Tastiest Log

In Lumbertusk, school started when the sun came up and ended when somebody ate the teacher.

Today it had lasted almost until lunch. That was a record.

Troll King Brog sat at the back of the classroom on a bench made of a whole pine tree. The bench groaned under him. The classroom groaned too, because it was a cave, and caves groan when forty trolls sit in them and think very hard.

At the front stood a goblin. His name was Snitch. He wore spectacles and a look of deep despair. Behind him, on a slab of slate, he had drawn a big circle with chalk.

"This," said Snitch, "is the number one."

The trolls looked at the circle.

"It is round," said a troll called Hrunk.

"Yes."

"Like a stone."

"Yes, but it is not a stone. It is a number."

Hrunk thought about this for a long time. His forehead wrinkled. Little rocks fell out of the wrinkles.

"Can I eat it?" he asked.

"No!"

"Why you draw it then?"

Snitch closed his eyes. He was a goblin, and goblins were not famous for patience, but Brog paid him two cows a week to teach Basic Study, and two cows was a lot of cows. Nobody in Lumbertusk had passed Basic Study in nine generations. Brog wanted to be the king who changed that. He had told everyone. He had told them so many times that some of the trolls were starting to believe that school was a kind of punishment for something they had done.

"Good question, Hrunk," said Brog from the back. "Snitch, why you draw it?"

"Because, Your Majesty, if you know the number one, then you can learn the number two."

There was a murmur. Two! The trolls looked at each other. This was moving very fast.

"What is two?" asked a troll called Grubba.

"Two is one, and another one."

"Another stone?"

"It's not a stone!"

Brog rubbed his chin. His chin was the size of a barrel and covered in moss. He liked the moss. It kept his chin warm in winter.

"Methunk," he said slowly, "two is when you got a log, and you eat it, and then you want another log."

Snitch opened his mouth. Then he shut it. Then he opened it again.

"Yes," he said. "Actually. Yes, Your Majesty. That is exactly what two is."

The cave went silent. Forty trolls turned to look at their king. Brog felt something strange in his chest. It was warm and big, like a stew.

He had learned something.

"Harrar!" he roared, and slapped his knees. "I am smart! I thunk the number!"

The trolls cheered. They cheered so loudly that the roof dropped a stalactite on Grubba, who did not notice. Snitch put down his chalk with trembling fingers. For a goblin, he looked almost happy.

"Lesson over!" Brog shouted. "Now we eat logs!"

"But Your Majesty," said Snitch, "we haven't..."

Nobody heard the rest. Forty trolls were already heading for the door.

* * *

The log pile was behind Brog's hall, which was a hill. Brog's grandfather had hollowed it out with his hands. It had taken him eighty years and one very bad back. Inside it was dark and warm and smelled like wet dog and pine sap. Outside, the log pile stood taller than the hill.

Trolls did not have to eat logs. They could eat almost anything. Rock, bone, sheep, goblins who taught too slowly. But logs were best. Logs were crunchy outside and soft inside, and if you left them in the swamp for a month they got a sort of green sauce that Brog liked very much.

And lately the logs had been better than ever.

It was the gnomes. Brog didn't really understand it. Two moons ago a little gnome had come to Lumbertusk with a cart of turnips and a big smile. He had asked for nothing. He had only stood in the pine forest and waved his hands and talked to the ground for a while, and then he had gone away. And after that, the trees grew faster, and the logs tasted sweeter, and sometimes a patch of empty swamp turned into a farm all by itself. One morning there were cabbages where there had been mud.

The gnome had called it Gaea's Presence. Brog called it lunch.

He picked up a log as thick as a horse. He bit into it. The bark crunched. The sap ran down his chin into the moss.

"Mmm," he said. Then, louder: "Tastiest log I've eat all week, I'll have another! No, two!!"

Two! He knew two now. He held up two fingers to show everybody. Everybody cheered again.

It was a good day. It was the best day. Brog was king of Lumbertusk, and he knew the number two, and his belly was full of logs.

Then the elf came.

* * *

Hrunk saw her first. He was on the hill, sitting on a rock and trying to work out if the rock was a number. He stood up and pointed.

"Boss," he said. "There's a tall thing."

Brog looked.

She came out of the pine forest on a white horse with silver bells on its bridle. She was very tall. Taller than a human, though much smaller than a troll, and so thin that Brog worried for her. Her hair was the colour of moonlight on snow. Her face was smooth and bright and sharp, like the inside of a shell. She wore a grey travelling cloak, plain and dusty, but under it something glittered.

Four more elves rode behind her. They looked very nervous. One of them kept his hand on his sword. Brog thought this was funny. A sword! Against a troll! It was like threatening a mountain with a fork.

The tall elf stopped her horse at the foot of the log pile. She looked up at Brog. Brog looked down at her. Nobody said anything for a while.

"You are Brog," she said. "King of the Trolls."

Her voice was low and clear. It reminded Brog of the sound a stream makes in spring, when the ice breaks.

"Ya," said Brog. "That's me. King Brogrim, actually, but nobody say it. Too long. You want log?"

The elf looked at the log in his hand. It was half eaten and dripping green sap.

"No," she said. "Thank you."

"Okuh. More for me."

He took another bite. The elf watched him. Her face did not change, but something moved in her eyes. Brog thought it might be laughter. He liked that. Most people who visited Lumbertusk did not laugh. Mostly they screamed.

"I have a gift for you," she said.

She raised her hand. Her fingers moved. She spoke a word that sounded like glass ringing. The air around Brog went bright and cold.

Something heavy appeared on his shoulders.

He looked down. He was wearing armour. Real armour. Silver plates as big as doors, shaped to fit his body, with rivets the size of fists. It shone in the sun so brightly that Grubba covered his eyes.

"Ooooh," said every troll in Lumbertusk.

"It is Create Armor," said the elf. "A spell of the Enchantment realm. It copies the armour of my own guard, but larger. Much larger." She paused. "It is not quite finished. I need to adjust the size. You must hold still."

Brog held still. He held very still. He held so still that a bird landed on his head.

The elf frowned. She moved her hand again. The plates shifted, groaned, slid. One of them pinched Brog under the arm.

"Ow," said Brog.

"Hold still."

"I am holding."

"Hold stiller."

Brog thought about this. He did not know what stiller meant. He decided it meant you made somebody else do it. He turned to Hrunk.

"Hrunk," he said. "That funny tall elf friend say take this shiny armor and hold still. Um, you do it."

Hrunk nodded seriously. He walked over and put both hands on Brog's shoulders and held him very hard.

The elf made a small sound. She put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook. One of her guards turned away and coughed into his glove.

Brog did not understand what was funny. But the elf was laughing, really laughing, and her silver eyes were bright, and something inside Brog's big chest did a strange slow roll, like a log turning over in the swamp.

He decided he liked her very much.

* * *

When the armour was done, they sat on the log pile together. The elf sat on a small log. Brog sat on a big one. Her guards stood at the bottom and tried to look brave.

"I need your help, King Brog," she said.

"Okuh."

"You don't know what I'm going to ask."

"Don't matter. You give me shiny." He knocked on his chest. It rang like a bell. "Shiny is good."

She smiled. It was a small smile, and it went away quickly, but Brog saw it.

"There are orcs in the Gutlands," she said. "To the south of you. Their chief is called Gragzul. He is hungry, and he is stupid, and he has a shaman who is not stupid at all. They will come here. Soon."

"Orcs come here, we eat them."

"They will come with mages. With Necromancy. Orcs can animate the dead of their foes. Do you understand what that means?"

Brog thought about it. Dead foes. Animate. He knew animate. It meant walking around. Snitch had taught them that word last year, when Hrunk fell asleep in class and somebody said he wasn't very animate.

"Dead things walk," he said.

"Yes. Your dead. Your trolls. If orcs kill them, they will not stay dead. The orcs will raise them up and send them against you."

Brog went quiet.

Trolls did not fear death much. Trolls had Legendary Regeneration. If you cut a troll in half, both halves got grumpy, and after ten turns there was one whole troll again, usually hungry and asking what happened. It was one of the best things about being a troll. Death was just a long nap.

But if somebody took your nap away. If somebody made your cousin get up and walk against you before he had finished regenerating...

"That's not nice," Brog said.

"No. It is not."

"Who are you?" he asked. "Really? You not just elf. You talk like a king."

The tall elf looked out over the pine forest. In the sunset her hair turned gold and red, like fire.

"I am a friend," she said. "That is enough for now."

She stood. She brushed bark from her grey cloak. Under it, for a moment, Brog saw a thin silver chain around her neck, and on the chain a little stick of wood. It was not a pretty stick. It was crooked and scratched and very old. She touched it with two fingers, the way Brog touched his best log before he ate it.

Then she was on her horse, and the bells were ringing, and she was gone into the trees.

Brog sat on the log pile for a long time. He knocked on his shiny chest. Bong. Bong.

"Funny tall elf friend," he said softly.

At the bottom of the hill, Hrunk was still holding on to the empty air where Brog's shoulders had been.

"Boss," he said. "Can I stop holding now?"

Before Brog could answer, a horn blew in the south. It was a troll horn, made from a bull's leg, and it only meant one thing. Grubba came running up out of the swamp, splashing mud everywhere.

"Boss!" he shouted. "Orc Rangers! On the border! Lots of them!"

Brog stood up. The armour rang like a hundred bells.

"How many is lots?" he asked.

Grubba thought very hard. Then he held up two fingers.