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'Very accurate deshcription, I'd shay.'
'He wouldn't agree. He'd say it was a magnificent barbarian tent, hung with the pelts of the great beasts hunted by the lean-eyed warriors from the edge of civilisation, and smelt of the rare and curious resins plundered from the caravans as they crossed the trackless – well, and so on. I mean it,' he added.
'He'sh mad?'
'Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.'
'Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.'
Cohen turned in his saddle again. Twoflower was telling Bethan how Cohen had single-handed defeated the snake warriors of the witch lord of S'belinde and stolen the sacred diamond from the giant statue of Offler the Crocodile God.
A weird smile formed among the wrinkles of Cohen's face.
'I could tell him to shut up, if you like,' said Rincewind.
'Would he?'
'No, not really.'
'Let him babble,' said Cohen. His hand fell to the handle of his sword, polished smooth by the grip of decades.
'Anyway, I like his eyes,' he said. They can see for fifty years.'
A hundred yards behind them, hopping rather awkwardly through the soft snow, came the Luggage. No-one ever asked its opinion about anything.
By evening they had come to the edge of the high plains, and rode down through gloomy pine forests that had only been lightly dusted by the snowstorm. It was a landscape of huge cracked rocks, and valleys so narrow and deep that the days only lasted about twenty minutes. A wild, windy country, the sort where you might expect to find —
Trollsh,' said Cohen, sniffing the air.
Rincewind stared around him in the red evening light. Suddenly rocks that had seemed perfectly normal looked suspiciously alive. Shadows that he wouldn't have looked at twice now began to look horribly occupied.
'I like trolls,' said Twoflower.
'No you don't,' said Rincewind firmly. 'You can't. They're big and knobbly and they eat people.'
'No they don't,' said Cohen, sliding awkwardly off his horse and massaging his knees. 'Well-known mishap-prehenshion, that ish. Trolls never ate anybody.'
'No?'
'No, they alwaysh spit the bitsh out. Can't digesht people, see? Your average troll don't want any more out of life than a nice lump of granite, maybe, with perhapsh a nice slab of limeshtone for aftersh. I heard someone shay it's becosh they're a shilicashe – a shillycaysheou – Cohen paused, and wiped his beard, 'made out of rocks.
Rincewind nodded. Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to keep ntil they learned about doors and didn't simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall.
As they gathered firewood Cohen went on, Trollsh teeth, that'sh the thingsh.'
'Why?' said Bethan.
'Diamonds. Got to be, you shee. Only thing that can shtand the rocksh, and they shtill have to grow a new shet every year.'
'Talking of teeth—' said Twoflower.
'Yesh?'
'I can't help noticing —'
'Yesh?'
'Oh, nothing,' said Twoflower.
