John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

"How can it carry that foreleg here? Seems like it would need both hands to climb."

‹It has carried it in its jaws from the beginning. Trolls walk easily on their two feet, but travel faster on all four.›

After a bit the terrain eased, the trail continuing more directly. "Are the hunters back on the trail?" Macurdy asked.

‹They are following the dogs. Do you hear them?›

"No. Do you?"

‹For the last several minutes I've been guiding on their baying. It is quicker.›

They'd been following the troll for nearly two hours when Macurdy first heard the dogs, the sound growing louder as Vulkan gained on them. Thunder rumbled, and he realized the day had darkened. Shortly, beneath the forest roof, it became dark as dusk, and still. Sporadic rain spattered on treetops.

The dogs ceased their trail call, the sound changing to excited barking that said they'd caught up to their quarry. He heard a roar, the scream of a dog, furious barking and raging, more screams. More roars, in two voices overlapping; it hadn't occurred to Macurdy that trolls might travel in pairs. Men shouted. A horse screamed, then another. Vulkan had increased his speed, and with no free hand to fend off brush, Macurdy lay low on the heavy shoulders. Ahead a man screamed, the sound cutting off sharply.

Macurdy's attention was on the noise of combat. He'd totally missed the wind thrashing the treetops. Now a wall of rain marched across the forest canopy, with a sound he could not ignore-like an oncoming train. The fighting was less than a hundred yards away when the deluge struck-rain, hail, leaves and twigs. Lightning stabbed vividly, thunder crashed, branches and pieces of tree trunk thudded to the ground. A wild-eyed horse dashed past, an empty saddle on its back.

Then, in front of him, Macurdy saw two huge shaggy forms. The lesser, beset by a trio of furious hounds, was flailing at them with the broken remains of a man. The other stalked crouching toward two men a few yards distant, one man with a shortsword, the other with a knife. Three horses were down; the others had fled.

Vulkan stopped so abruptly, his rider almost lost his seat. A single thought slammed Macurdy's mind: ‹OFF!› He dismounted, drawing his sword.

Then Vulkan charged the troll who swung the battered corpse, and struck the creature head-on, driving it backward, his powerful neck and shoulders slamming great tusks deeply into the troll's belly. Squalling, spilling guts, the troll grabbed Vulkan even as it fell, taking him down with it.

Macurdy's attention was on the larger troll. Raising his sword, he shot a ball of plasma from its tip, a ball half as large as his fist. Then turning, he aimed at the troll wrestling with Vulkan, but afraid of hitting the boar, he turned back to the other.

His plasma ball had struck through the larger troll's guts. Yet the creature seemed unaffected, except that it had paused in its attack. Before Macurdy could fire again, lightning flashed, accompanied by a stupendous bang of thunder that drove him to his knees.

A minute or minutes later, his wits somewhat recovered, he lurched to his feet, pelted by cold rain and acorn-sized hail. Vulkan had shaken free of the troll he'd disemboweled. The other troll had disappeared, though examination would disclose scattered fragments. The two other men were on the ground. One was struggling to sit up. Macurdy wobbled over to him.

"Damn it, Jeremid," he said, "don't you know enough to get in out of the rain?"

The man stared up at Macurdy. "You!" he husked. "Bhroig's balls! Where in hell…" Then he looked at Vulkan, who was also coming toward him.

"He's my buddy," Macurdy said, gesturing with his head. "His name is Vulkan. He's bigger than me and he's smarter than me, and I think he calls lightning down from the clouds."

‹Not I, Macurdy.› The "voice" resonated in their minds. ‹I am only a bodhisattva and great boar. You are the Lion of Farside.›

Jeremid had a broken arm. One of the trolls had jerked a spear from a man's hands and slammed Jeremid with its shaft, breaking his humerus. So it was Macurdy who loaded Jeremid's unconscious hunting partner across Vulkan's saddle, and lashed him securely in place with reins from dead horses.

Before they left, Macurdy took time to examine the troll Vulkan had killed. Eight feet from heels to crown, he judged, and five or six hundred pounds, with fangs to match. The hands were bigger than any he could have imagined, and bore claws. It was female, and had been pregnant. The other, the male they'd been following, might have stood ten feet, and weighed eight or ten hundred pounds.

They headed back toward the farm, Vulkan leading the way. Macurdy brought up the rear, whacking off saplings here and there with his sword, and blazing an occasional larger tree, so others could more easily find the bodies and bring them out.

By the time they got to the farm they'd started from, the sun was shining, low in the west. And Arnoth, the man who'd started out tied across the saddle, was sitting on it.

Of the four men who'd died, two were hired men on Jeremid's farm, one was the hired man from the farm the troll had raided, and one was a neighbor from farther down the road. Arnoth was not visibly injured, but was weak and dazed, seemingly from the lightning strike.

Arnoth's hired man had left a widow and orphan. The child-the lad who'd taken Macurdy to the dead ox-was sent to notify the dead neighbor's widow. Jeremid promised to get word to relatives of both women.

By that time the shock had worn off, and Jeremid had more than enough pain in his arm. Macurdy set and splinted it, then began the healing. Unlike Arbel, he used neither flute nor drum. Guided by Jeremid's aura, he simply manipulated the energy field around the break, and over the rest of the body. Finally they started down the road to Jeremid's farm, both men walking.

After supper, they sat on the side porch, in late spring twilight that smelled of moist soil, growing plants, and livestock. Jeremid had a jug beside him for painkilling. Vulkan rested on the ground a few feet away. Sundown had invigorated the mosquitoes, and Macurdy had woven a repellent spell.

He'd already given Jeremid a brief summary of his years back on Farside. Now he described his visit to Wollerda and Liiset, and what Vulkan had said about a threat from across the Ocean Sea. "So we're heading north to see Varia and her ylvin lord. The empires need to know." He didn't mention Sarkia's message.

"Hnh!" Jeremid peered intendy at Macurdy. "And then what?"

Macurdy didn't answer at once. "I'll do whatever comes to mind," he said at last. "Something will. Some folks need a plan. But I seem to do best by doing whatever occurs to me. Sometimes it is a plan, and I follow it as long as it's working. But even then I do whatever seems best. There's no guarantees in life. I've learned that the hard way."

"I don't suppose you've got any attention on your ex-wife?"

"I haven't had much luck with marriages."

He'd answered without thinking, had been looking at his marriages as three tragedies: Varia kidnapped and lost to him, Melody drowned, Mary with her chest crushed. But his weeks with Varia had been remarkably happy, and he'd learned a lot from her. He couldn't imagine what he'd be like without having had those weeks. And Melody? Her open jaunty manner, her reckless fearlessness, her passion for him… And finally Mary; not counting his time away at war, they'd had more than a dozen years together. Sweet years, loving years. Macurdy, he thought, instead of moping, you ought to congratulate yourself on how lucky you've been.

Jeremid's thoughts had turned to what Macurdy had told him about an invasion threat. "Looks like you might end up raising another army," he said. "You're probably the only one who can."