The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King by Lynn Abbey Page A

shaft of my club. Against another human, the flint knob would have been the best choice: a
human could stun a man of his own race with the knob, men take him apart with the hook. But against a
thick-skinned troll, it was all or nothing. I spun the shaft as I lunged at my enemy and swung with the
hook leading.
    My arm bones jammed my shoulders when the flint struck flesh. I nearly lost my grip. Nearly.
Somehow I kept my hands where they belonged as hook went in up to the leather thong that lashed the
stone to the shaft. The troll made a sound like a baby crying. His club grazed my arm as he toppled. He
was dead before he struck the ground.
    Staggering, because my heart suddenly refused to beat and my lungs forgot to breathe, I dropped
to one knee and savored my victory by starlight. But the thoughts that rang in my mind were: What was
his name? Did he leave anyone behind who would remember his name? The army Windreaver had
loosed in the heartland wasn't made of outcasts, orphans and rootless veterans, like us. The trolls were
totally committed to their cause. The bands we trailed were families with fathers and grandfathers,
mothers and children.
    I'd never know my troll's name or what had brought him, alone, to my hill, his death. Perhaps
he'd gotten lost in the night. Perhaps he'd been chasing his own dreams of vengeful glory. But it was a
safe bet that he wasn't the only troll in walking distance, and that some other troll was going to come
looking for him.
    Even if there weren't any other trolls nearby to put the tang of danger in my victory and cut short
my celebration, the torch I'd tossed aside had set the straw-grass ablaze.
    Fire was an enemy I'd known as long as I'd lived. Grabbing my blanket, I swung and stomped
those flames until they were gone and every ember was dark. Then, on my hands and knees, I raked the
hot ash with my fingers until it was as cool as the corpse behind me. Dawn was coming when I rested
and drained the last drops from my water-skin.
    As the first red streaks of daylight thrust over the eastern horizon, I gazed at my night's work: the
fire I had extinguished, the troll I'd killed. He was young, probably no older than I—which made him very
young for a troll. The warty calluses that armored adults of his race had scarcely spread up his arms. His
face was smooth, with soft brown eyes, wide-open and staring at me. His open mouth asked why?
    I had no answer. We were far from Deche; there was no cause for me to think I'd claimed
vengeance against a troll who'd wronged me personally. Like as not, the troll I'd killed—the troll who
would have killed me, I made no mistake there—had his own wounded memories and fought humans for
the same reasons I fought trolls.
    Neither of us was right, but I was alive. Nothing else mattered. I'd survived the massacre at
Deche, and I'd survived a face-to-face combat with a troll. Destiny had plans for me. I believed that as
strongly as the sun rose, but I had no hint of what lay before me.
    Trolls were sun-worshipers. Every house I'd explored above Deche had an east-facing door with
a rayed disk and an inscription chiseled into the stone lintel above it. I'd determined that before the
Troll-Scorcher had come to the Kreegills, trolls had set the skulls of their ancestors atop their homes
where the sun would strike them first and fill their hollow eyes with light.
    My troll had fallen wrong-way round. Dawn struck his feet while his eyes were still in shadow. It
was no desecration—not compared to what the trolls had done in Deche and elsewhere—merely an
accident as he fell and died. But I had to prove myself better than the trolls, to justify what I'd done. I
wrapped my belt around his ankles and hauled him around so the rays fell on his still-open eyes. In ashes
    Then, when the sun was well risen, I took my knife and hacked off his head.
    Bult and the others had begun to rouse from their stupor by the time I returned to our camp