The Prodigal Troll Part 17

The waters swirled away like an exhausted fit of temper, transforming the green meadows Maggot recalled into a flat of mud and devastation broken by innumerable pools and unrecognizable debris. High clouds brewed the sky, and carrion birds dropped like dark hailstones to feast among the refuse.

"We walk," the man Maggot called Chin suggested, and Maggot understood him. It felt like such a triumph.

"We walk," he agreed.

Maggot wrapped his arms around the trunk, swung under the branch, dug his toes into the bark, and climbed to the ground. Chin fell. They stood and stretched their stiff limbs.

The mud sucked at their feet as they waded across the swampy bottoms to the higher, drier hills. Chin lifted his head and thrust out his lips. "Brothers."

Maggot followed Chin's eyes. Coming toward them, between the trees beside the riverbank, he saw two men with bright red cloth wrapped around their heads.

"Brothers," he said, relishing the word. He gestured to himself and Chin. "Brothers?"

Chin looked at him and nodded. "Brothers."

"We brothers." Maggot quickened his stride to meet the others.

e is saying what?" Maggot asked.

In the moons since he had rescued Sinnglas-that was his friend's name, he knew now, not Chin; chin was their word for the food-slipping-in-place-Maggot had made great strides in learning people talk. But the newcomer's accent was just different enough that Maggot could not understand him. Nor did it help that he and Sinnglas sat on the far side of the council, in the place of least favor.

"Wait." Sinnglas leaned forward. "I'm listening."

Maggot waited. And listened. Mostly he watched.

The newcomer was only the latest visitor to come to the council cave of Sinnglas's people. Council lodge, he tried to think the word, though the s.p.a.ce, shaped of cut and bent branches, and dark inside, resembled a stuffy cave, especially when crowded by several dozen men and the pungent aroma of their medicine weed.

Strangers had been coming for weeks to the council lodge, but this newcomer impressed Maggot more than the others. He was older, with shoulders as broad as a troll's and arms as long. His nose bent like a hawk's beak, and he talked through it more than through his mouth, making raspy, indistinct words Maggot could not follow. The newcomer's clothes were less like those of the men around him, and more like those Maggot had seen among the lion-hunting men. He carried many weapons, and two men followed him wherever he went, like a pair of trollbirds.

Everyone in the council lodge listened to the newcomer with great seriousness, as if he were the sound of dawn.

They sat cross-legged on the ground, frowning and sighing somberly, while the newcomer droned. Maggot had tried sitting the same way and didn't like it, so he continued to squat troll-fashion on his haunches. It also raised him slightly above the others and made it easier for him to watch their reactions. The newcomer sat in the center at the council's place of honor, beside Damaqua. Damaqua was the First of this band. He was also Sinnglas's brother.

One of Sinnglas's brothers. The other two sat behind Maggot, at the farthest end of the hall, squeezed back against the wall. Their names were Keekyu and Pisqueto. Their eyes gleamed as happily as the morning they had found their brother Sinnglas safe from the flood.

The newcomer finished speaking. He unfolded a cloth lying across his lap and raised a broad belt of beads, mostly black and white. Maggot couldn't quite read the picture-it looked like several men hunting an animal.

Several of the older men shouted, then fell quiet. The newcomer handed the belt to Damaqua. Keekyu and Pisqueto traded half-smiles and nods.

Sinnglas pretended to relax, but his eyes stayed focused on his older brother. Maggot felt like he had the first time he could remember watching trolls vote on something.

Damaqua held the belt up, inspected it, then turned it around, lifted it high, and presented it again to all the men gathered in the lodge. Now Maggot saw the picture clearly. Four men hunted a big tooth lion. One of the men had bright red beads atop his head, the color of Damaqua's turban. Damaqua spread the belt on his lap, folded it, and handed it to the silent man who sat on the other side of him. Tanaghri, his advisor.

Sinnglas didn't like Tanaghri; therefore Maggot hated him.

Tanaghri held the belt with open distaste. Damaqua stretched out his hands for the pipe, placed the long thin stem to his lips, and puffed meditatively, sending little blue clouds of smoke into the air. The longer he waited before speaking, the more important his words would be. Finally, he laid the pipe upon his lap, leaving his hands upon it, and spoke in his strong clear voice.

"We are honored," Damaqua said, "to have so famous a First Man as Squandral come among us."

Maggot didn't understand the mountain range of differences that divided Sinnglas from his brother, but he liked the slow, rolling rhythms of Damaqua's voice. Squandral was the newcomer's name; Maggot taloned on to that.

"His exploits," Damaqua continued, "are known from the motherwater, River Wyndas, to the northern seas and over the mountains to the ocean. Who else among us besides Squandral has killed giants, has wrestled with the Old Ones, or defeated the invaders in so many battles? He was a friend of my father, when my father was First, and together the two of them turned their paths to peace, forging alliances with the invaders. For many years now we have traded with the invaders and lived peacefully beside them. When a man so renowned in war leads his people away from war, men follow."

Damaqua puffed on the pipe again. Maggot had understood the words, but only half the meaning. Later he would have to ask Sinnglas the meaning of giants, Old Ones, invaders, war.

No one else spoke or showed any expression. Damaqua placed the pipe to his lap, and gestured for Tanaghri to leave. The older man placed the belt down. Sunlight and the buzz of insects slipped in when he moved the skin at the door aside. Keekyu and Pisqueto shifted uncomfortably, scowling. But Sinnglas stayed fixed in his position, so Maggot did not move.

"Now Squandral has come down all the way from the place where three rivers meet to share his counsel with us," Damaqua said. "His words have led not only his own people, but all of our bands since the time of our fathers, and our fathers' fathers. If we are wise, we will listen to his words as young bucks look to the stag to see which way to run."

The door-flap opened again, and Tanaghri returned with a long bundle wrapped in cloth, which he handed to Damaqua, who said, "These are a sign of our respect for the gift of Squandral's wisdom."

A murmur of approval here. Damaqua unfolded the bundle and presented the gifts-a blanket of some fabric divided in squares such as Maggot had seen among the hunters; strings of gla.s.s beads, glittering like gems; an elegant dagger wrapped in snakeskin.

Maggot mulled this over. The newcomer, Squandral, gave them a belt; they gave him other items. Not that different from the trolls, he supposed, who shared whatever they had. If you found two bats on the floor of a cave, you gave one to a friend, and she did the same for you. That way everyone always had a bat to eat.

Sharing was a simple rule among trolls, but with people it was much more complicated. When Maggot had first arrived with Sinnglas, he'd had nothing but the things he carried-his knife, the two lucent stones strung around his neck-and he'd received gifts from many people. Damaqua had presented him with a blanket like the one given to Squandral. One evening Maggot went with Sinnglas and his two brothers into a house to talk to a man-Sinnglas had many people to talk to, all the time-and the old woman there gave Maggot a bowl of hominy. He was tired of carrying the blanket and gave it to her in exchange. Damaqua heard about it and was furious. He ceased speaking to Maggot afterward and no longer invited him to meals. Sinnglas, strangely, was not displeased. So Maggot thought that he had done something right, but he still had no idea what it was.

Squandral said things through his nose about each gift, but Maggot couldn't understand him or read his expression. He wondered if Squandral would keep his blanket or give it away for something to eat.

Damaqua puffed on the pipe before he spoke again. "Now the honorable Squandral asks us to put aside all our years of peace like a bad harvest, to set aside our relationships with the invaders like crops ruined by insects. This is a hard thing for us to do. If we thrust aside all our crops, what will we eat and where will we get the seedcorn to plant when next year comes? Look around us here. What man among us does not carry something taken in trade from the invaders?"

Maggot had a belt now, a breechcloth that he liked, and a fine hatchet that he kept waiting to find a use for-most of the other men also carried them. He wore no shoes upon his feet nor any of the other adornments preferred by Sinnglas's people, having too many things to carry about already. When he leaned over the shoulders of the other men for a closer look at the gifts, Squandral stared at him. He was a hard man, made of granite. Maggot met his scrutiny without flinching.

Damaqua continued speaking, emphasizing his words with his hands. "The honorable Squandral says that a time has come for war, that the invaders push into the higher valleys, killing our game and squeezing us against the wall of the mountains. This is true. He says that they move onto our land with no respect for our use of it and build their farms and houses. This is also true. He says that we must rebel against them, as we did thirty years ago when he and my father were young men." He slapped the back of one hand against the other palm. "That if we strike the hand that steals from our plate, it will be less likely to steal from us again."

His gaze rested on Sinnglas, challenging him.

"I do not say yes or no to Squandral's proposal," Damaqua said. "Let us have our feast and consult with one another, and then reach our consensus."

He handed the pipe over to Squandral, who sucked at it like a baby at its mother's breast. Throughout the room, men bent to trade counsel with one another.

"How will they vote?" Maggot whispered in Sinnglas's ear.

"We will not be unified in this. Damaqua cannot win a vote for peace, but my followers cannot win the vote for war."

War. That word he did not yet understand. Sinnglas's language baffled him. It had one word that meant to dig. There was no way to say, as a troll could, to-dig-with-the-fingertips-in-soft-soil, to-probewith-toes-in-dirt, to-scoop-handfuls, to-overturn-with-the-feet, toopen-new-pa.s.sageways-underground. The words for food and for the finding of it also seemed greatly impoverished to Maggot. And it had words like war that described nothing tangible, nothing he could imagine. Whenever he asked Sinnglas to describe the meaning of war, his friend embarked on a long series of stories about the invaders, their abuses and injustices.

But these abuses drove Sinnglas; Maggot understood that much. Sinnglas had been following the men in the camp of tents to watch against them when the flood struck, separating him from his brothers. He had been preparing for this war then. So if Maggot had not saved him, there might not be a war at all. The war was very important to Sinnglas. Maggot was glad that he had saved Sinnglas.

Squandral, the newcomer, spoke again, and Damaqua repeated his words about feasting and careful thought and agreement, and then the men rose to leave.

Maggot followed Sinnglas outside. The weight of all his tools and weapons still felt odd to him, bouncing against him as he walked. As did his clean skin and hair. He had scrubbed himself raw in imitation of the other men.

Sinnglas and his two brothers carried their bows and quivers. Maggot followed them outside the village palisade, larger and st.u.r.dier than the one by the river, as they crossed the fields and meadows toward the forest. No one spoke for a long time, until they were far away from anyone else.

Maggot lost hold of his tongue first. "The man, he nose, like a hawk-"

"Squandral," Sinnglas said. "A great man. First among his people, a friend of my father's when he was First among ours."

"Squandral," Maggot repeated. "He wants we do what?"

Sinnglas meditated on this, wearing the same expression on his face that Damaqua had when smoking the pipe. The two brothers looked very much like one another.

The four men followed a path through the woods and over a ridge. Another person waited for them down in the glade-one of the two trollbirds so recently perched upon Squandral's shoulders.

"That," Sinnglas said, "is what we have come to find out."

Away from craggy-faced Squandral, this man made a stronger impression. He was lean, with a long axe-shaped head. He and Sinnglas exchanged nods, and then they both squatted down, troll-style, resting arms on their knees. Maggot hunkered down beside them, but Keekyu and Pisqueto waited at a short distance.

"Greetings, Menato," Sinnglas said.

"And greetings to you." He lifted his chin in Maggot's direction. "So this is your foreign wizard. Is it true that Gelapa has put a curse on him?"

Because of the charms about his neck, and because of things that Sinnglas had said about him, these people believed that Maggot was a wizard. This made men hesitant around him and the women afraid. The women avoided Maggot, even though he told them he was no wizard. The only other wizard in the village was Gelapa, an old man who rattled turtle sh.e.l.ls at Maggot whenever he came close. People feared him too. Another thing Maggot didn't understand.

Sinnglas merely shrugged. "Gelapa is weak. He drinks too much of the medicine water. He could not heal a bullfrog of its croak, and his curses couldn't make a rabbit jump."

"Heh." Menato lifted his chin again at Maggot.

"His name is Maqwet." Sinnglas was unable to give Maggot's name the deep throaty inflection of a troll. "He comes from over the mountains."

Menato smiled. "Squandral calls him the Vulture, because of the way he hovered over the council meeting. There is a hungry look in his eyes."

"Heh," Sinnglas said. "Vulture. That's good."

Off to the side, Pisqueto chuckled. He was very young, with no hair on his chin and hardly any flesh on his bones. Keekyu, who was older than Damaqua, smiled, rubbed his nose, and stared at the ground. He had an unfamiliar sick smell about him sometimes.

"We have heard rumors of him," Menato said. "We have heard that he is one of the southerners, come from over the mountain to pledge their men in joining our war. Now that we have seen him with our own eyes, Squandral doesn't know what to believe."

Sinnglas answered with a small, tight shake of his head. "He is not one of the southerners. We have seen them, you and I, when we went raiding among them. Maqwet does not look like them, does he?"

"No."

"Also, he knew no more of their language than he did of ours. And yet he can describe all the pa.s.ses through the mountains, and the paths of the rivers and the ways they flow."

Maggot had tried hard to explain himself to Sinnglas, and he had wearied of it. All he wanted to do was learn enough to follow the woman where she went. He would help Sinnglas as a favor for that knowledge, and then he would go find her.

"So where is he from then?" Menato asked.

"Maybe he is like First Man," Sinnglas answered. He glanced sideways at Maggot and explained. "When the animals stole the secret of speech from Earth Spirit, they began to mock Earth. Mammut said, 'Look how weak Earth is: I can tear it up.' Flathorn Stag said, 'Look how ugly Earth's plants are, I will mark them with my antlers.' Crow tried to warn them that Earth was angry, but they wouldn't listen. So Earth Spirit let loose a great flood that drowned all the animals. Those that survived crowded together on the high mountaintop, and Earth Spirit opened a crack in the ground and out came First Man."

Maggot craned his neck and concentrated. He knew almost all these words, but had never heard this history before.

"So," said Sinnglas, "Earth Spirit took the power of speech away from the animals, all except for Crow, and gave it to First Man. Then Earth said to him, 'You may take one thing from each of the beasts and keep it for yourself.' From the lion, First Man took a tooth and fashioned it into his knife. From the mammut, he took the long tusk and made a spear. From the stag, he took the flathorn and made it into a shovel, and so on. The animals remember their loss, and so continue to tear up the earth, but Earth Spirit pays them no heed. From Crow, First Man took nothing, and Crow, in grat.i.tude used his speech to teach him wizardry."

"Heh," Menato said thoughtfully.

Sinnglas stared at Maggot, seeming to measure his response. "So I say you are like First Man. You appear after a flood, coming out of the mountains, born, as you tell us, of no woman. You came unadorned, naked as a newborn, but with tools, as First Man did; and like First Man, you are also a wizard."

Maggot sank back on his haunches. "No. When they raised hands for First, I lost the hands to my father," he said, the words he had repeated many times now coming to him more easily. He looked at Menato. "I have never speaked to a crow, but now I speak with happybird-that-visits-in-the-night." There was no word for trollbird: that was the best translation Maggot could manage.

"Heh," the lean-faced man repeated. He didn't move for several long seconds. "He talks like a wizard."

Sinnglas laughed. "Yes. And he saved my life, when I was swept away in the floods. You may believe that also."

"Ah, the floods."

"My life was saved, but others died, and we did not find their bodies. Now their spirits haunt us. We lost all our spring planting and much of our remaining seed, and many animals were destroyed. Plants we collected from the forest have been swept away. This will be a hard year for us."

Menato shifted his legs, placed his fingertips on the ground. "It is the invaders who do the damage to us. Our village was spared the worst, but the floods swept away the tame cattle of the invaders, whole herds of them. Now the invaders come and trample our fields, hunting the deer and bison we would eat. They tell us that we will have to pay a heavy tax in crops this year. The Lion will devour us all."

Maggot frowned. He supposed that a lion could eat several handfuls of people, but no lion he had ever seen could eat all the people in this village.

Sinnglas nodded. "Their emissaries have said the same to us, though our second crop is late planted and less than it should be. They already planned to bring their herds up here to pasture, and so they came to kill the lion and the wolves that live up here. But the floods drowned their herds and so they do not come. Damaqua says it is a sign that we should continue to accommodate them. But I say they will come next year, when they are stronger and we are weaker. It is better if we strike now, while there is still strength behind our fist."

Menato pursed his lips. "This is what Squandral thinks also. He respects and fears the Lion. But we are too weak to act alone, so Squandral will not go to war without Damaqua."

"Without Damaqua or without our village? Damaqua will be for peace, but we are divided. He cannot get consensus."

"But neither can you."

Sinnglas shook his head. "No, I cannot."

Maggot shook his too, practicing the gesture so that he would not stick his tongue out when he meant no. Pisqueto looked at Maggot, stuck out his tongue, and bugged his eyes. Keekyu smiled, briefly, and Maggot laughed aloud.

They all sat silently for a time. The warm sun on Maggot's back made his skin itch for shade.

"We must do something," Menato said finally. "If we do not stop the invaders here, we will have to flee south across the mountains and fight for land within the country of our enemy."

"Some already flee," Sinnglas said. "They went that way last winter but never arrived."

"We must do something. This is what Squandral says."

Sinnglas's mouth tightened. "I will raise a raiding party, such as one that we would take across the mountains into the land of our enemy. But I will lead it down into the valleys stolen by the invaders. Damaqua cannot stop that."

"That is good."

"I will call for the dance tonight, as the old men gather in the council lodge. But it will only be my venture, not the will of our village."

"It will be a start," Menato said. "I will tell this to Squandral." He rose to leave.

As he slipped off into the woods, Maggot and the other brothers stood around Sinnglas.

"That went well," Pisqueto said, his grin as bright as a halfmoon. "The famous Squandral will be with us when we fight! How can we lose?"

"I did not hear Menato promise that," Keekyu said.

"Nor did I," Sinnglas admitted. "Likely we will make this raid alone." Then he smiled too, an expression somewhere between the grim face of Keekyu and the boyish joy of Pisqueto. "Perhaps it will just be the three of us then." He glanced at Maggot. "Perhaps even four."