"Stand in front of it," Vimes hissed.
"I"m not that tall, Sam! Or that wide!"
The troll looked up at them, then at the trophies, and then grinned. It"s colder up here, Vimes thought. He"s quicker on the uptake. Even Nobby won"t play poker with him in the winter. Damn!
"Something wrong?" said Detritus.
Vimes sighed. What was the point? He"d spot it sooner or later.
"I"m sorry about this, Detritus," he said, standing aside.
Detritus looked at the horrible trophy and nodded.
"Yeah, dere used to be a lot of dat sort of fing in der old days," he said calmly, putting down the luggage. "Dey wouldn"t be de real diamond teef, o"course. Dey"d take dem out and put bigger glass ones in."
"You don"t mind?" said Lady Sybil. "It"s a troll"s head! Someone actually mounted a troll"s head and put it on the wall!"
"Ain"t mine," said Detritus.
"But it"s so horrible!"
Detritus stood in thought for a moment and then opened the stained wooden box that contained all he had felt it necessary to bring.
"Dis is der old country, after all," he said. "So if it"d make you feel better..."
He pulled out a smaller box and rummaged among what appeared to be bits of rock and cloth until he found something yellowy-brown and round, like a shallow cup.
"Should"ve bunged it away," he said, "but it"s all I got to remember my old granny by. She kept fings in it."
"It"s a bit of human skull, isn"t it?" said Vimes at last.
"Yep."
"Whose?"
"Anyone ask dat troll dere his name?" said Detritus, and the glint in his voice had a brittle edge to it for a moment. Then he carefully put the bowl away. "T"ings were diff"rent in dem days. Now you don"t chop our heads off an" we don"t make drums outa your skin. Everyt"ing is hunky-dory. Dat"s all we have to know."
He picked up the boxes again and followed Lady Sybil towards the staircase. Vimes took another look at the trophy head. The teeth were longer, far longer than they"d be on a real troll. A hunter"d have to be very brave and very lucky to go up against a fighting troll and survive. It"d be so much easier to go after an old one and later replace the ground-down stumps with sparkly fangs.
My gods, the things we do...
"Igor?" he said, as the odd-job man lurched past under the weight of two more bags.
"Yeth, your exthellenthy?"
"I"m an excellency?" said Vimes to Inigo.
"Yes, Your Grace."
"And still My Grace as well?"
"Yes, your grace. You are His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Your Grace."
"Hang on, hang on. His Grace cancels out the Sir, I know that. It"s like having an ace in poker."
"Strictly speaking this is true, your grace, but great store is set by titles here and it is best to play with a full deck, mmph."
"I was once blackboard monitor at school," said Vimes sharply. "For a whole term. Would that help? Dame Venting said no one could clean a blackboard like me."