Once More With Footnotes

I've tole him, there's bin a troll under this bridge for nigh on five hundred years — "
     
                  "So if you just hand over the treasure," said Cohen, "I'll be getting along."
     
                  The troll's face creased in sudden panic. "Treasure? Haven't got any," it said.
     
                  "Oh, come on, " said Cohen. "Well-set-up bridge like this?"
     
                  "Yeah, but no one uses this road any more," said Mica. "You're the first one along in months, and that' s a fact. Beryl says I ought to have gone in with her brother when they built that new road over his bridge, but," he raised his voice, "I said, there's been trolls under this bridge — "
     
                  "Yeah," said Cohen.
     
                  "The trouble is, the stones keep on falling out ," said the troll. "And you'd never believe what those masons charge. Bloody dwarfs. You can't trust 'em." He leaned towards Cohen. "To tell you the truth, I'm having to work three days a week down at my brother-in-law's lumber mill just to make ends meet. "
     
                  "I thought your brother-in-law had a bridge?" said Cohen.
     
                  "One of 'em has. But my wife's got brothers like dogs have fleas," said the troll. He looked gloomily into the torrent. "One of 'em's a lumber merchant down in Sour Water, one of 'em runs the bridge, and the big fat one is a merchant over on Bitter Pike. Call that a proper job for a troll?"
     
                  "One of them's in the bridge business, though," said Cohen.
     
                  "Bridge business? Sitting in a box all day charging people a silver piece to walk across? Ha lf the time he ain't even there! He just pays some dwarf to take the money. And he calls himself a troll! You can't tell him from a human till you're right up close!"
     
                  Cohen nodded understandingly.
     
                  "D'you know," said the troll, "I have to go over and ha ve dinner with them every week? All three of 'em? And listen to 'em go on about moving with the times ..."
     
                  He turned a big, sad face to Cohen.
     
                  "What's wrong with being a troll under a bridge?" he said. "I was brought up to be a troll under a bridge. I want young Scree to be a troll under a bridge after I'm gone. What's wrong with that? You've got to have trolls under bridges. Otherwise, what's it all about? What's it all for?"
     
                  They leaned morosely on the parapet, looking down into the white water.
     
                  " You know," said Cohen slowly, "I can remember when a man could ride all the way from here to the Blade Mountains and never see another living thing." He fingered his sword. "At least, not for very long."
     
                  He threw the butt of his cigarette into the water. "It's all farms now. All little farms, run by little people. And fences everywhere. Everywhere you look, farms and fences and little people."
     
                  "She's right, of course," said the troll, continuing some interior conversation. "There's no future in just jum ping out from under a bridge."
     
                  "I mean," said Cohen, "I've nothing against farms. Or farmers. You've got to have them. It's just that they used to be a long way off, around the edges. Now this is the edge."
     
                  "Pushed back all the time," said the troll. " Changing all the time. Like my brother-in-law Chert. A lumber mill! A troll running a lumber mill! And you should see the mess he's making of Cutshade Forest!"
     
                  Cohen looked up, surprised.
     
                  "What, the one with the giant spiders in it?"
     
                  "Spiders? There ain't no spiders now. Just stumps."
     
                  "Stumps? Stumps? I used to like that forest. It was ... well, it was darksome. You don't get proper darksome any more. You really knew what terror was, in a forest like that."
     
                  "You want darksome? He's replanting with spruce," said Mica.
     
                  "Spruce!"
     
                  "It's not his idea. He wouldn't know one tree from another. That's all down to Clay. He put him up to it." Cohen felt dizzy. "Who's