FanStory.com - Ol' Silver and Red, ch 12by Wayne Fowler

In the last part, Ohmie and Blado, using Ol’ Silver and Red, managed to rig a loop of rope through the underwater tunnel from the dragon’s lair to the lake.

Chapter 12

Their pre-arranged signal was three short jerks on just one of the ropes, which Princess May was to expect no sooner than one hour from the dragon’s appearance. Not long after gaining the bank with the two rope ends, she felt the gesture. Ohmie was ready to send the first installment.

Suddenly remembering that they were to have tied the two ends together, Ohmie having shown her the type of knot to tie, she had to do it underwater since one end of the rope was being towed under the lake and back into the mountain. Prince Shauconnery scampered to the canoe to return his sister and the looped rope to the bank where they could reel in a treasure box.

The plan called for Ohmie and Blado to await a returned signal before launching the evacuation of the nest. They knew that Ol’ Silver and Red would not be returning, blinded as he was, but were moderately concerned that he might give the Shauconnery and May trouble should he perceive the transfer of his wealth, the loss of his hoarded nest. They mistook the Prince and Princess’s shoreward movement as the signal to begin operations in earnest.

The looped rope’s circling action bowled the land crew over as Ohmie and Blado began sending crates and cartons and barrels of gold and jewels from the cavernous lair. Hours and buckets of sweat later, a veritable mountain of gold, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies later, Princess May’s and Prince Shauconnery’s hands raw from broken blisters later, the cavalcade of containers finally stopped. Princess May and Prince Shauconnery collapsed in separate heaps where they stood, only rousing themselves for nourishment. For the next long spell, Ohmie and Blado would simply have to await their recovery.

Knowing that the men had no doubt exhausted their supply of containers, the Prince and Princess emptied the partially filled boxes and barrels into one another, filling them to their brims to re-attach the empties to the looped rope for re-use. Once done, they signaled back. They had to signal several times, finally tugging an end of the rope many yards before gaining any response. They didn’t know if the men were busy, asleep, or whether the rope had a large enough sway that the men couldn’t feel slight tugs. In any case, they began pulling the empty boxes and barrels back into the mountain.

The rope’s movement was so slow, Princess May and Prince Shauconnery thought that Ohmie and Blado might be at the end of their endurance. Then she thought about catching a trout and reeling it upstream. The fish’s tug and fight were so fierce she thought she’d caught a whale, surprised that it was only yearling size. The trout, with its mouth agape acted like an anchor, a ship’s sail, catching the current’s resistance. The empty containers must have presented the men the same difficulty. She and Prince Shauconnery, against their guarded interests, helped by pulling on the loose end of the loop, wishing someone had thought to employ draught horses.

When the circling route of the looped rope again stopped, all the containers safely on the bank, Princess May let the men assume it was time to rest, eat, and wait for daylight to begin again. It took all of the next day to finish. Ohmie and Blado left Ol’ Silver and Red a pile about a foot-and-a-half tall and covering nearly the same radius as the original nest of the silver and stage trinkets. Then they slept, waiting until they’d rested before attacking the climb up the shaft and descent down the mountainside.

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Bruke was a troll. He’d been a troll for as long as he could remember, though something deep down inside told him that long, long ago he might have been a human.

The truth is that he was a human – a particularly ugly human. A human so ugly that no one would talk to him, or even look him in the eye. His eyes nearly touched each other at the bridge of his nose which hung to his lower lip, the end of it appearing as if a moldy prune. He didn’t think his mouth had always been this wide, but gradually, over the course of a hundred years or more, stretched to reach from one ear to the other.

He still, though, had the normal number of teeth – thirty-two. That was the main reason he thought he was human in the first place – his teeth count. Dogs had forty-two, cats thirty, and opossums had fifty. Pigs and bears had forty-four and forty-two. Humans had thirty-two, like himself. Bruke knew because he’d eaten the heads of every one of the creatures, even of the human creatures.

Bruke’s teeth only vaguely resembled human teeth. His were all pointy, like little spears, and gapped about an inch apart. They worked fine for ripping flesh, but not so much for chewing. He’d long ago learned to wolf down whole hunks of meat.

Fish were different. Fish wriggled so fast, too fast for his tongue to position them for proper biting. They were also slippery, too slippery to hold halfway into his mouth for biting. Fish had to be swallowed live. Bruke didn’t mind too much. He only ate to get full, and survive; wriggly fish filled him faster than sheep or goats.

Fish, though, soon learned to avoid the bridge under which the troll made his home. They called it the Troll Bridge, as did the local farmers. The local farmers chose to cross the river over a gravelly ford some miles downstream.

The bridge was ancient, much older than Bruke. It was built by the same people that built the land’s castles. The water under the bridge flowed all year round, beginning at the mountain lake, which filled from the mountain spring, which came from Ol’ Silver and Red’s cavern pool. The river meandered through the countryside, eventually to Princess May and Prince Shauconnery’s castle.

Bruke, the troll, got fat on fish and sheep, and the occasional dog or cat or goat. But soon there were no more fish, and no more dogs or cats, and all the animals of the forest grew far too smart to cross the troll’s bridge. Bruke grew gaunt: thin and gaunt. Also, his arms stretched and reached the mud under the river from so much scraping of the vegetative muck from the river bottom. The occasional grub, or worm his goal.

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Princess May and Prince Shauconnery worked feverishly, recovering and beaching the boxes and barrels. One barrel broke free of Prince Shauconnery’s grasp as he slipped and fell. The barrel floated out into the lake. As soon as the two finished emptying the containers for their return to Ohmie and Blado, Princess May, unaware of any such thing as a troll, quickly ran around the lake, intending to skip across the bridge for the barrel that had floated to the other side. Halfway across, too late to turn back, she heard the explicit challenge: “Who’s that tripping across my bridge? Now I’m coming to gobble you up!”

Stunned by this development, Princess May did not linger to converse. The troll’s wide mouth puckered after his question, preparing to bite. May was nearly to the other side.

The troll was unaccustomed to such incivility from humans. Was this puny human unaware of how things worked? He very nearly lost his prey. At the very last second and only because his arms had grown so long, he snatched her by the ankle, yanking her over the low rock wall, underneath the bridge and into the bleak darkness of the water’s depth.

On her way, toes over brow, her head slammed against a round rock that capped one of the bridge piers. The noggin smack happened just as she called to her brother, the Crown Prince. What came out was a screaming sound, something like “sja – aug!” Then, before she could repeat her plea more clearly, she went unconscious from the head-banging. And before she could get her bearings, she was underwater, being held on the river’s mucky mess by the troll’s foot.