Chapter Five #2
I nodded along, my eyes watering as we neared the small home.
Flames leapt skyward. In the bright light of the fire, we could see a large shape lying in the doorway.
The mountain troll was dead, skin seared off, a neat hole in the side of its head.
Tossed about the yard like dolls were three dwarves and two elves.
Not an uncommon thing here on the fringes of lands that both races shared.
Many races mingled out here in the harsh lands. Sadly, none were alive.
“Shitful things trolls are,” Smuta coughed out as she dropped to a knee beside a young dwarven male with a severely broken neck. “Always picking on them that are smaller than them, but this house took the fucker down as they fell.”
Asdren stood beside me, quiet as the night itself, and exhaled. “We got to bury them in the ground, back there under the rocks. You want to take them elves to a tree, I wager?”
“Please, yes, they will be closer to the goddess,” I whispered.
“Right then, let’s get these people taken care of.”
We did just that. Digging under the flat rocks and then laying the shale atop the fallen dwarves, we then took a moment at their graveside. I stood back a space behind Asdren, whose long hair fell into his face as he bowed his head.
“Hearthmother, we send these hearts of flint back to you, to the fires of your eternal hearth, so that the stone may be their bed. May the memory of their valiant battle never fade, and may they sing their songs in the halls of the ancestors for eternity,” he said with conviction.
Smuta murmured along and turned to face me. “Right. They’re with the mother now, let’s get your people tossed into the trees.”
“There is no tossing,” I mumbled under my breath.
Since the trees were sparser here, it took us a bit longer to find a pine with thick enough boughs to hold the adult elves.
Working silently, I climbed up into the tree and took the deceased from the dwarves on the ground.
Asdren watched with interest as I arranged them properly, eyes closed, hands on their chest. Seated with the dead, I pulled some pine needles from the tree to sprinkle over their mangled bodies.
They should have herbs, been washed, and dressed in fine robes, but that was not available here.
I was sure Danubia would take them into the cycle of life no matter what their clothing was.
“Gracious Danubia, bring peace and respite to these children of yours as they venture onward. Clasp them to you and guide them from their suffering into the light of the lifegiver. Cleave them onto you so that they may cycle back into the glory that is your wild heart.”
A dove cooed in the distance. A sure sign that the goddess had heard my prayer and had chosen to reply through one of her divine creatures.
I climbed back to the ground. “They are on their way. We should return to the camp. I can reach out to the ponies as we go,” I said, and so we returned to camp, the house burning brightly behind us.
It was easy to find the other ponies. They’d not gone too far.
They came trotting to us as soon as they heard my thoughts.
With soft pats and words of encouragement, we took them back to camp, where the twins were washing their hands in the creek.
“Find the troll?” Narub enquired as he splashed some water on his sword to cleanse the blood from it.
“Aye, dead at the hands of the farmers. None of them survived the encounter.” Smuta sighed out, peeling off her breastplate as we strode to the fire. “We laid them to rest under the stone, and the elves are dangling in a tree like smoked fish.”
“They’re with the Hearthmother now,” Asdren added while dropping down to sit on the ground by the fire. The carcasses had been taken away, the soft dirt combed over to cover the pools of blood, and the fire stoked back up.
“Her flame never dies though her fire burns low,” the four dwarves murmured.
“I’m going to that trout hole upstream to wash the stink of them mangy troll mutts from my backside,” Smuta announced and grabbed her saddlebags from the ground by her sleeping roll. “Been four days. I can smell myself.”
The men nodded. I watched her stalk off downstream with concern.
If the twins had taken the dead pack in that direction, she could run into wolves.
And without any weapons, she would be defenseless, so I slipped off to re-tether the ponies and then faded into the dark.
I would keep watch from a distance with my bow at the ready.
Should a wolf or any other horrid creature that called these mountains home arrive, I could drop it with ease.
Splashing about in the water like a catfish on the bank made it easy to find the female.
Also, she was humming a song I did not recognize.
Silently, I found a fat fir to hide behind.
I rested my back against the tree and startled when something short but loud charged out of the dark.
Thinking it was a boar, I grabbed my bow, sighing when I saw Asdren step up to me.
“What the fuck is it you think you’re doing, Chirp?” he snapped up at me. “Come out to sneak a fast peek at her titties under the moonlight?”
“There is no moonlight, you stumpy dolt,” I fired back.
“Well, you got eyes like a fucking cat, so I figure you don’t need no light to be spying on a female bathing.”
“I have no interest in spying on that female or any other!” I snarled while waving my bow in the direction of the loud splashes. “I am here to protect her!”
“Pah, you protect her? That’s rich. I shit out things wider than you!”
“Impossible for your arse is too tightly clenched to shit out anything larger than a pea!”
His mouth fell open. I did not have cat eyes.
Yes, I saw well in the dark, but not like a cat.
He could, too, if he learned to listen, use his peripheral vision more, and not charge head on like a bull.
Those were all things scouts learned early on in our training.
There was just enough starlight to see your own shadow even on the darkest of nights.
So I could see his stern face, his blazing eyes, and the opening of his plump lips.
For a man with such a distinctive nose, he was…
unique. Fierce, scarred, brazen, loud, rude.
All things an elf would find unattractive—which I did—but here under the stars, I found myself staring at him while I wondered what it was about his face that made him so…
distinctive. Why was his hair and beard so wiry?
Did it feel soft or coarse? Would a smile make him less fearsome?
Yes, I felt it would. He would be comely if he smiled.
No, not comely. Ruggedly handsome. Yes, those were the words I wanted.
Asdren would never be called pretty. No, he was too brutish for that, but he would be attractive. Quite attractive if he tamed his beard…
What I did not see until she stepped around the tree was Smuta in all her glory. We both jumped slightly when the nude female appeared out of the blue. How had a stout, naked dwarf snuck up on me so easily?
“Would you two take this somewhere else?!” she shouted at us, slippery wet arms crossing under her breasts.
I quickly averted my gaze to stare at the stars overhead.
“I’m trying to wash the stink of a troll pack and dead bodies off my fucking tuppy!
If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two was peeking at my paps, but that ain’t the case so whatever it is betwixt you two take on off to some other part of the fucking world so I can wash my arse in private! ”
She stalked off, or I assumed it was her, as I was still gazing at the triple southern stars.
“See what you done, Chirp. Now she’s got a burr in her muff, and that’ll be taken out on me,” Asdren barked up at me. I shook off the combination of surprise and whatever bizarre thoughts about this dwarf’s mouth with a huff.
“What I did?” I managed to ask before he thundered off, a cloud of angry dwarven flowing from him. “You are the least stealthy being I have ever encountered, and I have spent time with a herd of bellowing druids singing songs in elk!”
“Fuck you and fuck the elk druids!” he shouted, shoving through a prickly silver berry bush.
The shouts of outrage mixed with pain from the thorns as long as my thumb could be heard all the way to the Iron Gate, I was sure.
I laughed out loud. He fell back into Dwarvish as he thrashed about and then finally broke free.
Chuckling softly to myself, I watched his departure.
He possessed a strong gait, much like one of the ponies, short legs but sure feet.
His squared, broad shoulders rolled as he walked away.
He moved along like a badger, massive attitude atop a powerful stocky but low to the ground body.
Yes, he was a badger through and through.
I had only tried to converse with one once.
She was not interested at all, and I barely escaped with my toes intact.
Asdren probably would bite off toes if he could or at least nip at them or other parts of an elf’s body.
A shiver of something hot raced through me, settling low in my belly.
Then someone shoved me hard, a strong hand in the middle of my back, and I stumbled forward, arms circling.
“I ain’t telling you again. Get the fuck out of here and let a lady wash her fucking twat in peace!”