Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel

Chapter 7

The sound of something large crashing through the undergrowth woke Raf.

His eyes snapped open. It was still dark. He peered into the moonlit forest around him.

Beside him, Ko was already awake. The old man’s head was perfectly still as he listened intently.

The loud crashing noises were coming from the other side of the stream.

Then Raf heard more noises: branches snapping, heavy footsteps pounding on damp earth, and then — suddenly, cutting through the still night air — deep voices.

“There he is!”

“Get him!”

The voices had a depth that the human voice box cannot reach.

“Trolls?” Raf whispered.

“Yes,” Ko said softly. “Stay under your blanket and don’t move.”

At Ko’s suggestion, they had been sleeping just inside the tree line on their side of the muddy stream, without a fire, and with dense layers of leaves covering their blankets, creating a kind of camouflage. Raf huddled under his leaf-covered blanket and stared across the streambed, thankful that it lay between him and whatever was coming through the underbrush—

A huge gray shape burst out of the thorn bushes on the opposite bank and skidded to a halt at the edge of the foul muddy gorge.

Raf gasped at it in wonder.

By the light of the moon, he could see it clearly.

It was six feet tall, with monstrously broad shoulders, monstrously large fists, a monstrously thick neck, and a monstrously solid head.

Indeed, the only things about it that were not monstrously sized were its legs — they were disproportionately short, thick, stubby things that held up its huge upper body.

It was a troll.

This was Raf’s first glimpse of one since the day his parents had died. Only this troll, despite its imposing size, was itself frightened.

It was running for its life.

The troll stood at the edge of the stream, surprised to find its escape route cut off.

The deep voices came again from the thorny forest behind him: “Here! Tracks! Heading toward the bridge!”

“Where are you, Düm! We’re coming to get you!”

Raf glimpsed flashes of fire in the forest behind the troll: his pursuers were wielding flaming torches.

The fleeing troll looked this way and that, agitated and desperate, before realizing that there was no choice but to attempt to cross the muddy stream by way of the Broken Bridge’s leftover pillars.

Raf watched as the big creature measured his first leap onto the nearest stone pillar: this appeared to require all of the troll’s concentration.

The troll jumped …

… and landed on the first pillar, swaying precariously but managing to regain its balance.

It was at that moment that his pursuers — four other trolls — rushed out of the forest bearing torches in their enormous hands. If it was at all possible, these trolls were taller and weightier than the first one: they were almost seven feet tall, with broader shoulders and longer arms. But they still had the same stubby legs.

The four pursuers spotted the first troll wobbling desperately on the pillar, high above the mud of the streambed, arms held out for balance.

They howled with laughter.

“Look at him! Stupid Düm!” one guffawed.

“Don’t fall in, Düm!” another cackled. “That foul gunk beneath you is gripping mud!”

Then a third pursuer threw something at the fleeing troll. It bounced off his back, spraying liquid, before falling into the bog.

Raf saw it land in the gripping mud with a soft gloop: it was a goblet of some sort. Within seconds, the mud sucked it under.

“Ooh-ahh, Düm! Don’t lose your balance!”

Raf frowned. The four pursuers seemed to be, well, drunk.

And indeed, just then, another of them took a lusty swig of foamy liquid from his own goblet before hurling it at the fleeing troll and striking him on the back of the head with it.

“Na-ha! You got him in the head!”

“Well, we know that won’t hurt him!”

The fleeing troll — Düm, Raf guessed — risked another leap to the next pillar and made it, again struggling mightily to retain his balance where Raf would have found it quite easy.

The pursuing trolls started throwing other objects at Düm: branches, stones. They bounced off his thick gray hide.

And then one of the pursuers threw a larger rock.

It hit Düm squarely on the side of the head, causing him to lose his balance, and he tumbled from the pillar, falling for fifteen feet, cartwheeling in mid-air, before he landed feet-first in the gripping mud, embedding his legs all the way up to the hip in the viscous goo.

The look of pure fear that flashed across Düm’s face when he saw his predicament struck Raf to the core of his being.

It was a look common to all creatures — man, deer, hound and, evidently, trolls — the look of profound terror that follows the realization that one is moments away from death and there is absolutely no escape.

The four other trolls exploded with laughter when they saw him drop into the mud. Two more rocks were thrown.

One called, “Maybe you should have thought about this before you spoke to Graia. Stupid Düm. See you in the afterworld, you foolish dragger.”

A final rock thunked against Düm’s head and the four trolls lumbered off, crashing through the thorn bushes, heading back toward the mountains, leaving the troll named Düm to die.

Raf had watched it all with a kind of grim fascination and he was staring at the swaying thorn bushes on the other side of the stream when he heard the troll in the mud whimper forlornly.

Raf slid out from under his leaf-covered blanket and moved to the brink of the stream.

“Raf—!” Ko hissed.

Raf just held up his hand.

He looked down into the bog and saw the troll hopelessly lodged in it, panting as it struggled in vain against the gripping mud. With every movement the troll managed only to sink itself further into the ooze.

It looked pathetic and terrified. It was going to die here, slowly and alone.

“Hey …” Raf called.

The troll jerked round in the mud, looking this way and that before it realized the voice had come from the southern side of the muddy stream.

Its fearful eyes found Raf’s and in a single instant Raf saw a complex series of thoughts pass through them: this troll needed a human’s help, but given the history of human — troll relations, such a thing was unlikely to happen.

“Please help Düm,” it said as it sank another inch into the mud.

Raf looked long and hard at the creature. He thought of his mother in the grip of a wild troll. He had never contemplated that his own first encounter with a troll might involve saving one.

“If I help you,” he said, “you won’t hurt me?”

“Düm no hurt. Düm promise no hurt.”

Ko came alongside Raf and whispered, “Not all trolls fully understand the concept of a debt of gratitude, Raf. If you save him, he may not believe he owes you anything.”

Raf pursed his lips, still thinking.

Ko said, “This doesn’t have to concern you—”

Raf spun to face Ko. “Yes. It does. I will not stand by and watch a creature die.”

With those words, he pulled out his axe, tied his rope to its handle and, holding the other end of the rope, threw the axe down to the stricken troll.

It landed in the mud next to Düm and he grabbed hold of it.

“Hold on and we’ll pull you up,” Raf said.

The troll obeyed and with slow, careful movements, Raf and the far more reluctant Ko pulled him through the gripping mud to their side of the stream. Once Düm was out of the mud and standing on more solid dirt, they used the rope to help him scale the sheer wall of the stream until at last the troll stepped up onto their bank.

He rose to his full height, looming head and shoulders above Raf and Ko.

There was a long pause as he stared at them.

“Düm would be pleased to know your name, so Düm may thank you.”

Raf smiled. “My name is Raf.”

“Thank you, Raf. Thank you for saving Düm’s life.”