"Well—ah—" Perhaps if he shut his eyes and imagined Yvette ... Then Thorolf was startled to see, in the dimness, a tear trickle down Bza's hairy cheek; then another.
"Why, 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 sitting 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 and unabashed curiosity about Thorolf'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 without 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 dark, 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 entertaining her disappointed suitor Khop.
Thorolf stealthily withdrew and sat down at a distance, 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 fact he rather approved. It would dissuade her, he thought, from developing 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 vision 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 not interrupted the tryst.
Another disquieting thought crossed Thorolf's mind. Suppose Bza conceived during these trysts? Would Thorolf be deemed the father and held responsible? He was hazy on trollish customs; but Rhaetia had stern laws on parental responsibility. Desertion of one's family, for instance, was punished by fifty lashes for the first offense, 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, saying: "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 beneath 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 dangerous. They put converts into posts in our government, where they steal documents. When people oppose Orlandus, he frightens them into silence, or casts a spell upon them, or bribes them, or harasses them with lawsuits, or—"
"What is a lawsuit?"
Thorolf explained. Wok picked up a club, the head of which was a ball set with iron spikes. "If any lowlander tried that on me, I would see if his head was harder than this!"
"Such a program would not work amongst lowlanders, any more than their laws and courts would succeed amongst trolls. Besides, Orlandus has servants possessed 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 trolls to guard you likewise," 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-SEL 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. Because 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 made 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 settled 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 came 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."
"How about the murder? You know I'd never have harmed dear old Bardi."
"Lodar tells me they have taken in another suspect. The details I know not yet. As for desertion. I told Gunthram ye were on a secret mission for me."