Elvar nodded, felt a flush of pride and fear. Pride to be picked, fear that she might run into a full-grown bull-troll. Trolls were not to be sniffed at. The Battle-Grim had hunted them before, for a price, but not when they were at half strength, and running blind through a forest. Trolls were fiercely territorial, a male usually solitary unless there was a female in season close by, in which case males would compete for her affections, fight, mate and remain with her for the duration of her gestation and a month or two after his brood had been born. After that he would return to his territory.
So, there could be one, two or more, if the cow-troll has given birth. And newborn trolls were not much smaller than Elvar, strong and nimble when they were born, voraciously hungry. And notoriously fond of human flesh.
“Let’s pick up the pace. I don’t want my prize ending up in a troll’s belly,” Agnar said.
Elvar set off, veering back on to the path and breaking into a slow jog, Grend staying in the woods level with her, Biórr moving to her left, and then running parallel to the stream, his boots crunching in snow. Elvar felt her heart beating time as she loped ahead, eyes scanning the path and woodland. The path steepened and twisted, veering around rocks that were becoming more frequent. Something caught her eye, a silver line glistening in diffuse patches of daylight that filtered through the trees.
A strand of cobweb, thick as Elvar’s finger, ran from the rotted, hollowed trunk of a pine tree up into higher boughs. Elvar tracked it upwards, saw the cobweb spiral, spreading wide among the branches, dark husks hanging. Rats. A crow. A pine marten, big as a cat.
Frost-spiders.
Elvar shrugged her shield from her back and into her fist as she ran, whistled, drawing Grend’s and Biórr’s eyes, and pointed with her spear.
There are too many of us, Elvar thought, but her eyes searched the boughs, just in case. She’d seen what a frost-spider’s venom could do, freezing blood in veins and stopping the heart.
Snowflakes as big as leaves drifted down about her, muting the sounds of the forest. Grend was a dark shadow flitting on her right, Biórr slower, navigating the snow and rocks of the stream’s bank, which was becoming deeper and wilder, foam-flecked. Snow fell thicker about Biórr, the canopy thinner above the stream, which made his route slicker and harder to navigate.
That will teach him for following me. He has some stones, though, risking Grend’s ire.
Elvar glanced back, glimpsed the thrall on the path, moving in a stooping run, Sighvat puffing like a bellows behind him.
A sound filtered through the forest, a distant, constant hissing, like an angry cat. It grew louder. A waterfall? Whatever it was, Elvar was running towards it, her lungs and legs starting to burn, then a new sound pierced the forest. A huge, roaring bellow cutting through all else, for a few moments drowning out the roar of the waterfall.
“Troll,” she said, an attempt at warning Grend and Biórr, but the word came out of her mouth a rasp rather than a warning shout. It wasn’t needed, though; Grend and Biórr both heard it, judging by the way they slowed, their eyes flitting from the path ahead to Elvar.
She couldn’t see anything but held her spear up as a warning to Sighvat behind, then she ran on, though more cautiously than before.
The path steepened, then levelled out and Elvar spilled out on to a snow-covered plateau, blinking as trees thinned about her. A torrent of molten fire plummeted down a granite cliff, like a waterfall, roaring and hissing, cascading into a molten pool that bubbled and churned. Snow fell upon it, melting and hissing, sending a permanent mist swirling into the air.
On the fire pool’s eastern edge two figures stood, a woman and child, as close to the pool as they could bear, waves of heat rolling off the molten rock. And between Elvar and the woman and child were two others, one taller than the other.
A troll and a man.
They were fighting.
The man was broad and thick-bearded, wrapped in fur, his head roughly in line with the troll’s belly. He held a spear two-handed, was jabbing and ducking as the troll swung a club of knotted wood, spiked with iron nails as long as Elvar’s forearm. An explosion of turf as the club tore into the ground, the man leaping away, falling, rolling, staggering back to his feet, stabbing with his spear at the troll’s leg.
“MINE!” the troll roared, deafening, even over the din of the molten waterfall and fire pool.
Grend stepped close to Elvar, Biórr just standing and staring.
The thrall loped up to Elvar’s side, and there was a clink of chain as Sighvat huffed up the slope and into the open glade, sweating, cheeks red. He dumped the sack he’d been carrying on to the snow with a rattle of iron.