He stopped. Frowned. “Though, now that I think on it, I don’t imagine too many kids—”
“Last kid got lost exploring the sewers was Tommy Wingle. Eight years ago. He stills comes down, now and then, brings me chocolates.”
It eyed us hungrily. “Got any chocolates?”
Greyboar was still frowning. As usual, I had to do the quick thinking.
“No, we don’t, sir, sorry about that,” I piped up. “But we’ve got a loaf of bread. And some cheese.” I unhitched the backpack from where it had been riding on my shoulders. (High on my shoulder, needless to say; only proper way to carry a backpack in a sewer.) Started rummaging through it.
“What kind of bread?”
I pulled out the bread, stared at it. “Uh, I don’t really know. I’m not a baker. It’s good bread though! I swear! Really really good—”
It’s odd, if you’ve never heard it. A sort of rumbling, gigantic, disdainful sniff:
“It’s rye.” SNIFF. “Crappiest bread there is. Even worse than pumpernickel.”
I prepared for the worst. Just about the very absolute worst I could imagine. I’d never thought I’d die of old age in a bed, mind you. But still! Being devoured by an ogre in a sewer was a bit much.
Suddenly, the monster sniffed again. Then again. I realized it had detected the odor of the cheese in the knapsack. Nasty, gooey stuff, it was. Jenny and Angela had scrounged it up just before we left. Neither Greyboar nor I had touched the crap, after taking one look at it. I cringed.
“Camembert!” squealed the horror. “And I’ve got just the wine for it, too! A nice little pinot noir I’ve been saving!”
* * *
“Delightful,” purred Maurice, daintily dabbing his lipless maw with a talon. “And such a wonderful change from baby alligator!”
The not-ogre cast a reproachful glance at Greyboar. “You’d crap some giant turds too, if all you had to live on was baby alligator.”
The chokester nodded politely. “I’m sure I would.”
The not-monster stuck out his tongue with disgust. It looked like a giant, purple leech.
“Nasty things, baby alligators. All bones and teeth and tail and scaly hide. And it takes at least five or six of them to make a decent meal.” A heavy, heavy sigh. “Fortunately, people keep buying the stupid things and dumping them after they start growing up. When they discover they’ve got a big, stupid, nasty, man-eating reptile on their hands. Some pet!”
Maurice craned his head around—had to turn his whole body to do it; no neck—and glared at a huge pile of baby alligator bones in a corner of his grotto. He snorted. “Wouldn’t find a troll doing something that stupid.”
To back up a bit, Maurice—that was the monster’s name, as you may have deduced—had explained, with quite the air of injured amour propre—that he was not an ogre, but a troll. A bonafide troll, yessirree. A member in good standing of the species Trollus sapiens.
I managed to keep a straight face, after he clarified the point. Not easy, that—not even with the sight of Maurice’s tusks and talons to keep me civil. It was a bit too much like a murdering fiend insisting he was really a homicidal maniac.
Greyboar, of course, had no trouble at all keeping a straight face. Naturally, he got interested in the distinction, and started asking questions. So we had to sit there for an hour in that cold, dank, stinky, dimly-lit grotto while Maurice blathered on. It seems—
Oh, yeah. I suppose I should pause in order to give you a proper description of what they call the “locale.” Hm. A bit difficult, that. Let’s do it this way:
Close your eyes and try to imagine a troll’s lair. Try real hard. Got it?
Add raw sewage.
Okay, moving right along, Maurice insisted on giving us a long-winded discourse on the fine distinctions between:
1) Ogres and trolls. This mainly involves—you’re getting the troll version, mind—an extra little bone in the ankles, certain minute and subtle differences in the shape of the talons, and a vast difference in cranial capacity. I.e., they look exactly alike except trolls say they’re smarter.