A Lion Among Men Part 6

"Traum: the crossroads to nowhere," said a young clerk with a voice that broke in midvowel. "Or everywhere: it's the same thing, en't it?"

"I don't know Traum from Tenniken, or a troll from a trolley car," said Brrr, admiring his own cleverness.

The clerk rolled his eyes. "Looking to buy a good map?" He pulled out a colored chart of the district.

Brrr had never seen a map before. He struggled to make sense of the sc.r.a.ped lines and shaded patches. A wispy gentleman, in looking for some snuff, leaned over the counter to see. "I taught geographics and natural civics to unteachable boys for thirty years," he said. "Allow me to explain."

The Lion learned that Traum had sprung up in a gentle valley between folds of forested hills. The valley allowed for a train line originating in distant s.h.i.+z, to the southwest, and running to Traum and beyond. To the northeast, the line was built on steep and inhospitable ground. Trellised and b.u.t.tressed in precipitous style, the tracks climbed upslope until they reached the quays of the famous Glikkus Ca.n.a.ls.

"Famous to some but not to all," said Brrr.

The old fellow took a pinch of snuff. He was warming to his subject.

"The Glikkus channels are carved by some natural event of such mind-numbing antiquity that their origin can be explained only by myth. They serve as a merchant's route to the emerald mines in the western Scalps of the Glikkus. The mountain natives-called Glikkuns, though none can deny they are anything but trolls, really-take advantage of those natural waterways and our industrial rail line to bring their emeralds to market."

"Yes, but which way is Tenniken from here?"

"Traum is the trading post for the whole emerald industry. Why do you want Tennikin?" asked the clerk. "We have quite a line of emerald souvenirs, including a kind of fudge peppered with emerald dust." The lone box of fudge wore a mantle of ordinary dust upon it, suggesting that the delicacy was more a novelty than a necessity.

"Is Tenniken on on the rail line?" asked Brrr. the rail line?" asked Brrr.

"Look, there's some stumpyfolk now," said a burgher's wife, clutching her shawl about her, as if to preserve her respectability, even at this distance. "Stars and st.i.tches, but they give me the goosey s.h.i.+vers!"

Brrr regarded the Glikkuns through the open door of the establishment. They were stout and stubby. Like many creatures who spend a good part of their lives underground, they were bleached out.

"If we Gillikinese are pale, at least compared to the darker tribes of the Vinkus and the ruddy b.l.o.o.d.y Quadlings, Glikkuns are downright albinoid," murmured the doddery gentleman, who apparently couldn't resist a spontaneous lecture. "Am I right? Am I right about this?"

"They look like walking farmcheeses to me," agreed the goodwife.

A Glikkun family group loitered outside, deciding whether or not to venture into the shop. A blond moss capped the scalps of them all, from the papoosed newborn to the elders. The eyes of trolls, what Brrr could make out through their perpetual squint, glinted like steel, the pale white irises appearing to rise in blue alb.u.men. Both males and females sported hunches p.r.o.nounced enough to need wrapping in dedicated hunch-coats, each secured by b.u.t.tons and straps and elasticized hems.

They carried short, stout dirks in skarkskin sheaths.

"That's their chief," whispered the schoolmaster. "A woman named Sakkali Oafish."

A troll woman in leather leggings and a grey scarf rubbed the belly of her pregnant companion and scowled around her.

"She's just got wind of the scam-I mean the scheme," said the clerk. "Oooh, dark night, alley, that carving knife: not for me."

"When their babies want to suck, the Glikkuns offer the knife instead of the t.i.t," said the goodwife. "Puts 'em off milk at once and stunts their growth, making 'em more Glikkuny than ever."

"The Wizard of Oz wants emeralds, he gets emeralds," said the schoolteacher. "The Wizard of Oz makes the laws. In this case, the law of supply and demand. He demands it, they supply it. End of discussion."

"The Wizard of Oz," said the Lion, remembering the question of the Ozmists. He wished he had the nerve to say "The WOO" in a superior, derogatory tone, but he didn't trust himself to be able to carry it off.

"The Wizard of Oz, yes. You just crawl out from under some rock?-the chief potentate, if self-proclaimed, of the whole beloved country, thank you very much. He has recently kicked off a schedule of public works in the Emerald City that requires a goblin-h.o.a.rd of emeralds. A fourfold increase from the usual amount requisitioned. The Glikkuns have stepped up production in their mines and arranged for transport of the emeralds to Traum. Here they collect their fees in cash and grain and medicine."

"And vermouth," intoned the clerk, knowingly.

"You serve trolls in here, don't you," said the goodwife.

"Their coin weighs the same as yours," said the clerk. "Madame." "Madame."

"The economy of Traum relies on the trolls," said the schoolmaster. "And I don't know why they should be complaining. Business has never been so brisk for them. Ever. But, my dear boy," he continued to the clerk, "I do think you could make a legitimate argument for barring the door against an angry mob."

If the seven-person family group outside const.i.tuted a mob, it wasn't entirely angry. The Glikkun baby chortled as it sucked on a sugar stick.

"What's their gripe?" asked Brrr, going toward the back of the shop, pretending to inspect the wares displayed there-a line of women's foundation garments. Camisoles, bustiers, smocks, and pantaloons.

"Close the door up, mercy on us," hissed the goodwife to the clerk.

The schoolmaster rooted through his purse to pay for his snuff. "Sakkali Oafish has just gotten wind of an...an irregularity, shall we say, in the arrangements. The Traum merchants are paying the Glikkuns the going rate for emeralds, fair and square and in conformance with trade agreements-but our merchants are transporting the crop of jewels by rail down to s.h.i.+z, and they have begun to mark up the wares fourfold. For the simple job of loading emeralds onto the trains and unloading them several hundred miles south, the merchants are getting fat on the labor and product of the Glikkun miners."

"The Glikkuns get their due," said the clerk, "as I hear it told. The guild of traders has never stiffed the trolls a penny farthing."

"Contracts hold, but contracts can be unfair, too," a.s.serted the gentleman.

"We're in the wrong place at the wrong time," said the goodwife. "I'd have been a smarter woman to have gone visiting my sister in Tenniken like she asked me to instead of finding myself here on this day of all days."

"Tenniken! The home of the soldiers," said Brrr. "Can you get there by train, do you know?"

"I can. Not certain trains are serving the likes of you." can. Not certain trains are serving the likes of you."

"I don't understand why we're seeing trouble today," said the young clerk, whose pink-ham face was going pale and his voice cracking in higher registers than before.

"Aren't you paying attention?" snapped the schoolteacher. "Sakkali Oafish has just learned about the trade inequities. The merchants taking twenty florins for every five the trolls get. She's spitting nails. She's declared she'll call a strike unless the agents of the s.h.i.+z merchants pay double the negotiated rate for the emeralds they take, starting with the current s.h.i.+pment. Today. Before the Glikkuns leave. But the agents for the s.h.i.+z merchants are balking, saying that they aren't authorized to enter into a new agreement, nor do they have the funds on hand to pay an unantic.i.p.ated surcharge. Of course the Glikkuns are mad as hornets. And like all trolls, stubborn to boot. The whole town is waiting to see if they start to riot."

"Our husbands are getting their guns," said the goodwife. "They'll take care of the matter. The Traum civic militia drills once a week."

"Drills for ten minutes, drinks beer the rest of the evening," replied the schoolteacher.

"My Aimil is in the service and he can shoot to kill at fifty yards even when he's dead drunk." She sniffed in pride. "Good lad."

"I hope your Aimil is stopping for an ale then, because there will be shooting here before the moon is up."

"Mark my words. They'll show those Glikkuns the business end of a blunderbuss. Do some good, to boss the clammy little pasty-blobs about," said the goodwife.

"Severity rarely helps in instances like this," replied the gentleman.

"You setting yourself up as a court of justice all by yourself?" The goodwife raised her chins and rounded her lips as if tasting something unsavory. "Why en't you going to live underground with the mole folk, if you endorse them so pitifully?"

"I'm not a court of justice-merely a commentator for our ignorant visitor," said the schoolmaster mildly. In the spark of their little exchange, the Lion had retreated farther into the shadows.

"That petticoat will never fit you. It's a pet.i.te," said the clerk, either nastily or trying to make a joke and diffuse the situation. "A lady lady is pet.i.te." is pet.i.te."

"I'm shopping for a friend," replied Brrr, as frostily as he could, dropping the garment. He had thought it was some sort of headdress, with its lacy eyelets and scalloped hem.

"I suppose you're friends with them them?" asked the burgher's wife. "You arrived with them, and all?"

"I never did." Brrr tried harder for a tone of offense. "I have nothing to do with them."

"If you're not their weird bodyguard, then why en't you chasing them away for us? They'd run from you soon enough."

"I have nothing against trolls," said Brrr.

"That's a medal you got on your chest, en't it?" She glowered at him. "A medal for what? Valor in the line of shopping?"

"I was hoping to find the soldiers' garrison at Tenniken. This is all a mistake."

"What the soldiers wouldn't do with the likes of you!" She pursed her raspy lips at him and lowered her chin to look out under her brow, like a lizard from under a rock.

He stopped trying to explain. He only wished he could fade into the shadows in the shop the way, so conveniently, he'd been able to camouflage himself in the shadows of woodlands.

Before the Glikkuns outside could move on, the lane was filled with the stutter of drumming. The Traum Defense Brigade, no doubt. The goodwife looked hopeful at the thought of an encounter.

Not yet ready for a face-off-not with the baby troll drooling into its bibbing-Sakkali Oafish turned her group toward the doors of the shop.

"My virtue," said the goodwife to the clerk. "Shut the door, can't you?"

The clerk strode forward and said, streetward, "We're closed to all but residents with town accounts."

Sakkali put her foot in the door jamb. Her glance betrayed little fear. When she spoke, her voice was low and full of rasp. "Is that so? Then the Lion lives in Traum?" One hand settled on the infant's scalp, the other one on the hilt of her dirk.

A silence ensued. "She has a point," said the clerk to Brrr. "You'll have to leave."

"This is unseemly," said the schoolmaster. "There's no need-"

"I insist, or I'll summon the merchant defense," said the clerk. "I can't tell the boss that his s.h.i.+pment of deluxe Dixxi House dinner services got shattered in a brawl."

"I don't have the stomach for shopping today," said Brrr at last.

The door closed behind Brrr. He could hear the angry click of the bolt against the strike. Apparently that honorable schoolmaster had elected solidarity with his fellow citizens.

"You choose to stand with the aggrieved," said Sakkali Oafish admiringly.

"I choose no such thing," snapped Brrr. He looked up the way, and down. He wanted to get out of Traum before things became more unpleasant. "I don't suppose you know the way to Tennikin? Where the soldiers are?"

"The Wizard's soldiers?" Sakkali Oafish spat at their name.

"I knew a soldier who was-" But Brrr couldn't think of how to describe Jemmsy.

She was quick, that Sakkali. "You knew a soldier who betrayed his orders by befriending you?"

The local militia turned into the high street. A motley mob of overweight merchants, nervous teenagers, that same miserable minister with his beard. Some pitchforks, a rolling pin, several guns looking all too dangerous.

"I have a job to do," said Brrr. "I'm sorry for your trouble with soldiers, but I can't stick around and sort it out. I have an errand of mercy for the father of a dead friend."

"You're not going to leave us to face this human mob unarmed," said Sakkali. "What kind of Lion are you, anyway?"

At which question the Lion discovered the rhetoric of silence.

In any case, the trolls were hardly unarmed, he thought to say (but didn't); fellow Glikkuns were showing up from an alley here, a chapel gate there, supplied with pickaxes.

The local militia raised their muskets. The Glikkuns stooped to loosen cobbles from the roadbed. From the stove of some upper-story kitchen, out of sight, a teakettle hissed like a small storm of rain beyond the hills.

Once again, thought Brrr, my chief talent: wrong place, wrong time, wrong key. "Not my fight," he tried to explain. "I have a promise to keep..."

Backing up, twitching his tail in consternation, he heard a holy sound of bells splas.h.i.+ng from the steeple. Like the Lurlinists' music, only pretty. Brrr had not heard such melodic resonance before, and it sounded notionally of resolution, somehow.

Yet all around the town square of Traum, the hands of worried citizens were clanging gates closed, making an iron music. Wooden garden shutters slapped into place and were barred from the inside: You could hear the oaken music of the slats dropping. The free pa.s.sage of the high street and the market square, within moments, became a pen. A closed run for an enemy trapped within.

This is how a market town defends itself when it lacks an army garrison, thought Brrr, and only then did he realize he had been pad-docked, too.

Sakkali Oafish hadn't bargained on this reception. Perhaps this was a new maneuver, invented recently. "You, Lion!" she bellowed. "You smash a wall before they slaughter us, every one!"

"But-but-I have business in Tenniken-" He wasn't refusing, he wasn't-so what was he doing?

A barred iron gate right before him in his face, and all the pitching against it, to no avail-for it was strong, and he only a cub- Before he could shake the thought free, return to language, a shot rang out, or two. Brrr was lately familiar with gunshots in the woods, but here in the open, in a town built of stone and slate, the echo was terrible. Stupefied, he recoiled sideways, involuntarily, and he pitched into the stone arch of a covered well. Dizzied, dazed, he stood long enough to see Sakkali take a stone at her skull. She was brought solidly to the ground, like a sack of rice tilting over onto its side. He staggered and fell, and was sick on the cobbles.

"Here, here," cried the other Glikkuns, a small citizenry of them in their gravelly tones. Sakkali-dead or alive?-no one could tell. Two small fierce trolls lifted her body with hoa.r.s.e grunts like chortles. "Lion, to gate, to wall, for one, for all." Two or three of them leaped upon him. They hauled Sakkali's barrel-like form with them.

"No," he murmured, hoping only they could hear, "play dead, play dead! It's your only chance."

He shook them off and rolled onto his back, showing them how, letting his forepaws fall limp upon his chest like the unbuckled ends of a belt.

The trolls battered down beside him, as if he were a rampart, but only for an instant. Rifles were being aimed from all directions, and a supine Lion was a useless Lion to the Glikkuns. They abandoned him, making a rush for the lowest and weakest-looking of the gates, where a single sharpshooter was able to pick out one, two, three of them, and then the others took Brrr's advice too late, and played dead, and were taken into captivity.

Initially-that day, the next-the Traumanians went through a show of celebrating Brrr. His refusal to evacuate the Glikkun trolls was called brave; his collapse in the high street was deemed an act of public sacrifice. A masterstroke of mob-control strategy. Pacifism in the course of strike busting. Brilliant.

For a while Brrr believed the public relations campaign, until it dawned on him that the constant advertis.e.m.e.nt of his refusal to defend the Glikkuns diverted attention from those who had actually carried out the a.s.sault. Then he began to suspect that within any cry of applause may lie coiled a hidden sneer. Perhaps a well-deserved sneer.

He made plans to leave Traum as soon as it felt safe to do so, which was some weeks. He traveled by train toward Tenniken, afraid all the while that vengeful Glikkuns might dynamite the tracks. Run the carriages off the rails. Reclaim any cargo of emeralds in transport. Then hunt through the pa.s.senger cars to locate the Lion's cowardly carca.s.s and do to it what he had allowed to be done to the members of their tribe.

He found that his reputation preceded him. "Just my luck. The Champion Lion himself," said a portly journalist in the dining car, scribbling notes on a stenographer's pad. He looked fondly over the tops of his reading spectacles and lifted a gla.s.s of sherry to the Lion, who had been a.s.signed the second dinner sitting and directed to the journalist's table. "Have I heard that the grateful citizens of Traum pressed upon you a small purse, in grat.i.tude for services rendered?"

"Yes," said Brrr, with some reservation.

"Whatever funds they came up with would have been less than what they'd have had to pay the Glikkuns."

"Indeed," said Brrr. Some of which he had spent in the dry goods store, buying a vest in which to keep his cash. And a cane, to give him gravitas. "It was just a token honorarium."

"As befits a token hero. And look at that simply glorious medal for courage, to celebrate your achievement."

The twinkle in his eye was deadly. Brrr feigned an attack of indigestion and excused himself. Alone in a stinking loo, he found that his alibi of intestinal ailment had come true.

When he emerged, he didn't return to the dining car but wandered in the opposite direction. Upon reaching the last car on the train, he opened the rear door and stood on the juddering platform. Out of sight of anyone else, he allowed himself an unseemly spasm of shame. Then, when the train rattled onto a trestle bridge, crossing some dark unpleasant lake, Brrr let the medal on its leather belt fly out to hit the water with a final gleam.

Now it is over before it has really begun, he thought, my quest for approval. Only for Brrr it was never over, not really. An accidental half hour in the wrong village. His curse.