Point one for the bard.
I offer a prayer as I stand before the bridge, only a pace from its first plank. I wonder if I am ready for death. I am almost thirsty enough to believe I am.
I wait to be attacked. To be robbed. I wait to see the beasts of legend. I stand at the edge of the broken path for several minutes, waiting, listening, tasting the air. Nothing happens. Neither bird nor cloud touches the sky. Not even a second breeze passes to stir the dust.
I step onto a thick wood plank. I expected it to creak beneath my weight, but it holds steady. A lock of hair sticks to the sweat along the side of my face. I don’t peel it away. I’m surprised I have anything left to sweat.
Another step, and then another. Not a single creak nor echo. I cross the first plank, then the second. The third, down to the eighth. I see no sign of life, only a nearly endless path ahead.
Did the drought wipe out the trolls, too, leaving their shadowed city to hang in ruins? Is my last attempt at shelter to go unachieved?
Could I make it to Eterellis, and see the great ruins for myself, before my body withers and dies?
My steps become surer, my strength rallying as the sun dips, cooling the air a degree at a time. I count the planks as I pass them, wondering at the enormous trees they must have hailed from, when one—the twenty-sixth—groans beneath my weight. I slow, examining it. The wood neither bows nor splinters. I shift my weight, and the sound repeats, but farther to my right.
It is then I realize it has not creaked beneath my weight, but someone else’s. Someone coming from below.
I step back, my breath coming quick. I search the bridge, scanning from one side to the other, when I hit something solid behind me.
Whirling around, I look up, up, up . . . into the face of a troll.
My heart drops to my stomach, while my stomach rushes to my throat. Again, my imagination has failed me.
The troll is immense and green as onion shoots. Hammered armor crosses his massive chest, leaving room for the natural spikes on his shoulders to protrude outward. His muscled forearms are covered with sheaves of fur, also cut to reveal a row of smaller bony spikes. Nubs of bone line the widest jaw I’ve ever beheld. His nose is short, and his green brow is so thick it hides half his eyes. His greasy hair forms a widow’s peak, with yet more bony nubs sprouting on either side of it. Short tusks jut forward from wide, snarling lips. A thick belt of some sort of leather encompasses a middle six times thicker than my own.
I am six feet tall standing straight, but this creature towers over me. The top of my head comes to the base of his chest. He raises a spear, and his ears—like large human ears with the top curve sliced off—twitch.
With one muscular arm, he points the tip of the chipped spearhead at my throat.
The bridge creaks again. I spin, my hair catching on the spear, to see two, three, four trolls climbing up and over the sides of the bridge like spiders. Three green, one a sickly shade of gray. Two wield spears, two swords. All are made of thick, rippling muscle.
They form an armored circle around me that narrows and shrinks.
Fear bubbles within me, reacting to my own. It presses against my skin, eager to be released.
Before it overwhelms me, I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth and screech the oath I repeated a thousand times on my journey here: “By sun, earth, and shadow, and as Regret forms on my lips, I am of trollis and am bound by its words!”
The blades stop. Heat pummels me like a hammer. Sweat slicks my skin. The air feels so arid, I struggle to breathe.
The first troll says, “You dare speak an oath to us?” His language is my own, but his accent is hard around the edges, otherly.
I dare to meet his gaze, pressing down my inner darkness. I don’t understand the meaning of the words, but they’re all I have. Fists clenched, I repeat, “By sun, earth, and shadow, and as Regret forms on my lips, I am of trollis and am bound by its words.”
One of the trolls behind me spits. Another grumbles, “It is law.”
The first troll growls, turns his spear around, and jabs its head into the wooden plank he stands on. He pulls a cloth from around his waist.
Large hands grab me, a hard knuckle grazing my arm.
The cloth, a bag, jerks over my head, smelling foul. But it is more than a sour smell, because my head starts to spin. I struggle to focus, only to feel weightless, the air punched out of my lungs.
All is black. When I come to, my hands are tied tightly behind me, and I bounce as though carried over a shoulder. A bony protrusion presses into my ribs. I try to squirm away from it, but the thick, muscled arms around my legs only tighten, holding me in place. The bag clings to the sweat of my temples. I try fruitlessly to spit out my own hair. Panic flashes cold across my skin, but I remind myself that although I’m being taken by trolls, they have not hurt me yet. That must mean something.
Still, I am carried for a long time, shaken as though descending stairs, then weightless again as though slowly falling down holes. The air around me cools significantly. No light peeks through my bag.
How far into their city have they carried me, and how will I ever find my way out?
By the time I’m roughly deposited on a smooth stone floor, I’m shaking, and not from the chill. My stomach threatens to upturn, my mouth is dry, and when the sack is yanked off my head, it takes me too long to orient myself. I stare down at the dark cobbled stone under my hands. I stare and stare, trying to make sense of it.
“She spoke the oath,” a low voice says behind me. The first troll from the bridge.
“Another one?” spits a hard baritone. A beat passes. “I’m going to find this singing louse and rip his tongue out. Well, what is it?”
The words dance around me like drunk fairies.
A low woman’s voice barks, “Oh, for Regret’s sake, give her some water.”
My thoughts catch on the use of that word, regret, but my mind pushes forward to the more crucial offering. Water?
My dry eyes struggle to blink clear. Something hits the stone beside me with a tinny ring. It takes a moment for me to recognize it as a pitcher of water.
A soft squeak escapes me as I grab it and drink, the water stale and metallic and wonderful. Some of it sloshes down the front of my dress. I drink until the pitcher is empty and my stomach aches.