Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,174

furiously and whirled about to face the elders, who were gathered together near the troll’s webbed feet. “Do you truly mean to cheat me of the bounty?” she demanded. “Why, you ungrateful, two-faced gaggle of sheep-fuckers,” she began, then almost slipped off the cadaver again.

“Now, now,” one of the elders said, holding up a hand in a gesture meant to calm the stranger. “There will, of course, be an inquest. Certainly. But, be assured, my fine woman, it is only a matter of formality, you understand. I’m sure not one here among us doubts, even for a moment, it was your blade returned this vile, contemptible spirit to the nether pits that spawned it.”

For a few tense seconds, the stranger stared warily back at the elder, for she’d never liked men, and especially not men who used many words when only a few would suffice. She then looked out over the restless crowd, silently daring anyone present to contradict him. And, when no one did, she once again turned her gaze down to the corpse, laid out below her feet.

“I cut its throat, from ear to ear,” the stranger said, though she was not entirely sure the troll had ears. “I gouged out the left eye, and I expect you’ll come across the tip end of my blade lodged somewhere in the gore. I am Malmury, daughter of My Lord Gwrtheyrn the Undefeated, and before the eyes of the gods do I so claim this as my kill, and I know that even they would not gainsay this rightful averment.”

And with that, the stranger, who they at last knew was named Malmury, slid clumsily off the monster’s back, her boots and breeches now stained with blood and the various excrescences leaking from the troll. She returned immediately to the tavern, as the salty evening air had made her quite thirsty. When she’d gone, the men and women and children of Invergó went back to examining the corpse, though a disquiet and guilty sort of solemnity had settled over them, and what was said was generally spoken in whispers. Overhead, a chorus of hungry gulls and ravens cawed and greedily surveyed the troll’s shattered body.

“Malmury,” the cooper murmured to the clam-digger who’d found the corpse (and so was, himself, enjoying some small degree of celebrity). “A fine name, that. And the daughter of a lord, even. Never questioned her story in the least. No, not me.”

“Nor I,” whispered the peat-cutter, leaning in a little closer for a better look at the creature’s warty hide. “Can’t imagine where she’d have gotten the notion any of us distrusted her.”

Torches were lit and set up round about the troll, and much of the crowd lingered far into the night, though a few found their way back to the tavern to listen to Malmury’s tale a third or fourth time, for it had grown considerably more interesting, now that it seemed to be true. A local alchemist and astrologer, rarely seen by the other inhabitants of Invergó, arrived and was permitted to take samples of the monster’s flesh and saliva. It was he who located the point of the stranger’s broken dagger, embedded firmly in the troll’s sternum, and the artifact was duly handed over to the constabulary. A young boy in the alchemist’s service made highly detailed sketches from numerous angles, and labeled anatomical features as the old man had taught him. By midnight, it became necessary to post a sentry to prevent fishermen and urchins slicing off souvenirs. Only half an hour later, a fishwife was found with a horn cut from the sea troll’s cheek hidden in her bustle, and a second sentry was posted.

In the tavern, Malmury, daughter of Lord Gwrtheyrn, managed to regale her audience with increasingly fabulous variations of her battle with the demon. But no one much seemed to mind the embellishments, or that, partway through the tenth retelling of the night, it was revealed that the troll had summoned a gigantic, fire-breathing worm from the ooze that carpeted the floor of the bay, and which Malmury also claimed to have dispatched in short order.

“Sure,” she said, wiping at her lips with the hem of the barmaid’s skirt. “And now, there’s something else for your clam-diggers to turn up, sooner or later.”

By dawn, the stench wafting from the common was becoming unbearable, and a daunting array of dogs and cats had begun to gather round about the edges of the square, attracted by the odor, which promised a