She kissed my trembling fingertips.
It was likely that Dorean was a few years older than I; no one knew for certain. She'd been born far to the east of the Kreegills, where the war between the trolls and the Troll-Scorcher was an everyday reality. Maybe she'd been born in a village. More likely she'd been born in one of the wagons that followed the army wherever it went. Then her luck ran out. Myron of Yoram, whose idea of a picket line was a man holding the thong of a sack of rancid broy, left his flank unguarded. Troll marauders nipped his ribs, and Dorean was an orphan.
The bailiffs brought her out of danger; they did that out of their own conscience—loading their empty wagons with orphans and the wounded and bringing them back where trolls hadn't been seen in generations. Later, when the army was mine, I would remember what the bailiffs had done and reward them. But that day when I was ten and I looked beyond my father's arms, my eyes beheld Dorean's beauty for the first time, and the untimely vision of living torches was banished from my mind's eye.
"I will stay with you, Manu."
Surely Dorean had spoken to me before, but I had never truly heard her voice and, though I was young, I knew that I had found the missing piece of my heart.
"I will take Dorean as my wife," I told my father, my tears and fears already forgotten. "I will build her a house beneath the cool trees, and she will give me children. You must tell Grandfather. He cannot handfast her with anyone else."
My father laughed. He was a big man with a barrel chest. His laugh carried from one side of Deche to the other. Dorean blushed. She ran away with her hands held against her ears, but she wasn't displeased—
And Father spoke with Grandfather.
I had six years to fall in love with Dorean, and her with me. Six years to build a tree-shaded house. Six years, too, to perfect my wedding dance. I confess I spent more time up in the troll ruins perfecting my dance to the tunes my youngest brother piped than I did making mud bricks for the walls of Dorean's house.
In the way of children, I'd forgotten my cousin's memories of trolls with flaming eyes. I suppose I'd even forgotten the tears that first drew Dorean to my side. But something of my mad cousin's vision must have lingered in the neglected depths of my memory. I never followed the himali wagons down to the plains, yet the trolls fascinated me, and I spent many days exploring their ruined homes high in the Kreegills.
The script of my own race remained meaningless to me, but I deciphered the inscriptions I found on the troll monuments. I learned their names and the names of the gods they chiseled into the stone they'd quarried. I saw how they'd panicked when they saw the Troll-Scorcher's army in the valleys below them, abandoning their homes, leaving everything behind.
Stone bowls sat on stone tables, waiting for soup that would never be served.
Their benches were made from stone, their beds, too; I was awed by what I imagined as their strength, their hardness. In time, I identified the tattered remnants of their blankets and mattresses in the dust-catcher corners, but my awe was, by then, entrenched.
In truth, the trolls were a placid race until Rajaat raised his champions and the champions raised their armies. Myron of Yoram taught the trolls to fear, to fight, and, finally, to hate the very thought of humankind. Yet, it is also true that Deche and the trolls could have prospered together in the Kreegill, if Rajaat had not interfered. Men did not quarry, and trolls did not farm. By the time I was born, though, there was no mercy left in either race. It was too late for peace, too late for anything but annihilation. Rajaat and the Troll-Scorcher had seen to that.
It was too late for Dorean. My beautiful bride remembered her life before Deche and could not bear the mention of trolls. To her, the gray-skinned trolls were evil incarnate. As the sun rose each day, she slipped outside the village and made a burnt-honey victory offering for the Troll-Scorcher. Her hatred was understandable: she'd seen trolls and their carnage. I'd seen only their ruins. My thoughts about trolls were whirling mysteries, even to me.
In Deche, boys became men on their sixteenth birthday. I could have taken Dorean into my almost-finished house, but the elders asked us to wait until the next himali crop was in the ground. Dorean and I were already lovers; the delay was no hardship to us. We would be wedded before our child was born.
The day of my birth looms bright in my memory, but the day that looms largest was the Height of Sun in my seventeenth year—the Year of Enemy's Vengeance, the day Dorean and I were to be wed. I remember the bloody sun as it rose over the Kreegill ridge, the spicy aromas of the food the women began to serve, the sounds of laughter, congratulations, and my cousin's pipes as I began the dance I had practiced for years. With music and motion, I told the world that I would cherish Dorean, protect her, and keep her safe from all harm.
I was still dancing when drumbeats began to echo off the mountains above us. For a handful of heartbeats, the throbbing was part of my dance. Then my crippled uncle screamed, "Wardrums!" and another veteran shouted, "Trolls!" as he bolted from the feast.
We had no time to flee or hide, scarcely enough time for panic. Trolls surged into Deche from every quarter, their battle-axes swinging freely. As I remember now, with greater knowledge and the hindsight of thirteen ages, I know there could not have been more than twenty trolls, not counting the drummers hiding outside the village. But that morning, my eyes beheld hundreds of gray-skinned beasts wearing polished armor and bearing bloody weapons.
Fear made me bold, reckless. I had no weapons and wouldn't have known what to do with a sword, axe, or spear, if one had suddenly blossomed in my hands. In the midst of screaming confusion, I charged the nearest troll with my naked fists and never saw the blow that laid me flat.
I've been spared the true history of that day, with all its horror and agony: not even Rajaat's champions can hope— or dread—the memory of what happened while they lay unconscious. I choose to believe that the village was dead before the butchery began, that all my kith and kin died swiftly, and that Dorean died first of all. My mind knows that I deceive my heart, because my mind learned what the trolls did when they defeated humanity: Their women drew our men's guts through slits in their bellies or broke apart their ribs and seized their still-beating hearts. What their men did to our women, no matter their age or beauty, would be best forgotten—
If I could forget.
Vengeance was mine, in the fullness of time; my conscience does not trouble me, but I am grateful that I cannot remember Deche's desecration. Destiny had dealt me a glancing blow to the side of my head, then destiny covered me in the refuse of what would have been my wedding feast and my home. The trolls didn't spare me, they simply didn't find me.
The sun had set when I next opened my eyes. My head was on fire, but that wasn't what made me blink. A half-congealed drop of blood struck my cheek as I lay there wondering how I'd survived, wishing I hadn't. The eviscerated corpse of someone I had known, but no longer recognized, hung directly above me. I was showered with gore and offal.
Trolls, I thought. They'd massacred Deche and stayed to celebrate their deeds in its ruins. I had no notion how many trolls remained, nor any hope that my second attack against them would be more successful than my first. I didn't much care either way. My fingers explored the ground beside me and clutched a rock somewhat larger than my fist. Armed with it and numb courage, I gained my feet and lunged for the nearest head.
She seemed twice my size in the firelight. Drunk or not, she heard me coming and swatted me down. I was laid out on the damp ground, staring at the sky with a sore head, a busted lip, and tears leaking out my eyes. A score of strangers laughed. When I tried to stand, someone planted a foot on my chest.