The Prodigal Troll (25 page)

Higher up in the mountains, people lived in bark caves surrounded by similar walls of sharpened stakes. Maggot had only seen them a few times. In the late winter, those people abandoned their village for wilderness hunts, and it was these smaller groups Maggot stole from. He'd thought that those people and these were two different bands, but they both built similar walls, so now he didn't know.

Maggot skulked through the remains of the copse until he found the fallen, rotting tree where he'd hidden before. He thrust his hand into the leaf-filled pit beneath it, fishing around until he found his spear. Resting the shaft across his thighs, he squatted down behind the log to watch the camp for some glimpse of the woman-the Woman.

Above his head, a red-breasted bird began to trill at the dawn. Its song sounded uncertain, confused at the sudden absence of trees and shelter that had been there only a day before, or perhaps calling for a mate or nestlings that were no longer there. Maggot listened to it, wondering what would be the proper gift to show the woman his interest, and caught himself in a sigh. Nothing ordinary would do.

People began to stir in the camp, shadows among shadows. Maggot crawled down for a closer look. Twigs tangled in his hair as he squirmed through a wallow and peered over a rugged lip of dirt.

A man much larger than the others walked forth from the camp leading the three spotted cats that Maggot had seen the other night. This giant rubbed their haunches vigorously, each in turn, then shoved their hindquarters, shouting. The cats took off running, their rear legs overreaching their bent heads as they blurred across the floodplain.

Maggot had never witnessed an animal move so fast on the ground. Falcons attacking out of the sky, yes, but this took his breath away. When they looped out in a big circle toward Maggot's hiding place, he held that lost breath and pretended to be one of the stupid dead. Because if he did move or do anything else stupid, they were likely to see him and he could end up dead. He glanced back to the camp-

And saw the woman.

He craned his neck, straining to see her clearly above the lip of ground, through the web of branches. She came out and stood next to the giant. The other, birdlike woman accompanied her and a bearded man with a trollbelly, but Maggot scarcely noticed them. She wore tight-fitting pants and a loose, open breasted shirt like many of the men, but the curves of her body were distinctly feminine.

When she clapped her hands and shouted something to the cats, laughing, Maggot's heart pounded and a shiver coursed up his spine and down again just as it had the other night.

He followed the arc of her eyes and saw that the cats had turned in his direction. The one in front aimed its head at him like the point of an arrow, digging its legs into the turf.

Maggot squeezed his spear tightly, touched the knife at his throat, and did not move again, even to blink.

Then the second cat overtook the leader and swung out a paw to trip it. They balled up as they tumbled, rolling across the grass, snapping at each other. The third cat's legs slipped out from under it as it turned while passing them, and then it too pounced onto the pile. The big man clapped his hands and called to them, and one popped up and zipped off in his direction, followed by the other two.

Maggot exhaled and let his head sink to the ground. When he gazed up again, the woman and the others were returning to the camp. The log-and-mushroom men gathered outside the palisade, along with the spear carriers. Shortly afterward, the mammut came striding forth-so they'd recaptured it. Too bad. The little cave was perched upon its back with the man riding just behind its head again. The mammut rider shouted something, and the creature bent on its front legs!

This was certainly magic, the wrong-tasting nature that his mother-

The woman and her female companion climbed up on top and sat inside the little stick cave. Then, with much shouting and noise, the people set out all at once, like a great band of trolls going to feed at dusk. The mammut lumbered among them, carrying away the woman.

Maggot rose to his feet and followed them at a distance as they traced the river toward its source in the mountains. Pairs of spear carriers ranged outside the main group. With his newfound respect for the way they threw their weapons, Maggot could not come close enough to see the woman's features. But the blue-and-yellow tent atop the mammut bobbled along at the edge of his vision, always in view.

She was looking for something from her perch; all these people were looking for something. The deer perhaps, like the one they had killed yesterday. He'd have to get it first and bring it to her.

Miles upstream from the camp, the procession turned aside from the river plain and spread out along the edge of the forest. Maggot ran up to the first ridgeline to get above the people and observe them.

As he slipped between the trees in a hurry to find some position where he might see the woman again, he topped a steep rise and saw three men running from the opposite direction. Maggot dropped to his hands and knees, sidling into a hiding place behind a tree.

The three men were mountain people, with bright red skins covering their heads. Maggot realized that they, like him, were tracking the other group.

Maggot crabbed his way down the edge of the slope. The three men changed direction, fading back into the trees where Maggot couldn't see them. He hurried downhill instead until he found the group he sought-First and Foghair, with the Boy and several others, including the big man who'd had the cats. They knelt by something and grew excited, then hurried on. Maggot ran to the spot as they left it.

Scat. Bigtooth scat. He squatted on his haunches and poked his finger at the scat, breaking it into big chunks. He crumbled a piece between his fingers, sniffed it. Fresh, no more than a day old.

So they hunted the solitary bigtooth cat the way that packs of little bigtooths hunted deer or bison, with some lying in wait while others chased the prey into their clutches.

Maggot looked at the scars on his thigh and traced a finger over the hard ridge of the scar that crossed the back of his neck into his hair. He had surprised a bigtooth once before, in a cave in the lower mountains by the southern pass. Or rather the bigtooth had surprised him. He'd woken from his sleep one day with the cat's mouth closed around his head. He'd had his knife at hand and his mother nearby, or he wouldn't have escaped. It had taken a long time for his skin to knit together and heal, and he had been sick with a fever for many days. His nostrils flared at the memory. He had never killed a cat before.

Lifting his head, he looked downslope where the woman rode on the back of the mammut. And sighed. He hefted the spear in his hand and mimed throwing it. Maybe he wouldn't have to get too close to the bigtooth.

Or-maybe-he'd let the people kill the bigtooth. He could steal it from them and then give it to the woman.

With that thought, he retreated into the trees. But although the stupid people made their big noise all day, over a series of forested ridges and through several long ravines, they didn't flush the bigtooth once. By the end of the hunt, Maggot was checking to see if they had tails-they chattered as noisily as squirrels and seemed about as dangerous.

As the mob began its disordered ramble back toward their newly palisaded camp, he ventured close for one last glimpse of the woman. All he saw was the striped tent bobbing on the mammut's back, until that too finally dipped below the horizon. So it had been wishing for snow in summer's heat to think he could steal the bigtooth. He'd have to go find it.

A single bigtooth would range over land occupied by several troll bands, days and days of walking. But they tended to stay in one area as long as they found easy prey, and they always stayed near the watercourses. He stared out across the floodplain, watching the river come down from its source in the mountains. Deer moved up to the higher slopes in the spring. The bigtooth had to be following them.

Twilight cast its uncertain mist across the landscape. Maggot raised his head to the sky and saw the evening star-what the trolls called One-Eyed Mouth. It beckoned to them from their caves in the evening, calling them out to feed.

He lifted the spear another time as if to throw it.

Heading upriver in the fading light, he followed the trail from ravine to creek to ravine, until hungry and thirsty, he paused at the mouth of a larger tributary stream for a drink. The perch was too steep to sip from, so cupping his hand in the current, he splashed water into his mouth.

A few large shadows slipped silently into the woods on the other side of the water. Deer. Maggot snatched up his spear and followed their movement into the hills.

The stream babbled over a wide bed of rocks, making frequent and sudden falls. The mountain walls were steep on either side, thick with trees, and marked by sudden sprays of water that gushed out of narrow defiles. Maggot climbed upward over this rough terrain until the land opened out at last on marshy flats.

Vague shapes moved across a gray landscape of soft-edged growth and smooth, dark planes of water-a herd of several dozen grazing deer. Maggot skirted them slowly.

A bigtooth roared somewhere over the hills-the deer lifted their heads toward the sound and scattered.

Maggot ran, his feet splashing, toward the hilltop nearest the source of the roar. He practiced throwing motions with the spear as he went.

The moon was a little fuller tonight, and still in the sky, casting a pale light among the trees. When he reached the higher, drier land he circled through the woods, looking for any sign of movement, listening for any sound.

Off to his right, across flatter ground, he heard the snarling and snapping of wolves. He took a few hesitant steps that way.

The bigtooth growled from the same direction.

Maggot sniffed the air, looked at the clouds above the trees, and then angled through the forest to come at the noise from downwind. He saw the timber wolves first, counted five of them. They stalked the bigtooth, who sat in a little clearing in a puddle of moonlight, crouched over a large doe, with an arm cast across the body like a mother protecting its child. It had chewed off the doe's head.

The two dagger-shaped teeth jutting from the upper jaw were longer and wider than Maggot's knife. The short bobbed tail twitched at the back of the cat's massive, stocky body.

One wolf lunged at the bigtooth's flank, and the cat surged up to bat it with its massive paw. But as soon as the bigtooth moved, two other wolves darted in and tore at the carrion. One grabbed hold of the front leg and dragged it several feet before the bigtooth turned, snarling, and drove them away.

The wolves could take the meat-Maggot wanted the bigtooth. He chose a tree he could climb easily, and then, visualizing the way the boy had killed the deer, he lifted the spear, aimed it at the bigtooth's heart, and threw it.

It sailed wide of his target, and over it, to crash sideways into some bushes.

He grabbed his head in dismay-stupid people! Why did they throw their spears like that?

As the cat whirled to meet the new threat intimated by the sound of the spear hitting the brush, the wolves seized the chance and the meat. Two snapped at the bigtooth to hold it at bay while two others lunged in and dragged off part of the doe. The wolves retreated a short ways with their trophy, and the bigtooth turned to eat the rest before it was all gone.

The fifth wolf trotted curiously in Maggot's direction, and he scrambled up the tree to escape it. Sitting fifteen feet up, Maggot hurled insults at it because he didn't have any rocks.

Maggot watched the wolf turn aside for its portion of the meat, and he spit after it. He'd been stupid with the spear for thinking that being people would be so easy. He would have to try to find it later, or steal a new one.

When the wolves began to harass the bigtooth again, the cat decided that it had eaten enough and abandoned the remainder to them. It set off with a slow, arrogant stride on a trail that led around the hill and down to the streamside.

The woman wanted the bigtooth. Was she worth the danger?

With the carrion distracting the wolves, Maggot decided to chance it. He dropped from his branch, sprinted over the hilltop, climbed another tree by the trail, and waited, hoping.

Trolls rarely attacked living creatures, but when they did, it was like this: they hung on the face of a steep rockwall, or cliff, and dropped on their prey as it passed below. They wrapped it up in their long arms and bit its neck, or clawed open the stomach with one of their hands. Maggot had perfected the technique when he was small by dropping from trees on Ragweed's neck. Ragweed never looked up at the trees. At least not at first.

Neither did the bigtooth cat-Maggot hoped it didn't get a second chance to learn from its mistake.

The big cat swaggered along the deer trail, shifting its head from side to side, its tongue lapping the long teeth. As it passed beneath the limb on which Maggot sat, he leapt onto its back. He snaked one arm around its throat and braced his legs to stop its first attempt to roll over on its side. It turned its head, slashing its jaws at Maggot as he plunged his knife between its ribs, deep. The cat roared, twisted, and Maggot kicked his feet, fending off its rear legs as the claws came up to gut him. He wrenched the knife free, stabbing the cat's breast again and again.

The bigtooth growled, ripped its head from Maggot's grasp, and rolled the other direction. Maggot dropped his knife and jumped for the tree. He pulled himself up onto a branch as the big cat slammed into the trunk. Maggot slipped, caught himself, looped a leg over the next branch, and heaved himself higher. The bigtooth paced at the base of the trunk, its side glistening slick with blood.

Maggot dripped sweat. He couldn't catch his breath. The bigtooth's blood mixed with his own-he'd been slashed on his side and the back of his calf, and he'd scraped his leg climbing the tree.

"If you aren't going to die"-he gasped-"then go away."

The bigtooth seemed to like this advice, because it suddenly started running down the trail. Before it passed out of sight, it staggered and collapsed face first.