Balligot's gruff

[wyre]

*“Oooo,

I love to romble

Round in Gnomble

Wombling in a wagon down a neat brick road!

Ne’er stop to fomble

Ne’er stop to shomble

I just wanna womble down a neat brick road!

Score another pint and chomble it down!

Blomble if you feel you’re about to drown!

Now don’t you fomble! Don’t you shomble!

Chomble in a wagon down a neat brick road!”*

 

“Again, Kairen!” blombled my good friend Setyavas with uncontrollable laughter, “Just once more!”

*“I just wanna womble down a neat brick ro-ad!!”* I sang dismally, upsetting several woodland creatures with my shrill singing. Our wagon wombled on, whatever that means, as the dusk grew darker. We were both swirly-brained with beer, which we had haggled off a pair of Dwarri merchants the day before.

“You know, Kairen, I think you’re the finesht friend I have,” Setya bleated once he had calmed down. “Really, a dashing adventurer you are. Simply dashin’!”

“I love it when you’re drunk, Setya,” I replied. “You’re just so much nicer to me.”

Setya laughed his throat raw and swayed his hooves from side to side over the front end of the wagon, and the two herasi whose valiant task it was to pull it trotted faster in an effort to get away from him.

“By Akataur, I love Gnomble,” he said. “Folks are so generous. Like those dwarri. Lovely gentlemen, they were.”

“Pity we had to cheat them,” I replied, feeling moral failure rotting at my innards.

“A right pity,” he agreed sombrely. “We’re such scoundrels. Les’ do something over-generous when we get to Tri’vara.”

“Tip the whores!” I cried with drunken glee. Setya agreed, toasted my good health, and drained another flagon of beer. The frothy alcohol sloshed against his big buckteeth and dripped all over his furry belly.

“When abouts is Tri’vara anyways?” he asked. I tried to count off on my fingers how many days we’d been on the road since Charn. It didn’t help that everything was coming out in double.

“Eight... Four days,” I proclaimed. “Give or take a... a week.” Setya wasn’t listening, which was good, because I was wrong.

“What’s that?” he asked, squinting into the darkness.

Being Gnomble, he could have been referring to anything. Mammothine mushrooms sprouted in pretty clusters between the feathery trees, and a mountain-high ridge of shelf fungi formed a steppe across the wide blue horizon. My bleary eyes struggled to see more than a swarm of dancing firefly lights some way off the road.

“Faeries,” I said, and then began to slur a diarrhoea of elfkin names. “Pixies, sprites, leprechauns, nymphs, dryads, goblins...” I slipped deeper into the wagon bed with every word.

“Goblins aren’t faeries, are they?” Setya asked, plucking a mushroom from the basket at his side and chewing at the rim.

“Hexidreen, doxies, gnomes... eh? Goblins are too faeries! The Big Book says so.” I waved my finger in the air with this proclamation to underline its immutability.

“How do you know?” Setya asked absentmindedly.

“I KNOW OK, YOU ARROGANT GOAT!” I exploded. He dropped his mushroom and it was quickly trampled into the cobblestones by a large herasi paw.

“That was uncalled for. You know I didn’ mean to insult you, Kairen. Friends?” He held out a furry hand. Setya is fascinated by the idea of handshakes.

I paused and thought about it. “Yeah, friends.” I took his hand and shook it vigorously. He bleated happily.

“Hang on, what’s that?” he asked, staring once more at the penumbral black.

“Faeries,” I yawned, closing my eyes. “Yargles, hoodies, trolls...”

“TROLL!” Setya shrieked.

“Yes, trolls! Trolls are faeries too!” I insisted. Waving my finger once again, harder than before, so that my whole arm shook.

Setya grabbed fistfuls of my shirt with his furry fingers and invested all of his pitiful strength in shaking me from my drunken stupor. The herasi warbled in fear and I had the faint notion that something was awry.

“A troll, Kairen! A troll!”

I wobbled to my shaky feet and drew my fearsome sword, Leaper, from the scabbard at my side. Being as drunk as I was, I was painfully close to cutting off my own nose, but Leaper, thankfully, is a magickal blade, and swerved away from my skin whenever it came too near.

“Where?” I asked, staring into the darkness. Setya had disappeared in a blur of frantic scurrying.

“I’m over here,” a gruff voice replied.

I swerved around and looked down at the hulking beast whom was blocking the road. He held the herasis’ reins in one hairy fist, stopping them from running headlong into the darkness. A wide traveller’s cloak was draped over his shoulders, and his hood was up.

“Oh, excuse me. My friend here thought you were a troll.” I bowed politely, finding my footing on the wagon in case I needed it later.

“I am a troll,” the shadowy traveller replied. His words were obscured by his magnificent yellow fangs.

“Well, you certainly are a handsome fellow, aren’t you?” I replied politely. “I’ve never really met a troll before, you see, and I was under the impression that they ran about naked and couldn’t talk.”

He fixed me with his black eyes and was silent. With Setya having disappeared somewhere, I felt pretty foolish waving Leaper around, and I put it back in its scabbard.

“You didn’t happen to see where my friend went, did you?” I asked.

The troll peered around, and asked, “The goat man?”

“Sytiri, actually,” I corrected, “He’s very particular about that, but seeing as he didn’t stick to his own continent he really shouldn’t be.”

“He is hiding under the wagon,” the troll replied.

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“Troll!” Setya bleated, elaborating on the matter effectively but unnecessarily.

“Yes, I think we have established that the gentleman is a troll, Setya.” I tried to get a peek at him from where I was standing, but unfortunately there was a wagon between us and it did nothing to help my efforts. “Would you care to come back up here?”

The frightened whimpering suggested otherwise.

I sighed to myself. “Well, honourable mister troll. What might I do for you this lovely and laudable evening?”

The troll pointed one clawed finger into the darkness ahead, where in the moonlight I saw a swift stream and a wide stone bridge. “You have to pay the toll.”

“Oh, excuse me once again!” I gushed at my hasty foolishness. “I thought you said *‘troll’*. Setya, you can come out, he’s not a troll, he’s a toll collector. It’s a toll bridge!”

“Exareth’s blood,” the troll muttered. He shambled around the herasi and reached out for the lantern at the head of the wagon, breaking it off its metal stand with brute strength. He held the lantern up to his hooded face so that I could see his large tusks, the short mossy hairs growing around his lips and black eyes, and the full berth of his wide snout.

“I am a troll,” he repeated, “And this is a toll bridge. I demand tribute for your passage.”

“Oh,” I said. “A troll bridge toll bridge? What exactly do you want from us?”

The troll sniffed loudly and circled the wagon, his snout heaving. He took some time to decide.

“You got any beer?” he asked, eying the large keg at the back of the wagon.

“I’m afraid we’ve drunk the last of it,” I lied. The troll scowled, which wasn’t pleasant, as it revealed many more of his barb-like teeth.

“Meat then.” He turned back to the herasi, sizing them up.

“Hang on, can’t we negotiate?” I procrastinated, flicking out words like gold ingots to buy the herasi some time.

The troll snapped the larger herasi’s harness and placed an eager hand under the skittish creature’s belly. Even though I never learned to ride a herasi and had been kicked in the face by one not too long ago, I had an affinity with the beasts. Not as strong an affinity as Setya, but my propensity was certainly towards them walking away with their under beaks intact.

“You want to get to Balis’ Grave, you cross the bridge. You cross the bridge, you pay the toll.” The troll gave the impression that he was used to such banter and cared for it less than he did his own mother.

“Yes, but you’ve got such a great business opportunity here, I thought you might be interested in a far more extortive proposition.” I smiled a roguish and synaptic grin to remind him of how cooperative I was being.

“Yeah? And your drunken gut is gonna tell it to me?”

“I do some of my finest work when I’m drunk,” I replied in an offended tone. “And yes, I’ll tell you. You see, me and Setya here ran into a spot of trouble down in Charn. He’s a bit too keen to rush into shady business dealings than saner Cloven are... I blame myself, naturally, for smuggling him off Nalos in the first place. You wouldn’t believe what they do to the Sytiri in the Jewelled Cities. They’ve a prejudicial hate against minotaurs, too, Dei knows why...”

“Get to the point.”

“Yeah, well Charn’s smuggling organisation, whose name is Astor – it’s not an organisation as much as the one woman, but she’s tough – she hired Setya to wagon himself to Tri’vara with a cache of –“

“Don’t tell him!” Setya brayed urgently.

“Fireworks. Really Setya, he can’t eat them or anything.”

The troll snorted. “What are fireworks?”

I made a quick move to uncover the large crate in the wagon and plucked a bright red rocket from the assortment inside. I held it up in the moonlight so he could see it.

“An invention from the far west,” I replied, sounding like an aspiring merchant. “They’re made of all sorts of chemicals found on the island of Knale. When they explode if messes with magickal Hexes, so the fey have them ranked as dangerous illegal goods. These ones can’t do any harm, though. They’re fakes, you see.”

The troll shook his heavy head in disgust.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[wyre]

“I know. Humans, right? Sometimes I wish someone would round us up and kill us all. But that’s not the extent of it; Astor is far too clever,” I elaborated, amazed that I managed to sneak anything as sophisticated as a semicolon into my drunken ramble. “She’s sending the real goods in a wagon *after* this one. That way when it arrives the authorities will be busy with Setya here and miss the real fireworks being delivered.”

The troll snorted again, this time with barely detectable scepticism. “And if you know this, why do you take the road to Tri’vara and almost certain capture?”

“Because,” I said, trying to remember why we were taking the road to Tri’vara and almost certain capture, “Because –“

“Kairen is friendly with the Mahn!” Setya blurted. “Please don’t eat me!” he added obsequiously.

“Setya, you adorable billy goat, I knew I couldn’t trust you to keep a secret. How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t tell a pirate that you’re afraid of water, you never offer an ouwren a kebab and under no circumstances do you ever tell a troll that you’re friendly with the Mahn!”

“That last one’s new,” Setya complained defensively.

“Be that as it may, get some sense in that horny head of yours.”

“You told him about the fake fireworks!”

“And now we’re pointing hoofs are we?”

“GET ON WITH IT!” the troll hollered. His thunderous voice echoed into the evening and disrupted a nearby swarm of pixies, who cursed us with the foulest language and flew off in a huff, bickering to themselves.

“There’s no need to shout. Well, as the goat said, there are certain people that I happen to have accidentally bumped into and shared drinks with among the Mahn – they’re more acquaintances than friends really – and if it would get my friend Setya out of trouble, I could tip them off that there are smugglers half a day’s travel behind us and spare us the agony of prison. A smarter goat than Setya might also find someone to buy the fake fireworks afterwards, too.”

“Enough! How does this rant feature into the negotiation?” the troll asked. He tethered the herasi back to the wagon and shambled over to sit down on the roadside, anticipating a long and detailed explanation.

“Well, it just so happens that I’m not too pernickety about how I get Setya here out of his deal with Astor. I don’t much care for her, you see. There was some trouble a while back when we were travelling together down The Merrywanderer with some boat people and she left me in a pretty nasty spot of bother. I swear she left me with that eye on purpose... professional jealousy, you understand. Anyhow, I want payback, and if you help, I reckon you could walk away with three or four herasi instead of just the one. Not to mention various pretty fireworks, a keg of beer and a very longwinded story to tell any fetching troll ladies you come across.”

The promise of impressing troll women must have hit home, because he thought about it for a spell and decided it would be a worthwhile exercise.

“Half a day you say? Very well, follow me,” he resigned. “And watch that ridiculous goat-man. He is too skittish for this sort of work.”

The troll shambled off into the dark waving the wagon lantern. Setya peeked out from under the wagon and scrambled to his feet.

“I hate travelling with you, Kairen,” Setya whined, heaving himself back into his seat. “You’re always making deals with everyone you meet, winding up in filthy dungeons and dragging me into them with you,” he accused. It was one time, really. Just one time.

“Well yes Setya, that is what I do. What does your Almanac say an adventurer does?”

Setya ignored me and with an encouraging whinny to the herasi, the wagon left the road and followed in the troll’s wake.

The troll had a cosy little warren just beside the river, and after insisting that we wipe our feet on his muddy doormat, he let us come inside. It was a hollowed-out earthy mound, filled with all sorts of trollish things. A wide shelf by the door had an extensive collection of very sharp teeth, and in a dugout sink set in the far wall a heap of pots and pans lay in a tangle, crawling with beetles. Glass jars lined the walls, filled with disgusting jellies and oozes. The warren was obviously held up by the ingenious tunnel-magick commonly practised by goblins. Numerous little side burrows far too small for a troll suggested that goblins did live there, and with a ferocious grunt the troll called them out to meet us. The despondent creatures emerged sleepy-eyed from their holes rubbing their protrudent eyes and shaking their leathery heads.

“A late supper, I think,” the troll ordered the goblins, clearing the round dinner table in the middle of the room with a sweep of his hairy arm. He hung up his cloak, revealing a muscular chest calloused by battle, and told me to put my sword by the door.

“I don’t like magick blades,” he grunted. “Wretched fey in their thrice-cursed towers with their Ixthar-damned Hexes. Venison?” He offered. I took a plate from the waiting goblin, pat him on the head, and began to eat. Setya took a large root bulb out of a bowl and nibbled it nervously.

“Fey.” I agreed with a disgusted scowl. “I wish someone would round them up and kill them all.”

There was a hearty round of agreement, but like me Setya was crossing his fingers under the table.

“So how exactly do we go about doing this... Kairen? Is that right? Is the wagon guarded?” the troll asked, ripping into his venison.

“That depends, yes, Kairen Oppelger at your service, and yes again.”

“Balligot,” the troll said, formally introducing himself. “Why does it ‘depend’?”

“It depends because one troll is certainly not enough to intimidate a guarded wagon, but three will be. Also it depends because even with my comprehensive knowledge of faeries, I am uncertain as to whether a certain saying is truth, or as Kalispi’s folk call it, a faerie tale.” I eyed him eagerly, examining every bump and curve of his hairy hide.

“Then you are fortunate that my own knowledge of trolls is considerable,” Balligot replied, narrowing his eyes at my probing glances.

“Might I have one of those bulbs you’re guzzling Setya? Thanks.” I swallowed a chunk of bulb and cleared my throat.

“Is it true that you can skin a troll many times, but you can only kill it once?”

Setya choked on his root bulb. Balligot laughed and spluttered out a mouthful of ale. I calmly kept at my meal, pretending I had asked something normal and not at all insulting.

“A knife, Igzas, a knife,” he ordered one of the goblins. Igzas scurried to the table holding a large meat cleaver. Balligot took it and with neither a flinch nor a flutter he brought it slamming down on one of his clawed fingers. He picked the dismembered member up and passed it to me.

“A trophy, for your audacity,” he announced. I took the finger, sniffed it, and put it in my pocket. “Now look.” He held up his hand and I watched with glee as a fresh little finger sprouted out of the bloody stump.

“So it’s true.”

Balligot nodded and began to elaborate. “There is only one way to kill a troll, and that is to cut out his brain and burn it. Ours are an ancient people, often hunted by those envious of our strength. We never tire, and never sleep. It is only by this world’s Hexcraft that we have ever died, and even in that, we have brought down many fey before facing death. The fey hunters, the... ‘Mahn’... are bold warriors. I hate them, and it would have been wise had your billy goat kept quiet about your connection to them.”

“I apologise for my numerous character flaws,” I replied, filled with self disgust, “And were I in any position to do so, I would shuck my cowardly ways and tell the Mahn exactly where to stick their shattakai. As it is, I must now beg your bravery and patience to co-operate with my dastardly schemes.”

The troll straightened. “Yes, to matters at hand. The regeneration of my Gruff – that is what we trolls call our bodies – is a powerful trait, but ever since the fey declared us unfit to inhabit this world methods of our execution have become known. I will not feign imperviousness in the face of a greater enemy.”

“I agree whole heartedly. Bluffing has only ever worked for me the one time, and while it counted then, I wouldn’t suggest it now. At least, not without some trickery. You aren’t going to like my suggestion, but I’m going to say it. Ready?” I gasped for breath:

“I think we should cut off enough of your gruff to make troll suits for me and Setya so that we can pretend to be three trolls instead of one troll and two weaklings and thereby pose a greater threat to the caravan.”

The goblins ceased their scurrying and looked up expectantly at their master. Setya began to shake right down to the tip of his stumpy tail, and the air grew wet with potential bloodshed.

“Ok,” Balligot replied.

Skinning a troll – twice – required a degree of surgical talent which neither Setya nor I possessed. The room was cleared by the goblins, after which they obediently left to fill several buckets of water to mop up the impeding waves of blood we were to unleash. I handed the meat cleaver to Setya. He threw up and started crying. I took the meat cleaver back.

“Be careful that blade goes nowhere near my chest,” Balligot warned me. “Troll brains are wrapped around their hearts.”

“Point noted.” I swung the cleaver hard and fast into his back.

The troll gruff was thick, and Balligot hardly paid any attention as I idled the cleaver through his sinewy muscles.

“This is very impressive stuff,” I commented, wiping my bloody hands on my jerkin. “I’ve never cut through anything so thick. With a bit of work, this could make a decent set of armour.” Balligot took the comment with good grace.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[wyre]

“Hurry up.”

When it became clear that the whole warren was going to be baptised in blood, the goblins forsook their hygiene and armed themselves with hooks, scissors and breadknives. They joined the fray, doing a much finer job than I had done. After having his whole gruff skinned and his head cut off and regrown twice, I expected Balligot to be at least a little miffed. Like a true martyr he just washed himself off in the river and returned to watch us perform the finishing touches with a jovial smile curled around his tusks.

No short of schedule we had two workable troll suits, complete with helms and all.

“Hmmm; mine’s a little tight around the waist,” I noted, poking the fleshy suit with a gnarled claw. “But it’ll do.”

Setya required some persuasion before we could finally get him into his gruff, but once inside his troll skull sat firmer on his long nose and he appeared much more threatening than I did.

“Is this alright?” he asked self-consciously.

“You’re a natural,” Balligot replied. A hint of goaty smile peeked out of the gruff’s open mouth.

“Well,” I said, punctuating the cosy, blood-spattered warren with my cheer. “Now that the taxidermy is finished, let’s get down to grifting.”

 

We didn’t wait long at the bridge before the wagon arrived. It was larger than Setya’s, with a proper canopy and a much richer inventory. Two herasi trotted on either side of it, ridden by armed guards with fierce-looking swords.

The fresh gruff stank worse than a blagalast, which stinks worse than carici venom, if you’d believe that possible. I had a strange sense of déjà vu as Balligot stood forward to block the herasi.

“Troll!” the wagon driver shrieked.

“A toll? Is it a toll bridge?”

“Troll bridge! Troll bridge!”

Well, pay the fellow and let’s be off.”

“TROLL. TROLL BRIDGE!”

I was suddenly overcome by a great sense of pity for Balligot. It must be tough to be a bridge troll.

A leather-clad cad emerged from the back of the wagon, squinting in the morning light. He had a wicked-looking crossbow ready in his hand, but as haggard as he looked, I did not think he would be able to aim it properly.

“Ah. Now Niggle, next time be more specific. That’s three trolls.”

Balligot motioned at the bridge, just as he had with us. His being one of the Third World creatures implied that there would be a certain degree of repetition behind his actions, yet I hoped against hope that I would not be here for a third time.

“This is a toll bridge. Yes, a troll bridge toll bridge. We’ll be needing tribute before you pass.”

The crossbowman looked aghast. “Well, that’s hardly fair now, is it? We’ve come all this way, and here’s you trying to rob us blind. Ain’t there room for negotiation?”

“No. Great Ixthar, no.”

Balligot had three of the four herasi unharnessed in seconds, and handed the bucking critters to Setya, who crooned to them to calm them down. The guards were downright befuddled. One of them drew his sword, took one look at Balligot and put it away. The other kept peering around the wagon to see if the first had his sword drawn or not.

“But don’t you want to have, say, six herasi rather than three? There’s a large caravan right behind us, and if you –”

“Shut it. And put down that thrice-cursed crossbow.”

Looking back, that was a mistake. The wagon master immediately dropped the crossbow and it hit the neat brick road sharp-like, jarring the tiller. The bowstring whipped the loaded bolt into air-splitting motion.

Time froze.

Time sped up and the bold smacked clean into my thigh. The gruff caught the tip, but before I could stop myself I cried out in my noticeably human voice, “Son of a ...!”

The wagoners took a moment to realise what had happened, during which time I tugged my troll skull tightly to stop it falling off.

“Hang on, did you just –”

A nervous bleat escaped Setya’s mouthpiece.

“FAKE TROLLS! FAKE TROLLS!” the wagon master cried out. The guards drew their swords and spurred their herasi to charge.

Balligot tore the nearest guard off his herasi and slammed his head against the floor. The other took a swing at me. I immediately reached for Leaper and grasped air for a second, recalling that back at the warren I thought a troll would look silly with a sword.

I raised my arm just in time to prevent my own decapitation. The sword cut through several layers of gruff and stuck there.

“Whoa!” the guard cried, too busy holding onto his sword and falling off his herasi to come up with anything more intelligent. He hit the ground and I kicked him in the head several times with the gruff’s meaty foot.

The wagon master and his assistant were in two minds over how to continue. On the one side they could keep fighting the two fake trolls and one very real, blood thirsty monster Setya and I knew as Balligot. On the other hand they could run, and wise men that they were, they did.

Balligot made sure that both the guards were out cold before inspecting the wagon.

“I don’t know whether I should thank you or mash your brains together,” Balligot informed us, grinning his bestial grin as he hauled a keg off the wagon.

“Might I suggest the former?” I myself climbed onto the wagon and threw a few fireworks in my troll skull, using it as a bucket. “This is splendid loot. Look, Setya, more beer! These fellows must have met those dwarri!”

Setya was beside himself.

“Oh, Kairen! Dearest friend! Most awesome of adventurers!”

Ok, that’s a lie. I thought I could pull it off, but no. Setya spent most of the next few days puking and wiping gruff slime out of his coat, and he’s never let me forget it.

TO BE CONTINUED

[wyre]

It was second sunrise. We had finished moving all of our old gear into the bigger wagon and had a hearty lunch with Balligot and his goblins down in his warren. Say what you want about goblins, but they can clean up after a battle. The guards were tied to a herasi and sent along the road back to Charn, and the smaller wagon was being chopped into firewood at that very moment. Apart from our new wagon and heftier cargo, it was as though nothing had happened.

Balligot walked us back to the wagon, a new spring in his lumbering stride.

“I must thank you, Kairen Oppelger, for your aid. My serfs and I shall eat well for the next while.”

“Please, don’t mention it,” I replied with shamefaced honesty. Some eating habits take getting used to, and I felt bad about the herasis’ harsh fate.

“Safe travels on this road, you never know what may be waiting at the next bridge,” he said, smiling. He turned to Setya. “And you, billy goat. Stay close to young Kairen. Where wits are lacking, they should be shared.”

“Thank you, mister troll,” Setya brayed.

 

“You know,” I said, some time far over the bridge and deeper into the eastern woods, “Trolls aren’t half bad.”

Setya was calmer now that the whole ordeal was over, and was regaining some sense with his sobriety.

“The bad part is pretty bad though,” he said sagely. The wheels on the wagon creaked melodiously against the road as the herasi trotted onward. “Hey, Kairen?”

“Yes, dear Setya?”

“What was that song you were singing yesterday?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea.”

END OF STORRY