The Bowl of Souls: Book 01.5 - Hilt's Pride (5 page)

He looked back at Beth to find her staring open-mouthed. He chuckled. Pleased at her reaction. “But there is one thing no one tells you about being named. You aren’t really free.”

She
rose
a shaking hand and pointed over his shoulder.
“L-look.”

Hilt felt the familiar chill of danger and drew his swords in one swift motion as he spun around. Standing behind him just a few yards away swaying and blinking stupidly were three trolls. All at once, they lifted their long arms tipped in vicious claws and screeched.

His well-trained mind assessed the situation. They were mountain trolls, seven foot tall and gangly, with beady eyes and cavernous mouths full of rows of teeth. A thick layer of slime dripped from their grey skin.

Trolls were mindless creatures driven only by hunger and they were hard to kill, regenerating from any wound. The only way to kill them for sure was to light them on fire. The slime that coated their skin was highly flammable and they went up quicker than lamp oil. Unfortunately, Hilt didn’t have a fire source handy.

 Hilt erupted into motion, spinning and slicing. The most important thing when fighting multiple trolls was to disable them right away. His first cuts went at the outstretched arms of the closest troll, lopping off its hands at the wrists. He ducked the swipe of the second troll and swung low, severing one of its legs at the knee.

As it crashed to the ground, the first troll tried to pull him in with the stumps of its arms, its open mouth descending on him. He met its mouth with the tip of one sword, piercing its soft upper pallet and continued through its brain to stick out the top of its skull. He twisted the blade and shoved its quivering hulk atop the other downed beast, and left his sword stuck in its skull while he turned to face the third.

It was charging toward Beth, who was backing away but not fast enough. He wouldn’t be able to reach her side before it struck. Trolls were filthy creatures and even a scratch from their claws could cause a serious infection.

Hilt gripped his remaining sword with both hands and called out to the magic in the blade. The sword was ready and eager. The magic gathered quickly. He stepped forward, spun, and released it with a mighty two-handed swing. A gust of wind hurtled from the blade and caught the troll mid-stride, sending it sprawling into the steaming blue pool. Beth stumbled and fell on her rump in surprise, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Hilt turned back to the other two trolls.

The troll with the sword stuck in its skull still lay quivering, but Hilt had to jump out of the way to avoid the claws of the second troll, which launched itself at him with its one good leg. It gathered itself and leapt towards him again. He jumped back out of the reach of its attack and swung his blade. He called up the magic of the blade again, but this time narrowed the power of the wind down to a fine razor edge.

Though the tip of his blade missed its face by inches, the power of the magic took off its head from the nose up. The troll crashed to the ground and the top of its skull rolled several feet away and rattled to a stop.

Hilt stabbed the sword into its back and hurriedly took off his small pack.

“Beth!” he barked. She looked at him from the place where she sat, stunned.
“You all right?”

“I-I.
I
never .
.
“ She
stared at him, eyes wide, her face blank. He had seen that expression many times before in the eyes of men after battle. He needed to snap her out of it quick, and the best way to do that was to give her something to do.

“Beth, come here! Hurry, I need your help.”

She shook her head and blinked away her stupor before climbing to her feet.
“W-what?”

“Here, help me drag their bodies together. It’s only a few moments before they start moving again,” he said. He grabbed one of the troll’s arms. “Careful, they’re slippery.”

“But their heads . . .” she said eyeing the top of the
trolls
head which sat just a few feet away. The eyes were twitching.

“They really don’t use their brains much and they regenerate fast. It’s surprising how quickly they recover. That’s why I left my other sword in the first one’s head.” He gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Come on, grab its leg. Just don’t let your hands slip. Their claws are sharp. You don’t want to cut yourself.”

She lifted its one remaining foot. “Um, gross,” she said, grimacing at the feeling of its slime covered skin. She wrapped both hands around its ankle and helped Hilt pull it over and toss it down on top of the body of the other troll.

“Where is the other one?” His eyes were on the deep blue pool. The surface was still once more.

“Um, I don’t think it ever came out,” she said.

He walked over quickly and looked into the water. The troll had sunk to the bottom of the pool and stayed motionless, its claws reaching upward, its mouth hanging open in a silent screech of rage.

“Huh. What do you know? It drowned. I never drowned a troll before,” Hilt said.

“W-will it stay dead?” Beth asked.

“I imagine so. That liquid is so hot that it probably cooked it. A cooked troll is a dead troll.” He turned back to her. “Speaking of . . .”

He tossed something to her, which she caught clumsily. It was a wooden dowel about the length of her thumb and there was a leather cap covering one end. “What is it?”

“It’s my flame stick. Got it as a gift from a wizard friend years ago,” Hilt replied. He walked over and retrieved his swords, wrenching them free from the troll’s bodies. “Take the cap off the end, but be careful not to lose it. It’s made of firedrake leather.
Hard stuff to get
ahold
of.”

She pulled the cap off and saw a round metal button imbedded in the end of the stick. There was a symbol carved into the metal. “That’s a fire rune.”

Hilt nodded.
“Exactly.”
He extended one sword out to her blade first. It was dripping with troll slime. “Rub the metal on the tip of the sword.
Carefully, now.”

When she brushed the flame stick against the sword, there was a tiny spark. The troll slime combusted and the entire length of the blade
was
set ablaze. Hilt touched the sword to the bodies of the trolls and with a whoosh, they went up in flame. He walked over to the body parts that he had lopped off of the trolls and speared them quivering on the end of his sword before flicking them into the fire.

“Would you put the cap back on? Just be careful not to touch the metal.” Beth put the leather cap back over the end and stared at the burning trolls transfixed until Hilt came to her side. He looked at her with worried eyes. “Are you okay, Beth?”

She swallowed and handed him the fire stick. “I don’t know.”

He tucked it into his pocket and grabbed her hand. “Come. Let’s continue on. You’ll feel better as we get away from here.”

Hilt hoped he was right. She seemed quite shaken up. He was relieved when only a few yards later, she shot him a glare and said, “I’ve seen battles before, you know.”

“I’m sure you have,” he said.

“Not trolls, but I’ve lived in Pinewood for fifteen years. I’ve seen goblins, gorcs, orcs, bears,
moonrats
. . . I even watched the town guard kill a giant once,” she said. “So don’t go treating me like some moon-eyed girl that can’t handle a little violence!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said in all sincerity. She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but let him continue leading her along by the hand.

Hot pots and steam vents bubbled and hissed all around them. They had to backtrack a few times to avoid some particularly dangerous footing, but a half hour later they had passed the most active area and the air began to smell fresh again. Still, she didn’t let go of his hand.

“What was that you did back there?” she asked. “When you knocked that troll into the pool, I mean.”

“That was my sword,” he said. “
Northwind
, I call her. She hangs on my right hip.
Southwind
is the other. He hangs on my left.”

“Magic swords . . .” she said. “I’ve heard of them before, but that was pretty impressive.”

“Thank you,” he said with a smile. “When I was ready to go to the Bowl of Souls, I knew that I needed a special set of swords. I found a master smith that knew how to work runes into the metal and I commissioned them. He, uh . . . took my name to heart when he forged them.”

“George the Wind,” she said. “I saw the air runes on the hilts, but I thought they were just for show.”

“You seem to know a lot about runes,” he said and she just shrugged in response. There was so much about this woman he didn’t know. “Well, you’re right. When he handed them to me, he told me he had made me some ‘little breezes’.”

They walked several minutes in silence before she spoke again.

“I-I’m sorry about before, Hilt. I don’t usually act like this. It’s just that I have hunted animals all my life and for some reason when I’m around, the creatures are calm as a kitten. They never attack me. Not snakes,
moonrats
, bears, anything. But when that troll came at me, the look of hunger in its eyes . . . I’ve never felt so helpless before. He was going to eat me, tear me limb from limb and I-I had no way to stop him.”

“Bah! Not true,” Hilt said and gave her his most disarming smile. “You had me.”

Her mouth twitched and she looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or smack him. Finally she returned his smile. “I’m glad you came with me, Sir Hilt. I want you to know . . .”

“What do you want me to
kno
-?” She placed a finger against his lips, stopping him mid-word. Her eyes were wide with fear as she pulled the finger away and pointed up the slope to the right.

Hilt cursed his luck. Just over the next ridge, walking down the slope towards them were four trolls. Two of them were standard mountain trolls like the ones he had dealt with earlier, but the other two were different, bent and misshapen. That was not a good sign.

“Alright.
We’ll be
okay,
We’ll just have to go up the other side of the slope.” She was still staring at the swaying trolls as they approached. He reached up and gently turned her face towards his. He waited until her eyes latched onto his. “Listen to me, Beth. Trolls can’t see well. At this distance, they can’t make us out. Their main senses are smell and taste and we are downwind from them right now.”

She swallowed and nodded.

He grabbed one of the leather cords around his neck and pulled a pouch out from under his shirt. He opened it up and dumped its contents, mainly gold and silver coins, into his hand and shoved them into his pocket. He then took the fire stick out and tucked it into the pouch.

“I want you to hold onto this for me, okay?” He wrapped her fingers around the pouch and hung the cord over her neck. ”Fire is the best weapon against trolls. If we have to face them again, you light a stick or something, anything you can find. You’ll be ready for them.”

The leather creaked as she tightened her grip on the pouch. “You bet I will.”

They trotted to the left, putting some distance between them and the approaching
trolls,
then turned and began climbing again. As they navigated the rock strewn slope, Hilt kept a sharp eye on the monsters’ progress. So far, the trolls had continued on their path, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

As they were rounding one particularly large boulder, Hilt’s foot slipped. He caught himself, but swore as he looked down. “Blast! Troll sign.”

“What’s that?” Beth asked.

“Trolls leave slime trails wherever they go like-like . . . great lines of snot.” He scraped his boot off on a nearby rock. “This one was fresh.”

“It looks like a snail trail.” Her nose wrinkled and she pointed to the path ahead. “Look!”

 Long glistening lines crisscrossed the path ahead. Hilt looked back to the trolls on the other side of the slope. The beasts had stopped and stood swaying slightly, long tongues hanging out as they tasted the air.

“Can we get around them if we climb up a bit more and cross back over?” she asked.

“No. The wind is blowing against us. If we climb past them, our scent will blow right to them. We have no choice but to keep going up this side.”