“What have we stopped for?” asked Cleaver.
“Shut up,” hissed Clive. “Shut your mouth.”
“What’s the matter? You hiding from someone?”
Clive’s failure to respond was all the answer Cleaver needed.
“Oi oi!” he yelled. “Over here! Grub’s up!”
Clive hastily wrapped up the sword, burying his mouth under a double-layer of sackcloth. “What are you doing? You’re going to get us both killed!”
The sackcloth wasn’t so effective that he couldn’t hear Cleaver chuckling beneath his gag.
Realising he had no way of outrunning the trolls, Clive began thinking of ways he might placate them. Perhaps he could bribe his way out of this? He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and found what amounted to about a pound sterling in change. Worthless. Unless he were able to use his magic to turn the coins into gold somehow? He made a fist around them and focussed his thoughts on transmuting them to precious metal. When he opened his hand he was pleased to find a number of gold bits sitting on his palm. His excitement wasn’t to last.
“Good luck buying off an army with them slim pickings,” said Cleaver, who’d managed to chew a hole in his sack and was drawing immense pleasure from his kidnapper’s sorry situation.
Clive needed a new plan. What if he could make himself invisible and evade the trolls that way? He closed his eyes and concentrated on disappearing his body. He opened them and examined his hand, which was still very much there, if half transparent.
Cleaver laughed some more. “Who knows, mate, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll only half kill you.”
Clive tried to come up with a fresh plan of action but the trolls were almost in sight. It was over and he knew it.
“Give it up, son,” urged Cleaver. “Do one good thing with your life and chuck me in that swamp before those bastards get a hold of me. Do it now. You don’t have to bow out of this the villain.”
Clive held out the sack and dangled it over the side of the bridge. He couldn’t let it go though. Couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing, even now, with death’s icy breath on his neck.
UNABLE TO SLEEP, Ashley shifted uncomfortably on the rock-hard slab that the dwarves had the audacity to call a bed. Despite the mortuary chill it gave off, the room still managed to feel sweaty and close. Adding to the general prison feeling of the chamber, the corner of the room came with a chamber pot, which hadn’t been emptied in days. One thing was for sure; the dwarves could learn a thing or two about hospitality from their elf cousins. It wasn’t just the quality of the accommodation keeping Ashley awake though, it was the thought of letting Clive get away. If only he’d listened to what the guy was telling him. If only he’d realised Clive wanted to play the Raistlin to his Caremon.
There was a knock on the bedroom door. For a moment, Ashley entertained the idea that Clive had suffered a crisis of conscience and returned to the fold. Instead, he answered the door to find Galanthre stood there in her nightclothes.
Good enough.
“What up, girl?” he asked, eagerly ushering her into his boudoir.
The elf came inside and took a seat, her face pensive. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about what I said before. At the church.”
“Ain’t nuffin,” said Ashley. It was of course, but since the circumstances he found himself in now had clearly overtaken the previous, he was ready to let bygones be bygones.
“To own the truth,” said Galanthre, “I don't have anything against black people. Or humans even.”
“There’s gotta be a better way of saying that,” Ashley remarked with a wince, “but carry on.”
Galanthre sighed. “I said what I said because…” she paused. This was obviously hard for her. Evidently, displays of martial prowess came to her much easier than displays of emotion. “I said it because I care about you,” she went on, “and I can’t have that. If I were to let you get close and you got hurt...” She trailed off.
Ashley did his best to put her at ease. “Girl, chill. Some troll throws chrome at me I’m gonna box his face up.”
“You’re strong but you’re no fighter, Ashley. Not yet anyway.”
“What you chattin’ about, girl? You saw me back in your manor. I rinsed that troll.”
“And what about the scorpion? How did you fare then?”
Ash fished for a rebuttal, but his defence was as weak as the one he’d employed against Stinger.
“There’s no shame in staying out of the coming battle,” Galanthre told him. “No shame at all.” She placed a hand on his and let it linger there. “Please. For me. Let another warrior take your stead. You’re a good man, but you don’t belong here.”
“You’re wrong,” he told her. “This is the first place I’ve wound up that I do belong.”
Essex had never been kind to Ashley. Adopted by an affluent white family at the age of four, he’d experienced the upbringing of fish tank alligator bought in a dodgy souvenir shop then flushed down the toilet when it stopped being cute. As a young man he’d never managed to fit in, even with his peers. Being the only black face in a sea of white will do that. When the day came for Ongar Secondary’s final year photo, the black kid found himself shoved to the back row, consigned to the shadows. Except for a disembodied grimace floating in the darkness, you wouldn’t even know Ashley Brooks had attended high school. Still, he refused to be ignored. The moment he’d arrived in further education he did everything in his power to fit in. Joined every club on the list. Showed up to all the events going. Soon, Ashley Brooks went from being a social outcast to a hard-drinking, rugby-playing, chess team, everyman. It’s how he ended up hanging out with the crowd of LARPers that led him here in fact. A place that didn’t judge him for being different. At least until now.
Ashley thrust a hand into the pocket of his breeches and pulled out a plastic wallet. “See this?” he said, plucking a card from its pocket and showing it to Galanthre. “Back home, this is what I need to drive a car.”
“What’s a car?”
“It’s like a pimped out horse and cart.”
Without hesitating, he lit a bedside candle and set the card aflame. “See ya, provisional driver’s license.”
Galanthre didn’t seem all that impressed, so Ashley went a step further.
“This one’s my bank card. It’s a key to all my money, innit?” He held it to the fire and watched it blacken and crumple. “Peace out, riches.”
Still the elf’s expression remained stoic. Ashley had no choice but to pull out the big guns. “You think I‘m clownin’?” He whipped out a cardboard rectangle and presented it like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. “This is my McDonald’s reward card,” he told her, his voice cracking with reverence. Slowly, ever so slowly, he bore the precious artefact towards the eager tongue of the flickering flame. The corner of the card met the heat and began to singe when suddenly Ashley yanked it away.
“Actually, I’mma keep that one,” he said, tucking it back into his wallet. “One more stamp and I get me a free Double Cheese.”
Nat hadn’t caught a wink of sleep. Drensila’s flying monkeys were due to arrive at sunrise, and all she could do was stare helplessly at a crack in the bedroom ceiling, her thoughts rattling about her head like dice in a cup. The dwarves had moved her and Terry to a different chamber since Clive’s desertion; a secret one, just in case there were any other turncoats among their ranks who might wish them harm. Some elf with a grudge to settle. Maybe even another human. Nat had sworn that Clive was the only weed in their garden, but the dwarves had insisted on taking the precaution all the same. What did it matter, Nat thought. The damage was already done. Clive had struck a fatal blow when he swiped Cleaver. The only reason she’d survived this long was because of that foul-mouthed piece of oversized cutlery, and now he was being stolen away to who knows where.
But it was worse than that even. Nat and Cleaver had become like hand in a glove. From the moment she’d picked him up in Epping Forest she’d f
elt a sense of oneness. A sense that they were two halves of an unstoppable team. A team capable of taking the forces of evil by the short and curlies and giving them what for. Now that was all gone. Ripped away like an arm caught in a pit bull’s jaws.
She shook Terry. “What are we going to do, Tel?” she asked. She knew he was awake, or else he’d be snoring like a dinosaur.
Terry rolled over and put his thick arm around her. “What’s the matter, hon?”
“I just… I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I know, it doesn’t make sense. Do you think he was hypnotised? Like maybe Drensila used some kind of Jedi mind trick on him?”
Nat pushed him back. “Who do you think we’re talking about here?”
“Clive, obviously.”
“Not that little shit! I’m talking about Cleaver.”
“Your sword?”
“Yes, my sword! The one made to take down Drensila the Black. Remember? The one forged from a meteor, heated in whatchamabollocks and cooled in the waters of the blah blah river? The one your friend ran off with.”
“We probably shouldn’t rush to judgement on that.”
“Why do you always have to defend him?”
“I told you, the guy’s had a hard life.”
“He’s had a hard life? I’m an absentee A Level student with chunky thighs who’s somehow wound up leading an army.”
“I like your thighs.”
“Thanks, Tel, but that’s not really the point I was making there.”
Suddenly a bugle trilled. There was a commotion from the corridor outside, followed by clanking and a sharp rap on the door. An armoured dwarf soldier poked his head around the jamb.
“T’ barbarians ahr at t’ gate, ma’am,” he reported. “Best get yer gear on.”
“Already?” Nat cried. “How did they get here so fast?”
“Must’ve been marching at a clip,” the dwarf replied, then rushed off to go about his duties.
Nat felt her blood run cold. She’d been called to war once already, and look how that had turned out.
“You can do this, Nat,” Terry assured her. “With or without some talking sword.”
He laced his hand in hers and for a moment, just a moment, it felt like she was a whole person again.
Chapter Twenty-One: Hack & Slash
THE TROLLS ROLLED up on Bludoch Dungeon like a river of lava, thinned by its journey but still deadly, still unstoppable. The army assembled at the polished doors of the subterranean city, which were illuminated briefly by a bright stroke of lightning.
Skullcap pushed to the front line, face streaked with rain. He aimed his sword at a nearby tree and ordered a unit of men to fell it. As he watched his soldiers take their axes to it, he meditated on the battle ahead. The enemy were foolish to think they were safe beneath the earth. Trolls were born underground. They thrived in the shadows. That the dwarves considered the depths their natural habitat too was of no consequence. His army would decorate their home with their own blood.
There was a cry of “Timber!” and the oak crashed to the ground. The soldiers went at it some more, hacking off unwanted boughs and paring it down to a stout trunk some ten yards long. Working double-time, they harnessed ropes about it to provide handholds, then on Skullcap’s order, lined up either side and hefted it to waist height.
“To your mark,” roared the warlord, and his soldiers dutifully manoeuvred the log towards the great bronze gates, feet slipping as the rain continued to turn the ground into a mudslide. Skullcap paused, leaving his men to struggle with the tremendous weight of the battering ram while he considered his next move. Instead of issuing the order to break down the doors, he called for his waterboy, Thrungle, commanding him to fetch a water skin at once. The demoted troll complied, hurrying from his position, while the troll wrecking crew continued to buckle under the ram’s bulk, cursing him for every moment of delay. Skullcap snatched the skin from Thrungle and drank it down gulp by agonising gulp, eye fixed on his inferior as he drained it to a draught. Finally, he made a big display of smacking his lips before delivering the long-awaited order.
“Charge!” he hollered.
With a giant heave, the soldiers propelled the battering ram at the dungeon doors.
THE WOODEN RAM sounded against the metal doors, sending an ominous peal echoing down the stone stairs and into the dungeon’s entrance chamber.
The giant room was packed two hundred strong. Nat Lawler looked to her side and saw a dwarf, Axe-beard, gripping the shaft of his hatchet in a pair of leathery fists. On her opposite side she saw an elf, Eathon, a dew of sweat clinging to his brow as he bounced on the spot in anticipation. In front of her she saw a human, Terry, who nocked an arrow to his bowstring and drew it tight to his chin. It was heartening to behold, this alliance of hostile races that had come together to achieve a common goal. Together, they’d conquered their differences and formed a beautiful rainbow coalition. Nat sighed. Such a shame the colours of that rainbow were about to be mashed into a muddy brown paste.
She straightened up and drew a sword from her scabbard. From Cleaver’s scabbard. It didn’t belong there. It didn’t belong in her hand either. Compared to her enchanted blade, the weapon the dwarves had saddled her with felt like a cheap imitation. A bottle of Tommy Hilfinger from Walthamstow Market. A KFG restaurant. A poorly painted Bart Simpson on the side of an ice cream van.
Another chime reverberated around the chamber; a dinner gong for the hungry trolls ready to burst in and feast on the flesh inside.
A chill settled on Nat’s back and she became short of breath. Her throat tightened. It was as though someone were standing on her windpipe. She scrambled for her asthma inhaler, but when she puffed on it she only sucked down clean air. She stabbed the canister again but it was empty. She was losing it.
Terry put away his shortbow and rubbed her back. “You’re okay, hon,” he told her. “Take a breath. You’re okay.”
Acting on his words, Nat took long, deep breaths through her nose and exhaled from her mouth, bringing her respiration back under control. She knew all the right ways to survive an asthma attack, but it was Terry who saved her. Not her medical know-how. Not some magical elixir. Her boyfriend. He was the one to untie the knot in her chest and show her the way to calm.
“I love you,” Terry told her.
Tears stung Nat’s eyes. She was just about to tell him the same when a third peal arrived from upstairs. This one sounded less like a musical note than it did an ocean liner running afoul of an iceberg. “Everyone hold your line,” Nat commanded, her voice quavering.
The message was received, though grudgingly. The leader of the dwarven forces, Axe-beard, had been instructed by his king to follow Nat’s orders, but had only agreed to do so under great sufferance. Even the most straightforward of her requests, such as insisting his men not chew powerful hallucinogenic mushrooms and rush skyclad into battle (as was the dwarvish way) was met with much grumbling and gnashing of teeth.
“This plan o’ thy’n is for shite,” spat Axe-beard, spoiling for a fight. “Them basturds’ll be on us enny secon’ naw, ‘n’ we ain’t got nuthin’.”
Another deafening crash from the dungeon doors, a horrible noise, like a hammer on bone.
“Have faith,” insisted Eathon. “Nat Lawler is a formidable warrior with a keen military mind.”
The dwarf scoffed. “Ye listen ta this lass orl ye like, longshanks, but ah run things dahn ‘ere. We ‘ave a secret hatch up top. If ah send a unit o’ men on a sortie we can ger those bastards unawares ‘n’ cop ‘em in a pincer movement. Sittin’ on ahr arses dahn ‘ere int doin’ nowt fer us.”
CLANG!
The sound of battered metal resonated off of the chamber walls like a death knell.
Nat looked hopefully to Neville, whose white-knuckled hand rested on the handle of a lever. In turn, Nev looked to Tidbit, who studied the dials of an instrument hooked to a cable that led up through a ceiling vent. The tiny dwarf cross-checked t
he dial’s reading with a view of the outside, which he was able to observe via a hastily installed periscope. Through the fisheye lens he saw the overhead weather, as well as the battalion of bloodthirsty trolls beating at the dungeon doors.
“No’ yet,” reported Tidbit.
“Wha’ d’you mean no’ yet?” snarled Axe-Beard.
“We ‘ave t’ gerris jus right,” replied Tidbit. “T’ window fer success is tighter than a gnat’s chuff.”
There was another attack on the doors. Metal buckled and groaned. Rivets popped.
“Enuff o’ this!” yelled Axe-beard, and signalled a unit of dwarf soldiers. “Men, make fer t’ hatch ‘n’ circle round back o’ them. Quick march.”
“Hold!” Nat demanded, Braveheart style.
The dwarves hesitated and looked to their superior officer, who chewed fitfully on his beard.
“Belay tha’ order ‘n’ stand yer ground,” Axe-beard grudgingly told them.
Galanthre fixed Ashley in the eye. “Whatever happens next, remember what I taught you and stay by my side.”
Ashley might have found that cloying. Might have felt mothered, like a kid being dropped off for his first day of nursery. Instead, he chose to accept Galanthre’s help like a boxer sat in his corner getting a last minute sponge down. He centred his weight and planted his feet a shoulder’s width apart. He imagined them growing roots and burrowing into the ground. Pictured trolls bouncing off of him like bullets from Superman. When the bell rang for Round Two, he’d be ready.
Another apocalyptic clang. The doors were hanging off their hinges now. Nat checked on Neville. He held his arm in the air, signalling that the iron was not yet hot.
Axe-beard shook his head and grunted. “You’re goan to gerrus all killed.”
The dwarves were getting itchy. Feet shuffled. The lines were about to break.
Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga) Page 18
