The Pixilated Peeress (22 page)

             
Foll
owing Gak among the tents, Thorolf was startled when Bza caught his hand in her hairy one. He found the touch repellant, though Bza was only doing what was expected of her. At the big tent in the middle, Gak pulled aside the flap, thrust in his head, and
c
ried:

             
"Out, Mother, aunts! Wedding!"

             
Several of Wok's wives emerged. One said to Tho
rolf: "You lowland weakling, take Bza mate? You be good mate, or all women of tribe beat shit out of you!"

             
"Have strong yard!" cried Gak. closing the tent flap behin
d Thorolf and Bza.

             
A little pottery lamp dimly lit the tent. A small iron pot in the center flickered and smoked: this took the edge off the autumnal chill but did not heat the tent enough to comfort a "lowland weakling." To one side lay a heap of bear a
nd wolfskins.

             
Bza fingered Thorolf's jacket. "How can f
u
tter in false skin?" she asked.

             
"'Come off," replied Thorolf, feeling more and more appalled. The sight and strong odor of Bza's squatty body aroused no lust whatever. What if he could not get i
t up? He had heard jokes about shepherds and ewes but had no such tendencies himself.

             
"Take off," said Bza. "False skin scratch." She lay down on the pile of skins and spread her stout, yellow-furred form.

             
In for a penny, in for a mark, thought Thorolf
. One by one he shed his garments. At last he approached the supine troll girl with lagging steps, as if on his way to the headsman's block. This was certainly not the initi
ation into the pleasures of love about which he had fan
tasized. He began to shiv
e
r.

             
Bza raised herself on one elbow. "What matter? No stiff?" she said, pointing.

             
"Well
—
ah
—
" Perhaps if he shut his eyes and imag
ined Yvette
...
Then Thorolf was startled to see, in the dimness, a tear trickle down Bza's hairy cheek; then another.

             
"W
hy, Bza!" he said. "You weep!"

             
Her wide mouth puckered, and she sobbed. "Sorry. Do duty. Come on, futter! Get over!'"

             
"
What matter? No want?"

             
"N-nay. Me try, but you so ugly! No hair on long, thin body, like snake!"

             
"No want, no do," said Thorolf
, sneezing and sit
ting down beside her. He stroked her scalp as if she had been a pet animal. "No fear. Me kind." He sneezed again.

             
She sobbed more than ever, stammering: "M-me love. Love Khop. Few day. me Khop mate. Then you come."

             
"Be Khop mate," he
said.

             
"No can. Wok say us mate."

             
"No worry. Me no say; you no say. No tell Wok. Me love other, too. Many days, me go; you be Khop mate. Good?"

             
"Good!" Bza threw her thick arms around Thorolf and gave him a hug that,
he thought, came close to cracking a rib. He said: "Now sleep!" and blew out the lamp.

-

             
On the next day's hunt with Gak, Thorolf had to endure Gak's coarse jokes an
d unabashed curiosity about Tho
rolf's nuptials. He passed off Gak's remarks with vague
nothings, and the young troll ceased after Thorolf, with a lucky crossbow bolt, brought down an ibex.

             
A few days later, returning from a similar hunt with
out game, Thorolf approached the little tent that Wok had assigned him. He was about to throw open
the flap when a faint sound from within made him pause. The sound, he perceived, was that of heavy breathing from two occupants.

             
He wormed a finger into the crack of the flap, teased it open a hairsbreadth, and put his eye to the slit. Inside was still d
ark, but the thread of light through the crack glanced from the golden fur on the hindquarters of a male troll, rhythmically rising and falling. He could not see the other occupant but inferred that Bza was enter
taining her disappointed suitor Khop.

             
Tho
rolf stealthily withdrew and sat down at a dis
tance, facing so that he could watch the tent out of the corner of his eye as he worked on arrow shafts. It was nothing to him if the mate whom Wok had foisted on him took her former betrothed as lover; in fa
c
t he rather approved. It would dissuade her, he thought, from de
veloping an amorous passion for her nominal mate. For all that she avowed him hideous, long propinquity could stimulate lust between the most unlikely pair.

             
A movement at the edge of his vi
sion caught his eyes. A huge, burly young male troll emerged from the tent, glanced around with comical furtiveness, and slunk away. Thorolf pretended not to see him. Knowing the enormous strength of trolls, Thorolf thanked his paganist gods that he had n
o
t interrupted the tryst.

             
Another disquieting thought crossed Thorolf's mind. Suppose Bza conceived during these trysts? Would Tho
rolf be deemed the father and held responsible? He was hazy on trollish customs; but Rhaetia had stern laws on parental resp
onsibility. Desertion of one's family, for instance, was punished by fifty lashes for the first of
fense, a hundred for the second, and so on upward until the offender expired.

             
It was high time that he attacked his problems in Zurshnitt. Any hue and cry
over Bardi's murder should by now have died down. Besides, although inured to the hardships of life in a tent, Thorolf was getting tired of goat's meat, barley porridge, and weak beer.

             
After the evening meal, Thorolf sought out Wok, say
ing: "Chief, know
you aught of the Sophonomists and their leader, the wizard Orlandus?"

             
Wok swelled his furry chest and smote it with his fist. "Vile catiffs! I hate them! If I had Orlandus here, I would twist his head off, slowly, and boil it for soup!"

             
"Why so?"

             
"He tells the stupid lowlanders we be evil beings, demons. When he hath power, he says he will kill us all
—
even the little ones because, he says, 'nits make lice'!"

             
"Hast heard him say this with your own ears?
"

             
"
Aye."

             
"So your tunnel under Zurshnitt
has a branch be
neath the old Castle Zurshnitt?"

             
"How knew ye?" barked Wok.

             
"Simple reasoning. Now harken, O Chief. I and my father and many other Zurshnitters also hate and fear these Sophonomists. But they are clever and danger
ous. They put converts
into posts in our government, where they steal documents. When people oppose Or
landus, he frightens them into silence, or casts a spell upon them, or bribes them, or harasses them with law
suits, or
—
"

             
"What is a lawsuit?"

             
Thorolf explained. Wok picke
d up a club, the head of which was a ball set with iron spikes. "If any low
lander tried that on me, I would see if his head was harder than this!"

             
"Such a program would not work amongst lowland
ers, any more than their laws and courts would succeed amon
gst trolls. Besides, Orlandus has servants pos
sessed by spirits called deltas, which obey him without question."

             
"What canst do?"

             
"I have a plan, and I need your help. First I must get in touch with my father, the Consul.
"

             
"
How?"

             
"I shall write a
letter. The next time you send a party to your border to trade with the Zurshnitters, they can give this letter to one of the merchants."

             
"Will this merchant pass it on to the Consul? Canst trust him?"

             
Thorolf shrugged. "My father will pay the messenger for the service; and one must betimes take a chance. Then he and I shall confer, alone at a place I know. He will have bodyguards, but I shall tell him to keep them away."

             
"Ah! Then I had better send tr
olls to guard you like
wise," said Wok.

             
Thorolf shook his head. "I fear not my father's men, since he and I are on good terms. Nobody else need know."

-

             
Thorolf's letter read:
THOROLF TO CONSUL ZIGRAM,
GREETINGS. WILT MEET ME AT THAT POOL ON THE RIS-S
EL WHERE YOU TAUGHT ME TO FISH? WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS. SET DATE AND KEEP YOUR ESCORT OUT OF SIGHT AND HEARING.

             
On a drizzling day in autumn, Thorolf set out for the pool at which he had first met Yvette of Grintz. Be
cause the peasantry might have heard he was wanted and seize him, he carried, folded up in his pack, a little one-man tent of hides. Under this he spent a damp, uncomfortable night.

             
During the afternoon of the second day he came to the Rissel. The fog ma
de black ghosts of the trunks of the leafless trees and the wan fronds of the conifers. Away from the stream, the dominant sound was the constant drip of water.

             
Thorolf followed the river upstream to a rapid, where he could cross by leaping from boulder
to boulder. Then he followed the riverbank down to the pool where he had been fishing when Yvette had manifested herself. As he came in sight of the misty flat, he saw a bulky figure, in official crimson, sitting on a folding stool and fishing. He speeded
his approach, calling: "Father!"

             
The Consul heaved himself to his feet and embraced his son. "Well, Thorolf!" he said. "Thou lookst well."

             
"The simple mountain life, sir."

             
"But I fear thou also stinkest."

             
"Sorry about that; but where I've been there's no water deep enough to bathe in."

             
"Anyway, it joys me to see you alive and hale. Where hast been?"

             
"Living with the Sharmatt trolls. Is there a warrant out for my arrest?"

             
Zigram sank back on his stool,
the feet of which set
tled into the watery soil beneath his weight. "Merely a summons as witness. Gunthram was hot to charge you with murder, desertion, and a treasonous plot with the Carinthians. I squelched that last accusation, pointing out that it ca
m
e from the Sophonomists and should hence be handled with tongs; also that a band of rogues from Carinthia had attacked you in the Zoological Park
—
something to do with the fugitive Countess of Grintz."