The Pixilated Peeress (24 page)

             
In a few minutes it was over. Zigram, Thorolf, Wilchar, and Odo stood panting and sweating amid a ring of bodies, most of them dismembered like beeves in a butcher shop. Blood spattered the garments of the sur
vivors as if it had been thrown at them by b
ucketsful. Nor was all the blood that of the Sophonomists; Thorolf had taken a slit in his skin along the ribs; his father had a wounded arm. The mailed bodyguards had fared bet
ter, but Wilchar's cheek bled copiously from a cut.

             
Looking up from tying ba
ndages, Thorolf said in Trollish: "Hail, Gak! How come here?"

             
"Wok say, lowlanders play trick. Kill Thorolf. Tho
rolf good troll in lowlander body. Go watch. If see trick, help Thorolf!"

             
"Good!" said Thorolf. "This Consul. Troll friend. My father."

             
G
ak ducked his head, grinned, and slapped Zigram on the shoulder, sending him staggering. "Ah! Good. Help us; we help you."

             
"Now both mine arms are lamed," grumbled the Consul, moving the bruised member. "What saith the troll?"

             
Thorolf translated. Zigra
m said: "Tell him I will do my best to get my bill anent trolls through the Senate. I owe it to his folk."

             
When Thorolf translated, and the trolls roared ap
proval, Zigram added with a smile: "Pray, no more friendly slaps! That last all but dislocated my
shoul
der. "

             
"Now," said Thorolf, "surely you have all the evi
dence you need to command an attack on Castle Zurshnitt!"

             
"Think ye so? Gunthram's convinced that so many of our men are secret Sophonomists that when so commanded, theyd turn on their o
wn officers instead. Think not but that we've considered the problem. More
over, Orlandus could use your Yvette as a hostage.

             
"I'll tell you! Proceed with this secret plan of yours. If by the time the election be over, Orlandus' flag still flies high, I'
ll see what I can do."

-

             
As Zigram and his bodyguards painfully prepared to mount and amble off, Thorolf said: "Father, how shall we communicate? We need something more regular than an occasional trading party."

             
Zigram shrugged. "I know not, son."

             
"
Let's say you develop a burning thirst for trollish beer and have arranged to receive a keg thereof each week. We can have our missives exchanged with each load."

             
"That horrible stuff!"

             
"You could give it to your cat when no witnesses be nigh."

             
"And
poison the poor beast? Anyway, she'd have better sense than to drink it."

             
"Well, send me some more paper, pray. I am almost bereft!"

             
Thorolf waved to the departing Consul and folded the garments that the invisible Sophonomist had worn. At least, Orland
us had not been so prescient as to realize that a naked spy in this cool, wet weather was likely to betray his presence by sneezing. He gathered his bundle and turned back toward the village of the Sharmatt trolls.

             
Looking
at Wok across the fire as they gnawed goat's meat, Thorolf said: "O Chief, I shall need help to overthrow the Sophonomists."

             
Wok took his time. "Get your father to declare us people, and we will help. Otherwise, not."

             
"Ah
—
a fine idea, but I know not ho
w to bring it about
...
"

             
"That is my final word, Thorolf. Any such venture were perilous to us trolls. Why lust ye after this? Hast not a good life here?"

             
"It's not that you treat me badly. I told you I had an eye on a lowland woman in Zurshnitt. She i
s a prisoner of Orlandus."

             
"What's wrong with Bza? Be ye not futtered enough?"

             
"Nay; that's not it. This one I loved ere I ever met Bza."

             
"So what think ye? To snatch this woman out of Or
landus' grasp and fetch her hither?" Wok gave a rum
bling chuc
kle. "We cavil not at a man's having more than one mate. Forsooth, it takes a real man
—
" Wok thumped his furry chest with the sound of a bass drum "
—
to ride more than one at a time. I know. If they quarrel, he must needs make peace amongst them. If they a
c
t in concert, they nag him, one after another, until he gives in to their desire. If ye fetch your lowland sweetling hither, it will be a sight for the ancestral spir
its how ye fare betwixt the twain."

             
Thinking, Thorolf gnawed. "Not sure am I yet what s
tratagems would further my sire's bill to benefit the trolls." The horrid idea that had been lurking at the back of his mind could no longer be denied. Taking a deep breath, he said: "Could some troll guide me through the tunnel under Zurshnitt, so that I
shall dis
cover whither it leads and where it gives access to the world above?"

             
After a gulp and a belch, Wok replied: "Very well. I shall send Gak."

             
Not only to guide me, thought Thorolf, but also to watch lest I turn against the trolls.

-

             
Ahead of the hillock on which stood Thorolf and Gak, the Venner Valley sprawled, in the misty midst of which lay Zurshnitt. Beyond the city rose the snow summits of the Dorblentz Range. Thorolf could just make out the dark protuberance in the middle of Zu
r
shnitt that was Castle Hill and its fortlet.

             
"Go back down," grunted Gak, pointing down the slope away from the city. He stepped off the crest and skidded down the steep incline, checking his slide with the butt of his spear.

             
Thorolf, wearing the yello
w robe he had taken from the dead Sophonomist spy, scrambled after. Gak halted at the base of a mossy outcrop of stone, forming a small cliff. The face of the outcrop was masked by a screen of creepers dangling from the bank above.

             
Gak's sky-blue eyes pe
ered out from under his shaggy, overhanging brows. "Be sure nobody see," he growled.

             
He pushed the creepers aside, laid a hairy hand against the stone, and pushed. Groaning, a section of stone revolved about its vertical axis until the slab stood perpend
icular to the face of the outcrop, half in and half out of the tunnel entrance.

             
Gak took a last look about and entered the hidden door. "Come!" he said in a stage whisper.

             
Thorolf took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and fought his rising panic.
He told himself: Come on, weren't you just as frightened when the howling mob of Tzenrican revolutionaries rushed upon you?

             
"What matter?" said Gak from within the tunnel. "Fear?"

             
At least, thought Thorolf, he could not let this back
ward aboriginal se
e that he was afraid. He forced him
self to step boldly into the tunnel, ignoring the painful pounding of his heart.

             
"Dark!" he muttered.

             
"You see," said Gak. The troll slipped off his shoul
der the strap of his goatskin bag. He took out a pair of rush
lights and a Rhaetian copper igniter, and he charged the device with tinder.

             
"Where get?" asked Thorolf, pointing to the igniter.

             
"Trade. Soon we make, too." Gak pulled the trigger and lit the rushlights from the brief yellow flame. He handed
one to Thorolf and pushed the door back to its closed position. The trolls, Thorolf saw, had cleverly fabricated the stone door to fit the tunnel entrance, with pivots at top and bottom.

             
The meager light enabled Thorolf to stride after Gak. The tunnel sl
oped down, leveled off, and sloped some more. Where the solid rock gave way to earth, the tun
nel had been lined with rough-hewn planking. The planks overhead were braced at intervals by posts against collapse.

             
They walked and walked; when Thorolf's rush
light weakened, Gak produced another. The floor became wet. In places mud had worked its way up between the planks, giving a slippery surface on which the yellow flames of their torches cast a flickering reflection. Thorolf thought he could hear the rumbl
e
of street traffic overhead.

             
Little by little his panic subsided, only now and then returning with a rush. He smiled in the near-dark; if he would never really enjoy being in a tunnel, at least he could now face such burrows with becoming fortitude.

             
"S
tep!" muttered Gak.

             
Thorolf found that he was ascending a stair, then walking on a level, then climbing again. Now and then the opening of a side tunnel gaped blackly in the rush
light. The passage became so narrow that both Thorolf and Gak had to turn s
ideways to squeeze through. Tho
rolf fought down a return of panic.

             
"Quiet!" breathed Gak. Thorolf gripped his scab
bard lest it clank or scrape against stone.

             
The tunnel ahead showed a feeble blur of gray against blackness. As they approached, Thorolf
saw that the left-hand wall had been chiseled out to form a rectan
gular opening, large enough to go through without stooping but only a span deep. The far end was blocked by a screen of some sort, which admitted enough light for Thorolf's dark-adapted e
y
es to see.

             
As Thorolf peered at the screen, he picked out a var
iegated pattern of darker patches. The mottling resolved itself into a familiar-seeming form. Then he realized that he was looking at the back of a well-known paint
ing. It was the huge pict
ure, in the assembly chamber of the Rhaetian Senate, of Amalt of Thessen, in armor, leading the charge against the Carinthians. To Thorolf's vision, the figures were reversed right and left.

             
Thorolf could not see anything in the room through the canvas.
He listened, holding his breath, but detected no sounds of human presence. He gently touched the back of the painting. The canvas swung out and away a little; it was evidently hung from the top. A sharp hiss from Gak made him jerk his hand away, and the p
i
cture returned to its normal position with the ghost of a thump.

             
Thorolf wondered where the chimney flue led up from the fireplace over which the painting hung. By rights it should pass through the space where he now stood; but the masonry beneath his fe
et seemed solid. There must be an offset, carrying the flue beneath his feet to the passage wall behind him and then up. Perhaps the Carinthian governors had built these holes to spy upon the king's officials or to escape from Zurshnitt in a crisis.