The Last Guardian (Disney)

by Eoin Colfer

  Mulch yanked on the troll’s hair, instinctively resurrecting an age-old troll-steering technique. His granddad had often told stories around the spit-fire of the great troll riders who had rampaged across the countryside doing whatever they felt like, and nobody could even catch them to argue.

  The good old days, his granddad used to say. We dwarfs were kings. Even the demons would turn tail when they seen a mounted dwarf comin’ over the hill atop a sweat-steamin’ troll.

  This doesn’t feel like a good day, thought Mulch. This feels like the end of the world.

  Mulch decided on a direct approach rather than pussyfooting around with battle tactics, and he steered Gruff directly into the throng of Berserkers.

  “Don’t hold back!” he shouted into the troll’s ear.

  Bellico’s breath caught in her throat.

  Scatter! she wanted to shout to her troops. Take cover!

  But the troll was upon them, smashing terra-cotta warriors with scything swipes of its massive arms, knocking them over like toy soldiers. The troll kicked the dog into the lower atmosphere and sideswiped Bellico herself into a water barrel. In seconds, several pirates were reduced to a dog’s dinner, and even though Salton Finnacre managed to jab a sword into Gruff’s thigh, the massive troll lumbered on, seemingly unhindered by the length of steel sticking out of his leg.

  Mulch’s toes located the nerve clusters between Gruff’s ribs, and he used them to steer the troll into the barn.

  I am a troll rider, the dwarf realized with a bolt of pride. I was born to do this, and steal stuff, and eat loads.

  Mulch resolved to find a way of combining these three pursuits if he made it through the night.

  Inside the barn, the plane lay balanced on a wheel and wing tip, with arrows piercing its body. Holly’s face was pressed to the glass, her mouth a disbelieving O.

  I don’t know why she’s surprised, thought Mulch. She should be used to me rescuing her by now.

  Mulch heard the clamor of ranks re-forming behind him, and he knew it was only a matter of heartbeats before the archers launched a salvo at the troll.

  And as big as my mount is, even he will go down with half a dozen arrows puncturing his vitals.

  There was no time to open the glider door and scoop up its three passengers, so Mulch yanked on the hair, dug in his toes, and whispered in the troll’s ear, hoping that his message was getting through.

  Inside the solar plane, Holly used the few moments before all hell would surely break loose to hustle a dazed Artemis into the pilot’s seat. She strapped herself in beside him.

  “I’m flying?” asked Artemis.

  Holly flip-flapped her feet. “I can’t reach the pedals.”

  “I see,” said Artemis.

  It was a banal yet necessary conversation, as Artemis’s piloting skills were soon to be called into use.

  Gruff shouldered the plane upright, then put his weight behind it, heaving the light craft toward the open doorway. The plane hobbled forward on damaged gear, lurching with each rotation.

  “I did not foresee any of these events,” said Artemis through clattering teeth, more to himself than to his copilot. Holly placed both hands on the dash, to brace herself against an impact toward which they were rolling at full speed.

  “Wow,” said Holly, watching arrows thunk into the nose and wings. “You didn’t foresee a troll-riding dwarf pushing your plane down the runway. You must be losing your touch, Artemis.”

  He tried to connect himself to the moment, but it was too surreal. Watching the Berserker soldiers grow larger through the double frames of windshield and barn doorway made the entire thing seem like a movie. A very realistic 3-D movie with vibro-chairs, but a movie all the same. This feeling of detachment coupled with the old Artemis Fowl slow reflexes almost cost him his life as he sat dreamily watching a Berserker long-arrow arcing toward his head.

  Luckily Holly’s reactions were stellar, and she managed to punch Artemis in the shoulder with enough force to knock him sideways to the limit of his seat belt. The arrow punctured the windshield, making a surprisingly small hole, and thunked into the headrest exactly where Artemis’s vacant face would have been.

  Suddenly, Artemis had no problem connecting to the moment.

  “I can air-start the plane,” he said, flicking switches on the dash. “If we get off the ground at all.”

  “Doesn’t that require coordination?” asked Holly.

  “Yes, split-second timing.”

  Holly paled. Relying on Artemis’s coordination was about as sensible as relying on Mulch’s powers of abstinence.

  The plane battered its way through the Berserkers, decapitating a terra-cotta warrior. Solar panels tinkled and cracked, and the landing gear buckled. Gruff kept pushing, ignoring various wounds that now gushed with blood.

  Bellico rallied her troops and hurried in pursuit, but none could match the troll’s pace except the hound, who latched on to Mulch’s back, trying to dislodge him.

  Mulch was insulted that a dog would interfere in what was possibly the most valiant rescue attempt ever, so he locked its head in the crook of one elbow and shouted into the animal’s face.

  “Give it up, Fido! I am invincible today. Look at me, riding a troll, for heaven’s sake. How often do you see that anymore? Never! That’s how often. Now, you have two seconds to back off, or I am going to have to eat you.”

  Two seconds passed. The dog shook its head, refusing to back off, so Mulch ate him.

  It was, he would later tell his fellow dwarf fugitive Barnet Riddles, proprietor of Miami’s Sozzled Parrot bar, a terrible waste to spit out half a dog, but it’s difficult to look heroic with a mutt’s hindquarters hanging out of yer mouth.

  Seconds after the live hound disagreed with Mulch to his face, the dead dog disagreed with his stomach. It may have been the Berserker soul that caused the onset of indigestion, or it may have been something the dog ate before something ate him—either way, Mulch’s innards were suddenly cramped by a giant fist wearing a chainmail glove.

  “I gotta trim,” he said through gritted teeth.

  If Gruff had realized what Mulch Diggums was about to do, he would have run screaming like a two-year-old pixette and buried himself underground till the storm had passed, but the troll did not speak grunted Dwarfish and so followed the last command given, which had been: Push downhill.

  The solar plane picked up speed as it ran down the clay ramp with the Berserkers in quick pursuit.

  “We are not going to make it,” said Artemis, checking the instruments. “The gear is shot.”

  The runway’s end curved before them like the end of a gentle ski jump. If the plane went off with insufficient speed, it would simply plummet into the lake, and they would be sitting ducks alongside the actual ducks that were probably inhabited by Berserkers and would peck them to death. Artemis was almost reconciled to the fact that he was going to die in the immediate future, but he really did not want his skull to be fractured by the bill of a possessed mallard. In fact, Death by aggressive aquatic bird had just rocketed to number one on Artemis’s Least Favorite Ways to Die list, smashing the record-breaking dominance of Death by dwarf gas, which had haunted his dreams for years.

  “Not ducks,” he said. “Please, not ducks. I was going to win the Nobel Prize.”

  They could hear commotion from underneath the fuselage: animal grunting and buckling metal. If the plane did not take off soon, it was going to be shaken to pieces. This was not a strong craft, stripped back as it was to increase the power-to-weight ratio necessary for sustainable flight.

  Outside the solar plane, Mulch’s entire body was twisted in a cramped treeroot of pain. He knew what was going to happen. His body was about to react to a combination of stress, bad diet, and gas buildup by instantaneously jettisoning up to a third of his own body weight. Some more disciplined dwarf yogis can invoke this procedure at will and refer to it as the Once a Decade Detox, but for ordinary dwarfs it goes by the name Trimming the Wei
ght. And you do not want to be in the line of fire when the weight is being trimmed.

  The plane reached the bottom of the slope with barely enough momentum to clear the ramp.

  Water landing, thought Artemis. Death by ducks.

  Then something occurred. A boost of power came from somewhere. It was as if a giant forefinger had flicked the plane forward into the air. The tail rose, and Artemis fought the pedals to keep it down.

  How is this happening? Artemis wondered, staring befuddled at the controls, until Holly punched his shoulder for the second time in as many minutes.

  “Air start!” she yelled.

  Artemis sat bolt upright. Air start! Of course.

  The solar plane had a small engine to get the craft off the ground, and after that the solar panels kicked in; but without a battery the engine could not even turn over, unless Artemis hit the throttle at the right time, before the plane began to lose momentum. This might buy them enough time to catch a thermal for a couple of hundred feet, enough to clear the lake and outfly the arrows.

  Artemis waited until he sensed the plane was at the apex of its rise, then opened the throttle wide.

  Bellico and her remaining troops ran hell-for-leather down the runway, hurling any missiles in their arsenal after the plane. It was a bizarre situation to be involved in, even for a resurrected spirit occupying a human body.

  I am chasing a plane being pushed down a runway by a troll-riding dwarf, she thought. Unbelievable.

  But nevertheless it was true, and she’d best believe it, or her quarry would escape.

  They cannot go far.

  Unless the vehicle flew as it was designed to.

  It won’t fly. We have destroyed the battery.

  This thing flies without power once it is airborne. My host has seen this with her own eyes.

  Her good sense told her that she should stop and allow the plane to crash into the lake. If the passengers did not drown, then her archers could pick off the swimmers. But good sense was of little use on a night such as this, when ghost warriors roamed the earth and dwarfs rode once more on the backs of trolls, so Bellico decided she must do what she could to stop this plane from leaving the ground.

  She increased her pace, outstripping the other Berserkers, using her long human legs to their full advantage, and hurled herself at the troll’s midsection, grabbing tufts of gray fur with one hand and the pirate sword with the other.

  Gruff howled but kept pushing.

  I am attacking a troll, she thought. I would never do this with my own body.

  Bellico glanced upward through the tangle of limbs and saw the whole of the moon, gleaming above. Beneath that, she saw a dwarf in considerable discomfort, changing his grip to hold on to the plane’s body, flattening himself to the fuselage.

  “Go,” the dwarf instructed the troll. “Back to your cave.”

  That is not good, thought Bellico. Not good at all.

  The plane swept up the liftoff ramp into the air. At the same moment, Gruff obeyed his master and released his grip, sending himself and Bellico skipping across the lake like skimmed stones, which was a lot more painful than it sounds. Gruff had a coat of fur to protect his hide, but Bellico covered most of the distance on a face that would have water burns for several months.

  Overhead, Mulch could hold on no longer. He released a jetstream of watery fat, wind, and half-digested foodstuff that gave the solar plane a few extra feet of lift, just enough to send it soaring out over the lake.

  Bellico surfaced just in time to be clocked on the forehead by what could have been a dog’s skull.

  I will not think about that, she thought, and swam back toward the shore.

  Artemis pumped the throttle for a second time, and the plane’s engine caught. The single nose propeller chugged, jerked, then spun faster and faster until its blades formed a continuous transparent circle.

  “What happened?” Artemis wondered aloud. “What was that noise?”

  “Wonder later,” said Holly, “and fly the plane now.”

  This was a good idea, as they were by no means out of the woods yet. The engine was running, it was true, but there was no power in the solar battery, and they could only glide for a limited time at this altitude.

  Artemis pulled the stick back, climbing to a hundred feet, and as the wider world spread out below them, the magnitude of the devastation wrought by Opal’s plan became obvious.

  The roads into Dublin were lit by engine fires fed by fuel tanks and combustible materials. Dublin itself was blacked out, except for patches of orange lighting where generators had been patched up or bonfires lit. Artemis saw two large ships that had collided in the harbor, and another beached like a whale on the strand. There were too many fires to count in the city itself, and smoke rose and gathered like a thundercloud.

  Opal plans to inherit this new earth, Artemis thought. I will not let her.

  And it was this thought that pulled Artemis’s mind back into focus and set him scheming on a plan that could stop Opal Koboi for the final time.

  They flew over the lake, but it was not graceful flight—in fact, it was more like prolonged falling. Artemis wrestled with controls that seemed to fight back as he struggled to keep their descent as gradual as possible.

  They crested a row of pines and flew directly over the Berserker Gate, where Opal Koboi labored in a magical corona. Holly used the flyover as a chance to recon their enemy’s forces.

  Opal was surrounded by a ring of Berserkers. There were pirates, clay warriors, and other assorted beings in the ring. The estate walls beyond were patrolled by more Berserkers. There were mostly animals on the walls—two foxes, and even some stag, clopping along the stone, sniffing the air.

  No way in, thought Holly. And the sky is beginning to lighten.

  Opal had given herself till sunrise to open the sec-ond lock.

  Perhaps she will fail and the sunlight will do our work for us, thought Holly. But it was unlikely that Opal had made a mistake in her calculations. She had spent too long in her cell obsessing over every detail.

  We cannot rely on the elements. If Opal’s plan is to fail, we must make it fail.

  Beside her, Artemis was thinking the same thing, the only difference being that he had already laid the foundations of a plan in his mind.

  If Artemis had voiced his plan at that moment, Holly would have been surprised. Not by the plan’s genius—she would expect no less—but because of its selflessness. Artemis Fowl planned to attack with the one weapon Opal Koboi would never suspect him of possessing: his humanity.

  To deploy this stealth torpedo, Artemis would have to trust two people to be true to their own personality defects.

  Foaly would need to be as paranoid as he had always been.

  And Opal Koboi’s rampant narcissism would need to have run so wild that she would not be able to destroy humanity without her enemies at hand to witness her glory.

  Finally Holly could not sit and watch Artemis’s clumsy attempts at aviation any longer.

  “Give me the stick,” she said. “Give it full flaps when we hit the ground. They’re going to be on us pretty quickly.”

  Artemis relinquished control without objection. This was not the time for macho argument. Holly was undeniably ten times the pilot he would ever be, and also several times more macho than he was. Artemis had once seen Holly get into a fistfight with another elf who said her hair looked pretty, because she thought he was being sarcastic, as she was sporting a fresh crew cut on that particular day.

  Holly didn’t go on many dates.

  Holly nudged the stick with the heel of her hand, lining up the plane with the manor’s pebble driveway.

  “The driveway is too short,” said Artemis.

  Holly knelt on the seat for a better view. “Don’t worry. The landing gear will probably totally collapse on impact anyway.”

  Artemis’s mouth twisted in what could have been an ironic smile or a grimace of terror.

  “Thank goodness fo
r that. I thought we were in real trouble.”

  Holly struggled with the stick as though it were resisting arrest. “Trouble? Landing a crippled aircraft is just a normal Tuesday morning for us, Mud Boy.”

  Artemis looked at Holly then and felt a tremendous affection for her. He wished that he could loop the past ten seconds and study it at a less stressful time so he could properly appreciate how fierce and beautiful his best friend was. Holly never seemed so vital as when she was balancing on the fine line between life and death. Her eyes shone and her wit was sharp. Whereas others would fall apart or withdraw, Holly attacked the situation with a vigor that made her glow.

  She is truly magical, thought Artemis. Perhaps her qualities are more obvious to me now that I have decided to sacrifice myself.

  Then he realized something. I cannot reveal my plans to her. If Holly knew, she would try to stop me.

  It pained Artemis that his last conversation with Holly would be by necessity peppered with misdirection and lies.

  For the greater good.

  Artemis Fowl, the human who had once lied as a matter of course, was surprised to find that in this instance, lying for the greater good did not make him feel any better about it.

  “Here we go,” shouted Holly over the howl caused by the wind shear. “Shankle your bootbraces.”

  Artemis tightened his seat belt. “Bootbraces shankled,” he called.

  And not a millisecond too soon. The ground seemed to rush up to meet them, filling their view, blocking out the sky. Then, with a tremendous clatter, they were down, being showered by blurred stones. Long-stemmed flowers fell in funereal bouquets across the windshield, and the propeller buckled with an earsplitting shriek. Artemis felt his seat belt bite into both shoulders, arresting his leftward lean, which was just as well, because his head would have naturally come to rest exactly where a prop blade had thunked through the seat rest.