The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [10]
But then, in the next instant, the rat disappeared. Smacking his thin, bony lips, Baatlrap grimaced in triumph. Thurgol flushed, knowing that the troll had waited until the chieftain could see him. The firbolg bit back the urge to charge over to the hulking troll, but with the morsel already consumed, there was nothing he could do in any event.
Fools! Rage caused the giant's limbs to tremble, and for a second, his temper threatened an explosion that would certainly have resulted in bloodshed, if not death, but then he whirled on his heel and stalked away, past the dirty caves and through the narrow, rocky niche that gave the village its only easy means of egress. Wolfdogs scuttled from his path, cringing away from the clublike feet that had on previous occasions booted many a canine posterior.
Too long they'd been hungry! Thurgol swung his hefty club, a tapered oak limb studded with round knots, into the base of a pine tree, grunting from the pain that shot down his arm. The tree swayed vigorously, but no sound of splintering treated the firbolg's ears.
That was different, also. As recently as last spring, that pine trunk, or any other of equal girth, would have snapped like a dry twig from such a blow. Now the trees were healthy again, thriving with a vibrancy they hadn't displayed for twenty years. All around him, throughout the great valley of Myrloch, the forests and meadows had surged into life with renewed vitality.
And the failure of the firbolg and troll hunters wasn't because the game had disappeared, either. If anything, the numbers of deer and rabbits, fox and squirrels, had increased during this vibrant season. But at the same time as life invigorated the plants, so had the animals become more alert, quicker, more nimble.
The hunting tactics of Thurgol and his band had always been crude, at best. The thrown rock was the deadliest weapon in the giant-kin arsenal, and the club, however heavy and knotted, was no way to bring down a deer. Of course, during the chieftain's youth, the band had possessed the Silverhaft Axe, and while that was no hunting weapon, at least in design, it seemed that the diamond-studded blade and whichever firbolg wielded it had always been able to provide fresh meat. Indeed, one of Thurgol's earliest memories was of a grand feast-a huge bear, slain by Klatnaught, the former chieftain, with the Silverhaft Axe. Klatnaught's wife, the shaman Garisa, had provided Thurgol with a tender morsel from the beast's ribs.
Yet it had now been two decades since the Silverhaft Axe had been stolen. During these past years, the firbolgs had ranged the width and breadth of the wide valley in the heart of the island of Gwynneth, stumbling across listless animals and bashing their brains out. Now, he knew, those days were gone, along with the mighty axe.
He came to the shore of a pool of still water. Previously he had come here to study his reflection, drawing comfort from the craggy precipice of his brow, the heavy jowls and large, wart-covered nose. Those features, together with his broad-girthed mass of shoulders and chest, his stumplike legs as sturdy as two weathered oak trunks, had combined to make Thurgol lord and master of Blackleaf.
But even that visage was lost to him now, thanks to the cloudy film that colored the previously clear water. Not only did the liquid have a distinct cast of milky white color, but in the full dark of the night, it also actually seemed to glow!
Thurgol wasn't terribly certain of the latter fact. On one night several weeks earlier, however, he had certainly gotten the impression that the pool possessed some kind of luminescence. On that occasion, shaken by a dim, supernatural fear, he had hastened back to the village, and he hadn't approached the pond after