Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel (7 page)

Raf found himself in a small guardroom lit with candles: a room that had been converted into a laboratory.

Thick wooden benchtops were covered with jars, pots, and barrels, all of which were filled with bubbling, steaming liquids. On long shelves sat unruly clusters of flowers, fruits, and vegetables; garlic and onions hung from strings.

In the floor in the center of the guardroom was a wooden ladder that led to lower levels.

And in the midst of it all, snoring loudly, fast asleep in a chair, was a small wrinkled old troll.

*

Raf stared at the old troll in wonder.

He had never seen a troll like him. He was smaller than the others, shorter even than Raf was. And he had reedy arms and thin knock-knees. His nose was long and beaky, with several warts, and he had a long white beard on his chin and wild bushy eyebrows. A field troll.

As Raf peered in wonderment, the troll snorted suddenly, making him jump.

But it was well and truly asleep.

Raf realized with a thrill that this was his chance: to steal the Elixir and get away from Troll Mountain unnoticed.

If he could find the Elixir now and leave this tower without waking the old troll, he could be out of the mountains by morning and home with the cure within days.

Moving slowly and carefully so as not to make the slightest sound, Raf went over to the laboratory’s benches, scanning them for the Elixir.

There.

Three small glass bottles stood on a table off to one side, all on their own, separated from the clutter of the rest of the room.

They were all filled with the same amber liquid and each bottle was of far higher quality than any of the other vessels in the laboratory. Apart from the dry husks of several discarded lemons and limes beside them, the benchtop around the three bottles was empty. Clearly, these three bottles were special.

Raf stood before them, gazing at the all-powerful Elixir.

Damn the trolls, he thought. He’d take all three.

He stepped forward, his foot landing on an ancient floorboard.

It creaked …

… and the old troll awoke mid-snore, snapping up, looking around in a muddle. “What—? Who—oh my—how did you get in here!”

Raf stood erect, somehow finding nobility in being discovered. “I come from the valley you trolls keep under your thumb—”

The little old troll ignored him, rushing past him to the door through which Raf had entered the tower.

He crouched by the doorframe, looking down at the floor beside it. “You silly fool—!”

“I seek the magic Elixir,” Raf said desperately. “My people are dying. Please do not raise the alarm …”

The old troll turned, pointing to a mechanism in the floor by the door: a weighted rope plunged down into a hole in the floorstones there.

“My young friend, I’m sorry to inform you that the alarm has already been raised.” He spoke far more eloquently than Düm or the guards did. “The Troll King keeps me prisoner here. I cannot even go outside for air without his knowing it. When you opened that door, a stone attached to this rope was released. It has already fallen down its hole and hit a bell in the guardroom below. The king’s guards
already know
something is amiss
. They will be here any moment!”

“No … no …” Raf’s mind was racing. “I can take you with me then,” he said quickly. “You are Vilnar, are you not? My name is Raf and I am a friend of Ko’s, the old hermit of the Badlands. He speaks highly of you.”

The troll looked at him askance.

“I do indeed know Ko. He is a fine and wise man. And you, young man, you scaled this guarded mountain to steal the Elixir for your people? And now you offer to release me from my confinement, even though I am a troll. What kind of hero are you?”

“I’m no hero, I’m just—”

“Nevertheless, you deserve something for your efforts, even if you are ultimately to end up in the king’s belly. If I cannot give you the Elixir, let me at least give you some knowledge: the Elixir is
not
magical. It is the result of much hard work,
my
hard work conducting experiments in this room.”

Raf heard a door slam somewhere deep within the watchtower, followed by urgent shouts.

His eyes shot to the door through which he had entered: he could get out that way, but he knew that he’d never get past the battlement that ringed the summit. The guards on it would be alerted by now.

Vilnar grabbed Raf’s shirt and yanked his face to his own, right up to his wart-covered nose.

“Young man, pay attention! The illness, it is not a curse or an omen or black magic. It comes from a lack of nutrients—nutrients peculiar to lemons, oranges and limes. That is all. Which means the Elixir is not magical either, it is merely a juice made from those same fruits. But if I tell that to my captors, they will kill me and retain my hard-earned knowledge!”

Raf’s mind was reeling. His brain was in a panic, thinking only of escape and fleeing, and yet here was this silly old troll giving him a lesson in medicine.

He turned desperately. “I have to get out of here—”

“That’s not going to happen,” a hard voice said from behind him.

Raf spun—

—to see four large guard-trolls step up from the ladder in the floor, great hammers gripped in their fists.

Raf’s blood went cold.

His mission was over.

Flanked by the four guards, terrified and alone, Raf was marched down through the Supreme Watchtower, then down a tight spiral staircase concealed within the north-western pillar of the Winter Throne Hall. He emerged from a secret door cut into the base of that pillar, stepping out onto the open-air space. It was still dark. Dawn was a couple of hours away.

“Take this scum to the cells,” the head guard growled to the others. He held Raf’s rope and lightweight axe in his huge hands. “The king sleeps. I shall inform him of this thief when he wakes in the morning.”

Raf was pushed across the Winter Throne Hall and down through some more tunnels cut into the main body of the mountain, before he abruptly emerged into fresh air again, arriving at a wooden platform erected high above the western flank of Troll Mountain.

A large wooden box-like contraption—had he known the word, Raf would have called it an “elevator”—hung before him, dangling from a thick rope in such a way that it could be lowered through a rectangular hole in the floor of the wooden platform. (Raf couldn’t see it, but a huge cogwheel housed in a shack above the platform raised and lowered the elevator when the cogwheel was turned by a single muscular troll.)

Escorted by two guards, Raf was shoved onto the box and lowered down the western face of the mountain.

He recalled that during his ascent he had been unable to scale the western face because it was sheer and vertical.

Now he saw that it was more than that.

The entire western side of the mountain had been smoothed by the hand of some outside agent—man or troll, it didn’t matter—so that it formed a perfectly vertical surface.

And now, as he was lowered down that sheer polished rock face, Raf saw that cut into it were shallow recesses. Each recess was shaped like an upside-down triangle, with a sharp point at the base, and inside many of the oddly-shaped recesses were …

… human prisoners.

The cells had no bars. They didn’t need them. The drop below their brinks was two thousand feet and at the wall’s base was a tangled forest of upwardly pointed stakes.

From what Raf could see, the cells were arranged in a grid formation. There were about thirty cells, widely spaced, in three vertical columns. Roughly half of them were occupied.

Forlorn bearded faces stared out at Raf from the cells as he was lowered past them. The prisoners were mostly men and they appeared emaciated and starved. By virtue of the inverted triangular shape of each cell, the prisoners sat in them awkwardly, curled and hunched.

And then suddenly, among the despairing faces, Raf saw one that he recognized.

“Bader …!” he gasped.

The prisoner’s eyes sprang open in recognition, but before he could reply, Raf’s elevator had gone past him, descending lower still.

Raf was finally deposited in a triangular cell of his own. The elevator withdrew upward, taking the guards with it, but not before one of them gave Raf some parting advice:

“Sleep well, thief. If you cannot sleep, you might consider throwing yourself from your cell before the morning, for when the king sees you tomorrow, you will wish you were dead.”

*

When his captors were gone, Raf sat glumly in his cell, pressed against its sloping walls.

The mountain wind was the only sound.

The triangular walls of the cell were perfectly cut, made of hard polished stone without a chip or a notch. The cell was perhaps seven feet high but only four feet deep. The brink yawned before Raf, rimless and railless. Out of the rear wall of the cell poked many tiny bronze spear-tips which prevented a prisoner from leaning against that wall. 

Just sitting hunched over in the upside-down triangular hole was uncomfortable enough, but the combination of the spear-tips and the deadly drop meant that Raf had to sit essentially motionless.

He looked up, whispering in the darkness. “Bader! Bader! Can you hear me?”

A moment of silence. Then:

“I hear you.” The voice, once haughty and proud, was listless and flat.

“What happened to you and your party?”

“We made our case to the Troll King and the dirty beast imprisoned us for our trouble.”

“What of the other members of your party?”

A pause. The mountain wind whistled.

Bader said, “So far as I can tell, only I remain. Every now and then, the trolls take a prisoner away for eating or sport. We can hear their gleeful shouts when they gather on the Winter Throne Hall. They leave us here to wither and lose all energy. Then, when we are weary from hunger and thirst, they take us. Once taken away, no prisoner ever returns.”

Raf swallowed.

He spent what remained of that night curled up in his uncomfortable stone hole, staring out at the westward view: beyond the snow-capped peaks of the Black Mountains, he saw the vast northern plains. In other circumstances it would have been beautiful.

At length, dawn broke.

Around mid-morning, they came for him.

After he stepped off the elevator, Raf was pushed by a pair of guards through a dark horizontal tunnel that delved into Troll Mountain.

He heard shouts and cheers from somewhere.

At the end of the tunnel he came to a fork—he could go up, presumably to the Winter Throne Hall, or down.

He was shoved downward.

The cheering became louder. As he proceeded down a steep passageway, Raf heard a series of dull
thunk
s followed by a chanting of “
Grondo! Grondo!
”

A rush of fear shot through Raf’s body. Where were they taking him? What had he got himself into?

Then Raf turned a corner and suddenly he found himself standing inside the upper reaches of the vast space that was the Great Hall of the Mountain King.

His breath caught in his throat.

Raf stood at the top of a staircase that wound in an elegant spiral down the outside of a gargantuan stone column. (While the immense column appeared to be an addition to the hall, it—and the three other mighty columns holding up the ceiling—had actually been cut from the mountain itself. Similar spiral staircases wound around the flanks of the other columns.)

In the center of the immense space was a high pyramidal podium on which stood the Troll King’s throne, far larger than the one up on the Winter Throne Hall. A horde of perhaps two hundred trolls was gathered at the foot of the throne, thronging around a pair of trolls who were engaged in combat, cheering and shouting at every blow.

And sitting on the throne, flanked by what appeared to be his sons, his cronies, and a pair of hobgoblin jesters, biting down on a meat-covered bone, contentedly lording over the scene, was the Troll King himself.

*

As Raf was led down the spiral staircase, the two fighting trolls continued their battle, hitting each other’s shields with their hammers. Then the bigger troll disarmed the smaller one and broke his wooden shield with a lusty blow and the crowd chanted ever louder, “
Grondo! Grondo!
” The big troll started unleashing more blows on the now-defenseless smaller one, knocking him to the ground and pinning him, before turning to the king.

A hush fell over the hall.

All eyes turned to the Troll King.

One of the hobgoblin jesters made a throat-slitting gesture.

The king said simply, “Kill him, Grondo.”

Grondo’s hammer came down on the head of the fallen troll and made a sickening noise.

The crowd roared, the jesters danced, the king smiled, and as the trolls gathered around the victor, Grondo, a pair of worker-trolls dragged the dead body of the vanquished one away.

Grondo was escorted up to the king’s throne. He dropped to one knee before the king and bowed his head.

The king stood. “You are a worthy champion, Grondo. I thank you for this fine gift of death you have given me on my son’s wedding day.”

“It is my honor and privilege, lord,” the champion said.

“Please stay here by my throne today,” the king said, and the crowd gasped for this was clearly an honor. Grondo took his place among the row of courtiers and troll princes standing behind the king, his head held high.

Gripped by his guards, Raf was brought across the floor of the chamber and made to stand directly in front of the king’s mighty throne. The huge crowd of trolls stood closely around him, grunting, whispering, and glaring.

Standing in their midst, Raf looked small, frail, and alone and he felt like that, too. He barely reached their shoulders.

“My lord!” called the senior guard. “I bring you the thief caught on the mountain during the night!”

The king leaned forward, eyeing Raf closely. The crowd of trolls encircling Raf fell silent.

Raf was assessing the Troll King, too. Like all the bigger trolls, the king had a long snout and a pair of tusks jutting up from his protruding lower jaw. Draggers like Düm had flatter faces and no tusks, while field trolls were just small.

As he looked at the king more closely, Raf noticed that he further distinguished himself from the other trolls by wearing foul decorations on his body: a necklace made of human fingerbones, a cloak made of a mountain-wolf pelt, and worst of all, a weapons belt featuring two daggers and a longer blade made of a sharpened human leg bone.

The Troll King spoke.

“I was told about this thief. He was discovered in the Supreme Watchtower, trying to steal the Elixir. No thief has ever made it so far. He must be … slippery.”

No one spoke.

The king grinned meanly. “But not slippery enough.”

The assembled trolls sniggered.

One of the hobgoblin jesters was glaring right at Raf, cruel and hard.

“You are not the first human to attempt to penetrate our stronghold and steal our Elixir, young thief,” the king said. “Here is another.”

The king held up the meat-covered bone on which he had been gnawing. Raf’s blood froze.

“Nothing tastes sweeter than the marrow of an enemy,” the king said. “And since today is a special day, I think I shall—”

“My tribe is dying,” Raf blurted, and the entire crowd gasped at the sheer gall of someone interrupting the king.

The king looked as if he had been slapped in the face.

“You cut off our water,” Raf said, “so our crops grow poorly and we Northmen become weaker and more susceptible to the illness. I came here only to—”

“
Silence!
” the king boomed, his voice ringing through the enormous hall. The assembled trolls quailed. The jesters literally cowered.

But Raf stood his ground.

The king’s eyes bulged. “Impudent thief! How dare you address me so! I have a good mind to snap one of your arms off right now and eat your bones in front of you! Northmen!
Northmen!
I know this tribe. A dirty rabble. They sent elders to bargain with me months ago. I received those old men on my winter throne. They, er, fell before me.”

The trolls near Raf sniggered.

The king boomed, “Then these same
Northmen
sent a delegation of three young princes several weeks ago, princes who arrived with three porters. The lead prince, Bader was his name, offered me his porters in return for a small bottle of the Elixir.”

Raf’s eyes widened in surprise.

The king saw it.

“Yes. Your prince offered
his own people
as payment for a sample of the Elixir. He did not ask for water or food or even a barrel of the magic drink. Just a single small bottle.”

Raf saw the scene in his mind. Bader had come here not to save the
tribe
from the illness at all. He had only come to save his own sister. And he had brought along the three porters not as assistants but as unsuspecting sacrificial offerings.

The king leered at Raf, his huge troll mouth salivating. “I saw little honor in this Northman prince named Bader so I ate his porters anyway and threw him and his fellow princes in my cells to contemplate their treachery.”

Raf said nothing.

The king’s eyes narrowed. “But you, thief, you are not like him. You came here alone, under the cover of night, and you scaled an entire mountain to steal my Elixir. Were it not for my own precautions, you might have succeeded. No, you are motivated by a far more dangerous emotion than your prince was: the desire to save others. You … are a hero.”

The king raised his chin. “Trolls! Today, as you know, is a special day, the day of my son’s wedding. And so, as a wedding gift, I will give this hero to my son, Turv”—the king nodded to the tall red-robed troll at his right hand, who, Raf noted, also wore a grim fingerbone necklace plus a bone-sword at his waist made from a human leg—“as his matrimonial meal. While not as succulent as the meat of a child or a woman, the tough sinew of a hero will bring Turv that hero’s strength.”

The crowd of trolls gasped and then applauded vigorously. This was an astonishing gift: captured enemy warriors were usually eaten only by the king himself.

“Tonight,” the king announced, “at the wedding banquet for Turv and his bride, Graia, this thief will be ritually killed and his bones served bloody and fresh to Turv! Until then, put him in the cage, so I may look upon him throughout the day!”

Raf was led to a small iron cage that hung from a great chain. He was locked inside it and hoisted aloft, high above the floor of the hall for all to see: the live prisoner who would become that evening’s celebratory meal.