He walked two hours, discovering along the way a clearing planted with plum and apricot trees, which had long gone wild.
Dhrun inspected the clearing. It seemed deserted and quiet. Bees flew among buttercups, red clover and purslane; nowhere was there a sign of habitation. Still Dhrun stood back, deterred by a whole host of subconscious warnings. He called out: "Whoever owns this fruit, please listen to me. I am hungry; I would like to pick ten apricots and ten plums. Please, may I do so?"
Silence.
Dhrun called: "If you do not forbid me, I will consider the fruit to be a gift, for which my thanks."
From behind a tree not thirty feet away hopped a troll, with a narrow forehead and a great red nose from which sprouted a mustache of nose-hairs. He carried a net and a wooden pitchfork.
"Thief! I forbid you my fruit! Had you plucked a single apricot your life would have been mine! I would have captured you and fattened you on apricots and sold you to the ogre Arbogast! For ten apricots and ten plums I demand a copper penny."
"A good price, for fruit otherwise going to waste," said Dhrun.
"Will you not be paid with my thanks?"
"Thanks put no turnips in the pot. A copper coin or dine on grass."
"Very well," said Dhrun. He took the copper coin from his purse and tossed it to the troll, who gave a grunt of satisfaction.
"Ten apricots, ten plums: no more; and it would be an act of greed to select only the choicest."
Dhrun picked ten good apricots and ten plums while the troll counted the score. When he plucked the last plum, the troll shouted: "No more; be off with you!"
Dhrun sauntered along the trail eating the fruit. When he had finished, he drank water from the stream and continued along the way. After half a mile he stopped, tapped the purse. When he looked inside the penny had returned.
The stream widened to become a pond, shaded under four majestic oaks.
Dhrun pulled some young rushes, washed their crisp white roots. He found cress and wild lettuce, and made a meal of the fresh sharp salad, then continued along the path.
The stream joined a river; Dhrun could proceed no further without crossing one or the other. He noticed a neat wooden bridge spanning the stream, but again, impelled by caution, he halted before setting foot on the structure.
No one could be seen, nor could he discover any evidence that passage might be restricted. "If not, well and good," Dhrun told himself. "Still, it is better that first I ask permission."
He called out: "Bridge-keeper, ho! I want to use the bridge!"
There was no response. Dhrun, however, thought he heard rustling sounds from under the bridge.
"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 dimbleflower.
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!"