The Great Troll War

Colin and the Princess

Aside from the odd detour so the Leviathan could feed on a flock of seabirds, we made good time, and were soon winging our way across the sea between Cornwall and the Scillies, the white foam of the cresting waves almost close enough to touch, the smell of salt spray in our nostrils. Ralph was flying low because he didn’t want us to be seen, and although the Leviathan’s four paddles made a thumping noise as they rhythmically beat the air, they would hopefully be mistaken for the sound of the sea. We approached the island of Tresco from the north-east, crossed the rocky shore and then glided softly up the hill to alight at an abandoned castle, where we found Colin and one of Sir Matt Grifflon’s men, bound up with rope. I recognised the latter as one of the minstrels, last seen at the Co-op. There was a walkie-talkie on the grass next to him.

‘Hello!’ said Colin cheerily. ‘I was wondering when you’d arrive.’

The jar containing the Mysterious X was sitting on a low wall, the loose collection of charged particles that made up the nebulous entity firing like fireflies. Colin must have brought X with him in case he needed to communicate some ideas across the ether.

It was no coincidence I had turned up.

‘Hello, Colin,’ I said, ‘that’s Ralph. He’s an Australopithecine.’

‘Is he, by gum? Hello, Ralph. I like your handbag. I’m a Dragon.’

‘Ook,’ said Ralph politely, although clearly unimpressed. When you can ride a Leviathan, Dragons don’t have quite so much ‘wow’ factor.

‘So,’ I said, getting straight down to business, ‘do the Princess’s kidnappers know you’re here?’

‘If they do they’re pretending they don’t,’ he said. ‘I was going to charge in and carbonise them all in a terrifying frenzy of barely concealed rage, reclaim the Princess and then fly away triumphantly across the sea like the badass Dragon I always wanted to be.’

‘What happened?’

‘My pilot light went out,’ he said, opening his mouth wide so we could see. The small flame at the back of his gullet was indeed extinguished.

‘So I overpowered Chuckles here, who was on guard duty, and tied him up. Actually, he tied himself up. They call in for an update every fifteen minutes. Do you have a lighter or a box of matches?’

Unfortunately, evolution had not so far supplied the Dragon with a natural method of reignition in the event of a pilot light outage, so they relied on either a man-made spark, a mouth full of flint, or a smouldering lightning-struck tree. Annoyingly, none of us had matches or a lighter, not even Ralph, who emptied his large handbag on the grass to check.

‘Crumbs,’ said Tiger, surveying the contents of the handbag, ‘you’ve come tooled up, Ralph.’

He had indeed. Among the collection of gold doubloons, romantic novels, a half-finished sampler, a CD of Rick Astley’s greatest hits and six fidget spinners was a large flintlock pistol complete with powder flask and six lead balls. Like most people, I wasn’t fond of projectile weapons, and even knights and other warriors regarded them as ‘the weapon of a snivelling coward’, preferring instead to use a sword, rapier or dagger. If you were going to kill someone, the saying goes, ‘only the worst cowards do it anonymously from a distance’.

‘Can you load one of those?’ I asked Tiger, and he nodded.

‘Then do so – and make it a double charge.’

‘High Ground, check in.’

The words had come from the two-way radio lying in the grass, and Colin picked it up. He placed it next to the captive guard’s ear, and then a razor-sharp claw on his opposite temple.

‘I lost my brother yesterday to this little caper,’ said Colin in a low growl, ‘so I’m feeling a little prickly right now. You’re going to reply that everything’s okay up here. Do you understand what I will do to you if you try to trick us?’

The minstrel nodded and Colin pressed the transmit button.

‘All clear up here.’

‘Well done,’ said Colin, ‘you have earned yourself another fifteen minutes of life.’

‘Miss Strange?’ said the captive in a plaintive sort of voice. ‘Please tell your friend not to kill me.’

‘He’s a Dragon,’ I said. ‘They kind of make their own rules. Do you want a piece of advice?’

‘That I should do what he says?’

‘You learn quickly.’

We crawled to the edge of the derelict building on the hilltop, hid behind a stone arched doorway and peered down the slope opposite. Cromwell’s tower was right on the edge of the sound between Bryher and Tresco, and looked about the most perfectly positioned tower for imprisoning a princess, and not by chance. Kidnapping royalty, as previously stated, was a growth industry in the UnUnited Kingdoms, not helped by the plethora of insurance companies which had sprung up to cover the cost of a safe return. In fact, some thought that the insurance companies might even have encouraged it, as pretty much every important person – and a few pets – were currently covered against ransoming.

‘How many?’ I asked as we peered at the tower.

‘Five,’ said Colin, ‘all heavily armed. If I can’t get my pilot light relit, I don’t really rate our chances. My leathery hide will stop most small-arms fire, but not for ever. What’s Tiger like in a fight?’

‘What he lacks in stature he makes up for in ferocity – and he’s good at throwing knives.’

‘Could he kill someone?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘and I can’t say whether I could either.’

It was a good point. Owing to the relentless depiction of death on TV, in theatre and the movies, killing someone often appears an easy choice and a satisfactory and acceptable way of dealing with conflict. I had serious doubts about this, and whether I could actually do so myself, if I had to.

‘A negotiator would be handy right now,’ said Tiger. Kidnapping princesses had generated a new profession: ransom negotiators and re-snatch squads would either work for the insurance company or even be employed by royal families in order to save losing their no-claims bonus.

‘I’m not sure we have the time to find one,’ said Colin. ‘If we don’t get the Princess back on the throne, Sir Matt will be giving the Quarkbeast to Shandar and negotiating with the Trolls.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘this calls for more of an “on the hoof” plan. Tell me: how did you manage to talk to the Mysterious X when you wanted it to get in touch with me just now?’

‘I imagined myself back in the lobby of Zambini Towers and then imagined myself yelling the words.’

‘Think you can again?’

‘Sure.’

A half-hour later I was approaching the tower on foot from along the access road. As I walked, I could see one of the guards step out of the front door to meet me.

‘Far enough,’ he said when I was about fifty yards distant. He was a nasty-looking character, the sort of person I would use to make sure a kidnapped princess stayed kidnapped. He had leathery skin, wore military armour, and had recently been knighted as a chevron was hastily sewn to his shoulder. A knight was the King’s own guard and loyal to death – there would be little point in trying to talk him around.

‘I’ve come for the Princess,’ I said, ‘and I will not leave without her.’

‘Then you will not leave at all,’ he said. ‘The choice is yours.’

‘We will retake the Princess,’ I retorted. ‘She will return to the throne, and she will show mercy to you and your garrison so long as you step away. Refuse, and your next thought will be as carbon. What say you?’

‘I say that’s bold talk coming from a little girl,’ said the knight, and drew a revolver from a holster by his side, cocked the hammer and fired. I heard the shot zip past my ear, nicking my earlobe. Either it was the wind or I was lucky; if he fired at me ninety-nine more times, I think he would have got me square between the eyes every time. He was surprised himself, and pulled back on the hammer once more to place a fresh round behind the hammer.

But at that moment there seemed to be a commotion at the very top of the tower. The knight did not move, well aware that a distraction is a popular ploy. He perhaps should have. As he fired the second shot I brought out Exhorbitus and held it in front of me, and felt the bullet ricochet off the burnished blade and fly over my left shoulder. He fired again and Exhorbitus moved again, instantly changing my pre-thought to action, and the third slug was deflected from my abdomen and pinged off the roadway behind me. It was the last shot he fired. Above him, a lit oil lamp came sailing out of the highest window, just a random thought planted in the Princess’s head by the Mysterious X. Colin, waiting unseen on the back of the invisible Leviathan not sixty feet above the knight’s head, caught the lamp in mid-air and in one seamless move ignited the gaseous breath from his methane-producing stomach, pointed himself vertically downwards and let fly with an oily burst of fire.

I’m not sure of the precise ratio of methane to hydrogen to oxygen in Dragon breath, but what I do know is that Colin’s first attempt at carbonising went spectacularly well. In less than ten seconds the knight was transformed into a perfect charcoal facsimile of himself with every pore and eyelash preserved as a fragile carbon matrix that had once been complex life. As we watched, the blackened gun with the hand still attached fell to the ground, followed by the plates of armour in his coat. Within a few moments he had crumbled into a charcoal-coloured heap on the ground, only his lower legs remaining to show where he had once stood.

‘Woah,’ said Colin, who had alighted by my side. ‘That was necessary and just, right?’

‘He was trying to kill me,’ I said. ‘You did the right thing. Come on.’

We split left and right as a heavy machine gun opened up from a second-floor window, the bullet strikes chasing us along the ground as we ran for cover. But Ralph and the Leviathan’s work was not yet done, and seemingly from nowhere a large hole was punched into the tower, the bulk of the Leviathan suddenly visible as its chameleonic skin rippled with the shock. The front of the tower fell out, the machine gun was silenced, and I scrambled over the rubble to enter the building. I sliced left and right as I entered the ground-floor room, removing the arm and a hand of two potential assailants. There was the crack of a weapon from upstairs and I rushed up the narrow staircase while Colin flew in a tight orbit around the outside, acting as top cover for the operation.

I reached the second storey, saw nothing remiss so moved to the top floor, where I found the last guard holding the Princess tightly from behind, a dagger at her throat. Tiger had got there ahead of me, and was pointing the old flintlock in their direction.

‘Drop the dagger and you live,’ said Tiger.

‘You will kill me anyway,’ said the guard, ‘I have nothing to lose.’

‘You have in your hands the true and just ruler of the Kingdoms,’ said Tiger in an impressively calm voice. ‘We need to vanquish the Trolls and the Mighty Shandar, but Sir Matt Grifflon has only his ambitions to think of. Before today, you were merely an unthinking drone of an arrogant despot. After today you will be the one that saw sense, the one who made all the difference. You need to do the right thing.’

The guard stared at Tiger, then at me, then dropped the dagger. The Princess wriggled out of his grasp, but did not run to join us – she jumped upon the fallen blade and held it to the guard’s throat.

‘You little fool,’ said the Princess, who I could see had not been having the best of days, ‘this is what happens to—’

‘Wait!’ yelled Tiger, who still had his weapon held high. ‘We don’t kill unarmed prisoners, ma’am, that’s not who we are.’

‘A liar and a brigand and guilty of the highest treason,’ the Princess shouted back. ‘Who is to stop me?’

‘I will,’ said Tiger in a calm voice. ‘Harm the prisoner and I will shoot you stone dead, Your Majesty.’

‘Jennifer?’ asked the Princess, who seemed to have reverted to her previous obnoxious self after all the stress. ‘Will you let him do that?’

‘I most assuredly will,’ I replied. ‘A queen who defies the law and murders one who has surrendered and offers no resistance is a queen who does not have the moral authority to rule. Do as Tiger says, Your Majesty.’

She looked at us both, and her face crumpled. The dagger fell to the ground for a second time, and we rushed forward to retrieve it.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the Princess, and collapsed in a heap.

‘Thank you,’ said the guard, moving to a corner of the room, breathing heavily, a slight nick on his throat where the dagger had drawn a little blood.

‘It’s okay,’ I said to the Princess, ‘it’s not been a good day for any of us.’

‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ said the Princess. ‘I thought all was lost.’

‘Then you don’t know me as well as you thought you did. Come on, we have a throne to reclaim.’

I whistled to Ralph, who brought the Leviathan into a hover outside the window. We moved the Princess out of the window and across to the Skywhale, and in another minute we were all heading in formation back across the sea towards the mainland.

None of us said a word. Tiger had his face covered and my heart wouldn’t stop racing. No matter what anyone says, rescuing princesses from towers is never plain sailing.