A handful of coins slid across the counter. They felt icy cold, and most of them were heavily corroded.
'Oh, er-' the barman began.
The door opened and shut, letting in a cold blast of air despite the warmth of the night.
The barman wiped the top of the bar in a distracted way, carefully avoiding the coins.
'You see some funny types, running a bar,' he muttered. A voice by his ear said, I FORGOT. A PACKET OF NUTS, PLEASE.
Snow glittered on the rimward outriders of the Ramtop mountains, that great world-spanning range which, where it curves around the Circle Sea, forms a natural wall between Klatch and the great flat Sto plains.
It was the home of rogue glaciers and prowling avalanches and high, silent fields of snow.
And yetis. Yetis are a high-altitude species of troll, and quite unaware that eating people is out of fashion. Their view is: if it moves, eat it. If it doesn't, then wait for it to move. And then eat it.
They'd been listening all day to the sounds. Echoes had bounced from peak to peak along the frozen ranges until, now, it was a steady dull rumble.
'My cousin', said one of them, idly probing a hollow tooth with a claw, 'said they was enormous grey animals. Elephants.'
'Bigger'n us?' said the other yeti.
'Nearly as bigger'n us,' said the first yeti. 'Loads of them, he said. More than he could count.'
The second yeti sniffed the wind and appeared to consider this.
'Yeah, well,' he said, gloomily. 'Your cousin can't count above one.'
'He said there was lots of big ones. Big fat grey elephants, all climbing, all roped together. Big and slow. All carrying lots of oograah.'
Ah.
The first yeti indicated the vast sloping snowfield.
'Good and deep today,' he said. 'Nothing's gonna move fast in this, right? We lie down in the snow, they won't see us till they're right on top of us, we panic 'em, it's Big Eats time.' He waved his enormous paws in the air. 'Very heavy, my cousin said. They'll not move fast, you mark my words.'
The other yeti shrugged.
'Let's do it,' he said, against the sound of distant, terrified trumpeting.
They lay down in the snow, their white hides turning them into two unsuspicious mounds. It was a technique that had worked time and again, and had been handed down from yeti to yeti for thousands of years, although it wasn't going to be handed much further.
They waited.
use my Uncle Oswald lay quite still like that. Mind you, I only ever saw him once. And that was at his funeral.'
Victor opened his mouth - and there were distant, blurred voices. A few stones moved. A voice, a little closer now, trilled, 'Hallo, little children. This way, little children.'
'That's Rock!' said Ginger.
'I'd know that voice anywhere,' said Victor. 'Hey! Rock! It's me! Victor!'
There was a worried pause. Then Rock's voice bellowed: 'It's my friend Victor!'
'That mean we can't eat him?'
'No-one is to eat my friend Victor! We dig him out with speed!'
There was the sound of crunching. Then another troll's voice complained, 'They call this limestone? I call it tasteless.'