Tarah Woodblade (7 page)

Anna yelped as the troll convulsed, then laid still. Tarah grabbed it by the leg. The troll’s skin was slick and rubbery and she fought a grimace off of her face as she began pulling it down the center of the road towards the second one.

“What are you doing?” Anne asked from atop her horse. “Let’s ride on.”

“We can’t, Madam Furley. They heal too quick. If we leave ‘em here, they’ll just attack the next person that comes down the road,” Tarah said, dragging the heavy troll past their horses.

Bertwise didn’t believe it. “How can it heal an arrow through the brain?”

“They don’t have much to heal,” Tarah replied.

“Troll brains are simple, Berty,” Derbich explained. “All they think about is eating. Besides, even if you cut their head off, they’ll just grow a new one and walk around as if nothing happened.”

“And the head you cut off will grow another body if you let it,” Tarah added, grunting as she pulled its body on top of its friend. “Once saw a troll cut into ten pieces. Two weeks later, came back to find ten trolls.” That was actually one of her papa’s stories, but Grampa Rolf would say telling tales was a good idea, whether the story was true or not. That’s how you grew your legend.

“The best thing you can do is leave something stuck through its brain until you can burn it,” Tarah continued. She looked down at the troll whose head she had smashed. The bones of its skull were already re-forming. She set down her pack and reached into the front pocket for her flint and steel. “Now hold tight while I set these things on fire.”

“Right there in the middle of the road?” Bertwise asked.

“Don’t want to burn down the forest,” Tarah said.

“I don’t like standing around here,” Anne complained. “What if there are more of those things around?”

“This won’t take long,” Tarah said through gritted teeth. If these people weren’t clients she would have chewed the woman’s ear off. Instead she kept her voice even.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Derbich said. “Trolls burn quite quickly. Their slime is flammable.”

“How efficient of them,” Anne grumbled.

Tarah turned her back on the woman and struck her flint against the steel, sending sparks onto the trolls’ glistening bodies. It only took a few strikes before there was a soft whoosh. The flames came up so suddenly that the horses shied away.

The trolls began to squirm as the fire ate into them and one of them jerked spasmodically, sending strings of burning slime across the road. One string landed on a slime trail the trolls had left earlier and Tarah rushed over as fire began to spread. She was able to kick dirt over the trail to stop the flame’s spread just before it reached a pool of slime at the forest’s edge.

“See, lady?” Tarah said. “That’s why I wanted ‘em in the middle of the road. Who knows how long they’ve been in the place leaving their slimy tracks every. . .”

Tarah’s voice trailed off. She walked to the edge of the road and crouched down. “No way,” she mumbled to herself, gazing at several slime-covered impressions in the ground. Their pattern was quite distinct.

“Do we really need to wait around here until those things stop burning?” Anne said.

“Just a minute longer,” Tarah said. She opened her pack and reached deep inside to pull out a piece of folded parchment. She opened it and compared the ink drawings on the page to the impressions in the ground. They matched perfectly.

Gripping her staff tightly, she tucked the parchment under her arm and reached down with her free hand to touch the tracks. A deep hunger flashed through her mind and she snatched her hand back, frowning slightly. She couldn’t sense the mind of the creature that had left the track. The troll slime was in the way. She sat back on her haunches and looked at the piece of parchment again, her brow furrowed.

 “Miss Woodblade? Is there a problem?” Derbich asked. The man’s voice was tinged with concern.

She shook her head and tucked the parchment back into her pack, then stood and turned to face them. “It’s nothing of importance, sir. We should move on.” He raised an eyebrow but nodded and Tarah added, “I’ll pick up the pace. We’ll still make it by dark if we hurry.”

She started on down the road towards the Mage School at a brisk jog, leaving the smoldering remains of the trolls, and the curious tracks, behind. The nobles had to urge their horses into a trot to keep up. To Tarah’s relief, they kept a slight distance, giving her time to mull things over.

When the drawing of the strange tracks had been given to her, Tarah had scoffed at the idea that such a creature existed. But now she had seen real proof. The tracks had belonged to a large beast with the front end of an ape and the rear end of a great cat.

She could feel her grampa’s smile. There was a lot of money to be made if she could track that beast down. Too bad the tracks had been so old. From the state of them, they had been left in the mud two rains ago and from the looks of the forest around, it hadn’t rained in quite some time. She bit her lip. The creature could be anywhere by now.

Tarah Woodblade doesn’t turn down an opportunity to make coin
, Grampa Rolf reminded.

It’s too much of a stretch, grampa
, she replied. Still, it was a lot of coin. She shrugged the thoughts away. She could worry about that later. The most important thing at the moment was to deliver the nobles to the Mage School.

Tarah kept up her pace and soon she was breathing heavily. She shook her head, refusing to slow. Three months of hiding had weakened her. Tarah Woodblade didn’t get winded. Not after a mile run. Besides at this speed, none of the nobles had bothered to speak with her.

The enormous Rune Tower loomed ahead and she ran on, her eyes taking in the scars of war all around her. The fighting had been heavy along this last section of road. Trees were broken, many of them charred, and huge sections of the forest had been torn up. Tarah didn’t let guilt touch her this time. This had been the result of battling with magic. Surely there was nothing one person could have done to help.

Tarah’s legs were burning by the time the walls of the Mage School came into view. She slowed to a walk, her jaw dropping. The walls had shrunk.

The walls used to be a marvel. Raised by powerful earth wizards, they had been fifty-feet-high and made of a single sheet of black rock and used to hang out overhead far above the ground, giving the oppressive feeling that they could collapse on her at any moment. Now, though they were made of the same black rock, the walls were maybe twenty-feet-tall at most. Tarah swallowed as she thought of the sheer amount of power that would have been necessary to bring those walls down.

The Furleys hadn’t seen the walls in their previous state. Anna gave out an awed gasp and Bertwise hooted in excitement. They urged their horses forward and soon passed Tarah in their rush to get to the gates.

Derbich let them race ahead, slowing down as he came next to her. “I must talk to the wizards, but I would like to speak with you afterwards if you don’t mind waiting, Miss Woodblade.”

Without thinking, she nodded and he hurried to catch up to his wife who was already at the front gate speaking to a guard and gesturing excitedly. Tarah walked on, watching as he caught up to them and calmed his wife. Before she reached them, another guard came from inside the wall and ushered the family through. They didn’t look back.

Tarah stopped and grit her teeth in consternation. Why had she agreed to wait? There was nothing to do outside but stand in the dirt and they could be gone for hours.

She looked up at the darkening sky. Surely there was no real need to stay. The Furleys had already paid the guild. If she started back to Sampo now she would be back at the Tracker’s Friend to throttle Bander by midnight.

She turned around, intending to do just that when she heard her papa’s voice chastening her,
Be responsible, Tarah. If you see something dangerous in the woods, you got to warn folks
.

Her shoulders slouched and she mumbled, “I know, papa.” Tarah looked back at the guards standing by the gate. There were two, one standing on either side of the wide gate, and both were looking her way. She headed towards one of them. He was a big man wearing a breast plate and carrying a spear.

“Hey you!” Tarah said and the man’s eyes widened in surprise. His face was weathered and a long scar wrinkled one cheek. “You in charge here?”

“Me? No. I’m just a student,” he said with a voice Tarah found high for a man his size.

“You’re a student?” she said, puzzled. “At the Mage School?”

A hesitant smile appeared on the man’s lips. “Naw. At the Battle Academy, Ma’am.”

“What’s an academy student doing standing guard at the Mage School?”

His smile faltered. “It’s a big place. Everybody helps with guard duty.”

Tarah frowned. The academy didn’t send students on guard assignments. More had changed than she’d thought. “I don’t have time to talk to a student. Where’s your guard captain?”

“Uh . . .” The student took a few steps back from the wall and looked towards the top of the wall. “Jerry!”

A helmeted head appeared at the top of the wall and peered down at them as it shouted back, “What?”

“This . . . lady wants to talk to someone in charge!” the student replied.

The person on the wall let out a sigh. “I’m coming down!”

A few moments later a guard dressed in full polished platemail walked from inside the gate, his helmet held under one arm. He was short, perhaps a full foot shorter than Tarah, but he had a wide-bodied frame. His shoulders were as wide as a man half again his size and his arms were huge. He approached them and Tarah realized from his stride that he was a dwarf. She hadn’t noticed right away because, unlike other dwarves she’d seen, his hair and beard were cropped short and neat. It reminded her of the way her papa kept his beard trimmed.

The student saluted him but the dwarf just scowled. “You call me captain when you’re on duty, kid,” the dwarf snapped. “And my name’s ‘Djeri’, not ‘Jerry’. understand?”

The man’s face reddened. “Yes, sir.”

Tarah found it strange to see such a young-looking dwarf addressing that grizzled man as ‘kid’. But then again the races with blood magic lived a long time. For all she knew, he could be hundreds of years old.

“Alright, Yerd, back to your post,” the dwarf said in dismissal and turned his eyes on Tarah. He raised one trimmed eyebrow at her armor and red staff, then met her gaze. His eyes were green. She’d never seen a dwarf with green eyes. “And what can I help you with?”

“You’re the guard captain?” she asked.

“No. Riveren the Unbending is in a meeting right now,” the dwarf said, his voice a deep baritone. “But I’m one of his sub-captains. You can speak to me.”

So Riveren was still in charge. The ‘Unbending’ moniker was new, but at least someone she knew had survived the war. “Okay, captain. I wanted to tell you that you guys have problems. We ran into trolls on the road here from Sampo.”

The dwarf didn’t look surprised. “How far from here?”

“About half way,” Tarah said. “There were two of ‘em.”

“Two trolls,” Djeri said, nodding. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll send some men down to take care of them.”

“Those trolls are dead,” she replied. “I burned ‘em and left ‘em in the middle of the road. The reason I’m warning you about ‘em is because there could be more. There was a lot of slime in the forest around the area. I had folks to guide so I wasn’t able to stay around and count tracks.”

“You killed them?” The dwarf looked her over again, his face thoughtful.

“Tarah Woodblade won’t be slowed down by a couple trolls.”

Djeri smiled. “You’re Tarah Woodblade? The hero of Pinewood?”

“I am,” she said and though she injected pride into her voice, something about the dwarf made her feel a little guilty saying it. “But I’m not from Pinewood itself.”

“I heard about you.” He gave her a respectful nod. “Most people thought you were dead, but the Pinewood folks said you were too tough to die. Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story,” she said quickly. “And it’s getting late. I really need to get heading back. I just wanted to warn you before I left.”

“Come on. There’s no need for you to leave just yet. Not when it’s just getting dark,” the dwarf replied and Tarah wondered where he was from. She had never met a dwarf that sounded so . . . human. “Why don’t you stay here for the night? Dinner’s just starting back at the barracks and there is a guest house open that you can sleep in.”

“I-I don’t know.”

“I insist,” he said with an encouraging grin. “Listen, the food here might not be dwarvish, but it’s way better than the turd soup they serve at the inns in Sampo. And I hear the beds at the houses are really nice.”

“Well . . .” Tarah hesitated. A bed sounded wonderful, but Tarah really didn’t want to spend the evening trying to explain where she’d been during the war.

Djeri took her hesitation as a yes. “Good. Yerd! Send a message to Wizard Beehn that we have a guest.” The big man nodded and ran through the gate. Djeri put an arm around her shoulder and urged her inside. “Thanks for warning me about the road. I’ll tell Riveren about it as soon as he gets out of the meeting. I’m sure we’ll send a patrol out at first light.”

Tarah sighed in acceptance and allowed him to lead her through the gate. The view inside the walls was pretty much the way she remembered it. The main road continued through vast manicured lawns to a cluster of class buildings and a clock tower at the center of the school. The enormous Rune Tower rose up behind it all, stretching endlessly into the sky.

That was the home of the wizards, the home of the Bowl of Souls, and more importantly to Tarah, the home of the greatest library in Dremaldria. Tarah had never been inside, but her mother had told her tales of it. She had always dreamed of roaming the library, reading the tales of the great adventurers of days gone by. But the wizards would never let someone like her in there.

Djeri paused to let her take it in, but he didn’t stop talking. “I’m sorry you had to deal with those trolls. We’ve had difficulty keeping the area clear. Ewzad Vriil and the moonrat mother left a lot of turds behind for us to deal with.”