Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel

Chapter 19

For the remainder of that day, Raf sat forlornly in his cage, watching the trolls prepare for the evening’s feast.

Draggers hauled great stone sleds into the hall from a side door on the eastern side. On those sleds were baskets of food, and jugs of water and mead.

While the draggers toiled, the king and his courtiers drank and laughed. By mid-afternoon, some had already passed out on the floor. At one point, the two little hobgoblin jesters drew laughs from the king’s cronies by throwing fruit at Raf.

Shortly after that, Raf saw the bride and her mother enter the hall. The bride’s mother was a big heavy-boned she-troll dressed in the kind of brown sack-cloth that seemed to be worn by most of the troll women. She walked with a purposeful stride and ignored the catcalls from the drunken males up near the throne.

The bride beside her could not have been more different from her mother. She was smaller and walked with a shy hunch, and she wore a sack-cloth that was far whiter than those worn by the other she-trolls. The unruly trolls nudged and elbowed Turv at the sight of her, behaving — it seemed to Raf — like immature boys.

And then it struck Raf: this she-troll was Graia, the she-troll Düm had beseeched the troll prince Turv not to marry.

Having witnessed the way troll society operated, Raf could see now what an outrageous thing Düm’s approach to Turv had been: a lowly dragger questioning a prince.

Outrageous, but also brave. Düm might have been slow-witted, but he must have known such an approach was loaded with peril.

Late in the afternoon a commotion arose at the side door to the hall.

A crowd of trolls gathered there started oohing and ahing.

Raf looked that way—

— to see a pair of figures emerge from the throng of trolls and approach the king’s throne.

Raf gripped the bars of his cage as his eyes went wide.

It was Düm and Ko.

And Düm was leading Ko by a rope, as his prisoner.