Rainfall maneuvered the wain so they could roll Avalanche out from the uphill side. He was a wonder with the horses, who didn’t like her smell one bit and shifted nervously whenever Rainfall didn’t stand at their noses to calm them. Once the wagon was in place, Rainfall led the horses into the trees so they could rest and eat with dragon out of scent, out of mind.
Jessup helped by widening the channels she dug. Eventually they had a shallow grave and a pile of earth and rock to go atop it.
Wistala rested after they pushed Avalanche out of the wagon. Rainfall and Jessup placed earth and rocks over him.
With that done, Jessup ate and drank from a meal he’d packed in a bag. Rainfall led Wistala up to the crest of the hill and the ring of trees. The canyon wind took up his willow-leaf-like hair, and he tied it together with a bit of red-colored silk.
“How do you like this spot, Wistala?”
She looked across the gorge. A series of small waterfalls ran down the opposite side, though the wind caught much of the spray and turned it into a white mist.>The troll shifted as the tree-trunk fell. Rather than hitting it squarely, the projectile opened a gash in its side. This just enraged the troll rather than skewering it. Luckily for Wistala, it took its temper out on the tree, which had lodged itself in the shallow water of the riverbank. The troll picked it up and cracked it against the cliff side, again and again until only a shard remained in its grip.
Only then did it notice the arrows and spears from above.
Brave or foolish, Rainfall’s gang flung spears and fired hunting arrows down at the troll as Wistala made it to the first pillar of the bridge. She saw a spear lodge in the troll’s back. The sense-stalk stood straight up, and it began to climb.
The next thing Wistala knew, she was climbing. Using the deep crevices between the joined stones, a skilled man could make the long climb, but it would take him ten times the effort it took Wistala, with her four shorter limbs and thick muscles. She crawled up the bridge’s support like an ant hurrying up a grass stalk, her pace not greatly reduced from what she could achieve on flat ground.
But she was only halfway up when the troll reached the men.
One, a lumberman, judging by his broad leather girdle, tried his axe on the troll’s hand as it came to the cliff top. She heard the sharp thwack of the blade as it bit into the troll’s fountain-size hand even from her distance. The troll’s other hand came up and struck the lumberman such a blow, he exploded into pieces.
She passed over the bridge-rail to find the troll standing on the cliff top, searching the tree line for the fleeing men. It flushed a man and ran him down on the road, where it smashed and then swallowed him. A group of horses fled screaming from the woods, one or two pulling men along.
Wistala wasn’t sure what she could do, but she hurried toward the north end of the bridge anyway. She had one good gout of flame left in her fire bladder, if not two; she’d eaten heartily for months, and there was still an angry liquid ball inside her, waiting to get out.
She’d diverted the troll before; perhaps she could again, long enough for it to lose track of the men. . . .
A white flash on the road ahead. Wistala, gulping air as she ran, recognized the shape.
Avalanche!
The stallion—with blood in the air, even on a rainy night, and the frightened calls of mares behind him—had given in to instinct and stood his ground, eagerly pawing at the road.
The troll rounded on the stallion.
“Come on! Beast!” Avalanche neighed. Then he screamed and reared up, front hooves cutting the air before him. “Try to take of mine. I’ll kick your teeth out!”
Wistala dragon-dashed, her vision red with lost breath. The troll’s air sacs bulged from its behind; she could see flaps of raised skin like a pinecone opening and shutting as it tried to catch its breath—or was it damaged in some way? No matter—she homed in on the deep whooshing sound.
Then the troll lunged forward, its gait even stranger because of cradling its wounded hand. . . .
The troll reared up and reached for the horse as Avalanche charged. But the stallion danced sideways, and lashed out with a hind leg, kicking one of the thin forearms. Avalanche reared up and struck the troll in the mouth-without-a-face that constituted the front of its body.
The troll backed up and lifted itself.
The sense-orb hung over all like a watchful bird. As the troll’s mouth dropped open, seemingly with the idea of swallowing Avalanche whole, Wistala slid to a stop and spat her fire, as though trying to get an extra few tail-lengths of distance into it by letting momentum carry the contents of her fire bladder up her throat, accelerated by ring after ring of throat muscles.
The sense-orb whipped around, and Wistala caught one glimpse of a wide-open eye? nostril? ear? in the center of a wormy fringe—
The fire struck the troll in its breathing sac.
It spun, tucking its hindquarters and covering the breathing spicules with its rear legs. An elbow knocked Avalanche aside, and the stallion crashed down, as though tripped. The troll jumped awkwardly away like a spastic frog, stomping on Avalanche in its flight, beating at its hindquarters with its rear feet where Wistala’s flame clung and dripped and burned.
It made for the river, by plan or blind flight of instinctive pain. The troll hurled itself into the trees along the roadway and fell in ruin, its limbs no longer capable of supporting the mouth-body. The sense-orb looked this way and that at the twitching limbs before it, too, collapsed.
Wistala couldn’t stand and gape—she hurried to Avalanche.
Avalanche fought for breath, his tongue extended and bloody foam on his lips and the roadway. At her approach, the stallion raised his head a little.