The Great Troll War

This HENRY totally sucks

There was only the merest glimmer of the pre-dawn when we gathered outside the hotel the following morning. Tiger was there with the two Dibble Storage Jars37 in a rucksack, and I was there with the warmest clothes I could find.

Once Magnificent Boo and Full Price were also present, there to see us off. Ideally, either of them should have come with me as they could do a little magic ‘on the fly’ if required, but Colin and Feldspar were still teenagers, and couldn’t carry their weight.

‘Tiger will have to carry the jars,’ said Feldspar, who was fussing as usual. He’d found a set of bathroom scales to ensure the weight was evenly distributed and said it would help if Tiger took Exhorbitus, but I wouldn’t be parted from it, so had to divest myself of all other items in order for him to take me at all.

‘We’ll try and figure out Shandar’s plans while you’re away,’ said Boo. ‘Monty’s trying to figure out what 2.1 TeraShandars of wizidrical energy will actually do and perhaps work backwards from there.’

‘I just thought of something,’ said Tiger. ‘If Zambini had been literal when he said “bigger and bolder than anything you can imagine” then it’s not world domination because, well, we’ve just thought of that and it’s not a big stretch – all power-hungry megalomaniacs want that – along with adoring masses, a lot of gold and some very big statues.’

It was a good point.

‘In that case,’ I said, swiftly thinking this through, ‘we need someone who can think bigger and more boldly than us. Someone who has fanciful notions and weird screwball ideas that fly in the face of logic and reasoning.’

‘What about – I don’t know – a fantasy author?’ suggested Tiger. ‘They’re pretty unhinged and come up with all kinds of weird and crazy stuff. Maybe they can help.’

Boo said she’d get Princess Jocaminca on to it as it would be good to ‘see those wasters doing some work for a change’.

‘Okay,’ I said, tying a handkerchief around my neck against the chill morning air, ‘we’re out of here. Happy and ready to go?’

‘Yup,’ said Colin.

‘Yup,’ said Feldspar.

‘I’m ready,’ said Tiger.

‘Now listen,’ said Once Magnificent Boo, coming over all motherly, which felt very alien indeed, unless your own mother was moody and distant and forbidding and didn’t blink and stared at you oddly all the time. ‘To recharge the storage jars just put them near the source of the HENRY and let them fill on their own.’

‘You’ll know they’re full when they start to glow bright green,’ added Full Price. ‘It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good luck, then. Think you’ll be okay?’

I paused for thought. We had to defeat the most powerful wizard the planet had ever seen along with an untold number of Trolls with dinner on their minds – and had little to help us: a princess with no nation, two fussy Dragons, fencers and marksmen who were neither of those things, a bunch of terrible worriers, two sorcerers with no magic, no plan, a vegetarian Troll and forty-eight hours in which to do it.

‘Piece of cake,’ I said.

Full Price and Boo stepped back as Colin lowered himself to the ground so I could climb on.

‘Don’t jab me with that sword,’ he grumbled. ‘Now hang on tight and for goodness’ sake don’t fall off – I don’t want your death on my conscience.’

‘If that happened,’ said Feldspar with a silly giggle, ‘you’d be the last Last Dragonslayer slayer.’

‘Yes, ho ho, very funny,’ said Colin. ‘It’s all right for you, you’ve got the light one.’

They fussed like this for several minutes until eventually, after a long galloping take-off run along the promenade, they inched slowly into the air with a frantic beating of wings. Colin then flew in a long arc around the bay, not very fast, and never above twenty feet. I clung onto the rope halter, which was passed around his neck and nose.

‘Are we going to gain any height?’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Colin above the sound of his beating wings, ‘you’re going to have to speak up a little.’

I repeated myself louder.

‘Totally out of the question,’ he yelled back. ‘I’m … unhappy with heights after I was shot out of the sky and nearly died in that fall back in the Cambrian Empire.38 Besides,’ he added, ‘low and slow allows you a survival potential if you fall off. I’m going to fly above water and trees for that very reason.’

‘I’m not going to fall off,’ I said.

‘Yes, but if you do.’

Tiger was having no such issues with Feldspar, and they were now high above us, wheeling in and out of the clouds. I asked Colin to pass over the Button Trench, and as we did I noted a thousand or so Trolls congregating at the barrier, who waved at us as we went over, and made eating gestures with their hands. Shandar had not been kidding over his ‘forty-eight-hour’ threat.

We took the sea route along the South Coast, startling seabirds and the occasional porpoise as we passed round Lizard Point. Colin sped up a little as he grew more confident, but twice had to stop to get his breath back as it was an effort to keep us both aloft. The first time was near St Austell, the second at Looe Island. Feldspar and Tiger joined us on both occasions, and although Feldspar suggested they swap, Colin refused. I think it was a matter of pride.

We carried on up the coast and at Plymouth took a left and headed inland, the route taking us across the city, where we could see the full effect of the Troll invasion. Overturned cars, fire-gutted buildings and prisoners corralled into fenced-off areas and guarded by Trolls.

As soon as Plymouth was behind us the land rose as we flew into the large massif that is Dartmoor. We passed across the turquoise pools of quarry workings, then scooted at almost zero height over the boggy terrain, eventually alighting just behind Foggin Tor, about two miles west of where the HENRY was situated, so we could take stock and make plans. While the Dragons sat and ate sandwiches and drank tea from a Thermos, Tiger and I trod cautiously up to the highest point of the tor, and then, staying low and out of sight, we peered across the tussocky, boulder-strewn moorland between us and our target, a lattice-work steel radio mast wrapped tightly with thick arboreal growth. There was little sign of life other than a few ponies and sheep quietly grazing, but we could see neat bundles of clothes placed on the ground at about hundred-yard intervals all around, each with a pair of shoes on top and a budget steel sword stuck into the ground near by.

‘Hollow Men?’ whispered Tiger.

‘Hollow Men,’ I whispered back. ‘These will be proximity actuated – get too close and they’ll jump into life. Believe me, you don’t want to fight one.’

I’d tackled them before, and while a sole example could be despatched with relative ease, if three or more attacked simultaneously, you would soon be overpowered. When it comes to violent killing machines without reason, pain or fear, Trolls might be a more preferable foe.

‘Here,’ said Tiger, and handed me the binoculars. I focused on the impenetrable forest that had grown around the mast. It seemed to quiver as I watched, the forest thickening and moving as it absorbed the background wizidrical energy.

‘So if there’s no spelling going on anywhere,’ whispered Tiger, ‘how can it have anything to absorb?’

‘Magic is a product of raw human emotion,’ I murmured, scanning the tightly knotted trees for any place where we could gain access, ‘and the wizidrical energy generated by the fear and stress of the Trolls’ invasion is generating huge amounts of crackle. Presumably the HENRY will then transfer everything it gathers to Shandar, thus making him even more powerful.’

‘D’you think he planned it all this way?’

‘He’s a fool if he didn’t,’ I said, still staring through the binoculars, ‘but wizidrical energy derived from pain and loss is always tainted with the burden of sorrows, which in turn taints any sorcerer using that power, and draws them farther into a downward spiral towards anarchy and chaos.’

‘Evil makes evil,’ said Tiger.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but similarly, good begets good.’

‘How’s it going?’ asked Feldspar, who had wriggled up behind us.

‘Nothing so far,’ I said. ‘We’ll watch and wait for a bit before we rush to action.’

‘Jolly good,’ said the Dragon. ‘Here’s a cup of tea and a KitKat. You’ll have to share, I’m afraid. Listen, is Colin all right? He seems to be in something of a mood.’

‘He’ll be okay,’ I said.

‘Okay, then,’ said Feldspar, and crawled off back to where Colin was waiting.

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Tiger as we stared at the knot of forest. There were no Trolls and no sign of life. As we watched, a crow perched on a sword hilt of one of the Hollow Men. The pack of clothes suddenly popped into existence as an empty human-shaped entity and expertly cleaved the crow in half. Then, when it observed no continuing threat, it collapsed back into a folded parcel of clothes.

‘I don’t like Hollow Men very much,’ said Tiger.

‘Me neither,’ I replied.

Then, quite suddenly, several of the trees bent apart and opened on one side of the thicket that was wrapped around the mast. The gap stayed open for about ten seconds, then closed again.

‘It’s venting hot air,’ I said. ‘Make a note of the time.’

Tiger jotted in his notebook and started a stopwatch as I stared at the same spot to see whether it would reopen, and we sat in silence for several minutes.

‘Jenny?’

‘Yes?’

‘The key Zambini sent to you via Molly,’ he said. ‘It was for the glovebox of your VW, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

He paused to see whether I would volunteer more, but when I didn’t he said:

‘And?’

‘Portal’s opening,’ I said as the trees parted again. ‘Time?’

‘Exactly twelve minutes.’

‘Good. Let’s see if it does it again.’

‘Okay. And the glovebox?’ he asked again, as Tiger seldom forgot about a question once he’d asked it. I dug into my jacket pocket and passed him a photograph.

‘There was a spare set of headlamp bulbs,’ I said, ‘a car manual and service history, a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut that was so old I scarcely knew what it was, and this.’

Tiger stared at the faded black-and-white photograph. It had been taken outside the orphanage where we both grew up. Zambini was standing next to the VW Beetle, holding a baby wrapped in a blanket, the Quarkbeast sitting attentively at his feet. Also in the picture was Mother Zenobia. She had run the orphanage for over half a century, and was a craggy ex-sorceress, who had always been scrupulously fair in the treatment of her charges: we took it in turns to sleep under the hole in the roof. The picture might have an innocent explanation, but it looked for all the world as though Zambini was leaving me at the orphanage.

‘He might have … chanced along at the precise moment you were abandoned,’ said Tiger, who was trying to put a positive spin on this even though it sounded as though he thought the same as I – that both Zambini and Mother Zenobia had known all along who I was.

‘And posed with me, Mother Zenobia, the VW Beetle and the Quarkbeast?’

‘I do confess it seems a little odd,’ said Tiger.

‘It’s more than odd, Tiger. The picture being left in the glovebox with a key delivered from Zambini? He wanted me to see this.’

‘You think Mother Zenobia knew your identity and kept it from you?’ he asked in a shocked tone. ‘She would never do that.’

‘I agree – so if she did it was for a very good reason. And it also suggests I was not assigned to Zambini Towers randomly – and that the Quarkbeast didn’t just chance along.’

‘All this was planned?’

‘If so, it was sixteen years in the making,’ I said, staring at the radio mast, to which the entwining trees clung tightly like some sort of massive beanstalk, ‘but if I want answers I’ll have to find Mother Zenobia and ask her. Perhaps that’s why Zambini revealed it to me now.’

‘Is she still alive?’ he asked. ‘I mean, is anyone from the Lobsterhood still alive?’

‘No idea,’ I replied, then: ‘The portal’s opened up again. Interval?’

‘Twelve minutes.’

‘Good. Let’s talk to the Dragons.’

I replaced the photo in my pocket and we picked our way back across the boulders to where the Dragons were waiting. They had eaten their sandwiches, our sandwiches, most of the biscuits and were now playing mah-jong while sipping tea from large tin mugs.

‘Pong,’ said Colin, staring at his tiles. ‘No, wait, Chow. I always get that confused. What news?’

‘The HENRY is a thick knot of beech, mixed with bramble,’ I said. ‘It’s impenetrable, but every twelve minutes the tree trunks part to vent out hot air. They stay open for ten seconds, then close.’

‘Okay,’ said Colin, ‘so one of us flies in there, drops the jars off at the core and comes back out, then we check on them every twelve minutes until they are full, right?’

‘It’s a good plan,’ said Feldspar, ‘but doomed to failure. That HENRY has got “trap” stamped all over it in big letters. Shandar is expecting you to come, expecting you to enter. When that closes with you and me inside, we’re not coming back out until Shandar’s plans have come to fruition. This is playing right into his hands.’

‘You have a better plan?’ I asked.

‘Do you trust me?’

He was asking all of us, and we all agreed that we did.

‘Jenny and I need to go off-grid for twenty-four hours, do some digging and be back in time for Shandar’s deadline. Agreed?’

We all nodded again.

‘Shandar might be doing mind sweeps of those loose with their thoughts, so this is the cover story: we attempted to gain entry to the HENRY but there was an accident and we fell into the water-filled quarry just over there. We did not re-emerge, and Colin and Tiger, you waited for four hours before returning home. You can tell only the Princess and Once Magnificent Boo that we are safe. We will send word as soon as we can by way of a homing snail that all is well, but that might not be for twelve hours or more. If you do not receive any word in twenty-four hours, then we are truly gone, and the fight is now yours. Do you understand?’

Colin and Tiger both nodded their heads.

‘Good.’

Feldspar stretched his wings, then clasped his brother in a hug, and handed him the thumb ring that had been Maltcassion’s. They then conversed in Dragon for a few moments, and pressed their foreheads together hard.

‘Take care, won’t you?’ said Tiger, handing me the backpack with the jars and the snails and the few snacks the Dragons hadn’t managed to eat. ‘Should we hug in case it goes wrong?’

‘It’s not going to go wrong,’ I told him.

‘No,’ he said, chewing his lip.

‘Okay, then,’ said Feldspar once he had finished conversing with his brother, ‘how long can you hold your breath?’

I recalled swimming in the Wye when I was little, just near the orphanage.

‘Maybe thirty seconds.’

‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘Climb on.’

We took off and then circled around the source of the HENRY.

‘So what was all that hugging stuff you did with Colin?’ I asked. ‘It’s not the standard goodbye I’ve seen you guys do in the past – and you gave him Maltcassion’s ring.’

‘That’s easily explained,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m going to die soon. I can foresee it. Not how, or when, or precisely where – but certainly within the next twenty-four hours.’

‘Then we need to turn back,’ I said.

‘The future, once set, won’t change, Jen. If I were to head back now then my death would be something banal and avoidable, like being hit by a car or food poisoning or something. I’ll turn back if you command it, but my end will have no value, and I will have entered the world as I left it, without changing anything for the better.’

He looked around at me with his large green eyes as his wings beat through the air. He was less than a year old and the head jewel in his forehead had not even begun to grow through. He wouldn’t be adult for another century and a half. I knew what he said was true, knew that the end of his life could be spent wisely or foolishly. He was my friend, and I was his. But we both understood what had to be done, and about selflessness, and sacrifice.

Endgame is serious stuff.

Feldspar went into a slow spiral dive to lose height to the west, then made a low approach towards the HENRY on a route that took us over the flooded workings. As we passed over, Feldspar feigned a wing cramp, told me to take a deep breath and then rolled over and impacted the water.

It was immensely cold, and I gripped harder on his rope halter as I could now feel Feldspar swimming below me. The light dimmed, and after a moment or two I felt us stop, some hands holding me, and with a hissing noise the water drained rapidly from the small round chamber in which we found ourselves.

‘You okay?’ said a diver who was operating the controls of the airlock. I nodded. Once the water was out, a hatch at the bottom of the chamber was opened and we climbed down a short ladder. The first thing I saw when I reached the bottom rung was a naval officer with a kindly face. She saluted smartly.

‘Miss Strange?’ she said. ‘I am Captain Lutumba. Welcome aboard DCSV Bellerophon.’