Rurik's Arc

Chapter 3 of 22

The tunnel spat Rurik out into light. He stood, and Bjorn rose beside him. The glade opened wide. Glowing fungi lit the trunks. Vines climbed everywhere. Wild elves watched from the shadows. Beast-kin crouched in the moss. None moved. All of them looked past Rurik to the thing in the center. A troll blocked the heart of the glade. Its hide was bark and moss. Branches grew from its shoulders. It stood taller than three men and did not need to move to seem like a wall. It looked down at Rurik, at his four feet of height, and it laughed low. "Small king," the troll said. "You want their spears." It swept one heavy arm at the watching folk. "They follow strength. Show me yours, or crawl back to your hole." Rurik did not reach for his hatchet. He had left the wyrm at the tunnel mouth. He had nothing here but two men and his own two hands. Behind him a voice spoke, low and flat. "Don't fight it," Thorin said. The old dwarf climbed out of the tunnel last, his father's axe across his back. Gray beard, iron rings, a battered helmet. He had followed Rurik through the dark without complaint, the way he had followed him from the pass. His knees popped as he stood. He looked at the troll the way a man looks at weather. "It wants us broken," Thorin said. "Strength isn't lifting it." Rurik understood. The troll wanted a fool to swing first. He would not. He stepped forward instead. He walked until he stood in the troll's shadow and had to bend his neck to hold its eyes. The wild folk leaned in. "An army burned my supply road," Rurik said. "They killed a man who served that pass forty years. I came here begging. That's not weak. That's what a chief does when his people are dying." He set his boots wide. "Move, or don't. But I'm not crawling back." The troll studied him a long while. Then it reached down. Rurik held still. The huge hand did not strike. It pressed flat against Rurik's chest, testing, the way a man tests a beam before he trusts it. Rurik did not step back. His heels held. "Stone," the troll said at last. It drew its hand away. "You don't bend. Good." It stepped aside. The path to the glade's heart lay open. The wild folk rose from the moss, watching now with new eyes. Then Bjorn spoke. "My blade came in on a thief's belt." His hand found his empty scabbard. "I want it back before any bargain." At his words a fae figure stiffened across the clearing. A wild elf reached for a bow. The moss went tense. Rurik had won his way in. Now Bjorn's claim split the very folk Rurik had come to gather, and every eye turned cold.