed the chorus of words, though others of the New Gods propelled him, eager to claim a place in the Moonshaes. But Talos moved carefully. He would not strike the goddess in Myrloch, in her place of strength. No, for this task, another place would serve.
"Yes!" pledged the princess, thrilling to the role and the power. The shards of glass brightened within her, like a flaming wick concealed by a thin curtain of flesh. "But how?"
"For that," replied the voices of Talos, "we shall grant you a tool."
The demigod had languished in an icy prison for the coming and going of many centuries. Most of that time had passed in cold, mindless blackness as, unknown to Grond, the ages had passed him by.
Now, for the first time in many, many years, that darkness began to lift. The demigod felt the warmth of the world at his feet, the chill of the sky against his skull. For all that time he had rested, in the earth … and of the earth. Now, as remembrance of another life returned, the Peaksmasher was reluctant to make any acknowledgment.
He had led his giants here in the distant past, and at the time, the will of the Earthmother had stood strong against him. The clash of immortal wills had been powerful and violent, and in the end, the goddess had vanquished the demigod.
Aware of his past defeat, Grond wasn't certain that the result had been such a bad thing.
12
Tristan camped a short distance from the scene of his fight with the trolls. Finding a low, tree-covered knoll where he could see reasonably well to all sides, he picketed Shallot within a screen of evergreens and ordered the hounds to remain silent and vigilant.
Not daring to risk a fire-even Newt agreed that they didn't want to bring the trolls back just yet-the High King and the faerie dragon ate a cold supper. The loquacious serpent shared his companion's somber mood, talking little while they ate.
Then Tristan found himself a comfortable tree. Laboriously climbing a dozen feet from the ground, using his one hand and his feet to pull himself up the rough bark, he found a wide notch between a pair of sweeping limbs. He leaned back against the trunk, secured by a wide limb encircling his left side. Newt buzzed up to him and then found a stout limb a little higher up the trunk. Here he curled up, catlike, and promptly fell asleep.
Laying the blade he had dubbed Trollcleaver across his lap, the High King watched and waited throughout the remaining hours of evening and fading twilight. The hounds had found places to sleep under the tree, but they, too, remained alert and restless. Still there was no sign of any troll returning to the scene of the skirmish, nor did the corpses show any inclination to regenerate.
Finally, after dark, Tristan slept, though he jolted awake at the sound of any scampering creature of the woodland. He longed to hear the cry of the wolves, but his wishes were met with silence, except for the rustling of the small animals. His hounds, under the example of the well-disciplined Ranthal, didn't even growl at the rabbits and squirrels. They, like their master, waited for bigger game.
Yet during the course of the night and the dawn, that bigger game never materialized. Stiffly climbing down from his perch before the sun had fully cleared the horizon, Tristan began to wonder if he had sent the band into flight. The latter possibility seemed pretty unlikely, given the fact that he was only one man, but why hadn't they returned to the scene of their watch?
It was time, Tristan decided, to find out what the trolls had been guarding. Climbing easily again into the saddle, with Newt curled up in his position on the pommel, the king urged Shallot into an easy trot. With Ranthal leading, the four remaining hounds loped in a protective screen before the horse and riders.
Almost immediately Tristan noticed that the forest opened up into wide grainfields. He skirted a low hill and at last saw water gleaming before him. By the time he had passed the hill, he could make out the towers of the manor house and temple of a good-sized town.
Codscove! Spurring the powerful war-horse into a canter, Tristan approached the community, sensing immediately that this was a scene of trouble. The great tracks through the grain indicated the advance of a large force, and as he drew closer to the town, he saw the blackened ruins of burned buildings.
Yet, for all the signs of life meeting his eyes, it might have been a ghost town. A few piles of charred timbers still smoldered, casting thin wisps of smoke into the morning air, but the damage was at least a day or two old, Tristan knew. As he neared the first buildings, he saw human corpses, bloated and surrounded by flies, and from them he knew for certain that the battle had been two days before.
It was a sight he had witnessed all too often before, though it had been many years since he had seen it in his own realm. A feeling of deep, fundamental violation took hold of him, slowly welling upward into a crescendo of growing rage.
Again he tried to picture the firbolg lord who had brought all this to be. His hand itched to drive a blade into that hateful body, the grotesque image of evil. Why? Why do they attack? What do they seek?
Cautiously he reined in, causing Shallot to prance nervously, still a hundred paces from the nearest fringes of the town.
"What're we stopping for?" demanded Newt, raising his head and peering through the horse's white mane. "I'll bet they have food in this town!"
"Remember the way those trolls jumped us? I don't want the same thing to happen when we get between those buildings." Tristan could see that the narrow streets of the town created only a few routes he could use, and all of them could easily conceal a deadly ambush.
"Well, if that's all, I'll go have a look!" huffed the dragon, bouncing into the air and immediately disappearing. Concealed by invisibility, he flew quickly forward, flying over the main street and looking into the buildings and walled yards to either side.
Five minutes later he had returned to the king. "There's nobody there-no humans, no giants, no trolls. Nothing!" he reported. "Now can we go see if we can find some decent food?"
"I'm afraid not, old friend," Tristan replied. He had learned what he wanted to learn. There was no point now in examining the tragic scenarios that would doubtless be evidenced in the houses of the town. "If the raiders aren't here, they must have gone somewhere else, and I intend to find their trail!"
He guided Shallot in a wide arc around the town, riding along the lanes that ran between the once lush fields. Now most of the crops had been trampled in the chaos of battle. At last, as he neared the shore, he found the muddy track left by a marching army. He saw the harbor, now placid and blue, but the masts of many small boats jutted from the surface, each marking the grave of a fisherffolk boat
On the ground below, huge, booted feet-firbolgs, Tristan recognized with a tingle of alarm that was nonetheless acute for the fact that the memory was twenty years old-had clumped along in the midst of the horde, while the bare, clawed feet of trolls had carved their own distinctive marks in the earth along the army's fringes.
"Maybe they marched into the town while we were riding around and getting hungry," Newt suggested hopefully.
"Look at the toes," Tristan suggested. "They're pointing away from Codscove."
"I guess you're right," Newt concluded glumly. "At least, some of them are going that way."
Ranthal bounded along the trail of the army, but now he stopped, a hundred feet ahead of Tristan, to look back at the king with his ears upraised. The other three moorhounds raced after their leader, and Shallot trotted along in the wake of the dogs.
Tristan was about to call the rangy hounds back-he didn't want them too far in the lead-but the steady Ranthal held his pace to a slow walk until the great war-horse drew near. Then the dogs spread into their protective screen, sniffing alertly and poking through the brush and hedges that flanked the path.