The Bowl of Souls: Book 01.5 - Hilt's Pride (8 page)

“You’re not going back in there.” Beth said matter-of-factly “You promised to escort me to the top of this mountain.”

Hilt grabbed his hair in frustration. “And I will. But first I need to go back and-.”

“No,” Beth rubbed the end of the fire stick against the dry branch in her other hand.

Hilt threw out his hand in warning, but she didn’t give him a chance. Beth tossed the burning branch onto the nearest slime trail. A line of fire streaked towards the cave entrance lighting every trail it crossed.

Wasting no time, Hilt ran to Beth and tossed her over his shoulder, then turned and ran away from the cave.
“Yntri!”
 
he
yelled, but the elf was already running ahead of them.

When the line of fire hit the pool of slime at the mouth of the cave, there was a whoosh and then a sharp crack. Hilt was knocked from his feet by the concussive blast. His chest struck the ground and Beth tumbled away from him, rolling across the rock.

IV

Hilt’s ears rung and as he gasped for air, he looked back to see an enormous twisting plume of flame roaring from the cave entrance. Troll trails everywhere had been lit and the entire ridgeline was aflame. It was sheer luck that the blast had not knocked them into one of those flaming areas or tossed them down the mountainside. Even so, the heat was so oppressive that he feared his clothing would combust. He crawled to Beth.

She was moaning softly. Her left arm had fallen across a lit troll trail and she hadn’t yet noticed that the sleeve of her dress had caught fire. He beat out the flames and dragged her to her feet. He grabbed her arm and pulled her further away from the blaze. She staggered along in a daze at first, bruised up and moaning. Then the behemoth’s pained roar echoed from the inferno behind them. She forgot about her discomfort and began to jog beside him.

They didn’t turn back until the air cooled and they caught up to Yntri. The elf stood with arms folded watching the blaze, the flames reflecting in his squinting eyes. Hilt glanced back over his shoulder. The fire still poured from the cave mouth, flowing upward into the sky like an upside down waterfall. Hilt released Beth’s arm and looked her over to make sure she was okay. She was bumped up and bruised and her dress had torn in a few places, but from the way she glared back at him, he figured that she had recovered from her tumble.

“What on earth were you thinking?” Hilt snapped. “We could have all been killed!”

“I made sure we were standing in an area clear of slime before I lit the trails,” she said. “The fire was a bit more intense than I figured though.”

“A bit?”
Hilt said in disbelief. “And where is my fire stick? Please don’t tell me you dropped it.”

“Here,” she said and stuck out her right hand which was still clenched around the stick, her knuckles white. “I made sure not to let go of it.”

“And the cap?”
Hilt asked. “Please tell me you didn’t lose it.”

“
Uhh
. . .” Her brow furrowed, her eyes darting back and forth for a moment as she tried to remember what she had done with it. Then she sighed in relief.  “That’s right. Yntri pulled it off when he tried to take the stick away from me.”

Hilt glanced over to Yntri. The elf handed it to him wordlessly. Hilt snatched the fire stick from her hand and placed the cap back on it before tucking it into his pocket. “I see that you can’t be trusted with this.”

  “I can’t be trusted?” she scoffed. “After you ran off to your doom, leaving me alone with a
handsy
old elf, I’m the one who can’t be trusted?”

Yntri nodded and clicked at Hilt in agreement.

“Look, you two,” Hilt said. “I was not going to my doom. I was just checking things out. I wanted to see it.”

“And how did that go?”

“It was . . . large,” Hilt said.

“Could you have killed it?” she asked, hands on hips.

“Well . . . likely not, but we will never know, will we? You took that opportunity away!”

“It was for your own good!” Beth said. “Why on earth were you so determined to face that thing?”

Hilt clenched his jaw. “It was a matter of-.”

“Pride?” she scoffed. “More like a matter of stupidity.”

“Yes, pride!” Hilt shouted. He raised his right fist and shook his rune at her. “I was named nearly twenty years ago! Twenty years since I received the highest honor a warrior can get. It took immense focus and
drive
to reach those heights, but what then? Where does a driven man go once he’s reached the top? Tell me!
Where?”

Her jaw hung open in surprise at the intensity of his reaction and she stammered as she tried to find an answer. Yntri clicked a few times and placed a calming hand on Hilt’s arm, but the warrior shook him off.

“I’ll tell you where,” he said. “Once you have reached the peak, there is no direction to go but down.”

Beth swallowed. “N-now if you’re at the top there’s no reason you have to go anywhere . . . is there?”

Hilt laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. “Yes, I suppose I could stand still, poised on my peak, trying to maintain myself. That’s what people expect a named warrior to do. And don’t get me wrong, for many years I have been content to do so, but lately more and more I get that itch, that need to achieve something again. The monsters of legend are one of the few challenges still out there, one of the few ways I can still improve.

“I already slew one of them.” He jerked a thumb at Yntri. “It was the day Yntri and I met. A nightbeast had been haunting one of the villages in Malaroo down by the Jharro grove.”

Yntri’s brow furrowed. He clicked at Hilt with a scolding tone, jabbing a finger in his direction.

“Yes, I know.” Hilt shook his head with a snort. “He tried to warn me off back then too. Yntri likes to tell me my pride is going to kill me some day. I disagree. I think it’s what keeps me alive. I was unhappy for a long time before that battle. But when I killed that nightbeast things changed. The
Roo
-tan welcomed me in. Their leader took my council and started opening up their borders to Dremaldria. That fight changed their country and my life for the better.”

His explanation didn’t get the response he had hoped for. Beth’s look of surprise had turned into a scowl. “So that’s what this pride of yours is?
A need for fame and glory?
You reach the top and that’s not good enough for you? You need to keep waving and shouting, ‘Look at me! I’m Sir Hilt and I killed stuff, so I’m still the greatest!’”

“Stuff?”
Now it was Hilt’s turn to stammer. “Y-you think this is about fame? You think that if I had killed that behemoth, word of my victory would spread? You think bards would travel around singing about it? How? No one knows it’s here!”

“Oh, and you wouldn’t tell anyone about it? Sure.” Beth rolled her eyes. “Who needs a bard when you can sing your own praises?”

“Had you ever heard of me before today, Beth?” When she didn’t answer right away, Hilt nodded in satisfaction. “You don’t know a fraction of the things I’ve done. No one does. I don’t seek out the praise of others. Praise comes on its own sometimes when you do good works, but that’s not why I do what I do. This is
my
pride. It’s about me.”

“All about you?”
Beth’s scowl hadn’t faded. “So you’re admitting that you’re selfish. You go around pretending to want to help, but when it comes down to it, you’ll put your stupid pride above everyone else.”

Hilts face went red with indignation, but Beth didn’t back down. Yntri clicked and whistled soothingly and took a step between them in an attempt to calm things down, but they just ignored the elf, glaring around him.

Hilt’s fists shook. “It’s . . . You . . . You’re just determined to antagonize me, aren’t you?”

Beth threw up her hands. “What’s going to happen next time, hmm? If we get near the top of this mountain and we need your help, but the
world’s
largest squirrel runs by, are you going to leave us and run off chasing it?
Huh, mister selfish?”

They leaned in close, eyes locked, matching each other glare for glare for several seconds, Yntri stuck uncomfortably between them. Then Hilt’s lips twitched. Beth’s glare faltered. Both of them burst into laughter.

Yntri watched their mirth, confusion etched on his wrinkled face. He scratched his head and clicked a wary question.

“Yes! Yes, Yntri, I suppose we are crazy. ” Hilt laughed some more. He shook his head at Beth.
“World’s largest squirrel?
Really?”

“It’s what popped into my mind at the time,” Beth said, holding her bruised sides and wincing. “I know it doesn’t sound very dangerous, but the picture I had of it in my mind had really sharp teeth.”

As the laughter died down, Hilt shook his head. “Beth and Yntri . . . you were both right. I have two missions ahead of me and I put both of them in jeopardy by chasing after the behemoth. That was indeed . . . selfish of me and inexcusable behavior. I am very sorry.”

Beth looked quite surprised that he had admitted it. “I forgive you. And I-I apologize for antagonizing you . . . and for almost blowing all of us up.”

Hilt gave her a sincere bow. “I am most grateful for your forgiveness and I accept your sincere apology. What about you, Yntri? Do you forgive us?”

The elf shrugged and clicked a few times, then turned and hiked on, talking back to Hilt over his shoulder.

 “Yntri says it is getting late.” The sun had indeed nearly reached the horizon. Clouds at the edges of the skyline had begun to turn a pink hue. “We should find a good place to stop for the night. Can you climb a bit further?”

Beth nodded, though she looked exhausted. Hilt didn’t blame her for being tired. It was hard to believe that their climb had just begun that morning. They had been through a lot in that short period of time.

They followed Yntri up the slope in silence for a while. Hilt kept an eye on the woman, making sure she was holding up alright. Beth’s movements were a bit labored as she trudged on. He wondered if her fall had done more than just bruised her. Despite obvious discomfort, Beth didn’t complain.

When she did speak again, her look was introspective. “Hilt . . . when you were in the cave . . .”

“Yes?” he said.

Her head was down and her voice hesitant as she added, “The beast. What did it look like?”

Hilt noted the fear in her posture and replied, “A nightmare. You don’t want to know.”

She nodded, then asked a few seconds later, “Do you think that the fire killed it?”

Yntri, who was just a few yards ahead of them laughed and clicked back at
her
.

“He says that if fire killed it the behemoth wouldn’t be a legend,” Hilt translated. “He’s right. Troll behemoths heal too quickly even for fire. Perhaps if one was starved and then you set it on fire . . .”

She eyed him with suspicion. “You are thinking about strategies in case you decide to come back and face it later, aren’t you?”

Hilt chuckled. “Already you know me so well. But don’t worry. I will see you to the top of this mountain. Then I have another mission to finish before I can even think of coming back.”

That didn’t seem to make her feel better. She folded her arms. “I really had hoped I’d killed it.”

“If it is any consolation, that inferno doubtless caused the deaths of hundreds of trolls that were growing from its side.
They hung from its back like bunches of grapes.” She grimaced and he added, “Come to think of it, you probably killed the population of rodents that it was feeding off in there. It’s too large to leave that cave and without a food source, it may starve to death. So oddly enough, your fire may kill the beast after all. Imagine that!
Beth, killer of legends!”

A slight smile reached her lips at that thought and she straightened up a bit, but Yntri shook his head and clicked again.

“Oh,” Hilt said as the elf continued on.