The Great Troll War

Aside from the general, the Princess and myself, there was also Tiger, who wouldn’t leave my side, a small contingent of royal guards to protect the monarch if things turned sticky, and a semaphore communications officer. It was their job to signal to another communications officer waiting at a phone box a hundred yards down the street, who would relay commands to the control centre back at the hotel, and from there to the resistance cells up and down the country.

In truth, the Princess shouldn’t have been there, but had refused all entreaties to be taken to a safe place because ‘she would never command others to face dangers that she was not willing to face herself’.

In due course it would cement not only her popularity, but the moral leadership required to rule a newly United Kingdom. She leaned closer to me and touched my hand.

‘Is this going to work?’ she asked.

‘We’ll know in half an hour,’ I said, ‘or at least you will – I’m on the First Eat List.’

We stared at the massed army of the Trolls facing us. If things went well, we at least had a sporting chance – and with a bit of luck, without a sword needing to be drawn, or a shot fired.

Actually, not a bit of luck – a lot of luck.

It had been a long night, but the fencers and marksmen, along with the team of terrible worriers, had been of inestimable value – far more than a traditional army. Killing a Troll would not diminish their numbers at all, for a new one would be generated to sustain the density ratio, and all that would be gained would be tired muscles and a blunted sword. No, we needed to build barriers. We needed not soldiers but fencers – and not just any old fencers, but masters of their art. Ones who could build in the dark, build stealthily, across rivers and streams, hills and forests, and who could instruct others in the craft over the phone if necessary, and call upon others to build the single greatest network of button barriers that was ever created – and do it all in a single night.

I looked towards the east, where already the sun was beginning to burnish the trees on a distant hillside, edging them with deep orange. Shandar’s bridges across the Button Trench had already begun to build themselves. They were of tree roots, growing and entwining together so to eventually give a firm base upon which the Trolls might walk. The Trolls reacted by picking up their clubs and ensuring their salt and pepper grinders were loaded and in their holsters, ready to be utilised in case of emergency seasoning requirements.

The reason that we had left it so late to launch our counterattack was simple: we had no idea how much of our grand plan had been carried out and we needed to leave it as long as possible to ensure that it had. The marksmen and women were not quite so well organised as the fencers, but on the plus side anyone with a brush could in effect be a marksperson, so long as the paint had been mixed to the precise hue.

‘General Worrier,’ said the Princess, ‘give the order.’

He nodded to the man holding the semaphore flag, who signalled to the woman in the telephone box, who gave the order to Lady Mawgon, who relayed the order to the Regional Commander of the Devon Resistance Group, who signalled his deputy to order that the flare be fired. We could not see it from here, but the flare that arced up out of Bridgwater was significant, for teams of marksmen had been busily painting a continuous unbroken cerulean blue line between the estuary at Bridgwater on the northern coast and the inlet near Axmouth to the south. It mostly followed roads, as it was easier, but there it was: a thin blue line, which would, so long as it was unbroken, bind the Trolls within Devon to a fixed geographical area.

As we found out later, the team standing by to finish the line responded with a flare back to their regional command centre as soon as they had, and the ‘order completed’ signal was relayed back to us. The message took about thirty seconds in each direction.

‘The Thin Blue Line has been completed, ma’am,’ said the communications officer. ‘Thirty-eight miles of unbroken paint.’

‘Good,’ said the Princess but without much enthusiasm, as annoyingly the Trolls were undiminished in number. It didn’t seem to have worked, and the bridges across the Button Trench were now half complete. The Trolls were limbering up, drawing weapons, sharpening spoons and readying themselves for breakfast.

‘Well,’ said the Princess, ‘it was a good idea. Maybe what works in sports halls doesn’t extend to entire peninsulas.’

‘So it’s Plan B,’ I said, drawing Exhorbitus out of its scabbard. ‘Fight like hell. I suggest you retreat, ma’am.’

At that very instant the first rays of the new day bathed the scene in an amber glow.

‘Ma’am, your retreat path is waiting,’ said Tiger, pointing towards where the open door of my VW was waiting for us, engine ticking over. Colin would be waiting at the hotel, ready to whisk her off to the Isles of Scilly, where there would be no Trolls.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Generaclass="underline" order every barrier closed.’

The general transmitted the new order, but this went not just to one regional headquarters, but all of them: to the 173-mile fence that had been constructed along the old Offa’s path by an army of over ten thousand, who built the barrier from whatever was to hand, at night, by the light of torches and lanterns. It was decorated with buttons, and the last gap was completed, as we found out later, just as the sun rose. The fencers, their work complete, their hands and fingers bleeding, collapsed exhausted on the grassy flanks of the huge earthwork that would, for the second time in history, stand as a bulwark against the Troll.

Offa’s Dyke wasn’t the only one. Nine other barriers had also been constructed or painted, each restricting the open area in which the Troll could expand. From north to south and from east to west, following canals, and rivers, and estuaries, and roads. Sometimes walls, sometimes a blue line, sometimes a dyke built from earth, and at other times a beautifully pleached hedge – all decorated with buttons or painted cerulean blue. We learned later that over a hundred thousand people had worked on their construction, and from all walks of life: princes shoulder to shoulder with peasants, geeks alongside lingerie models, game-show hosts beside epidemiologists. All were committed to the destruction of the common foe, the cause of freedom, and to have vengeance for those who had been killed and eaten.