The Pixilated Peeress (18 page)

-

             
Thorolf walked swiftly back to Doctor Bardi'
s house. If the old wizard did not use the wrong formula and turn him into an olifant, Bardi could put a temporary spell of illusion on him. Thorolf might also, he hoped, be able to touch Bardi for a loan. A man on the dodge needed money, and some upland
p
easants were a tight-fisted lot.

             
At the iatromage's house, Thorolf was surprised to see the door ajar. Either Bardi was becoming more woolly minded than ever, or
...
Just in case there might have been intruders, Thorolf laid hand on hilt and pushed his w
ay in.

             
All was dark. Thorolf moved as silently as a stalking cat. He felt his way down the hall to the sanctum, the door of which was ajar. Silence lay as thick as the lid of a coffin.

             
He fired his igniter. The yellow flame showed a room in disorder
—
even greater disorder than usual. A chest had been upset, dumping out its contents. Books had been pulled from the shelves and scattered. Thorolf's boot struck one of the skulls lying on the floor; the cranium rolled away half a turn, seeming to grin up a
t
him.

             
Before his light went out, Thorolf spied an unlit can
dle in a copper candlestick atop a row of books. He recharged and fired the igniter and got the candle lit. By the yellow light he espied a human foot projecting from behind a settle. He moved q
uickly; the foot proved to be that of Doctor Bardi, who lay supine with his throat cut.

             
Thorolf grunted. While he and Bardi had never been close, he had known the old wizard for years, had ap
plied to him for the cure of ailments, and had become fond of
him despite the mage's failing powers. He won
dered: Was it common robbers, or Gondomar's men, or the Sophonomists who had slain the mage?

             
He thought the last the likeliest. Orlandus had learned from Yvette that Thorolf had rejected her offer. Thorolf ha
d heard that Sophonomists were implacable toward traitors and apostates. Their leader assured them that they might, without guilt or qualm, cheat, betray, as
sault, rob, or slay those hostile to the Cause.

             
Thorolf had shrugged off such remarks as the typ
ical inflation of rumors; but the speaker had evidently known whereof he spoke. They might well have added the name of Thorolf Zigramson to their list of enemies. Perhaps they thought that Bardi had advised him to re
ject Yvette
...

             
He scrutinized the ro
om. The murder must have oc
curred at least an hour earlier, soon after Thorolf had left Bardi's house the last time. Bardi's blood, black in the candlelight, was fast drying but was not yet alto
gether dry.

             
So there was no point in crying the haro. The
killers would have escaped; if Sophonomists, they would be back in their castle. From what Chief Constable Lodar had told him, there would be little use in setting the Constabulary after them. In fact, if Thorolf were found here, he would become the prime
suspect. While he avidly yearned to bring the killers to book and to avenge his friend, it began to appear as if it would be all he could do to assure his own continued existence.

             
The settle behind which lay the corpse had not been overturned, but the se
at lid had been raised and the contents scattered. Bardi had kept his dirty clothing in the settle, awaiting the weekly visits of the washer
woman. Beneath the soiled garments he also kept a small chest containing a substantial sum in gold; this chest was
now missing. Thorolf had advised the wizard to put the money in a bank; but Bardi, having once been burned in a bank failure, was bank shy. He had assured Thorolf that the chest was securely locked by a spell; but Thorolf knew that such spells were easily
cancelled by any competent magician.

             
Thorolf wondered how to get out of Zurshnitt. The army would surely have alerted the gate guards, and Bardi had not lived to put an illusion spell upon him. He still had the protection of Bardi's counterspell against
illusions and possession, but that would wear off ere
long.

             
Thorolf hunted until he came to a wardrobe holding Bardi's spare robes. He chose a loose one bedight with magical symbols and pulled it on over the knapsack.

             
A half-hour later, limping heavily
, bent to look hunchbacked, and leaning on Bardi's walking stick, he came to the West Gate. When challenged, he said in a disguised voice:

             
"I be Doctor B-Bardi's new apprentice, F-Fermin by n-name, may it p-please the gallant captain."

             
With a bored wave, the soldier signaled Thorolf to proceed. Thanking the small histrionic skills that he had obtained by taking part in amateur plays at the uni
versity at Genuvia, Thorolf vanished into the night.

-

             
Along
the higher valleys of the Sharmatts. Thorolf Zigramson plodded unhappily upward, ever upward. On either hand rose the somber green, conifer-clad slopes; above these the iron-gray screes; and beyond these the glaring white of snow and glaciers. With the gr
e
at love of his life in the goetic grip of Orlandus and three sets of enemies seeking his gore, his hopes of an academic career and of union with his beloved seemed farther off than ever.

             
He felt grossly inadequate. True, his officers had of
ten praised h
im for bringing his men up to standard in equipment, discipline, and general conduct; they had dangled promises of promotion. But he uneasily felt that his soldierly success had been at best a lucky ac
cident. Any time, some untoward event would expose hi
m
as an incompetent impostor.

             
He marched grimly on. At least, he had come through recent armed encounters unscathed. A professor at Ge
nuvia, Doctor Vipsanio. preached the philosophy called Chaoticism, which Thorolf found consoling. The bur
then was that
life, nature, and the universe were so unpredictable, and man so at the mercy of unforesee
able events, that one should neither give up hope in a parlous strait nor think that any success had made one proof against future disasters.

             
Since Thorolf had no
camping equipment, he had slept in barns whose owners furnished an overnight hayloft and a meal in exchange for stories and gossip. The third day out, he was getting into the heart of the Sharmatts, above the treeline. A few late-blooming flowers gleamed
i
n the scanty meadows. The barns had ceased, and the snowline lay not far above.

             
Thorolf thought he could handle trolls, from his ex
perience with Doctor Reccared's guide and with the few he had met on fishing trips into the Dorblentz Range. He rehearsed
the expected meetings. Thus he was not startled when a troll stepped out from behind a boulder and pointed an iron-tipped spear, croaking in Trollish:

             
"Who ye?"

             
Thorolf had learned Trollish from his few contacts and some book study. Shifting Bardi's wa
lking stick to his left hand to free his sword arm, he answered:

             
"Me friend."

             
"So?" said the troll, approaching with a broad grin on its wide mouth, displaying large yellow teeth. The creature was the height of a short human being but so massively musc
ular as to make Thorolf, as strong as any man in his company, feel puny. Beneath its beetling brows gleamed pale-blue, sunken eyes, a wide, flat nose, and a receding chin half concealed by a scanty beard of tawny-yellow hair like that which clothed its ba
r
rel-shaped torso and stubby, thewy limbs. Trolls wore no clothes, their fur providing adequate cover. This one said:

             
"No goat?"

             
"No goat? What mean?" said Thorolf, puzzled.

             
"Who you, lowlander weakling?" demanded the troll, ignoring Thorolf's question.

             
Thorolf identified himself, adding: "Me know Chief Yig, in Dorblentzes."

             
"Chief Yig? Ah!" The troll put a little bone whistle to its mouth and blew. A dozen other yellow-fu
rred, blue-eyed trolls emerged from behind the rocks and lei
surely strolled toward Thorolf, grinning. All bore spears, bows, or slings.

             
"Say know Yig," the first troll told its fellows.

             
"Ah!" said the other trolls in chorus, moving closer. "Yig you fr
iend?" asked one.

             
"Aye; us blood brothers."

             
"Ah!" said the trolls together. With a lightning rush, they sprang upon Thorolf from every side. Before he could draw a weapon, they had seized his arms and legs in a grip of inhuman strength and threw him su
pine. If they had been human, he would have given a good ac
count of himself; but he was like a doll in the trolls' hairy hands. Keeping his composure with effort, he said:

             
"What is? Me friend!"

             
"You Yig friend," said the first troll. "Yig us foe. So y
ou us foe."

             
It occurred to Thorolf that he should have looked into the shifting feuds and alliances among the trollish tribes before he ventured into their lands. He said:

             
"Me no harm. What you do?"

             
"You see," said the first troll. Four trolls, one g
rip
ping each limb, picked Thorolf up and bore him along the trail. To his demands, they merely grinned and re
plied:

             
"You see!"

-

             
After an hour in this painful position, Thorolf was borne into a kind of natural amphitheater, around which the mouths of several caves gaped in the hillside. The area was dotted with tents of hide and swarmed with trolls of both sexes and all ages. The a
i
r was thick with rough trollish voices, the clang of a forge, and an overpow
ering stench of unwashed bodies and rotting garbage.

             
At the farther end of the depression, a smelting oven rose against the hillside, sending up a plume of orange flame against
the darkling sky. Trolls bustled about it. Others emerged from the nearest cavern mouth with sacks on their bent backs, which they emptied on the piles of minerals surrounding the smelter. Nearby, a troll was forking browse into a pen containing a dozen g
o
ats.

             
Trolls clustered about the arriving party, croaking questions. The trolls bearing Thorolf shouted: "Make way! Make way! Have meat!"

             
They approached a formidable-looking troll with a necklace of bear claws, who sat on a boulder whittling arrow shaf
ts. Deftly removing Thorolf's sword and dag
ger, the captors set him on his feet, while two retained their grip on his arms.

             
"Who ye?" said the large troll.