QUENTIN THE TROLL AND THE WEDDING OF DOOM
Daniel Eness
Published by Eortholic Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Daniel Eness
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Table of Contents
Quentin the Troll and the Wedding of Doom
He already had more than enough trouble on his massive hands. His oldest son’s wedding (to the ugliest girl on Three) was in five days, his wife was pregnant for the fourteenth time in twenty years and his fledgling shipping business was going down the latrine.
Now, four of Quentin’s cousins lay at his feet, dead. Even by troll standards, it was shaping up to be a bad morning.
Two brothers, Fargus and Stupid, were face down. Another cousin lay face up, near the tent opening. That was Fat Len, Quentin’s second cousin on his mother’s side, and, semi-coincidentally, his father’s. The fourth, Vinlu An, was sprawled over the remnants of a wooden stool, a splattering of wild honey slowly dribbling from her fist. Each corpse bore a large, single wound to the torso.
Quentin squatted low to the ground, stretched his arms in front of him and swept a pile of dust between his palms. In a swift, crude ceremony, he scattered the sand over the bodies. A cloud of the stuff filled the tent. With one last look at Fat Len, Quentin’s favorite, he quit the tent only moments before the deadest of the four began to quiver in the darkness.
Quentin made his way through the labyrinth of the city-state, determined to, against his better judgment, alert the Constable.
Just to make his route through the mobs, Quentin shoved his fellow trolls to either side of the thoroughfare. He kicked a little goblin so hard that it tumbled down a sluice canal. The market crowds teemed. Today, Three buzzed with more rumor than usual. Murder, to Quentin’s surprise, was not the topic of the day. It was tourists.
Quentin came to a crushing stop in the midst of a score or more trolls, while another score crashed behind him, into the cluster.
"I can’t see something!" grunted a squat, gray duffer who used a splintered ash tree for a crutch.
"Me too!" cried a female in a tangled shawl. She repeatedly punched her mate’s back for emphasis. "Something is what I don’t see neither!"
Quentin stood a head above average, but even he could not see what inspired the jam. He gripped the shoulders of two onlookers. As their tendons popped beneath the weight, Quentin hoisted himself aloft.
He could see a wildly decorated covered cart on its side, with a side door flung ajar. Plumes of smoke rose from its underside and there was no beast to pull the thing. A stunned goblin lay prone nearby, panting.
Sharp pain sent Quentin’s left hand upward with a jerk. As he tumbled, he realized that he had been bitten by one of his props. The troll beneath his other hand cackled. Quentin struck the ground, face-first. The impact violently parted the crowd like bone dominoes.
Quentin got up, dusted himself off and began stepping over the bodies of the fallen. As an afterthought, he swatted behind his back, flattening the troll who laughed at him.
At the noxious wreck, he stooped to pluck the goblin from the ground. Still squatting, he shook the little white creature to resuscitate him. The goblin’s eyeballs bulged and his lips contorted. He coughed.
"Stop faking," said Quentin, flicking the goblin’s ears. Quentin blew into his tremulous eyes. The goblin blinked. Quentin shook him again with a bit more enthusiasm. "Come, thing. Come to."
The goblin wailed. "Don’t bury me! I’m worth more alive!"
"Hm. That may be so, but I doubt it. You a tourist?" said Quentin. Laughter rose from the surrounding crowd.
The goblin’s face was slack and dismayed.
"Haw! Turist!" cried Herpin Sumthin, one of the more ancient of the Ancient Town Fathers who happened to be in the lowly recovering crowd surrounding the spectacle. With authority, the dodecagenarian stifled a belch. "P’raps a pet of the whistling wizard, but a goblin on holiday? Like a hog in a petticoat."
Boxing his platter-sized hands gently around the skull of the goblin, Quentin drew their faces together. The goblin smelled of steamed fish and ironworks. And honey.
"Wizard?" said Quentin.
"I don’t know anything about a wizard!" cried the poor beast.
"Four of my son’s wedding guests are dead, and my folk don’t die easy. Unlike them, however, you will," Quentin paused, for drama. "…if you don’t tell me about the wizard."
The goblin shrieked, and passed out. Quentin dumped the slack beast to the cobblestones, near the still pluming wrecked cart, in hopes of rousing him once more. This time, whether due to terror or the drop, the goblin did not come too.
"Flighty little snit," said Quentin, to no one in particular.
A voice boomed. "What in God’s name have you done now, Quentin Mark Rondelay Lastingame?"
It was the Constable.
"Oh, hello John." said Quentin. "I thought you might be here. Late."
The Constable peered over the prone goblin, and wrinkled his nose. "Is it dead?"
"Poke it and find out," said Quentin.
"I’m not touching that…" said the Constable, "…thing!"
The Constable surveyed the wrecked wagon. "Where’s the ponies?"
"Hm. Like the hitch and anything else that might suggest this wreck used to be a pony wagon. Gone."
"Where gone? What have you done?" said the Constable.
By this time, most of the trolls in the crowd had untangled themselves from one another and had been studying the match intently. A few were eager to plead their grievances against Quentin.
"’e knocked us down!" cried a lady in the crowd.
"Smacked my noggin!" cried a strapping youth.
"Took me teeth out with ‘is hand!" shouted the troll who had bitten Quentin earlier. His cries were muffled in part by a bloody handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.
Quentin looked down. Indeed, a long, twisted incisor remained imbedded in his hand. He plucked it and pocketed it before the Constable noticed.
The Constable turned to the grumbling trolls and said, "Knocking and smacking and toothing ain’t a crime. Thieving is. Somebody here knows who swiped the ponies."
The goblin stirred. In a stilted whisper, he said, "No ponies."
"That does it," growled Quentin, crouching to finally abuse the truth out of the goblin.
"Hold on, Mr. Lastingame. You’ve got some questions to answer before you ask any of your own. For that matter," said the Constable, turning to address the crowd, "everyone has to answer to the Law!"
Rapt, trembling awe struck the faces in the crowd surrounding the Constable and his alleged perpetrators. The Constable’s chest grew. He hadn’t seen such respect before in his entire career. The awe turned to panic, as trolls began to scatter in all directions.
"Thunderbirds!" they cried.
There are few words that strike fear in the hearts of trolls. "Thunderbirds" is one. Ancient, legendary creatures with long skulls and massive claws and wings more vast than a longboat. No one living on Three had ever seen one before. For that they had been thankful, until now.
In the sky were a quartet of the creatures, making catastrophic noise and descending with great speed. For the second time, Quentin dropped the goblin. His heart pounding, he drew his hands into fists.
In a flash, the flying things were whipping overhead in a deafening cacophony. At this point, the Constable had drawn his beating-sticks and was flailing them uselessly in the air. Twice he struck himself in the face.
One of the thunderbirds swooped down in the square, and dropped something that looked like a stone. Quentin could see that the bird also had a goblin at its belly. The stone struck the ground and exploded in green smoke. Trolls have a saying: "Unfamiliar odor is never your own," which roughly means that a new thing is probably something to avoid.
As he scampered from the gas, Quentin realized that the flying things weren’t beasts. They were rides for goblins. A goblin in another contraption tossed another bomb, and it struck the Constable squarely in the face. As he went down, he hurled one of his beating sticks at the offender. Like a bolo, the chain between the wooden ends caught on the main wing support. The ends wrapped, snapping the wing down. The goblin squealed as the machine crashed to the earth in a heap.
Smoke was everywhere. Quentin ran towards the noises made by the fake thunderbirds, but they were too fast. He stopped dashing about and stood motionless in a clearing in the haze. The rumbling behind him grew louder and louder, but he held his ground until the last second. Then, he ducked his shoulder, turned, and threw the nastiest uppercut he could muster. Quentin’s fist merely grazed the flying goblin, but nevertheless shattered the creature’s leg. With some amazement, Quentin watched as his victim, weaving in the air, managed to fly off and out of sight, wailing all the way.
The first goblin from the cart wreck was being scooped up by the remaining faux thunderbird. Quentin was not about to let the little rat escape. He dashed and leaped, snatching the rescued goblin’s ankle as his rescuer ascended. Quentin had the sickening sensation of being lifted off the ground, then bounding back to earth. His enemy couldn’t maintain lift for very long. The rescued goblin began to kick Quentin repeatedly in the face.
"Let go!" the goblin squeaked.
"No!" Quentin shouted, and between kicks, repeated, "No!"
"You’ll kill us!" he cried. A broad and very high city wall was fast approaching.
"Don’t. Care!" replied Quentin, again, between kicks. The mad trio was now aloft by several feet, nowhere near enough to clear the wall which was almost upon them.
"Penelope!" cried the Goblin.
Quentin jerked hard, his eyes bulging like melons, and tumbled to earth. With the loss of so much ballast, the unsteady kite shot nearly straight up, clearing the city wall by a whisper.
The groggy Constable staggered to Quentin through the thin haze, towing the dazed body of the goblin from the crashed thunderbird. Quentin sat up, rubbed his neck and said, "That little whiff said, ‘Penelope!’"
"Who’s Penelope?"
"My son’s ugly little bride-to-be."
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Quentin did a rare thing: he trembled. He was standing outside the double doors of a foreboding den of chaos. He balled up his gargantuan fists and breathed deeply three times. Then he entered his own house.
Were it more civilized it would resemble a zoo,. Womenfolk dashed about, squawking like ravens at one another, measuring lace, cutting and weaving flowers and baking. Fumes gushed from the brick oven. Ribbon was everywhere.
Quentin ducked behind a counter, and crept around the pantry. As big as he was, his dingy flesh measurably blended him with the stone walls, especially with the gaudy party colors scattered about. He was only three yards from the door to his armory.