From a High Tower (28 page)

“Yesss,”
Pieter said.
“All rock. Pieter is tough.”

“I personally have never seen anything that could take him on in a fight,” said Rosa, and patted his hand again. “He's figured as a bit of a hero in our histories for a very long time now. I wish there were more like him! Pieter, you will know them again if you smell them, yes?”

By way of an answer, Pieter raised his head a little and inhaled. Well, “inhaled” was putting it mildly. He sucked in air so hard that her skirt flattened against the back of her legs and Cody's jacket flapped in the breeze he made.

Then Pieter stopped inhaling, and let out his breath in a long sigh. She had expected a fetid aroma, given what she had heard about the sanitary habits of trolls, but instead his breath smelled of nothing worse than a damp cave.

“Yesssss,”
he said, looking down at Rosa.
“Pieter will know them.”

“Thank you, Pieter,” she said, and turned back to the two of them. “Now if you run into trouble anywhere near here, just run for Pieter's bridge. He'll protect you.”

“Yesss,”
Pieter agreed, nodding.
“Pieter go back down now. Goats must go to bed. Then Pieter will listen to the rocks sing.”

“Thank you for coming up to see us, Pieter. Oh! And I brought you some honey from Bad Schoensee!” Rosa opened the rucksack she had carried all this way and brought out an enormous brown pot with a waxed stopper. “Here you are!” she said, giving it to the troll as Pieter reached carefully for it.

“Red Cloak good,”
Pieter said, somehow getting an expression of glee on his rocky face.
“Red Cloak never forgets what Pieter likes. Pieter thanks Red Cloak.”

“You deserve it, Pieter,” Rosa replied warmly. “Good night!”

“Good night, Red Cloak, Yellow-hair, and Hat Man,”
said Pieter, and then, carefully cradling the enormous jar of honey in one hand, he began climbing back down into the gorge. Within a few moments he was gone. From the bottom, they could hear . . . well, if rocks could hum, that would be the sound of it. Something like gravel falling, but somehow holding a tune in it.

“Hat Man?” said Cody, as they turned to go back to the encampment.
“Hat Man?”

“I never know what he's going to decide to call people,” Rosa chuckled. “I think he's never seen a hat like yours before.” Cody was wearing his white, broad-brimmed hat as usual, so Giselle could understand why Pieter had taken that as the mark of his individuality. “The first time I ever saw him, I was wearing the red cloak that my mother made for me, so that became my name, so far as he was concerned. He calls Hunt Master Gunther ‘Face-Moss,' so I think you got off lucky, Master Lee.”

“Reckon I did, at that,” Cody chuckled. “So . . . trolls is generally bad?”

“Almost always,” said Giselle, before Rosa could answer. “There are all manner of children's stories about them, and they generally end with someone getting eaten.” She glanced over at Rosa. “I thought that daylight turned them to actual stone, though.”

“It does. Sunlight never falls in that gorge,” Rosa pointed out. “Pieter knows every inch of it, and every place where it might be dangerous for him to venture. So if you are ever pursued by a troll, you should do your best to get somewhere that sunlight will fall.”

“I'll keep thet in mind,” Cody responded, “Though I've no intention of kickin' up a troll!”

“Stay out of caves, then,” Rosa and Giselle said at the same time, looked at each other, and laughed.

“Trolls sometimes guard treasure,” Rosa elaborated. “Pieter almost certainly has some. It's not that hard for a troll to get, even without ambushing travelers. People have accidents upstream and their bodies get washed downstream. When that happens, Pieter is not in the least squeamish about picking over the bodies.” She shrugged. “At least he doesn't eat them. He's a troll, and it's remarkable enough that he considers any human beings at all as friends. You can't expect him to act as if the bodies of dead strangers mean anything to him.”

“Well, I wouldn't,” Giselle agreed, just as they reached the spring and the start of the broader trail that would lead back down to the encampment. “The only thing I am
not
surprised by is how long he has considered himself to be an ally of the Bruderschaft, since he seems to be a very good creature, and probably has been from the time he was . . . well however trolls are made. Trolls live a very long time, I believe.”

“Very. Really, I have never heard of one dying of old age.” Rosa looked back at the dark gorge behind them. “I've asked him
how
long he's been our friend, and how he came to
be
our friend, but he only looked confused. I don't think he understood the question, because I don't think he understands the passing of time in the way that we do.”

It was deep twilight on the trail now, but Giselle did something she had only just learned how to do: she gathered Air Magic, made it visibly glow like a lantern, and set it to float above Rosa's head. She did the same for herself and Cody, and was rewarded by their nods of thanks. With the help of those lights, it was possible to see the trail quite clearly.

“Well, whatcha think happened?” Cody asked shrewdly. “Miz Rosa, I been around you long enough t'know there's likely one good notion, and prolly three or four buzzin' round that head of your'n.”

Rosa laughed. “You are right, and I do have an idea,” she said. “I think that when he was a very young troll, he must have encountered a proper Earth Master before he got a chance to learn to prey on people. I think that Earth Master found him this gorge, protected him, taught him how to be a shepherd, and got him his first flock. By treating him well, and respectfully, Pieter became a friend, which is how Giselle and I treat our Elementals.”

“A'course, that there Earth Master got hisself some mighty fine protection thataway,” Cody pointed out.

“Of course,” Rosa agreed. “Nothing is ever one-sided. I think that long-ago Earth Master recognized what a good bargain it would be for both of them. But trolls do not generally understand the concept of
bargains,
so he made the arrangements without mentioning anything of the sort, and only when Pieter grew in understanding did he introduce such things to him. Now, of course, Pieter understands such things very well; he bargains with us for the few things that he needs, and considers himself well paid for his protection with what we bring him. He recognizes us at once, even if he doesn't quite grasp how time passes for the rest of us. He's shown great sorrow and some confusion when we've told him someone he knew long ago is dead.”

“He understands death?” Giselle asked, then shook her head. “Of course he does, if he has a flock of goats and eats some, and sees dead bodies in the stream.”

“He has quite a sophisticated concept of death,” Rosa replied. “I have been down in that gorge, and near his cave he has . . . well I would call it a
memorial garden,
made with stones with the names of people he has learned are dead on them, all planted with ferns and mosses. Sometimes he just sits there and contemplates them.”

“Really!” Giselle found herself touched. She would never, ever have expected that sort of behavior out of a troll, of all things.

The encampment was in sight now, and just as well, because twilight had truly fallen, and the lights and campfires were welcome sights ahead.

“One day, when I am not being run from pillar to post by my duties, I intend to come here and sit down with Pieter for several days and write down his history,” Rosa continued. “He might not understand the passage of time, but there is nothing at all wrong with his memory. And he might not remember peoples' proper names, but he never forgets what he calls them. I think that by starting with me and going backward, I can figure out how long he has been there. And I can certainly get the tale of his earliest recollections out of him. After that I can at least match the rather descriptive names
he
calls people with the records of the Brotherhood.”

“That'll make for a hell of a yarn,” Cody agreed, as they reached the edge of the encampment. “Jest a damn shame nobody'll ever read it but yer Brotherhood.”

“Yes,” Rosa agreed wistfully. “It is.”

Todtnau was a slightly smaller town than Bad Schoensee, and although it did have a lovely waterfall, it lacked the lake, and so it was not as much of a spa destination. Still, they were able to support a run of four days, and even better, because Kellermann had made sure the show was there over a market weekend, the cost of supplies was cheaper than it had been in Bad Schoensee. Kellermann had counted on this, and made some very shrewd bargains while they were there. The Americans did like their meat, and sausages and hams would keep in the warmer weather better than anything other than salt beef.

Kellermann called the foremost of the members of the show together after the last show in Bad Schoensee. He had a map spread out on the table. “I wanted to show you all this, so there would be no rumors that I was leading you around in circles,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “Look, there is Bad Schoensee,” he said, pointing. “And here is Todtnau. Now, here was my problem. We could have gone this way, up to Freiburg, which is a city and we probably could stay for two weeks or more. But it is a long way, and only one village on the way, so there would be no way of earning much money on the road there. So I rejected that.”

Everyone nodded, including Giselle.

“Or, I could see that we could backtrack a little bit, and take this route to Neustadt. It's longer, and circuitous, but there are seven towns on the way, and we can stop and do at least two days in each. It won't be a lot of money, but we also don't have to do the full show, just the main tent, so there won't be as much to set up. So that is what I arranged.” His finger traced more of their route. “From there, we go to Donnau-Eschingen, then back this way to Freiburg with a great many shows on the way, and from
there
I can arrange things farther north, all the way up to Strasbourg and Baden-Baden. We can have at least three weeks in Freiburg, I think, which will give me plenty of time to arrange more bookings.”

“That looks pretty fine to me, Kellermann,” Cody said as they all contemplated the map.

“I'm not planning on taking us farther north than Baden-Baden, because Wild Bill's show is in the north.” Kellermann shook his head. “You know what happened when you followed him in France. Half-filled tents. That was why you canceled the rest of the bookings and went down to Italy.”

“It was worse'n half-filled, sometimes we didn' have no more'n a dozen customers,” Cody told him, as the others nodded, agreeing with him. “I knew you was smarter than that thief that made the first set of bookin's!”

Kellermann relaxed, and smiled. “Well, I do know my countrymen. And I do know that the people here in the Schwarzwald tend to be overlooked when it comes to traveling entertainments of our size. I'm glad you approve.”

“Say, Kellermann,” Texas Tom spoke up. “You reckon we'll be able to go home by November?”

“Go home?” Kellermann said. “Well . . . yes. You'll have more than enough to book passage for everyone home from, say, Amsterdam or one of the Italian ports. If you all plan to disband, you won't need to bring the tents, or any of the livestock except those you really want to, and I can certainly arrange for all of it to be sold. But you won't go home rich.”

Faces fell all around the table.

“On the other hand,” Kellermann continued, “If you were to stay another year here, as Buffalo Bill is planning on doing, your reputation will have increased dramatically
and
you will benefit from the reputation of Buffalo Bill. I will be able to book you for a month or more at Heidelberg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Munich,
none
of which will have seen Buffalo Bill's show, since he is planning on returning to England next year. I can confidently predict that yes, if you remain until . . . October after next, you
will
all go home rich. We only need to find a cheap place to spend the winter. Italy, perhaps. . . .”

Giselle did some quick mental calculations. “What about free?” she asked. “You'd only need to provide provisions for yourselves and the animals.”

Now everyone was looking right at her in astonishment. “Where would we find some place to winter for free?” Kellermann asked cautiously.

“Where I came from,” she told him, and quickly described the abbey. “It's in very good repair. It used to hold several hundred nuns. The only thing that is not in good repair is the old chapel, which we had deconsecrated. You could probably put the cattle and the buffalo in there, and some of the horses that wouldn't need stabling, if there are any that tough. It would be rough living, but”—she shrugged—“free. And more sheltered than winter camping.”