]
I would be the first to admit I did not know as much about trolls as I had made it seem. As confident as I had sounded, most of my information came from half remembered wiki scrolls. Twilight vampires never forgot anything. They could tell you in precise detail a conversation they had half a century ago as though it had happened this morning, every word, every pause, every shift in the other person's expression. But that photographic memory only applied to after the turning. Everything before it remained exactly as fallible and patchwork as any human recollection, which meant the sum total of my troll knowledge was whatever I had managed to absorb during what I could only describe as a very casual research session.
What I did know was that Trolls were giant humanoid creatures with a functional level of intelligence, capable of simple sentences and basic communication with humans. They usually lived in the wild but had a well documented habit of setting up under bridges, which they often built themselves, and charging toll from travellers passing through.
Witchers used to kill them fairly routinely, something about certain trolls having a taste for human flesh, but that had largely fallen out of practice. Most people had simply gotten used to having a troll around. Paying the toll was cheaper than bridge maintenance and considerably less complicated than filing a complaint with anyone who might actually do something about it.
They were not petrified by sunlight. That was apparently a myth and I had made a mental note of it specifically because it felt like the kind of detail that would get someone killed if they assumed otherwise.
Oh and Yennefer kept a giant mountain troll penis in her collection somewhere... I did not know what to do with that last piece of information.
I was about halfway across the bridge when I decided to look back. I was not very far from where I had started but the fog was doing an excellent job of filling in the gaps, a thick grey curtain that softened everything behind me. Good enough. After one last check in both directions I walked to the side of the bridge, swung my legs over the railing, and dropped.
The landing was softer than it had any right to be. The platform beneath me was solid, well constructed even, the kind of steady that you did not expect from something built by a creature that looked like a geological event wearing trousers. It was crouched at the far end of its improvised platform.
The first thing that registered was the size. It was enormous in the way that certain natural formations were enormous, not dramatic about it, just present and immovable and built on a scale that made the bridge feel suddenly much smaller than it had from above.
Its skin, if you could call it that, looked less like flesh and more like the side of a cliff face that had decided to get up and move around. Thick and layered, rough hewn, the colour of old stone after rain, dark grey with patches of brown and dull green where moss had taken hold in the crevices. Its back especially was heavily ridged, great plates of hardened hide stacked across its shoulders like a natural armour that had simply grown that way over a very long time. Its limbs were thick as old tree trunks, hands resting on knees big enough to palm a cartwheel.
Its face was broad and flat, a wide blunt jaw that took up most of the lower half of the head, a nose that was more of a suggestion than a feature, and two small eyes set deep under a heavy brow that caught the dim light from under the bridge and held it with a dull patient gleam.
On the beasts head, seated with surprising stability given the surface it had to work with, was a bucket. A simple wooden bucket, the kind you would find at the bottom of a well, sitting at a slight angle above his brow like he had put it on in the dark and never bothered to adjust it. Around the neck on a length of rope hung what appeared to be three tin cups, some spoons, and something that might have once been a spear head.
From somewhere around where a waist might be on a creature built like a collapsed mine, hung a piece of leather. Old and worn and cracked at the edges, tied off with a length of rope that had seen better decades, a sort of loincloth.
Scattered around it on the stone were the casualties of the last several days, my nose, and the context provided from stolen memories identified each one; a clay jug of Temerian Rye sat closest to its right hand, empty, tilted against the bridge, beside it two more jugs, one of Dwarven Spirit with the cork still in, one of Mahakaman Spirit with the cork decidedly not in, the contents having made their way partly down the troll's throat and partly into the cracks between the stones.
Further along the spread, a squat bottle of Kaedwenian Stout had been opened, sampled once apparently, and then set aside with the particular finality of something that had not met expectations. A skin of Mahakaman Mead lay on its side, the sweetness of it cutting through everything else when the river breeze shifted, 'the dwarves' greatest contribution to world culture' now mostly contributing to this beasts drunkenness. Two bottles of Redanian Lager, both empty, had rolled to the edge of the stone and stopped there.
It noticed me approximately ten seconds after I noticed it, which was either a testament to how drunk it was or how quietly I had approached. Its small eyes fixed on me with the bleary deliberate focus of something that was working harder than usual to see straight.
Then it decided to stand up.
The process was ambitious. It began well enough, both hands finding the stonework behind it, the enormous frame beginning to lever itself upright with the slow dignity of something that had done this a thousand times and fully expected to do it again. It got approximately three quarters of the way to vertical before its feet, which had apparently not been consulted on the plan of standing up, disagreed with the direction things were going.
It went down face first.
The impact was considerable. The stone beneath the arch shook. One of the empty Redanian Lager bottles that had been teetering at the edge finally made its trip into the river. The tin cups around its neck rang against each other like a very small and very alarmed bell tower. The bucket on its head, defying all reasonable expectation, stayed on.
A groan rose from the floor. Low, resonant, the sound of something vast and unhappy communing with the stone it was currently pressed against.
I looked at it for a moment. Well. I don't miss this about not being human at least.
I crossed the remaining distance and crouched down in front of it, resting my elbows on my knees, bringing myself to approximately the level of its face, which was currently turned sideways against the stone with one eye visible and one eye buried. The visible eye found me after a moment with the slow rotating focus of a compass needle that had forgotten which direction north was.
"Hello," I said. "I'd appreciate it if we could talk for a bit, the people you have been extorting up top sent me to deal with you."
A pause. The eye blinked. Slowly. With great effort.
"MMFFHH." Another groan, this one more communicative than the last, though still significantly muffled by the stone it was being delivered into. I caught the shape of something that might have been words if the floor had not been in the way.
"I didn't quiet catch that," I said.
The troll turned its head slightly, unsticking one cheek from the stone with a sound I chose not to examine too closely, turning to face me, its eye regarded me for another long moment.
Then, with the immense slow determination of a geographical feature deciding to relocate, Grul began the process of getting back up. It took a while. I waited.
Eventually it arrived at something approximating upright, swaying with the careful concentration of something that had decided staying vertical was a project requiring its full attention. The bucket shifted to an even more precarious angle. The tin cups settled.
It looked down at me. I looked up at it.
"Pale Hummie man Grul bridge, cross " it said, with the gravity of someone stating a fundamental law of the universe. "Pale Hummie man pay Grul."
I sighed.
I had known, intellectually, that trolls were not the most articulate creatures on the Continent. The games had made that abundantly clear. Boris in Velen had managed well enough but Boris had been sober... and not wearing a bucket. This particular one was none of those things, and the combination of what had been in those jugs with what appeared to be its natural baseline for communication was producing something I was going to have to work considerably harder to navigate than I had optimistically assumed when I was still standing on the road above. I pinched the bridge of my nose.
A drunk troll. I had walked down here to negotiate with a drunk troll.
"Grul," I said, slowly, carefully, the way you might speak to someone standing on a very narrow ledge. "This bridge doesn't belong to you. You didn't build it. You don't have the right to charge people for it."
Grul stared at me. The swaying stopped. That was, I realised a fraction too late, probably not the right opening.
"Grul bridge," it said. The slur had lessened out of its words, replaced by something flatter and considerably more certain. "Grul fix bridge. Grul keep bridge. Grul bridge."
"The people of Temeria built this bridge," I said, keeping my voice even. "The soldiers up there maintain it."
Grul's expression did something complicated. "Blue Hummie mans," it said with a weight of feeling that suggested the garrison had not endeared itself during their acquaintance. "Blue Hummie mans not fix bridge. Grul pull stone from river when flood come. Blue Hummie not fix bridge when crack arch." It jabbed one enormous finger upward at the stone above us. "Grul fix. Grul bridge."
I looked at the arch above us, studying it properly for the first time. I had assumed the bridge was in good repair because it was old and well built. Looking at it now, properly, I could see the places where newer mortar had been packed into old cracks, the stones along the base of the arch that sat slightly differently from the others, reset rather than original. The work was rough but it was present and it had held.
"You did all that work in the week you've been here?" I asked Grul. The troll seemed irritated by my repeated line of questioning but he answered me anyway.
"Grul fix bridge," it said simply. "Bridge bad when Grul come. Stones loose. Grul fix." It patted the stonework beside it with something unmistakably proprietorial. "Grul fix bridge, bridge belong Grul now. Hummie mans use Grul bridge, hummie mans pay Grul. Fair is."
The logic was not complicated. It was not even wrong, exactly, in the way a child is not exactly wrong when they decide that finding something abandoned and repairing it makes it theirs. Grul had arrived, found a bridge in poor condition, spent a week putting it right with its own labour, and concluded that the work entitled it to the toll.
The garrison had been maintaining this crossing in name only apparently, which meant that from Grul's perspective the bridge had been unclaimed, neglected, and in need of someone willing to do the actual work.
Still, while the logic was sound from its perspective, it didn't change the facts. A monster had stolen from humans and attacked one of them, even if in self defence, and the people up top were not going to see the distinction.
I told it as much. Grul's expression darkened steadily throughout, the bleary belligerence reassembling itself into something more focused. "Hummie man gob-gob too much," it said. "Pay Grul or Grul boom-boom hummie man head."
I let a little cold into my voice. "I'm trying to help you out here. If you'd just let me come to an understa—" It interrupted me with a bellowing roar. The sound bounced off the stonework and came back doubled. Something small dropped from the underside of the arch into the river.
The hand came fast, faster than something that size and that drunk had any right to move, sweeping in from the left in a wide arc aimed roughly at my midsection. A grab rather than a strike, an instinctive territorial swipe.
I stepped back and let it pass. Grul blinked. Looked at its own hand. Looked at the space where I had been. he tried again, a backhand this time, slower, the motion of something recalibrating. I ducked under it without difficulty, feeling the displaced air move across the top of my head.
"Grul," I said, straightening. "I'm not here to fight." He did not appear to find this relevant. he lurched forward off the stonework with the unsteady momentum of something that had been sitting for too long and had now overcommitted to standing, and swung again, a full roundhouse with a glass of spirits still held in its other arm, the glass vessel sloshing audibly with whatever remained inside it. I easily sidestepped. The fist went past me with a sharp whistle.
Grul stared at where I had been a fraction of a second ago. Then with a frustrated roar it swung again, but this time I did not evade its fist, instead I caught it.
One hand around the wrist, the impact of its momentum running down through my arms into my shoulders, and down into my legs, my boots scraping back an inch back across the wet stone before I arrested the motion entirely. Grul strained against the grip, small eyes widening at the fact it was actually losing a contest of strength against something half its size.
Then in that window of opportunity, I hit him. Not with my sword, but rather a straight punch with my right hand, driving forward into the soft centre of its torso with a thunderous force that echoed, right where a diaphragm would be if the anatomy mapped the way I was gambling it did.
It mapped.
The sound he made was not a roar or a bellow. It was a profound, unhappy exhalation, the deep involuntary heave of something that had just had every cubic inch of air driven out of it at once. It folded forward, the jug finally slipping from under its arm and shattering on the stone, and then, with a thoroughness that I stepped sharply to the left to avoid, it was comprehensively sick.
The river received most of it. I waited as the troll remained bent forward for a long moment, hands on its knees, breathing in a ragged recovering rhythm that brought up memories in me of too many nights where I had been on the same compromising position.
The smell under the bridge, which I had thought did not previously have much room to get any worse, somehow found some.
"You sober enough to talk?" I said. "Because if not I could always wrap this up by bringing them your head. And honestly, after your little stunt just now, I'd much prefer the latter."
A long pause from the direction of the floor.
"Pale hummie man strong," Grul said, into its own knees. The voice was different now, the thick slur of earlier wrung out of it, replaced by something flatter and more present. "Grul not think hummie mans so strong is."
"Most people wouldn't," I said. "Life is full of surprises, I've come to find."
Grul made a sound that was not quite a groan and not quite an agreement and was probably both. Then, with the slow suffering dignity of something that had made a series of poor decisions and was now living in the consequences, it straightened up.
One enormous hand came up and pressed against the side of its head. The tin cups around its neck rang softly against each other with the motion. It looked at me.
The eyes were clear, the headache behind them was visible even from where I was standing, but clear. Whatever had been in running through its system had been thoroughly and efficiently removed from the equation. "Grul listen," it said, with the resigned air of something that had exhausted its other options.
"Good," I said, and crouched down to its level. "Here is the situation as it stands. You cannot stay here. Not the way things are. The garrison is not going to accept a troll under their bridge indefinitely, the toll arrangement has already put one man in the river, and the next thing they send down here will not be someone trying to have a conversation with you." I held its gaze.
Grul's jaw tightened, and a low growl came from it, but it said nothing. "I'm not saying that to threaten you," I continued. "I'm saying it because it's true and you should know it." I paused. "But I think there's a way you get what you actually want out of this without it ending badly for anyone."
Grul looked at me with the careful attention of something that had learned to be suspicious of sentences that started that way.
"What Grul want," it said slowly, "is bridge. Grul bridge fix. Bridge Grul belong . People pay Grul for cross. Is simple."
"I know," I said. "And I think that's achievable. But not like this. Not with the 'blue hummie mans' nursing bruised dignity and a commander who's been told there's a monster under his bridge." I let that sit for a moment. "What I'm proposing is legitimate. The kind of arrangement that means a group of pissed of army men don't come hurling spears at you."
Grul's eyes narrowed. "Pale hummie man deal make?"
"I'm proposing a conversation," I said. "Between you and the garrison commander. With me there to mediate and keep things from going sideways." I paused. "You agree to a fair toll, something reasonable, food or whatever people can manage and stop stealing their spirits. In return the garrison acknowledges that you've been maintaining this bridge and stops trying to kill you, hell they might even pay you themselves, it would certainly be cheaper than them having to spend who knows how much on maintenance and hiring builders for it."
A long silence settled. Then Grul's expression shifted into something I had not seen on it yet, its features were to foreign but I approximated it to anger. "Blue hummie mans say Grul steal ale," it said.
"You did steal it," I said gesturing empty bottles around us.
"Grul not steal," it said, with sudden heat. "Grul take ale. Grul leave coin. Is same as hummie mans do in hummie man ale house. Hummie mans give coin, hummie mans take ale. Grul give coin, Grul take ale. Is fair. Is same."
I pinched the bridge of my nose in aspiration, by its own understanding of commerce, which it had most likely learned entirely from watching people conduct transactions at road side inns and market stalls, you gave coin and you received goods. It had given coin. It had received goods. The fact that nobody had agreed to the transaction in advance was, apparently, a technicality Grul had not considered relevant.
"The garrison will say you didn't ask first," I said, carefully, thinking of a way to explain this in a way that made sense.
"Hummie mans in ale house not ask first either," Grul said, with impeccable if deeply flawed logic. "Hummie mans just put coin down and take ale. Grul do same." It crossed its enormous arms. "Blue hummie mans should happys be. "
I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose.
"Grul," I said. "In an alehouse, the person selling the ale has agreed in advance to sell it to anyone who comes in with coin. That's the arrangement. The garrison had not agreed to sell you their stores."
Grul frowned. This appeared to be a distinction it was encountering for the first time and finding unwelcome. "But Grul leave coin," it said again, less certainly now.
"I know," I said. "And I think that matters. I think when I explain it to the garrison commander it will matter considerably." I met its eyes. "But you need to understand that from their side it looks like theft, even if that wasn't what you intended."
A long silence.
Grul looked at the coins. Then at the empty space. Then back at me with the expression of something that had just discovered a flaw in a plan it had been very pleased with.
"Grul oopsies make," it said finally. Quietly, rather embarrassed.
"An honest one," I said. "Which is different from a malicious one." I paused. "It's something we can work with."
Grul sat with that for a moment. "Pale hummie man talk to blue hummie mans," it said slowly. "Tell hummie mans Grul not bad. Tell hummie mans Grul fix bridge. Tell Grul pay for ale even if Grul oopsies make."
"Yes, that's the goal," I said.
Another long silence, the vast slow machinery of its thinking working through the proposition from every angle it could manage with a headache and an empty stomach. Then it exhaled, a long slow sound like wind through a gap in old stonework.
"Grul agree," it said. "Pale hummie man talk to blue hummie mans. Grul be good. Grul keep bridge. Grul charge fair toll." It looked at me with the small clear eyes.
"That's the plan." I said as I straightened up and offered it a hand, which it looked at for a moment with a confused expression, but at my gesturing, it took it eventually, one enormous hand wrapping around my wrist, and I helped lever it upright with considerably more ease than the gesture implied.
"Good," I said. "I'm glad we could come to an understanding. Let's get you up top, sort things out with the garrison, and get some food in you while we're at it." I paused, realizing somewhat belatedly that we had conducted an entire negotiation, including a brief but vigorous physical altercation, without me actually introducing myself. "I've just realised I haven't told you my name, it's Matthias, Matthias Harlow, lets get along yeah?"
Grul looked at me, strangely enough a look of recognition plastered on his face. "Carrie On Night?" Grul asked, with complete seriousness.
Where the hell did he hear that from?
I stared at it, completely taken off guard. "What did you just call me?"
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Authors Note: That's it for chapter 18, the troll encounter was genuinely fun to write, mostly because Grul ended up considerably more sympathetic than I originally planned once I started working out his internal logic. The ale situation in particular I was very pleased with, there is something deeply funny to me about a creature that genuinely believed it was conducting a legitimate commercial transaction and left the correct change.
I want to get to Maribor as quickly as possible from here because I have an idea for what happens in the city before we make our way toward Barefield, which now that I'm thinking about it is pretty far out geographically. I'll do my best not to stretch the road there with unnecessary filler, we've had enough of that already.
As for how the Carrion Knight title managed to spread to a troll under a bridge within twenty four hours of being coined by a Godling sixty miles away in Caed Dhu, let's just say monsters, trolls in particular, have their own information network that operates outside of any system humans have yet managed to document. Again, don't think too hard about it. I certainly didn't.
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead, both Frozen Blood and Chrome and Flame are currently two full chapters ahead over on my Patreon( https://www.patreon.com/c/maydae010401/posts ). All support is genuinely appreciated more than I can easily say.
As always please leave a like and review if you enjoyed it, and feel free to leave criticism in the comments. I read all of it even when I pretend I don't.