The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [25]
As this truth began to grow within him, Thurgol became increasingly nervous. He cast his tiny eyes about the thick fringe of underbrush surrounding the village, imagining that a deadly ambush took shape there. He saw the firbolgs and trolls, many of them already drunk, and pictured the slaughter that might result from a sudden and unsuspected attack, harboring no illusions that his thick-skulled troops would respond as quickly or in such orderly fashion as had the dwarves.
Abruptly, decisively, he stalked over to a troll who guzzled from the opened rum cask. With a sharp blow, Thurgol knocked the keg to the ground, where it shattered in a splash of amber pungency. With a growl, the troll lunged at him, but the firbolg chieftain smashed a brawny fist into the monster's long, branchlike nose. Yelping, the green-skinned monster stumbled back, both hands clutching his wounded proboscis. Hateful black eyes, sunken like caves beneath the beast's overhanging brows, regarded Thurgol with undiluted venom.
The troll backed away from the enraged firbolg. Like most of his kin, the beast took great pride in the sweeping expanse of his beaklike nose. Now that it had been shattered, he was obsessed with making sure that it grew back as prominently as ever. Growling and snarling, the troll settled in the doorway of a roofless cottage to tend to his regeneration.
Not all the beasts would be so easily cowed, however. As Thurgol might have guessed, Baatlrap was the one to disagree. The monstrous troll swaggered toward Thurgol, his long arms planting curling fists on his hips.
"Why you stop Lakrunt from drink?" he demanded, his voice an ominous growl.
"More dwarves will come," Thurgol shot back, crossing his arms across his chest and facing the giant troll squarely.
"Dwarves run. We celebrate!"
"What about dwarf warriors? We killed only old ones and young ones! Others might be nearby."
"Pah! We win fight. We drink!" To underscore his point, Baatlrap ripped another keg from the hands of a gaping firbolg and poured a long stream of rum into his mouth.
"We win! We drink!" The cry arose all around him, from firbolgs and trolls alike, and Thurgol knew that he had lost the argument.
"Turn your eyes to this!" The voice screeched through the scene of growing chaos like a sharp scythe through a field of ripe wheat. All eyes turned to Garisa. The hunched giant woman stood in the open after emerging from one of the larger of the dwarven buildings. She raised her hands over her head, and they all saw what she held. They saw, and they trembled in awe and a sense of giddy joy.
"The Silverhaft Axe!" she cried, and the last rays of the setting sun gleamed from the immaculate metal of the weapon's shiny haft.
But it was the blade itself that inevitably compelled everyone's rapt attention, for here the sunlight glittered even more profoundly, shining and reflecting and shimmering off the facets of a great, wedge-shaped surface of purest diamond.
* * * * *
Baatlrap stared at the gleaming axe blade. In it, he saw all the wonders of the world, the most glorious beauties and the grandest achievements… and the vision of utmost, terrifying power.
A dim stirring tickled the base of the troll's primitive brain. The coarse, wiry body thrilled to the ecstasy of victory and celebration. The scent of blood still pulsed in his nostrils. His mind lingered on the memories of dying dwarves, squirming desperately in Baatlrap's crushing talons until, very gradually, the wriggling bodies grew still.
But now the sight of the Silverhaft Axe awakened within him an overwhelming craving, and at the same time a reverent sense of of awe. All his dull feeling came together then in a single