Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
MAIA
“This is a stupid idea,” Gunnar grumbled beside her.
On Maia’s other side, Ragnar seemed to agree with his brother. Both of the trolls were on edge, and she didn’t know what to say to calm them down. In truth, she wasn’t feeling great about this plan herself.
But some part of her needed proof. She’d seen what humans did to the trolls, and while she hadn’t seen what the trolls did in response, she knew damn well they weren’t innocent. Maia needed to see how the humans of this town would react when they were faced with what they had done. Perhaps it was na?ve of her to hold out hope that her people would make the right choice. But she really needed to give them the chance to not disappoint her.
One last chance. One last hope that maybe, though the kings didn’t agree, that the people of this kingdom could provide some peace for themselves.
They walked toward the village. Each troll near her was armed to the teeth. Ragnar even had knives in his hair, twisted in the tall peak of the braid that fell down the center of his head. Not to mention the knives strapped to his arms and thighs, the sword at his hips, and the shorter blade on the other side. There were so many weapons on each of these trolls that it was clear they were a threat.
And yet, they were not running toward the village. They were not letting out those whooping calls that usually warned humans that trolls were attacking. The war band was calm and quiet as they walked toward the village.
A tall wooden barrier circled the town. It was crudely built—just logs that had been stood on their end and driven into the ground. The uneven heights made it seem like there were fingers surrounding the village, waiting to clamp down on the people within.
A small gap, just large enough for six men to walk through side by side, was the entrance to the town. At least there was no way for the human soldiers to be above them, because there hadn’t been a second level of this wall built.
As it was, she could see there were countless soldiers on the other side of the gap. They all waited, their swords gleaming in the sunlight, ready to start yet another battle that many of them wouldn’t come back from.
Gunnar shook his head. “And a fight it is.”
“You don’t know that yet,” Maia desperately replied. “You haven’t even tried to talk to them.”
“They don’t want to talk, fire hair.”
Ragnar put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to slow down so they were near the back of the war band. “You will stay hidden if a fight starts. I don’t want you getting involved.”
“I didn’t plan on it. I have no idea how to fight.”
“Good. Don’t let them touch you.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead before turning his attention to the head of the group. Already, a few people from the town were coming out of the safety there—two men and a woman.
The first man who led the way seemed to be the leader of the soldiers. He wore gleaming armor that was expertly molded to his body, the joints moving soundlessly as he walked. This was not a man who had grown up on the outskirts of this village. Maia had only seen armor like that closer to the city, and within the castle itself. The swagger in his step also betrayed a confidence that didn’t come from a place like this.
The man and woman behind him were hesitant in their movements. Their clothing, while still nice, wasn’t anywhere near the quality of the other man’s armor. And they held each other’s hands in a grip that was so tight she could see their white knuckles even from the distance where she stood.
“Trolls!” the man in armor called out. “This is a first. I’ve never seen your kind try to barter before. Have you finally learned how to speak?”
A chuckle erupted from within the village. She could only imagine those were the soldiers just waiting to pour out of the false safety behind the tree trunks.
Gunnar walked to the head of the group, pushing some of the trolls aside to be the first to speak. “We’ve come to warn you that the mountain is off limits. Any human who steps foot on our land will be killed. We’re taking our home back.”
“And just how are you going to do so? We have more soldiers than you do, and that mountain belongs to our king.”
“Your king has no claim to our homeland.” Gunnar placed a hand on the sword at his hip. “There doesn’t need to be any more bloodshed today. We understand that you have willingly fought with our people, and that you desire to see more of us dead. But I can promise you will suffer far graver losses.”
“With our new weapons, I think you’ll find the battle will end in ways you could never have imagined.” The soldier grinned, and an icy chill went down her spine.
Maia had met men like this before. They’d come in to speak with her father, but never about flowers. They dealt in information. Control was their drug, and any instance where they could exert control over others was where they thrived.
This soldier wanted the trolls to attack. He wanted another reason to fight them, because he had some trick up his sleeve.
The trolls surrounding her shifted. She could feel the nerves suddenly rippling through them, like the man’s words were a wave that crested and swelled throughout their numbers. They knew, she realized. They knew there was something wrong, and they still came here. With the intent that they would give the humans a chance.
Perhaps she wasn’t the only fool who’d hoped for too much.
Gunnar didn’t let it show that he was nervous, though. Even back here, she could see the flash of his grin as he lifted his hands from his sides. “We’re here to talk, and that’s all. We don’t want to kill any more of you.”
“Is that so, troll?”
“The rest of your people are lying out there in the woods. We could hear them groaning as we healed our own. You didn’t kill more than three trolls. How many of your men did you lose, soldier?”
Then, slowly, blatantly, Gunnar wrapped his fingers around the pommel of his sword.
She could see how much that affected the man. Even the one behind him flinched and shoved his wife toward the trolls on instinct. Perhaps in an offering, or perhaps to try to save himself first. The woman staggered, then fell onto her hands and knees.
And that one little movement sent the entirety of the trolls into a frenzy. Everyone around her started drooling and growling. The sounds of their anger rose into the air, filling the space around her with so much rage and tension that it made her heart race.
The soldier laughed. “You don’t want to fight? You’ve got a pack of slavering animals at your back!”
“We don’t treat women like that,” Gunnar said.
“I’ve seen you kill women and children before.”
“On accident,” Gunnar spat. “We have no fight with those who cannot lift a sword against us.”
They were not willingly kind to human women, Maia knew that. But she had never seen them blatantly want to harm someone, like what had happened just now. No troll would have shoved a woman to the ground, and certainly not one of their own.
Gunnar stepped toward the woman, keeping his hands raised so no one tried to attack him. And then he reached his hand down for her. What an image he made. A massive troll, skin green as the grass surrounding them and his hand the size of the woman’s head, reaching out to help her.
But then the woman stood so quickly that she was almost a blur. Ragnar grabbed Maia and spun so he protected her with his body, but not before Maia saw a dart from the woman’s hand catch Gunnar in the chest. He took a step back, his hand over his ribs where the weapon had sunk. And when he drew his hand away, it was coated in blood.
There were no choices after that. Not for any of them. In one rushing movement, the trolls rushed forward. Maia’s hair blew in front of her face at the speed of their storming rage. She stood still in the center of all that anger, watching as the humans ran back toward their home. Soldiers stood in front of the trolls, but it didn’t matter. They would go through the wall of those men like they were paper.
Ragnar cupped her cheek in his hand, a sturdy rock in the madness of all that anger. “I must avenge my brother,” he said, his gaze searching hers.
And Maia knew he was waiting for her to bid him to go. He wanted her permission. If she said no, he would get her out of here and allow the other trolls to fight.
But this was his fight, too.
“Go,” she whispered. “I’ll be safe.”
He kissed her fiercely before turning and leaping into the fray. She was left alone as an empty vessel, as the trolls took all her rage with them. They rushed into a battle she could not join, so she sent her own aching pain with them.
Maia had never wished for blood in her life. She’d never wanted to hurt someone else just because she was angry. She’d done everything she could to give them a chance. The humans weren supposed to prove her right. They were supposed to prove that they were reasonable, and that it was just the crown who wanted the trolls dead. People on the outskirts of the kingdom could use their own common sense and know that a deal with the trolls was beneficial. But now she wondered if she’d ever been this angry in her entire life.
Finally, her feet moved. She raced across the grass toward Gunnar, who was still standing where he had been moments before. The air filled with the sound of battle. Shouts, clanging metal, screams of pain. But none of that mattered as panic filled her veins. He was so pale. The moment she touched her hand to his shoulder, he staggered.
“Gunnar,” she said, grabbing onto his arm and trying to tug him in the opposite direction. “Come with me.”
“Where is Ragnar?”
She could just barely make out her husband. He was a purple blur tearing through the ranks of humans as they stood in front of him, slowly but surely carving a path into the village. “Fighting.”
“Good,” Gunnar wheezed. “Good, he should be fighting. Take the knife from my thigh.”
“What?”
“Take the knife.” His weight listed to the side, and there was nothing she could do to stop him from toppling over.
Lunging for the knife at his thigh, she grabbed it and then held it up for him to see. “What now?”
He wasn’t breathing right. The air exiting his lungs rattled and wheezed in an unnatural sound. But he still rasped, “Now run, fire hair.”
Run? Why would she run?
She waited just a little too long. Hands grabbed her by the hair, hoisting her up by the long strands. Kicking out her feet, she tried to cut the grip that made her scalp scream in pain. She must have caught something with the knife, because an angry curse echoed right next to her ear before she was thrown onto the ground.
Maia just barely moved the knife out of the way before she impaled herself on it. But that meant she landed hard on the ground, knocking the wind from her lungs. She couldn’t stay still. She had to crawl away, if that was what it took.
Dragging herself with her forearms, she tried to get the air back into her lungs while she moved. She had just barely wheezed in a breath before a boot caught her in the ribs, flipping her over. Everything in her screamed in pain, unlike anything she’d felt before. But then she focused on the man standing over her, and adrenaline flooded through her.
A soldier. Someone who might have once been familiar. He looked like so many of the men she had known in her life. Sandy brown hair, streaked with lighter colors from years of being in the sun. Sunburnt skin across his nose and dark brown eyes that were almost handsome. A square jaw that she would have once thought was appealing, and it certainly would have made her blush if he had flirted with her.
But now? Now he was glaring at her like she was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen in his life.
“Troll whore,” he snapped, then spit onto her chest.
What did he just call her?
He pulled the sword out from his belt, and she didn’t have time to think. Maia let out a startled shriek that made him freeze for the barest of moments before she sank the knife into his thigh. She didn’t know if she’d gotten him good, or if she’d even hit something important. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to die at the hands of this man.
“You bitch!” he screamed, grabbing for the knife and ripping it out of his leg.
But that was just enough time for her to roll and get up onto her feet. She ran. The skirts around her legs were cut on the edges, so she could run faster than she would have in her older clothing. Her breath sawed in her lungs, her heart thundering in her chest.
Troll whore.
He’d called her a whore, and she wasn’t that. She was a troll wife and how dare he call her anything else?
With that fueling her, she ran faster than she ever had in her life. And still, it wasn’t enough.
The man tackled her from behind. The air flooded out of her lungs for a second time, and now she saw stars. Little specks made it hard for her to focus on fighting when she wasn’t even sure she could stay conscious. If she passed out now, though, she didn’t know what he would do to her. Already he was wrestling her body, flipping her onto her back. Straddling her with his legs on either side of hers, she didn’t have to guess what he might do.
These men all wanted the same thing. Control. She’d seen it countless times when she was under her father’s roof. He’d protected her then, saying he wanted a daughter as pristine as the first snow. But the expressions on the faces of those men had been the same as the one above her now.
They all wanted to feel powerful, even for a few moments.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” he hissed as he reached for his belt. “You’re a troll whore. You can take me just fine.”
A glint of metal appeared in the center of his throat. He looked a little shocked by that, even reaching up to touch the sharp tip of the blade that had pierced through him. A bead of ruby red blood rolled down the strong muscles of his neck, disappearing into the armor beneath.
And then more of that red blood, trickling up into his mouth as he made a choked sound. He was thrust away from her, his body forcibly lifted by the tip of the sword in his throat. She watched as the weight of his body warped the wound, stretching the wound in a wide open maw as the sword slid out and his body dropped onto the ground, before her eyes were drawn to the troll standing above her.
Ragnar stared down at her, his chest heaving with breath and slick with sweat. There was blood splattered all over his body, along with dirt and smears of things she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Troll wife,” he said. “Are you well?”
No. She wasn’t sure what had just happened, but she wasn’t well. She didn’t know if she would ever be well again.
But she cleared her throat and replied, “I’m alive.”
The corner of his lip twitched above his tusk, his expression nearing a snarl. “I should have made him suffer longer than he did.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
His gaze flicked to the man still drowning in his own blood, before he spat onto the man’s body. The wad of spit stood out on the gleaming armor, now dripping with blood. “Or perhaps I should have let you live, soldier. I would have sent you back to your people missing all of your limbs, so that you could tell them what would happen if any of your people touch my wife again.”
He lifted his sword into the air and she turned her gaze away as Ragnar hacked into the body. The sounds were enough. But soon there was no more noise, only her husband as he gathered her up to his chest and disappeared with her into the forest.
She clung to him, holding onto his form as tightly as she could. Dark shadows moved through the trees with them. Trolls who ran through the woods like they were part of this wild place, and one with Gunnar’s limp body slung over his shoulder.
All of them covered in blood.