Lost Bloodline 3 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17

With the falling night being so thick, Koda’s group stuck together as they followed the broad track of the trolls into the dense brush of the hillside.

The cave that Samira was leading them to was actually over the ridgeline, tucked into a small dell out of sight of the village by nearly a quarter of a mile over rough terrain, studded with boulders and clumped heather. There were small stands of thick pine trees as well that provided good cover, but were not thick enough to really block the line of sight.

Thankfully, the mashed track of the trolls didn’t wind or twist, it just pounded flat everything in its path that it could and shoved out of the way what couldn’t be stomped into submission. More than one cracked tree lay on its side, with boulders shoved far enough to leave a furrow in the earth and clear their path. The only rock that wasn’t cleared from the path was an absolutely massive boulder as large as a school bus that showed the marks of the trolls’ anger on its weathered skin.

Large scratches marked the boulder where the beasts’ claws had tried to get a grip, and chunks lay broken off of it where the trolls had vented their anger before just going around the massive stone.

“Makes you wonder,” Calandra murmured nearly silently from her spot beside Koda. “Eight trolls should have been able to shift that, but it doesn’t look like they tried together. They just beat on it and tried to shift it one at a time.”

“Pecking order?” Samira suggested. “I bet their chief tried to move it first and failed, so the others got it in their head that they could test themselves against it to see if they could beat their chief and take his spot without having to risk their lives.”

“That seems too smart for what we’ve seen of them,” Koda said at first, but he remembered the dregs of cunning that he’d seen in the eyes of the troll that he’d fought and grimaced. “Then again, maybe not.”

“Shh,” Todd hissed from the front of the group. “We don’t know how close we are to the cave.”

Taking the chastisement to heart, Koda nodded and focused on placing his feet carefully so that he didn’t trip in the growing darkness. On his other side, Arthene walked with an easy confidence that told him her night-sight was keeping up with the challenge.

I could really use something to help that, Thera, Koda playfully sent to the goddess.

He didn’t expect a response, since Thera rarely did answer to his thoughts and urges unless it was a direly important one. So when he got the sensation of annoyance and amusement along his bond to the divine being, he was surprised. The annoyance faded to affection a moment later and a sensation of ‘be patient’ before they vanished altogether.

Huh, Koda thought to himself. Maybe she is watching more often than I thought. Being a young man, his mind immediately went to his intimate moments with his mates, and he blushed faintly. Hopefully not all the time, though.

Before Koda could spend too long worrying about a voyeuristic goddess, a distant bellow of anger echoed out of the darkness ahead and everyone froze. The bellow was followed by a second, fainter one in a higher timbre.

“They are fighting amongst each other,” Arthene murmured quietly. “This is a perfect distraction.”

“Then let’s not pass it up,” Koda urged, and the group got moving once more.

Calandra had let her spell fade earlier when they turned off the main path, not wanting to speed them into danger if they happened upon the troll’s camp too quickly, so the group hurrying was more of a normal jog as the bellows and roars got louder. Soon, they were joined by the meaty punctuation of fists meeting flesh and guttural grunts.

Suddenly, something else lurched out of the darkness that they hadn’t expected as well. The flicker of firelight reflected off stone.

“Not good,” Arthene growled low in her throat. “Trolls don’t normally use fire. It’s a sign of intelligence in their chieftain and makes the group more dangerous.”

“Quietly!” Todd insisted, and the group slowed even more, as the noises of fighting continued.

They could hear the grunting and growling of more trolls as well, likely egging the fight on in their own tongue.

With the distant glimmer of firelight to guide them, it only took a minute more to find a broad cleft in a cliff face that was the mouth of the cave.

Rather than crowd up to it, Koda had them hold back a good three hundred feet away and sent his most stealthy forward as large dark shapes crossed in front of the light, roaring at each other as they worked to beat the stuffing out of each other.

Todd, Samira, and Hannah crept forward, the hunters moving like ghosts as they got closer to see what was going on. The entrance to the cave was easily twenty feet across, so even crouched in the bushes where he was, Koda could see fairly well into the yawning space.

A large bonfire that appeared to be made of whole trees sat in the middle of the cave, while a number of large shapes stood, crouched, or lay around it. Two larger shapes wrestled with each other while being encouraged by the observers.

Is the chieftain fighting one of the other trolls? Koda wondered as one troll wrestled the other to the ground by the fire and began smashing its face in with powerful blows.

Despite the graphic fight in front of him, Koda could feel the draw of the cave. There was a power there, an ancient sleeping strength in the cave that told him it was another site that he could claim for Thera to further rehabilitate his patron. But doing such with the trolls there would be suicide.

While the fight he’d seen earlier amongst the creatures was violent, it didn’t even hold a candle to this one. The first two trolls had been arguing; this was obviously one troll killing another as blood flew through the air.

His scouts reached the wall of the cliff and crept forward to peek through, only obvious in the thick darkness because of their shapes against the paler stone of the cliff. He knew Todd was on one side while Hannah and Samira were on the other, but that was all he could tell at this distance.

A sudden flare of light came from the cave and drew his attention back there once more, as a bellow of pain split the air.

The prone troll had snatched a burning log from the fire and clubbed its opponent in the head with it, sending the other troll flying with its clothes on fire.

The new development drove the other trolls scrambling in the cave to get away from their burning fellow as the bloody troll rolled heavily to its feet, still clutching its burning weapon in one hand. It found its balance and hefted the log over its head to club the still-burning troll down when something even larger surged into view from one side.

While the trolls they’d fought in town were large, easily around ten feet in height, this one was half again that tall and far wider.

With one large hand, the larger troll snatched the log from the hands of the wounded one and tossed it back into the fire. The gesture also split the air with a sharp crack of breaking bone as the first troll’s wrist broke.

Howling in pain, the wounded troll turned on the larger one that Koda guessed was the chieftain and threw itself in a rage. But the effort was futile.

The larger troll caught the smaller one by the throat with a snarl before leaning forward, literally biting half of its head off with a wet and meaty crunch. The smaller troll immediately fell limp in its chieftain’s grasp while the larger troll chewed, filling the air with a grinding and crushing noise of bone breaking and the mastication of flesh.

Koda heard someone gag off to his right and felt his own stomach roll. The chieftain had bitten through its underling’s skull with as much casual disdain as he might tear into a dinner roll.

The other trolls in the cave all cowered away from the larger shadow, scampering to the far side of the fire as the chieftain dragged its victim and current meal out of sight. Sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bones grew louder as the leader settled in to devour its underling. The still-burning troll that had been hit with the log continued to flail until it put out its smoldering clothes before dragging itself into the opposite corner from its feasting leader.

Movement by the walls of the cave told Koda that his hunters were returning, using the cover of the troll chief’s meal to hide their movements.

As soon as the three hunters rejoined them, Koda held up his hand for silence and gestured back along the trail, clearly signaling that they would wait to speak until they had more distance from the threat that the chieftain represented.

The absolute last thing I want right now is to get his attention. Not at night like this, Koda thought while their group carefully picked their way back along the trail. No one spoke until they made it back to where the trail split, and then Samira rattled off what they observed.

“That was the single largest troll I’ve ever heard about!” Samira whisper-shouted. “Did you see what it did to that one who cheated in the fight?”

“Cheated?” Todd asked, incredulity in his voice. “How could a troll cheat?”

“It used a tool against its opponent,” Samira asserted confidently. “Trolls value their strength above all else. Using tools in a fight is the purview of the weak.”

“But what about the weapons those two used in the village? We all saw them yanking beams out of houses,” Hannah hissed.

“Those were weapons—that’s different,” Samira said with confidence. “A rock or a log is a weapon, but setting it on fire makes it a torch and that’s a tool.”

“So the chieftain intervened and killed the wounded one because it hit its opponent with a torch and not a club?” Calandra asked in disbelief. “This wasn’t in any of the information we had on trolls.”

Samira just shrugged again and held her hands out helplessly, as if to say it was out of her control and she was confused, too.

“How do you know this?” Arthene asked sharply, staring at the caracal woman with her brows knitted. “How, and why did you not mention this before? I’ve never heard of such behavior from trolls.”

“It’s just a guess, but there is a story I heard from one hunter who observed a group of three trolls, and he said that they beat each other up with fists, clubs, rocks, and all manner of things. But when one grabbed the stick that had been used to stir the fire, the other two turned on it with even more fury and tore it limb from limb. Hence, my theory about tools is that they should not be used as weapons.”

“It’s solid enough of a guess,” Koda interjected, wanting to stop the argument he was worried was brewing. “It could also just be that the chieftain was annoyed with that troll and decided to eat it. We don’t know enough about them to really say for sure. Now, what else did you see?”

“There were a dozen trolls in there besides the chieftain,” Todd supplied helpfully, with Hannah nodding her agreement while Samira scowled, clearly annoyed at the idea of ‘not knowing enough’ but accepting of Koda’s need to change the subject.

“I saw a pile of dead goats in the back corner as well. They must have dragged off any of the animals that they were too full to eat,” Hannah added a moment later. “Several looked chewed on and were beginning to bloat, so they’d been dead for a bit.”

“Trolls won’t care,” Arthene said with a derisive snort. “They eat each other, so rotting meat won’t bother them. The worry is the chieftain. With it being so much larger, it’s going to want more food soon.”

“Devouring an entire troll will keep it happy for a day or two at least, surely?” Sienna asked, her distaste at what she’d just said obvious on her face.

“We can only hope. So we have time to plan at least,” Koda sidled around to wrap an arm around Sienna’s waist comfortingly and his first mate leaned into him thankfully.

Glancing around at the others, Koda saw they were all a bit green at what they’d just witnessed, but none of them looked like they were going to give up or run. Hans was the most pale of the group, but his grip on the haft of his mattock was tight and he scowled fiercely despite his pallor.

“What I want to know is why now?” Calandra asked into the silence, drawing attention to her. The dwarven woman was looking towards Samira, as the caracal woman was clearly the most knowledgeable about the situation. “Your people have stories of trolls, and know that they lived high in these mountains. You knew to avoid their grounds and everything, but why have they come down now?”

“I don’t know,” Samira said with a shrug. “But I have a theory. The stonecracker leopards are one of the few predators capable of hunting a troll, and they kept the population in control for a long time. Something must have happened to them. Either their numbers grew too much and drove the trolls out, or the trolls hunted them and cleared the path down the mountain.”

“Given the strength of their chieftain, I think the second is the most likely,” Arthene said dryly. “Though it offers us an opportunity if we can find their old nest.”

“Opportunity?” Koda asked, turning his attention to his taller mate.

Arthene had a sparkle to her yellow eyes that told Koda she was up to something, but from the squaring of her shoulders, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“Stonecracker leopards will eat us as easily as they would trolls,” Samira cautioned, but from the way her tail danced excitedly behind her back, Koda could tell it was a halfhearted warning.

“If they still survive. But I’ve fought them before. My old cave was a stonecracker den before I took it for myself,” Arthene said confidently. “But that’s not the point. My mate, you have a skill that you haven’t had the chance to use yet. That’s not your fault though, as my Lady took the only opportunity you had for herself.”

“What?” Koda asked in confusion. “Thera did what?”

“At the Windwalker’s Retreat,” Arthene added as if that explained the entire thing, but Koda remained confused.

“At the retreat…” Sienna murmured, clearly trying to solve the question herself. “Thera manifested and bound the ancient wendigo spirit to the location, then used it to clean up the Crooked. Surely you can’t mean the Crooked got up into the mountains?”

“No, sweet Sienna,” Arthene said with a snort. “Samira’s people would not have missed that if they did. I’m talking about the spirits. Koda is a champion of the Beast Queen, and he bears her totem as his weapon. I bound myself to his will joyfully—how could I not for my hero?” Arthene turned a heated smile on Koda that sent a thrill of desire up his spine and helped shake off some of his disgust.

“So wait,” Netta said, interrupting their conversation. “You are saying that, if Thera hadn’t done it, Koda might have been able to bind the wendigo to his will?”

“Possibly,” Arthene said with a shrug. “Or it would have devoured his soul from the inside and turned him into a wendigo as well. Those spirits are very dangerous, and that risk is likely why Thera took it for herself. It also gave her a tool to use to protect the site.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not be devoured in that fashion,” Koda said. He saw Calandra’s eyes sparkle, and she opened her mouth to say something, but he quickly covered her mouth before she could speak. “So what, you think I might be able to bind one of these stonecracker leopard spirits?”

“If they were defeated by the trolls, one of their food sources, then surely a ghost or two will remain behind because of their anger. We just need to find their den, and I can walk you through it, my mate.”

“How far?” Koda didn’t even argue with Arthene’s suggestion. If she said it was possible, then he trusted her judgment. Instead, he turned his attention onto Samira, who grimaced and rubbed her chin.

“A day, maybe two? It depends on how far we have to range. I know the landmarks that we were told to avoid that bordered on the stonecracker’s territory. But there is no guarantee that the trolls beat them. It is possible that the trolls fled the high mountains because the stonecrackers were too much of a threat anymore. The chieftain might be smart enough to have figured that out.”

Koda nodded in agreement to her point but glanced back out over the night-clad hills towards the distant and dark village. It only took him a moment to come to a decision.

“We will keep that in mind, but we need more information. The trolls will stay in the cave for at least a day or two, and we won’t have support from the Silent Plains hunters for another five days. For now, we are on our own. If we can get some kind of support from these ghosts, like Arthene thinks, then we need to make the most of it. Two days to check this out, then we head back. Let’s find a spot where we can make camp, and get some rest where a bored troll won’t find us.”