She watched Thrungle about to do battle with the elf woman and her human cohort, and went to issue him a command to dispatch them as quickly as possible that he might come to her aid. When she reached inside her sash though, she found it empty.
The Durkon rod of power was gone!
Stolen from her person as if by magic. No, by magic. Her apprentice! He must have used his sorcery to spirit the item away from her, just as he’d teleported Cleaver from her trophy cabinet.
Drensila grimaced.
The lion tamer had lost control of her cats.
As Galanthre deflected Thrungle’s first stinging attack, she noticed that the arm swinging the sword was significantly more muscled than its partner, as though it had been taken from a larger specimen and grafted on somehow. It was a curious detail to notice in the midst of a pitched battle, but her keen eyes spotted it nonetheless.
Ashley attempted to launch a sneak attack on Thrungle as he spun right at his accomplice, sacrificing his opposite flank, but the troll was too fast, turning back and knocking his blow aside with ease. Thrungle fought well, managing both opponents at once, holding his own like an octopus playing whack-a-mole. It was an impressive display of ambidexterity, ruthless and efficient, for the troll was a formidable warrior and knew better than to engage in a life or death melee unless victory was assured.
“Enough of this,” he announced, whirling his scimitars. “I’m going peel off your faces and make a loincloth of them.”
Thrungle rained down another welter of blistering attacks on his already exhausted challengers, wearing them down bit by bit. Galanthre failed to step back from one of Thrungle’s swings fast enough, and earned a pommel strike to the temple for her hesitation. It landed so hard that it almost felt good. She wobbled and her world went dim and cosy, like she’d just stepped into a warm bath. She longed to shut her eyes and let her head slip beneath the black water, but she had to stay awake. Had to.
Her vision returned, along with the rest of her senses, and she planted her feet, determined to see the battle through. She wasn’t done yet. Just a touch of blunt force trauma, nothing to worry about.
Ashley sought retaliation, running full tilt at Thrungle. Unfortunately, the troll saw him coming a mile off and reacted fast enough to stop the human slipping by his defences. The first blade he sent missed Ashley by a finger’s width. The second did not. The sword sliced into Ashley’s chest, sending him sprawling to the ground. Thrungle was quick to take advantage of his adversary’s misfortune, and seized his neck between the sharp edges of his twin scimitars. Galanthre took a step forward but the troll cocked an eyebrow, daring her to take another.
“Any closer and his head rolls, she-elf,” Thrungle assured her.
Galanthre hesitated. She had failed. As a fighter. As a friend. As anything more.
Thrungle smiled and ran a forked tongue over his slobbery fangs. Galanthre could see it in his cruel yellow eyes. He was going to kill Ashley no matter what. The troll drew his blades wide, ready to scissor the human’s head from his neck. Galanthre made to pounce—
—Then Thrungle’s arm came off. The larger of the two—the one that had been poached like the teeth decorating his necklaces—fell clean from his shoulder and landed on the ground with a hot slap.
Ashley landed a moment after that, free of the monster’s grasp. The next thing to happen was the tip of a sword puncturing the troll’s chest. It all happened in a moment; spores exploding from the wound as if from a twelve-gauge, coating Ashley and Galanthre in foulness.
Thrungle staggered about in a half-circle to meet his assassin.
He found Terry.
Despite his mortal wound, the troll managed a laugh. It was a funny thing after all. For all his scheming, for all his clever ideas, for all his machinations, he’d met his end at the hands of a feeble little man. Even funnier than that, he’d been led to that death by a second feeble little man, and before that he’d taken his marching orders from a feeble little woman. He hadn’t been able to see it before, but here and now, in his death throes, he finally understood the truth. Everything that had happened to him—everything—had been at the whim of another. He’d lived his whole life a slave. A pack animal that fancied itself a lone wolf. A craven mutt sniffing at the back of the throng, feeding off the big dog’s scraps. Now he was to die, unloved and unmourned. He gurgled like an unstopped drain and crumpled, letting out one final dusting of spores as his lungs emptied their last.
Galanthre knelt over Ashley to examine his wound. She was pleased to find his armour had soaked up the brunt of the troll’s blow, and that the cut that made it through was superficial at best. He’d be left with a scar, nothing more. A scar on his chest to match her own. How romantic. She leaned across to Thrungle’s body, gathered up a fistful of necklaces and tugged them over his head. She held them there, letting the pendants dangle in the breeze. They no longer chattered. The teeth of her forefathers were silent now. Avenged.
Terry’s shadow loomed over her. “Where is he?” he snarled, knuckles white on the hilt of a discarded sword. “Where’s Clive?”
Having crawled out from beneath the balloon and fled in the confusion, Clive had arrived at the opposite end of the citadel. His lungs were broiling, his heart pumping Red Bull. He tore up to the gondola station and threw himself into the waiting cable car. This was his getaway across the chasm, his ticket to freedom.
His first instinct—once he’d realised he was outnumbered and caught in a losing fight—was to make his departure using sorcery. To levitate away, or anchor a magical bridge to the mainland. It wasn’t to be. His reserves were tapped, his mana sapped from holding sway over enchanted swords and hurling giant fireballs. The gondola would have to do.
He tugged on a lever and felt the car lurch forward as the system’s winch came to life and began to convey him across the gorge. His heart was in his throat. He hated heights. Hated them. Then he saw Terry screeching up to the gondola’s embarkation point, eyes burning with malice. That he disliked even more. Phobias were one thing—irrational, incoherent—but the raw contempt on Terry’s face was so absolutely real. All the magic in the world wasn’t going to quench the hellfire in those eyes.
Terry arrived at the gondola station, muscles stinging, the soles of his bare feet crying bloody murder. Spotting a nearby lever, he closed his hand around it and pulled hard, like Doctor Frankenstein waking his monster.
Nothing.
He reset the lever and pulled it again.
Still nothing.
He slammed it up and down, but it was no good, the car was in motion and bound inexorably for its destination.
He had to do something. Had to stop Clive making it to the other side of the chasm. He looked up and saw the gondola system’s revolving winch mechanism and knew what he had to do. Sword by his side, he climbed a wooden mast until he reached the cable propelling the car to freedom. Legs gripping tight to the mast, he raised the blade in both hands and prepared to bring it down on the giant loop of cord abetting the traitor’s escape. He smiled as he did it. Smiled and looked out to the fleeing car so he could meet Clive’s eye as he sent him to his doom.
What he saw did nothing to hasten his revenge, in fact it did the opposite. As he watched Clive slip into the distance—fearful and pathetic—he was reminded of a time that his own life had hung in the balance. Back at the elf village, during their first encounter with Drensila’s army. If it weren’t for Clive coming to his rescue and sticking a hammer-wielding troll in the back, he’d have ended up a smear. Clive had saved Terry’s life that day. He lowered his sword. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to kill an old friend. At least not like this.
The sword fell from his hand and struck the ground with a single, pure note.
Chapter Nine: Party Crashers
“GO ON, GIRL, chop chop!” urged Cleaver, as Nat carried him up the circular staircase to Drensila’s the Black’s minaret.
Nat hoped she had what it took to end the dark
queen’s reign. Hoped she could cross that line. After all, it was one thing to cut down Drensila’s trolls—those were just bundles of evil packed into a familiar shape—but ending the life of a fellow human being… that was something else.
Eathon bounded past her, his treads of his running blades landing in the footprints of his departed brother, who had once scaled this very tower. Reaching the top of the staircase, he silently nudged open the door to Drensila’s minaret, just as Gilon had.
Saw her sitting there with her back to him, same as before.
Began closing the distance to his prey, sword arm raised.
Didn’t detect his image reflected in the minaret’s window.
Failed to notice Drensila following his every move.
“Stop!” screamed Nat as she stormed into the room, panting for breath.
While Eathon had allowed his thirst for revenge to cloud his judgement, Nat had exercised a morsel of caution and seen Drensila’s game for what it was. The queen whirled about to unleash a bolt of frost and put Eathon on ice, but, forewarned by Nat, Eathon was able to spring like a jack-in-the-box and dive off to one side. The incoming bolt passed him by and smashed into the stone wall behind him.
With her magic all but depleted, Drensila howled in dissent. She was, as Cleaver aptly put it, “mad as a dog in a dustbin.”
It had been a long time since Nat had seen Drensila the Black in the flesh, and despite the evil sorceress’s aggravation, she looked as put together as ever. Her elegant dress clung to her in all the right places, and her plunging neckline and fuck-me heels would turn heads from a mile away. Ugh. She was like all the Kardashians rolled into one.
All Eathon saw when he looked at Drensila was a despot and a murderer. “I’ll make you pay for what you did to my kind,” he told her. “Driving us from our homes. Massacring us like animals. Bringing us to the brink of extinction.”
Drensila grinned. The elf had sidestepped his fate once, but she would still see to it that history echoed today.
Moving like quicksilver, she snatched an onyx pin from her hair bun, liberating it from its sheath and setting loose the poison upon its tip. There was a poetry to what would come next. Even now, beyond his death, Stinger would deliver the reaper's kiss and finish the job he started when he took this idiot’s legs. She hurled the hairpin and it sailed through the air, dead on target—
—then suddenly Nat was there, knocking the dart aside in one impossibly fast flash and leaving it buried in the wall.
Nat seemed as surprised by this turn of events as anybody. While she had seen the missile fly and reflexively moved to intercept it, the propulsive action that carried her there had been her sword’s doing. After all, Cleaver had seen this trick before, and he wasn’t about to get taken in twice.
“No flies on me,” he told Drensila.
“You… you bastard sword,” she cursed.
“Broad sword, actually.”
For Eathon, the time for repartee had long since passed. He pulled back his sword arm and went to take Drensila the Black’s head.
“Please,” she begged, backing away. “Violence accomplishes nothing.”
But her cries for clemency were only a means to distract the elf from the dark magic she was working behind her back.
The poisoned onyx hair pin ejected from the wall, span counter clockwise and buried itself between the elf’s shoulder blades. Nat plucked it from his flesh, but the damage was done. Eathon faltered, stumbling against her, holding onto her to stay upright.
“You fool,” mocked Drensila. “Did you really think I’d go down so easily?”
Nat had some wicked shade to throw on that. “Looking at that slutty little number you’re wearing, I’d say, yeah.”
It was a sweet burn.
“You pathetic giblet,” bawled Drensila. “I’m going to scoop out your womb and use it for a fruit bowl!”
This interloper, this silly girl that had treated her world like some bedtime story, was about to receive a fatal dose of reality. The sorceress used her last remaining scrap of mana to accomplish a lightning-fast streak across the chamber, so quick that she was able to land a punch in her would-be assassin’s gut before she could even blink.
The wind left Nat’s belly and she landed on all fours, wobbling about like a perplexed AT-AT.
“Now who’s going down?” squawked Drensila.
She went to deliver a spiked heel to the side of Nat’s skull, but her adversary was fast and brought her sword up in self-defence. Cleaver bit into Drensila’s shin, drawing blood and growling like a Rottweiler.
The queen screamed in agony. “You’ll pay for that, you tub of lard!” she bawled, tugging herself free of the blade.
She delivered another a kick and this one connected, knocking Cleaver from Nat’s grip and sending him clattering out of her reach.
Suddenly Nat found herself entangled in a proper hair-pulling bitch fight. It was the kind she hadn’t known since the school playground, only the stakes were altogether higher than the time she dobbed in Susan Jenkins for looking at her Maths answers.
Drensila slapped the taste out of Nat’s mouth with a stinging backhand, then raked her claws across her cheek, drawing blood and damn near putting an eye out. Any reservations Nat had about causing Drensila harm swiftly departed. Now she was out to kill the cow. Let them call her a murderer if they liked, she’d wear the badge with pride. She’d write it on a flag and wave it at a parade if it meant putting this skinny bitch down.
Nat fought back, thrashing her arms about and windmilling her fists until she finally landed a blow. Somewhere in it all, the sharp point of her elbow struck Drensila square in the tit, causing her to shriek in protest. Nat managed to bang her funny bone in the process, but the pain was totally worth it.
“Go on, Red,” shouted Cleaver, unable to fight but happy to offer some pep talk from the sideline. “Give her a punch in the bracket!”
But the sorceress was having none of it. Reaching for a side table, her hand came back brandishing a silver-plated letter opener. It looked silly there—like a toothpick in the fist of a giant—but Drensila’s intentions were serious enough.
She aimed the point of the blade at Nat’s throat and charged, a banshee’s scream upon her lips. Nat tried to bat her aside, but Drensila was too strong, grappling onto her and knocking her from her feet. The Chosen One hit the ground with a sound like a stepped-on puppy, then Drensila was on top of her, bearing down with the letter opener, which looked anything but silly now. Nat fought frantically to push her off, but Drensila had gravity and the weight of an impressive bosom on her side. The sharp end of the weapon edged closer to the soft flesh of Nat’s throat.
Closer.
Closer still.
She turned her head in an effort to avoid the blade and found Eathon, helpless by her side. Though he could only lay there, paralysed, the fight in his eyes told her he was doing everything he could to resist the effects of Drensila’s toxin. In fact, he was working so hard to get between Nat and the knife that it was a wonder his bones don’t tear free of his skin and hurl themselves into the fray.
Nat felt the point of the blade dig into her windpipe. Soon it would break the skin and slip inside, putting a full stop on her life. She turned back to Drensila, hovering over her, muscles corded, a smug grin on her face as the knife drew its first drop of blood.
No.
Absolutely not.
No way was she about to be beaten by this vast hussy.
Nat fought back. Fought back with everything she had. She’d always been a fierce competitor, but she had something in her arsenal even more valuable than that. She was a really sore loser.
Nat brought up her knees, worked the soles of her feet under Drensila’s stomach and kicked out as hard as she could. Her unusually strong, hockey-fit thighs launched Drensila over her head and into the minaret’s circular window.
CRASH!
The glass exploded under the force of Drensila’s momentum and she
found herself soaring headfirst through the night sky, into the abyss, screaming the whole way down. Soon the queen’s cry was gone, swallowed by the howling winds of the Durkon Chasm. Drensila the Black was no more.
“Off you toddle,” yelled Cleaver, bidding the queen a fond farewell.
Nat was about to allow herself a moment of celebration, then remembered Eathon dying by her side. She rolled herself over and put a hand on his cheek. He was so cold.
“Come on, wake up,” she demanded, but the elf’s condition was only getting worse. A crimson sweat beaded his skin and the light in his husky blue eyes—so strong before, so full of life—was starting to fade.
“Heads up, love,” said Cleaver, whirling about on the ground like the centrepiece in a game of spin the bottle.
The tip of his blade pointed towards the departed queen’s bedside dresser. “Go on, ‘ave a gander in there,” he told her.
This wasn’t the sword’s first time in Drensila’s bedchamber, and he knew something about it that his wielder didn’t.
Nat followed the direction of his blade, grabbing the handle of the dresser’s drawer and pulling it so hard that the compartment came clean out. She turned it upside down and tipped the contents of the drawer onto the bed. Various odds and ends rained down—finger bones, a pouch, her long-lost mobile phone—but the object that most caught Nat’s attention was a small, crystal vial.
“Get that down ‘im,” Cleaver urged. “Go on, get a jog on.”
Nat hurried over the Eathon, uncorked the vial and poured the antidote into his mouth. He laid there, too weak to swallow, forcing Nat to prop him up and massage the liquid down his throat. She held onto him, calling his name, but Eathon refused to respond. She lowered him back down and beat her fists on his chest. Still no sign of life. His limbs hung slack, his head off to one side. Skin pale. Lips a lurid blue. Nat’s heart sank. The room felt empty, even though it wasn’t. A tear ran down her cheek, blazing hot. He was gone. She pressed her lips to his to kiss him goodbye.
Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga) Page 28
