Chapter 2
Two
Gunnar
Gunnar's back hit the dirt hard. Plumes of dust billowed around him, clogging his lungs with a reminder of the drought that had plagued the trolls for far too long.
He rumbled out a growl, the sound one that should have sent his attacker quaking in their boots. It was the sound of a male who would hunt down those he hated. He would put this person in their grave long before they touched him again.
Rolling, he just barely steadied himself before a spear sank into the dirt where he had been lying. His lungs burned. His throat ached with all the dust that had clogged it. Even his tongue felt thick in his mouth, but it didn't matter. He had to win.
Curling his hands in the dry earth, he pulled up a handful before flinging it into the face of his attacker. The male cursed, and the sound gave away exactly where he was. It was enough. Barely. But Gunnar had always been a good fighter.
He launched himself into the air with a cry that should have shaken the very ground he stood on. Claws flashing in the light, he used the dust and the disarray to do what he needed to do.
Wrapping an arm around the thick neck before him, he brought the warrior to the ground.
He was smaller than this male, not by much, but by enough.
The male flailed, trying to get him off his back, but he was unsuccessful.
Gunnar wrestled him onto the ground, wrapping his legs around his torso and squeezing harder, harder.
He would kill him if he had to. If that was what it took.
But then, at the last second, the big meaty hand of the blue warrior in his grip hit the ground. Once, twice, three times. A submission.
Gunnar released him, both of them wheezing as they rolled away from each other, coughing into the dirt. He was peppered with bruises. His entire body hurt. He was pretty sure one of his tusks was loose where the massive idiot had hit him in the face, even though they weren't supposed to do that.
"Fuck, Emil," he grumbled, spitting out a mouthful of blood. "That last shot was cheap."
"Well, it wasn't supposed to be easy, now was it?" Emil had already stood. He didn't look too much worse for wear, other than the very dark marks around his neck where Gunnar had been choking him. "Now get up. You're supposed to be celebrating."
Right. Of course he was. He was celebrating because, finally, after all this time, he was a warrior. He'd passed the last test.
The only test that mattered.
His life was going to change now. Forever. It was what he had always dreamt of and more. He was going to be a warrior, like his brother, like his father before him, as all the males in his line had become.
Standing, he reached for Emil's hand, and together they lifted their fists in the air. The cries of all the warriors surrounding them filled his ears with pride.
Every year, the trolls picked warriors to fight with them. He had been training with his friends for nearly ten years. Ever since he was a child, all Gunnar wanted was to fight. Like his family. Like the only person who mattered.
They were surrounded by at least a hundred warriors, all of them shouting and whooping because he had finally done it. But even as his left eye started to swell shut, Gunnar was looking for one person and one person only.
And then he saw her. Tindra.
His best friend stood a head taller than most of the other people in the crowd.
Her green skin glistened, so smooth and unmarred it was almost a shock to realize she was a better warrior than nearly every single person in that crowd.
No one had ever given her a scar. Not on the countless raids she'd been in.
She was a legend, and she’d taught him everything he knew.
Tindra pushed through the crowd once the shouts started to die down.
He headed for her as well. The other warriors knew that mentors always celebrated with the warrior who was welcomed into the war band.
As he approached her, many hands slapped down on his back, telling him that they were proud of him. That he'd done well.
He had never felt so full of love or pride in his people. In his own hard work, too.
"Good job, leafling," Tindra said, nudging a fist to the bottom of his jaw. "The green warrior officially becomes just a warrior. Your father would be proud."
Gunnar knew he would. Though his parents had been killed in a raid by the humans only a few years ago, the sting still made his chest hurt. He rubbed at the spot just over his heart, reminding himself that he still had Ragnar, at least.
"What are we doing to celebrate?" he asked.
"Well, I know you're a fan of adventure, and that you've been trying to get me out of the mountain for a while.
" She winked and then pointed through the crowd to two packs that were leaning against a fence. They were not stuffed full, so their journey wouldn’t take more than a day, but he could see the bottoms were heavy with water and food.
"I thought you'd maybe like to see how tall Trollveggen really is. "
He'd been dying to get outside for a while, but it had been far too dangerous. Their king had warned them all to stay within the mountain because the humans were crawling all over it. But they must’ve been safe enough if Tindra was suggesting this.
He wiped sweat away from his swollen eye with a grin and headed over to the packs. He was tired, sure. But never too tired to explore.
There were more congratulations as they headed out. Somehow it seemed like the entire mountain already knew that he was joining the ranks of warriors, and that was part of why he loved it here. So many people cared for him. So many people wanted to show their pride in what he had done.
Tindra led him out a secret exit. It took them a while to get there, and he was certain this was part of the warrior secrets that he would soon share.
The cliff edge she clambered over was hidden behind a spray of a waterfall that glowed bright blue.
The stones were icy against his palms as he climbed up over them and toward what he assumed was a swift and safe exit.
The walls of the mountain were tight where she led him. This exit was clearly not meant for many people to walk through at the same time. He even had to take his pack off a few times and shove it ahead of himself so he could fit. Not that he minded.
Gunnar had always enjoyed this. He was the one people came to when someone got wedged in a cave or they were stuck in a hole somewhere deep. A fear of tight spaces had never plagued him, or really many people in his bloodline.
His family loved to mine. His mother had been a miner before tragedy had struck.
She’d never wanted to go above with their father, said the desire to see the sun was far more human than she was.
Gunnar and Ragnar had grown up in the depths of the earth, their births guided by the groan of the mountain itself.
"Nearly there!" Tindra said over her shoulder, and then a spear of sunlight hit him in the face.
He grunted, turning away from it for a moment before he couldn't stop himself from looking back. Gunnar was one of the few trolls who loved the sun. He had grown up underground, so it was like a forbidden tease every time he got a chance to look at it.
It made his skin smell sweeter. The warmth of it was a decadent beauty that surely he should be able to indulge in more often.
"Where are we?" he asked as he left the mountain. His body slipped free from its embrace and suddenly he was surrounded by green.
Not much of the interior of the mountain was green. Sure, some of their crops were the color. And he had seen a few other places in Trollveggen where there were green flying insects. But nothing like this.
The bed of emerald moss spread out around them like a blanket.
His bare feet sunk into the plush carpet, and he swore the claws on his feet could even feel how soft it was.
The sun sparkled through emerald leaves on the trees, dappling the ground with shadows that gave the illusion of texture.
And he could smell it. All the surrounding greenery made the entire world have this scent that he wanted to drag into his lungs and bottle for later.
Tindra shook her head and adjusted her pack. "Ridiculous. This isn't even the best part. Come on, Gunnar."
He rolled his eyes but followed her. Tindra always knew the best places. She'd been scouting for years, and she knew the secret areas of this mountain like no one else. So many of their people had tried to get her to give up her secrets, but she never did.
Maybe now he could get her to show him those secrets.
Tindra turned to the mountain itself. Her claws dug into the stones so easily that it almost looked like she was floating as she climbed a sheer ledge that stretched all the way into the clouds. Up she went, farther and farther away from him.
"Shit," he muttered before shaking out his arms. They were still sore from wrestling with one of their better warriors of the warband. Why did she think he could climb like this? She was going to get him killed!
Tindra leaned back, dangling from one arm as she glanced down at where he still was. "Come on, leafling. Or are you scared of a little climb?"
She always knew how to make him angry. The accusation burned through him as he made sure his pack was secure before heading up the mountain after her.
Gunnar had climbed like this his whole life.
He'd even raced Tindra up the mountain, but only on the inside.
This was different. The sun was in his eyes.
The rocks reflected that light in a strange way.
Wind brushed against his sides, feeling like the fingers of someone he did not know.
How strange it was to know that the world was alive around him, and so different from his home.
How long had it been since he'd been outside the mountain? He didn't know. A year? Maybe more?
He turned for a moment to look out at the land that was slowly being revealed now that they had crested above the tree line, and his breath caught. There was just so much space. So much land that he had never seen or explored.
The mountain gave way to rolling hills in the distance.
He could just barely see the white dots that covered the fields even farther beyond, and those must be the sheep that trolls loved to steal for food.
They had a few in the mountain, but they never lasted very long.
Whenever they raided a human village, they took some sheep home with them.
The meat was sweeter when the animal had seen the sun.
He wondered if trolls would be sweeter if they lived up here too. Supposedly there were trolls who lived far beyond the mountain, wild and free as they were supposed to be. Gunnar had never met one, though.
Breathing harder, he hurried to catch up. Tindra had already crested the very peak of the mountain and sat atop it like a conqueror. With one elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist, she looked like it had taken absolutely zero effort to climb all this way.
She started rummaging through her pack while he worked to get to the top with her. The peak wasn't razor-sharp like it looked. There was actually about two troll heights of space where they could lie down.
Which was exactly what he did. Gunnar crawled the rest of the way to the peak and then flopped onto his back. He was a little embarrassed about how hard he was breathing. He'd been training for years and had the endurance of an ox. But somehow he’d struggled very much to get up the mountain.
"Someday you'll do this faster than me," Tindra said as she handed him an apple. "But that's not today. And I'll admit, I'm quite pleased about that."
He grunted and tried to sit up, feeling his abs screaming as he did so. But he managed eventually and sat on the top of a mountain eating an apple with his closest friend.
They both stared out over the clouds that meandered by them, down toward the human kingdom and the castle that was always on the edge of their view.
It was hard to look at it sometimes, knowing what he did.
King James wanted to see the trolls eradicated.
Wiped out. Destroyed beyond reckoning and he and Tindra knew firsthand what this king was capable of doing.
Still, he didn't want to ruin this moment.
Tindra leaned a little, bumping his shoulder with hers. "I'm real proud of you, you know. That wasn't an easy fight to win. You proved yourself worthy of a good warband."
"Did I?"
"Oh, stop fishing for more compliments. You're ridiculous," she said with a chuckle. She did nod again, though. "You did us all proud. All of us."
Something burned a little harder in Gunnar’s chest. The flame had been growing for a while now.
He knew damn well there was a lot to be said about his ancestors, and how he could still feel them watching him.
Every inch of their history was written throughout his body.
From the speckles on his skin that were barely visible, to the better hearing he had that only wild animals shared, even to the curly locks of his hair.
The path his ancestors had taken was written all along his skin.
And hers. The more he looked at Tindra, green as he was, the more he could see that.
"Do you think we'll ever fight together?" he asked, even though he knew the answer would make him worried. He didn't know if he could fight beside her. He wasn't sure he could focus at all.
She shrugged. "If the king decides to do so, then we'll fight. We're good at that, you and I. Fighters to the end."
"Do you think you could fight with me by your side?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. It would be easy to get distracted if you were there. But we'd both have to. We'd have to fight the right way, the way we've been trained. And we'd win. Because we always win."
“But it’s unlikely we’ll have to?”
She bit her apple, the crunch echoing around them. “Don’t know, Gunnar. We may very well fight beside each other and watch the other die. Hard to know.”
Gunnar put a hand to his belly where something strange brewed. A feeling. A warning.
He'd been so sure life was about to change for the better, but... it felt like something deep in his soul wasn't all that certain.