Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel

Chapter 25

While this was happening, Raf slid down the rain-slicked surface of the upper western flank of Troll Mountain, bouncing on his backside with Vilnar still clinging to him.

After about a hundred feet of sliding, they sailed off a second brink and, for a moment, found themselves two thousand dizzying feet above the stakes at the bottom of the mountain’s vertical western face — the same stakes that lay beneath the triangular prison cells cut into that flank.

As he and Vilnar flew out into thin air, Raf reached out with his crossbow and hooked it around the roof of the small shack that housed the elevator mechanism servicing the cells.

The crossbow snagged the edge of the roof …

… and Raf and Vilnar suddenly swung inward and landed in an ungainly heap on the wooden platform directly underneath the shack — the platform with the hole in its floor through which the elevator was raised and lowered.

Dazed, Raf shook his head and looked up to see the huge shadow of a troll standing right in front of him!

Before Raf could move, the troll had lifted him bodily into the air, gripping him firmly in its massive hands, drawing him up to its huge gray face.

A face that Raf recognized.

It was Düm.

“Master Raf, you are crazy human, but you smart, you figure out Master Ko’s plan. Düm hope you pleased with Düm’s efforts. It very hard for Düm to remember all of Master Ko’s instructions.”

“You’ve been great, Düm,” Raf said. “Thank you.”

It was then that Raf noticed Graia standing behind the troll. “You must be Graia.”

“I am. And I am coming with you.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Raf said. He could hear the loud banging of the trolls trying to break down the upper door that Düm had barricaded.

“We’re not out of this yet. We have an old man to rescue and then we have to run as fast as we can. Düm, the wheel, please.”

Within minutes, with Düm turning the great cogwheel that raised and lowered the elevator and Raf standing on the elevator itself, they found Ko in his cliff-side cell.

The old man was very pleased to see Raf. He stepped onto the elevator.

“You listen well, my young friend,” Ko said as Düm raised them up. “And I am most glad you came back for me on your way out.”

“You did ask me to,” Raf said. “Although did you really expect me to beat the trolls’ champion in single combat?”

Ko shrugged. “I told you before: a quest would not be a quest if it were easy. Either you beat their champion or you failed in your mission—”

Pained cries interrupted him.

The other prisoners — most of them starving Southmen and Southwomen — had seen them on the elevator and were desperately begging to be rescued, too.

Raf was momentarily taken aback.

Apart from his spontaneous decision to free Vilnar, he hadn’t thought of rescuing anyone else. He had come to Troll Mountain for the Elixir and he had only stopped here to grab Ko on the way out.

Then another voice called, “Raf! Raf!”

Raf turned.

It was Bader. He was standing with his legs astride his inverted triangular hole, peering up and out at Raf.

“Take me with you,” Bader croaked. “Please.”

Raf stared at him, at this pale imitation of the formerly haughty prince.

“I have the Elixir, Bader.” He indicated the pouch hanging from his hip. “I can save our tribe.”

“Please take me with you, Raf.”

And in Bader’s desperation, Raf saw something. Bader was just as desperate to live as the Southmen prisoners were.

In that moment, Raf knew that whether they be Northmen or Southmen, they were all the same, they were all people, and if he saved one of these captives now, he had to save them all.

“People, listen to me! If you want to flee this place, get on this contraption now! This is your one and only chance of escape!”

And so, hauled up by the mighty exertions of Düm, the great escape from the cliff-side cells of the trolls began.

It took four trips to release all fifteen prisoners — first Ko and Bader plus one other man; then all of the others in groups of four.

Raf would greet each load of prisoners at the elevator platform and send them on their way with the words, “Go! Don’t look back!”

Bader had not needed a second invitation. He stole away immediately, dashing inside the mountain while Raf stayed at the elevator platform to release the other captives.

The bangs of the trolls on the upper stone door continued and just as Raf helped the last prisoner — a young woman from the Southmen tribe — from the elevator, he heard a great rending crack and then troll voices shouting angrily.

“They’ve broken through Düm’s barricade,” he said to Ko. “We have to go!”