Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga)

by D. K. Bussell

  The talking rock sighed. “I suppose not,” he admitted.

  “You have arms. I’m assuming you have legs under there too. Why not explore the world instead of waiting for it to come to you?”

  “And what would I do in this realm of men?” the elemental asked in his baritone voice.

  “I don’t know,” Eathon replied with a shrug. “Tour our famous caves, climb a mountain, chase butterflies. Anything has to be better than this.”

  The elemental tipped his head to one side, conceding the point. “You do not speak the answer, elf, but you speak the truth. You are free to go.”

  “‘old oop a minute...” protested Tidbit, who’d been trying to decode the elemental’s riddle the whole time.

  But the creature had made up its mind.

  He turned his mouth to the ground and let out a call that sounded like a distant rockslide. The rapids either side of Eathon and Tidbit began to take on new partings as more elementals broke the surface of the water, forming a line of stepping stones that stretched all the way to the river bank.

  The elemental set his captives atop one of his hunched brethren and bid them farewell. “Goodbye, travellers.”

  Eathon nodded in appreciation. “Get out there and see the world,” he told the elemental. “Make a difference.”

  The talking rock bobbed his head. “Perhaps I will,” he said. “Perhaps we all will.”

  Tidbit snapped his fingers. “Ah’ve gottit!” he said, chasing Eathon’s heels across the stepping stones. “What ye do is, ye put t’ furst pouch ins—”

  “No one cares,” said Eathon,” stepping onto dry land.

  NEVILLE DRUMMED HIS fingertips on the armrest of the Durkon throne. He’d taken to his new role with great aplomb, affecting the gracious air of a benevolent king.

  “Is that all of them?” he asked, weary after another day spent holding court with his loyal subjects.

  “Just one more visitor left to see,” replied Emerdor.

  “What does he want?”

  “She, sir,” the elf corrected. “An elderly lady speaks of an undesirable element that has found its way into our stronghold.”

  “Send ‘em in, fam,” said Ashley, eager to bring the session to a close.

  Emerdor opened the throne room door to admit their final guest. A withered old lady with a homemade crutch entered and doddered up to the podium. She had straggly grey hairs sprouting from her face, as though she'd wet her chin and walked through a cobweb.

  “What can we do for you?” asked Neville, amplifying his voice in case the woman was hard of hearing.

  “You had a man in here yesterday,” the woman said, foregoing formalities, “Honest Olaf, he calls himself. I’m here to tell you he’s a gypsy and a thief.”

  “Izzit?” said Ashley, stifling a yawn. The woman sounded like his nana, ranting away in the old folks’ home about white devils stealing from her purse.

  “What do you know of this man?” asked Emerdor, getting to the point.

  Neville squinted at his advisor. The elf had overstepped his bounds a bit there. Words would be had. “Yes,” said Nev, asserting his authority, “tell us what you know.”

  The crone was only too eager to tell him. “I crossed paths with him many moons back,” she explained. “First time I saw him he was stood outside my town bank dressed up like a guard.”

  Neville set his chin on his palm. This was starting to look like a real, “Onion on my belt” type of story.

  The woman carried on. “I was wanting to go into the bank to pay in some savings,” she said, “only there was this big queue stretching right outside. That’s when I saw “Honest Olaf” pointing at a sign on the wall behind him. It said I could ignore the queue and leave my savings with the guard instead. He had this deposit box by his feet with metal bands and great big locks, and he looked official enough. “Save yourself some time,” he told me. “Pop your money in the slot and go about your day.” She shook her head. “Well, the whole thing turned out to be one big scam,” she said, to the surprise of almost no one. “Worse than that, I heard from a neighbour that she’d seen him take that deposit box away at the end of his shift—after he’d taken down his little sign—and it was so heavy with loot he needed to drag the thing along the ground.”

  Neville put his face in his hands. “Okay,” he said. “I suppose we’d better have a word with the guy.” He turned to Ashley, who looked like he was going to be sick. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  Ashley dry heaved. “Our money,” he said. “I gave him our money.” He removed something from his pocket. It was a short stick with leather wrapped around one end: Honest Olaf’s so-called wand of lightning.

  “Are you kidding me?” yelled Nev. “You raided our piggy bank for that?”

  “Since when do we pass up on magic items, bruv?”

  “Sirs,” said Emerdor, “not in front of our guest...”

  “How much?” demanded Neville. “How much did you give that cowboy?”

  “We don’t know for real if he’s booky—”

  “—How much!”

  Ashley averted his eyes. “All of it,” he said.

  Neville lost it. “Did he at least throw in some magic beans?” he thundered.

  “You’re out of order, blud.”

  “I’m out of order? You traded all our money for a fucking twig.”

  “You start putting everything under a magnifying glass, of course you're gonna find problems.”

  Neville shook his head in disbelief. “The man had “Honest” in his name, Ash. Wasn’t that a clue? Since when do honest people need to advertise the fact?” Fuming still, he leant back in his throne, arms folded.

  Emerdor approached the podium. “What would you have me to do, sirs?” he asked.

  Neville leaned forward. “Bring him to me,” he growled, fingers steepled.

  Ashley stole a look at his companion. He was starting to get real comfy in that big black chair.

  “WELL,” SAID NAT, wiping phanta ray blood from Cleaver’s blade, “I can cross that off my bucket list.”

  Galanthre ignored her and set about descending the crag they’d been left stranded upon.

  “Did you hear what I said?” asked Nat, proud of her little joke. “The bucket list thing?”

  Galanthre carried on as though she hadn’t, despite her elf ears having heard it loud and clear.

  Nat went after her, picking her way down the rockface. “Are you annoyed at me?” she asked. Galanthre continued her trek to the ground, scowling all the way. “You’re angry because of what I said about your brother, aren’t you?” asked Nat. “About leading him on? I didn’t really mean all that – I only said it to motivate you. To get you fired you up.”

  Galanthre whirled around. “You meant every word,” she growled, her almond-shaped eyes peering right through her.

  Nat saw the pointlessness in lying. “Okay, technically it was completely true, but I’m really sorry about it.”

  Galanthre shook her head and picked up the pace, making short work of the difficult terrain.

  Nat followed after her, feeling increasingly guilty. “So, you and Ashley, huh?”

  “Don’t try changing the subject,” snapped Galanthre, finally coming to a halt. “You should never have toyed with my brother. He has some hard bark on him, but his heart is soft.”

  “It was nothing,” Nat pleaded. “I only did it for the ego boost. I already have a boyfriend.”

  “Had a boyfriend,” Galanthre corrected. “In case you forgot, he ran away.”

  “Okay, now who’s being a bitch?”

  The two of them arrived at the foot of the crag and faced off. “Eathon should be with an elven woman,” Galanthre seethed. “The Redsky bloodline is all but extinct and he’s wasting his time doting on a human. Look at you. Who knows if you could even bear his seed?”

  “Can we please not talk about your brother’s seed?”

  “Fine. We won’t talk.”

  They conti
nued to walk along in silence until Nat could bear the tension no longer. “I wish there was some fast way back to the river,” she said. “Something we could ride maybe, like a dragon.”

  Galanthre blew her top. “There are no such thing as dragons!” she screamed. “They’re the stuff of fairy tales!”

  “Hey, when I arrived in this place the first thing I saw was literally a fairy.”

  Galanthre stopped, threw down her pack and collapsed onto her haunches, sobbing.

  It was the first time Nat had seen the elf with her guard down, and it struck her like a thunderbolt. “Hey there,” she said, putting a sisterly arm around her. “You okay, hun?”

  “I’m worried about Eathon,” she replied between sobs. “He was never much of a swimmer, even before he lost his legs.”

  Nat tilted her head and put it against Galanthre’s. “He’s survived worse,” she told her. “We’ll get to that river and we’ll find him. You’ll see.”

  The elf wiped tears from her eyes and made something approaching a smile. “Alright,” she said, snatching up her pack. “What are we waiting for?”

  HONEST OLAF WAS dragged before the citadel’s stewards wearing the furtive look of a man exiting a Paddy Power at 10am on a weekday morning.

  “Give us back our money,” demanded Neville.

  Olaf strained at the two guards holding each of his arms. “It was an honest transaction, my lords, fair and true.”

  “I’m not coming to you with a receipt asking for a refund,” said Nevill. “You’re going to give us back our money or face the consequences.”

  “The coin belongs to the people,” said Emerdor, acting above his station again. “There are too many of us here and our resources are scarce. If you don’t tell us where the money is hiding we will see a revolt, and yours will be the first head on a pike.”

  “Please, sires,” begged the merchant. “I’ve done nothing to deserve such treatment.”

  “You’re a thief,” insisted Neville.

  “Where did you come by this talk?” Olaf asked, crestfallen. “Those dark days are long behind me. I am a changed man” He turned to Ashley imploringly.

  “Don’t look at me, bruv.”

  Olaf continued to plead his case. “I won the wand in a poker game. Staked everything I owned on it. That’s how much I believe what I’m telling you. That artefact is worth every penny you paid for it and more besides—”

  “—Enough,” said Neville,

  “If you still don’t believe me I can show you its certificate of authenticity—”

  “—I said enough!” Neville cried.

  Finally the merchant fell silent.

  “What would you have done with him, sirs?” asked Emerdor.

  Ashley looked to his companion.

  Neville leaned back in the Durkon throne and scowled as he considered the merchant’s fate. He was just about to announce Olaf’s sentence when an unannounced visitor entered the chamber.

  “Did I pick a bad time?” asked Drensila, padding across the throne room floor.

  Chapter Nine: Power Creep

  THE TROLL GIANT strode through the fens of Bloodmyre Swamp as though it were skipping puddles.

  As promised, Carnella had directed Clive—the giant’s puppeteer—to his next source of fresh meat, an orc settlement parked on the bank of the red marsh. Clive sat nestled within the giant now, piloting the monster from a spot in its forehead, which he occupied like some sinister third eye. Around him, the bodies of thousands of trolls worked together in perfect concert, conveying their master to his target. Clive grinned as the settlement hove into view. More muscle to tack onto his giant, strengthening its immense frame and cementing his absolute power.

  The titan arrived and announced itself by reaching down with its free hand, uprooting a mangrove tree and swinging it like a giant club, right through the settlement’s primitive dwellings. Clive offered the orcs no quarter, cutting them down in their dozens, battering them to death. He laughed as he listened to their tiny voices drift up from below. Unlike the rest of the people he’d come across this land—who, for the most part, conveniently spoke his language—these creatures were aggressively foreign. Instead of speaking in English, they communicated in an awful warlike tongue, like Klingon or German. Just because Clive didn’t understood their words though, didn’t mean he was deaf to their fear.

  A unit of orcish archers rushed from their barracks and began taking pot shots at Clive’s titan. One arrow skimmed by his ear, infuriating him. He ordered the giant to raise a foot, then—

  BOOM!

  —orc soup.

  Clive cursed. He’d been overzealous. He needed the orcs bodies intact to make use of them, or at least reasonably so. The rest of their ranks he dispatched with more finesse, until finally they were all dead. Every last one of them. Another settlement lay in pieces, and the instrument of Nat’s ruin grew larger still.

  Carnella watched the massacre from between the cracks of the giant’s left hand, which was wrapped around her in a fist. She had no idea that Clive was unknowingly doling out justice to the creatures that had recently attempted to ravish her daughter, nor would she have cared if she had known. Carnella was a rare kind of evil. A mother bear that would sooner eat her own cub than leave the cave to hunt.

  Clive ordered his puppet to make use of the dead, and as the fresh bodies fused with his giant, it grew ever larger. It was monstrous now, three times the size of the abomination that had crawled from the pit.

  Clive brought Carnella to his eye-line and grinned. She noticed a smear of blood running from his nose and smiled back at him. Soon, when the timing was right, she would reclaim her rod of power and crush this whelp, just as he had those orcs. Let the fool grow as big as he liked, she would soon chop him down to size.

  DUSK DREW IN and the sky took on the rosy hue of late evening.

  Nat had been on her feet all day and she was exhausted.

  “Keep up,” said Galanthre, calling over her shoulder as she strode away on a pair of legs worthy of a thoroughbred dressage horse. “We’re almost at the river.”

  “Will you slow down?” Nat begged, panting hard.

  “Why are you so unfit?” the elf asked. “What is it you humans do all day?”

  “We mainly sit at desks,” Nat replied. “When we’re not hunting Pokemon.”

  “What are Pokemon?”

  “Ugh, you never get my references.”

  Galanthre held up a finger and shushed her.

  “What is it?” Nat whispered, scanning the horizon with the intensity of a teenage boy combing a lingerie catalogue for stray nipples.

  “I see two men approaching in the distance.”

  “Well? Is it them?”

  Galanthre smiled. It was them. Eathon and Tidbit.

  The two parties ran at each other, coming together in one giant, friendly ball.

  The reunited party made camp among a nearby copse of trees, which they strung high with hammocks before lighting a campfire. They celebrated their survival by trading war stories over a dinner of roast phanta ray meat. Nat caught Eathon’s eye across the flames and they smiled at one another like high school sweethearts.

  “Ye know wha’ would make this shindig summat speshal?” said Tidbit, uncorking a waterskin tied about his neck. “A round o’ drinks.”

  He handed the skin to Nat, who gave its contents a sniff. Whatever was inside smelled absolutely lethal. “What is this stuff?” she asked, holding the dwarf’s moonshine at arm’s length.

  “A little o’ this ‘n’ a little o’f that,” he replied. “Fermented pertaters, yeast, charcoal, whateva ah could get ma ‘ands on.” He nodded at the waterskin. “Go on ‘n’ give it a try,” he insisted.

  Nat didn’t want to seem rude, and besides, she had every cause to be merry. She knocked back the waterskin and took a bolt. It tasted awful. “Yowzers,” she concluded, and took a second swig.

  This one tasted much better, leading her to conclude that the first swig
must have been from a bad batch. Clearly, her faculties had already been compromised.

  “Watch yerself, lass,” said Tidbit, “tha’ stuff kicks like a mule.”

  Nat suddenly felt great, like she’d taken off her bra at the end of a long day and flung it across the room. Smiling, she handed Tidbit back his waterskin and he passed it on. Everyone took freely of the dwarf’s hospitality, which is to say they got stupid drunk.

  Having made its fourth circuit around the campfire, the waterskin was returned to Tidbit, who turned the vessel upside down to show that it had been drained dry.

  “Time, gentlemen,” he said, and let out a belch.

  “Get some kip, you bunch of lemons,” said Cleaver, who stood planted in the ground by by the campfire. His eyes flicked to one of Clive’s giant footprints. “We wanna be fighting fit to take down that brickhouse.”

  Eathon agreed. “I’m going to bed,” he slurred, and bid his companions a brief goodnight before weaving off to his hammock.

  Galanthre and Tidbit soon did likewise, leaving Nat to extinguish the campfire alone before heading off to bed. Except Nat didn’t want to go to her own bed. She wanted to go to Eathon’s. The dwarf’s toilet wine had driven her right by tipsy to absolutely battered, no way she was sleeping on her ownsome tonight.

  Uninhibited and frisky, she tiptoed past the tree slung with Galanthre’s hammock, happy to hear the elf snoring away above her like a pneumatic drill. Nat grinned like the cat that got the cream and made for Eathon’s tree, pinballing all the way.

  “Where d’you think you’re going, missy?” asked Cleaver, who Nat had snatched up on autopilot.

  “Shhhh!” she hissed, stuffing her unwanted chaperone into his scabbard.

  As she headed to Eathon’s hammock she wondered why she’d only ever had the one boyfriend before. Actually, she remembered, there was one guy before Terry. She’d come close to taking him as a lover—a dumb expression, but somehow fitting in this bodice-ripping fantasy land—when her hockey team went on an away game and hooked up with a bunch of basketball guys. Much like this evening, alcohol had found its way into the mix, and Nat had gone to him with amorous intentions. The two of them had ended up taking their shirts off in his hotel room before Nat decided his arrogance trumped his good looks. The tipping point, and the reason for Nat’s hurried exit, had been the moment he insisted she refer to his junk as “Bone Thugs-N-Harmony” (apparently his penis was “Harmony”).