AN EXCERPT FROM "NEFERI'S TALE"

"Jarkell, there's people out there."

Before she could say another word, the weaponmaster suddenly grabbed the girl by the cloak. He pulled her roughly towards him, up against a large tree, and clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She struggled and glared at her companion, thinking herself betrayed. Frightening memories of a night long ago welled suddenly into Neferi's mind.

"Trolls," he whispered, then slowly removed his hand. He pointed off to their left. Three creatures were moving through the woods, towards their camp.

Realizing her mistake, Neferi slid from his grasp and dropped to a crouch. Her twin daggers were out in an instant, her eyes darting about the forest. She didn't think they'd been spotted. "You could have just told me," she hissed.

There was no humor in his eyes. His black-edged greatsword was out. Neferi had not even heard him draw it. "We've got to make our way back to the others, and quietly," he whispered.

"That's my specialty." She started moving silently back the way they had come.

Jarkell grabbed her again, but this time all he did was put his free hand on her shoulder. He shook his head. In the dim light of the shadowed forest, she saw Jarkell draw his hand across his neck. He pointed at the three trolls with his sword. Silently, he tapped his chest, and pointed off into the woods, along a path that would take him slightly ahead of the trolls. He pointed to her, and indicated that she should move silently around behind them. The little rogue gulped, and nodded.

Her palms were sweating inside her gloves as Jarkell moved off into the darkness, leaving her alone. She realized, suddenly, why the houseless weaponmaster had been so insistent on teaching her the proper way to use her knives. Soon, she would put that training to the test. Cautiously, she set out, in a different direction. Neferi felt uncomfortable in the forest, exposed. Moving silently over a bed of leaves was much more difficult than anything she'd ever had to do in the alleyways of Culhaven. The sun was setting, and the forest was growing dark. The monsters carried no torches, but they did have warhorns. The forest rang with their fearsome sounds from several directions.

Neferi knew that if she abandoned Jarkell to face the three trolls alone, he would probably die, and then they would come for her. If she tried to run, she would be lost in the forest without the others. She tried to move as quickly and quietly as she could, her ears straining for the sound of battle. When Jarkell ambushed the three trolls, she'd have to get there soon.

All too soon, she heard it- Jarkell's warcry, and the ring of steel against steel. It didn't come from the direction she had been expecting. Neferi changed her course, and sprinted towards the sounds.

Already, Jarkell had felled one of the three trolls. It lay at his feet, headless. But the other two trolls were bearing down on the weaponmaster. Jarkell had found a large outcrop of stone, and he stood with his back to it, fending off two attackers at once. The trolls were huge, taller even than Jarkell. They were covered with rough hides and bits of tattered leather. She wondered if her knives would even penetrate a troll's tough hide. Their skin seemed to be made of granite scales. One held a huge spiked club, the other wielded a wood-handled stone mattock two-handed. Jarkell managed to parry the club, but had to dodge the other troll; it's weapon missed but struck the boulder behind him with a resounding crack. Jarkell cut across with his sword, and laid open the thigh of one of the trolls.

Neferi covered the ground between them with a few quick strides. As she ran, she imagined herself as a warrior-princess of old, cutting the great troll in two with a single cut of her blade. But these were daggers she carried, not a greatsword like Jarkell's. Pushing aside the inexplicable fantasy, she tried to remember what he had hastily taught her- the most critical points on a body. She could only hope that a troll had the same weaknesses as a man.

They never even heard her coming. With a quick slash, Neferi cut through the back of one troll's legs. Just like that man in the alleyway long ago, the troll cried out as she severed the sinews of its knee. The troll buckled, spurting blood. As it fell, it twisted away from her. But this time, Neferi was prepared to finish what she started. She had her second dagger out, and already moving. She plunged her knife into the thing's neck, just as Jarkell had explained to her. She had to jump out of the way to avoid being crushed as it fell.

Her attack provided just enough distraction for Jarkell to deal with the other troll. With a back-handed slash, he cut the thing's neck, then brought his sword down, point first with both hands, into its chest.

Suddenly, a fourth troll loomed up behind Jarkell, one they had not seen before. It stood atop the boulder he'd been keeping at his back. The monster raised its huge claidhmore overhead. Without thinking, Neferi threw one of her knives. It took the thing right in the eye. "Look out!"

Jarkell whirled, and cut the thing down at the ankles. With a roar of agony, the troll pitched off the stone and fell towards them. Neferi leapt back out of reach, her thrown dagger already replaced in her hand by another. Without a word, Jarkell reversed his sword again and pierced the thing through the heart.

"Gods, these things stink," Neferi cursed. The troll blood was warm and black in the dim light, and she could feel she was splattered with it.

Jarkell was just a shadow, standing there. "More than that," he said. "They're things of magic, and they won't stay dead for long. It takes a magic sword to really kill one, or a wizard. I don't suppose you're a wizard?"

She looked at the four corpses lying motionless on the forest floor. "Hardly."

Jarkell went to the first troll, the one Neferi had killed with her knives, and thrust his black sword through its heart. For good measure, he repeated the ritual on the other three. "Can't be too careful with these things." The weaponmaster looked around the forest for signs of other trolls. Off in the distance, they could hear the sounds of battle. "We'd better go back and help. Gather up your knives. If you have a mind to keep them, you'll have to get them cleaned off by morning. Troll's blood can eat through steel."

The knife she had thrown was buried somewhere in a bloody, stinking dead hulk. Neferi grimaced at the thought of retrieving it. Disgusted, she dropped one of the knives she was holding, the one with troll's blood on it. "No thanks," she said. "I've got plenty more."

***