"It was perhaps a rash move," he admitted. He drew Trollcleaver, allowing the gleaming blade to shed gentle light around the gathered humans and dwarves. "Still, this blade gave me a better chance than I'd ever have thought. Perhaps there was something to that priest's prophecy."
"Father, that priest was treacherous to the core!" Alicia objected. She quickly recounted the tale of the hallucinatory terrain Parell Hyath had used to try delaying the company from Corwell, while Tristan frowned in displeasure mingled with confusion.
"If it hadn't been for Keane," the princess concluded, "we'd probably still be wandering around in a swamp that doesn't even exist!"
"Then why would he give me such a sword?" asked the king. "This blade is truly as mighty as any weapon I've wielded since the Sword of Cymrych Hugh. I have dubbed it Trollcleaver, and it is aptly named. If he intended for us to fail, what purpose is served by such a gift?"
"The priest is a mysterious figure," Keane suggested. "Some of what he said-about the trolls and firbolgs, for example-proved to be remarkably accurate. Yet our army was surrounded by an illusionary expanse of water, clearly of the cleric's doing. It could only have been placed there to stop us."
"There's more than a hint of madness to this whole affair," Tristan observed somberly, suppressing an ominous shiver as he recalled his aimless wandering. "It's only good fortune, and perhaps the favor of the goddess, that enabled us to prevail."
"And prevail quite remarkably," Hanrald noted. "From the edge of disaster, we earned a victory that destroyed the foe!"
"The foe is not entirely destroyed," Sir Koll amended. His face fell ruefully. "A small knot of trolls escaped into the forest-a las, but the northman captain and I were too sorely pained to give chase."
"Did you note a great one among them, with a bronze-edged sword-jagged teeth on the blade, like a saw?" asked the king quickly. "I believe him to be their leader, and I'm not sure if he was slain by fire."
"I'm sorry, Sire. I couldn't say for certain," replied the knight.
"We'll break into companies and root them out soon enough," Alicia suggested. "The bulk of the horde has been broken."
"Others might have gotten away as well," Brandon said with a cautionary tone. "I assume that you didn't see the Princess of Moonshae in Codscove," he said to Tristan.
"No-nothing afloat. Even the fishing boats had been sunk."
"She was taken by firbolgs!" exclaimed the northman bitterly. "Some of them must have put out to sea!"
"Why would they do that?" Brigit asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Another thing," Finellen interjected. She had just heard the whispered report of dwarven warriors who had been scouring the battlefield. "The Silverhaft Axe isn't here. No one saw it during the battle, and it wasn't found on any of the bodies."
"Perhaps we'd better have a word with one of the prisoners," mused Tristan. He picked a particularly dejected-looking firbolg, a brute who sat on the ground with his head in his hands. "Bring that one over here!" he called to Sands.
The sergeant-major and a few of his men prodded the reluctant creature toward the king and princess. The giant-kin regarded the humans and their allies with suspicion and fear, though there seemed to be little threat in his manner. Low, beetling brows shaded his eyes from the bright moonlight, but the sagging expression of his jowls seemed far more tired than angry.
"Here," said Alicia, handing the brutish fellow a small sausage from a nearby knapsack. The giant sniffed it cautiously, then popped it into his mouth with a quick gesture.
"There was a ship here," Tristan began, speaking in slow, clear common tongue. "Where did it go?"
"Thurgol took ship," the giant said, squinting in concentration.
"Where did he go?" blurted Brandon.
The firbolg turned, looking to the north. Trees screened them from the coastline, and from this distance, the looming summit of the Icepeak was lost in the haze. Yet the giant-kin unerringly pointed across the strait, to the summit rising above Oman's Isle.
"Thurgol took ship there," he said firmly. "To the big mountain with the snow. They go to the place of Grond Peaksmasher."
Baatlrap seethed with such fury and hatred that he felt as though he must certainly explode. His hand was torn away, his army broken. He led a group of no more than twoscore trolls, the only ones who had survived the battle with the human and dwarven armies. Now those of his comrades still alive regarded him with frank skepticism and loathing, as if it were Baatlrap's fault that the fight had eventually swung against them. He stared back at everyone who seemed likely to challenge him and was mildly gratified to see that, even one-handed, he could still cow the trolls of his band.
Yet his mantle of leadership rested insecurely. He knew that no troll could hold the reins of command for long if he proved incapable of leading his followers to victory and plunder, or at least some small measure of prosperity. Thus far Baatlrap had given them a great victory, at Codscove. Unfortunately that triumph had been followed by today's less-than-glorious setback.
But more than the memory of defeat tore at the hulking leader. Indeed, he felt nothing whatsoever for the many trolls, many of them lifelong companions, who had fallen in the fight. The firbolgs who had perished mattered even less.
To find the true cause of his bitter rage, he had to look no farther than the end of his left arm. The limb ended in a slashing, gory wound where once his wrist and hand had been. In one moment of chaotic battle, one violent act of combat, his hand had been sliced off by the human's sword.
And it wouldn't grow back!
Other trolls had suffered similar injuries. In fact, as they marched, one of the creatures, sliced across the gut by that same deadly weapon, fell to the earth, writhing. No longer able to hold back the weight of his insides, the creature finally gurgled out his last breath amid a circle of impassive, dead black eyes.
The trolls resumed their trudging march, leaving the last fatality where he had fallen. The hideous creatures moved in silence, each of them grimly aware of the deadly harbinger this sword might signify, for if humans could inflict trolls with wounds that wouldn't heal, the future of the humanoids suddenly seemed to hang by a very tenuous thread indeed.
In Baatlrap's mind, that hatred began to coalesce into an image of an enemy. He thought of the man who bore that mighty sword, the one his entire army had attacked. They had almost slain him then! A deep growl rumbled from the troll's chest as his fury grew. The lone warrior never would have escaped the encircling ring if not for the appearance of his accursed allies!
But to Baatlrap, it was the lone fighter who came to personify all the hatred, all the frustration that the seething predator now endured. If he could blot out that life, he thought, some of that rage must certainly be mellowed.
And another thought occurred to him. If, in the process of besting the human lord-he knew that such a warrior must be a leader of men-Baatlrap could gain control of that deadly sword, than there would be no troll who dared to stand in the path of his rulership over the clan.
With this thought on the great troll's mind, his pace of retreat slowed to a shuffle and finally stopped altogether. Then, with only a barked command for his tribesmen to follow, he turned and started back toward the gathering of their enemies.
"All the boats were sunk?" demanded Brandon, trying to discover a means to pursue his beloved longship. "Not a curragh or rowboat left?"
"I didn't inspect closely," Tristan said, "but there was nothing afloat in the bay."
"I looked," offered a newcomer. Newt popped into view above them, hovering lower until he came to rest upon Tristan's shoulder. His cheeks bulged, and the little faerie dragon quickly swallowed a mouthful of raw fish.