The Prodigal Troll (24 page)

Maggot felt a dead-end cave crack open into a wide new cavernyou could throw spears.

Maybe people weren't so stupid after all.

As the spear carriers emptied the guts out of the beast, Foghair blew her horn again. The drumming and ringing and thrashing stopped, and all the others came in.

Two men tied the animal to a long pole. Maybe they were taking the meat to their women. Maggot had already decided to follow them to find out when he saw the mammut.

The shaggy red giant ambled into the meadow. Sun blazoned off metal knobs that adorned the ends of its tusks. A small man perched on its head behind the flapping ears. Stranger yet, a tent-a cave made out of sticks and skins, striped blue and yellow-sat astride its back. There were two people in it.

Boy presented the deer to the mammut riders, one of whom said something-the higher voice sounded like a woman's-before they turned away toward the lower valley, with the men carrying the deer and the others chasing after. Maggot followed them, like a shadow stretched out far and behind by a low sun.

Their trail paralleled a stream to where it met a river gushing over a rocky bed. The men approached a village of tents-a cluster of caves made of skins like the one on the back of the elephant-at the river's edge. Fires burned there, making Maggot wary. That magic eluded him. The only time he had ever tried to take hold of fire, he'd burned his hand.

Maggot hid in a large copse of trees that occupied a slight rise at the river's edge, downstream from the camp where too many men moved about constantly, like bees at a hive, making them impossible to count. Though he watched for a time, he saw no more women, and he began to despair that Foghair was the only one after all.

Exhausted, Maggot sipped from the river, then crawled under a fallen log and covered himself with leaves for a brief nap. He awoke refreshed, with the moon only half itself and dropping out of the sky. Though he moved about in the day now and had for many years, despite his mother's fears, some part of him still felt more comfortable at night. When he crept forth for a closer look, he left his spear behind so he could have both hands free for scavenging. His knife still dangled from the string around his neck.

He approached the darkened camp slowly, anxious at the smell of fire and burned meat, wondering how he'd find the women here if there were any. A big animal coughed at the edge of the tents, and Maggot dropped into a crouch.

Three lean, long-legged, spotted cats-unlike any big cats Maggot had ever seen-padded through the darkness. Their eyes glinted green. One paced back and forth, pausing to bat at one of the tents. So he was not the only one to prey on these people tonight.

Staying low, Maggot crawled off to the opposite side of the camp. While the men were distracted by the cats, he'd go in and take what he wanted. He was creeping inside for a closer look when one of the tents moved.

Maggot froze.

The huge bulk of the tent budged again, then lifted a snakelike appendage into the air.

The mammut! It swayed like an old tree in a strong wind. Maggot had known mammuts before, especially on the morning side of the mountain range. Trolls and mammuts fed side by side sometimes during the summer nights. Maggot had always been fond of the creatures because they were bigger than trolls. Even Ragweed looked diminutive next to one.

The little cave was no longer on its back. Maggot approached it gently, reaching out to pat its side. Big clumps of winter fur came loose at his touch. The trunk turned around, snaking over his shoulders, his head. All the while, the mammut rocked, lifting its back leg, dropping it, repeating the motion, until Maggot noticed the iron band affixed to its ankle. The mammut was chained to a stake driven deep in the ground.

That just smells wrong, Maggot thought as he hunkered down to examine the stake. It was the size of a small stump and buried deep. Gripping it with both hands, he braced his shoulders and tugged. The soil was soft. He wiggled the stake from side to side, pulling until it came free.

Shoving the animal's hard, unyielding side with his hand, Maggot whispered, "Go on, go away."

The shaggy creature shuffled in place.

A buzzing snore droned out from one of the nearby tents. Maggot spun around-he had forgotten to watch the tents. Leaving the mammut, he slouched toward the new noise, alert for signs of movement, his heart pounding at his own stupid distraction. He spotted one of the logs that the men carried through the woods propped at an entrance flap to one of the tents. He hefted it, expecting a heavy weight, but found it remarkably light. He saw at once that it was hollow, with the ends covered by some stretched skin. People did a lot with skins. Maybe because theirs were so thin. He tapped the end with his fingertips, and the sound made him jump.

Maggot felt suddenly nervous around all these people and their things. Carrying the log under one arm, he hurried back to the nearby copse.

Sitting down at the base of a tree, he propped the log between his legs. He tapped at it again with the tips of his fingers, and it made a light noise.

It reminded him of woodpeckers drilling dead trees. He smiled, wishing he'd had something like this among the trolls. He could have sounded almost like them then. With his fists, he pounded out the danger-death warning. The log resonated just like Ragweed's chest. He repeated it a couple times, adding a shrill scream at the end. He grinned, imagining the reaction of other trolls.

Looking back in wonder at the camp of men who made such things, he noticed some of them clearly outlined against a big fire that hadn't been burning as brightly a short while before.

First stood there, with Foghair by his side. Maggot recognized them by their posture, as surely as he would recognize a member of another band.

Maggot prepared to flee into the farther darkness, to retrieve his spear, when the mammut trumpeted somewhere far beyond the camp. It had wandered away after all.

He laughed. "Run, mammut, run."

And that's when he saw her. A woman. The Woman.

She came out of a tent and stood between Foghair and First beside the fire. She was taller than First, almost as tall as Foghair, with firelight glinting on her dark hair and tanned skin. Her long robe gapped open at the neck to reveal the curve of her breasts. Many of the men showed fear in their posture-even Maggot, with his puny nose, could smell it on them-but she stood there with her fists on her hips and stared curiously into the dark.

A second woman, whom Maggot scarcely noticed, snatched at her sleeve like a small bird plucking straws, but she shrugged it off. First said something, and she grinned. He said something else, and her laughter rang through the night, splashing over Maggot like cold water.

Maggot had felt the need to mate many times. The feeling that surged through him now had as little in common with that urge as a flower did with the giant poplar trees. He had no name for it. It threatened to drown him, like a mountain stream after a sudden cloudburst.

Still holding onto the skin-log, he crawled backward, then ran as far as he could, away from the tents and into the night.

ith daylight stalking the hills above the valley, Maggot finally found what he sought: a crack between two rocks beneath an overhanging stone. He pawed in the mud, enlarging the opening. When he crawled inside he found a good den, ripe with the old, faint stench of skunk.

From the inside Maggot dug the hole bigger until he could pull the hollow log in with him. It was a good den, though not big enough for him to stretch his legs out full-length. He rolled one way, then the other, then flopped over and over, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. Once, he nearly dozed off, only to be startled awake when his leg twitched, kicking the log.

Awake, he couldn't stop the thoughts. He'd been afraid. He didn't understand it. Yes, he'd been afraid many times before when wrestling trolls much larger than himself or hunting down creatures whose horns were sharper than his sticks. Venturing into daylight the first time despite his mother's warning. This didn't feel anything like those. Why should he be afraid of this woman? Had he not wrestled Little Thunder's son, Stinker, and won? Had he not killed stags in the mountains with sharp sticks and his own bare strength? Had he not turned his face toward the sun and not been turned to stone?

He had to go back to the skin-caves to see the woman again. To give her an interest gift. To show her his intentions.

Wrapping his arm around the log-drum, he held it tight, thinking of her until he fell into a restless sleep.

Maggot awoke with darkness rising, went outside, and pissed on the stones to mark the cave as his. Leaving the log behind, he ran barehanded down to the river in the moonlight.

He hadn't eaten much for two or three nights, so when he spotted the conspicuous purple-globed flowers of wild onions, he stopped to dig up several mouthfuls. The bulbs were small, so he satisfied his hunger by chewing on the pungent green stems.

Twice, on his way, he surprised deer and chased after them. Neither time did he catch one, and he thought again about that spearthrowing trick. Yes, that could be a very useful skill.

The moon was crawling into its cave when he reached the camp, but the light from it was still enough to illuminate a transformed landscape. The copse of trees that had sheltered him was nearly gone; all that remained were the few largest trees, some deadwood, and piles of branches. A rough palisade of upright logs now surrounded the tents.