Panting, Marcus grabbed Phoenix’s arm. “Thanks,” he gasped.
“It’s not over yet,” Phoenix warned. “The only thing that kills them is sunlight and there’s still quite a few hours of night left, I’m afraid.”
“What...” Marcus puffed, frowning, “are we supposed to do then?”
“I think...,” Phoenix turned to look up at the tree. Its burn-time had been short. Even now the last of the oil-rich needles were sizzling into extinction. There wasn’t enough wind to make the fire jump to the next tree. “I think,” he repeated, “we’re going to have to run for it.”
Can’t you just,” Marcus waved an arm at the tree, “set a few more alight and drive it away?”
“Sure,” he replied, “but that might set the whole forest on fire or even send it straight back toward Jade and the others.”
“Can’t Jade do anything?”
“She’s still asleep. We couldn’t wake her up – believe me, I tried. Besides, Truda tells me magic doesn’t work on trolls either. Must’ve been what was causing her so much trouble before.”
“Is that what that thing is?”
Phoenix nodded. “Evidently we’re right in the middle of troll-country.”
“Oh this keeps getting better and better,” Marcus muttered.
Phoenix quirked a quick grin. “Ain’t it great? Can’t have things getting too dull.”
Marcus sent him a sardonic look. “Dull would be a nice change. I’d even opt for boring.” The troll chose that moment to roar at them in its unintelligible, gravelly voice. Phoenix gripped the torch tighter and pointed with it in a direction away from the cave.
“I don’t like your chances of dull or boring happening any time soon,” he said. “Let’s take turns distracting it and hope it’s too stupid to realise what we’re doing. We’ve got to keep it away from the others until morning.”
So began the longest night in Phoenix’s life – either of his lives, in fact. For hours the two ran, staggered and fell through the cold forest. They took turns hiding and resting while the other carried a torch and ran in a different direction, making enough noise to attract the troll’s short attention. Whenever it looked like losing interest, they would yell or light another tree to get it stirred up again – always careful now to choose isolated trees. It had occurred to Phoenix only after setting the first one alight, that a full-scale forest fire might not be such a great idea.
Always the troll thumped after them remorselessly, untiringly; sometimes roaring, sometimes laughing as though this were a hilarious game these puny humans had invented just for its enjoyment.
Late in the night, the moon set and the boys could no longer tell what direction to run. They were exhausted, cold and soaked from the knees down. Phoenix couldn’t feel his feet or fingers any longer. He wondered if they were frostbitten. The ground was treacherously slippery underfoot. They stumbled and fell more and more often. At last, even their torch sputtered and gave up, leaving them in utter darkness. Starlight gleamed off to their right. Water. A lake. Considering how many lakes and streams they had seen, it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen into one.
“I can’t keep going,” Marcus whispered. He rested in the deep shadow of a tree just to Phoenix’s left. Phoenix stood with his back pressed to another tree, head down, hands on bent knees taking weight off his legs, breathing hard.
“Me neither,” he admitted.
Not far away, a loud crunching, crashing sound told them the troll was close on their trail. Although made of rock, the beast seemed to have the nose of a bloodhound and the night vision of an elf. It delighted in sniffing out their hiding places.
“We could try the lake,” Marcus suggested.
“I don’t think you can drown a rock,” Phoenix disagreed. “Besides, we’d freeze to death in that water.”
“Got a better idea?” the Roman sounded aggravated.
“Actually,” he tried to sound confident; hoping he was right, “I do. We need to make for high ground. Dawn’s not far away now.”
That, at least, was true. In the last few minutes, black shadows had begun lightening to dark grey. A hint of pale sunrise colours showed in the east. If they were really lucky, they might be able to keep the troll occupied for another half an hour. Then, if they were really, really lucky, it would be too far from its home to run back when the sun rose.
Unfortunately, Phoenix had become so turned around during the night that he had no idea in which direction his friends were. He did, however, have a very bad feeling that the cave that currently housed an unconscious Jade and two children was the home of their friendly little troll.
The tree holding Phoenix up shook violently. With another grinding chuckle, the troll grabbed and pulled it back like a giant slingshot. Fear gave both boys a spurt of adrenalin and they sprinted away just as the rock-hands released the trunk. It twanged and creaked in an arc toward them, the tip of the pine dipping low before snapping upright again and swaying to and fro, showering them with ice and snow.
Phoenix scrambled uphill as best he could, picking his way between huge boulders and hoping desperately that none of them would turn out to be trolls as well. He could hear Marcus’ uneven breathing close behind. Too close for comfort, came the sound of enormous rocky feet stomping on the slope below.
“Have you...” Phoenix panted, “got your...flint and.. tinder?”
“Yes!”
Phoenix paused to glance up and then back over his shoulder. The beast was gaining on them but so was the light from the eastern sky. It would be close. Resolutely, he gritted his teeth and pushed on his aching thighs to force himself up the slope. “When we get to the top,” he called breathlessly, “I’ll distract it while you find something to set fire to. I don’t care if it’s your own clothes. I want it trapped in a circle of fire when dawn comes, got it?”
“Right,” Marcus wasted little breath on the acknowledgment.
Abruptly, the slope levelled out and they emerged from beneath the canopy onto a strangely level hilltop. It looked like a small mountain had been sheered off cleanly by an enormous sword. Phoenix searched rapidly for a hiding place. Unfortunately, the area was not only perfectly flat but also perfectly clean. Not a tree, rock or even a bush broke the unforgiving openness of the space before them. Not even a convenient patch of long grass or ferns. There was nowhere to hide.
Phoenix had no breath to spare on swearing. He staggered to the very centre of the clearing and cast a desperate glance over his shoulder at the eastern horizon. It glowed beautifully pink and grey in a way that early-rising joggers would have admired. For Phoenix and Marcus, however, it had a worrying lack of bright, shimmering sunshine. Sunrise was at least twenty minutes away and there remained absolutely nowhere they could hide from the troll for that long.
Phoenix stood a few moments longer in the middle of the space and exchanged despairing glances with Marcus. His legs were jelly and each breath stabbed at his lungs. Sometime during the night he’d fallen badly on his side. He suspected one of his ribs was fractured and was sure his right ankle was seriously twisted. As long as he didn’t actually look at the bruising, he could convince himself the pain was irrelevant.
“Go,” he managed to gasp at Marcus, “I’ll try and keep it busy.” The Roman nodded and stumbled off to the other side of the clearing. Phoenix prayed silently he would find enough dry tinder and willing trees in time. The top of this hill was bigger than he’d hoped. Marcus would have a difficult job to get the entire thing encircled by flame in time for sunrise. If he didn’t, this could be the first and last sunrise that Phoenix would ever almost see.
Even as the morbid thought of his own death by flattening occurred to him, Phoenix felt a spurt of relief through the exhaustion and fear that blanketed his mind. He had already died once. His knife still had six jewels on it. Hypothetically, he could die five more times and still come back to life. One death had been more than enough and he wasn’t even slightly keen to test this hypothesis. Besides, t
here was always the chance that the troll would simply squash him repeatedly with that enormous fist until all of his remaining lives were gone.
What would happen then? Would he be truly dead, or would he find himself back in the real world? Was that an option? Could they just die enough times to get free of this game? No, they had a task to complete as well, he remembered. Stopping Feng Zhudai was more than just winning this game – it would save both worlds from a horrible future.
From just beyond the edge of the plateau, thunderous footsteps and that crunching laugh sounded, ominously close. Phoenix saw the troll’s ugly head and massive fingers appear as the beast idly brushed aside a fifty foot tree like it was made of spider web.
Phoenix sighed and squared his shoulders as the troll spotted him and chortled roughly again. OK. There could be a chance that dying six more times might launch him back into his real life; but there was an even bigger chance that it would just make his world and this one a hell-pit of death and disaster. He couldn’t take the easy way out by dying. Easy! Hah!
It was time to duel with Death in a world where Death was programmed to win.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As far as he could tell, Phoenix had three advantages: he was smarter and faster than the troll; and there was nothing on this scoured-flat plateau he could trip on. As long as he stayed on his feet and didn’t succumb to exhaustion, he should be able to keep the troll occupied long enough for Marcus to complete his task.
Of course, the troll had at least two big advantages of its own: it was indefatigable and indestructible. As Phoenix tensed himself to run, he wondered if his three outweighed the trolls’ two. The creature trundled closer, looming over him like a mobile cliff-face. Phoenix looked up and swallowed heavily. From this angle, it was hard to believe he had any chance at all. His legs shook.
With one more fleeting glance at the brightening eastern horizon, Phoenix uttered the most childish war-cry in history. He stuck his thumbs in his ears, poked out his tongue and yelled:
“Nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah – you can’t catch me!”
He dove and rolled clumsily to the left. Tiredness and pain made his aikido roll awkward and jarring but it served the purpose. A huge cloud of dust roiled up from the place where he had just stood as the troll’s granite fist smacked into the ground.
Clambering to his feet, Phoenix clutched at his ribs with one hand and his sword scabbard with the other. He should have taken it off. It threatened to tangle his legs as he skipped aside again and ducked beneath a swinging stony arm. The hand passed so close to his head that the wind tossed his hair into his eyes. Impatiently, he brushed it aside and stumbled back just as an enormous, craggy foot stomped where he had been. This was never going to work. The troll was simply too big and too strong for him to keep being that lucky. He had to change; had to do the unexpected.
Something his aikido sensei often said came to mind: “Avoid the falling rock”.
If he hadn’t been so exhausted, Phoenix would have laughed at the irony of it. It was a central idea of Aikido: don’t be there; don’t go places where you were likely to get in trouble; if you did get into trouble then running away was a great option. Phoenix suspected his master never thought the philosophy would have to be taken quite so literally.
Aikido! That was it! OK, he couldn’t actually throw the troll or put it in a wrist lock but there had to be some way he could use its own strength and movement against it. That was the very basis of how aikido worked. An idea glimmered.
Dragging long, painful gasps of breath, Phoenix turned and ran twenty long paces away then doubled back towards the troll at full tilt. The beast stopped short, confused by this sudden change of tactics. It stood uncertainly for a moment then raised a thick arm to swing down at Phoenix’s darting form, missing when he dived directly between its legs at the last second. The momentum of its own arm carried the troll further forward than it probably intended. As it tried to twist its heavy body to follow Phoenix’s path, the beast leaned just a fraction too far and overbalanced. It fell to earth with a resounding thump and a roar that shook the entire mountaintop.
Phoenix didn’t stop to watch. He only had a brief respite before the beast would be up again – and probably very angry this time. Glancing around, he spotted Marcus working frantically with a smoky branch. Several trees around the clearing were smouldering nicely. Phoenix noted with admiration that the Roman had chosen to set fire to trees evenly spaced around the mountaintop. The troll would have to stay in the clearing to avoid the fires but there weren’t enough alight and dawn was still at least ten minutes away. The creature could still escape if it wanted to.
Time for Plan B. If only he had a Plan B.
“I need a rope!” he yelled. Marcus nodded and reached beneath his fur coat. Rapidly, he unwound a long, thin rope from his waist. Phoenix decided now was not the time to ask why it was there in the first place. He was just grateful his companion was so well prepared. Snatching it with a brief nod, Phoenix staggered back into the clearing as the troll unfolded itself and pushed to its feet.
Star Wars time, he thought grimly – just like Luke taking out the Empire’s Walker on the snow world of Hoth. With hasty, trembling fingers, he knotted the rope into a huge lasso and laid it out on the ground like a giant snare. Next he laid the free end in a long straight line and backed away a few steps.
The troll paused and watched Phoenix with an air of confused stupidity. It clearly couldn’t work out why this puny human was laying such an obvious and ineffective trap. There was no way a troll could be snared by the strength of one man. It peered uncertainly at the loop and at the loose, untethered rope. Then, with a rough laugh, it placed one foot unconcernedly smack into the middle of the lasso.
Instantly, Phoenix darted forward and snatched up the free end and ran backward, pulling the loop taut around the stony leg. The troll laughed again and stepped back, jerking the rope tighter and pulling Phoenix off his feet. He managed a scrappy breakfall that protected his ribs but winded him. Holding onto the rope, he scrambled upright as the troll trod heavily toward him.
Again Phoenix rushed suicidally toward the monster; again he launched himself between its open legs. This time the troll was a shade quicker and he barely escaped being hit like a croquet ball by the swinging fist. This time it did not overbalance. Instead, it turned around to face this annoying gnat of a human.
In doing so, it did exactly what Phoenix had hoped – it tangled the rope around its own legs. He ran as fast as his burning thighs would carry him around the thing. He stayed just out of reach of those fists, darting in every direction to confuse and encircle the troll. It twisted and turned to follow him until the rope was thoroughly snarled around its legs.
Finally realising its dilemma, the troll stood still and looked down at itself. Perplexed, it reached down to pluck at the thin cord. With perfect timing, Marcus managed to get a dozen more trees to burst into flame right in front of it at that moment. The troll looked up. Heat and flames leapt. Raising rocky hands to shield its face, the troll tried to back away. Then, as the ropes pulled taut, it toppled slowly to the ground with the booming sound of a mountainside avalanche.
Phoenix jumped aside and punched the air with a whoop of joy. He stumbled to Marcus’ side and the pair of them watched the troll thrash and twist on the bare earth. More trees flared into life. The circle of fire was complete – but it wouldn’t last long. With a loud twang, the thin rope snapped and the troll managed to bend a knee.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Phoenix breathed, staring at the eastern horizon. A thin, shivering slip of sun appeared.
The troll roared. Phoenix imagined he could hear a touch of fear in that gravelly sound now. Its struggles increased. Rope plunked, broke and fell away in loose segments. The troll heaved itself to its feet and lumbered toward the nearest trees but the fires there were reaching peak intensity. It backed away with a roar of pain and confusion.
Turning, it ran directly toward where Phoenix and
Marcus were half-hidden behind an unburned sapling. Marcus gasped and backed away involuntarily. His movement must have caught the troll’s eye and it raised a murderous fist right above them.
Phoenix caught Marcus’ elbow and dragged him aside.
“Run!” The two boys bolted but Phoenix’s twisted ankle chose that moment to give out completely and he fell to the ground in a heap. Marcus stopped, turning back to help.
“Go!” Phoenix yelled, afraid they would both be killed. “Get out!” At least with his digital lives he had a chance of surviving. Marcus had only one life in this world. The Roman shook his dark head and bent over to haul Phoenix to his feet.
He was too late. Overhead, branches snapped. Burning pine needles and glowing embers fell around them like fireworks. A fist of unyielding stone descended unstoppably toward their unprotected heads. Phoenix shoved at Marcus, pushing him aside. He stumbled away with a look of horror as he realised what Phoenix had done.
“No!”
There was a flash of brilliant white light, tinged with purple-blues that burnt into the brain and left strange after-images on the inside of Phoenix’s eyelids. Marcus’ despairing yell was overwhelmed by a horrendous cracking sound. It echoed like the crunching, grinding, snapping cacophony of noise an iceberg makes as it calves into the sea; or the sound of an earthquake destroying whole cities.
Then; silence. Profound, utter silence except for the crackle and sizzle of pine trees fizzling into bare trunks around them. Reddish sunlight poured through the smoky haze. Phoenix slowly turned his head and looked up. Two feet above him, the troll’s grey fist hung, frozen in midair. With a gasp of shocked relief, Phoenix dragged himself out from beneath that looming pile of stone. Marcus hurried to help him up and together they hobbled back uphill to get a better view.
Teetering on the edge of the hilltop clearing was an enormous, solid, statue of a troll. Spring sunlight had done its job. The troll had petrified, just as Truda predicted. As the two warriors watched, gravity took charge and the stones disintegrated. An arm shattered and smashed to earth just where Phoenix had lain. Then the other arm; the head; a knee snapped. Suddenly the whole lot imploded into a large, shapeless pile of grey rocks tumbling down slope.
The Hammer of Thor Page 7
