A Borrowed Axe · Tovrik · JourneyChronicle

Between them he found a shelf where the wind forgot to blow. He ate bread that had been warm when he packed it and was now only a cold fact. He thought of the hearth in Anvilmar, the way the stones drank heat and gave it back all day. He did not turn around. A borrowed axe is a promise, even when the promise is only that you will bring it back dented instead of bringing back an excuse.

Near a frozen rill he met a trogg smaller than the first and meaner, the way small mean things often are. It threw a stone before it charged. The stone took him above the eye. Blood ran into the brow of his beard and froze there in little red beads. He killed it with three blows and a fourth he did not need, then sat down hard because his legs had filed a complaint.

Level 3 was not a song. It was a thicker neck and a shoulder that answered when called. He flexed his hands and felt the new strength sitting in them like a coin he had not spent. The axe looked smaller. He knew that was a trick, and he also knew a trick could keep you alive until the real thing arrived.

He made a camp that would have shamed a mountaineer and satisfied a dwarf who intended to see the next fire lit. Back to a boulder. Axe across his knees. Flames small enough to be a secret. They took the damp wood and turned it into light he could trust. Far off, something troggish knocked stone on stone, counting or warning or simply enjoying the noise. Tovrik listened until the knocking became ordinary. Then he slept in his armor, which is a young warrior’s way of saying he does not yet trust the world to keep its hours.