The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [63]
“Sam!”
“Sorry. I’m sure his heart’s in the right place.”
“Good.”
“Or someone’s heart, anyway.”
“Sam, really!”
“All right, all right, but you must admit he does look a bit…odd.”
“None of us can help the way we’re made, Sam.”
“He looks as if he tried—good grief…”
“Oh dear,” said Lady Sybil.
Vimes was not against hunting, if only because Ankh-Morpork seldom offered any better game than the large rats you got along the waterfront. But the sight of the walls of the new embassy might have been enough to make the keenest hunter take a step back and cry “Oh, I say, hold on…”
The previous occupant had been keen on hunting, shooting and fishing and, to have covered every single wall with the resultant trophies, he must have been doing all three at the same time.
Hundreds of glass eyes, obscenely alive in the light of the fire in the huge hearth, stared down at Vimes.
“It’s just like my grandfather’s study,” said Lady Sybil. “There was a stag’s head in there that used to frighten the life out of me.”
“There’s just about everything here…oh no…”
“My gods…” whispered Lady Sybil.
Vimes looked around desperately. Detritus was just entering, carrying some of the trunks.
“Stand in front of it,” Vimes hissed.
“I’m not that tall, Sam! Or that wide!”
The troll looked up at them, then at the trophies, and then grinned. It’s colder up here, Vimes thought. He’s quicker on the uptake.* Even Nobby won’t play poker with him in the winter. Damn!
“Something wrong?” said Detritus.
Vimes sighed. What was the point? He’d spot it sooner or later.
“I’m sorry about this, Detritus,” he said, standing aside.
Detritus looked at the horrible trophy and nodded.
“Yeah, dere used to be a lot of dat sort of fing in der old days,” he said calmly, putting down the luggage. “Dey wouldn’t be de real diamond teef, o’course. Dey’d take dem out and put bigger glass ones in.”
“You don’t mind?” said Lady Sybil. “It’s a troll’s head! Someone actually mounted a troll’s head and put it on the wall!”
“Ain’t mine,” said Detritus.
“But it’s so horrible!”
Detritus stood in thought for a moment, and then opened the stained wooden box that contained all he had felt it necessary to bring.
“Dis is de old country, after all,” he said. “So if it’d made you feel better…”
He pulled out a smaller box and rummaged among what appeared to be bits of rock and cloth until he found something yellowy-brown and round, like a shallow cup.
“Should’ve bunged it away,” he said, “but it’s all I got to remember my old granny by. She kept fings in it.”
“It’s a bit of human skull, isn’t it,” said Vimes, at last.
“Yep.”
“Whose?”
“Anyone ask dat troll dere his name?” said Detritus, and the glint in his eye had a brittle edge to it for a moment. Then he carefully put the bowl away. “Tings were diff’rent in dem days. Now you don’t chop our heads off an’ we don’t make drums outa your skin. Everyt’ing is hunky-dory. Dat’s all we have to know.”
He picked up the boxes again and followed Lady Sybil toward the staircase. Vimes took another look at the trophy head. The teeth were longer, far longer than they’d be on a real troll. A hunter’d have to be very brave and very lucky to go up against a fighting troll and survive. It’d be so much easier to go after an old one and later replace the ground-down stumps with sparkly fangs.
My gods, the things we do…
“Igor?” he said, as the odd-job man lurched past under the weight of two more bags.
“Yeth, Your Exthelenthy?”
“I’m an Excellency?” said Vimes to Inigo.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And still My Grace as well?”
“Yes, Your Grace. You are His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Your Grace.”
“Hang on, hang on…His Grace cancels out the Sir, I know that. It’s like having an ace in poker.”
“Strictly speaking this is true, Your Grace, but great score is set by titles here and it is best to play with a full deck, mmm.”
“I was once blackboard monitor at school,” said Vimes sharply. “For a whole term. Would that help? Dame Venting said no one could clean a blackboard like me.”