Then, when the sun was well risen, I took my knife and hacked off his head.
Bult and the others had begun to rouse from their stupor by the time I returned to our camp with my trophy, banging bloodily into my knee. Looking back, I now recognize another gesture from destiny's hand, guiding me into a situation I ought not to have survived. I was young—that accounts for most foolishness among men of all races; I suppose it accounts for mine that morning.
Throwing the troll's head at Bult's feet, I shouted, "I saved your worthless lives last night," and, in the inexplicable reasoning of youth, I expected him to thank me. More than that, I expected him to recognize that I was the better man and admit as much before the whole band.
Foolishness. Unmitigated foolishness... and destiny.
Bult had a sword, the only sword in our band. It had a composite blade: bits of broken obsidian wedged into a stave of waterlogged wood that had then been baked hard in a kiln and strengthened with a copper spine. It was useless against a troll, but Bult figured to make short work of me when he drew it out of a bulky scabbard.
"Knew you was trouble from the start," he said, kicking my trophy aside as he advanced on me. "Should've killed you then and there—you with your fancy farm-boy words and your ideas."
I retreated a pace and tested my grip, finger by finger, against the rawhide braid wrapped around my club. With a dead troll fresh in my memory, I was cautious, but not overawed by my adversary or his weapon. My club needed a bit more room than Bult's sword; I shook out my shoulder and retreated, cocking my arm for my first swing. Bult smiled and nodded.
I thought our brawl was about to begin, but I hadn't been paying attention to my back. Hands I hadn't suspected seized my wrist and elbow. They wrenched my weapon from my hand, clouted me on the flank, and thrust me forward to my doom.
I landed hard on my hands and knees, well in range of Bult's leather-shod foot. He kicked me solidly under the chin, and I went head over heels in the dust, to the great amusement of my fellows, who had more enthusiasm for the murder of one of their own than they'd shown for a true enemy's death.
"You think you're smarter than me, Manu," Bult told me as he raised his foot to kick me again. I scrabbled backward into an unfriendly wall of legs and feet that ended my retreat. "That's been your mistake all along. You think 'cause your mamma and papa taught you to talk pretty, you're cut from a better piece of cloth. Well, your mamma and papa aren't nothing but troll-meat, Manu, just like you're gonna be when they find you."
Bult meant to hamstring me and leave me for the trolls— that was clear from the gleam in his eyes and the angle his wrist made with the sword's blade when he raised his arm. He could have had his will with me; I was weak with fear and sick with defeat. Sour blood filled my mouth. There was no strength left in me to move my legs out of harm's way, if he'd taken his cut right then. But Bult lugged his stroke and gut-kicked me instead.
Today I am the Lion of Urik, invulnerable and invincible. In the form Rajaat has given me, the finest steel cannot harm me. With an exercise of whim, I can hide my shape beneath an illusion of any creature I imagine. But when I was a mortal man, there was nothing about me that warranted Bult's respect. I took after my mother's folk: light-boned and slender. From my earliest days I'd learned the tricks of balance and leverage because I never had my father's and brothers' strength. I could carry Jikkana because I knew where to lift; I could fell a troll because I knew where to balance, where to pivot, how to coil my entire body and release its power in a serpent's strike.
Knowledge was my weapon, I told myself as I lay there in the dust, blood and bile streaming from my face. I was smarter than Bult; I was better, but first I had to breathe and protect myself from the kicks that came from all directions. Ignoring pain and blurred vision, relying on instinct—knowledge—alone, I caught a foot as it struck my ribs. I twisted it one way as I rolled the other. Finally there was a groan that didn't come from my throat, and a few heartbeats for me to rise up on my hands and knees.
I choked when I tried to breathe and spat out a tooth or two. My hair dragged in the muck my blood had made of the dust, but my lungs were working again, and my thoughts were clearer. I heard Bult sidestepping, taking aim at my flank. Raising my head, I caught his eye.
I nailed Bult, midstride. He backed off, and his mouth worked silently a moment before he said: "Get up, farm boy. Get up on your feet, if you dare, or crawl away as you are."
We'd heard that trolls could track by scent, that their noses were as good as their night eyes. The way I was bleeding on the ground and clutching my side, Bult guessed I'd be troll-meat whether he hamstrung me or not. And probably he was right: I was a deadman, but I was done running from trolls and wasn't going to start crawling from my own kind. I got to my feet and stayed there. A few of my fellows sucked their teeth with surprise or admiration. I didn't know which. I didn't care. My blood settled.
"Cowards," I repeated, including my fellows in the curse. Bult took a step toward me. I spat out another tooth that left a bloody mark on his cheek, and he stayed where he was. "Little children, a little bit afraid of trolls, a lot more afraid of the Troll-Scorcher. Eyes of fire!" I recalled my cousin, five years dead and forgotten in the ruins of Deche. "I've seen the Troll-Scorcher's magic, his eyes of fire, just like you. I've seen them at the muster—nowhere else. I've seen Myron of Yoram burn the heart out of a trussed-up man when we're all camped for muster, but I've never seen his awful magic out here."
I believed what I said, and I hated Myron of Yoram more than I hated Bult or any troll that ever lived. It gave me the strength to take a step in Bult's direction.
"Call him, Bult. Call the Troll-Scorcher. Tell him what I've done. Tell him to come and burn me with the eyes of fire. I'll die for him, Bult, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Call him!"
Once a month, as Guthay's golden face cleared the eastern horizon, we'd all gather around the fire, hand in hand, to shout the Troll-Scorcher's name to the night. When we'd shouted our throats raw, Bult would drop to his knees, his veins bulged and throbbing across his brow, and he'd tell the Troll-Scorcher how many trolls we'd seen since the last time, what they'd done, and what we'd done, which never changed: they ravaged, and we ran.
"Aye, Bult," someone behind me said. "Call the Troll-Scorcher. Let him decide."
"Manu's right. Maybe the Troll-Scorcher listens to us; maybe he don't. We see his mighty-bright officers, an' they tell us he's wagin' war somewhere else, but never near us." Another voice in the crowd.
"Never near no one," a woman added, sweet honey to my ringing ears. "Never met no one at the muster who didn't say the same thing: they seen trolls all year, an' never once seen the Scorcher."
I could feel the power of persuasion around me. "Call him, Bult," I taunted, then reached out for my fellows' hands and shouted our champion's name.
We all shouted as if Guthay were rising. Bult hit the dust with his eyes squeezed shut. Nothing happened—but, nothing ever happened when a poor, mortal human called Myron of Yoram.
When the time came and the dark magic was mine, I gave all my templars medallions—lumps of fired clay for most of them, but hardened with my breath, so they'd never doubt that I could hear them, see them. No less than Jikkana, Bult was my teacher; he taught me that in the field, fear, morale, and discipline are different words for the same thing.
And I learned from my younger self, too. If Myron of Yoram had been half a man to begin with, he'd have heard Bult that day. He'd have stirred himself across the netherworld—I know he had the power, what he lacked was will and wit—and he'd have struck me down with the eyes of fire.