by Alex Kosh
“And where are these Craftsmen now?” I immediately asked.
“One of them tried to escape, and we had to ...” – the troll hesitated – “... strangle him ...”
Did he mean me?
“The other one is in our headquarters now. He’s being interrogated ...”
“Where is this headquarters of yours?”
“On the next corridor,” the troll replied. “Don’t go getting the wrong idea, we don’t beat people during interrogation ...”
“Of course not,” agreed Alice, involuntarily raising a hand to her badly scratched lips. “And what about the Craftsman you strangled?”
“We had no choice but to do that. We don’t like violence,” the troll told us and suddenly confessed: “We want to go home. We’re tired and we’re hungry. There isn’t a scrap of meat anywhere in this tower of yours ...”
“Good thing they don’t eat people,” Alice remarked in a quiet voice.
The troll suddenly burst into laughter.
“You were just lucky that when the Tabernaclians hired a team for the attack, they came to our community,” he said. “We don’t eat people. But the community in the next village is quite happy to eat human flesh. If the Tabernaclians had hired trolls from the next tribe ... they wouldn’t have been sitting here starving like we are.”
Was I imagining it, or was the troll feeling a bit sad?
“And what does this Master of yours look like?” Chas asked impatiently.
“Like ... a man,” the troll replied. “You know, you all look the same to us.”
“So do you to us,” Alice shot back.
That was right – she was reading my mind.
“Well, how is he dressed at least? What colour are his clothes?” Kelnmiir asked.
“The same as theirs,” said the troll, pointing at Alice and Chas.
Aha! So the spy was one of the Academy’s pupil ... or ... someone dressed up as a pupil.
“Interesting,” Chas drawled. “How do you manage not to get us confused? What if I’m this Tabernaclian Master of yours? Do you recognise him from the colour of his hair, or what?”
“The colour of his hair wouldn’t be any good,” the troll retorted. “The Master always wore a hood.”
“Then how do you recognise him?” said Chas, repeating his question.
“In the first place, he knows a special password. And in the second place, he speaks our language. How many people do you think know the language of the trolls?”
So they had their own language? Well, would you believe it!
“You mean to say that if some man arrives who’s dressed in yellow livery, knows a special password and speaks your language ... then he’s your Master?”
The troll thought about it.
“We-ell ... yes,” he finally replied.
“Right!” the vampire exclaimed in delight. “And do you know the password?”
“I do,” said the troll. “But I’ll only give you it on one condition ...”
“I don’t understand,” said the vampire, moving the knife closer to the troll’s neck. “You think you can set conditions for us?”
“All right,” said the troll, deciding to put it differently. “Call it a request, not a condition.”
“That’s a bit better,” Kelnmiir chuckled. “Whoever said that trolls were stupid?”
The troll shrugged, almost unseating Kelnmiir, and glanced darkly at Alice out of the side of his eyes.
The troll’s request turned out to be quite simple. He wanted to go home and take the rest of the trolls who were still alive with him. And by the way, there were only twenty of the stoneheads left. Ten of them had been killed when they drew the entire fire power of the Craftsmen, one had been killed by Kelnmiir and two had been destroyed by the Vickers brothers. The rest of the troll casualties had been smeared across all the levels of the tower by the teleports that had started to malfunction. Now there was only one thing the remaining stone heads wanted – to go home as soon as possible. But there was no way they could do that. And, in addition, their contract didn’t allow them to abandon the Master voluntarily. So the troll offered us all the help he could give in exchange for our promise not to kill any more trolls unless it was absolutely necessary. And as well as that, we promised to do everything we could to make sure that after all this commotion the trolls would be sent back to their village. (What was that village like? I wondered. It would be interesting to visit it some time.)
Only the problem was, if we did manage to free the Academy, it was unlikely that we would decide anything. The Craftsmen would immediately take everything under their control and we would be thanked (though even that wasn’t certain) and sent somewhere far away, so that we wouldn’t get under anyone’s feet. But how could the troll know that? We weren’t going to tell him...
“So you’re betraying your own kind?” Kelnmiir asked.
“No, I’m saving my own kind,” the troll corrected the vampire.
“All right,” Chas agreed. “If I understand things correctly, Kelnmiir’s going to play the part of the Master?”
The vampire nodded.
“I mention it because ... you need to change your clothes,” Chas reminded him.
“Hmm, yes ...” Kelnmiir looked down at the troll. “Are you sure you won’t try anything stupid?”
“I promised to help,” the troll said calmly.
Kelnmiir thought, thought again, and decided to trust the troll after all. He jumped down off the troll’s shoulders, tossed the knife to Alice and went to get changed.
“I’m warning you,” Alice warned the troll, although the expression on her face was rather uncertain, to say the least.
The troll didn’t react at all to Alice’s warning. He was an incredibly calm creature. I was really impressed.
When Kelnmiir came back in yellow livery, with Chas dressed in black, we started discussing our plan further.
“Do I look the part?” the vampire asked the troll, pulling the hood up over his head.
“Yes,” the troll agreed. “But your voice should be a bit rougher.”
“Iss dea te ikhma?” Kelnmiir spat out.
The troll nodded.
“Now the voice is more like his, and the pronunciation sounds more Tabernaclian. It will do.”
“After that the two of them started rattling away rapidly in trollish. Rapidly and incomprehensibly. Although, even if they’d been talking more slowly, we still wouldn’t have known what all that gibberish meant.
“Right, guys,” the vampire finally said, turning to us. “This is the plan. I play the notorious Master, and you are my hypnotised attendants. We go to the room occupied by the trolls, as bold as brass, and I say I’m taking the prisoner with me. Then we move quickly to the teleports and transfer to the first floor. Clear?”
“That’s all clear,” Chas said with a nod. “But how do we imitate these ... attendants?”
Kelnmiir pondered.
“Well, don’t talk to each other, look straight ahead all the time. And most important of all – there mustn’t be a trace of any emotion in your faces.”
“Act like morons? We can do that,” Chas said delightedly.
“Don’t forget, you promised that my tribe wouldn’t get hurt,” the troll reminded us.
“Even if they attack us, not a single stone hair on their heads will be harmed,” Kelnmiir promised. “That’s it, let’s get moving.”
We walked out of the room. The troll went first, followed by Kelnmiir as the Master, with the three of us trudging along behind. And by the way, Alice had given me back my all-purpose battle broom, so now I carried a fearsome weapon in my hands.
The only troll sentry post was by the teleports, at the intersection of the corridors. Two trolls blocked our way.
“Dogron? Where have you been all this time?” one of them enquired lazily.
“Meeting the Master,” our troll replied curtly. “He’s come for the prisoner.”
Both of the troll guar
ds looked in surprise, first at the teleports and then at us.
“The Master used a secret teleport,” our troll explained right on cue.
“I see,” the two trolls chorused together in relief. “Pass on.”
Trolls really were rather stupid after all. It had never occurred to them to ask why our troll was so badly battered after meeting the Master. No way could I believe they hadn’t notice the troll’s missing fingers and all his cuts.
We turned into one of the corridors and walked on. Quite soon the troll stopped in front of one of the doors and knocked.
“Dlok dar?” he asked.
“Dar,” said someone inside.
The troll was the first to enter the room, and Kelnmiir stepped in after him.
“Wait here,” he said to us.
We obediently stopped outside the door. We couldn’t talk, or look around ... we had to stay in role, no matter what. But, on the other hand, who could see us?
As if in response to my question, the door opened and two trolls came out of the room. To judge from the completeness of their extremities, our troll was not one of them.
“Oh, just look at these hypnotised prisoners,” one of the trolls laughed. “Just standing there like blocks of wood.”
“And look, one of them’s even a Craftsman,” the second troll replied. “Our Master’s a smooth operator all right.”
“Yes, the first troll agreed. “And now he’ll hypnotise this other Craftsman. That’s great. Maybe there won’t anything left for us to do.”
Both trolls burst into laughter.
“By the way, if the Master takes this Craftsman, who’s going to check the teleports for us?”
“That’s right,” the second troll agreed. “We’ll have to ask him for one of these in exchange.”
Now that was bad. I just hoped Kelnmiir could find a reason for not leaving one of us. But then, he was the Master, wasn’t he? Why should have to make excuses to the stoneheads? What he said, went. So the trolls would have to get by without checking the teleports.
“What if he doesn’t leave one?” the first troll asked, and he seemed to have surprised himself by asking.
“Then I don’t know,” the second one admitted. “Let the elder deal with him ...”
“Yes, let the elder deal with him,” the first troll immediately agreed.
The trolls chatted beside us for a little longer and then stomped off in the direction of the teleports.
“Did you hear that?” Chas hissed. “If they ask him to leave one of us instead ...”
“Shshhh!” Alice hissed.
“I just ...”
“Shut up!”
Chas sulked, but he stopped speaking.
Less than two minutes later, the door of the room swung wide open. The first out was our troll, then came Kelnmiir with Shins, and another five trolls tumbled out after them. How did they all fit in there? As I recalled, the room wasn’t all that big ...
“It will all be over soon,” said Kelnmiir, thumping the biggest troll (clearly the leader) on the shoulder.
“Is it all right if we take one of these hypnotised prisoners instead of the Craftsman?” the troll asked, nodding in our direction.
Oh-oh. This was trouble.
“I can’t do that,” Kelnmiir said simply. “I need every man I can get.”
“So he needs men, but he doesn’t need trolls!” the elder roared.
“You misunderstood me ...”
“I understood you perfectly well. You may have hired us, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to die for you without a thought.”
I didn’t know about Alice and Chas, but I could hardly restrain myself – I wanted to do something, not just stand there like a block of wood ...
“Wait, Tillak, don’t be so hotheaded,” said our troll, intervening at last.
For which he immediately received a punch to his stone face.
“Don’t you go sticking your nose in!” the elder snarled.
“But there’s no need to use the teleports now,” our troll went on. “What do we want checkers for?”
“First this so-called Master herds us into a trap, and then he refuses to help,” the elder said angrily. “Are you on his side, Dogron?”
“This isn’t the most suitable time for arguing,” Dogron said in a conciliatory tone.
“And just when will there be a suitable time?” the elder asked. “I suspect we won’t live to see it. So many of us have already been lost, Dogron, have you forgotten?” The elder frowned. “Dogron ... maybe you’ve betrayed us?”
“Don’t be silly, Tillak,” said Dogron, throwing his arms up in the air. “You’ve known me since we were children ...”
“Trolls change,” the elder remarked philosophically and turned to Kelnmiir. “So when can we get out of here? You promised me this operation would only last a few hours and it would be perfectly safe. And almost twenty of my trolls have already been killed!”
“It will be over soon,” Kelnmiir replied. “All I need to do is go down to the first floor with this Craftsman.” He pointed at Shins. “After that we’ll send you back to your village.”
“I’ve heard that before,” the troll elder persisted. “First you said the job would be finished once we detained all the Craftsmen. Then it suddenly turned out that we needed to clear all the other floors too, then you made us lug the crates out of that Museum ...”
“Are you accusing me of lying?” Klenmir asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes!” the troll answered. “And we’re tired of being used! Either you send us to our village, or we release the Craftsmen!”
“Release them,” Kelnmiir said with a shrug. “But we’re going, we’ve got business to attend to.”
He pushed Shins ahead of him and waved for us to follow on.
We’d only taken a few steps when the troll recovered his wits.
“Stop them!” the elder shouted ... and then Dogron smashed him across the head. “You ...” Tillak muttered, and slowly sat down on the floor.
All this happened so quickly that the other trolls had no time to react. And a moment later we were rushing down the corridor ...
“I don’t understand: have the trolls just rebelled against their Tabernaclian employer?” Chas asked as we ran along.
“Yes, exactly,” agreed Dogron, who for some reason was running with us. “To be quite honest, I didn’t expect that from my fellow-tribesmen.”
“Then that’s great, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It might be great,” Kelnmiir growled. “But not just at the moment when they think I’m the Master.”
“Maybe we should stop and explain to them,” Chas began.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Alice snorted. “Do you think they’ll believe us? And even if they do, who knows what ideas they might get into those stone heads of theirs.”
On the question of stone heads, I was wondering why that troll had run and not stayed behind.
We reached the teleports travelling so fast that the two troll guards had no time to suspect that anything was wrong. And when the trolls who were chasing us appeared from round the corner, Dogron smashed one of the guards over the head, and Kelnmiir dealt with the second one.
Dogron looked at me inquiringly: “Can you tell which of the teleports is safe?”
“No,” I replied honestly, and pointed to Shins. “But he can.”