The Accidental Necromancer
The Trouble with Trolls

“Many years ago,” Xyla explained, “Gren’s tribe migrated into the hills north of my forest. At first there was trouble, because the trolls wanted to cut down trees to help build their village. I killed several trolls, and then I reached an agreement with their chief, Gren’s father.

“I allowed them to come into the forest once every fifteen days, in groups of no more than four, to gather the trees that had fallen naturally, but had not yet rotted away, and also to cut down trees that were dead but had not yet fallen. I even had the squirrels guide them to the dead trees. It was not ideal for either me or them. They did not get as much wood as they wanted, and the wood perhaps was not quite as good as wood from live trees. And dead trees are also part of the life of the forest. Many creatures find homes in rotted logs, so in the long run it would have been better to leave them in place and let Nature do as she does. But at least it meant peace.”

“You, against a whole village,” I said.

“In the forest I can move much faster than any troll, and I can hide. I can disguise myself as a tree, which meant I could be anywhere, even at the very edge, watching them, without them knowing, and strike at the time of my choosing. I did not have to use vines that had no thorns with you, Abby, when we first met. Outside the forest would be a different thing, but inside they would have to move in very large groups to be safe, and even then, I might be able to pick one off at a time.”

I nodded. I wondered what would have happened to me had I looked more dangerous. “So what changed?”

Gren spoke. “A few months ago four males came to our village. One was the son of woman who died during the initial misunderstanding. And another was a fire wizard, named Baradzem.”

Pyromancers. They are called pyromancers. Next she’ll be calling me a “Mage of Death.” Actually, that’s pretty good.

“Apparently they don’t like me much,” Xyla said.

Gren shrugged. “Not sure they care about you, beautiful green girl with facile fingers. Not really. I think you are an excuse. But she is right. The four began to set the town against the deal we had made, against Xyla of the talented tongue, and against my father the chief, who they said had a bloated belly.”

Gren frowned. “It is rather round,” she admitted. “He is getting old, and does not move about the way he once did. And he is getting more foolish, too, but I still think he is more wise than these four strife stirrers.”

“What can we do about it?” I asked.

Gren shrugged. “I fear it is too late to do what really needs to be done. They have my father a prisoner in his own home. I objected, and they sought to do the same with me, but I fled to the forest, with three of the four on my heels. Only Baradzem stayed behind, but I run very fast, and once I was in the forest, of course I knew the ways better. Also, Xyla came and stopped them.”

“I should have killed them,” Xyla said. “But I did not know what had happened to old chief Gavabar.”

“My father,” Gren said, proudly, although she’d already made that clear. “They ran back to the village, like frightened rats.”

“It is the pyromancer that worries me most,” Xyla said.

“We must rescue my father!” Gren said.

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Xyla said. “You know that outside the forest I am not very powerful. But Abby might be able to help.”

Gren grinned. “I have my bow, with which I am deadly.” Humility did not seem to be a troll value, or at least, it wasn’t one of Gren’s strong points.

“I don’t know that I can do much,” I said cautiously.

“There are things you have done,” Xyla said, somewhat cryptically.

I thought about what she meant. Sure, I had a chainsaw. And Life Drain. And Xyla didn’t even know about Dimension Step. And maybe, just maybe, if we won a battle I could make some zombies, and that might make a difference in a war. Make zombies, have them kill people, make more zombies — sure, I could maybe take over the village that way, at the cost of a lot of death and destruction. I was reluctant to go that route for several reasons. One was that I was just plain squeamish. But the other was that it seemed like a horrible way to win the hearts and minds of the people in the village. “How many trolls are in the village?” I asked.

Gren thought about it. She had obviously never thought to count. “Two hundred?”

“That’s a lot. And how do they feel about your dad?”

“I think they used to like him a lot. Until the four fiends came, our village knew peace, and we were growing. We have not always had enough beer for an orgy every month, but usually. That is another thing. The quartet of quarrelers claim that in the forest are fruit that ferment quickly, and that the green witch woman is stopping good trolls from getting drunk.” She shrugged at Xyla. “That is what they call you. Green witch woman.”

“Dryad. I am a dryad,” Xyla said.

“They are ignorant, and they have not had a chance to appreciate your bountiful breasts and tantalizing tongue.”

“Nor will they.”

But we have, hmm?

I tried to get the discussion back on track. “How do the village trolls feel about your dad now?”

“I think the town is divided. Most like Gavabar, but they are afraid of Baradzem, the fire wizard. Things have happened to those who stood against Baradzem. Accidents, supposedly. Those who were hurt do not talk about what happened. Neither does the one who died by falling into his fireplace, or the one who fell off a cliff with a curiously neat cut in his neck from the rocks below.”

“Gotcha.” If there was still sympathy for the old chief, it seemed unlikely an army of zombies would help.

“I have not shared your secret ways,” Xyla said.

She certainly gossiped about some things. Did “way” mean the portal, or technology, or my necromantic abilities? I suspected all of the three, although I hadn’t talked to her much about the necromancy. “Well, I don’t think I can go into town and face down a couple of hundred trolls. I just don’t have that kind of power. Even with the aid of your no doubt prodigious bow.” I had a thought. “The troll whose mother died. Is his father still in the village?”

“Probably,” Gren said.

“Don’t suppose he’s one of the ones who likes Gavabar, and could maybe be talked into talking some sense to his son?”

Gren shrugged. “I don’t have any way of knowing who the father was,” she said. “How would anyone know?”

Troll women were that easy? But Enash had implied they didn’t actually like having sex with troll men.

“Perhaps an explanation of troll mating customs would help,” Xyla said.

“Oh,” Gren said. “Everyone talks about it. Everyone knows. You can’t go anywhere among the other races without them bringing it up and asking rude questions.”

“Abby often does not know the things everyone knows, and she knows things that no one knows,” Xyla said.

Gren shrugged. “Female trolls seek pleasure from other females. Only when drunk do they mate with males. Males can only get it up when they are drunk. That is why beer is so important to us. No beer, no children, unless women make supreme sacrifice of mating while sober, but male trolls are so ugly. We have big parties, and everyone gets drunk and mates with many. Only the chief ever mates one on one with a female.”

“Ah,” I said. It didn’t sound like a sustainable evolutionary strategy. There were still trolls, obviously. And maybe evolution wasn’t the way species came into being on Amaranth.

“I know,” Xyla said. “It sounds great, doesn’t it? A giant orgy! Except for the male trolls. But maybe if they were elves, instead. No insult intended.”

“No insult taken,” Gren said. “Elves have tiny dicks, though. Still prettier to look at. Elf women are hot, though, and male trolls think about elf women a lot, I think.”

I cleared my throat. “Back on track, here.”

“Yes,” Xyla said. “We need to protect the forest from these evil trolls.”

“We need to kill Baradzem and his terrible three, and free my father, so that we can resume the peace,” Gren said. “That is the best way to protect the forest.”

Gren saw the bigger picture, it seemed, but how to do any of that without luring them into the forest, where Xyla was powerful, first? They wanted to recapture Gren, so maybe we could use her as bait, but that seemed risky.

C’mon. Get the dryad to kill some trolls, raise a zombie army, make the trolls do your bidding or face your wrath. You can use this Gavabar as a puppet, to make the woman happy, and you can get yourself invited to all the troll orgies. Is this not obvious? Of course, having a wand would help.

It sounded like the perfect way to be the person I did not want to be.

Xyla and Gren were looking at me, waiting.

“I don’t think we have a way to go against them right now. But I have some magic of my own, and with a wand I’ll be more powerful. I have clues to where one is.”

“But it’s guarded by zombies,” Xyla said, looking at Gren.

Gren shrugged. “How many?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

“So we fight the zombies, get you your wand, then you use your wand to cast magic to free my village?”

“That’s the rough idea.” I still had no idea how to make it all happen. But I knew that if I had a good ranged attack our odds would be better than without one.

“I cannot help much, inside a cave,” Xyla said. “But I can guard the forest while you two retrieve the wand.”

“It sounds like the sort of quest the gods would give heroes,” Gren said. “I am in. When do we start?”

“I have a few things around here to do, still,” I said. “Perhaps if the two of you were to, um, go somewhere?”

“Allies should have no secrets,” Gren said.

Yeah, well, the fate of two worlds might be at stake. A little lie wouldn’t hurt. “I have magical things to do, things that might blast the soul of a non-adept.”

Xyla’s eyes widened. Well, I’d have to fill her in later.

“You are going to keep him under control, aren’t you, Abby?”

She means me. She knows that this is not the natural order of things. She feels the wrongness of your control in her bones. Branches. Whatever she calls them.

“Yeah, I won’t be taking any risks with that,” I told her.

“Come, Gren, “Xyla said. “I’m sure we can find things to do. We will be along the path toward the cave.”

I nodded. I wondered what kind of things they were going to be doing, and if I was missing out on a threesome, but I really had no choice. Once they were out of sight, I buried the two keyboxes. I got the compass and loaded some freshly charged batteries into my backpack. I hefted my chainsaw.

Alright, zombies. Here I come.

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