Finua

Chapter 3: The Hunting Party

There is a popular notion among all of the people of the world that trolls don't feel pain the way the rest of us do. Even up north, humans, elves, and dwarves agree with us. Trolls can sense pain, but it doesn't hurt them the way it hurts us. It just gives them the information they need to know about whatever's wrong. Whatever damage Kwer had sustained was completely known by her, but she was not slowed by it. It didn't make her suffer. It was like she was reading about it, rather than feeling it.

That, I assumed, was how she covered so much ground so quickly. We were back up on the flank of the goblin horde within minutes, the magic lights and displays glinting off our sweat beads from across the crowd. Goblins were looking back at us slackjawed. Kwer didn't stop, and I didn't try to stop her. We plowed through the mass, trampling goblins underfoot, shoving still more over the edge, making way towards the intruders, all eyes on us. A concussive missile of energy blew from Jen, which stopped Kwer in her tracks, pitching Auga and I over her shoulders and high into the air. Auga was once again stopped by a rigid pillar of wood, but my lucky trajectory was directed at Tia and her spear, waiting eagerly for me to land right on it. But I was plucked, right out of the air, by my savior, who deprived Tia of her latest kebab and who tossed me aside out of harm's way. It was Lugoke.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he asked me, before he turned away to face down Tia. What an asshole!

Then they fought, and it was every bit the fuck yeah I was hoping it to be. Tia had her spear and Lugoke had this big scepter-looking mace thing he probably stole from some merchant at the foot of the mountain a decade ago during the summer as part of a dare that ended up being a gang initiation because he did it so brutally so the other kids were just like fuck it, let's team up. That's my assumption.

Anyway, Lugoke and Tia were tearing shit up, and Tia didn't look any bit happy to finally meet her match. She looked more like someone at a party who after dismissing a dozen well-meaning people in a row has ultimately been trapped by a thirteenth bastard who is blind to all social cues, and now this death match, to extend the analogy, is her finally straightening her back and telling him to fuck off, and Lugoke's side of the whole thing was that person becoming all shocked and offended like he's entitled to a one-sided conversation about his rich friend's boat or whatever it is those people always insist on talking about, and that she ought to laugh out of respect, or in this case, allow her skull to be caved in. That's not to say that I was on Tia's side: it's just that Tia was the one facing me, and I could see her expressions.

Dagger and pickaxe at the ready, respectively, Auga and I regrouped and once again attempted to join the fray. The intruders were by this time closing in on the opposite mountainside, and the wooden walkways were beginning to become layered, as multiple floors and levels jutting from the inside of the cliffs became accessible. We were at the end of the bridge, in other words. This was important, because it was safer. Goblins, and even a few members of the raiding party, were toppling off the sides of the gangplanks as always, only to land alive and well on another level just a few yards down.

I bobbed and weaved along the edge of the goblin crowd, aiming for Laurence, who I saw hiding behind Umba, thrusting his sword under the dwarf's armpits when he could. When he aimlessly ambled from behind his shelter, for whatever reason, I charged him. His eyes went wide, but he wielded his weapon to defend himself, and he blocked my pickaxe.

There we grappled on the edge of the walkway, another walkway below us, not so far down that we'd suffer anything other than a sprained ankle upon landing. But Laurence was already bashed up by the Maggot King. He really didn't want to fall that height. Pussy.

Here was some kid, it was obvious, destined to be a hero. If he and his mates ever reached Syfor Lek, no doubt it would be Laurence who would make it the farthest. Destiny, so the High Queen has made mathematically clear, always belongs to humans and elves. Leaning in behind his sword, trying to push my pickaxe down to make way for a killing blow, I got a look at him up-close and it made me retch. He looked so soft and round and hopeful. He had never grown up in such conditions as these. He probably fancied himself poor: he was probably some farmhand, or maybe a squire to some nobody, who dreamed of a bigger life in a bigger city, maybe even of women with bigger boobies, and because of these generic ambitions he had grown to assume that his current life was demeaning and unjust, and it never occurred to him, as he ventured underneath the mountains of Sh'raitha and got his first glimpse at goblin life, that we had those same dreams, and that we were starting a hell of a lot lower than he was. I doubt it ever registered that this was not just some obstacle for him to overcome; that what he thought was a trial, that this place which was so inescapably bad that it was considered to be a gauntlet on the other side of which he could emerge newly experienced and empowered; he never for a moment realized that this miserable blight of horror was where I lived. He thought that this was a test he only had to pass once, over the course of this one night. He never stopped to think about growing up here forever. And I hated him for that. I hated everyone for that, from here all the way up to Castle Berahd itself, and I hated the High Queen for propagating such a deliberately malicious misunderstanding.