They crested a row of pines and flew directly over the Berserker Gate, where Opal Koboi labored in a magical corona. Holly used the flyover as a chance to recon their enemy’s forces.
Opal was surrounded by a ring of Berserkers. There were pirates, clay warriors, and other assorted beings in the ring. The estate walls beyond were patrolled by more Berserkers. There were mostly animals on the walls—two foxes, and even some stag, clopping along the stone, sniffing the air.
No way in, thought Holly. And the sky is beginning to lighten.
Opal had given herself till sunrise to open the second lock.
Perhaps she will fail and the sunlight will do our work for us, thought Holly. But it was unlikely that Opal had made a mistake in her calculations. She had spent too long in her cell obsessing over every detail.
We cannot rely on the elements. If Opal’s plan is to fail, we must make it fail.
Beside her, Artemis was thinking the same thing, the only difference being that he had already laid the foundations of a plan in his mind.
If Artemis had voiced his plan at that moment, Holly would have been surprised. Not by the plan’s genius—she would expect no less—but because of its selflessness. Artemis Fowl planned to attack with the one weapon Opal Koboi would never suspect him of possessing: his humanity.
To deploy this stealth torpedo, Artemis would have to trust two people to be true their own personality defects.
Foaly would need to be as paranoid as he had always been.
And Opal Koboi’s rampant narcissism would need to have run so wild that she would not be able to destroy humanity without her enemies at hand to witness her glory.
Finally Holly could not sit and watch Artemis’s clumsy attempts at aviation any longer.
“Give me the stick,” she said. “Give it full flaps when we hit the ground. They’re going to be on us pretty quickly.”
Artemis relinquished control without objection. This was not the time for macho argument. Holly was undeniably ten times the pilot he would ever be, and also several times more macho than he was. Artemis had once seen Holly get into a fistfight with another elf who said her hair looked pretty, because she thought he was being sarcastic, as she was sporting a fresh crew cut on that particular day.
Holly didn’t go on many dates.
Holly nudged the stick with the heel of her hand, lining up the plane with the manor’s pebble driveway.
“The driveway is too short,” said Artemis.
Holly knelt on the seat for a better view. “Don’t worry. The landing gear will probably totally collapse on impact anyway.”
Artemis’s mouth twisted in what could have been an ironic smile or a grimace of terror.
“Thank goodness for that. I thought we were in real trouble.”
Holly struggled with the stick as though it were resisting arrest. “Trouble? Landing a crippled aircraft is just a normal Tuesday morning for us, Mud Boy.”
Artemis looked at Holly then and felt a tremendous affection for her. He wished that he could loop the past ten seconds and study it at a less stressful time so he could properly appreciate how fierce and beautiful his best friend was. Holly never seemed so vital as when she was balancing on the fine line between life and death. Her eyes shone and her wit was sharp. Whereas others would fall apart or withdraw, Holly attacked the situation with a vigor that made her glow.
She is truly magical, thought Artemis. Perhaps her qualities are more obvious to me now that I have decided to sacrifice myself.
Then he realized something. I cannot reveal my plans to her. If Holly knew, she would try to stop me.
It pained Artemis that his last conversation with Holly would be by necessity peppered with misdirection and lies.
For the greater good.
Artemis Fowl, the human who had once lied as a matter of course, was surprised to find that in this instance, lying for the greater good did not make him feel any better about it.
“Here we go,” shouted Holly over the howl caused by the wind shear. “Shankle your bootbraces.”
Artemis tightened his seat belt. “Bootbraces shankled,” he called.
And not a millisecond too soon. The ground seemed to rush up to meet them, filling their view, blocking out the sky. Then, with a tremendous clatter, they were down, being showered by blurred stones. Long-stemmed flowers fell in funereal bouquets across the windshield, and the propeller buckled with an earsplitting shriek. Artemis felt his seat belt bite into both shoulders, arresting his leftward lean, which was just as well, because his head would have naturally come to rest exactly where a prop blade had thunked through the seat rest.
The small craft lost its wings sliding down the avenue, then flipped onto its roof, coming to a shuddering halt at the front steps.
“That could have been a lot worse,” said Holly, smacking her seat-belt buckle.
Indeed, thought Artemis, watching blood on the tip of his nose seem to drip upward.
Suddenly something that looked like a giant, angry peach slid down what was left of the windshield, buckling the anti-shatter glass and coming to a wobbly stop on the bottom step.
Mulch made it, thought Artemis. Good.
Mulch literally crawled up the manor steps, desperate for food to replace his jettisoned fat. “Can you believe that supermodels do that every month?” he moaned.
Artemis beeped the door and the dwarf disappeared inside, clattering down the main hallway toward the kitchen.
It was left to Artemis and Holly to lug Butler the length of the steps, which in the bodyguard’s limp, unconscious state was about as easy as lugging a sack of anvils.
They had made it to the third step when an uncommonly bold robin redbreast fluttered down and landed on Butler’s face, hooking its tiny claws over the bridge of the bodyguard’s nose. This in itself would have been surprising enough, but the note clamped in the bird’s beak made the little creature altogether more sinister.
Artemis dropped Butler’s arm. “That was quick,” he said. “Opal’s ego
doesn’t waste any time.”
Holly tugged the tiny scroll free. “You were expecting this?”
“Yes. Don’t even bother reading it, Holly. Opal’s words are not worth the paper they are written on, and I can tell that’s inexpensive paper.”
Of course Holly did read the note, and her cheeks glowed brighter with every word.
“Opal requests the pleasure of our company for the great cleansing. If we turn ourselves in, just me and you, then she will let your brothers live. Also she promises to spare Foaly, when she is declared empress.”
Holly balled the note and flicked it at the robin redbreast’s head. “You go and tell Opal no deal.”
The bird whistled aggressively and flapped its wings in a way that seemed insulting.
“You want to take me on, Berserker?” said Holly to the tiny bird. “Because I may have just crawled out of a plane crash, but I can still kick your tail feathers.”
The redbreast took off, its birdsong trailing behind it like a derisive chuckle as it flew back to its mistress.
“You’d better fly, Tweety!” Holly shouted after it, allowing herself an unprofessional outburst, and it did make her feel marginally better. Once the bird had disappeared over the tree line, she returned to her task.
“We must hurry,” she said, hooking her arm under Butler’s. “This is a trick. Opal will have more Berserkers on our tails. We’re probably being watched by…worms…right now.”
Artemis did not agree. “No. The gate is paramount now. She will not risk more soldiers hunting for us. But we must hurry all the same. Dawn is only a couple of hours away, and we have time for only one more assault.”
“So we’re ignoring that note, right?”
“Of course. Opal is toying with our emotions for her own gratification. Nothing more. She wishes to place herself in a position of power, emotionally.”
The steps were coated with seasonal ice crystals, which twinkled like movie frost in the moonlight. Eventually Artemis and Holly succeeded in rolling Butler over the threshold and onto a rug, which they dragged underneath the stairs, making the hefty bodyguard as comfortable as possible with some of the throw pillows that Angeline Fowl liked to strew casually on every chair.