The Long War

special trolls are to you, humans aren’t all that special to trolls.’
    Sally just glared back.
    Suddenly Snowy stood bolt upright, staring out to the north, ears pricked again, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Again Li-Li murmured words, or growled commands, and Snowy stayed in control of his reins.
    ‘You can see why he’s distracted,’ said Sally. ‘Take a look.’
    When Jansson twisted to see, she saw small compact brown-furred forms bounding across the fields away from the cart, white tails bobbing. ‘They look like rabbits,’ she said.
    ‘I think they are rabbits. Authentic Datum pedigree. I wonder how they got here.’ And Sally turned to glare at Finn McCool.
    He grinned, showing too many triangular teeth. ‘Beagles-ss love them. Fun to chase. Good to eat.’
    ‘What else have you sold these creatures?’
    ‘As-side from rabbits?’
    ‘Aside from rabbits.’
    He shrugged. ‘Not juss-st me. The wheels-ss. The iron . . .’
    ‘You sold them iron-making ?’
    ‘Brought blacksmith-th. Humann.’
    Jansson asked, ‘And the fee you negotiated for all this—’
    ‘The litters-ss of their litters will be paying in ins-sstallmentss.’
    And, Jansson thought, paying for this ‘gift’ of the rabbits. Ask an Australian about rabbits . . .
    The kobold had been leaning towards them, apparently keen to join the conversation. Distracted, the women abandoned their talk, and he shrank back. Jansson wondered if Finn McCool picked up some undertone of contempt, of dismissal. Now he dug his elderly walkman out of his pouch, lifted his headphones over his ears, and played his music, swaying to a beat Jansson could hear, tinnily. He smiled again, watching the faces of Sally and Jansson, making sure they were noticing him. The kobold was like a poor imitation of a human, and a needy one, Jansson thought: needing the regard of humans, whatever animal dignity his distant ancestors had once possessed long bred out by corrosive contact with mankind. Jansson turned away with a peculiar disgust.
    And she saw, to her horror, that while Li-Li and Snowy were distracted, Sally had slipped the ray gun from its loose holster at Snowy’s waist. She inspected it briefly, then put it back. ‘Dead,’ she whispered to Jansson. ‘I thought it looked kind of inert. Another useful fact, Monica . . .’

50
    T HE TRAIL GREW wider as they approached the city. There was more traffic now, carts laden with butchered carcasses and cut leather and heaps of bones. Live animals on the hoof were driven forward too, things like bears, some even a little like apes, controlled in rough herds by beagle shepherds with sticks and whips that cracked. There was even a party of trolls being led by a beagle but under no apparent duress, singing what sounded like rockabilly to Jansson.
    And there were many pedestrians: beagles, adults and pups alike, all sparsely dressed, with belts or jackets replete with pockets. Jansson saw no sign of adornment, nothing like jewellery, no hats or fancy clothing. But as the crowds thickened Jansson started to smell them, the sharp stink of wet fur and piss or dung, and she wondered if that was how these dog-like people decorated themselves: not with visual embellishment but with fancy scents.
    The adults all walked upright. Maybe dropping to all fours was frowned on in the city, something you only did out in the country or in private – like a human going naked, maybe. But the young would get down and hop and gambol around their parents’ legs like puppies around a new owner. Jansson was no anatomist, but she watched the beagles curiously, trying to see how a presumably dog-like four-legged body plan had been adapted to a natural-looking upright stance – and how it had been arranged that slipping back to all fours was so easy. That was a difference with humans, she thought; even as a kid she wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if she’d tried to knuckle-walk like her remote chimp-like ancestors. But she couldn’t make out the detail.
    She clung on in the rattling cart, letting the sights and scents wash over her. The gathering crowd might almost have been human, if you looked at it through half-closed eyes. The beagles’ bodies, upright, were taller than human, and with the pelvis slung oddly low, so the torso was long, the back legs, short. Not impossibly far from the human. But then she would see ears prick up, and cold wolf-like eyes stare back at her, and the pack scent of the dogs would