“Grah!” said the troll, and smiled. Trolls were always smiling. Their mouths were wide and froglike and naturally suited to it. With its eyes squeezed tight against the sunlight, Frogsnoggler looked comically pleased.
“What are you doing up at this hour, anyway?” Sings-to-Trees asked, coming down from the porch.
The troll’s face fell. “Gragh…” it said humbly, and held out its arms.
“Oh, no…”
Cradled against its chest, almost lost against the clay-colored bulk, lay a battered grey fox. An ugly leg-trap, all steel fangs and metal, hung grotesquely from one small back leg.
“Grah?” asked the troll anxiously, holding out the injured fox. “Grah?”
Sings-to-Trees got his arms under the fox, who snapped weakly at him. The trap hit his chest with a metallic clunk. Outrage choked him. “Bloody poachers!” he growled, shifting his grip on the fox. The trap chattered again.
“Grah!” agreed the troll. Its low forehead wrinkled in a frown. Immense tusks glittered briefly at the edges of its mouth.
Sings-to-Trees took a deep breath, and let the anger go. There were more important matters at hand. The fox was a skinny little thing, panting in pain and probably dehydration as well, and standing around with his teeth gritted didn’t do the poor creature any good.
First things first…
He wasn’t strong enough to get the leg trap off himself, but fortunately, brute strength was squatting at arms-length. “Okay, Frogsnoggler, I’m going to need your help.”
“Grug!” It nodded vigorously.
“I’ll hold him. I want you to pull the trap open—slowly!—and I’ll see if we can get the leg out without something worse happening.”
The fox’s leg was badly cut but not crushed. The little animal had been lucky. Sings-to-Trees tossed a towel over its head to keep it from ripping his arm open, held the fox’s torso firmly under his elbow, and nodded to the troll. “Carefully, now…”
Frogsnoggler reached down and opened the steel trap as casually as Sings-to-Trees might open a book. The elf pulled the fox’s foot free, working as delicately as he could to keep the wound from being torn even wider by the cruel metal teeth. The fox panted in pain.
It took less than a minute, but several subjective eternities passed for Sings-to-Trees.
“Got it…got it…There!” He reached out and patted Frogsnoggler’s flank with his free hand. “Well done!”
The troll beamed at him. “Grah! Grah-grah-hrragggh?”
Sings-to-Trees had no idea what the troll had said, but he could venture a guess. “I think he’ll probably be fine, but I need to treat this. Can you help me a little more? If the daylight’s not bothering you too much?”
“Grah, grah.” The troll waved a hoof-like hand dismissively.
“Then if you could take him…” Sings-to-Trees placed the fox back into the troll’s arms and went to get catgut and a needle.
Cleaning the wound and sewing the fox’s leg up was a tedious process for Sings-to-Trees, and an undoubtedly painful one for the fox, despite the sedative the elf poured down its throat. He was rather glad the troll was holding the animal. The fox kept snapping and trying to thrash, but it might as well have been held down by a mountain.
“One more…and…there we go.” He tied off the thread. “Okay. I’ll keep him for a few days and make sure it heals up clean, and he gets a couple of square meals.” He accepted the fox again. “Thank you and—oh, no!”
“Grah?”
Sings-to-Trees leveled an accusing finger at Frogsnoggler. “Why didn’t you tell me he was biting you?”
“Grah…” The troll shrugged and scuffed the dirt with one hoof, like a small child caught at mischief. Its left arm was full of tooth marks, most of which had skidded off the thick hide, but a few were filling up with blood.
“Stay right there. I’m cleaning those.”
“Graww…”
The fox went into an empty hutch, most recently home to an infant manticore. Sings-to-Trees put a bowl of water in with him, and draped the towel in the corner. He went back out to the porch.
Frogsnoggler had waited. Sings-to-Trees picked up the bottle of iodine, turned around, and sighed.
The troll’s eyes riveted on the bottle. Its mouth sagged in a parody of despair. “Grawh.”
“Come on, you’re a big troll,” said Sings-to-Trees. This was something of an understatement—Frogsnoggler was probably close to two tons and stood nearly eight feet tall. “And I know you’re brave. You stood there while that fox bit you and never a peep.”