Shadows of the Past - The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King Chapter 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Previous: Chapter 4 | Next: Chapter 6
Chapter 5 splits between two timelines again, and both of them are tense in completely different ways.
We start in the present. Guthay, the larger moon, has been wearing silver rings for four nights straight. If it happens a fifth night, the farmers begin planting season. Farmers are already gambling, bringing gift-grain to the palace early, hoping to land at the bottom of the sacred sack where the “lucky grain” sits. They pray to Hamanu because he’s the only god they have.
And Hamanu? He’s a farmer’s son who became a god. But a man who lets himself be worshiped can’t be seen praying. This year, with Nibenay’s army on his borders, he’d pray if he knew a god who’d listen.
He’s stuck between bad options. Call up his army too soon, the fields don’t get sown. Call them up too late, Nibenay attacks first. So he does the only thing that feels better than thinking about the future: he writes about the past.
Five years. That’s how long Manu marched with Jikkana in the Troll-Scorcher’s army. Five years of tracking trolls without ever fighting them. The army was a joke. Myron of Yoram kept trolls alive like a miser hoarding coins, scorching a few at musters to keep everyone afraid, but never winning the war.
Jikkana taught Manu everything: how to read, how to fight, how to survive. She was coarse and tough and drank too much. Eventually her body gave out. She coughed up bloody bits of lung. And when she couldn’t walk anymore, she handed Manu her knife and asked him to end it.
Manu killed her the way he’d wrung bird necks for his mother’s supper. Quick and clean. He held her body until it cooled. He dug a grave and wrote her name on a bone in human script, adding troll blessings on the underside. Then he stood there at dawn waiting for tears that never came.
He hadn’t cried since Deche. Not for Dorean. Not for anyone. Whatever part of him produced tears was gone.
After that, Manu started pulling night watch. He didn’t want to sleep because Dorean and Deche were waiting in his dreams. On one of those watches, a troll came up his hill. Young, with soft brown eyes and barely any of the warty armor adult trolls wore.
Manu killed him with a single swing of a hooked stone club. Every bit of balance he’d learned from being smaller and lighter than everyone around him. The hook went in up to the leather thong.
Standing over the dead troll, Manu didn’t feel triumph. He wondered about the troll’s name. He turned the body so sunrise would hit its eyes, because trolls were sun-worshipers. He wrote troll blessings in ash on the enemy’s chest. Then he hacked off the head and carried it back to camp.
This scene tells you exactly who Manu is. He kills without hesitation, but he can’t do it without thinking. He respects the trolls even as he fights them. That’s what separates him from everyone else.
When he throws the head at Bult’s feet, he expects gratitude. He gets a beating instead. Bult draws his sword. The others grab Manu from behind. They kick him and stomp him.
But Manu stands up. Bleeding, missing teeth. And he starts talking.
“Coward,” he calls Bult. Then he calls out the entire army. They can’t fight trolls without permission. He’s seen the eyes of fire at the muster, never in the field. Myron of Yoram doesn’t want to win. He wants the war to last forever.
The crowd turns. They call for Bult to summon the Troll-Scorcher. They shout Myron’s name together. And nothing happens. Because nothing ever happens when poor mortals call their champion.
The chapter ends with Manu looking back on this moment with a thousand years of hindsight. He had the puzzle in his hand. He could have rallied humans and trolls together against Rajaat’s champions. “Instead of rallying them all against Rajaat’s champions, I took the club they returned to me and smashed it into the side of Bult’s yellow-haired head.” He knows exactly where the road forked. He took the wrong path.
Chapter 6 will push both timelines forward. War is coming to Urik, and young Manu is about to meet the champion who started everything.