The Spriggan
by ZuiderZee   zuiderzee98@hotmail.com 
Adventures of an Amazon Hobbit:  Part 4


Fire and water, two natural enemies, engaged in impotent wargames with one
another-the orange flames of the great cookfire and smaller torches which had
found their way out of tired hands and into conveniently sized clefts in the
rocks- all the while the gray autumn drizzle fell only as the lightest
raindrops can; slow and ihhibited by the air.

Where it dropped in the fire or near it, steam rose with the smoke in a weird
haze.

The heat and the cold made eddies in the haze.

Through this, the two opponents, Volmor and the one he now called RhohG, faced
off over their rudely hewn hanks of venison.

The Cror mountain chieftan, his face wet and dark with grease, sucked in a
quick breath and took another bite, frustrated by the damnable tendon which he
eventually bit in half to get at the tough meat behind it.

His challenger retained her seat opposite him, but as yet had not taken a
single bite of the wedge-shaped section of haunch which still bubbled from
open blood vessels and hissed in the drizzle.

"Eat! EAT, YOU STUNTED HOYDEN!" Volmor said through a mouthful, spraying the
half-chewed meat from his fat-slathered teeth.

Crushfoot limped closer as did a few more of the tribesmen, each with a
smaller, more sensible cut of meat skewered on their own knives.

"Gehh! She wastes her time as well as ours." A fat-lipped spearman took a swig
of the wine and then dropped the bulging skin at the feet of the newcomer.
Fatlip saw nothing else interesting and stepped away. Crushfoot bothered him.

"The Kriirling mocks us." Crushfoot said.

Again a chorus of assents.

"Just who are you anyway, Kriirling?" Another spearman with a long gash in his
leg stepped into the space Fatlip had left.

"Don’t ask who, ask what." A third spearman in a boarskin cape wiped the rain
from his eyes. "What is this thing that we expect it to behave like a man? A
man of the Cror tribes?"

More assents.

Gash took a seat on a boulder, heedless of the wet surface. "I would say it
was only a game, a bit of fun...but I haven’t forget...and let no man here
forget that this is our ceremonial ground. Our place of testing. Men have died
here. Men have endured worse than death here."

"I told all of you my name!" Snatching up the wineskin, RhohG took a swig of
the too-thick contents and gulped. She took another hearty swallow and set the
skin on a nearby rock. "At least I gave a name that matters in this forsaken
land."

Boarskin kicked a small stone at her.

Seeing it coming even in the haze, RhohG caught it with one hand and let it
drop.

"This is a land forsaken only by the weak." Crushfoot was impressed by the
quick reflexes. "That is plain. You must have some strength in you to have
made the journey here. And while I never found Gigurd’s company especially
harsh, he would not have taken you in for a winter unless you showed his
company some fighting skill. It is our wont to challenge what we find out of
place...and I’ve never seen anyone more out of place than you."

Volmor by now had reduced the haunch to a bone with a few bits of ugly flesh,
not quite meat, still clinging.

RhohG took up her untouched portion and tore insanely into the mixture of fat
and meat, going much quicker than Volmor had.

"She was simply afraid of burning her tongue, Greenshoulders!"

Volmor shot a mean look, but he didn’t see who spoke, the smoke and the mist
were still thick.

"I am Volmor! And when I find he who called me anything else, I’ll have a bite
out of him for good measure!"

"By the old gods, see how the hoyden eats!" Fatlip exclaimed.

"Like six hound-dogs kept starved for a chase!" Boarskin seconded.

"If that hoyden can keep her gorge down as well as she can eat, Volmor will
certainly have a sore belly keeping ahead of her." Crushfoot added with a mean
laugh.

The venison had been fresh.

Bloody.

Thin red gore gave the Kriirling’s cheeks and chin a vile blush.

In the firelight, her narrowed eyes showed a bestial glow.

Those closest saw her bite off chunks seemingly large enough to choke the
largest lion and swallow them without effort.

"She may prove to be more formidable than Volmor predicted." Boarskin
scratched his chin. "A well draped in a human skin, she is...and a such a
meager skin. This one is tricky, no lie."

"Volmor chose not the wisest contest...." Gash muttered.

"Eating like that, she will vomit and forfeit the match, she eats too fast!
This contest is not measured by haste." Fatlip nodded his shaggy mane.

"A fine thing, maybe," Rhogh remarked. "But a fair contest all the same. How
tough one’s insides are is as good a mark of fitness as one’s outsides. Me?
I’ve never vomited. Though there have been times I wish I could have."

"We’ll see how boastful you are when you eat an equal amount of what our
generous chief has already devoured-you are a long way from that!"

Gash pounded the butt end of his spear on the rocks in emphasis.

The mass of men surged in closer, now more interested in the duel since the
small stranger had begun to eat with more gusto.

"Bring me meat!" Volmor roared. "A leg at least!"

"Don’t be taken in by a trick, Volmor. The hoyden will spew like a vixen spews
for its litter any second now. A bellyful of meat is a hard thing to digest!"
Gash seemed to echo Fatlips sentiments.

Crushfoot secretly hoped the gluttony would cost Volmor his life. "Show this
outlander Kriirling how a man eats! Hurry with that meat! Is this our sacred
testing ground or isn’t it? Wasn’t it said this was no game?"

Volmor was already sitting back, leaning over to eat caused his face to
contort into an agonized leer. He motioned with waggling fingers.

Crushfoot limped in and handed him the wineskin.

To their combined amazement, RhohG now began to consume everything in her
hands, tendons, marrow and bone, gnawing like some titanic rodent, grinding
the durable parts into pulp between her gnashing teeth. She ate and she ate,
staining her clothes with meat juices. Red drops dappled her shirtfront and
the tops of her boots. Her widening lips and the underside of her nose were
smeared with cooked blood. She ate meat like boatmen heaving stones into a
hull for ballast, nothing served to her was spared the ravages of her jaws.
Not even their hounds could reduce elk bones to mush.

Volmor rocked to and fro, fighting for breath. His stomach wished it were the
only organ in his body. Heart and lungs and even his ribs hampered his
efforts. Soon, he stopped eating solely for the joy of it and slowed.

"I shall have wind enough tomorrow to scatter dandelions. For all the lard
I’ve eaten, I’ll have enough melted fat in my bowels to produce a jar of lamp
oil!" Volmor sagged, looking out of half-closed eyes.

"A few candles too, maybe." Fatlip grunted.

Volmor’s opponent snapped her fingers for more venison. She ate with the same
terrible pace, gliding through roasted elk flesh like a swan gliding across a
lake, not betraying the motions of its paddle feet.

Volmor Greenshoulders was looking green now in the face.

Seeing this, Crushfoot instantly decided Volmor would not be the winner. Nor
would old Greenshoulders be in any shape to make decisions once his stomach
started to pain him. Edging back into the shadows where he seemed to belong,
Crushfoot made his way out of the gathering place and down to the river,
determined to reach Gigurd’s steading by boat while the pickings were still
good. The swift river would bring him within hiking distance of the steading
in far less than an hour. Let the fools play their brainless games of status
and prestige. With enough riches, one didn’t have to concern himself with the
disadvantages of a missing toes. Those men who had survived the nasty
experience of choking on even the smallest bit of bone in their stews raised
sympathetic hands to their throats, though most were totally unaware of this
gesture.

"The hoyden has surely witched that meat..." Gash slapped a dirty hand to his
forehead. "Or herself."

Volmor’s face was a mask of thick droplets of sweat and rain and grease. His
energetic red color had faded to a sickly gray as blood drained to rescue his
ailing stomach from the mass of meat that had tumbled into it like a carnal
avalanche. Externally, his mighty muscles were the envy of all under him. His
lifting and throwing power was legend. Though he was not quite the hulking
figure of his ancestors, his physique allowed him both great power and
agility.

Internally, he was fighting the battle of his life.

With slippery fingers, he undid the belts around his middle, letting his gut
bulge outward like the chin of a frog.

He roared in sudden pain and held himself with both hands. "This freak isn’t
worth the effort! Declare the contest ended!"

Wisely, Crushfoot didn’t speak against Fatlips plea for sanity.

Looking with bleary, half-closed eyes, Volmor struggled for breath and rocked
drunkenly in place. Rhohg snatched the leg of venison from his trembling hands
and made short work of it.

Indeed, the more she ate, the quicker she could eat. Slabs were pushed at her
and disappeared down her gullet with menacing huffs of breath.

Amazement and cold fear took the place of simple doubt. The butchers supposed
she had eaten an entire elk, save for the offal, hoofs, antlers and hide.

"It’s just as well our hunters field-dressed those beasts," Gash wrung his
calloused fingers in anxiety. "I would have had to turn away if I saw either
of them obliged to eat...the organs."

"An elk’s pizzle isn’t something I’d have for dinner, though I was on the
verge of starvation...but I don’t know about that short one’s appetite. Mine
now is not so great...." Fatlip tossed his partially eaten cut into the trees
for the worms.

"Now then!" RhohG announced with a blood-lined mouth. "Is this worthy chieftan
of the Crorgathalers ready to discuss his terms? I have now eaten in excess of
him and am prepared to finish more...though he is not maybe. If he still has
his wits, let him speak before stupor and sickness take him!"

The torches set about them continued their insistent hap-hap-hap-hap-hap-hap
in the smoky, misty semi-darkness of the meeting place. Misshapen shadows of
men and their weapons marked the jagged rocks in dark, shifting streaks.

"Well, what says your chieftan, now that he’s too overcome with food to
answer. I have proved myself the better eater at least, and he didn’t have the
wisdom to pause and lay down the law before he succumbed."

Boarskin bared his teeth and limped to Volmor’s hunched back, shaking him with
daring arms. "The hoyden insults you...and us!"

RhohG stood.

"Bring me wine. All that eating has left me thirsty."

"No more of this! No more of this!" Fatlip held up his scarred arms in a
gesture of cessation. "Gigurd’s guest came here to our meeting place to seek
our chieftan’s terms and to challenge his might. Has no one here seen with his
own eyes that the one called RhohG has proved herself strong and worthy of
this clan’s acceptance?"

"That’s saying more than you should!" Boarskin replied. "Volmor is
sickened...unto his end, maybe. Some have said she won by trickery, and
trickery is not our way. But we do not know everything about this Kriirling. I
for one, don’t wish to know anymore. Send her back to Gigurd’s steading and
let us never meet again!"

This announcement brought cheers.

"She has said she wants no part in our tribe-" Boarskin continued, "But
Kriirlings of worth there have been and have found a place among us in times
past: Quesquetonach of the braided hair and his son, Huntach of the
flint-knife. And those others who did no war at all: Borotho the boatman,
Nyaff the smithy, Threya the breeder...who could never birth but a lone child,
but yielded pairs and more-mothering thirty in her span. And of course, Occhus
the far-wanderer and tower-builder who warned us of fire and saved our clan
from death. Any of them I would have been glad to welcome into our steading
and fight to defend-"

"But this is something different. Not of the race of men." Gash said sternly.
"What say you, Fjorgun?"

All eyes but those of the hungry stranger turned to look at a figure standing
well away from the firepit and the torches.

"I say the stranger should leave in peace and let us concern ourselves with
our own affairs. But I should like to know why she came to Cror at all. So
far, she has given no good accounting of herself. " Fjorgun Half-face intoned
in his usual slobbery panache. His old injury had left him a sight to wilt the
mating urge of any man who had occasion to recall the fat, pink folds that
were Fjorgun’s features and liken them to anything vaginal.

"I was told these hills were a hunting ground of my ancestors." RhohG said. "A
mighty people, cunning, strong and mysterious." "Your ancestors? All those
things, indeed?" Fjorgun’s right eye, ear and much flesh had been lost-pulped
by a knotted pine club in battle. The ill-healing skin was singed away with
hot irons to prevent rot. Fjorgun’s survival had been his business. With what
head he still had, most men, even Crorgathalers would have welcomed death
rather than deal with the absence of features and sheer ugliness. Only a thick
eyebrow hinted at the dense brown hair he’d once had. "Surely not our kind."

"After old Vainun, you are the collector of lore among us," Gash said. "Tell
us all what makes this stranger think she ought to come here and perhaps
inform her what a mistake she’s made."

"That I cannot do!" Fjorgun crossed his arms over his chest. "All here have
heard at least in part how when Wwordondir the Reckoner last winded his horn
of Changing and the sky was turned red, the great giants, ogres and every
lowly, miserable, mine-dwelling gnome was skaken from their path and the paths
of men to pitch deep into black Twunthorvald, at the roots of the underworld
...there to perish boiling in bottomless pits of sulfur. And even now, the
deadly fumes of their destruction seep up in clouds to rival the storms in the
skies...to befoul the lowlands. The stink and the heat kill all that lives
over the fissures."

"Fegh! Good riddance to them!"

"That doesn’t explain me!" RhohG emptied a bulging wineskin into her mouth and
cast the limp bag away. "That doesn’t explain anything! Gigurd and his clan
never made such a fuss."

"Aye. And look how they wound up. Careless, the lot of them." Gash retrieved
the empty wineskin, quietly amazed.

The blazing wood in the fire cracked. A burnt bough split in two and dropped
with a whoosh, scattering embers into the air.

Shadows danced as the flames shifted.

With a narrowed eye, Fjorgun watched the little stranger stand in a tightening
ring of humanity, looking tinier all the time.

"Some say the monsters still lurk, haunting the wild places and barbaric
wastelands of this world, tip-toeing back into our midst to work their
mischief, disguised as hoydens and hermits."

"I’m not in disguise!" RhohG stamped her booted foot. She pointed at the
slumped figure of Volmor whose only indications of life were the gentle tilts
of his labored breathing and the odd noises of his guts. "Greenshoulders here
is more of a giant than I. I say only that I may be descended from certain
giants, powerful, but not so enormous or pureblooded to suppose they couldn’t
breed with other races. Smaller races. Or perhaps the relationship is one more
of spirit than mere flesh. The soul of a giant is in me, rather than the body
on me."

"She’s no giant." Fatlip grunted.

"No ogre, either. Those types take what they want."

"She smells, but not of sulfur pits."

"Giants she says...giants had some kingliness about them, some obvious
greatness and nobility. To see one was to be in awe and fear, I’d give way
even to a young giant if ever I met one. This hoyden is about as noble as a
lizard."

"A bit more than a lizard...but not enough for one of us."

"That’s easy to explain. If this Kriirling is not the natural result of a
mating between a runt mountain ape and an overgrown poisonous toad, I hope I
wind up with a face as ugly as yours, Fjorgun."

Laughter took the place of silence and Volmor was forgotten.

Angrily, Fjorgun shouted over the outburst. "She is human...somehow. But not
completely. Something more, something less!"

"To your own Twunthorvald with you!" RhohG stood on her toes and pointed her
finger at Fjorgun as though to shoot arrows from the tip. "Let a man who isn’t
missing any of his parts accuse me of being...incomplete!"

More laughter, but Fjorgun had the humility to accept the barb.

"Hah! Did you hear that, Crushfoot? If you still had ten toes instead of five,
you could call the hoyden a name or two-" Gash looked around for the crippled
guide, not finding him. Boarksin shrugged his hefty shoulders. Gash shook his
head.

"SMOKE! FIRE AND SMOKE! LOOK OVER THERE!"

Through a gap in the trees, the clan members could see the orange glow and the
rising plumes of smoke. They had been too busy to notice before.

"That’s Gigurd’s hall ablaze, I know it! They’ve fired it themselves!"

"Then let it burn."

"Back to our own steading to defend it," Fjorgun ordered. "Take Volmor and
drag him along. It seems Rhoh-Gollilla-Lu’s feat bought her little but our
entertainment on a dreary, wet night. Go your way, Kriirling."

With but one eye to search, Fjorgun missed the running stranger in the rushing
mass of his own kind.

How fast could she run with a bellyful of meat and wine?

Standing at the narrow entrance to the meeting place, Fjorgun carefully
counted heads as the clan hustled out of the enclosure. Crushfoot was beneath
his notice, but three more were missing now.

To be continued.