Trolled (The Trolled Saga Book 1) Read online

  Skullcap sat upon his scorpion mount looking utterly indomitable. Suddenly, Eathon felt his resolve weaken. His throat tightened.

  “Let’s finish this,” Galanthre rallied. “For Gilon.”

  But it was too late. Another wave of trolls had made it into the clearing—dozens of them this time—grossly outnumbering the two elves. Skullcap smiled so wide it looked as though his grin might reach around to the back of his head, meet in the middle and make the top of his head slide off. Eathon and Galanthre glanced at one another. Even warriors of their skill were powerless to dispatch the forces arrayed before them. If they were to survive, they would have to pull back. Thankfully, they had an escape contingency. Reaching for a hanging vine, Eathon secured it around his wrist and grabbed his sister around the waist. Galanthre used her dagger to slice a second vine, which activated a counterweighted block and tackle that sent the pair of them rocketing back to the village. Skullcap’s anguished roar followed them home.

  Nat watched below as the enemy gathered at the proverbial gates. The herd had been thinned considerably, their numbers greatly diminished by the elves’ defences, but the trolls outnumbered them still, and vastly so. Still, Nat took a breath and did what was expected of her. “Everyone to battle stations,” she shouted, doing the best impression of a leader she knew how.

  Terry rushed to her side. “Let me stick with you,” he said.

  “No,” she replied. “I need you at your post.”

  “But I can’t just leave you.”

  Nat felt her resolve weaken. She wanted Terry by her side just as much as he wanted to be there, but a plan had been set, and they had to stick to it if they were to stand any chance against the horde. Still, the way he looked at her with those puppy dog eyes...

  It was Cleaver who broke the deadlock. “Don’t worry, mate,” he said, calmly and sincerely, like a warm hand on Terry’s shoulder, “Go do your thing, I promise I’ll look after your bird.”

  Terry was struck by a sudden urge to give Cleaver a fist bump, but resisted the urge for fear of losing his fingers.

  “I love you, babe,” Terry told Nat, and planted a kiss on her cheek before rushing off to his post.

  The trolls—who lacked the cat-like agility of the elves—weren’t able to scale the trees to the elf village, so instead used their muscular arms to hurl ropes into the uppermost branches. Grappling hooks latched onto catwalks and trolls began heaving themselves into the treetops, climbing like a tide of rising damp. Neville watched as a grapnel cleared a handrail, reverse-slithered across the floor, and bit into the spokes of his wheelchair. His body lurched as he found himself being dragged towards the edge of the footway with no means of escape.

  “I’m disabled!” he cried, but the troll ascending the rope with the rusty knife in his teeth seemed not to care.

  Neville was coming perilously close to making a real paint job of his pants. The troll’s weight tugged at his wheelchair, pulling it against the catwalk balustrade and causing its aluminium frame to buckle under the pressure. Thinking fast, he tugged out his short sword and started hacking at the troll’s climbing rope. It was tough going. The rope was strong, and his blows bounced off it like it was made of rubber. He persisted though. Despite often being made to feel helpless by others, a lifetime of learning to cope with no legs had made Nev’s upper body strong, and it wasn’t long before the fibres began to split and fray under his attack. The troll had made considerable progress in the interim however, and reached an arm onto the platform, his fingers scrabbling for a hold. He was just about to pull himself onto the walkway when Nev landed one last chop, snapping the climbing rope with an audible twang and sending the troll plummeting towards the forest floor. The sound of the monster’s spine cracking in half over a tree stump rang through the woods like a gunshot, and there he lay, smashed and splayed, a distant swastika.

  Another of the trolls managed to make it to the top of his rope and swing his legs over the catwalk’s balustrade. Having found his way into the elf village, the creature immediately made for the nearest enemy. He found Ashley. The BarbarianCon champion drew his weapon, flop sweat beading his brow. This wasn’t going to be a chivalrous exchange from the pages of some Arthurian legend, and he knew it. It wouldn’t be a formalised encounter with deft parries and daring ripostes. This was going to be a bar room brawl with pool cues and broken bottles of Newkie Brown.

  For a while the two combatants just stared at one another, the moment frozen in amber. Then the troll charged. Ashley put up his sword to defend himself. The force of the troll’s blow sent a shock through his arm that exploded in his shoulder like dynamite. The scimitar smashed through Ashley’s guard and sliced through his breastplate, gouging a nick into his chest that blossomed with blood. He felt the urge to go berserk but remembered his training and kept his inner Liam Neeson in check. Instead, he allowed his body to stay loose and let his muscles settle gently into the rhythm of swordplay. He dodged the next swing, and as he continued to sidestep the troll’s swings and duck his slashes, his adversary grew increasingly frustrated. Eventually, the troll became sloppy with rage, and that’s when Ashley saw his moment. Sidestepping a clumsy backhanded slash, he landed a well-aimed blow to the troll’s side. Success. His blade bit into the troll’s midriff and carved off a great, slippery flap of black flesh. A pungent cloud of spores erupted from the wound. With shock in his yellow eyes, the troll toppled sideways over the edge of the catwalk, screaming all the way to the ground.

  “Yeah bitch, you got rekd!” yelled Ashley, whipping off his shirt and twirling it over his head.

  He looked about to see if he had a witness and found Galanthre. Their eyes locked and she offered him a nod that seemed to offer something more than camaraderie.

  Clive was doing his best to keep out of the way during the melee, but he couldn’t stay out of trouble forever. Too many of Drensila’s soldiers had breached the elves’ defences and swarmed the village, eager to wash the decks with blood. He was left with nowhere to hide, and soon found himself at a dead end facing a gargantuan troll with only a puny dagger to defend himself with. Desperate, he concentrated on his weapon, willing it to fly from his hand and sink itself in the creature’s eye socket. Nothing occurred. The vicious monster closed in and hooked Clive’s legs from under him, rendering him supine. Clive winced as the troll lifted his hulking warhammer, blotting out the sun with its anvil-sized head. What a shabby way to die, Clive thought. Flattened by a mindless grunt in a pointless skirmish.

  “I’m going to club you good,” growled the troll, and wound up for the deathblow.

  Just then a voice called out. “Heads up, uggers,” it said.

  Clive opened his eyes to see the troll impaled in the chest by an arrow. Across the way he saw his saviour, Terry, shortbow in hand. He was stood ramrod straight, with his legs spaced apart like he was posing for a sculptor fashioning a piece titled, simply, “bravery.”

  “Ugh,” was all Clive could manage by way of a thank you.

  But Terry’s peacocking turned out to be premature. As he stood dusting his hands, the troll snapped the end off of the arrow, which had somehow managed to evade any of his vital organs. He stepped over Clive’s quivering body and marched in the archer’s direction, his heavy footfalls spelling a promise of doom. Panicking, Terry reached for his quiver but fumbled the next arrow, which disappeared between the planks of the catwalk. The troll was almost upon Terry, warhammer hoisted high and ready to turn him into a flat disc of meat—

  —when the point of a dagger sprouted from his eye socket. Thankfully, Clive had had the decency to return Terry’s favour, and buried his dagger in the back of the troll’s skull. The beast capsized, carried over the edge of the catwalk by the weight of his hammer.

  “You’re welcome,” said Clive.

  Nat was in something of a predicament. Having failed to repel the village borders, a group of invaders had made it onto a treetop catwalk and scoped her out. Three bloodthirsty trolls advanced towards he
r, tendons rising as their sword arms flexed in readiness. Nat was about to step outside the eye of the hurricane. This wasn’t some jumped-up triffid she was facing down, these were three trained soldiers made of muscle and hate. She held up her blade, which quaked in her hand like a Parkinson’s sufferer. Unimpressed, the first troll swatted the weapon aside with a flick of his wrist and delivered a punch to Nat’s stomach that landed like a cannonball. She keeled over backwards and folded in half, her sword falling to the deck as she hugged her aching abdomen.

  “So, this is the Chosen One?” the troll mocked.

  His friends snorted derisively. One of them even took the time to give her a kick while she was down.

  Cleaver hissed in Nat’s ear. “Pick us up will ya?” he implored. “I can’t do nuffin’ from down here.”

  Tears streamed from Nat’s eyes. She’d never been punched before—not proper punched—and it hurt so bad.

  “Shame,” sighed Cleaver, a shrug in his voice. “You talked a big game back there, Red. I thought you were a fighter, I really did, but it looks like you’re all mouth and no trousers.”

  Nat heard that. The sword was testing her, and if there's one thing Nat Lawler was good at in this world—or any world for that matter—it was tests. She took a breath, snatched up the enchanted blade and clambered to her feet.

  “Good girl,” said Cleaver, smiling. “Now, how about we do these geezers a mischief?”

  The trolls were done playing. The one that punched Nat in the gut lifted his sword and went to sink it in her skull. Cleaver had other ideas. Before the troll could bring down his blade, he struck out and took the troll’s head, sending it sailing into the air like a champagne cork.

  “Sling yer hook,” roared Cleaver, happy as a mosquito in a nudist colony.

  Nat’s second attacker didn’t fare any better. As she lashed out defensively, Cleaver worked with her swing and buried himself in the troll’s stomach, which burst like mouldy fruit and spilled a pile of fetid guts onto the catwalk.

  “Get in!” the sword yelled triumphantly.

  The third troll, locked into a full charge, managed to slip on his fallen comrade’s innards and found himself sliding helplessly in the direction of Cleaver’s sword tip. With only a slight tilt of his blade, Cleaver was able to skewer the beast through his screaming mouth, piercing his head like a cocktail stick through an olive.

  “Stitch that!” roared Cleaver from inside the troll’s skull.

  It was pretty gross.

  Down below, Skullcap scurried about on his scorpion, dodging his soldiers as they rained down from the elven village and smashed into the ground in explosions of black spores.

  “Face me, you cowards!” he screamed into the treetops.

  “Face this,” howled Neville, and triggered the village’s final countermeasure. Using his short sword to hack at a line of ropes, Neville sent a collection of nets plunging from the treetops. Nets loaded with great clusters of rocks. One of the rocks struck Skullcap on the head, sending him crashing from his mount. A moment later he found himself beneath the looming shadow of a second rock, which crushed his weapon arm flat and pinned him to the ground. Thrashing and cursing, Skullcap used his fangs to chew at the shoulder of his trapped arm. The yellow daggers gnawed through skin and sinew until the final strand of the ruined appendage snapped like a length of black liquorice. He scrambled to his feet and whipped his tattered cloak from his back to reveal something beneath. As far as Neville could tell from his vaunted position, the cloak had been covering a backpack. No, not a backpack, a tank of some sort, cylindrical, with a short hose coming out of it that connected to a metal spout. Neville’s eyes went wide as he realised what he was looking at.

  “Oh no,” he whispered.

  Skullcap had a flamethrower.

  This was Drensila’s finger gun.

  Terry saw it too. “He won’t do it,” he said, looking around at the trolls still fighting in the treetops. “He won’t risk killing his own men.”

  But Nat knew better.

  Skullcap grinned and curled the forefinger of his remaining hand around the trigger of his device. “You will scream in agony as your blubber renders before me.”

  A great stream of fire like Satan’s piss poured from the nozzle of the troll’s flamethrower. He cackled madly as he panned about, torching everything in sight, setting the woods ablaze. The trees supporting the elven village went up like kindling, and catwalks began to crumble as the stilts supporting them disintegrated. Whole huts toppled from the boughs and smashed into pieces on the ground. Skullcap’s allies—his own men—plunged from the sky like phoenixes taking their maiden flights. Chaos reigned.

  Eathon dodged falling debris and leapt between ruined footways to join Nat and the gang. “We have to get out of here! Now!” he shouted over the screams of the burning and the crackle of flames.

  Together with the rest of the elves, the gang made a hurried exodus. Some fast-roped down vines. Others hugged onto tree trunks that had been especially polished, riding them to the ground like fireman’s poles. The most graceful of the elves wrapped their wrists with cords made of rubber plant and bungee jumped feet-first for the ground, reaching the apex of their descent and cutting their cords to deposit themselves softly onto the soil. Neville, who couldn’t bear to part with his only means of conveyance, sat paralysed until Galanthre plucked him from his wheelchair and unceremoniously tossed him into an escape net.

  As they set down on the surface, the elf/human alliance found themselves overwhelmed by yet more trolls. Outmatched and tactically disadvantaged, they scattered from the glade, leaving the village to burn behind them. Skullcap turned his flamethrower on them but they were beyond the weapon’s range. Determined to get their attention, he turned and took aim at the elves’ sacred tree.

  Seeing what Skullcap was about to do, Nat froze in her tracks. “No!” she screamed.

  She made to charge the warlord but Eathon laced an arm into hers and pulled her back. “We must go,” he urged, his expression etched with sorrow.

  Skullcap met Nat with a haughty stare and pulled the trigger. A great plume of fire spilled from the device and the sacred tree burst into flames. Towards the top of the trunk, Nat saw the tree’s bark split as Elderwood’s eyes and mouth opened.

  “Be away from here, Nat Lawler,” he said, his expression riddled with pain. “You have a world to save.”

  Then his face disappeared behind a sheet of flame.

  Nat and the rest ran, but it was hopeless. The trolls were too many, and they would hound their quarry to the ends of the earth. Thankfully, Elderwood had enough magic left in him to aid his allies’ escape. As soon as they were at a safe distance he cast a spell through his roots that turned the soil beneath the enemy into quicksand, swallowing the trolls and dragging them into the suffocating mire. Thrashing bodies disappeared beneath the surface with a chorus of vile belches, sucked into the bowels of the earth.

  As Nat ran she cast a look over her shoulder, back to the forest clearing as it retreated into the distance. It looked pristine. Untouched. For a moment she wondered if everything that had happened—the trolls, the burning of the holy tree, the slain elves—had all been a figment of her febrile imagination. Then the pristine clearing vanished as Elderwood’s illusion died, revealing the forest as it really was. Elderwood had been replaced by a pillar of flame, its cinders raining down in grey flakes like the ash from a volcanic eruption. Smoke rolled across the smouldering battlefield to reveal the bodies of compatriots lying in pools of their own blood. This was the world as it really was, and it was all Nat’s doing.

  Not every soldier in the troll army fell prey to the quicksand. Some were lucky enough to find themselves on its banks. Others were able to haul themselves out and claw their way to solid ground. Stinger managed to pull free of the sand’s sticky clutches and find sanctuary in the upper boughs of an unburned tree. His rider wasn’t so lucky. Skullcap found himself beyond the reach of the nearest tree and up to th
e waist in the deadly bog. He began sinking at once but refused to give in to panic. He knew better than to thrash about and quicken his demise. Instead, he remained as still as possible, moving only to jettison the excess weight of his flamethrower. He scanned the shore of the quicksand for something to pull himself free with: an overhanging vine, or a handy tree root. As he searched for a means of escape, he saw his former chief centurion. Thrungle had somehow managed to evade being caught in the quicksand altogether, no doubt by hanging back from the battle like the coward he was.

  “Give me your arm,” Skullcap commanded.

  Thrungle leaned in but stayed just clear of Skullcap’s range, arms pinned to his sides. His necklaces of teeth dangled before the warlord, mocking him like the grins of a hundred smirking faces. Though Skullcap tried to grab them, they remained tantalisingly out of reach of his grasping hand. Just as Thrungle was about to step back and watch Skullcap disappear into the dirt for good, he saw other trolls approaching. They eyed Thrungle suspiciously. Was he deliberately refusing to assist their warlord? They drew their blades, and sensing their wrath, Thrungle sprang to action immediately, shooting out a hand for Skullcap to grab. He seized his paw and pulled himself out with his one good arm, emerging from the bog with a tide-line up to his chin.

  Skullcap caught his breath and rose to full height. “Lay down on the ground,” he ordered his inferior, snarling like a dog. “Now.”

  “But, sir…” grovelled Thrungle.

  “I said now!”

  The other soldiers formed a circle around him.

  Thrungle crumbled to the ground, prostrate and shivering. “Please, sir,” he begged. “I live only to serve.”