The Great Troll War

Molly Reveals Herself

The Princess and I visited the Button Trench around teatime. Sorting out the chaos of the two recent changes in administration took a frustratingly long time, especially given that time was something currently in short supply. It was now Sunday afternoon, and the Troll invasion was slated for dawn the following morning. The Quarkbeast had been returned to us by Grifflon’s men, but we still had no intention of giving him up.

We’d released Full Price and Lady Mawgon, who re-established the intelligence network and regained contact with our observers and resistance groups. Many had dutifully remained at their posts in case our fortunes changed, and, although patchy, the picture of the Troll invasion was generally consistent: they were now everywhere, and it did not look as though their appetite for human flesh would be appeased any time soon.

We stared at the Trolls on the other side of the trench, and they stared back at us in the sort of way we might stare into a fridge if feeling a little snacky. They had vanquished the human with little difficulty; a further small addition of land in the extreme south-west tip would not make a significant difference, the ten thousand or so souls the equivalent of just one more larder in a house not noted for its lack of larders. It was said that more people turned vegetarian during the Troll invasion that at any time in the Kingdom’s history. Being a carnivore suddenly looked a little iffy when you or your children were on someone else’s menu.

The Princess and I stared across the trench. We had asked to speak to whichever Troll was nominally in charge, and one was now lumbering up to talk to us. It looked a lot like the Troll Wife we had seen a few days ago. She recognised us both, but on reflection that might just have been the Hive Memory.

‘Yes?’ said the Troll.

‘This is the Supreme Ruler of the United Kingdoms,’ I said, indicating the Princess, ‘and she wishes to speak to the Emperor.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the Troll Wife. ‘And for what possible reason would he want to talk to you? It’s sort of like the starter wanting to have a chat with a guest, just before a banquet.’

‘It’s about the Mighty Shandar,’ said the Princess. ‘He will break any deal he has brokered. Our species will be better served by working together to defeat a common enemy before we find a peace of our own. I want to forge a new history between your people and mine so that we can live in harmony, rather than aggression.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the Troll absently, as her attention had wandered, ‘did you say something?’

The Princess patiently repeated herself, but the Troll was no less dismissive.

‘You’re breaking my heart. But I’ll let you into a secret: the Mighty Shandar will build bridges over the Button Trench no matter what you do tomorrow at dawn, and we will invade. So standing there bargaining with us is a little pointless – although out of courtesy we may ask if you would prefer to be steamed or boiled. Personally I’m against such concessions, but the 13.33 per cent bleeding-heart liberal Troll faction will have their say.’

We came away from the Button Trench without having made any headway, but at least some understanding of what we were to expect.

‘It looks like you were right about Shandar,’ said the Princess as we drove back into town. ‘Helping us rid the land of the Trolls was never part of his plan.’

‘Mind you,’ said Tiger, who was also present, ‘defeating the Trolls may not be relevant at all if the Mighty Shandar decides to leave the Earth as a frozen wasteland devoid of life, floating in a forgotten corner of the Milky Way. Shouldn’t we take the fight straight to Shandar?’

‘The Troll is currently the most immediate threat to our liberty,’ said the Princess. ‘We’ll fight them first then deal with Shandar.’

I liked her optimism, but wasn’t sure just how we could fight either right now.

We pulled up outside the Queens Hotel. The marksmen, eager not to sit on their hands doing nothing during a time of jeopardy, had been busy repainting the yellow lines outside the hotel, conveniently adding a ‘Monarchs Only’ parking slot.

Monty was waiting for us as we pulled up, and seemed to be looking positive about something, which might at least portend good news, even if it wasn’t actual good news.

‘Did that shade of cerulean blue that I gave you work?’ I asked, since I’d passed Ralph’s warpaint on as a possible weapon of war. A gallon of paint against several million Trolls didn’t seem like much, but it was something.

‘It did,’ he said, ‘but there’s something else I want to show you. It’s over at the Leisure Centre on Claire Street. Can you drive me up there?

‘What we do know,’ continued Monty, as we drove back up the hill, ‘is that brute force alone doesn’t work against the Troll’s ferocity. So the worriers and I were looking once again at the problem and three things struck us as mutually incompatible: first was the sheer number of the Trolls.’

‘It goes against all scholarly extrapolation of likely numbers, and every reconnaissance mission ever undertaken over Trollvania,’ said the Princess.

‘Right,’ said Monty. ‘Every Troll War was fought on the same assumption: that there weren’t very many and they must be easy to defeat. But every time humans opened the massive gates in the Troll Wall to give them a bit of a pasting, there were always far more than expected.’

‘Someone not doing their homework, it sounds like,’ I said, pulling up outside the Leisure Centre, which was now being used to train anyone who was willing to fight. Pointed sticks, kitchen implements, fists, feet, sarcasm, Trollphobic jeers – we were getting desperate.

Monty led us through to the main sports hall, which had been divided by large curtain partitions. There were desks set up with chairs, filing cabinets, phones and photocopiers, and the walls were liberally covered with pictures, diagrams, maps and charts. There were also about a dozen of General Worrier’s top worriers – including Major Worrier, who saluted smartly, bit his lip and then, the stress getting the better of him, had to be led away and sat down with a glass of water and a cool flannel on the back of his neck.

But in the centre of the curtained-off space was Molly in her Mini Traveller, doing some knitting.

‘Hello!’ she said through the window. ‘Glad to see you back, Jennifer. Sorry about Feldspar. He seemed a decent sort.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘he was.’

‘So,’ said Monty, showing me an old map of the UnUnited Kingdoms, ‘my second point is the extensive use of multiple barriers required to defeat them in the past.’

He pointed at the various features on the map.

‘As I mentioned before, we’ve got Offa’s Dyke cutting off the whole of Wales, Wat’s Dyke behind it, the others that criss-cross the land, the two ancient Roman walls at the borders of Trollvania, and now the two modern Troll Walls.’

We nodded, but didn’t see where he was going with this.

‘You had three points?’ said the Princess.

‘Ah yes: the Hive Memory. We know thoughts and memories are not universally shared, only among specific groups of individuals. And then there’s the shared tattoos. We thought it was a wise Data Integrity policy, but now we’re not so sure.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.

‘And me,’ said the Princess.

‘And me,’ said Molly, ‘and I’m a Troll so I don’t have an excuse.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Monty, ‘I’ll demonstrate. Molly, do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really trust me?’

Molly looked at the Princess, who nodded.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I need you out of the car.’

Molly looked at us all in turn, then nervously at the sports hall, which even though only half its total size still seemed only just the size she might feel comfortable with. She opened the door and then, with an odd sinuous movement that reminded me of a circus contortionist climbing in and out of a small barrel, she squirmed elegantly from the car and was soon standing next to us.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘I need you to be yourself,’ said Monty, then, in a louder voice: ‘Now.’

The curtain partition must have been rigged with quick-release hangings or something, for it fell to the floor, instantly doubling the floor space in the sports hall. The effect upon Molly was instantaneous: the crease we had seen running down her forehead the previous evening at the Globe reopened, and as we watched she tensed in anticipation, then dropped to her knees as her head seemed to stretch sideways.

She cried out in pain and we all took a step backwards.

‘She’s grown another set of eyes,’ whispered Tiger in astonishment, as Molly’s head continued to stretch. Her extra eyes weren’t the only things that were growing. Her legs were dividing down the centre, as were her arms, along with her body, which was separating down the middle, taking the new limbs and head with it, until, less than ten seconds later, there wasn’t one Molly standing in front of us – but two.

Molly looked at the other Molly and then gave her a sisterly hug.

‘Molly?’ I said.

‘Yes?’ replied both the Mollys in unison, seemingly oblivious – or at least unsurprised – to what had just happened.

‘I think I get it now,’ said Tiger, who was fairly quick on the uptake.

‘Lucky you,’ said the Princess, ‘because I don’t.’

‘The Troll,’ said Monty in a quiet voice, ‘is a variable-population-density life form. They do not live as a fixed number, but as a ratio. Their numbers expand and contract to fit the space available.’

He waited a moment to let this sink in.

‘The two Troll Walls are there to keep the Trolls in a fixed space geographically,’ he explained, ‘just as the Romans used the walls, and King Offa a set of dykes. The way to defeat a Troll isn’t with weaponry, or force, or entrapment – it’s by enclosing them.’

I looked at Molly.

‘Did you know this?’

‘Look,’ said the Troll, ‘I’m not huge on the whole counting gig – as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one of me. One here, and one over there. One times one is?’

‘One,’ said Tiger.

‘There you go,’ said Molly, ‘as clear as the nose on your face.’

Monty explained that there were roughly ten thousand or so Trolls living in between the Troll Walls, but as soon as the gates opened they could expand to over three million as they spread out to meet their preset density ratio, which was based on food supply, terrain and area. It sort of made evolutionary sense, too, for in this way a creature could never exceed the limits imposed upon them by their environment.

‘That’s why they hate us so much,’ said the Princess, ‘for humans can do what they cannot: expand unchecked beyond the levels at which their environment can support them.’

‘There’s a moral in there somewhere,’ said Tiger.

‘So hang on,’ I said. ‘Molly told us that 6.66 per cent of Trolls were vegetarians. That’s ridiculously precise unless … she is the only one. In which case—’

‘There are only fifteen individual Trolls,’ said the Princess, who was a little quicker at maths than the rest of us. ‘But we can check. Molly, can you name all your fellow Trolls?’

‘Sure. There’s Keith, Uuuurg, Estelle, Dave, Ugrax, Gluuurg and Charlotte, who is my mum. There’s also Gretal, Grnxtly, Polly, Ug, Dexter, Simon and Daphne.’

‘Yup,’ said the Princess, ‘fifteen. Molly, as a percentage of all the Trolls named Molly that are anywhere, how many are in this room now?’

‘One hundred per cent,’ said the first Molly, while the second stared at the diagrams on the wall and then turned to us and added: ‘I bounded myself in the Mini so that I should not suffer any indignities from any Troll anywhere in the Kingdoms.’

And she sighed deeply. Monty ordered the room divided in half again, but this time not by a curtain, but by a long string embroidered with buttons. Since it was an imposed boundary, it had the same effect as the curtain, and within a couple of seconds Molly had recombined herself back into a single Troll. It wasn’t so painful, and she looked much relieved.

‘I feel better as unit one’ she said. ‘If you want me I’ll be in the Mini.’

We all thanked her and within a few moments she was happily back inside the small car. The Princess, Monty and I all exchanged looks. We knew then the method by which we could defeat them.

‘I know,’ said Monty, ‘but with only a single night to prepare, there’s only a slim chance of victory.’

‘I’ll alert the necessary parties,’ said Tiger, going to find a phone, ‘and warn Lady Mawgon to stand by to receive orders – and also to alert Mabel that everyone will be pulling an all-nighter, and to get the sandwich and coffee-makers on stand by.’

‘I’m still not sure I fully understand what’s going on,’ said Molly, munching on a cucumber sandwich.