Sa’Thuk oberlooked with watchful eyes as the long line of his wanderers entered the passage. He stood on a small ledge, and behind him was a somewhat larger, difficult-to-climb rock formation that ran along the intended path of his group. Perhaps 20 meters opposite this formation was another narrow fault, which was only ten meters deep, but could not be crossed easily. Thanks to Mejhek, he knew that this narrow strip of land stretched for a good hour’s walk and that no nasty surprises lurked along the way. He was all the more concerned about the beginning of this path, where rock and abyss almost met. The passable ground here was only a few meters wide, and great disaster was approaching from behind his trolls.
“Even if we march as fast as we can,” Jeli’rhawa whispered quietly. She was the one who had sent the message with a little monkey a few days earlier about the Redshards following the wanderers. ”In about three to four hours, the Redshards will have caught up with us.”
“Poison and bile,” Haki swore just as quietly. “Apparently our plan with the other tribe didn’t work out if the Redshards are so close.”
“We’re less than half a day’s march from that bridge,’ Sa’thuk grumbled discontentedly. ”We’re so close to our goal. I’m not going to let it end like this!”
“And what do you intend to do?” Djar’Ku asked, as the only elder in the group. The expertise of warriors was needed now, which is why the other, old trolls were not present.
The young warrior in Sa’Thuk cried out. His arm had fully recovered, but even he knew that a fight under these circumstances would have been the end. “We could confront them here, where the path narrows and their superior numbers only partially help them,” he said. However, he was more of a comment than he was serious. “But if we have beaten them, we will be drained and extremely vulnerable and we cannot make a long rest in this area. A fight is too risky.”
“You are right,” Djar’Ku agreed, respecting the fact that the usually hot-headed leader was thinking clearly. ”What if we continued at the same pace?”
“And what would that gain us?”
“Rest for those who can’t fight,” Djar’Ku noted. ”We could prepare a rockfall trap halfway to take the hasty Redshards by surprise. That would give us advance warning that they were close. Then we send the others ahead and face the decimated Redshards, weakened by their own forced march.”
Sa’Thuk seemed to like the idea, but Haki dispelled everyone’s illusions. “Setting up such a trap effectively takes time and energy,” she sighed, pointing just as high into the sky, bathed in the setting sun. “Besides, night will fall soon, weakening us, and it comes to the same thing as if we were to fight here.”
“Do you have a better idea, woman?” Sa’Thuk snorted. It was meant less disparagingly and was an expression of his own frustration, which he concealed. ”Speak or be silent!”
Haki spoke, herchest swelling with pride. “The Redshards don’t know what slaughtered their allies,” she said deviously. Once more she saw her moment to offer the divinity of her experience as salvation for the wanderers. “They were foolish enough to decide everything in a single fight before. They will surely do it again.”
“Last time, they were overconfident,” Jeli’rhawa noted. ”They had been watching us and thought they had killed our best warrior, who hadn’t won the single combat. He had ignored the custom and fulfilled his part of the bargain. The Redshards won’t risk their hunt out of arrogance this time. Not after we slaughtered and defiled their tribesmen.”
“Then he should kill them all, just like last time,” Haki said dryly, with many factors in mind.
All present were unsure if they had misheard. “You can’t be serious,” Djar’Ku replied somewhat indignant. “It looked like nothing when he slaughtered those 11 trolls and their jackals, but this time we’re talking about 70 or more trolls and their beasts.”
“Yes, I saw it with my own eyes,” Jeli’rhawa swore again. ”There are many and as impressive as his abilities were, not even the most powerful warrior can stand against so many alone. Blood Tusk would surely kill many, but never survive.”
“Which would help us,” Haki said coldly. She had had enormous doubts in the last few days, born out of jealousy and insecurity. The female needed a new sign from the tiki to see if what she had seen was still the truth. If the giant was really what she had promised her group, he would not fall, and if he did, she would have followed the laws of the jungle and the trolls. After all, he was a stranger, bound to Haki’s group only by a contract and not by loyalty, and such a troll was expendable. At least that’s what she told herself. “That’s what he committed himself to.”
Jeli’rhawa didn’t have a particularly close bond with the gladiator, so she didn’t contradict him. Djar’Ku, on the other hand, found such an action ungrateful. “He didn’t sign up to get killed without a chance,” he made clear. “Has he offended your pride so much that you want to send him to his death? Come to your senses.”
Haki narrowed her eyes. “I speak out what I think is best for our group, just like I brought him to us in the first place!” she countered, reaching for Sa’Thuk’s shoulder for his approval. ”Without me, he would have perished in the jungle long before, strength or no strength. Maybe it’s just as well that he was sent to us for this purpose, to die for us.”
“At least he would die honorably as a troll,” Sa’Thuk said. It was a welcome opportunity for him to get rid of the gladiator, although he found the idea absurd. In this case, the male thought, though he wanted to push his tail back into Haki. ”I don’t see a problem with that. As was said, that was the deal anyway.”
“As if he would agree,” Djar’Ku replied. He glanced over his shoulder to see the end of the walker line approaching, with Bloodtusk bringing up the rear. ”Or you could force him. Are you being ungrateful, Haki? He literally saved you from an avalanche of wood and earth.”
“And I saved him from the dangers of the jungle,” Haki argued unimpressed. ”I took care of him for several days. Without me, he would have been dead long ago.”
“Well, I’m not telling him and I’m not supporting it.”
“What you think and want is of secondary importance anyway,” Sa’Thuk reminded the old warrior. ”I’ll make the decision and didn’t he brag that he has fought larger groups alone in this arena before?”
“Bragged... he just told the story as the whelps and adults wanted to hear it.”
“No matter, Haki is right,” Sa’Thuk said with conviction. ’The tiki will decide what happens, or do you suddenly doubt that they have a hand in this?”
“Only if they’re sadistic tiki,’ Djar’Ku said testily. ”No Tiki in their right mind would send a warrior alone against a small horde, but that doesn’t matter either. Blood Tusk won’t go along with it anyway, and we’ll have to find another way to deal with the Shards.”
“And if he does go along with it? Will you clench your fangs and take it?”
Djar’Ku was quite certain that the gladiator would not agree to this. “If he does go along with it, I won’t say anything.”
“We shall see,” Sa’Thuk replied. ’Jeli’rhawa, fetch the unclean one.”
“Right away,’ the scout nodded and she ran to the gladiator while some of the wanderers looked up at the small gathering as they walked, but none stopped or asked what was going on. These were the leader’s affairs and the hierarchy was clearly marked.
When he arrived at the gathering with Jeli’rhawa, Blood Tusk stuck his bisento into the ground. “Why are you back here?” he asked naively. “Do you want to trade places with me and walk at the end?”
“No, and lower your voice a bit,” Sa’Thuk ordered moderately. ’We need your skills as a warrior. There are countless enemies to be slaughtered.”
“Where?’ Blood Tusk murmured, looking around. ”I see nothing.”
“They’re getting closer by the second,” Sa’Thuk swore ponderously. He looked at Djar’Ku, who turned away in disgust before continuing. “You know we’re close to our goal, right?”
“Yeah,’ Blood Tusk grumbled. ”Zalun says it, the females say it, everyone says it. I get it. Which also means you’ll be taking me back soon.”
“That’s right, but there’s one last difficult hurdle in our way.”
“What?”
“The Redshards that attacked us at the old camp have found us,” Sa’Thuk emphasized. He didn’t want to emphasize the gravity of the situation, but to flatter the giant at the same time. ”Now you can show everyone how strong you really are. You will wait for them here and kill them all. After that, follow this path and as soon as we arrive at our destination, we will take you back to this Khuwix.”
“I can do that,” Blood Tusk nodded. Knowing exactly what he was supposed to do, especially kill, felt just like being in the arena. Still, he was not completely without guile. “Another group as large as the last one?”
“No,” Sa’Thuk shook his head slowly. His eyes flickered to Djar’Ku to see if the old warrior would remain silent, but he would not. “We don’t know exactly how many there are, but their numbers should at least match our group.”
Manifesting proportions in his mind was not exactly Blood Tusk’s forte. Therefore, he watched the advancing procession of trolls. “Me? Alone? Against so many?”
“Is that a problem? Aren’t you the best and strongest fighter there is?”
“Bad case”, Kriz’kriz croaked into the gladiator’s ear. The bird didn’t care about the giant, but it was really overdoing things even for her. “They’ll kill you.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Blood Tusk whispered to the batparrot. The gladiator actually dared to win this fight, but not under these circumstances. “If I had arena fighter Abaroth, I could do it. But I don’t. jungle trolls also have an advantage.”
“Why?” Sa’Thuk replied. He spread his arms. ”There’s no place to hide here. The path is narrow and they have to go through you. They can’t surprise you. Other than their numbers, they have no advantage.”
“But it is an advantage.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sa’Thuk said unyieldingly. He knew that the giant respected the bargain and he took advantage of this logic without hesitation. ”You were warned that it could be dangerous. Consider it the conclusion of the bargain. This fight against your return home.”
Yes, the words reached Blood Tusk, but he wondered. “Why only me? Why not all of us together?”
“Because we still need our strength. This area is dangerous and if we die, who will help you get back? Right - no one. Or we just leave you here alone because you don’t want to keep your part of the bargain. That would be the same. But if you fight, you have a chance.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
To live or to die, there it was again. The meaning of Blood Tusk’s entire existence was laid out before him. It was true that this was a chance for him, and probably the best, as it always was in his life. In the arena, he was never asked if and how he wanted to fight, and there had been some difficult opponents for him, who had sometimes annoyed him because of their intended impossibility. Nevertheless, he had never questioned and always won, and his life as a gladiator, trained only for death, was the main reason for his consent. “All right, I’ll do it,” Blood Tusk agreed. Deep inside him, without him even suspecting or understanding it, it was also the primal instinct of a warrior, of a troll, that had sent him a signal. Who, if not he, could save all the whelps, females and non-warriors from death? It could only be him.
In any case, Djar’Ku reluctantly closed his eyes. He gave his word that he would accept the giant’s decision and he did so, although it was damn hard for him. So he turned away and silently caught up with the rest of the walkers.
“What’s going on?” Zalun asked. Still marching at the back, he had waited for Blood Tusk.
“Ask the tiki,” Djar’Ku wheezed, patting the troll on the shoulder. ’They’re the only ones who know the answer.”
“How?’ Zalun replied indecisively, while the old warrior walked past him. He looked back again and when Bloodtusk was left alone by the other three, he came towards them. ”What’s going on here? Why is he stopping there?”
“Because he has a task,” Sa’Thuk said matter-of-factly. He thought it was very generous of him to answer the question at all. ’And you have yours. Back to your place.”
“Back to my place? Nonsense,” Zalun grumbled. Not too long ago, he would have followed his leader’s word unquestioningly and stood for the group in the mortal combat. Now, however, something didn’t seem quite right to him, and he ran to the gladiator.
“Hey!” Sa’Thuk growled. “I said, back to your place!” The troll’s command fell on deaf ears despite all its authority, though he felt a hand on his healed arm.
“This won’t take long,” Haki murmured confidently. Of all the walkers, she knew only too well how distant and solitary the giant was, unable to truly live in community. ”Blood Tusk will send him away on his own in a moment. You’ll see.”
Sa’Thuk hissed angrily, but he let it go and continued with Haki.
Only Jeli’rhawa did not follow immediately and quickly turned back. “Here, take this,” she said, handing the giant a handy clay bottle. “Drink this. It will help against poisoned weapons.”
Blood Tusk nodded at the scout, who now also moved away.
“Poisoned weapons?” Zalun asked suspiciously. “Who’s on our heels?”
“Redshards,” Bloodfang revealed monotonously. “At least as many as your group.”
The wanderers had already gone a little way, so no one really heard Zalun’s outburst. ’What?! And you’re supposed to do what?! Fight them all alone or what?!”
“Exactly.”
The sheer matter-of-factness with which the giant gave his answer without the slightest spark of fear stunned Zalun. “Well, if it’s nothing else,” he said sarcastically. “But tell me, have you gone completely mad? You’ll never make it!”
“Maybe,” Blood Tusk agreed. After all, as in the arena, death had always been a possibility and as Blood Tusk had accepted earlier: At some point he would fall and when that happened, he had not been strong enough. ”Why do you care?”
“Well, because I’m certainly not leaving you here alone!”
“Why?”
“Wh-what why? I owe you this and you belong with us!”
“And I told you what do,” Blood Tusk tried to get rid of the troll. ”And I don’t belong with you. I don’t want to. Don’t like jungle trolls.”
The last statement caught Zalun off guard. Besides, he simply lacked the giant’s perspective and why he thought the way he did. “Come on!” he implored him. “You take on everything, even a superior force against you and certain death, just to go back to that stupid arena so you can continue to be thrown to the slaughter there for the amusement of others? What is wrong with you?!”
The jungle troll’s anger was lost on Blood Tusk, partly because he wasn’t interested in his point of view, just as he wasn’t interested in what the others wanted. “What different with me?” he replied stoically. “You also do anything just to get to your new place. No peace here. I learned so much from my time in the jungle. Trolls kill each other over nothing. You’ll always have to fight until death comes.”
“But at least for something worth fighting and dying for!”
“And what?”
“If you haven’t learned at least that much in your time with us, maybe it’s better that you stay here,” Zalun sighed, slightly hurt in his sense of honor. ”And I don’t know why you told me, but I will honor your words and keep an eye on Nira’theba and her whelps anyway.”
“Or take her as your wife,” suggested Blood Tusk. “Isn’t that what trolls do? Claim? More wives?”
This naivety and truth in one sentence brought a fleeting grin to Zalun’s lips. “I hardly think I’ll go that far, but tiki, should you survive this and come back to us, I might question some of my beliefs.”
“Stop thinking about Tiki and doing that, that would be a start,” Blood Tusk said without any ill intent, and his companion took the words to heart. “Now, go.”
Zalun nodded. “Good luck.”
Time for himself, no other voices and silence, except for the onset of the evening and night jungle life. Patient as a stone, and just as motionless, Blood Tusk sat below the rock formation for almost three hours without saying a single word or thinking. He knew that his thoughts had to be focused on what was coming, just as before every fight.
Kriz’kriz had remained just as patiently and silently on his shoulder, but the bird’s animal instincts were beginning to sound the alarm. “I’ll tell your whole story,” she said in Trollish and pecked the giant on the head. ”Above all, no one is stupid enough to face a hunting group alone, but other trolls will see this as true courage and a few will know your name.”
“I don’t care and what’s the point?”
“Ja’Jen didn’t just send me to translate and teach,” replied Kriz’kriz, flapping her wings a few times without taking off. ”He thought there was something special about you. Must report to him. He might even pull your soul out of the dark sea to ask you himself. We know nothing about you except squish, squish and ding, dong from your arena.”
Blood Tusk didn’t have the slightest idea about necromancy, spirit magic and the like. “Don’t understand what you want to know more. Told you everything.”
“Maybe, but deep inside your big empty head, more could be hidden. Ja’Jen can coax a lot out of the dead.”
“Dead is dead,” Blood Tusk admonished. “He should leave me alone.”
“There you go being nice again,” croaked Kriz’kirz, but she knew that the time was up. “But to make sure it’s at least as familiar as you know it for you, I’ll watch until the end. Just like in your arena.” That was Kriz’kriz’s sincere offer and she fluttered up onto the rock formation, where she blended perfectly into the jungle. One of countless animals, swallowed by the darkness, out of reach and at a safe distance from everything.
Blood Tusk’s ears twitched, but not because of the bird’s words. He heard them, the rapidly multiplying feet above the jungle floor. A power was approaching him that did not want to hide and move unseen in any way.
The scouts, who had been watching the entrance for a good 30 minutes, had already revealed themselves when they heard their pack coming and jumped out of bushes and trees.
As if he were the epitome of calmness, Blood Tusk drank the antidote Jeli’rhawa had brought before he even moved a muscle and at least pulled the war mask over his face.
Unsure of the purpose of this unusually massive, giant troll, the Redshards scouts held back. They had many bones in their skin, but no braids of them.
Wind-jackals broke through the undergrowth growling and ran to the front line, where they took up position with bared teeth and tails raised.
Gradually, the background filled with the pack of Redshards, at least ten of whom wore short braids of bone splinters on their heads, and they wondered why they were suddenly seeing their vanguard.
Blood Tusk didn’t care about that. He grabbed his weapon, shouldered it, and stood up to place himself as close to the center of the path as possible. The giant’s calm composure gave the impression that it was just another day in his life of blood and steel.
The Redshards didn’t know who they had before them. How should they? The giant didn’t even know the slightest thing about his past, the time before the arena and even these first years, in a place meant for dying, were hardly more than a fleeting memory in the furthest reaches of his thoughts.
The question was – would Blood Tusk have served and fought so obediently in his life as a gladiator if he had known the truth? Indeed, he came from the long-forgotten blood of the first trolls, the ancestors. His tribe had been one of many that had survived for many centuries, but the further time progressed, the more his kind in the world had dwindled. They had been displaced by their new kindred, who were guided by the tiki to wipe out this part of trollish history. Nevertheless, the giant’s tribe had lived for a long time, despite numerous enemies and small numbers. Trolls and the help of certain tiki, these ancestors could not easily be broken, so the enemies of his tribe forged a pact with greedy mercenaries and slave traders, equipped with airships, rifles and other mechanical devilry. It had been a concentrated force that had nevertheless paid an extremely high toll of blood to finally defeat this small band. The warriors of the ancestors died in an endless sea of blood, upright and cursing. Heads of fathers became hunting trophies for trolls and their allies, and mothers had even the smallest whelps torn from the breast, thrown into a pit of corpses or on bonfires. That had been the actual mantra - no mercy for the ancestors. The mercenaries and slavers had been paid extremely well for this, without being betrayed by the trolls, and yet the same greed that had brought about the end of Blood Tusk’s tribe had saved his and a few whelps’ lives, at the age of not even one to five months. The slavers had been so intimidated by the ancestors that they had considered total annihilation a lost business opportunity. Besides, they had considered it justified compensation for their great loss of men and material, so that in the end they had smuggled some of the ancestors’ whelps out of the slaughter, far beyond the reach of possible revenge by the new troll tribes.
Yes, the pucks had once paid a lot of gold for this particular troll, but the gladiator had long since repaid them for tens of lives and it had never been planned or expected by the pucks that a piece of meat would live forever, because that was Blood Tusk to them. He was meat, snatched from the caring breast of a loving mother, without ever hearing her warmth or heartfelt words again or even remembering her. Instead, harsh words, chains, whips, work and all kinds of pain had been his lullabies as soon as he was old enough to pick up a sword. He had cost the pucks a lot, and yet, back then, he hadn’t even been worth the air he breathed for them. These horrors and thoughts were buried under all the corpses that the giant had piled up over the years to form a mountain, and yet it had once been his fate to perish far below this rotting mountain of dead. The trolls had wanted it, the first tiki had wanted it, his owners had wanted it and all those he had faced when he had to and despite all that, against all odds, he stood there, ready to defy once more the fate that had long been predetermined for him, with the same means that had always demanded his and that he knew as the only ones - blood and steel.
“Why did you stop?!” Si’sa spat. She led this large group and had one of the longest bone braids, which is why she narrowed her eyes all the more at the sight of the strange figure blocking the path in the twilight of the darkness. ’What-is-it?”
“End for you,’ Blood Tusk replied calmly. His heart beat so calmly that it was hard to tell if he was even breathing. “Leave the wanderers alone.”
“Is this some kind of bad joke?!” snorted Si’sa mockingly. “And you’re one of them, or what, and you’re supposed to stop us?”
“Only if you keep walking.”
“What kind of filthy troll tongue is that, I can hardly understand a word.”
“You’ll die if you go on,” Blood Tusk made clear with a raise of his Bisento. ’Enough?”
Si’sa looked around at her warriors. All of them were more than just amused and some had to control themselves not to burst out laughing, just like Si’sa herself. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”
“Ask the other eleven I killed.”
Immediately, the grim expressions of the Redshards brightened. Hearing about the death of their fellow tribesmen was a red rag for all of them. “You’re telling me,” Si’sa murmured slowly. “That you wiped out a part of us all by yourself?”
“No, I’m warning you that I did.”
You could see it in the eyes of all the Redshards. They took the giant’s words very seriously and none of them spoke of a lie or looked as if they would not believe this claim. “Then you will also get our best,” wheezed Si’sa. “Ara’Kasch! Take care of him! The rest will come with me and pass him by. We have no time to waste on just one troll. We have many wanderers to kill and defile.”
“Yes!” a beastly voice growled from the ranks of the 82 trolls. A 2.80-meter-tall troll with a pure fighting form, painted red all over, pushed his way forward. His face was intimidating and he had the longest bone-splintered braid of all, which was so long that it almost hindered him when walking. That’s why a new, shorter braid clattered against his elbow pads. He drew two serrated one-handed axes and clashed them together in front of his face. “The hunt was worth it for me!”
Attentive, but barely noticeable, Blood Tusk’s eyes moved from left to right, where some Redshards wanted to pass him cautiously and growling. The path was narrow, but there was some space to the sides, so that he couldn’t just grab the Redshardss. Besides, he was panting with exertion because someone was annoying him.
“HEY!” Ara’Kasch shouted angrily when he noticed the giant’s gaze. ”I’M YOUR OPPONENT! ME!” The Redshard champion emphasized this with another clash of his axes, which heated the hearts and lungs of his fellow trolls, who cheered him on. He clashed the axes together once more and at the moment he drew back the steel that blocked his vision, an oncoming throwing axe suddenly split his skull and he slumped lifelessly to the ground.
No one had seen it coming and the Redshards looked from the dead man to the source of the attack in shock.
Blood Tusk flew like the wind from one side to the other. The four trolls who had dared to pass had no chance and were cut in half by him. “Get out of here,” he said, as if nothing had happened, and he stood at attention again.
Now he was sure of every Redshard’s wrath. None of them would just pass him by to chase the wanderers. First him, then the rest, that was the new plan. “You really think you can stop us all?”, Si’sa snarled furiously. “SLAY HIM!”
With the wind-jackals at the front, the first half-dozen trolls charged forward, shouting war cries, and more followed close behind.
“All right,” Blood Tusk took a deep breath and took up his position. ”Let’s get this over with!”
