[AF04] - The Opal Deception

by Colfer, Eoin

  This was a completely different scenario. They had never received instruction on what to do when attacked by an entire pack of trolls in their own habitat.

  No one, the instructors reasoned, would be that stupid.

  There were two converging groups coming straight toward her. One from the river, led by a veritable monster with anesthetic venom dripping from both tusks.

  Holly knew that if one drop of that venom got under her skin, she would fall into a happy stupor. And even if she escaped the troll’s claws, the slow poison would eventually paralyze her.

  The second group approached from the western ridge, composed mainly of latecomers and cubs.

  There were a few females in the center of the temple itself, but they were taking advantage of the distraction to pick meat from abandoned carcasses.

  Holly flicked the tele-pod’s setting to low.

  She would have to time this exactly right for maximum effect. This was the last chance she would get, because once she started to climb, then she could no longer aim.

  The trolls sped up the temple steps, jostling for first place. The two groups were approaching at right angles, both headed directly toward Holly. The leaders launched themselves from a distance, determined to get the first bite of the intruder. Their lips peeled back to reveal rows of carnivorous teeth, and their eyes focused solely on the target. And that was when Holly acted. She flicked the brightness setting to high and scorched the retinas of the two beasts while they were still in the air. With piercing howls, they swatted the hated light and crashed to the ground in a melee of arms, claws, tusks, and teeth. Each troll assumed he was being attacked by a rival group, and in seconds the scaffold’s base was a chaos of primal violence.

  Holly took full advantage of the confusion, skipping lithely up the first three rungs of the metal structure. She clipped the tele-pod onto her belt so that it pointed downward like a rear gun. Not much protection, but better than nothing.

  In moments, she had caught up with Artemis. The human boy’s breath was ragged and his progress was slow. A slow stream of blood dripped from the wound on his ankle. Holly could easily have passed him, but instead she hooked an arm through the bars of the ladder and checked on the troll situation. Just as well. One relatively little guy was scaling the bars with the agility of a mountain gorilla. His immature tusks barely jutted beyond his lips, but those tusks were sharp and venom gathered in beads along the tips.

  Holly turned the tele-screen on him, and he released his grip to shield his scorched eyes. An elf would have been smart enough to hang on with one hand and use the other forearm to shield the eyes, but trolls are not much farther up the IQ scale than stinkworms, and act almost completely on instinct.

  The little troll tumbled back to earth, landing on the shaggy, writhing carpet below. He was instantly dragged into the brawl. Holly returned to the climb, feeling the tele-pod knock against her back. Artemis’s progress was painfully slow, and in less than a minute, she was tight at his shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right?“

  Artemis nodded, tight lipped. But his eyes were wide, on the verge of panic. Holly had seen that look before, on the faces of battle-stressed LEP officers. She needed to get the Mud Boy to safety before he lost his reason.

  ‘Come on now, Artemis. Just a few more steps.

  We’re going to make it.“

  Artemis closed his eyes for five seconds, breathing deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, they shone with a new resolve.

  ‘Very well, Captain. I’m ready.“

  Artemis reached above him for the next bar, hauling himself sixteen inches closer to salvation. Holly followed, urging him on like a drill sergeant.

  It took a further minute to reach the roof itself. By this time the trolls had remembered what they were chasing, and had begun to scale the scaffolding.

  Holly dragged Artemis onto the slanted roof and they scampered on all fours toward its highest point. The plaster was white and unmarked. In the low light it seemed as though they were walking across a field of snow.

  Artemis paused. The sight had awoken a vague memory. “Snow,” he said uncertainly.

  ‘I remember something…“

  Holly caught his shoulder, dragging him forward.

  ‘Yes, Artemis. The Arctic, remember? We’ll discuss it at great length later, when there are no trolls trying to eat us.“

  Artemis snapped back to the present. “Very well. Good tactic.”

  The temple roof sloped upward at a forty-degree angle, toward the crystal orb that was the fake sun. The pair crawled as quickly as Artemis’s exhausted limbs would allow. A ragged trail of blood marked their path across the white plaster. The scaffold shook and banged against the roof as the trolls climbed ever closer.

  Holly straddled the roof’s apex and reached up to the crystal sun. The surface was smooth beneath her fingers.

  ‘D’Arvit!“ she swore. ”I can’t find the power port. There should be an external socket.“

  Artemis crawled around the other side. He was not particularly afraid of heights, but even so, he tried not to look down. One did not have to suffer from vertigo to be worried by a fifty-foot drop and a pack of ravenous trolls. He stretched upward, probing the globe with the fingers of one hand. His index finger found a small indent.

  ‘I’ve got something,“ he announced.

  Holly scooted around to his side, examining the hole.

  ‘Good,“ she said. ”An external power port.

  Power cells have uniform connection points, so the cuffs’ cells should clip right on.“

  She fumbled the cuffs from her pocket and popped the cell covers. The cells themselves were about the size of credit cards, and glowed bright blue along their length.

  Holly stood up on the razor-edge rooftop, balancing nimbly on her toes. The trolls were swarming over the lip of the roof now. Advancing like the hounds of hell.

  The white roof plaster was blanketed by the black, brown, and ginger of troll fur. Their howls and stink preceded them as they closed in on Holly and Artemis.

  Holly waited until they were all over the lip, then slid the power cells into the globe’s socket.

  The globe buzzed, vibrated to life, then flashed once. A blinding wall of light. For a moment the entire exhibit glowed brilliant white, then the globe faded again with a high-pitched whine.

  The trolls rolled like balls on a tilted pool table. Some tumbled over the edge of the roof but most collected on the lip, where they lay whining and scratching their faces.

  Artemis closed his eyes to accelerate the return of his night vision. “I had hoped the cell would power the sun for longer. It seems like a lot of effort for such a brief reprieve.”

  Holly pulled out the dead cells and tossed them aside. “I suppose a globe like this needs a lot of juice.”

  Artemis blinked, then sat comfortably on the roof, clasping his knees.

  ‘St. We have some time. It can take nocturnal creatures up to fifteen minutes to recover their orientation following exposure to bright light.“

  Holly sat beside him. “Fascinating. You’re very calm all of a sudden.”

  ‘I have no choice,“ said Artemis simply.

  ‘I have analysed the situation and concluded that there is no way for us to escape. We are on top of a ridiculous model of the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by temporarily blinded trolls. As soon as they recover, they will lope up here and devour us.

  We have perhaps a quarter of an hour to live, and I have no intention of spending it in hysterics for Opal Koboi’s amusement.“

  Holly looked up, searching the hemisphere for cameras. At least a dozen telltale red lights winked from the darkness. Opal would be able to watch her revenge from every angle.

  Artemis was right. Opal would be tickled pink if they fell to pieces for the cameras. She would probably replay the video to cheer herself up when being princess of the world got to be too stressful.

  Holly drew back her arm and sent the spent p
ower cells skidding across the roof. It seemed then that this was it. She felt more frustrated than scared. Julius’s final order had been to save Artemis, and she hadn’t managed to accomplish even that.

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t remember Julius,“ she said. ”You two argued a lot, but he admired you behind it all. It was Butler he really liked, though, those two were on the same wavelength. Two old soldiers.“

  Below them, the trolls were gathering themselves. Blinking away the stars in their eyes.

  Artemis slapped some of the dust from his trousers.

  ‘I do remember, Holly. I remember it all. Especially you. It’s a real comfort to have you here.“

  Holly was surprised. Shocked, even. More by Artemis’s tone than what he had actually said, though that was surprising too. She had never heard Artemis sound so warm, so sincere. Usually, emotional displays were difficult for the boy, and he stumbled through them awkwardly. This wasn’t like him at all.

  ‘That’s very nice, Artemis,“ she said after a moment’s consideration. ”But you don’t have to pretend for me.“

  Artemis was puzzled. “How did you know? I thought I portrayed the emotions perfectly.”

  Holly looked down at the massing trolls.

  They were advancing warily up the slope, heads down in case of a second flash.

  ‘Nobody’s that perfect. That’s how I knew.“

  The trolls were hurrying now, swinging their hairy forearms forward to increase momentum. As their confidence returned, so did their voices. Their howls to the roof bounced back off the metal structure.

  Artemis drew his knees closer to his chin. The end. All over. Inconceivable that he should die this way, when there was so much to be done.

  The howling made it hard to concentrate. The smell didn’t help either.

  Holly gripped his shoulder. “Close your eyes, Artemis. You won’t feel a thing.”

  But Artemis did not close his eyes. Instead he cast his gaze upward. Aboveground, where his parents were waiting to hear from him. Parents who never had the chance to be truly proud of him.

  He opened his mouth to whisper a good-bye, but what he saw over his head choked the words in his throat.

  ‘That proves it,“ he said. ”This must be a hallucination.“

  Holly looked upward. A section of the hemisphere’s panel had been removed, and a rope was being lowered toward the temple roof. Swinging from the rope was what appeared to be a naked and extremely hairy rear end.

  ‘I don’t believe it!“ Holly exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ”You took your sweet time getting here!“

  She seemed to be conversing with a posterior. And then, even more amazingly, the posterior appeared to answer.

  ‘I love you too, Holly. Now, close anything that’s open, because I’m about to overload these troll’s senses.“

  For a moment Holly’s face was blank, then realization widened her eyes and sucked the blood from her cheeks. She grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.

  ‘Lie flat with your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes and mouth. And whatever you do, don’t breathe in.“

  Artemis lay on the roof. “Tell me there’s a creature on the other end of that posterior.”

  ‘There is,“ confirmed Holly. ”But it’s the posterior we have to worry about.“

  The trolls were seconds away by this point.

  Close enough for Holly and Artemis to see the red in their eyes and the years of dirt caked in every dreadlock.

  Overhead, Mulch Diggums (for of course it was he) released a gentle squib of wind from his backside. Just enough to propel him in a gentle circle on the end of his rope. The circular motion was necessary to ensure an even spread of the gas he intended to release.

  Once he had completed three revolutions, he bore down internally and let fly with every bubble of gas in his bloated stomach.

  Because trolls are by nature tunnel creatures, they are guided as much by their sense of smell as their night vision. A blinded troll can often survive for years, navigating his way to food and water supplies by smell alone.

  Mulch’s sudden gaseous recyclings sent a million conflicting scent messages to each troll’s brain. The smell was bad enough, and the wind was sufficient to blow back the trolls’ dreadlocks, but the combination of scents inside the dwarf gas, including clay, vegetation, insect life, and everything else Mulch had eaten over the past few days, was enough to short out the trolls’ entire nervous systems. They collapsed to their knees, clasping their poor aching heads in taloned hands. One was so close to Artemis and Holly that its shaggy forearm rested across the LEP captain’s back.

  Holly wriggled out from under the limb. “Let’s go,” she said, pulling Artemis to his feet. “The gas won’t put the trolls out for any longer than the light.”

  Overhead, Mulch’s revolutions were slowing.

  ‘I thank you,“ he said with a theatrical bow, which is not easy on a rope. The dwarf scampered up the rope, gripping with fingers and toes, then lowered it to Artemis and Holly.

  ‘Jump on,“ he said. ”Quickly.“

  Artemis tested the rope skeptically.

  ‘Surely that strange creature is too small to haul both of us all the way up there.“

  Holly placed her foot in a loop at the rope’s end. “True, but he’s not alone.”

  Artemis squinted at the hemisphere’s missing panel. Another figure had appeared in the gap.

  The figure’s features were in deep shadow, but the silhouette was unmistakable.

  ‘Butler !“ he said through his smile. ”You’re here.“

  And suddenly, in spite of everything, Artemis felt completely safe.

  ‘Hurry up, Artemis,“ called his bodyguard. ”We don’t have a second to waste.“

  Artemis stepped onto the rope beside Holly, and Butler quickly pulled them both out of danger.

  ‘Well?“ said Holly, her face inches from his own. ”We survived. Does that mean we’re friends now? Bonded by trauma.“

  Artemis frowned. Friends? Did he have room in his life for a friend? Then again, did he have a choice in the matter?

  ‘Yes,“ he replied. ”I’ve had little experience in this area, so I may have to read up on it.“

  Holly rolled her eyes. “Friendship is not a science, Mud Boy. Forget about your massive brain for one minute. Just do what you feel is right.”

  Artemis couldn’t believe what he was about to say.

  Perhaps the thrill of survival was affecting his judgment. “I feel that I shouldn’t be paid to help a friend. Keep your fairy gold. Opal Koboi has to be stopped.”

  Holly smiled with genuine warmth for the first time since the commander’s death, but there was a hint of steel in there too.

  ‘With the four of us on her tail, she doesn’t stand a chance.“

  * * *

  CHAPTER 8: Some intelligent conversation

  Mulch had left the stolen LEP shuttle at the theme park gate. It had been a simple matter for Butler to disable the park’s cameras and remove a half-rotted section from the hemisphere’s roof in order to effect the rescue.

  When they got back to the shuttle, Holly powered up the engines and ran a systems check.

  ‘What on earth were you doing, Mulch?“ she asked, amazed by the readings the computer was displaying. ”The computer says you came all the way down here in first gear.“

  ‘There are gears?“ said the dwarf. ”I thought this crate was automatic.“

  ‘Some jockeys prefer gears. Old-fashioned, I know, but more control around the bends. And another thing, you didn’t have to do that gas thing on the rope. There are plenty of stun grenades in the weapons locker.“

  ‘This thing has a locker too? Gears and lockers. Well, I never.“

  Butler was giving Artemis a field physical.

  ‘You seem all right,“ he said, placing a massive palm over Artemis’s chest. ”Holly fixed up your ribs, I see.“

  Artemis was in a bit of a daze. Now that he was out of immediate danger, the day’s
events were catching up to him. How many times could one person cheat death in twenty-four hours? Surely his odds were getting shorter.

  ‘Tell me, Butler,“ he whispered so the others wouldn’t hear, ”is it all true? Or is it a hallucination?“ Even as the words left his lips, Artemis realized that it was an impossible question. If this was all a hallucination, then his bodyguard was a dream, too.