The Great Troll War

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.