The Long War

“Never gets any easier. Not since the very first time I stepped.”

“On Step Day. I know. Out of my father’s living room, with a Stepper he made, and left behind.”

Jansson, doubled over, thumped the ground, frustrated. “It’s not just the stepping. This damn illness, it gets in the way of doing stuff. You know?”

“I can imagine.”

The others waited the few minutes it took her to recover enough to stand straight. Sally was grave, patient. The kobold stood alongside her, restless, his own injuries obviously paining him. But he oddly aped Sally’s stance, and he cocked his head as if in mock-sympathy, his gaze flickering from one face to the other, as if seeking approval. Jansson turned away from him, repelled.

She managed to stand up and look around. There was the airship hovering overhead, Joshua’s Shillelagh, a massive, competent-looking, reassuring presence. Jansson took a deep breath. This world smelled of dryness, of baked, rusty stone. But it didn’t smell of dog, and that was a huge relief.

Sally touched her shoulder. “Look. I have to go back, with these reptile ray-guns, whatever, for the sake of Joshua. Always assuming we find the guns at all. But the beagles can’t reach you here; they can’t step. You could just go, Jansson. Get into that airship and—”

Jansson smiled tiredly. “And leave Joshua behind? Sally, I’ve known him since he was a boy. He is what he is, he’s where he is, partly because I was in his life from the start. You know? Pushing him. Like you, I’m not about to leave him now.” She looked at the kobold. “Though I have to admit I don’t know why this one hasn’t scarpered already. Why did you hang around to let them beat you up?”

“Drugs-ss,” the kobold said simply. “They drugged poor Finn McCool. Could not ss-step.”

Jansson said, “But you just stepped with us. The drugs have worn off now. Yet you’re still here.”

Sally grinned, an expression that reminded Jansson uncomfortably of the beagles, the wolf-people. “Oh, he knows that if he runs I will track him down. You won’t be able to hide. Will you, you little prick? Wherever you go I will find you, and kill you.”

The kobold shrugged; he had already seemed nervous enough. “Poor Finn McCool,” he repeated.

The heat, the dryness, were sucking at Jansson’s strength. “Shall we get on with this?”

“Good idea.” Sally glanced down the dry valley, at the looming stone mass of the building there. “Not too healthy for any of us, hanging around that thing.” Suddenly she had a ring in her hand. “This what you need, Finn McCool?”

On the beagle world, the trolls had gathered by a river bank. Joshua and Bill walked towards them. Bill was carrying a backpack containing Lobsang’s patent translation device.

Every step caused Joshua precise, relentless agonies. His lower back felt hot and damp, and he wondered if his stitches were ripping open as he carried the weight of the crossbow gadget. If so, the blood loss might kill him slow, even if he didn’t step to give the weapon the chance to kill him quick. Even his dodgy shoulder was hurting, a grace note added to the symphony of agony from his back.

He tried to concentrate on his surroundings. The river was wide, strong, placid, and its banks were dominated by green fields and forest clumps. From the fields, the beagles’ strange herd beasts had come to drink, sipping at the lapping water, lowering their misshapen heads.

And the trolls were here, by the water. A band of them had gathered at the closest point of the river to the Eye of the Hunter, where irrigation channels and open sewers cut across the ground to the town. As always the troll group, though sedentary in this world, was mobile in the Long Earth; at the fringe of the pack, scouts and hunters continually flicked away and returned, like ghosts.

There were hundreds of trolls, in this one band. Joshua could see they had been here for some time; the ground was scuffed and muddy, and there was a strong, unmistakable troll musk in the air. There were more bands like this, Joshua could see, spread along the river bank, and on the far side, and deeper into the country. The long call, unending, seemed to hang above them, a cloud of elusive memory.

Surely there were still trolls out there across the Long Earth; nobody had any real idea how many trolls there were in total. But this really did look to be where they were concentrating, he could see that. The centre of gravity of the troll population.

And the band before him was the very pivot of it all, as far as he was concerned. For there was Mary, the runaway from the Gap, and her cub Ham, unmistakable in the remnant of the silvery spacesuit the nerds at the Gap had dressed him up in.

As Joshua and Bill approached the trolls did not quite fall silent, but the volume of their song diminished. Ham sucked his thumb as he watched them, wide-eyed, apparently curious, like all young mammals.