Elf Killers (2 page)

"I'm here!" he hollered. "We're up this old maidenhair! Just follow our voices..."

"We've got a rope!" cried Olloo. "We're letting it down as soon as we get it fast up here!" He picked up the piece of grapevine which they had just cut and held it across the hole on the inside. "See where it is? You each take an end and hold it in place while I tie the rope to the middle. When it's light tomorrow, we'll cut notches inside here to hold it so we can all go down the rope..."

Suddenly Lilee gave a shrill scream.

"Fn-dapff-nyj-yo-yoynf!" roared a troll.

"Run Lilee!" cried Renny.

"Hurry!" cried Mian, "Over here!"

"Here!" cried Kieran the moment they heard a much closer scream.

"I can't see!" wailed Olloo, fumbling frantically with the rope in the dark.

"Olloo! Kieran! Mian!" came the shouts from below.

"There!" cried Olloo as he flung the coils of rope out into the air. "Renny! Lilee!

Here! No, no, no! The trolls chased them past us!”

"What on Earth are you doing, Olloo?" said Kieran.

"I'm going over the side. Don't let the piece of grapevine slip..."

"That's madness, Olloo," said Mian. "You go down and..."

"The trolls have Doona," wailed Olloo. "I can't let them eat my sister."

"You go chasing trolls, and they'll roast you on the same spit," said Kieran.

"I have to try!" he sobbed. "She'd come after me. I know she would."

With tears streaming down his cheeks, Kieran pushed hard against the grapevine to hold it fast as Olloo clambered over the side. "I hate this," he growled. "Wait!" he cried. "Olloo! Wait!"

Olloo was already halfway down the trunk. "What?" he hollered.

"If you wait for us to cut notches for the ends of the vine, we'll go with you."

"In the dark?"

"Will you wait?"

"Oh all right, but I'm not climbing back up."

Mian and Kieran worked feverishly to cut notches just inside the cavity opening, able to hold their grapevine pole in place well enough to allow them to go down the rope without a fall. Meanwhile Olloo did not enjoy his wait. It seemed to take forever, listening to the calls of the purple-ribs and the deep resonant thudding of the hatchet up the tree, echoing in the trees all about. "It's not like I can hide quietly here or anything," he said. "But one thing's certain, I'm going to kill a troll."

Presently the chopping stopped and Mian came down the rope to wait wordlessly with Olloo for Kieran to make his way down the trunk. They quietly picked up their vasculums and set out behind Olloo.

"So we're on our way to find the caves of the Marfora Siofra, right Olloo?" said

Kieran, stumbling on sticks here and there.

"That's where they'd have Doona, wouldn't you think?"

"Well yea, but nobody knows just where that is..."

"Renny and Lilee went this way, didn't it sound like?"

"Yea? But just because they ran off this way to escape the trolls, doesn't mean that this is how we'd go to get to their caves..."

"Olloo," said Mian, "why don't we just wait until light and then track them?"

"Because Doona's my sister and they just might eat her by then. Besides, the Great Rock Wall, you know, all those sheer cliffs, starts in not far from here and we..."

Suddenly he collided with someone in the blackness and found himself on the ground, utterly paralyzed with terror. 

"Olloo!" cried the someone.

"Oisin!" he gasped as he rolled onto his hands and knees. "I expected you to be a troll."

"Is that how I've been acting lately...?"

"Oisin, they've got Doona. And we're on our way to get her back before they cook her. Are you coming? And they've probably got Renny and Lilee by now, too."

"You mean to tell me that you know where their cave is?" 

"No, but we're not too far from the Great Rock Wall. Isn't that where everyone says their caves have to be?"

"Yea, and nobody knows for certain because no one has gone there and lived to tell about it. Look Olloo. Doona's all you've got. I'll risk my skin to help you get her back. But mind you, I'm the eldest of us and that makes me responsible for you three. If I go with you and I think things are too dangerous, we're all coming back on my decision. You got that?"

"Indeed," said Olloo, giving his chest a proud thump which could be heard in the dark. "And you know what? Doona is the best sister ever, and if we get her back, I'll owe you forever."

"Well you lead the way then," said Oisin. "It looks like you know what you're doing."

Renny and Lilee ran on through the moonless dark, flinging aside saplings and stumbling.

"Stop Renny!" cried Lilee, gasping for breath as she staggered to a halt. "Did you hear that? There. What is that?"

"It's just some kind of big old owl that lives up in the mountains. I know it sounds awful, but it won't hurt you. Come on, we've got to keep going."

"But I don't think I can go another step."

"Oh yes you can. It wasn't that long ago that we could hear them tramping in the leaves." 

On they went. Suddenly they found themselves over the edge of a hogback in the blackness, flailing their arms, taking long plunging steps down in the skidding leaves until Lilee ran headlong into a tree and fell limp astraddle the foot of its trunk. "Lilee!" wailed Renny, gently tugging at her arm. "Oh Lilee, please wake up...!"

A massive presence grabbed Renny's arm. "Pyrn-tey," he said with breath like smashed bird's eggs, "du-yuy...pyrn-tey," he said to Lilee, with a cruel shake of her shoulder. 

At sunrise, Neron sat astride his unicorn looking over his search party. It was a small assemblage, scarcely more than a few family members of the missing, including Oisin's older brothers, Illiam and Orry. There would have been more had every available person not been needed to guard the camp and to help with the final preparation of the ships.

The Marfora Siofra had not come during the night. Instead there had been a mysterious fire aboard one of the ships. It was even suggested by a few that it had been set by the Marfora Siofra, but no one could imagine how trolls could possibly have managed it, even with their stealth and their owl-like ability to see in the dark.

Neron gave his head a shake. He needed to think about the task of rescuing Oisin and the children. It was not likely that he would have more than a day.
"
Let Faragher sort out the fire,
"
he thought as he gave nods to Illiam and Orry and shook his reins.

Chapter 2

The Great Rock Wall was considerably further than any of them had imagined.

With no moon, there was no way to get glimpses of it through breaks in the trees, and the only way they had of knowing that they were heading toward it at all was by going up the slope. Even this was bewildering at times, for unless they were certain that they were following the main ridge of a hogback, they could easily find themselves struggling up the side of some ravine, going off at a right angle to the way they wanted to go. In spite of this they were making progress, and after a time, most of the purple-ribs they heard were far behind them, down below in the timber.

Up here, great grey owls traded baleful wails hither and yon which could have stood the hair up on any of the young Elves were, they not tramping along bravely in each other's company. There seemed to be more pines and spruce. Not only was it beginning to sigh overhead in places, but the leaf litter was taking on a spongy quietness.
"
The better for sneaking,
"
thought Olloo. He was growing keenly aware of the dirk at his waist, which he usually seldom noticed.

"Mian," cried Kieran. "Would you quit stepping in front of me?"

"...in front of me? ...front of me?" came an echo.

"Hey!" shouted Oisin in a whisper. "If those echoes came from the Great Rock

Wall, then there might be caves any time. Let's stay closer together. Fates forbid! No more shouting. No more speaking out. We need to start being as quiet as we can. And it may be a very long way yet. Who knows how far it is to their caves?"

The company grew quiet at once as they went back to walking, with the scuffling of leaves and the snapping of sticks practically stopping altogether. A shivering owl called out nearby to be answered by another further up the slope.

"Hogs," whispered Kieran. "Someone's having a roast. Boy! My stomach's growling. How on earth would anyone possibly have a roast up...here?" Suddenly he saw how it all was and wanted to vomit.

"Who are those vile things cooking?" said Olloo, speaking out without whispering.

"Hey," whispered Oisin, grabbing him by the shoulders. "If we can smell their fire, you might have just gotten us killed."

"Please," he said, dropping to whispers. "I'll be quiet. Please don't make us go back. I've got to find Doona."

"Well, you have to or we die.”

"So how should we go about this?"

"We start by being the quietest we've ever been in our lives," said Oisin as he drew them into a huddle. "I say we should follow the smell until we see the fire and then see what we have. We probably won't be able to do one single thing for the captives without all of us dying on the spot. So the question is, Olloo, what happens if you see Doona? Can you turn your back on her if I say we have to leave? Are you that tough?"

Olloo gave a sigh in the dark. "Yes I am, Oisin. I'm here to save lives. I'll not return your favor by getting you killed."

"Very well then. When we have our first peek, we need to sneak back a good long way into the woods before we ever try to discuss what to do. And don't forget, even for a moment, that trolls see like owls."

They were underway at once, pausing briefly for Oisin and again for each of the others to remove his shoes. Even with most of the ground being covered with evergreen needles instead of leaves, the stealthy going seemed to take an eternity. A shivering owl suddenly called out very close by, giving them a start.
"
At least we're quiet enough not to bother him,
"
thought Olloo.

  Presently they saw the flickering of orange light up the bluff face which reared up beyond the trees. Only a few rods beyond that they began to make out, to their utter horror, one of the girls being roasted, gutted and bound, gagged with an apple and blackened, burnt hairless and dripping fat into the fire from the pole she was tied to. Doona and Lilee squatted at opposite ends of the pole, forced to keep it turning at spear point by a troll-brute who had left bleeding places all over their shoulders and arms. Eighteen more children of the original party of twenty-nine were tied to posts, leaving four unaccounted for. Tears streamed down their grimy faces as they waited in stunned silence for their own ends to come.

Oisin carefully turned Olloo, Kieran and Mian away and led them back into the woods, well beyond the fire before any of them forgot himself and gave them away. In spite of a couple of muffled sobs, they managed in heroic silence.

"We're not going to leave, are we?" whispered Olloo, the moment Oisin turned to them.

"I don't intend to without taking out that stinker back by the fire, but I don't want to spring our own death trap by doing so. Did any of you see any other trolls besides the one?"

"No."

"Nay."

"Nope," said Olloo, "but the way the rocks were lit up all up and down the bluffs,

I'd say there must be a whole row of caves."

"Then someone's got to go see," said Oisin, "and just one of us is going to be both faster and quieter. I want the three of you to sit down right here and not say one single word amongst you while I'm gone. If I don't make it back, stay here dead silent until broad daylight and head straight back to camp. Don't you dare go back up to the cave because no one will be alive. Got that?" And with that he vanished.

He was back in surprisingly short order, struggling to catch his breath before whispering, "There are other caves all right, but there's not a brute in sight. It's all sows and kids. And that brute guarding Doona and Lilee seems to be alone and about to fall asleep. This isn't going to last. Somebody's undoubtedly going to come and eat directly. Silent is the word. Stand behind me until I've got him. Then go cut loose the kids. Remember that trolls can see into the shadows. Tell them to keep their mouths shut, hold hands and stay with us. Ready?"

They were. In short order they took up positions just beyond the light of the fire. Oisin drew his bow, and with scarcely a hesitation, loosed his arrow. The troll toppled head first into the fire. At once, Olloo, Kieran and Mian rushed to the fire to cut free Doona and Lilee.