Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel (9 page)

Raf went cartwheeling over the edge of the stage.

To the massed crowd of trolls, it looked as if Grondo had dispatched him once and for all with the mighty blow, but both Raf and Grondo knew that Grondo had hit only air.

Out of sheer desperation, Raf had intentionally dived off the Fighting Platform, reaching for the edge with his hands while Grondo’s hammer swished above him, missing him by inches—so that now Raf clung by his fingertips to the Fighting Platform’s rain-spattered edge, his feet dangling high above the deadly drop.

But Grondo knew it wasn’t over.

The big champion stomped forward to see where his opponent had gone, but as he did so, Raf swung himself
underneath
the platform, gripping his axe handle in his teeth while clutching the network of rafters under the platform with his hands, disappearing completely from every troll’s sight!

After a couple of swings, Raf stopped suddenly. He saw something wedged between two of the support beams. Something that must have been left here by …

He
had
interpreted Ko correctly.

Raf swung forward with renewed energy.

*

Up on the Winter Throne Hall, the crowd of trolls grunted and murmured in astonishment. None of them had ever seen this happen before.

Grondo dropped to all fours and peered out over the edge of the platform, when abruptly, Raf’s head appeared at the opposite edge behind him.

“Over there!” the trolls called.

Grondo spun and moving with frightening speed, bounded over to where Raf was trying to climb back up onto the stage, grabbing his axe from between his teeth with his free hand—

—but Grondo was on him too quickly, and he seized the axe from Raf’s hand, wrenching it away—

—
only to reveal a knife still in Raf’s hand
, the flint knife he kept concealed in the axe’s handle, and with a quick but firm thrust, Raf plunged the knife deep into the soft flesh on the underside of Grondo’s chin.

Grondo froze, his eyes wide—the knife had gone right up into his brain.

There was a flash of lightning.

The assembled trolls fell silent. Even the jesters stood motionless in astonishment.

The drumming of the rain was the only sound.

Then Grondo fell.

His rigid body toppled forward, falling clear over Raf, and he dropped off the Fighting Platform, sailing down, down, down through the air above the eastern side of the mountain before he smashed against the rocks far below, his body spraying blood in every direction. But Grondo had been dead long before he struck the rocks.

The crowd of trolls remained silent, thunderstruck.

This was unheard of.

But what happened next was unthinkable.

*

Reaching underneath the platform, Raf brought up the object he had spied wedged between the support beams earlier.

Ko’s crossbow.

Tied to it was Ko’s beautiful gold-colored rope.

Before the trolls even knew what he was doing, Raf raised the crossbow and fired it—not at any of them—but upward, at one of the big horns extending out from the battlement crowning the summit of the mountain.

Given the Fighting Platform’s slight protuberance from the Winter Throne Hall, he had a clear shot.

This
was Ko’s plan: to complete his mission, Raf had needed to get to the Fighting Platform, where he would find the crossbow—planted there by Düm—and use it to get up to the Supreme Watchtower and get the Elixir.

After that, somehow, he had to get back down.

An arrow shot out of the crossbow with terrific force, soaring up through the rain-streaked air, trailing the rope behind it like a wobbling tail, before it looped over the horn at the north-eastern corner of the battlement and held.

Then Raf did the most outrageous thing of all.

He slung the crossbow over his shoulder, gripped the gold-threaded rope, and, pelted by the rain, took a fast-running leap out to the north of the Fighting Platform and …

… swung …

… in a long swooping arc out, around and behind the king’s winter throne, high above the rear flank of Troll Mountain.

His daring swing ended in the space behind the king’s podium, far from any of the trolls massed near the Fighting Platform.

And before any of them had even started to move from their places near the Fighting Platform, Raf was climbing, nimbly and quickly, hand over hand, up the now-vertical rope, heading for the summit of Troll Mountain for the second time.

The race was on. Only now it was Raf versus the entire population of Troll Mountain.

Raf surmounted the battlement and scanned the area fearfully.

There were no guards up here—they had all gone downstairs, either for the feast or the fight.

Raf dashed inside a thick stone doorway and found the set of spiraling internal stairs that led up to the Supreme Watchtower. (He knew these stairs—he had been marched down them when he had been captured. The spiraling stone stairwell led both up to the watchtower and down to a narrower set of spiral stairs hidden within the north-western column of the Winter Throne Hall.)

As he pounded up the stairwell, Raf heard shouts from below: “He’s up in the watchtower!” “Cover the battlement!”

The trolls were coming.

Raf kept running determinedly upward, his face fixed.

Raf came to the ladder leading to the topmost section of the Supreme Watchtower, clambered up it and burst into Vilnar’s laboratory, warm and candlelit, with its vast collection of jars, barrels and foodstuffs.

He saw Vilnar, rising sleepily from a straw mat on the floor.

“You? Again?”

“Vilnar! Come with me now if you want to escape your confinement!”

“Escape—?”

“Now or not at all!”

The little troll grabbed a small sack of food. “Now it is.”

“I also need these.” Raf moved to the side workbench and grabbed the three small glass bottles with the amber Elixir in them. He wrapped them in rags then put the rags in a pouch which he slung from his waist.

He had his prize.

Now he had to get out of here.

Vilnar came alongside him as they strode back toward the ladder. “Your determination is impressive, but determination alone isn’t enough. What is your plan now? They will cover the battlement and then storm this tower.”

“I’m actually following someone else’s plan,” Raf said. “I’m just trying to figure out what it is.”

*

The trolls were in a state of shock and bewilderment.

First the death of Grondo. Then the human’s incredible swing off the Fighting Platform and his nimble climb to the summit of Troll Mountain.

He had been caught trying to steal their Elixir … and now he was trying to steal it
again,
right in front of them all!

“Guards!” the king roared. “Get him or I shall dine on
you
tonight!”

The guard-trolls burst into action.

A dozen of them threw open the secret door to the stairwell inside the north-western column and started up its internal stairs.

Six of them left the stairwell to cover the battlement while the other six continued up the spiraling stairs toward the watchtower …

… only to hear an ominous booming noise coming from somewhere higher up the stone stairwell.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The guard-trolls swapped confused glances. What was this?

The great booms became louder and faster before suddenly seven large wooden barrels came tumbling out of the upper reaches of the stairwell at speed, rampaging down the steps, careening off the spiraling walls.

The first barrel slammed into the first troll with frightening force and swept him clean off his feet, hurling the big troll backward before bouncing further down the stairs, past the other shocked guards.

The guards managed to dodge and duck the rain of heavy barrels that followed, but not without injury. The tumbling rush of barrels crashed and careered past them, bouncing down the stairs into the darkness below.

The guards pressed on upward and entered the watchtower with their hammers raised …

… only to find it empty.

No thief. No wise old troll either.

The guards rushed down to the battlement to ask the six guards there if the fugitives had come down that way, only to be told that they had not.

The guard-trolls looked at each other, bamboozled.

*

In the meantime, some of the other trolls had headed for the door leading back down to the Great Hall, only to find it closed and barricaded from the other side.

The Troll King, on his winter throne, looked about in confusion and rage.

*

At the base of the stairwell hidden inside the north-western column of the Winter Throne Hall, the last of the seven barrels thrown from the watchtower bounced to a halt.

Its lid was kicked open from within, and out of it, wrapped in a padding of cloth and hay, popped Raf.

The barrel beside him wobbled and Raf heard a muffled shout from inside it. He ripped off its lid and pulled out Vilnar.

“This way,” Raf said grimly, pulling Vilnar by the hand.

As they dashed for the door, Raf pulled one of Ko’s bulbous flint-tipped arrows from a clip on the side of the crossbow and struck it against the stone wall, igniting it in a flash of flame.

*

Raf and Vilnar emerged from the north-western column at a run. The trolls near the king’s throne saw them immediately and took off in pursuit.

But, just before he raced out into the rainstorm, Raf dashed past the small green barrel set up beside the great column—and as he did so, without missing a step, he touched his flaming arrowhead to the barrel’s candlewick.

The wick ignited like a fuse …

Raf saw the trolls massing over by the stopped-up exit to the Winter Throne Hall—and figured that Düm had been there, too—and in that same moment, he also realized that Ko had even suggested his escape route.

“We can’t get down!” Vilnar yelled.

“Yes we can!”

Chased by the horde of trolls, Raf bolted for the
western
side of the Winter Throne Hall. No rail protected its edge. Mountains loomed beyond it, veiled in rain. Empty air fell away before him and Vilnar.

“Grab hold of me!” Raf yelled as they came to the edge.

Vilnar gripped his waist while Raf pulled out his crossbow and, at the very moment that the sizzling fuse on the firepowder barrel beside the north-western column burned down to its base and the little barrel exploded violently—
obliterating
the column, transforming it in a single shattering instant into a cloud of stone dust—Raf launched the two of them off the edge of the mountaintop!

*

As Raf and Vilnar leaped off the western edge of the Winter Throne Hall, a shocking scene occurred behind them.

The blast of the firepowder barrel had completely destroyed the north-western column, thus causing the entire roof of the Winter Throne Hall
and the whole summit of the mountain
above it
to come crashing down on the rear half of the open-air space.

With a momentous boom, the mountain’s summit slammed down onto the Winter Throne Hall and toppled clear
off
its rear northern edge, where it fell for two thousand feet before splashing into the dam-lake that curled around the rear of Troll Mountain, sending a stupendous gout of white water spraying into the air.

The rearward angle of the summit’s fall meant that none of the two hundred trolls trying to flee the open-air hall were killed or even hurt, but those few guards who were still inside the summit screamed all the way down.

While this was happening, Raf slid down the rain-slicked surface of the upper western flank of Troll Mountain, bouncing on his backside with Vilnar still clinging to him.

After about a hundred feet of sliding, they sailed off a second brink and, for a moment, found themselves
two thousand dizzying feet
above the stakes at the bottom of the mountain’s vertical western face—the same stakes that lay beneath the triangular prison cells cut into that flank.

As he and Vilnar flew out into thin air, Raf reached out with his crossbow and hooked it around the roof of the small shack that housed the elevator mechanism servicing the cells.

The crossbow snagged the edge of the roof …

… and Raf and Vilnar suddenly swung inward and landed in an ungainly heap on the wooden platform directly underneath the shack—the platform with the hole in its floor through which the elevator was raised and lowered.

Dazed, Raf shook his head and looked up to see the huge shadow of a troll standing right in front of him!

Before Raf could move, the troll had lifted him bodily into the air, gripping him firmly in its massive hands, drawing him up to its huge gray face.

A face that Raf recognized.

It was Düm.

*

“Master Raf, you are crazy human, but you smart, you figure out Master Ko’s plan. Düm hope you pleased with Düm’s efforts. It very hard for Düm to remember all of Master Ko’s instructions.”

“You’ve been great, Düm,” Raf said. “Thank you.”

It was then that Raf noticed Graia standing behind the troll. “You must be Graia.”

“I am. And I am coming with you.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Raf said. He could hear the loud banging of the trolls trying to break down the upper door that Düm had barricaded.

“We’re not out of this yet. We have an old man to rescue and then we have to run as fast as we can. Düm, the wheel, please.”

*

Within minutes, with Düm turning the great cogwheel that raised and lowered the elevator and Raf standing on the elevator itself, they found Ko in his cliff-side cell.

The old man was very pleased to see Raf. He stepped onto the elevator.

“You listen well, my young friend,” Ko said as Düm raised them up. “And I am most glad you came back for me on your way out.”

“You did ask me to,” Raf said. “Although did you really expect me to beat the trolls’ champion in single combat?”

Ko shrugged. “I told you before: a quest would not be a quest if it were easy. Either you beat their champion or you failed in your mission—”

Pained cries interrupted him.

The other prisoners—most of them starving Southmen and Southwomen—had seen them on the elevator and were desperately begging to be rescued, too.

Raf was momentarily taken aback.

Apart from his spontaneous decision to free Vilnar, he hadn’t thought of rescuing anyone else. He had come to Troll Mountain for the Elixir and he had only stopped here to grab Ko on the way out.

Then another voice called, “Raf! Raf!”

Raf turned.

It was Bader. He was standing with his legs astride his inverted triangular hole, peering up and out at Raf.

“Take me with you,” Bader croaked. “Please.”

Raf stared at him, at this pale imitation of the formerly haughty prince.

“I have the Elixir, Bader.” He indicated the pouch hanging from his hip. “I can save our tribe.”

“Please take me with you, Raf.”

And in Bader’s desperation, Raf saw something. Bader was just as desperate to live as the Southmen prisoners were.

In that moment, Raf knew that whether they be Northmen or Southmen, they were all the same, they were all people, and if he saved one of these captives now, he had to save them all.

“People, listen to me! If you want to flee this place, get on this contraption now! This is your one and only chance of escape!”

And so, hauled up by the mighty exertions of Düm, the great escape from the cliff-side cells of the trolls began.

It took four trips to release all fifteen prisoners—first Ko and Bader plus one other man; then all of the others in groups of four.

Raf would greet each load of prisoners at the elevator platform and send them on their way with the words, “Go! Don’t look back!”

Bader had not needed a second invitation. He stole away immediately, dashing inside the mountain while Raf stayed at the elevator platform to release the other captives.

The bangs of the trolls on the upper stone door continued and just as Raf helped the last prisoner—a young woman from the Southmen tribe—from the elevator, he heard a great rending crack and then troll voices shouting angrily.

“They’ve broken through Düm’s barricade,” he said to Ko. “We have to go!”