Free Iron Axe by Steven Harper Page A

open and strode outside, gathering the night in a pitchy cloak. The crowd of torches flickered in the dooryard. Danr stomped toward them, jaw set. His heart beat like a fast drum, and fear sang a shrill tune in his ears, but he kept moving. A hand plucked at his arm.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Aisa hissed. Talfi stood beside her, looking frightened. “This way!”
    Danr shook her off, though his mouth was dry as sand. “Now that I’ve killed a wyrm, it’s time to face a mob.”
    A few more steps took him within hearing of the crowd. The men had stopped at Alfgeir’s hall. Danr picked out individual faces in the torchlight: Anders the thatcher, and Mikkelthe pig farmer, and Henrik the butcher, and Soren the farmer, who had lost his father to frostbite last winter. And all the others he knew. They weren’t friends, but he had known them all his life. Now they were calling for his death. Anders carried a length of heavy rope.
    Danr was not surprised to see White Halli in the lead, torch in one hand, sword in the other. Golden firelight gleamed on the silver blade. Danr
was
surprised to see Rudin standing beside Halli. Rudin was Halli’s son, barely four years old. Before Danr could react further, Alfgeir’s door opened and the man himself stepped into the chilly night air, beard a-thistle with indignation. Norbert followed.
    â€œWhat’s happening here?” Alfgeir demanded. “What do you want?”
    â€œWe’ve come for the monster who killed the Noss brothers,” Halli said. “Trollboy and his kin—” Halli spat. “—destroyed their house and crushed their bones.”
    â€œI did no such thing.” Danr moved into the circle of torches. The men in the crowd, perhaps a dozen in all, tightened their grips on their makeshift weapons. One or two stepped back, but the rest held their ground. The light hurt Danr’s eyes, but he refused to blink. Instead he folded his arms over his broad chest. “Why are you causing trouble, Halli?”
    â€œDid your pet witch warn you we were coming, Trollboy?” Halli said.
    Danr just stared at him, unmoving despite the tat-tat-tat of his heart. The word
witch
was filled with a danger all its own, and Halli was attaching it to Aisa. Witches were beaten, branded, and burned or beheaded. He thought of Aisa’s head rolling away from a bloody axe, and all his words shriveled away. Halli noted the silence with glee.
    â€œDumb as a rock.” Halli turned to his son. “Take a long look, Rudin, and remember this day. The Stane are monsters,and monsters deserve to be exterminated.” He raised his voice. “Men, let’s—”
    â€œTouch one hair on his head, Halli,” Alfgeir said, “and I’ll take it straight to your father.”
    Halli and the men stared in astonishment. So did Danr.
    â€œTrollboy here does the work of ten men around my farm,” Alfgeir continued. “He’s stupid, he has no manners, and he’s filthy most of the time, but he isn’t a murderer.”
    Halli blinked. No one, least of all Danr, had expected Alfgeir to stand up for Danr. An air of uncertainty stole over the men. Several torches wavered. Norbert and Alfgeir’s two other sons, all heavily muscled from years of work in the fields, looked stonily over their father’s shoulders. Norbert rubbed his arm but remained silent.
    â€œPapa?” Rudin asked, tugging at Halli’s tunic. “Are you going to kill the Stane monster?”
    â€œWe found troll tracks in the wreckage,” Halli said, trying to rally. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”
    â€œHow do you know what troll tracks look like,” Alfgeir asked reasonably, “when no one here has ever seen a troll?”
    â€œThe tracks definitely weren’t human!” Halli shot back. “And only a troll could have—”
    â€œTrollboy’s feet are human.” Alfgeir