“What’s the matter?” asked Ben. “Where is it?”
Paradise swallowed. “It’s… It’s…”
BADOOM! With a sound not unlike an exploding Explodi-Toad, the whole bridge shuddered. Paradise raised one finger and pointed to the rotten wood above their heads.
“It’s right up there!”
“TROLL!”
Barely ten minutes before, the sound of several dozen toads being blown to smithereens had been the loudest sound Ben had ever heard. That record had just been broken by the voice of the thing up on the bridge. It boomed like a twenty-one cannon salute. Ben clamped his hands over his ears to block out the din, and almost punched himself to the ground with the metal gauntlet.
“GET YOU UP HERE, TROLL!” roared the voice. “YOU DONE LIT YOUR LAMPS, I KNOWS YOU’S HERE!”
“Goodness me,” whispered Wesley. “His grammar’s terrible.” The others stared at him. “S-sorry. Coping strategy,” he explained. “I’m hoping if I focus on the little things it’ll stop my head exploding in fear.”
“I’S WARNING YOU, TROLL! GET YOU UP HERE!”
Wesley shook his head. “Call that sentence construction?” he whimpered, then he jammed his fist in his mouth and began to rock back and forth in the mud.
“I think you’d better go up,” said Ben.
“I think you’re right,” agreed Scumbo, then he realised Ben was talking to him. “What, me?”
“Well of course you,” Paradise hissed.
“You gotta be joking,” Scumbo snorted. “Listen to him. He sounds mental. Anyway,” he said, pointing to Ben, “he’s the one what lit the lamps, not me.”
“But I’m not a troll, am I?” said Ben.
Scumbo hesitated. “What? Um. Yeah, well … neither am I.”
“Yes you are.”
“All right, yes I am, obviously,” Scumbo admitted. “But still. I can’t go up there. That’ll rip me to bits that will.”
“It won’t,” Ben said. “We’ll all be right behind you.”
“YOU DONE COMIN’ UP HERE, TROLL?”
Wesley let out a near-hysterical laugh. “Really shocking grammar. Bet he’s rubbish at sums as well.”
“As far as we know it hasn’t killed any trolls,” Paradise said. “Just kidnapped them.”
“Oh, well that makes me feel a lot better, that does,” snapped Scumbo.
“You go up and distract him, then we’ll hit him from behind,” Ben urged. “We’ll tie him up and make him tell us where the other trolls are.”
“Or he’ll bash my head in as soon as it pops up, then wear me like a scarf for the rest of his life.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Ben said. “I promise.”
“I’S GOING TO COUNT TO FIVE, TROLL!”
“Oho,” giggled Wesley. “This should be interesting.”
“ONE!”
Scumbo looked down at the footprint in the mud. The massive footprint in the mud.
“TWO!”
The troll sighed. “All right, all right,” he mumbled, shoving his way past Paradise. He looked back at Ben. “Right behind me?”
“Right behind you,” Ben assured him.
“UM … FOUR!”
Wesley squeaked with laughter. “Four he says!”
Scumbo ducked out from beneath the bridge. Ben and the others held their breath as they heard the troll clamber up the wooden planks. “I am a troll, fol-de-rol, and I’ll eat you up for…” he began, then his voice tailed off into silence.
There was a creaking as Scumbo climbed back down. He faced them in the shadows, his eyes bulging with terror.
“I think we might have a problem,” he said, then a hulking hand caught him by the head and yanked him out of sight.
“Now!” cried Ben, drawing his sword. He dashed out of the narrow space, with Paradise right at his heels.
“What, we’re not really going to help are we?” Wesley yelped. “I thought that was all a trick so we could run away!”
The planks above him rattled sharply as if the whole bridge was about to come crashing down. Wesley squealed and scrabbled up the bank after Ben, who was already vaulting over the one remaining handrail, making straight for…
Straight for…
Ben stopped running.
He looked up.
And up.
And up, until he finally found the face of the thing on the bridge. It was an ogre. Ben had never seen an ogre before, and he wasn’t sure exactly how he knew that this was one. Everything about it just screamed OGRE though, from its bald head and pig-like snout, to its scarred muscles that bulged from armour made of polished bone.
And yet it wasn’t just an ogre, it was something more. Or something less. One of its legs was a twisted tangle of brass and steel. Its bottom jaw was a grimace of polished metal, hinged on either side by two rusted cogs, and there was a round lens, like the end of a telescope, where one of the monster’s eyes should have been.
Scumbo was dangling by a leg from one of the ogre’s hands. He shot Ben a withering look as he rushed on to the bridge. “We’ll jump him from behind, you said. I won’t let anything happen to you, you said!”
Paradise and Wesley hung back, both frozen with fear. Ben felt his throat go dry as he slowly raised his wooden sword until it was pointing at the troll’s head. “Let him go,” he said. “This is your only warning.”
“Oh, well that’s got him quaking in his boots, that has,” spat Scumbo. “An’ here was me getting worried.”
“LITTLE BUG FUNNY,” boomed the ogre. There was a hiss and a cloud of steam as it raised its robotic leg and snapped it down towards Ben. Ben stumbled back as the planks at his feet exploded in a cloud of splinters and dust. The ogre’s leg carried on right through the hole, throwing the brute off balance.
Ben saw his chance. With a roar he swung with his sword at the monster’s real knee. There was a loud crack and Ben let out a cry of triumph. His excitement quickly faded when he realised the cracking sound had come from his sword, and not the ogre’s leg. He looked down at the broken handle in his hand.
“Oh come on,” he groaned. “Not again!”
The mechanical foot tore back up through the floor, and the whole bridge lurched violently to one side. Ben staggered, flailing frantically as he stumbled towards the waiting water. He grabbed for the first thing he could and his fingers found a leather strap that trailed from the ogre’s chest armour. Ben’s arm jerked tight and he heard the ogre growl in irritation.
“SQUASH LITTLE BUG,” the ogre roared. A hand hit Ben with the force of a horse’s kick. Fingers as long as Ben’s legs wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides and crushing any hope of escape. He squirmed in the monster’s grip, and saw himself reflected in its telescope-lens of an eye.
“So,” said Scumbo, doing his best to smile. “You going to tie him up now or…?”
A tingling snaked along Ben’s fingers. The metal of the gauntlet vibrated in his hand, but the ogre’s fingers were like bands of steel, and no matter how he twisted and turned, he couldn’t get his arm free.
Ben looked up as the ogre began to raise him higher. He was several metres off the ground now, close enough to the ogre’s head to see the bristly hair in his piggy nostrils and the dark pupil of his one real eye.
The monster’s breath swirled around him in clouds of stink and he realised its mouth was opening, the rusted cogs creaking as the bottom jaw swung wide.
“It’s going to eat him!” Paradise realised. She shoved Wesley forwards. “Do something!”
“L-like what?”
Ben’s head was within chomping distance of the ogre’s mouth now. The monster’s dark red tongue darted hungrily across its lips.
“Anything! But preferably not custard!”
Wesley gave a grim nod. He stepped nervously in front of the ogre. “Um, excuse me,” he squeaked. “Down here.”
“Now you’re for it,” said Scumbo. “This one’s a wizard. He’s going to stitch you right up
, mate. Just you wait and see!”
The ogre paused with his mouth still open. His one good eye swivelled down until it found Wesley. “MORE BUGS,” he boomed.
“Aha, well does a bug have one of these?” Wesley said. He shoved a hand up inside his sleeve and immediately whipped out a small bunch of daffodils. “No, wait, not that,” he muttered, blushing slightly. He shoved the flowers back up his sleeve and fished around again. “One of these,” he said, and this time he yanked out a slightly startled-looking red squirrel.
Paradise shook her head. “We’re all doomed.”
For a long time, Wesley just stared at the squirrel, and the squirrel stared back. Eventually, Wesley quietly cleared his throat and looked back up to the ogre. “Let’s just pretend this is a wand,” he said weakly.
“Out of the way,” said Paradise. She barged Wesley aside and grabbed the squirrel. Before the ogre knew what was happening she shoved the animal down the back of his boot. Almost immediately, the monster began to squirm and shake.
“TICKLES!” he roared. “MAKE TICKLE STOP!”
Releasing his grip on Ben, the ogre shoved a finger down inside his boot. Ben fell, down past the ogre’s waist, down past Paradise, then down through the hole in the bridge. He hit the shallow water with more clatter than splash, and groaned as all the air was knocked from his lungs.
The ogre let out a sharp hiss and pulled his finger free. The squirrel hung off the end of it by its teeth. The ogre tried squashing it between finger and thumb, but the squirrel released its grip and dropped to safety. It bounded towards Wesley, scampered up his robe, then shot back up the sleeve once more.
“Ben’s hurt,” said Paradise. “I’ll help him. You keep this thing busy.”
She raced down the bridge and vanished beneath it, leaving Wesley to face the ogre alone. It towered over him, four whole metres of muscle and machine.
“R-remember your training,” Wesley whispered to himself. He raised his hands. His fingers began to dance in the air. “N-now then, Mr Ogre-thing,” Wesley croaked, “you’ve got no one to blame for this but yourself.”
And with that, Wesley made magic.
Sparks spun like tiny fireworks from the ends of Wesley’s fingertips. The ogre watched them, mesmerised, as Wesley began to chant. “Hokum carsiccus … er … jimnus … or something.”
“This ain’t really filling me with confidence,” said Scumbo, but the ogre was transfixed, both glass and real eye focused on Wesley’s sparkly fingers.
Wesley raised his hands higher as he brought the spell to a shaky conclusion. “Millinarus … or millinarum, maybe? Poppakus ashtoomb!”
There was a bright flash and a bang and a puff of wispy white smoke. The sparks vanished and their hold over the ogre was broken. It blinked, as if awakening from a deep sleep.
“WHERE LIGHTS GO?”
Wesley stepped back. He had been hoping to turn the ogre into a duck. He had been trying to turn the ogre into a duck. And yet…
“I … I don’t understand,” he whimpered. “It’s still the same. Nothing happened!”
“Here,” said Scumbo. “Where’d this hat come from?”
The troll was now wearing what looked like a jester’s cap, complete with bells swinging from the three pointed corners. It was a little on the large side, and had slipped down so it half-covered his yellow eyes.
Wesley sighed. First custard, and now a jingly hat. He really was the worst wizard ever. “No idea,” he lied. “Nothing to do with me.”
The ogre’s robotic leg hissed and clanked as it took a step in Wesley’s direction. Wesley raised his hands again, but they were shaking too much for him to try any more magic. Instead, he held them up either side of his head in a gesture of surrender, and hoped the ogre might go easy on him.
“Step aside, Wes.”
Ben marched back on to the bridge. His clothes were wet and blood trickled from a scrape that ran all the way down one of his bare legs. He gazed up at the ogre and flexed his fingers inside the gauntlet. That tickle of energy tingled along his arm, and there was that feeling again, like there was nothing he could not do.
“Put down the troll, and tell us what you’ve done with the others,” Ben said. “And I promise not to hurt you.”
The ogre cocked its head quizzically to one side, then it hurled its head back and let out a deep, rumbling laugh that rolled all the way to Mount Nochance before bouncing back again. Ben didn’t flinch. He just kept staring up at the monster, his fingers flexing. In, out, in, out.
“So,” he asked, when the ogre’s laughter had died away. “What’s your answer?”
“ANSWER IS NO, BUG!” the monster replied, and he brought his free hand smashing down.
Ben skipped back, then as the ogre’s fist smashed through the wood of the bridge he shot forwards, using the brute’s bulging muscles like steps. The power of the glove surged through not just his arm, but through the rest of him, too. It was the most magical item his Uncle Tavish had ever encountered, and Ben could feel that magic flowing through him now, every last drop of it.
He bounded up the ogre’s bicep and swung with the gauntlet hand. There was a spark of metal on metal as his fist clanged against the ogre’s mechanical jaw. The monster’s head snapped sharply back. Before its face could even register surprise Ben hit it again, across the leathery skin of its cheek this time. The blow twisted the ogre around, throwing Ben off balance. He tumbled backwards, but was already preparing himself for another attack on—
WHUMPF!
The ogre had spun in a complete circle. It swatted Ben out of the air, sending him skidding across the slippery wood of the bridge. Before he could clamber back to his feet the monster’s finger and thumb clamped around the gauntlet. With the slightest of tugs it was pulled free, and all the energy Ben had felt buzzing through him fizzled away into nothing.
“Give that back!” Ben cried. “That’s mine.”
The ogre held the glove up to the lens in his eye socket. The outer ring of the lens spun as he brought the gauntlet into focus.
“NOT YOURS NOW,” the ogre said. “MASTER’S NOW. THIS WHAT MASTER LOOKING FOR.”
“Master? Is that your name?” asked Paradise.
The ogre grunted. “I IS NOT MASTER. MASTER IS MASTER. I IS DADSBUTT!”
Despite everything, Scumbo let out a snort of laughter. It made his new hat jingle merrily. “Dadsbutt. That’s unfortunate.”
“SHUT UP, TROLL!”
“Shutting up now,” Scumbo squeaked.
“YOU IS COMING WITH ME!”
“No!” yelped Ben. “Let him go!”
Dadsbutt ignored him. Liquid burbled through the pipework in the ogre’s mechanical leg as he squatted down low. Then, with a sudden kick, he leapt into the air and bounded off into the darkness.
Several seconds later, somewhere far away, they heard the muffled thud of him landing. They heard him land once more after that, further away still. And then they heard nothing but the babbling of the stream below.
“Well,” breathed Wesley. “I think that went really rather well.”
“Well?” said Paradise. “You thought that went well?”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” said Wesley. “And now we have information.”
“What, that you’re rubbish at magic? We already knew that.”
“Dadsbutt,” said Wesley. He rummaged up his sleeve, then pulled out his copy of Who’s Who, What’s What and Why They Do Such Horrible Things to One Another by Lunt Bingwood. He sat on the edge of the bridge and opened the cover. “I’m pretty sure he’s in here somewhere.”
As Wesley flicked through the pages, Ben looked down at his now bare right hand. “My glove,” he said. “He took my glove.”
“If it’s any consolation, I doubt it’ll fit him,” Paradise said.
Wesley stood up sharply. “Aha! Yes, here he is. Dadsbutt the Ogre.”
He turned the book around so the others could see the hand-drawn illustration of the monster they’
d just fought. It had the same bone armour, the same mechanical leg.
The version in the book had two eyes, though, and nowhere near as many scars as the one in real life had.
“Looks a bit different,” Paradise pointed out.
“Yes, well Lunt Bingwood did write the book over ten years ago,” Wesley said. “Ogres don’t age well.”
“What does it say?” Ben asked.
Wesley angled the book so he could make out the scratchy writing in the torchlight, then began to read.
“As is traditional for ogres, the then baby Dadsbutt was named after the first thing he saw in the moments following his birth. Even by ogre standards, where names such as ‘Table’, ‘Somerocks’, and ‘Mumsfeet’ are not uncommon, ‘Dadsbutt’ was a particularly unfortunate title to be saddled with.”
“I thought it quite suited him, actually,” said Paradise.
“As a result,” continued Wesley, “Dadsbutt grew up to be an angry young ogreling, quickly learning to rely on his brute strength and explosive temper to put an end to any childhood name-calling before it could even begin.
“In the years since then, Dadsbutt has developed a reputation as a near-unstoppable warrior. Despite sustaining numerous injuries in battle – including the loss of his leg and a good few too many blows to the head – the ogre continues to make his uniquely violent range of services available to the highest bidder.”
“Master,” Ben realised. “That’s what he meant when he said it was Master’s glove now.”
“He must be bringing it to whoever’s paying him,” Paradise said.
“And I bet that’s where the trolls are, too,” said Ben.
Paradise gestured to the book. “Does he have any weaknesses?”
Wesley scanned the page. “Yes!” he said. “A shocking disregard for the welfare of others.”
“I think we figured that one out by ourselves.”
“Anything else?” asked Ben. “Anything we can use against him?”
The Swivel-Eyed Ogre-Thing Page 4