The horse turned and looked down towards the gorge. The road here was pitted and cracked. Young trees were pushing up between the stones. The forest crowded in on either side. In a few years, no one would know there’d even been a road here. By the look of it, no one knew now.
“You’ve come here to die?”
“No. But there’s something I’ve always been meaning to do. Ever since I was a lad.”
“Yeah?”
Cohen tried easing himself upright again. Tendons twanged their red-hot messages down his legs.
“My dad,” he squeaked. He got control again. “My dad,” he said, “said to me—” He fought for breath.
“Son,” said the horse, helpfully.
“What?”
“Son,” said the horse. “No father ever calls his boy ‘son’ unless he’s about to impart wisdom. Well-known fact.”
“It’s my reminiscence.”
“Sorry.”
“He said … Son … yes, okay … Son, when you can face down a troll in single combat, then you can do anything.”
The horse blinked at him. Then it turned and looked down, again, through the tree-jostled road to the gloom of the gorge. There was a stone bridge down there.
A horrible feeling stole over it.
Its hooves jiggled nervously on the ruined road.
“Rimwards,” it said. “Nice and warm.”
“No.”
“What’s the good of killing a troll? What’ve you got when you’ve killed a troll?”
“A dead troll. That’s the point. Anyway, I don’t have to kill it. Just defeat it. One on one. Mano a … troll. And if I didn’t try my father would turn in his mound.”
“You told me he drove you out of the tribe when you were eleven.”
“Best day’s work he ever did. Taught me to stand on other people’s feet. Come over here, will you?”
The horse sidled over. Cohen got a grip on the saddle and heaved himself fully upright.
“And you’re going to fight a troll today,” said the horse.
Cohen fumbled in the saddlebag and pulled out his tobacco pouch. The wind whipped at the shreds as he rolled another skinny cigarette in the cup of his hands.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And you’ve come all the way out here to do it.”
“Got to,” said Cohen. “When did you last see a bridge with a troll under it? There were hundreds of ‘em when I was a lad. Now there’s more trolls in the cities than there are in the mountains. Fat as butter, most of ’em. What did we fight all those wars for? Now … cross that bridge.”
It was a lonely bridge across a shallow, white and treacherous river in a deep valley. The sort of place where you got—
A grey shape vaulted over the parapet and landed splay-footed in front of the horse. It waved a club.
“All right,” it growled.
“Oh—” the horse began.
The troll blinked. Even the cold and cloudy winter skies seriously reduced the conductivity of a troll’s silicon brain, and it had taken it this long to realise that the saddle was unoccupied.
It blinked again, because it could suddenly feel a knife point resting on the back of its neck.
“Hello,” said a voice by its ear.
The troll swallowed. But very carefully.
“Look,” it said desperately, “it’s tradition, okay? A bridge like this, people ort to expect a troll.
“‘Ere,” it added, as another thought crawled past, “’ow come I never ‘eard you creepin’ up on me?”
“Because I’m good at it,” said the old man.
“That’s right,” said the horse. “He’s crept up on more people than you’ve had frightened dinners.”
The troll risked a sideways glance.
“Bloody hell,” it whispered. “You think you’re Cohen the Barbarian, do you?”
“What do you think?” said Cohen the Barbarian.
“Listen,” said the horse, “if he hadn’t wrapped sacks round his knees you could have told by the clicking.”
It took the troll some time to work this out.
“Oh, wow,” it breathed. “On my bridge! Wow!”
“What?” said Cohen.
The troll ducked out of his grip and waved his hands frantically. “It’s all right! It’s all right!” it shouted, as Cohen advanced. “You’ve got me! You’ve got me! I’m not arguing! I just want to call the family up, all right? Otherwise no one’ll ever believe me. Cohen the Barbarian! On my bridge!”
Its huge stony chest swelled further. “My bloody brother-in-law’s always swanking about his huge bloody wooden bridge, that’s all my wife ever talks about. Hah! I’d like to see the look on his face … Oh, no! What can you think of me?”
“Good question,” said Cohen.
The troll dropped its club and seized one of Cohen’s hands.
“Mica’s the name,” it said. “You don’t know what an honour this is!”
He leaned over the parapet. “Beryl! Get up here! Bring the kids!”
He turned back to Cohen, his face glowing with happiness and pride.
“Beryl’s always sayin’ we ought to move out, get something better, but I tell her, this bridge has been in our family for generations, there’s always been a troll under Death Bridge. It’s tradition.”
A huge female troll carrying two babies shuffled up the bank, followed by a tail of smaller trolls. They lined up behind their father, watching Cohen owlishly.
“This is Beryl,” said the troll. His wife glowered at Cohen. “And this”—he propelled forward a scowling smaller edition of himself, clutching a junior version of his club—“is my lad Scree. A real chip off the old block. Going to take on the bridge when I’m gone, ain’t you, Scree. Look lad, this is Cohen the Barbarian! What d‘you think o’ that, eh? On our bridge! We don’t just have rich fat soft ole merchants like your Uncle Pyrites gets,” said the troll, still talking to his son but smirking past him to his wife, “we ’ave proper heroes like they used to in the old days.”
The troll’s wife looked Cohen up and down.
“Rich, is he?” she said.
“Rich has got nothing to do with it,” said the troll.
.“Are you going to kill our dad?” said Scree suspiciously.
“’Course he is,” said Mica severely. “It’s his job. An’ then I’ll get famed in song an’ story. This is Cohen the Barbarian, right, not some bugger from the village with a pitchfork. ’E’s a famous hero come all this way to see us, so just you show ’im some respect.
“Sorry about that, sir,” he said to Cohen. “Kids today. You know how it is.”
The horse started to snigger.
“Now look—” Cohen began.
“I remember my dad tellin’ me about you when I was a pebble,” said Mica. “‘’E bestrides the world like a clossus,’ he said.”
There was silence. Cohen wondered what a clossus was, and felt Beryl’s stony gaze fixed upon him.
“He’s just a little old man,” she said. “He don’t look very heroic to me. If he’s so good, why ain’t he rich?”
“Now you listen to me—” Mica began.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for, is it?” said his wife. “Sitting under a leaky bridge the whole time? Waiting for people that never come? Waiting for little old bandy-legged old men? I should have listened to my mother! You want me to let our son sit under a bridge waiting for some little old man to kill him? That’s what being a troll is all about? Well, it ain’t happening!”
“Now you just—”
“Hah! Pyrites doesn’t get little old men! He gets big fat merchants! He’s someone. You should have gone in with him when you had the chance!”