by Jim Eldridge
The Masked Avenger had left Meenu to look after Jack and now she joined Milo. She gestured at Harry and Percy.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Something sneaky, I bet,’ said Milo.
‘Come on!’ shouted Percy. ‘Get in the cart!’
‘Get in the cart, Big Rock,’ said Milo.
‘But Robin …!’ moaned the troll.
‘In the cart,’ said Milo firmly.
Big Rock clambered onto the back of the cart, looked at Robin as the old horse was tied to a post, and burst into tears.
‘You’re not really going to leave Robin with them, are you?’ asked the Avenger.
‘Ssssh,’ said Milo. ‘I’ll explain later.’
The Avenger looked at Meenu, who was still kneeling beside the fallen Jack, gently dabbing at his bruises with a damp cloth.
‘We’d better give Meenu a hand to carry Jack,’ she said.
They walked over, just as Meenu was helping Jack get to his feet.
‘How is he?’ asked Milo.
‘Bruised but okay,’ said Meenu. ‘You were very brave, Jack.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Jack. ‘But it hurt.’ He gestured for the others to move in closer, then he said, ‘I heard what Harry whispered to Percy.’
‘How?’ asked Meenu, puzzled. ‘I was here with you and I didn’t hear what he said.’
‘I guess it’s because I’m part troll,’ said Jack. ‘Trolls have good hearing.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Milo.
‘He said, “We’ve got to make that giant troll appear. When you’re on the road, go to kill them. That might do it.” Then Percy said, “What if the giant troll doesn’t come?” and Harry said, “Kill them anyway.”’
‘They’re going to kill us after all!’ said Meenu, shocked.
‘I expected something like that,’ said Milo grimly. ‘Hard Harry always did cheat and lie.’
‘And you’ve got a plan to save us?’ asked the Avenger eagerly.
‘Us? Er … no,’ admitted Milo.
The Avenger stared at him.
‘You haven’t?’ she said, aghast. ‘You came all the way here, knowing the evil sort of person Hard Harry is, putting us all in danger, and you didn’t have a plan?’
‘You were already in danger!’ protested Milo. ‘We came here to save you!’
‘Come on, you lot!’ shouted Percy impatiently. ‘Stop jabbering and get in the cart!’
‘Okay,’ whispered Milo. ‘I’ve got a plan. I’m calling it Plan A. Once we’re on our way, we push the driver off the seat, grab the reins and head for the village as fast as we can.’
‘You call that a plan?’ scoffed the Avenger.
‘You got a better idea?’ demanded Milo.
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’
Milo, the Masked Avenger, Meenu and Jack got to the cart and climbed in. Jack sat next to Big Rock, who was still crying quietly.
‘Don’t cry, Big Rock,’ whispered Jack. ‘Robin’s okay.’
‘No,’ sobbed Big Rock. ‘He turn into burgers.’
As the cart jolted forward and began to move off, accompanied by Hard Harry’s gang, Big Rock looked to where the old horse was tethered and sobbed again.
‘That’s not Robin,’ whispered Jack. ‘That’s Blaze.’
Bewildered, the big troll turned to Jack and said, ‘What?’
‘Remember that trick we used before, when I was in prison and Blaze took the shape of Robin so I could get out?’
Big Rock nodded.
‘Well, we used that trick again. We left Robin inside the caravan. Blaze did the switch when your back was turned. Once we’re safe, Blaze will turn back into his phoenix shape and fly away to safety.’
‘Why you no tell me?’ demanded Big Rock angrily.
‘Ssssh!’ urged Jack, shooting a look at Percy, who was driving the cart. But Percy seemed to be busy keeping the cart on the track, and didn’t appear to be listening to what they were saying.
‘Milo was worried that you might say something and give the game away,’ whispered Jack.
The big troll glared at Milo.
Milo frowned. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Jack tell me about Robin –’ said Big Rock angrily, before Jack slapped a hand over the big troll’s mouth to silence him.
‘Ssssh!’ he said urgently.
‘It not fair,’ glowered Big Rock. ‘I not thick! I got brain!’
‘Yes, but …’ Jack faltered. ‘Sometimes you say things without thinking. And we needed this to be a secret.’
‘Then why tell me now?’ demanded Big Rock, still annoyed.
‘Because we’ve found out they’re going to kill us all.’
‘They kill us?’ shouted Big Rock in a loud voice, shocked.
The cart pulled to a halt and Percy turned round to look at them in alarm.
‘They know!’ he yelled to the rest of his men.
‘Well, I think that’s another secret out of the bag,’ groaned Milo.
‘Kill them!’ shouted Percy to the other gang members.
CHAPTER 10
‘Okay. Plan A!’ shouted Milo. ‘Big Rock, throw the driver off!’
Before Percy realised what was happening, Big Rock had grabbed him and hurled him off the cart into a thorny bush.
‘Ow!’ yelled Percy.
The rest of Hard Harry’s gang rushed at the cart and began to climb on, waving their swords and spears. Big Rock, Jack, the Avenger and Meenu did their best to keep the invaders at bay, while Milo leapt into the driver’s seat, snatched up the reins and shouted ‘Go!’ to the horse.
‘No,’ said the horse. ‘If I do, Hard Harry will turn me into burgers!’
‘It’s another talking horse!’ said Meenu in surprise.
‘We won’t let Harry get you. Not if we get away!’ pleaded Milo. ‘I promise you, you’ll have your freedom!’
‘I don’t know,’ said the horse doubtfully.
‘Hurry up and get this cart moving!’ shouted the Avenger. ‘We’re being outnumbered!’
More and more of Hard Harry’s gang were scrambling to climb on board. As fast as Big Rock and the others let fly with punches and knocked them off, more took their places.
‘Please!’ Milo begged the horse.
The horse’s ears pricked up.
‘The magic word!’ it said. ‘No one’s said that to me in years! Right, hold on!’
And with that, the horse leapt forward, jerking the cart so that Harry’s gang members fell off onto the ground. Milo, Big Rock, Jack, the Avenger and Meenu nearly toppled out as well, but they just managed to regain their balance and hold on.
‘Go!’ yelled Milo at the horse. ‘Please, please, please, go!’
Hard Harry stood beside the old horse he thought was Robin and smiled as he heard the shouting coming from a short distance away.
‘You know what that is?’ he asked. ‘That is the sound of my people killing your friends.’
And he laughed.
‘You mean you broke your word?’ said Blaze/Robin. ‘You broke the promise you made?’
‘Of course!’ laughed Hard Harry. ‘Milo should have known I would! He knows what I’m like!’
‘A cheat and a liar,’ said the old horse.
‘Exactly,’ nodded Harry. ‘And a hungry cheat and a liar who likes horse meat!’
‘Boss! Boss!’
Harry turned and saw Percy running towards him, waving his arms in panic.
‘Boss! They did it again! They got away!’
Immediately, Harry was alert. ‘You mean that giant troll appeared again and saved them?’
‘No. They attacked us.’ And he gave an unhappy cry as he added, ‘They threw me into a thorny bush. It hurt.’
Harry scowled. He pulled out a sword and glared at Robin.
‘Okay. I was going to do this later, but doing it now will make me happy!’
He raised the sword and swun
g it at Robin but, before the blade could make contact with the old horse, there was a flash of light, and the blade just went through empty air.
‘Yes, that’s something we didn’t tell you about,’ said a voice above Harry.
Harry looked up in astonishment and saw the phoenix hovering over him.
‘Bye,’ said Blaze, and flew off.
‘Aaaarghhhh!’ roared Harry. He turned to Percy. ‘Bring me the fastest horses we’ve got left, and as many men as you can! We’re going after them! I can’t trust you idiots to do anything right! I shall do this myself!’
CHAPTER 11
The cart leapt and jumped as it rattled along the valley track. Jack and the others clung to the sides to stop themselves being thrown out. Suddenly the Masked Avenger gave a cry of alarm.
‘Look!’ she shouted.
They looked. Behind them were riders, galloping fast. At the front was Hard Harry himself.
‘They’re gaining on us!’ called Meenu to Milo. ‘Can’t we go any faster?’
‘I’m going as fast as I can!’ panted the horse. ‘It’s all right for them, they’re just horses with one man on their backs. I’m pulling a cart with a lot of heavy people on it.’
‘Me get off!’ said Big Rock.
And he leapt off the back of the cart, fell over, then got up and stood ready, fists bunched.
‘We can’t leave Big Rock!’ said Jack, and he, too, jumped off the cart and joined the troll. The Avenger and Meenu had also leapt off the moving cart and gone to stand with Big Rock.
Milo pulled the horse and cart to a halt. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘I’m calling this Plan B!’ shouted back the Masked Avenger.
‘It’s what friends do,’ said Jack. ‘One for all and all for one!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Milo with a sigh, and he got down off the driver’s seat and joined his friends.
‘Well, I’m not staying!’ said the horse. ‘If Hard Harry catches me, I’ll be in trouble. And a pie!’
With that the horse galloped off, taking the cart with it.
By now, Hard Harry and his gang were almost upon them. Then came the sound of wings beating, and a shadow fell over them. Jack looked up and his face broke into a grin as he saw a large green dragon swooping down.
‘Blaze!’ he cried.
THUNK!
Jack’s smile changed to a look of horror as he saw a spear hit the dragon and thud into its body. The dragon tumbled out of the sky and crashed to the ground.
‘No!’ yelled Jack in anguish.
‘Get them!’ roared Hard Harry.
Jack looked towards the voice. Hard Harry and Percy and the rest of his gang were almost on them now, swords and spears waving. An overwhelming feeling of anger and outrage filled Jack. They had been cheated and lied to, abused and beaten, and now their best friend, Blaze the phoenix, had been brutally and savagely killed!
Jack’s eyes filled with tears. No, not tears. These were harder than tears. It was as if there was a sort of thick glass over his eyes, a film of silica …
‘GRAAARRRRR!!!!!!’
Milo heard the roar and looked round, and his face split into a grin as he saw the massive figure of Thud towering over him.
‘Yesss!’ enthused Milo.
Hard Harry had pulled his horse to a halt and was staring up at the huge creature with a look of shock and horror on his face.
‘That’s the one, boss!’ said Percy in alarm.
As Thud advanced on the gang, Hard Harry gulped and wheeled his horse round.
‘Run!’ he yelled.
CRUNCH!
Before he could move, one of Thud’s enormous hands had swooped down and grabbed hold of Hard Harry, and flung him head first to the ground with a force that shook the earth.
Hard Harry let out a groan and tried to push himself up, but fell over, unconscious.
‘GRAAARRRRR!!!!’ roared Thud again.
‘Run!’ yelled Percy in a panic.
Hard Harry’s gang turned their horses round and galloped back towards their camp as fast as they could.
‘Wow!’ said Meenu.
‘No chance to bash ’em!’ snorted Big Rock, watching the retreating gang.
‘I’m not complaining,’ said Milo in relieved tones.
The sound of galloping hooves and rumbling wheels approaching fast made them turn. The horse and cart were returning, with Robin running along behind.
‘You didn’t think I was going to stay out of this!’ said Robin.
‘He persuaded me that coming back was the right thing to do,’ said the other horse. ‘He said that if we were united we could beat the crooks!’
‘Yes!’ said Robin. ‘Let me at them! Where are they?’
‘They’ve gone,’ said the Masked Avenger.
‘Gone?’
‘Retreated. Run away.’
‘You mean I galloped all the way back here for nothing?’ burst out the old horse angrily. ‘What made them go?’
‘Thud,’ said Milo.
Robin looked at Jack, who had turned back into himself again and stood looking dazed.
Jack looked at the crumpled body of the dragon, with the spear still sticking out of it.
‘They killed Blaze!’ he said, and now he began to cry, but real tears this time, not the hard, angry tears that had come when he’d turned into Thud.
‘No, you idiot!’ shouted the Masked Avenger.
She ran to the dragon, took hold of the spear and tugged at it, pulling it out of the dragon’s body.
As soon as the spear was removed, the dragon disappeared in a dazzling ball of flame. As the flame died down they saw Blaze getting to his feet and flexing his wings.
‘Now that was odd!’ said Blaze. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been killed before. Although I may have been, I suppose. It’s not something you remember.’
‘He’s a phoenix!’ said the Avenger impatiently. ‘They regenerate, as well as change shape. When they die they burst into flames and come back to life, all new and strong again!’
‘I knew that,’ said Big Rock.
‘Yes, all right. I suppose I did, too,’ said Jack. ‘It was just … seeing that spear hit the dragon.’
Meenu pointed at the unconscious Hard Harry.
‘I think it would be a good time to put an end to Hard Harry and his horse-stealing racket,’ she said. ‘And I think I know how to do it.’
CHAPTER 12
Hard Harry sat in the Village Marshal’s office and looked, in desperate appeal, across the desk to the puzzled Marshal Tom Tum.
‘Now let me get this straight,’ said Tum. ‘You are confessing to stealing horses and you want me to make sure you go to trial and are locked up.’
‘Yes.’ Hard Harry nodded energetically.
‘Why?’ asked Tum.
Hard Harry cast a fearful look out of the window.
‘Because there’s this giant troll out there, and they say that if I don’t confess, he’ll come and get me.’ He shuddered. ‘I’ve never seen anything so terrifying in my life!’
‘But what about the rest of your gang?’ queried Marshal Tum.
‘They’ve gone,’ said Hard Harry. ‘They’ve quit a life of crime. That giant troll has scared us all into going straight.’ He shuddered at the memory of Thud. ‘And as for the horses, they’ve all gone too. They’ve been turned loose.’
Tum shook his head.
‘This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard,’ he said. He pulled a form towards him and began to fill it in. In the space where it said Name of accused, he wrote: Hard Harry. Confessed.
The caravan with WWT on the side trundled along the road out of Bun. Milo and Jack were on the driving seat, with Ava and Meenu sitting on the roof. Big Rock ran round and round the moving caravan, practising wrestling kicks as he did so, and Blaze flew overhead in lazy loops.
‘This caravan is so heavy!’ complained Robin.
‘We could all get off if you like,’ offered Jack. ‘That�
��d make it lighter.’
‘If you did that, who’d be driving it?’ demanded Robin.
‘You don’t need a driver,’ said Ava. ‘You know where you’re going.’
‘What he means is, he wouldn’t have anything to moan about,’ grinned Meenu.
‘What happened to the other horse?’ asked Jack. ‘The one who talked?’
‘We had a chat and he decided to go off on his own,’ said Robin.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Milo. ‘He would have been company for you.’
‘I’ve got all the company I need right here,’ said Robin. There was a pause, and then he added: ‘Anyway, I like being special – which means there’s only room for one talking horse in this family.’
And with that the old horse broke into song as he trudged along:
‘Wrestling Trolls,
Tum-di-dum!’
And Jack, Milo, Ava, Meenu, Big Rock and Blaze all joined in:
‘Wrestling Trolls,
Tum-di-dum!’
FAMILY HEIRLOOM
CHAPTER 1
Jack sat on the steps of the Waldo’s Wrestling Trolls caravan and sewed yet another patch over a hole in Big Rock’s wrestling costume.
‘You need a new outfit, Big Rock,’ he said. ‘This isn’t even a costume any more, it’s just a load of patches sewn together.’
‘That my lucky costume,’ said Big Rock.
‘But say it falls apart when you’re in the middle of a bout?’ argued Jack. ‘You’d have nothing on. Everyone would see you naked.’
‘I put pants on, in case,’ said Big Rock.
Sometimes, thought Jack, there was no use in arguing with Big Rock. He was as stubborn as … well, as a rock.
Right now he was standing rigid and letting Robin, the old horse, push against him to try to knock him over, as a way of improving his balance in the wrestling ring. From the look of fed-up-ness on Robin’s face, and the groaning and panting coming from him, the old horse wasn’t enjoying the exercise.
‘Push harder!’ said Big Rock.
‘I am pushing harder!’ snorted Robin, and he put his head down and pushed with all his weight against the troll. Big Rock remained exactly where he was.