'I'm very happy for you,' said Victor.
'You my lucky human!' Rock boomed. 'Rock! What a name! Come and have a drink!'
Victor accepted. He really didn't have much of a choice, because Rock gripped his arm and, ploughing through the crowds like an icebreaker, half-led, half-dragged him towards the nearest door.
A blue light illuminated a sign. Most Morporkians could read Troll, it was hardly a difficult language. The sharp runes spelled out The Blue Lias.
It was a troll bar.
The smoky glow from the furnaces beyond the slab counter was the only light. It illuminated three trolls playing - well, something percussive, but Victor couldn't quite make out what because the decibel level was in realms where the sound was a solid force, and it made his eyeballs vibrate. The furnace smoke hid the ceiling.
'What you havin'?' roared Rock.
'I don't have to drink molten metal, do I?' Victor quavered. He had to quaver at the top of his voice in order to be heard.
'We got all typer human drink!' shouted the female troll behind the bar. It had to be a female. There was no doubt about it. She looked slightly like the statues cavemen used to carve of fertility goddesses thousands of years ago, but mostly like a foothill. 'We very cosmopolitan.' 'I'll have a beer, then!' 'Ana flowers-of-sulphur onna rocks, Ruby!' added Rock.
Victor took the opportunity to look around the bar, now that he was getting accustomed to the gloom and his eardrums had mercifully gone numb.
He was aware of masses of trolls seated at long tables, with here and there a dwarf, which was astonishing. Dwarfs and trolls normally fought like, well, dwarfs and trolls. In their native mountains there was a state of unremitting vendetta. Holy Wood certainly changed things.
'Can I have a quiet word?' Victor shouted in Rock's pointed ear.
'Sure!' Rock put down his drink. It contained a purple paper umbrella, which was charring in the heat. 'Have you seen Ginger? You know? Ginger?' 'She working at Borgle's!'
'Only in the mornings! I've just been there! Where does she go when she's not working?' 'Who know where anyone OF
There was a sudden silence from the combo in the smoke. One of the trolls picked up a small rock and started to pound it gently, producing a slow, sticky rhythm that clung to the walls like smoke. And from the smoke, Ruby emerged like a galleon out of the fog, with a ridiculous feather boa around her neck. It was continental drift with curves. She began to sing.
The trolls stood in respectful silence. After a while Victor heard a sob. Tears were rolling down Rock's face. 'What's the song about?' he whispered. Rock leaned down.
'Is ancient folklorique troll song,' he said. 'Is about Amber and Jasper. They were-' he hesitated, and waved his hands about vaguely. 'Friends. Good friends?' 'I think I know what you mean,' said Victor. 'And one day Amber takes her troll's dinner down to the cave and finds him-' Rock waved his hands in vague yet thoroughly descriptive motions '-with another lady troll. So she go home and get her club and come back and beat him to death, thump, thump, thump. 'Cos he was her troll and he done her wrong. Is very romantic song.'
not allowed to dally with customers. This isn't the best job in town, but you're not losing it for me,' snapped Ginger. 'Fish stew, right?'
'Oh. Right. Sorry.'
He flicked backwards through the pages. Before Deccan there was Tento, who also chanted three times a day and also sometimes received gifts of fish and also went to the lavatory, although either he wasn't so assiduous about it as Deccan or hadn't thought it always worth writing down. Before that, someone called Meggelin had been the chanter. A whole string of people had lived on the beach, and then if you went back further there was a group of them, and further still the entries had a more official feel. It was hard to tell. They seemed to be written in code, line after line of little complex pictures . . .
A bowl of primal soup was plonked down in front of him.
'Look,' he said. 'What time do you get off-'
'Never,' said Ginger.
'I just wondered if you might know where-'
'No.'
Victor stared at the murky surface of the broth. Borgle worked on the principle that if you find it in water, it's a fish. There was something purple in there and it had at least ten legs.
He ate it anyway. It was costing him thirty pence.
Then, with Ginger resolutely busying herself at the counter with her back to him lighthouse-fashion, so that however he tried to attract her attention her back was still facing him without her apparently moving, he went to look for another job.
Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people.
Bezam Planter adjusted the tray around his wife's neck. 'All right,' he said. 'Got everything?'