Extraordinary Zoology (16 page)

Lynus looked up at the stone huts and pondered the logic of trollkin construction. When humans built with stone, they built big—hundreds of men with dozens of steamjacks, teams of mules, and tens of thousands of blocks of quarried stone. Castles, cathedrals, and colleges were built with stone.

Trollkin, however, almost casually hauled rock and pounded it into huts and hovels. Where humans would build a house of frame and thatch, trollkin worked in stone. Maybe there was some threshold of efficiency their stronger backs and larger hands allowed them to cross. These sturdy homes would last for centuries, just like the palace in Caspia, Cygnar’s border fortresses, and Corvis University. For all Lynus knew, these homes and this low wall surrounding them had already stood for centuries. Weather had long since obscured any quarrying scars.

Horgash dismounted at the gate and bowed deeply to the matronly trollkin who had strode out to meet them. She was barefoot and bare-armed, wearing the colorful
quitari
-patterned cloth wrapped as a sash, a belt, and a tabard in one long, complex knot. Symbolic, perhaps, of the kriel she guided.

Lynus listened carefully, taking care to miss none of the Molgur-Trul she and Horgash spoke.

“Jata of Mirkar kriel,” Horgash began, “I have no trade goods on this trip for your village. I carry nothing but fresh wounds and grave news.”

“You may enter upon the stones of your own honor, Horgash Bloodthroat.” Jata inclined her head toward the rest of the group. “But your companions are far removed from the kin.”

“They are kith to me,” said Horgash. “I travel with Viktor Pendrake, warrior-scholar and high mentor in Corvis. He is a keystone, the topmost in one of the many arches of Cygnar’s bastion of learning. With him are three apprentices—Lynus Wesselbaum, Edrea Lloryrr, and Kinik Helegroth.”

Lynus felt a chill as Horgash said his name, as if a portion of his soul were being etched into an epic tale somewhere.

“All are true stone. They have fought at my side and on my behalf,” Horgash continued. “I trust my life’s breath and kin’s blood to them. And with both honor and great need, I beg you to place that same trust.”

Jata squinted lopsidedly, and with that furrowed, frozen wink, eyed Lynus and each of his companions in turn. After a moment she spoke, this time in slightly accented Caspian.

“High praise from our fallen caller. He says you’ve got stones.” She smiled, and Lynus realized she was punning across languages. “Your travels have left all of you worse-curried than his bison, but I still see in you at least a small measure of what Bloodthroat claims.”

She turned back to Horgash and said, in Molgur-Trul, “Kithkar Stershan’s lodge is empty while he and his warriors fight to the east. Clean your friends up, wrap them as guests, and we’ll talk.”

Lynus was discomfited to learn that, for this deep-woods kriel, at least, “wrap them as guests” meant that they were expected to dress trollkin-style. A young trollkin brought a stack of patterned cloth to them in Stershan’s lodge, and Horgash helped them wrap and tie themselves appropriately.

The pattern on these sashes was very simple, with the same colors as the
quitari
Jata wore but with none of the finer lines.

“Guest colors of the Mirkar kriel,” said Horgash.

“It’s an honor?” Lynus asked hopefully.

“Hah! The real honor is to be allowed to address the kriel wearing your own colors. But this is several steps above not being let within the gates at all.”

“Further evidence that despite the breadth of my travels, I haven’t been everywhere, nor made nearly enough friends,” Pendrake said. “I miss the more boisterous welcomes I experienced with the Klagg kriel at Scarleforth Lake.”

“I miss my trousers,” said Lynus.

“And they miss you,” said Edrea. “They’re filthy enough that they can stand up on their own. I half expect them to follow you out into the street.”

Lynus sighed.

“We must sally forth without them nonetheless,” said Pendrake. He looked quite comfortable wrapped in the long patterned cloth. “Let your trousers guard the lodge.”

Barefoot and clothed in naught but broad lengths of colorful wool, they walked through the village. Lynus felt small. Only the children here were shorter than he was, and a few of the older trollkin loomed even over Horgash.

“None of fighting age,” Edrea said quietly. “I see a few wizened old warriors, but that’s it.”

Horgash grunted in assent.

“Do you want to do the talking?” asked Pendrake. “Your command of the formal Molgur-Trul is far superior to mine.”

“There is no formal version of that tongue,” said Horgash. “We just wrap our words around pieces of old stories. Be polite, and you’ll do fine.”

The audience chamber was circular, with a fire pit in the center ringed by concentric stone benches. No fire burned this afternoon, but the room still smelled like smoke. Jata sat with four other trollkin, chins of the males covered with the craggy growths of age.

“Sit where you will,” Jata said in Molgur-Trul. “We are prepared to hear what you have to say.”

Lynus sat, again feeling child-sized. The benches were just a little too large.

Pendrake remained standing and began to speak, also in the trollkin tongue.

“A Tharn war party is making its way here, Elder. We have not seen them, but by the signs they have left, we estimate there are at least twenty, bent on slaughter.” He gestured toward the door. “Were that the extent of their force, your walls would lend you significant advantage, but the Tharn have a great burrowing beast of war with them.”

“What kind of beast?” Jata asked.

Pendrake paused. He, Lynus, and Edrea were already sure of what was coming. It was not something to speak of lightly. It was something to speak of after running far, far away.

The most recent accounts of the great serpents, the gorgandur, were forty years old, but even the oldest tales were consistent enough that the existence of these monsters could not be denied. Even Lynus’ little book of trollkin poetry included a tragic tale whose details aligned perfectly with ancient Menite accounts, though the two cultures had different names for this legendary horror. Adding to the proof of its reality was the giant tooth on display at Corvis University, recovered by the professor from an excavation of the site of that most recent attack.

Pendrake continued. “It is a gorgandur, likely a spawn of those legendary beasts from deep below Caen. It has flattened two small villages and devoured the inhabitants already. I fear that the sturdiest stones of the Mirkar will tumble beneath it.”

Jata sat silently. Pendrake looked over to Horgash, who nodded encouragement. He continued.

“You must evacuate. The Tharn and their monster approach from the southwest. If you travel northeast, you can rendezvous with the forces of the combined kriels defending the borders.”

“Have you seen the gorgandur, Viktor Pendrake?” Jata asked.

“Only its tracks.”

“Have you seen those we are fighting to the east, the bloodthirsty skorne warriors and their beasts?”

“Yes. They invaded Corvis three years ago and were repulsed.”

“That was a skirmish compared to the war now being waged. Flattening villages is nothing. The skorne you repulsed have returned with the strength to grind stone to powder. You would have us flee a grass fire by running headlong into a burning forest.” She looked at Pendrake, then at each of the others, her eyes finally stopping on Lynus.

“You.” She pointed. “You follow this man. Tell us why we should trust him.”

“I, um . . .” Lynus began. He quickly decided he was out of his depth, even if his Molgur-Trul was passable. “Horgash speaks better than I do, Elder.”

“Horgash can talk to old bones until they rise up and lead an army,” said Jata. “Your Iosan companion carries herself like a sorceress and is certainly wily with words. The ogrun behind you is flush with the zealotry of a bokur, and I don’t want to be preached to. You, however, I will hear.”

Lynus swallowed silently and gathered his thoughts. It was a very short process.

“You can do this,” Edrea whispered. “You read trollkin poetry for fun, remember.”

And then he did remember. What was it Horgash had said earlier, about wrapping words around pieces of old stories? That book of trollkin poetry had some old stories in it.

Lynus stood, took a deep breath, and began.

“Muthgar Preymaker hunted Grimjaw the Dire, circling through the Thornwood for a year and a day.” Lynus used his best lecture voice, speaking as if before an entire classroom, even though the audience chamber only had ten people in it.

“The stories say that he never actually saw the dire troll until the very end of the hunt, but could pick his scent from across the entire wood, and tracked him unerringly thanks to the beast’s split toenail. Well, Professor Viktor Pendrake has tracked dire trolls and worse all across western Immoren, and he’s had less to work with than toenails and body odor.”

Horgash cleared his throat to interrupt. Lynus held up a finger and shushed him with a glare. Class was in session.

“The ballad of Muthgar Preymaker ends when he fell to the gorgandur, and in that tale the monstrous wurm is treated with heavy-handed symbolism, a representation of the Devourer Wurm, and of death itself, the passage to Urcaen.

“The gorgandur is no symbol, however. If Muthgar Preymaker fell to such a monster, it is not because death comes to us all. It is because Muthgar did not know enough about it to know that he should flee.

“Viktor Pendrake wrestled a dracodile to the death and wore its hide to your gates. He rescued a scholar of House Lloryrr from the crushing grasp of a dire troll using two arrows, a dagger, and a flask of whiskey. Not two days ago, he tore the poison quill from a spine ripper, killed the beast with it, and then wielded it in a fight to the death against the last of its pack. You ask me to tell you why you should trust him. I cannot answer that, but I can tell you that I trust him, and will follow him across Immoren, and beyond.”

One of the old trollkin seated with Jata grunted, leaned toward her, and grumbled something privately. The others scowled and frowned. Jata looked no happier.

“You would liken your schoolteacher to Muthgar Preymaker, the great hunter of legend?” Jata asked.

In for a penny, in for a crown
, thought Lynus.

“Your scribes and chroniclers retell the deeds of Muthgar and other great heroes so your warriors can try to live up to them. Viktor Pendrake lives up to that legend, and lives beyond it. The only reason Pendrake’s epic song isn’t already sung louder and farther than Preymaker’s is because I’ve been keeping good notes and preventing exaggeration. Also, I don’t sing. But I promise you this: if there’s a fantastic, extraordinary, or otherwise monstrous creature troubling you, you have no better counsel, no better sword arm, no better general than Professor Viktor Pendrake.”

The gathered elders nodded, murmuring what sounded like assent.

Jata’s scowl deepened, and she glared—not at Lynus, but at Horgash. “
You
. I don’t know how you did it, but you suckered me into inviting a chronicler to speak. And a good one, too.”

“What?” asked Lynus. “I’m not a chronicler.”

“Actually, I think you are,” Edrea said.

Jata stood. “I am convinced.”

Lynus smiled.

Jata continued. “I am convinced that if the Mirkar kriel is to be saved, Viktor Pendrake must stand and fight with us, and lead its defense.”

Lynus stood agape. He thought he’d given a pretty good speech, but this was not how it was supposed to turn out.

Pendrake looked over his glasses at Lynus. “It was the sword-arm line. You were doing fine right up until that point.”