"Bridge-keeper! If you forbid my passage, make yourself known! Otherwise I will cross the bridge and pay you with my thanks."
From the deep shade under the bridge hopped a furious troll, wearing purple fustian. He was even more ugly than the previous troll, with warts and wens protruding from his forehead, which hung like a crag over a little red nose with the nostrils turned forward. "What is all this yammer? Why do you disturb my rest?"
"I want to cross the bridge."
"Set a single foot upon my valuable bridge and I will put you in my basket. To cross this bridge you must pay a silver florin."
"That is a very dear toll."
"No matter. Pay as do all decent folk, or turn back the way you have come."
"If I must, I must." Dhrun opened his purse, took out the silver florin and tossed it to the troll, who bit at it and thrust it into his pouch. "Go your way, and in the future make less noise about it."
Dhrun crossed the bridge and continued along the path. For a space the trees thinned and sunlight warmed his shoulders, to cheerful effect. It was not so bad after all, being footloose and independent! Especially with a purse which retrieved money spent unwillingly. Dhrun now tapped the purse, and the coin returned, marked by the troll's teeth. Dhrun went on his way, whistling a tune.
Trees again shrouded the path; to one side a knoll rose steeply above the path from a thicket of flowering myrtle and white dimble-flower.
A sudden startling outcry; out on the path behind him sprang two great black dogs, slavering and snarling. Chains constrained them; they lunged against the chains, jerking, rearing, gnashing their teeth. Appalled, Dhrun jumped around, Dassenach in hand, ready to defend himself. Cautiously he backed away, but with a great roar two more dogs, as savage as the first pair, lunged at his back and Dhrun had to jump for his life.
He found himself trapped between two pairs of raving beasts, each more anxious than his fellows to snap the chain and hurl himself at Dhrun's throat.
Dhrun bethought himself of his talisman. "Remarkable that I am not terrified!" he told himself in a quavering voice. "Well, then, I must prove my mettle and kill these horrid creatures!"
He flourished his sword Dassenach. "Dogs beware! I am ready to end your evil lives!"
From above came a peremptory call. The dogs fell silent and stood rigid in ferocious attitudes. Dhrun looked up to see a small house built of timbers on a ledge ten feet above the road. On the porch stood a troll who seemed to combine all the repulsive aspects of the first two. He wore snuff-brown garments, black boots with iron buckles and an odd conical hat tilted to one side. He called out furiously: "Harm my dogs at your peril! So much as a scratch and I will truss you in ropes and deliver you to Arbogast!"
"Order the dogs from the path!" cried Dhrun. "I will gladly go my way in peace!"
"It is not so easy! You disturbed their rest and mine as well with your whistling and chirrups; you should have passed more quietly! Now you must pay a stern penalty: a gold crown, at the very least!"
"It is far too much," said Dhrun, "but my time is valuable, and I am forced to pay." He extracted the gold crown from his purse and tossed it up to the troll who hefted it in his hand to test its weight. "Well then, I suppose I must relent. Dogs, away!"
The dogs slunk into the shrubbery and Dhrun slipped past with a tingling skin. He ran at full speed down the trail for as long as he was able, then halted, tapped the purse and went his way.
A mile passed and the path joined a road paved with brown bricks. Odd to find such a fine road in the depths of the forest, thought Dhrun. With one direction as good as the other, Dhrun turned left.
For an hour Dhrun marched along the road, while rays of sunlight slanted through the foliage at an ever lower angle.'.. He stopped short. A vibration in the air: thud, thud, thud. Dhrun jumped from the road and hid behind a tree. Along the road came an ogre, rocking from side to side on heavy bowed legs. He stood fifteen feet tall; his arms and torso, like his legs, were knotted with wads of muscle! His belly thrust forward in a paunch. A great crush hat sheltered a gray face of surpassing ugliness. On his back he carried a wicker basket containing a pair of children.
Away down the road marched the ogre, and the thud-thud-thud of his footsteps became muffled in the distance.
Dhrun returned to the road beset by a dozen emotions, the strongest a strange sentiment which caused him a loose feeling in the bowels and a drooping of the jaw. Fear? Certainly not! His talisman protected him from so unmanly an emotion. What then? Rage, evidently, that Arbogast the ogre should so persecute human children.
Dhrun set out after the ogre. There was not far to go. The road rose over a little hill, then dipped down into a meadow. At the center stood Arbogast's hall, a great grim structure of gray stone, with a roof of green copper plates.
Before the hall the ground had been tilled and planted with cabbage, leeks, turnips, and onions, with currant bushes growing to the side. A dozen children, aged from six to twelve, worked in the garden under the vigilant eye of an overseer boy, perhaps fourteen years old. He was black-haired and thick-bodied, with an odd face: heavy and square above, then slanting in to a foxy mouth and a small sharp chin. He carried a rude whip, fashioned from a willow switch, with a cord tied to the end. From time to time he cracked the whip to urge greater zeal upon his charges. As he stalked around the garden, he issued orders and threats: "Now then, Arvil, get your hands dirty; don't be shy! Every weed must be pulled today. Bertrude, do you have problems? Do the weeds evade you? Quick now! The task must be done!... Not so hard on that cabbage, Pode! Cultivate the soil, don't destroy the plant!"
He pretended to notice Arbogast, and saluted. "Good day, your honor; all goes well here, no fear as to that when Nerulf is on the job."
Arbogast turned up the basket, to tumble a pair of girls out on the turf. One was blonde, the other dark; and each about twelve years old.
Arbogast pinched an iron ring around each girl's neck. He spoke in a rumbling bellow: "Now! Run away as you like, and learn what the others learned!"
"Quite right, sir, quite right!" called Nerulf from the garden. "No one dares to leave you, sir! And if they did, trust me to catch them!"
Arbogast paid him no heed. "To work!" he bellowed at the girls. "I like fine cabbages; see to it!" He lumbered across the meadow to his hall. The great portal opened; he entered and the portal remained open behind him.
The sun sank low; the children worked more slowly; even Nerulf's threats and whip-snappings took on a listless quality. Presently the children stopped work altogether and stood in a huddle, darting furtive looks toward the hall. Nerulf raised his whip on high. "Formation now, neat and orderly! March!"
The children formed themselves into a straggling double line and marched into the hall. The portal closed behind them with a fateful clang! that ech6ed across the meadow.
Twilight blurred the landscape. From windows high at the side of the hall came the yellow light of lamps.
Dhrun cautiously approached the hall, and, after touching his talisman, climbed the rough stone wall to one of the windows, using cracks and crevices as a ladder. He drew himself up to the broad stone sill. The shutters stood ajar; inching forward, Dhrun looked across the entire main hall, which was illuminated by six lamps in wall brackets and flames in the great fireplace.
Arbogast sat at a table, drinking wine from a pewter stoup. At the far end of the room the children sat against the wall, watching Arbogast with horrified fascination. At the hearth the carcass of a child, stuffed with onions, trussed and spitted, roasted over the fire. Nerulf turned the spit and from time to time basted " the meat with oil and drippings. Cabbages and turnips boiled in a great black cauldron.