Sky and the Grumpy Troll (The Twinkpocalypse #2)

Chapter 1

Moerrven

Sure enough, the Mill Creek Bridge was crumbling the way everything crumbled without Bryndala’s care. She would never have let it get to this state.

The new county engineer had stomped on the bridge and told me it was steady as a rock. But I didn’t trust him with one of Bryndala’s bridges. I didn’t know much about bridges, but the casual way the engineer had checked it off his list had shown me that Bryndala had been his superior in every way.

I was not in any way qualified to do bridge repairs, and bridge repair was not particularly enjoyable.

Perhaps it was one of those things that went better if you were properly trained.

For example, at a training I might ask how one applied mortar above one’s head without dripping it all over one’s face.

Grumping at Bryndala for not being here to handle these sorts of things herself, I attempted to brace myself in a different position.

Within minutes, I’d given up and was flat on my back on the muddy ground beneath the cracked joint. Which was why I heard the hoofbeats well before the horses arrived.

It sounded like multiple horses, riding hard, which was unusual on a county lane where ox carts were the preferred method of transport.

The bridge shook with their passage overhead.

Three riders, heavy, galloping hard enough to rain dust and grit down onto my face.

Just when I was about to go out and yell at them to be more careful about bridges, they slowed and stopped.

They sounded rough and loud, and they were discussing a robbery like I might discuss a trip to the bookstore. Highwaymen. It couldn’t be. In broad daylight? I crawled deeper under the bridge, because I was not fond of danger.

There was a sharp yelp, followed by a thud and the scrape of something being dragged.

“He’s not worth the trouble, leave him.”

A rough laugh. “I’m not even sure why you snatched him in the first place!”

“I thought he was a woman, didn’t I, with those legs and the very tiny trousers.”

More laughter, followed by a groan. And then they were off, headed southward by the sound of their retreating hoofbeats. And then I heard a small whimper that made me concerned. Had they left a person behind?

I set down the trowel, climbed up the embankment, and hauled myself over the railing onto the road.

There was a human lying in the middle of the road.

Humans were small in general, but this one was particularly so, slight and compact, little more than five and a half feet, with black hair, tan skin, and an outfit that I could not begin to explain.

He was wearing shorts made of something purple that glittered like gemstones and a shirt that wasn’t a shirt so much as a suggestion of one, sheer and made of a sort of mesh, covering nothing that needed covering.

He was covered in road dust, but even so, I could see that he was remarkably attractive, with a fine angle to his jaw and big brown eyes that slanted up slightly at the corners.

His hands were bound behind his back with rough rope, and he was wriggling on the cobblestones like a landed fish, accentuating the lithe muscles that his strange clothing did nothing to cover.

He was on the far side of the bridge from where I’d climbed up.

I crossed to him. He spotted me, and the sounds got louder, with a cadence that suggested extreme distress, but the gag in his mouth stopped them from being intelligible.

His eyes were wide as they tracked up from my boots to my chest to my horns, then settled between my legs, one eyebrow quirking up.

Perhaps I had gotten mud or mortar there.

I looked down and brushed at my pants as I walked closer, feeling sorry for the man’s plight.

The eastern trade routes had been troubled lately; bandits preying on travelers, mostly interested in coin and goods.

Perhaps that was why he was in his underthings.

The highwaymen had taken everything of value and left him practically naked.

At least they had not taken his footwear, which was bright blue, the height of low boots, and stranger than everything else he wore combined. I knelt and examined the rope.

It was abhorrent, that was what it was, leaving a man in just his underthings.

I pulled my belt knife and cut the gag, then the ropes.

The human scrambled to his feet, ripping the gag from his mouth as he started talking, a torrent of sounds, musical and rapid, with hand gestures that encompassed the road, the bridge, me, the concept of reality itself, and possibly his feelings about all of the above. I understood none of it.

“I don’t speak your tongue,” I said, drawing out each word, in case clarity of pronunciation would somehow bridge the gap between our languages. It did not.

He looked at the bridge, then at the embankment I’d climbed up from. The space beneath the bridge from which I had emerged.

“Oh, I’m not an engineer. I was just doing some rudimentary repairs,” I said.

A grin spread across his face, equal parts delight and mischief, and he planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and began what I can only describe as a performance.

He held up one hand, palm out, like a sentry, drew himself up to his full unimpressive height, and said something in his language in a deep, dramatic voice. He pointed at me, pointed at the bridge, and shook his head with theatrical gravity.

He was deliberately blocking the bridge with his body.

He put both hands on his hips and widened his stance. He said something else, louder this time, and stamped one foot.

“Okay, well, I need to get back to my repairs. You are free to go. Though, if you need some clothing first, my house is just around the bend.”

He couldn’t understand me. He squared up further, chin lifted, and began making something like a growling sound while curling his fingers into claws.

I had no idea what to do with him. He was clearly mad, or foreign, or both.

I held up both hands in what I hoped was a universal gesture of peace. I took a step toward the bridge.

He leaped in front of me and planted himself directly in my path, arms spread wide, still grinning.

The top of his head came to the middle of my chest. He said something that sounded like a declaration, passionate, emphatic, unintelligible, and poked me in the sternum with one finger.

He looked past me, and his eyes widened.

Someone was coming, and this someone was accompanied by a lowing I recognized immediately. My sister Grunnhild’s ox, Berta, had a call like a foghorn.

I turned right as the ox cart rounded the bend. Grunnhild at the reins, the younger of my sisters, Dagmarra, beside her, knitting as usual. Between them sat a young troll woman I didn’t recognize. She was pretty, and studying the landscape with the wide-eyed interest of someone who was new to town.

She couldn’t be another matchmaking candidate. That would make four this month, and Grunnhild had promised that the cartographer from Ironhold would be the last, and here she was, rounding the bend with a fresh victim and the ox and the unstoppable force of sisterly concern.

I needed to escape.

My cottage was two hundred yards up the lane. If I sprinted, I could make it inside before they reached the bridge, lock the door, pull the curtains, and pretend I’d gone to Highmark for the month. I turned back, ready to abandon the bucket and mortar and sprint like my life depended on it.

The human was in my way.

He was still blocking the bridge approach with his arms spread, the muscles of his shoulders flexed in a way that might have been attractive had he not been crazy.

He was delivering a monologue of some length and passion.

If he didn’t shut up, my sisters would cease their chatter and notice us.

Even his strange outfit was glinting in the sun like a beacon.

I needed him out of the way, so I grabbed him by the waist and lifted him off the ground like a sack of flour, ready to set him aside and make a run for it, like the shameless coward I was. He weighed nothing, but he fought like a cat being threatened with a bath, all claws and flying limbs.

“I’m not kidnapping you, I’m just trying to get you to move,” I hissed as his knee caught my cheekbone and his foot made contact with my abdomen.

He wriggled in my hands and somehow looped his legs around me, twisting and climbing like he could take control if he made it to the top of me. He was a graceful little thing, I’d give him that. And fast.

“What is your objective here, tiny human?” I asked, swatting at him like a pesky fly.

He grabbed the nearest solid thing, which happened to be my left horn, his fingers wrapped around the base, right where it met my skin.

Right where the trolgar gland sat, nestled against the skull, the gland that every troll learned to protect before they learned to walk.

No hand but a bonded mate’s should touch me there, and in troll culture it was a grave violation, but I understood that he probably felt he was fighting for his life, so I forgave him the trespass.

Then he gripped the other horn, his thumb pressed into the soft hollow behind the horn’s root, his fingers curled around the ridge, and he held on as he hauled himself to my shoulders and wrapped his legs around my throat.

My knees buckled as heat and pressure surged through my body, something electric and sensual that started at the point of contact and cascaded down through my skull, my jaw, my spine, my chest, pooling low in my belly with a weight that made me sway.

My vision blurred for half a breath. Every nerve in my body focused to a single bright point under his fingers and my blood surged toward it like a tide answering the moon.

Then the sensation shifted, deepened, and underneath the physical intensity something else opened, something I hadn’t expected, hadn’t prepared for, and didn’t want. A flicker of awareness that wasn’t mine.