The Pixilated Peeress (19 page)

             
Thorolf repeated his identification and added: "Who you?"

             
The big troll chuckled and replied
in fluent if heavily accented Rhaetian: "My good fellow, ye have the honor of addressing Chief Wok, ruler of the Sharmatt trolls. Since ye have trespassed without leave on our lands, without bringing tribute, and since the dragon hath taken many of our go
a
ts, we find that we must needs use you to balance our diet."

             
"Dost mean to eat me?" cried Thorolf.

             
"Aye," said the troll.

             
Doctor Reccared, Thorolf remembered, had a theory that tales of trollish man-eating were merely a reflection of racial prejudice
, and that they never ate human be
ings. Reccared, he thought, should be in his boots right now. He said:

             
"If you do this, it will cause you endless trouble with the Zurshnitters. I am a respected sergeant in the Rhaetian Army." Wok merely
chuckled again.

             
Thorolf raised his voice: "They'll send an army and slaughter your folk, the innocent with the guilty!"

             
Wok wagged a thick forefinger. "My dear fellow, we shall make sure that nought of you or yours remain in such form that the deed co
uld be traced to us. Your garments, however necessary to lowland weaklings, are of no use to us; they shall therefore be burned. We shall make new hilts for your weapons, to fit our larger hands."

             
"How do you plan to cook me?" asked Thorolf.

             
The troll
chief pointed to the center of the clearing. A large iron pot was suspended by a gantry over a fire laid but not lit. "We shall boil you, of course," said Wok.

             
Thorolf fought to retain his composure. "Not alive, I hope!" he said in a casual tone, as if t
hat were merely a minor inconvenience.

             
"Nay, nay. It were too much of a struggle to get you into the pot alive. Ye shall be well dismembered."

             
"I knew not that you trolls could make so big a caul
dron," said Thorolf. As he spoke, he frantically searche
d his memory for something he had heard or read.

             
Wok chuckled. "That is our smith's masterpiece. It took endless hammering and reheating and filing to make it watertight."

             
"Tell me, O Chief, how come you to speak such excellent Rhaetian?"

             
"Why not? A
m I not a graduate of your Horgus Col
lege?"

             
"Indeed? That's unusual!"

             
"I'll tell you, since ye should have a tale to lighten your final hours. Years ago, ere ye were born, some well-meaning lowlanders thought, if trolls possessed the fruits of lowland
education, they would turn into fellow lowlanders. So the then chief, my uncle Tep, chose five likely lads, including me, and sent them to Horgus.

             
"I boast not when I say that, of the five, I was the only one to do well with the language; the others cou
ld speak it only brokenly. When we completed our courses, five years later, we returned to the Sharmatts, as ye lowlanders call them. That is, all returned save poor Zid, who perished of some lowland disease.

             
"I fear we disappointed Chief Tep. We had pic
ked up a smattering of Rhaetian; we had learned that the world was round; we could eat as ye do, with knives and those new Tyrrhenian things called forks. We had also acquired a taste for strong drink and insisted on wearing those woven things ye lowlande
r
s cover your bodies with. Amongst us they are not only useless but also harbor vermin.

             
"Worse yet, we had lost all our trollish skills. We could not milk a she-goat, or guard the flocks against wolves and bears, or track ihex and chamois, or scale a clif
f, or make fire by rubbing sticks. We could not endure to be out in foul weather. In other words, we were good for nought.

             
"One by one, my comrades perished. Yub fell off a cliff. Mro was fool enough to attack a dragon single-handed and was devoured. Nak
went back to Zurshnitt and was last seen begging in the streets for money to buy your crazy-water.

             
"Seeing the results of lowland learning, I devoted myself to proper trollish skills and did not badly. When Uncle Tep died, the tribe, reasoning that I co
uld better deal with the lowland menace because I spake lowlandish, chose me as chief.

             
"A few years past, some Zurshnitters came up to make us a similar offer, to train some of our youths. I declined but proposed in turn to train a number of their youths
in our skills and make real men of them!"

             
"Very wise," said Thorolf. "What's this about trib
ute?"

             
"If ye would enter our lands," said Wok, "ye must first get my leave. When ye arrive, ye must bring this tribute, which we set at two goats per lowlande
r." Wok pointed to the pen with the goats. "See yonder? That is the tribute brought earlier today by a party of moun
tain climbers from Madjino, where they speak Tyrrhe
nian. Why lowlanders should come up here to climb for pleasure, I cannot fathom; but t
h
ey do. They hope to ascend Mount Viggos ere the snows of winter forbid."

             
Thorolf said: "With due respect, has no one told you that it is wrong to eat your own kind?"

             
Again Wok uttered that irritating snicker. "Aye; four summers past, a preacher of one
of your lowland cults came, calling upon us to accept his true faith. Since we found him amusing, we let him live a while.

             
"Then another preacher came, from the West, and another from the East. These three fell to quarreling, one claiming there was but o
ne god; another, that there were two; and the third that there were three. In time we wearied of their screaming. They were delicious, especially the monotheist." Reminiscently, Wok picked his teeth with a splinter from the arrow shaft he was shaving.

             
Th
orolf felt sweat beading his brow. "Would you not say it were right to do as one is done by?"

             
"I suppose so," said the chieftain.

             
"Well then, we Zurshnitters do not eat trolls. So by what right do you eat us?"

             
"Ye lowlanders may not eat of our flesh
, but ye have natheless eaten our country."

             
"How mean you?"

             
"Ye stole our land!" roared Wok with clenched fists. "Once we roamed the entire ranges of the Helvetians and many lands besides. Then ye spindly, hairless crea
tures came. Having better weapon
s, ye drave us into the mountains. Ye fetched new diseases, whereof my
riads of us perished. Year by year ye forced us higher into the ranges. When we protest, ye offer a new treaty, which ye no sooner sign than ye begin to violate. Now ye have devoured a
l
l the apple save the core, and some have designs on that as well.

             
"Ye tell us one should not eat one's own kind; but whose kind are we? I know your Senator Zigram pro
posed to recognize us as fellow beings. With mine own ears I heard your Senate howl the
proposal down as the greatest jest in years."

             
Thorolf frowned. "With your own ears? You cannot have been in the Senate chamber. Hast magical pow
ers?"

             
Wok winked. "Ah! Ask me no questions and ye shall hear no taradiddles. By the way, is that Senator Z
igram the same as he who now sits as consul?"

             
"Aye; he is. He is also my father."

             
"Ah!" said Wok. "Every lowlander who wishes something of us doth claim he be a brother or son or cousin of some great lowland chief, thinking to overawe us. We have swall
owed that bait too often to believe such a tale anew.

             
"But hold! Edifying though this talk be, we cannot continue it for ay. Your coming relieves us of the need to slaughter goats." To the trolls holding Thorolf, Wok said: "Take, cut up, boil!"

             
Thorolf
struggled, shouting: "But he really is my father!"

             
The trolls nevertheless hauled him toward a large wooden block, behind which stood a troll with an over
sized cleaver.

             
"Chief Wok!" Thorolf shouted, seeking an idea to forestall his demise. "It is pro
ven impossible for so advanced a folk to practice cannibalism!"

             
"Eh?" said Wok. "Ye, a lowlander, presume to say what is impossible to
me
!
"
To the trolls he added: "Bring back!"

             
"Aye, sir!" said Thorolf. "A professor at Genuvia University explained it.
When a folk has advanced so far in handicraft as to make cauldrons, they will have given up cannibalism. So the old jests about cannibals boiling outsiders in stewpots mean nought. It were what they call an anachronism, like Rhaetians fighting with stone
axes."

             
"Hm," said Wok. "'That shows how much your learned professors know. We may be advanced enough to make cauldrons but not enough for ye lowlanders to accord us the rights ye do each other."

             
Thorolf had an inspiration. "Chief, you said a dragon is
taking your goats."

             
"That is so."

             
"A male or a female dragon?
"

             
"
A female."

             
"Why haven't your brave tribesmen slain the beast?"

             
"By day it lurks in its cavern, where it is certain death to venture. It issues forth at night to raid our herds by ste
alth. Several who have attacked it in the dark have perished."

             
"Could I but rid you of this dragon, were that not a fair price for my life?"

             
Wok snorted, his broad mouth turning down in an expression of contempt. "If our brave warriors have failed, thi
nk ye a lowland weakling would fare better? In Trollish: "Take back to block."

             
"Wait!" shouted Thorolf. "You prize gold, do you not?"

             
"Aye, since we learned that this pretty but useless metal can be traded for lowland things and used to bribe lowland o
fficials to leave us alone."

             
"Could I get rid of the dragon and also get you a lusty sum in gold, how would that be?"

             
"How much?" demanded Wok.

             
"Let us say a thousand marks."

             
"Not enough." In Trollish: "Take back!"