Compared to the elves, the trolls moved like they were underwater. Eathon kangarooed over their front line and landed amidst a cluster of trolls before whirling like a dervish and turning them into a butcher’s scraps. Galanthre ducked the cut of an enemy’s blade and ran the point of her sword up through his chin and out the top of his skull, causing a plume of black spores to shoot from the exit hole as though she’d struck oil.
Ashley heard Galanthre grunt as she drove the blade home and thought it sounded like a sex noise. Ashley really had to get his head in the game. He focussed up as a troll came at him, scimitar in hand. The beast swung at him, but Ashley stayed loose on his feet and dodged the cut of the blade. Seizing the moment, he curled his sword around the troll’s weapon and gave it a twist, disarming him. As his attacker watched his scimitar clatter to the ground, Ashley rammed his sword into the creature’s belly and tugged it to the side, emptying the troll’s insides.
Out of ammunition now, Terry retrieved an arrow from the body of one dead troll and used it to floor another.
Meanwhile, Nat cut down a couple more, stalling their strikes with Cleaver’s blade and paying them back with flaming deathblows.
Still, the allies couldn’t hold the trolls off for much longer. There were so many of them. Clive’s army was just too strong.
Tidbit loaded another ball-bearing into his slingshot as a troll came rushing his way whirling a morning star. Working fast, he pulled the weapon’s pocket to its fullest span and unleashed the missile at his adversary.
Crack!
The troll’s skull split in two, but another was quick to pick up where his fallen comrade left off, hurdling the dead soldier’s body and charging the dwarf with his weapon held high. Tidbit pressed another ball-bearing into the slingshot’s pocket. He took aim and was just about to fire, when he saw something happening off to one side. A second troll had managed to manoeuvre around Nat and was coming up on her from her blind spot, dagger in hand.
Two trolls.
One shot.
Him or Nat.
He took aim and fired.
Nat’s troll went down.
As he fell, so did the other troll’s blade; the one stood before Tidbit.
Tidbit looked past him, to the light cresting the horizon.
This was enough.
To die with the sun on his face.
He closed his eyes.
“Noooo!” screamed Neville.
He saw it happen. Watched through an arrow slit in the citadel’s south wall, peering through a telescope as the troll cut down his friend.
What was he doing out there? He was supposed to be fetching his wheelchair, not waging a war.
Tears burned his eyes.
Tidbit was dead.
The trolls were overwhelming the rest.
The battle was lost.
The telescope slid from his grip and landed at his feet. His face creased in anguish, the muscles of his chin trembling, his chest wracked with heaving sobs. Eyes blurry, he blinked away the briny tears—
—and saw something new.
Through the arrow slit, across the chasm, making their way to the last, smouldering embers of the fight, were two forces. Two forces, converging either side of the troll army, coming together in a pincer movement.
Racing to one flank were the rock elementals, who’d finally risen above the tide of trolls and begun smashing through their numbers with stone fists, pulverising bones and turning faces to pulp.
As the elementals met the enemy in one direction, a second force surged in on the other, cutting into their opposite flank and pressing the beleaguered trolls into a tight wedge. The new arrivals fought ferociously, slamming against the trolls in crashing waves, eroding their battle lines, snacking on their faltering ranks like a tornado on a tile roof.
Neville snatched up the telescope and focussed its eyepiece to get a better look at the soldiers that had come to their aid… only they weren’t soldiers, they were just men. Men and halflings, the victims of Clive’s rampage, taking whatever weapons they could find in the citadel and seeking revenge on their oppressor. Men and halflings he’d almost turned away at the citadel gates, now turning the tide of battle.
Neville’s face formed a teary smile.
While the others set into the remaining trolls, Nat went looking for Clive. She found him standing alone, a solitary figure occupying his own space on the battlefield. He’d been waiting for her to join him, and she obliged by meeting him upon a patch of ground yet to be stained red by blood.
Up close, Clive looked like a reject from a Hellraiser movie. The dragonfire had turned his flesh into beef jerky, scorching skin through to the bone. Padding towards her, he offered Nat a feral smile that showed the gaps of his missing teeth. He coughed as though he were suffering from consumption, then sicked an oily black mess onto the ground.
Nat felt her lip curl at the sight of him. Clive had become a revolting, vengeful creature, hateful of the world and twisted by his inability to overcome the indignities of his past. Like a Men’s Rights activist, only somehow even worse.
“Let’s get this game started, shall we?” he growled.
He waved a hand and a bubble of magic formed around them, semi-opaque and crackling dangerously. It was just the two of them now. Nat had entered Clive’s arena and found herself trapped; stuck in a cage with a wild animal.
“Don’t make me do this,” she said, Cleaver burning bright in her hand.
Clive’s face split into a grin. “What could you possibly do against me?” he asked.
He clicked his fingers and the shadow at his feet—the one cast by the silver shilling moon—crept from the ground and began to slither up his legs. The shadow gathered around his whole body, robing him in shade, shielding him in a suit of darkness made solid.
From beneath his black armour, Clive laughed. “You should have joined me when you had the chance, Lawler.”
Nat sighed. If nothing else, at least he was referring to her by name now. Not “girl” or “Terry’s bird,” but an actual human moniker. The first step in the right direction.
“There’s a way back from this, Clive. It doesn’t have to end in you dying.”
But he continued towards her, fist raised, speaking in All Caps. “I CHOOSE HOW THIS ENDS! You’re nothing! A stupid, insignificant girl who wandered out of her element.”
His shadow skin slinked from his fist to form a giant black club, which he swung and landed on Nat’s jaw, hard as frozen oak. The blow knocked her off her feet and threw her violently across the arena. She watched a molar go skittering along the floor and tasted blood, thick in her mouth.
“There’s no talking this through,” said Cleaver, burning white hot. “He's a rabid dog. Do him a favour and put him down.”
Nat knew he was right. Talking wasn’t going to cut it. He was going to bury her like the Cancel Account button of a first-month-free subscription service.
She clicked her jaw back into place and put it to Clive as plainly as she knew how. “I’m going to rip out your arsehole and use it for a skipping rope,” she told him. She had no idea where it came from, but she couldn’t wait to use it against the next person who gave her grief on Twitter.
Clive swung for Nat again, but this time she parried his blow with the flat of Cleaver’s flaming blade. The tremor of the impact rattled her arm and stung her elbow with a sudden drill-bit of pain. She staggered backwards, reeling from the blow.
“I am death!” Clive roared. “I am the destroyer!”
“You're a fucking bell-shine, mate,” replied Cleaver.
The sword took a swing at him, gouging a chunk out of his shoulder.
Clive simply smiled and muttered an invocation that magically knitted the wound back together. “If you’re not careful you’re going to make me angry,” he told them both, wagging his finger.
With a casual flick of his wrist he delivered another crushing blow that sent Nat slamming to the limits of his arena. As Nat lay there, kn
ocked senseless, she saw Eathon and Terry on the other side of the bubble, banging their fists and screaming mutedly. She looked down to find a giant dent in her breastplate, and realised the only reason she was still alive was the dwarven armour Tidbit built her.
“You should have stayed in your lane, woman,” Clive bawled, throwing up his hands. “This is High Fantasy, not High School Musical.”
He opened his free hand and in its palm appeared a sizzling sphere of black energy: a ball of pure, uncut spite, nourished by alienation, flowering from self-loathing. With a toddler’s angry scowl, Clive cannonballed the sphere straight at Nat.
She dived like a goalkeeper to avoid it, and the orb exploded against the inside of Clive’s forcefield.
Cleaver spoke on Nat’s behalf while she rolled onto her knees and gathered her breath. “If you’re such a big man, why don’t you drop the bubble and let us all have a go at ya?”
“Because I don’t have to,” Clive replied, delivering the words as though they were something poisonous he had to expel from his mouth. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.”
“Sure you don’t,” said Nat, “not here in your little safe space.”
She charged at him, mad as hell. Cleaver lashed out in a big arc, but just as he was about to make contact, Clive vanished and reappeared behind them. Carried on by her own momentum, Nat smashed into the wall of the bubble like an excitable dog into a squeegeed patio door.
As she lay there, knocked senseless for the third time, thick black chains began to sprout from Clive’s back. The chains snaked across the ground, cutting through the dirt to grasp at her ankles. The ice-cold links wrapped around her legs before gliding up to her torso and pinning her arms by her sides. Cleaver was buried beneath the mass of black bonds, silenced, his flame extinguished.
Clive approached, arms behind his back, whistling a jaunty tune. His cyclops eye bored into Nat, dark and bottomless. “I could cast a spell that would blow you sky high,” he told her, “but I’m not going to spend that kind of capital on a depreciating asset.”
He brought a hand from behind his back to show a shimmering black blade grown from the gauntlet of his shadow armour.
“I’d say it was nice knowing you, but, well…”
Nat strained at her bonds, panting like a cheerleader who’d just finished a particularly challenging routine. Her lungs filled quickly, flushing her with vigour, making her strong.
She thought back.
Back to when she’d arrived in The Broken Lands.
Back when she couldn’t go five minutes without taking a drag on her asthma inhaler.
Those days were long gone now.
Now she was a wildcat, fierce and deadly, able to take on the mightiest of foes and best them all. Clive had grown in power, but then so had she. The trail of dead trolls in her wake was a testament to that.
Clive raised the black knife and held its point to Nat’s eye. “Goodbye, Nat.”
She squirmed, she fought, she did everything she could to extricate herself, until finally, with sheer, sweaty determination, Nat broke her bonds.
The links of Clive’s black chains shattered, shards shooting off in every direction.
“H-how?” he stuttered, rocking back on his heels.
He was on his way to victory, coasting down the final straight, but the road had suddenly zagged.
Nat used Clive’s confusion to stomp on his instep with her Ugg boot. He winced in pain and screamed blue murder.
Cleaver bust into flames as Nat pulled him back, and hummed a low, swift tune as she drove him forward.
His blade entered Clive’s belly and his flame went out with a hiss, like a newly-forged sword plunged into a bucket of ice water.
As Clive slid from Cleaver’s blade, the Durkon rod of power fell from the pocket of his robe. The few remaining trolls on the battlefield stopped sharp and collapsed simultaneously, leaving Ashley, Galanthre and Tidbit with no one left to fight.
The bubble surrounding Nat vanished, leaving Eathon and Terry to come stumbling inside. Terry rushed to Clive, who lay on the floor, armour disintegrated, his belly bleeding like an uncorked bottle of Malbec. He pressed his palms to the wound but there was nothing to be done for him. Clive had been dealt a wound that was incompatible with living.
He spoke in a voice soft and calm. “Terry,” he said, taking his old friend by the hand. “I’m so sorry.”
It was like a spell had been broken. As though some monster shackled within him had become untethered and bolted for the shadows.
“I’m sorry too,” Terry replied with a sniff. “For everything. For getting you bullied. For calling you Queer Cli—”
Clive cut him off. “—You were right, Terry. Not for what you did, but…” he trailed off, then placed his other hand on top of his. “I only acted the way I did because I couldn’t admit the truth.” He coughed and smiled, blood staining his teeth. “I even tried to convince myself I wanted her…” He gestured to Nat. “What a joke.”
Nat rolled her eyes. Even at death’s door…
Terry wiped away some tears with the cuff of his sleeve. “You’re going to be okay, Clive. We’re going to get you home, mate, just hang in there.”
Eathon looked to Nat and shook his head. There was no way.
“It’s alright,” Clive sighed. “I saw this already. No more enemies. I didn’t realise it would look this way, but... I get it now.”
“I was never your enemy, Clive.”
“I... I know. Thank you, Terry. You were a good friend...”
His eyes glazed over as if he were slipping into a narcotic stupor, then his grip on Terry’s arm loosened and his arm went slack.
He was gone.
Nat placed a hand on Terry’s shoulder. She did it to console him, but it was an act of sympathy for Clive too. She saw him for for what he really was now: a scared kid who suppressed what he was and paid the ultimate price for it. Clive didn’t turn to the dark side. He self-destructed.
Eathon stepped forward to place a hand on Terry’s other shoulder and the three of them stood there, silent, reflecting.
Then a noise.
A rattle.
Something was moving in the dirt.
The Durkon rod of power twitched and danced.
Chapter Fourteen: Double Damage
THE ROD SHOT through the air like a yo-yo on an invisible string...
...And landed in the hand of Carnella the Cruel.
The Night Queen offered Nat and her companions a smile. Well, perhaps “smile” wasn't the right word for it. The top row of teeth was showing, and there was a faint curve to the lips, but there was no crease beneath the eyes, no lift of the cheeks. On anyone else, it would have been considered a grimace at best. On Carnella’s face, it was a sign of unadulterated joy.
She’d won.
Removed Clive from the field of play and reclaimed her family heirloom.
She held the rod of power high, and as she did, the ground began to shift.
The great, black blanket draped across the battlefield—the one made from the bodies of thousands of dismembered trolls—seemed to undulate and billow. The bodies were rising, each and every one of them, stitched together by black magic, raised from the dead.
A new army, stood proud and ready to fight for their one true creator.
“The old ways are the best ways,” said Carnella.
Looking out across the black tide, she saw the looks on the interlopers’ faces and felt their resolve crumble. They didn’t have it in them to repel another onslaught. It was over.
She’d beaten them all.
Nat watched the troll army stand tall and felt Cleaver go heavy in her hand. Her limbs went slack as the last of the adrenalin syphoned from her weary body. There was nothing to be done. She’d given it her all, but no matter how many monsters she slayed, there was always another to take up the baton. Literally, in this case.
“Let me talk to her,” said a sultry female voice.
It was Drensila.
Nat turned to find the deposed queen standing behind her, alone and unarmed. She was dressed in her slinky black dress and heels still, attired more for the ballroom than the battlefield.
Galanthre grabbed her and put the sharp edge of her dirk to Drensila’s throat. “Why would we do that when we have you hostage?”
Drensila sighed. “We’re not in league, my mother and I. The two of us have a… complicated relationship.”
“You expect us to believe that?”
Drensila shrugged. “I came here to offer my help. You either let me or you don’t.”
Nat looked across to Drensila’s mother and saw not a shred of love in her eyes. It was a look she knew all too well. “She’s telling the truth,” she told Galanthre. “Let her go.”
“You can’t be serious.”
She was.
Galanthre reluctantly withdrew her blade and replaced it in her boot.
Nat placed a hand on Drensila’s shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“It’s the only way.”
“She’ll kill you.”
Drensila arranged her usual resting bitch-face into a warm smile. “What do you care, you beef-witted strumpet?”
Nat smiled back. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m going to miss you.” She gave Drensila a hug and looked over to Carnella, who was organising her revived army into battle lines. “Honestly, what is it with that generation?”
Drensila shared a conspiratorial shake of the head before heading off to meet her actual maker.
“I thought you dead,” said Carnella, as her daughter limped across the battlefield to greet her.
Her hand gripped the Durkon rod of power and a pair of trolls met Drensila, stepping in front of her and crossing their swords to bar her progress.
A black atmosphere weighed on the proceedings, pressing down like a poisonous cloud.
“I knew better than to think the same of you,” Drensila replied. “I saw inside the boy. Saw the splinter you put in his mind. Saw how you agitated him without his knowing, nudging him, guiding him towards… towards this.” She swept a hand across the blighted battleground that surrounded them, sick with slaughter.
Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga) Page 40
