The Prodigal Troll (30 page)

group of women, ranging from old and stoop-shouldered to young and grinning, was gathered just outside the palisade gate. They shied away from Maggot as he passed by, but he was too busy thinking about the other woman to care. He was going to war with Sinnglas, and while he didn't know what war meant, he knew there was a lion to kill. The woman had looked at the lion's skin. He could kill Sinnglas's lion too, if it was bigger, and present her with that skin to show her his intentions.

Sinnglas led the other three through the village. It contained thirty-nine lodges-Maggot had counted them twice-although some contained only a few fire pits and some contained many. They came to Sinnglas's wife's lodge and entered. People looked up as the four men walked past the other fires to the room where Sinnglas lived.

His wife turned her round face questioningly toward them, but Sinnglas said nothing to her. When Maggot, Keekyu, and Pisqueto sat beside the fire pit, she placed bowls of ground corn before them. Keekyu picked up his bowl, took one bite, and grunted. "I don't dare eat this."

Sinnglas's wife stopped what she was doing, but didn't look over at him. Pisqueto, bent over his bowl, said around a mouth of food, "Why not?"

Keekyu sighed, his older face sagging sadly. "When we have no corn to eat next winter, I'll remember this bowl and die of heartbreak."

Pisqueto grinned. Sinnglas's wife smiled very slightly and went back to work. Maggot scooped his food into his mouth, but everything tasted like smoke to him, stifling his appetite.

Sinnglas didn't eat. Instead, he retrieved his hatchet and sat apart to mark it with red paint, tie red feathers to it, and bind it with strings of black beads. His wife walked toward him, then away. She pulled first at one braid, then the other, plucking at the quill-work flowers that outlined her dress.

"Will it be tonight then?" she asked finally.

"Yes," Sinnglas said, without looking up.

Her shoulders slumped as she turned away.

Maggot was not sure what had just happened between them. People were not demonstrative in the same way that trolls were. While living in their lodge, he had seen Sinnglas and his wife couple several times, but he had never seen them groom one another-women did that only with other women, men with men. He had not been introduced to Sinnglas's wife, or told her name; and when he had tried to speak to her, she always turned away from him. Perhaps that was what he had done wrong with the woman in her tent. He should have just given her the lion's skin and not mentioned the good way she stank.

Sinnglas's wife placed a second serving in front of Keekyu. Pisqueto made a pleading gesture, but she took away his and Maggot's empty bowls to clean them. Keekyu smacked his lips noisily, taunting them both as he ate.

When Sinnglas completed his preparations, he rose to leave. Maggot and the two brothers followed him to the clearing outside the council lodge.

A tree trunk, stripped of bark and branches, rose out of the ground. It stood half again taller than a man, as straight as a ray of light. Skins of snakes, some of them longer than Maggot had ever seen, looped around and around the post in great flimsy coils, slowly shredded by time and weather. The wizard Gelapa tended the snakeskins, collecting them from the lower valleys. When the wind blew, he crouched by the post, listening to the skins as they scuffed and whispered. Later, he made announcements according to what the skins had told him. Although Maggot had tried listening to the skins, they said no more to him than grasses rustled by the breeze.

Gelapa sat beside the pole now, with his head canted to one side, listening though no wind stirred the skins. He wore his hair in two short braids, like the women. His eyes were deep-set, wrinkled at the corners and resting on thick folds of skin. He squinted at the four men, scowled at Sinnglas and Maggot. Then he shook his head, saying, "Young men will always be young men."

"If only leaders would always lead us," Sinnglas replied.

He raised his hatchet and made to strike it against the post, but the wizard coughed. "Does the wind carry the future to you"-he turned his head to Maggot-"or to your friend, that you know the future and the vote of the council before the council votes?"

"I raise a raiding party, Grandfather," Sinnglas answered. All the men called Gelapa Grandfather. "Those who wish to follow me may do so."

"Who do you make your raid against?" Gelapa asked.

People gathered to watch, including many of the women from the gate, alerted perhaps by Sinnglas's wife, who hovered nearby. Sinnglas held his blow and spoke loudly, so that they might hear him. "Against those who take the meat from our mouths. Against those who steal the harvest from our fields."

The wizard rose slowly. He stood stiffly, with his back bent, glaring at Sinnglas. "So you say, Grandson. But will you return from your raid with meat and corn and gourds, or only with news to make the mothers mourn?"

"I will come like the sun, rising high above the mountains, bringing another season in which our people may grow-"

"No," Maggot blurted. "Like the sun, not."

Sinnglas stared at the ground, caressing his hatchet. "And what should I say instead, Maqwet, my friend?"

Maggot inhaled, thinking of the things he wished he might have said when he'd campaigned against Ragweed to be First. "You say instead: the sun, when you return, will fear your coming. It will not to rise unless first you give it your speak. The sun, when you speak, will hunt down the lion. Like a pack of dyrewolves, it will tear the lion to pieces."

Sinnglas's hand paused in its stroke. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "You will have to say it for me; otherwise I would be bragging."

"I will say it for you."

Gelapa teetered unsteadily away from Maggot. His face was marked by loathing. "So that's how it is?"

Sinnglas nodded. "Yes, Grandfather."

Gelapa looked to the crowd, encompassed them with a sweep of his arm. "Do well, then. We have a distinguished guest among us. It will be good to show Squandral the spirit of our young men, and also the wisdom of our elders."

Sinnglas raised the hatchet and thunked it into the post. A strip of snakeskin broke loose and fluttered to the ground.

Keekyu shook his fist at the crowd. Some cheered and shouted Sinnglas's name, while others rushed off among the narrow paths between the houses to tell the rest of the village.

Gelapa bent to the ground and gathered up the snakeskin, saying, "Ah ah ah, that's how it will be. Very well, let some mother prepare to weep." Before he shuffled away, his sunken eyes glanced off Maggot once last time.

Sinnglas had many friends-the men he visited frequently. One showed up at the post, then another, their arms full of items Maggot had never seen them wear before. Pisqueto and Keekyu went and collected similar things. In a short time nine men had joined Sinnglas and his brothers. The youngest was a slight lad who barely had hair about his groin; Sinnglas was the oldest but for Keekyu, and the only man among them who was married. Keekyu had no mate. Most were around the ages of Pisqueto and Maggot, between fifteen and twenty winters. They entered the building beside the council lodge.

A few men stopped, pointing with their chins at Maggot's long hair and smiling. Mostly they ignored him. They put on skirts that hung to their knees, beautiful things with fringes like hair and covered with tiny beaded patterns. Some were made of deerskin, and some of a soft, plush fabric marked with colors like Maggot had seen among the lion hunters. They fastened elaborate belts about their waists and slipped soft boots upon their feet, some tying bright red leggings about their knees, pausing often to praise one another.

Maggot wandered around the lodge watching them dress. When he heard voices outside, he went to the entrance and pushed aside the skin.

The villagers had gathered in a big circle centered on the council lodge next door. Mostly women and children-he saw none of the older men who formed the council. The wizard paraded around in front of them, speaking on the sacredness of the ancient ways of their people.

The crowd murmured and parted from behind. Damaqua strode through them, ducking his head as he entered the council hall.

Behind Maggot, a young man shouted, "Ai-yi-yi-yi yi yi-Yi!"

Some of the small children ran over to the lodge to peek into the door. When they saw Maggot they stopped short, eyes wide. He dropped the skin and chose a place against the wall where he could crouch.

All of the men wore their black hair cropped short, although Sinnglas and his brothers had been letting theirs go uncut since the spring. Sinnglas had told him that the invaders prohibited men from wearing warrior's braids: when they came to trade or collect their taxes, they cut off the hair of men who wore it too long or killed the men instead. Inside the lodge, men covered their hair with caps, some red and some white, one man's a yellow like buttercup flowers. Sinnglas's cap had a silver band around the base, as did several others. All were adorned with clusters of white feathers and a single eagle's plume projecting upward from the top. Many had a short braid of black hair affixed in the back. More and more of the men broke out in trilling screams as they painted each other's faces with stripes and dots.

Caught up in the spirit at the preparations, Maggot imitated their shout. "Ai-yi-yi-yi yi yi-Yi!"

The men fell silent, glancing at Maggot and then to Sinnglas. Perhaps he had not done it right. His voice, schooled to deepness by life among the trolls, did not always hit the highest notes.

Then Pisqueto laughed and answered with a call of his own. Several men echoed it, and they all returned their attention to grooming one another. When Sinnglas finished painting Keekyu's face, he came over to Maggot.

"Stand," he said, and Maggot did. "Turn around."

Maggot turned around, feeling Sinnglas's hands in his hair, sorting it into three long strands.

"You will not dance with us," Sinnglas said, looping one strand over another. "You are not of our village, nor did you come to us bearing the black-beaded warclub. But this will give my brother Damaqua and his followers something to think about. Perhaps, this will also make Squandral see the necessity of war even without my brother's support."

"Would that be good?" Maggot asked.

"It is our only hope as a people. Our fires grow cold. Where once we had villages all along these foothills, from the great sea in the north to the plains in the south, there now remain but a few: three in this region-my brother's, Squandral's, and Custalo's-plus several more farther to the south. The game in our hunting grounds diminish, and the soil of our fields grows thin because the invaders occupy the land where we would have once planted new crops."

Maggot's throat grew choked as Sinnglas spoke. He had witnessed the same thing among the trolls.

Sinnglas finished the braid and tied it at the base with a ribbon. "Now you look like a warrior, as we did in the days of honor before the invaders came."

Maggot tugged at his braid. It pulled his scalp tight. It was just like the one worn by the bearded man, the one he called First, who had led the lion hunters.

"The path of peace pursued by my father and my brother leads us only into the invaders' trap," Sinnglas said. "We cannot move over the mountains: our enemies prosper there and outnumber us, but they do not pursue us here because of the giants living in the high places and because they do not wish to anger the Lion. So this is where we must stand and fight."