“Too late,” he said.
The barn door trundled open on oiled casters, and six implacable Chinese clay warriors stood silhouetted in the moonlit rectangle.
“Archers,” said Holly. “Lie flat.”
Artemis seemed dazed by the utter collapse of his plans. He had acted predictably. When had he become so predictable?
Holly saw that her words were not penetrating Artemis’s skull, and she realized that Artemis had two major weaknesses: One, he was physically hamstrung not only by his hamstrings but also by a lack of coordination that would have embarrassed a four-year-old; and two, he was so confident in the superiority of his own intellect that he rarely developed a plan B. If plan A proved to be a dud, there was no fallback.
Like now.
Holly hurled herself at Artemis, latching on to his torso and knocking him flat in the narrow aisle. A second later, she heard the command from outside.
“Fire!”
It was Juliet’s voice. Ordering the murder of her own brother.
As battle veterans know all too well, the urge to look at the instrument of your own death is almost overpowering. Holly felt that pull now, to sit up and watch the arrows as they arced toward their targets. But she resisted it, forcing herself down, squashing herself and Artemis into the walkway so the corrugated steel pressed into their cheeks.
Four-foot-long arrows punched through the fuselage, rocking the plane on its gear and embedding themselves deep in the seating upholstery. One was so close to Holly that it actually passed through her epaulette, pinning her to the seat.
“D’Arvit,” said Holly, yanking herself free.
“Fire!” came the command from outside, and instantly a series of whistles filled the air.
It sounds like birds, thought Holly.
But it wasn’t birds. It was a second volley. Each arrow battered the aircraft, destroying solar panels; one even passed clean through two portholes. The craft was driven sideways, tilting onto the starboard wing.
And yet again the command came. “Fire!” But she heard no whistling noise this time. Instead there was a sharp crackling.
Holly surrendered to her curiosity, clambering up the slanted floor to the porthole and peeping out. Juliet was lighting the terra-cotta soldiers’ arrows.
Oh, thought Holly. That kind of fire.
Bellico squinted into the barn’s interior and was pleased to see the airplane keeled over. Her host’s memory assured her that this craft had indeed flown through the sky using the energy of the sun to power its engine, but Bellico found this difficult to believe. Perhaps the human’s dreams and recollections were becoming intertwined, so that to Bellico daydreams and figments would seem real.
The sooner I am out of this body, the better, she thought.
She wound a torch from a hank of hay and lit the tip with a lighter taken from the human girl’s pocket.
This lighter is real enough, she thought. And not too far removed in its mechanics from a simple flint box.
A straw torch would not burn for long, but long enough to light her warriors’ arrows. She walked along the ranks, briefly touching the arrowheads that had been soaked in fuel from a punctured gasoline can.
Suddenly the hound raised its sleek head and barked at the moon.
Bellico was about to ask the dog what the matter was, but then she felt it too.
I am afraid, she realized. Why would I be afraid of anything when I long for death?
Bellico dropped the torch as it was burning her fingers, but, in the second before she stamped on its dying embers, she thought she saw something familiar storming across the field to the east. An unmistakable lurching shape.
No, she thought. That is not possible.
“Is that…?” she said, pointing. “Could that be?”
The hound managed to wrap its vocal cords around a single syllable that wasn’t too far out of its doggy range. “Troll!” it howled. “Trooooollll.”
And not just a troll, Bellico realized. A troll and its rider.
Mulch Diggums was clamped to the back of the troll’s head with a hank of dreadlocks in each hand. Beneath him the troll’s shoulder muscles bunched and released as it loped across the field toward the barn.
Loped is perhaps the wrong word, as it implies a certain slow awkwardness, but while the troll did appear to shamble, it did so at incredible speed. This was one of the many weapons in a troll’s considerable arsenal. If the intended prey noticed a troll coming from a long way off, seemingly bumbling along, it thought to itself: Okay, yeah I see a troll, but he’s like a million miles away, so I’m just gonna finish off chewing this leaf, then—BAM—the troll was chewing off the prey’s hind leg.
Bellico, however, had often seen the troll-rider brigade in action, and she knew exactly how fast a troll could move.
“Archers!” she yelled, drawing her sword. “New target. Turn! Turn!”
The terra-cotta army creaked as they moved, red sand sifting from their joints. They were slow, painfully slow.
They are not going to make it, Bellico realized, and then she had a grasping-at-straws moment. Perhaps that troll and its rider are on our side.
Sadly for the Berserkers, the troll rider was most definitely not on their side, and the troll was just doing what he was told.
Gruff did indeed make a fearsome spectacle as he emerged from night shadows into the pale moonglow bathing the field. Even for a troll, he was a massive specimen, more than nine feet tall, with his bouncing dreadlocks giving the illusion of another foot or two. His heavy-boned brow was like a battering ram over glittering night eyes. Two vicious tusks curved up from a pugnacious jaw, beads of venom twinkling at the pointy ends. His shaggy humanoid frame was cabled with muscle and sinew, and his hands had the strength to make dust of small rocks and big heads.
Mulch yanked on the troll’s dreadlocks, instinctively resurrecting an age-old troll-steering technique. His granddad had often told stories around the spit-fire of the great troll riders who had rampaged across the countryside doing whatever they felt like, and nobody could even catch them to argue.
The good old days, his granddad used to say. We dwarfs were kings. Even the demons would turn tail when they seen a mounted dwarf comin’ over the hill atop a sweat-steamin’ troll.
This doesn’t feel like a good day, thought Mulch. This feels like the end of the world.
Mulch decided on a direct approach rather than pussyfooting around with battle tactics, and he steered Gruff directly into the throng of Berserkers.
“Don’t hold back!” he shouted into the troll’s ear.
Bellico’s breath caught in her throat.
Scatter! she wanted to shout to her troops. Take cover!
But the troll was upon them, smashing terra-cotta warriors with scything swipes of its massive arms, knocking
them over like toy soldiers. The troll kicked the dog into the lower atmosphere and sideswiped Bellico herself into a water barrel. In seconds, several pirates were reduced to a dog’s dinner, and even though Salton Finnacre managed to jab a sword into Gruff’s thigh, the massive troll lumbered on, seemingly unhindered by the length of steel sticking out of his leg.
Mulch’s toes located the nerve clusters between Gruff’s ribs, and he used them to steer the troll into the barn.
I am a troll rider, the dwarf realized with a bolt of pride. I was born to do this, and steal stuff, and eat loads.
Mulch resolved to find a way of combining these three pursuits if he made it through the night.
Inside the barn, the plane lay balanced on a wheel and wing tip, with arrows piercing its body. Holly’s face was pressed to the glass, her mouth a disbelieving O.
I don’t know why she’s surprised, thought Mulch. She should be used to me rescuing her by now.
Mulch heard the clamor of ranks re-forming behind him, and he knew it was only a matter of heartbeats before the archers launched a salvo at the troll.
And as big as my mount is, even he will go down with half a dozen arrows puncturing his vitals.
There was no time to open the glider door and scoop up its three passengers, so Mulch yanked on the dreadlocks, dug in his toes, and whispered in the troll’s ear, hoping that his message was getting through.
Inside the solar plane, Holly used the few moments before all hell would surely break loose to hustle a dazed Artemis into the pilot’s seat. She strapped herself in beside him.
“I’m flying?” asked Artemis.
Holly flip-flapped her feet. “I can’t reach the pedals.”
“I see,” said Artemis.
It was a banal yet necessary conversation, as Artemis’s piloting skills were soon to be called into use.
Gruff shouldered the plane upright, then put his weight behind it, heaving the light craft toward the open doorway. The plane hobbled forward on damaged gear, lurching with each rotation.
“I did not foresee any of these events,” said Artemis through clattering teeth, more to himself than to his copilot. Holly placed both hands on the dash, to brace herself against an impact toward which they were rolling at full speed.