“Aaahaa!” Peevy held up the lock in triumph, a greedy smile on his face. The muscles in his neck and arm bulged as he tried to lift the lid of the chest. “It's too heavy for me to lift alone. Swort! Come quickly.”
With united effort the goblins opened the chest, but instead of the expected glow of gold and jewelery, the top of the chest was remarkably dark. A pungent smell of urine, mold and stale sweat drifted from the open chest and invaded Sworts lungs and sent him into a fit of coughs and retches. He held his chest as he breathed superficial to suppress the tickling in his throat. He then held out his hands in front of him and puffed as Peevy roughly climbed onto his shoulders to take a look inside the chest.
“What the... “ Swort couldn't see Peevy's expression, but the disgust in his voice was undeniable. “Why would anyone.. Yugh!”
A moist, flimsy fur dropped on the ground next to Swort and all over his boots, followed by a dry boot with holes in the nose. A cacophony of clangs rung his ears as Peevy dropped a score of open cans on the ground and he brought his hands to his ears to block the prying sound. Jolts of pain ran through his shoulders as Peevy jumped to dig deeper into the chest.
“Interesting” Swort could hear Peevy mutter under his breath and another jolt of pain ran through his back as Peevy jumped again and the pressure of his boots disappeared.
Swort looked up to see Peevy sit inside the chest. Staring at fists full of shiny, golden paper he held up in the air. The paper looked as if it was of the expensive kind and elaborate, silver letters decorated the middle of the pages. Small holes seemed to indicate the papers could be torn neatly into squares, the insignia on the sides of the paper were unknown to Swort.
“Whats'da?” Swort asked Peevy who frowned at the printed silver letters on the papers.
“Some kind of coupons for Madame Zelena's beauty station for trolls.” Peevy replied. He threw a fistful of coupons at Swort. “Says here the dwarven Madam Zelena offers all trolls a discount on baths and the scrubbing of tusks.”
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“Thats' why the trolls are here.” Swort laughed out loud, looking out of the tent. Outside in the darkening sky, he could still hear weapons clashing and trolls singing verses of his poem. “I wonder how welcome they are after this encounter”
“Wait, wait...” Peevy brought the coupons closer to his face, then burst into a wild laugh. “I'm not sure how welcome they are, but the coupons expired three months ago already. I'm afraid Madame Zelena prefers to not have them on her doorstep at all.”
“The paper seems valuable though and the silver writing might be worth something at the least.” The bells on Peevy's robe jingled a he stuffed hands full of coupons into the pockets of his garb, then threw hands full of coupons at Sworts feet. “Perhaps we can find some buyers when we finally made our way to the capital of the orcs.”
Paper did not attract Swort much, the prospect of hauling such a bulk of paper for a possible profit even less. Instead, he walked around the shaggy tent, hoping to find at least some kind of real treasure.
He inspected the boot that the gnome had clambered on meticulously, but found it was discarded cause it was just a plain old boot. The tent was otherwise sparsely decorated. The moldy rug on the ground likely was the most valuable item inside and that was probably not gonna sell. Swort felt heavy inside. They had spend so much time and effort into the ruse, only to find useless garbage that only held value for trolls. He intended to have a very intimidating discussion with the gnomes as soon as they reached Kras at the outskirts of the camp.
Where was that gnome anyway? Swort realized the gnome had been silent since they entered the tent, which was uncommon for the tiny creature. He eyed the tent around them again, but the gnome was nowhere to be spotted.
“Where is that tiny little - “
“There they are!” A squeaky voice interrupted him. “See, they pillage your tents and try to take your riches for themselves. Yes. Bad bad goblins. Pipron told you truth, did he! Pipron is good gnome. We caught them red-handed! Yes we did."
Swort spun around, but two huge dirty fingers closed his wrists in an iron grip. A strong force pulled him off the ground by his neck. Swort shook like a cat, hoping to wrestly free of the hold. The hand shook him roughly back and forth, something cracked loudly in his neck, his head shaking from side to side.
“Lemme go, you dirty son of a trogg!” Peevy wrestled with a set of hands on his own, but the troll that held him just laughed at his efforts.
“Look a tha,” The breath of the troll smelled like rotten fish. A tuft of hair crowned the bald spot between his ears and the small gnome perched on the trolls shoulder. “Yer think ye can steal from ther Trolls, ey?”