Chapter 13

We spent the next two days recovering from our journey. The horses and mules grazed in the deep, lush grass of the meadow while the rest of us tended to the many little things that needed our attention.

Gait and Dan’ar went hunting the first morning and returned with a young doe. They, along with Saraid, spent most of the rest of the day around the campfire, cutting the meat into thin strips and smoking it on racks we had assembled from green tree limbs.

Torg and I spent the afternoon repairing many of the loose and torn straps on the mule packs. We worked in silence while the other three were gathered around the fire, tending to the meat.

As the afternoon wore on, I noticed that Saraid and Gait seemed to be spending a lot of time close to one another. The two of them were on one side of the fire with Dan’ar on the opposite. Their friendly banter could clearly be heard from where Torg and I sat, under a large tree.

Torg broke the silence, “It is good to see her laugh.”

I turned to him, “Saraid, you mean?”

He nodded his huge head and then said, “She has not had an easy life. It is not good when your own kind abandon you.”

I had been patiently waiting for the opportunity to delve into the relationship between Torg and Saraid. Ever since we had come upon them in the canyons, I had wondered why such two different beings would be together.

I cleared my throat and then asked, “What happened that the elves abandoned her?”

Torg sat aside the leather lead he was working on and then looked at me closely. After a second, he spoke.

“Her father was judged a thief by the high council. He, along with Saraid, were banished.”

“And her father, where is he?”

“Dead, he killed himself and left Saraid to die in the forest.”

Things were starting to make a little sense to me now. I continued with my questioning.

“So how did you and she come to be together?”

The troll looked toward the sky for a long while, and I thought I saw a glimmer of moisture in his eyes. He eventually lowered his head and said, “I found her next to her father; she was a child of twelve summers.”

He stopped, unable to speak further.

I nodded my head and then said, in a soft voice, “So you raised her?”

He nodded his great head but said nothing.

I looked at the great size of the troll and for the first time realized that I knew very little about him or his kind. I had assumed that he would be stone cold in his feelings, and had now found out that was not the case. I said nothing, and then went back to mending the mule pack in my lap. Clearly, there was much for me to learn about those that lived in this land.

Torg and I spent the rest of the afternoon in companionable silence as we worked on the leather gear. We spoke little, but I felt that there had been a bond formed between us that had not previously been present.