Free The Ogre Apprentice by Trevor H. Cooley Page B

wanted to avoid a scene. To Fist’s relief, Vincent was not in his customary seat.
    It was mid-morning now and most students were in classes, but the library was bustling with activity. The long polished tables were crowded with students of every rank preparing for their afternoon classes. It was considered impolite to raise one’s voice in this place, but the room was filled with the low roar of a hundred whisperers.
    Fist turned to the right of the main doors and faced a large wardrobe that had been repurposed as the official library weapon closet. A new rule had been instituted after the war. Anyone, wizard or warrior, that wanted to use the library had to leave their weapons in the closet. Fist thought it a silly rule. What were they worried about? Sword fights breaking out over books?
    Fist opened the wardrobe and fumbled briefly with the mage staffs that threatened to spill out. Grumbling, he placed his mace inside and walked to the center desk where he waited in line for his turn to speak with one of the librarian assistants. He was only five back in the queue, but he did not make it to the front.
    “Droppings!” accused an aristocratic baritone.
    Fist winced at the sound. He knew that voice. He turned to see Vincent’s long nose hook over the top of the desk. The gnome peered up at him, his eyebrows twisted with irritation.
    “You! Ogre! Come here this instant!”
    Fist walked around the desk to the place where the gnome was crouched. Vincent backed out from under the desk where he had been when Fist had entered the library. His tall and slender frame uncoiled as he stood. The gnome was nearly seven feet tall and gaunt with dog-like droopy ears and a two pairs of glasses perched on his high forehead.
    “Droppings!” The gnome announced again, shoving his hand out to Fist palm up. “Do you concur?”
    There was a scattering of tiny raisin-like ovals on the gnome’s palm. “Uh, yes,” Fist said. “Those look like poop to me.”
    “Poop is an uncouth term, but indeed they are,” Vincent said accusingly. “And I have been finding them everywhere. In my chair. In-between pages of my books . . !”
    “You might have mice,” Fist suggested.
    “Mice? Don’t be absurd,” Vincent said.
    “Maybe rats, then?”
    The gnome’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips, wrinkling the pencil thin mustache above his lips. “There hasn’t been a mouse or rat in the library for decades, young ma- . . . ogre! No, there is only one rodent that has been allowed in this auspicious space and that is your little pet!”
    Squirrel squeezed out of his pouch and scurried up to Fist’s shoulder where he affected a look of surprise, pointing at himself. Me ?
    “Gosh, I don’t know, Mister Vincent, sir,” Fist said. “Squirrel is really clean. I don’t usually find his poop anywhere.”
    Squirrel snorted and nodded in agreement and Fist suddenly became suspicious. Where did Squirrel put all his droppings? After all, he was constantly eating. They had to go somewhere.
    He shook the thought away. He really didn’t want to know. “I think those are rat poops.”
    “Again, I say to you, absurd ,” Vincent insisted, tossing the handful of droppings onto the desktop in front of him. He picked up a thick book from the desk and leafed through it. “I researched the matter. This is Bierbaum’s Twenty Third Treatise on Flora and Fauna in Dremaldria and the Region Thereabouts. It belongs on floor two, aisle thirty six. My evidence is on page two hundred and eighty seven. It is a chapter on the distinction between rodent droppings.”
    Fist wrinkled his nose. Someone wrote books about that?
    “Bierbaum says here in paragraph two, very clearly I might add, that there is a distinct variation in shape and color between the various squirrel species and the common rat. He states . . .” The gnome cleared his throat and began patting his chest with his free hand. “Where are my glasses?”
    “On your head,” Fist