Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel

Chapter 5

An old dirt track crossed the Badlands, twisting and turning through the barren landscape.

Once the track had been well used and clear, but now weeds dominated it. At times the path disappeared completely beneath the undergrowth or pools of rainwater and Raf had to rediscover it further on.

Raf walked along the track, flanked on both sides by forests of thorns. Occasionally, with a suddenness that would make him jump, birds took flight or an unseen ground animal would scurry through the brush.

If he kept up a good pace, he estimated it would take him three days to cross the Badlands.

On the first night, he camped by the putrid muddy stream and lit a small fire. No sooner was it ablaze than Raf saw something in the tree line.

A black wolf, staring at him with unblinking eyes.

Raf didn’t know how long it had been there. His hand moved to his axe.

The wolf just stood with its head bent low, watching him. Then it slowly opened its jaws, revealing long deadly fangs, and growled—

The second wolf came exploding out of the thorn bushes to Raf’s left.

Raf turned, raising his axe, just in time to be hit by the beast and thrown to the ground. It landed right on top of him. Raf struggled. But the animal didn’t move. It had his axe-blade lodged deep in its chest.

Then the first wolf attacked, bounding toward him as he lay defenseless on the ground. It leaped—

Shwap!

— only to drop out of the air and slide to the muddy ground right in front of Raf, with an arrow protruding from its rib cage.

Raf spun to see a dark figure standing at the edge of the clearing, a crossbow pressed against his shoulder.

“Lowland wolves,” the figure said, reloading his weapon. “They’ve been following you for several hours now. The birds knew they were here. That’s why they took flight. You were lucky these were lowlanders. They’re smaller than mountain wolves and not nearly as aggressive.”

“Not as aggressive?” Raf said.

“Oh no.” The figure stepped into the light, revealing himself to be a little old man. “A pack of mountain wolves wouldn’t have bothered stalking you. They would have just killed you on sight.”

He said this plainly, in the manner of one expressing the most rudimentary of facts.

Raf stared at the old man. He was, quite simply, the oldest person Raf had ever seen, far older than any of his tribe’s elders. This man had a long graying beard, oddly pointed eyes, and he wore a curious hat made of wicker. In his hands he held the now-reloaded crossbow, poised and ready.

“Who are you?” Raf asked.

“I am Ko,” the old man said pleasantly. “I live here in the Badlands on my own, in the tranquility that only solitude can provide.”

As a child, Raf had heard the older boys speak of a hermit who lived in the Badlands, a stranger from the East who worked magic and evil spells. Perhaps this was he.

Raf said, “Hello, Ko. My name is—”

“You are Raf, brother of Kira. Occasionally, you hunt at the periphery of these lands and sometimes you fight shadows using weapons of your own devise. I have watched you often.”

“You have?”

“Oh, yes, and I have enjoyed doing so.” Ko smiled. “You are a keen inventor. You create a weapon and then figure out how to use it by experimentation. It is nice to see one so young trying to create new things.”

Raf cocked his head. “When I showed one of my weapons to my chieftain, he laughed and called me foolish.”

Ko sighed. “I have seen other members of your tribe in these lands. It is they who are the fools. Your ideas are novel and clever.”

“You’ve seen my people?” Raf said with a start. “Did you happen to see a six-man party come through here about sixteen days ago? Three warriors and three porters?”

“Of course I did. How could I not? They made no attempt to travel in silence. They spoke much about the trolls before they ventured into the mountains.”

“Did you see them return?”

“No. I did not.”

“You say you heard them,” Raf said, “but you did not speak to them?”

“Often, I shadow folk who pass through these lands. The ability to move silently and unnoticed is a skill my people value highly. When I was a younger man, if I may speak immodestly, I was very good at the art of silent movement.”

Looking at the old man, Raf decided that that must have been a very long time ago.

“How did you know my name?” he asked.

Ko smiled again. “Your sister calls it when she comes searching for you at the end of the day. And you use hers when you rejoin her. She frets when you go out alone.”

“Oh.”

“And what causes you to be venturing this far into the Badlands, young Raf? This is beyond your usual range. You seem prepared for a sizable journey.”

“My sister is ill with the sickness. I am going to Troll Mountain to procure the Elixir for her.”

“You plan to trade your life for hers?” The old man seemed surprised. “To grant the trolls their cruel bargain?”

“I plan to procure the Elixir for my sister,” Raf repeated.

“Oh. I see.”

The old man examined Raf closely, as if he was deciding whether or not to say something.

“Raf,” he said at last, “you are a clever boy, brighter than any of the others I have seen from your tribe. But cleverness is not wisdom. To be clever is to be able to think of new things, methods, ideas. This is most commendable and, indeed, the young can be clever. Wisdom, however, comes from experience, from seeing things happen again and again, which is why the young are rarely wise. Would you allow an old man to impart to you some hard-earned wisdom?”

“I would welcome it.”

“When you go in search of elixirs, be sure you know exactly what an elixir is,” Ko said simply.

Raf frowned. “An elixir is a cure. A liquid one drinks that heals one from a disease.”

“I have said what I have said.” Ko blinked once and slowly. “I hope it aids you in your quest. I would be saddened if your sister died. She always struck me as a sweet girl who cared for you deeply—”

A wolf howled somewhere.

Raf turned. The old man did, too.

“That,” Ko said, “is the howl of a mountain wolf. They are coming down from the mountains to hunt.”

Raf stared fearfully out into the darkness.

“They are natural night-time hunters,” Ko said, “great dogs that can see in the dark as if it were day. But they only come down to the Badlands rarely, when they sense opportunity.” The old man looked outward, as if appraising the night itself. “Which they clearly do this evening. Were you planning on making camp here tonight?”

“I … I was. Why?”

Ko said, “A few miles from here is the Broken Bridge. Beyond that bridge, in the parts of the Badlands closest to the mountains, rogue trolls lurk in larger numbers. It is only their inability to cross the Broken Bridge that keeps them from penetrating your valley more often than they do.”

“Rogue trolls …”

“Normally, you would be safe making camp on this side of the bridge, but with mountain wolves about … well, wolves most certainly can cross the Broken Bridge. Perhaps you would like to take shelter in my home tonight. It is not much, but it is fortified against predators such as mountain wolves.”

Raf frowned, considering this.

At that moment, several other wolves answered the first wolf’s call, but from the opposite side of the Badlands. The wolves were communicating, hunting as a pack.

Raf turned to the wizened old man and nodded.

“Thank you, sir. I think that would be a very good idea.”

Ko lived in a small shack built on stone pilings out in the middle of a stinking swamp. Flies buzzed, frogs burped, and inordinately large snakes occasionally broke the surface of the muddy pond as they slithered by.

To get to the shack, Ko laid out a long plank, using it as a bridge to span the moat of putrid swamp water.

“Mountain wolves will not swim across so foul a swamp as this,” he said as they crossed the plank-bridge.

Ko lifted it up after them. Raf winced at the rank odor of the place.

“You get used to the smell quite quickly,” Ko added cheerfully. “One of the greatest features of the human brain: the ability to ignore a smell after a short while.”

That evening, by the light of a small fire, Ko and Raf spoke for a long time about many things.

Raf asked Ko about his life in strange faraway lands, while Ko frowned when Raf told him about the Northmen’s tribal hierarchy.

“What an awfully backward structure,” Ko said. “The most successful cultures I have seen do not allow such men to rule. Eventually, people come to realize that for their society to advance they must allow everyone to contribute to the best of their talents. The strong, in particular, must choose to serve the group as a whole, not their own interests. Tribes governed by thugs do not advance. They eventually stagnate and die.”

“Tell me,” Raf said, “do you know anything about this illness?”

“Occasionally sailors from my homeland who went on long voyages would be afflicted by a similar disease. But no cure for it was ever found,” Ko said.

“Do you know how the trolls discovered their Elixir?” Raf asked. “How can creatures so brutish find a cure while we cannot?”

“No,” Ko said, frowning. “This I do not know. The mountain trolls in these parts are not known for their cleverness. Their discovery of the Elixir is a most curious thing for which I have no explanation at this time.”

As he said this, Ko picked up Raf’s axe. After a moment, he extracted the flint knife hidden within its handle with a delighted grunt.

“Ah, how clever!” But then he said, “Not all trolls are brutish, Raf. Indeed, some of the varieties of smaller troll have been known to be remarkably intelligent. Here is another piece of wisdom for you: don’t judge a whole race by the actions of some of its members. If I were to judge you based on the actions of your fellow tribe members, I might believe you were a boorish oaf who thinks little.”

Raf nodded at that.

Ko added, “And while a troll is indeed rather brutish in appearance and has a well-armored hide, it does have a weak spot.”

“What is that?”

“Like the crocodile, a troll has very soft skin under his chin and under his arms,” Ko said.

While Ko inspected Raf’s knife, Raf examined Ko’s crossbow. He noted its powerful spring-loaded firing mechanism and the small collection of arrows held in notches on its left side — some had sharp points, others bulbous tips filled with ignitable material. He also noticed a length of closely woven gold-colored rope looped around two hooks on the weapon’s right side.

“That is the finest rope I have ever seen,” he said.

Ko nodded. “It was made by one of my country’s best armorers for my old commander, who gave it to me as a parting gift.”

Raf held it beside his own rope. By comparison, his rope looked frayed, crude and primitive. “I thought mine was good, but this, well …”

“Your rope is good,” Ko said firmly. “Because you crafted it with your own hands. And besides, it’s rope. As long as it holds your weight, how pretty does it need to be?”

Raf smiled. As he did so, he noticed in the corner of Ko’s shack six small green barrels with what appeared to be candlewicks sticking out of their lids. A strange kind of writing was painted on their sides. It read:

Raf nodded at them. “What is in those barrels?”

“Ah …” Ko smiled. “It is perhaps my people’s greatest invention, the secret formula for which I am privileged to know.”

Ko went over to one of the barrels and lifted its lid. He extracted a handful of thick black powder. “It is called firepowder,” he said. “My old army would use it to hurl heavy iron balls great distances into the ranks of our enemies, to topple their battle elephants and bring down the walls of their fortresses.”

Raf gazed at the black powder. “The powder catches alight?”

“More than that. If you light their wicks, these barrels will combust mightily, creating most powerful blasts. This strange powder won my country many wars.”

Raf nodded slowly, impressed. “Firepowder.”

Ko leaned forward. “Speaking of winning battles, let me give you a third piece of wisdom, my young friend, given you will be fighting your own battle soon: to bring down a four-legged beast, you only need to injure two of its legs. This rule applies to battle elephants and mountain wolves alike.”

Raf thought about that as he went to sleep that evening — for later on, outside the thin walls of the shack, beyond the closer noises of the swamp, he heard the rustle of branches and the grunts of a pack of large wolves, very near, and he was glad he had taken up the old man’s offer of hospitality.