Jabberwock Jack (2 page)

"Uh, Mikkel, I think I need help," said Szandor. "Like
now
."

Either not understanding or not liking my brother's plea for help, the troll opened its mouth and roared in Szandor's face, spraying him with spittle and what he later called the foulest morning breath he had ever experienced.

"Uh, Mikkel?" said my brother even more sheepishly.

My crossbow bolt was now loaded. Since the troll had moved from my original firing zone, I wriggled out of the mud, that previously welcoming sludge grabbing at my legs like a jilted lover, and pulled myself into a crouch. The creature was almost definitely going to bleed to death from the chest wounds, but it still had the power to kill both my brother and I before it went to its doom. I knew we had to take action. Unfortunately, the creature's back was to me. If it were a human being standing upright, I would have the back of its neck to target. But the hunched posture of the troll hid its neck behind two meaty shoulders. Another flesh wound would make it bleed out faster, but would probably not help my brother.

This was the time for something risky. Normally, it was my brother who took the wild, unjustified risks. It was his entire reputation among hunters. But since my brother was already knee deep in shit, it was time for me to take a risk on his behalf.

"Hey asshole, over here!" I shouted while aiming my crossbow.

I'm not sure if the troll understood and resented being called an asshole or if it simply looked because of the sudden sound and new potential threat. Whatever the reason, it turned, still holding my brother, and looked at me. This was what I wanted.

I aimed for just a second, relying on quick reflexes and wild luck to see me through. I held my breath and pulled the trigger.

I was still holding my breath as the bolt launched through the air. This was my Hail Mary. If I had fucked this up, I would need to start introducing myself as The Nowak Brother (singular) and having very different Thanksgivings.

The bolt struck true, piercing the eye of the troll. I let out my breath. Yes, I had just done that thing I wasn't supposed to do. Somehow, through blind luck, stupidity, and being a cocky jackass, it had somehow worked. If this is your first Nowak Brothers story, this is how we do things around here. It's also a fact that keeps me up at night sometimes worrying about the next time.

What came next was not a roar, a squelched shriek, or any other further sound from the troll. Its body seized up and tensed for just a moment, then went perfectly limp. My brother and its club fell to the mud. The troll teetered and then its entire form fell over. With a gigantic wet
schlump
, the massive body hit the mud, splattering everything in the clearing with that wet gray dirt.

With a cheer, I ran over to the troll's body. It looked pretty damn dead. I wanted to poke it and confirm, but I wasn't going to use my crossbow and risk my only weapon, which was also a delicate piece of machinery. There was the troll's femur club lying next to it, but that was a bit too morbid for me. Instead I settled for using my boot. I poked it a few times, but there was no reaction. The troll was dead.

I cheered again! We had done it! We had killed our first troll! All that training had paid off!

I started doing a victory dance. Yeah, I had killed monsters before, but your first kill on something you previously thought impossible was cause for celebration. I mean, seriously, if you had just laid in wait for hours to kill a massive eight foot tall monster that carried a human bone as a club using only a crossbow and your wits, you would be fucking thrilled too!

It was part way through my self-indulgent victory dance that I realized something was wrong. Where was Szandor? He should be here dancing with me or at least making some sour comment about how I should be embarrassed for dancing.

I looked around and then found my brother. He was back in the mud. Face down. And stuck, by the frantic yet futile movement of his arms against the slick gray sludge. I suddenly thought of a disabled turtle on its back. Suppressing a chuckle, I grabbed him by his shoulders and turned him back over.

He gasped for breath, his face gray and splotchy with mud. "Thought... I was... dead..."

"The troll is dead!" I said elatedly.

"Didn't want... to get killed... by mud..."

I shrugged and let him get his breath back. I resumed my victory dance.

Victorious and still covered in mud, we made our way back to Tor's camp site. We were within earshot when the bushes parted and Szandor was tackled by a gigantic dog. Three more followed and Szandor was buried in a sea of wagging tails and licking tongues. It didn't matter that he was still mostly covered with mud. Tor's dogs loved Szandor. He loved those dogs too, but nowhere near as much as they loved him. It's not like he's even the damn dog whisperer. He can't get any dogs, much less Tor's, to obey him more than the rest of us, but he's like fucking dog catnip. They love him.

Tor's daughters were chuckling as we passed through the bushes to the campsite, Szandor practically herded by the dogs. Tor's RV dominated the campsite with other tents dotted around the fire. Their other vehicle, a pickup truck, was parked on the trail they drove in on. Our van was just past that. Tor travelled the greater Avalon area hunting Trolls. Once he got a lead, he setup his RV as camp in the vicinity and used it as a base of operations. This was his life. His family had been doing it for generations with traditional monsters and trolls. When it came time, Tor decided to focus on the Avalon variety of monster. We've never seen any of the supposed "traditional" monsters, but they're supposed to be the ones you hear about in stories that the historical equivalents of the Van Helsings killed. Since we had never seen even one of the traditional monsters, it has always sounded like bullshit to us. But every so often we bump into a monster hunter who claims to be from some long lineage. I'd like to say that I'll believe when I see one, but I'll also admit that those families were clearly hunting
something
. Maybe if we ever leave New Avalon, we might see a different sort of monster.

Tor rose from the fire he tended. He was much older than us. We were in our early twenties, but Tor was in his fifties. However, because of his resilient Nordic heritage, he didn't seem like he had lost much of his vitality and sometimes seemed more energetic than either of us. Lines etched his face and his hair was whitening, but his tall form still had more bulk and visible muscle then either my brother or myself. We were more the thin, wiry types, while Tor was probably descended from Vikings. Neither Szandor nor I would be surprised if he had a horned helmet stashed away in the RV. His beard was much more trim and controlled than the wild mess you see in Viking movies, but I'm sure he would be ready to board a longboat and pillage villages at a moment's notice if those times returned. Okay, maybe not. Tor was actually one of the nicest people I've ever met. You'd never know he hunted and skinned dangerous monsters.

"Have you slain the beast?" said Tor. He had emigrated from Norway in his teens and had never totally lost his accent. There was never any difficulty understanding him, but there was always a weird sound to his pronunciations here and there, his sentences always slightly more awkward than they needed to be.

My brother and I both smiled and nodded. We were happy, but also drained. Our adrenaline had run out on the way back to camp. The mud that covered us also added to our weariness.

"We kicked its ass," said Szandor.

"At the same spot, yes? Or did you need to change plans?" asked Tor. We had talked out our plan with him, since he wanted to make sure we weren't doing something so stupid as to be suicidal. He was our teacher in this. While it needed to be our plan to claim our training was completed, it didn't mean he couldn't advise.

"The same spot," I said. "We only had minor complication." I looked over to Szandor.

"Very minor complications," he said.

"You boys take some showers," said Tor. "It's refilled and hot. Then relax. We've been preparing to celebrate your victory! Tonight we feast!"

Tor walked off into the woods alone. We were in the forest north of the New Avalon, outside of the Avalon basin. Unlike most Avalon monsters, trolls often travelled far from the Avalon basin, and so did Tor. But Tor knew these woods like the back of his hands. He feared nothing and knew where he was going. So neither us nor his daughters had any concern with him walking off into the trees with few supplies as sundown approached. That was what he did.

I let Szandor have the first shower and sat outside with Tor's three daughters. Still covered in mud, I kept away from the tents and chairs, the only close company the dogs. Brigit, Tor's oldest daughter at twenty, tended the fire and the meat smoker. Astrid, the middle daughter, eighteen years old, helped prep food for the feast. She was also handling the cooler. She had always made sure I had a beer when I wasn't hunting, so she was my favorite. She handed me one now. Elsa, the youngest at sixteen and who had an unhealthy crush on Szandor, made an awkward comment about him being naked right now in the shower, but no one responded to it. When I say unhealthy crush, it was probably healthy for her, but not so much for my twenty year old brother. All of Tor's daughters, Elsa included, were beautiful. They were also remarkably good natured, salt-of-the-earth sort of people. Hell, Astrid was handing out beers but was not having any herself simply because her dad had said no - even when he wasn't around. Not at all the jaded city goers we usually meet, which made them fun and happy... and more attractive.

They were also all trained in the family business. I'm not sure if they had graduated and had killed trolls yet, but I knew they were all lethal in a fight.

They were Tor's daughters, so Szandor and I had talked about this before we came up here. They were absolutely off-limits. Inter-hunter dating was generally a bad idea, but hooking up with the daughter of the man teaching us, housing us, and feeding us? Definitely bad taste. So far, neither of us had crossed that line. I was between girlfriends and questioning what I wanted in dating, so I wouldn't have been pursuing the girls even if we were back in New Avalon. Szandor was also single, but other than the continual attention from Elsa, he had been pretty good at keeping that line uncrossed. This would be our last night here, so hopefully we could keep to our pledge.

I heard Elsa talking in dreamy tones and therefore knew that Szandor had finished with his shower and come out. He looked much better without the mud. He was shorter than me, had short dark hair, and a lip piercing. He had a few tattoos on him, but he was hardly full sleeve. He had recently started growing a beard, my guess was for the purpose of looking more manly. Every time he has tried to grow a beard it always looks a bit off to me. It's always short cropped, so I always think he looks like he's from the Evil Star Trek Mirror Universe. But he seems happy with it, so who am I to criticize? I mean, other than when it's really funny to criticize.

As I passed him on the way into the RV, I gave him The Look, the one that said,
don't have sex with any of Tor's daughters while I'm gone
. Then I took my own blissfully hot shower. I must have lost track of time, because by the time I got out and dressed, keeping a towel to dry my long hair, it was dark and Tor had returned with the troll's body.

Tor had the body at the far edge of the camp site, downwind of us all. He had it hanging feet first from a tree over a bin. His main work would start on it tomorrow after we left. Tor skinned trolls. We think he sold the hides, but we've always been a little sketchy on the details and Tor had always been a little cagey when we asked. Since he was our host and no doubt could gut us in our sleep and get away with it this far away from civilization, we decided not to pursue the issue.

As I came out, Tor cleaned his hands and came over to Szandor and myself. Towering over us, he put his arms around both our shoulders. "Ah, my two young friends! It's been a good day, yes? A great victory! In my family, this would have marked the day you two became men!"

"I already thought I
was
a man," said Szandor.

"You're not even old enough to legally drink," I said.

"Soon," he replied. Szandor's twenty-first birthday was later this week.

"Now!" said Tor, tightening his grip on us, his massive Viking muscles digging into our shoulders. "To my family, you are both men! Tonight is a feast in your honor! You drink and take what you want!"

"I could get into that," said Szandor.

"Then let the feast begin!" said Tor. His daughters all cheered.

What followed was some of the best eating and drinking I had ever done. Besides hunting monsters, Tor was also an accomplished non-monster hunter. Living mostly out in the woods, wild game accounted for much of his food. And that made up a large portion of the feast. Grilled, smoked, and blackened venison, rabbit, and squirrel. Have you ever eaten squirrel? As a born and raised city boy, I had never once imagined what one of those little critters I had seen in Glenntown and the Ville might taste like. Turns out, not bad. I began wondering what the ever-present New Avalon pigeons might taste like. As an appeasement to our urban ways and probably wondering if we might balk at some of the game, he also had sent Brigit into town to get more conventional meats, so we had some beef steaks and chicken. He needn't have bothered, but we appreciated the gesture.

After most of our eating, Tor brought out a bottle of Aquavit. Before staying with Tor, we had never heard of such a thing. Think flavored Scandinavian Vodka. Not the vodka you see in liquor stores with the fancy bottles. This was Viking stuff. Probably made by Valkyries somewhere else on the World Tree. It was spicy and smooth. He offered the bottle to us both and toasted us as heroes.

"Tell me we're not heading out too early," said Szandor, eyeing the bottle. Normally a whiskey drinker, he had tried Aquavit for the first time a few nights ago and had become a fan. This would be his first chance to have more than a brief taste.