The Great Troll War

About six thousand people had taken refuge in the far tip of Cornwall, about a quarter of whom belonged on the Hive Memory ‘Eat List’, me included as of twenty minutes ago. The survivors were a mixed bag, and despite having many courageous individuals who favoured fighting over ending up as sapien en cocotte, we had no armoured vehicles, no artillery and only the weapons that the displaced had managed to carry with them. Annoyingly, bullets just tend to bounce off a Troll’s thick hide and make them more violent and hungry – neither of which generally ends well for humans.

I’d consulted my go-to person for all matters on everything, a friend named William of Anorak, and he was desperately frustrated when it came to answering, as, unusually for him, he had few fascinating Troll facts at his fingertips. He told me he’d call me back if he found anything, then reeled off all the citrus fruits, first by size, then in alphabetical order.

Without any anti-Troll strategy so far, the only two weapons we had that could possibly make a difference were Colin and Feldspar, the Dragons – but even with sound logistical support, it would be only those two youngsters against several million Trolls. Annoyingly, little more than an hour after the Button Trench was dug, a Spellsucking incantation started up which effectively hoovered all the wizidrical energy out of the air, rendering us magically powerless. Technically speaking a Hex Energy Neutralising Reversal Yieldiser, it was more often known by the acronym HENRY.9 This and the attack on Zambini Towers pointed a finger at the culprit: the Mighty Shandar. It takes a very powerful sorcerer indeed to spell up a Spellsucker or a thermowizidrical detonation. If there were a solution to the Troll invasion, it wouldn’t be magically based until we could take out the HENRY.

Anyway, the Troll invasion reeked of the Mighty Shandar’s assistance.

‘What’s the plan?’ asked Tiger as we climbed out of the VW Beetle.

‘Yes,’ said the Princess, ‘what is the plan?’

‘I don’t yet have one,’ I admitted. ‘Tiger, weren’t you running some numbers on the possibility of success when the Trolls inevitably cross the Button Trench?’

Tiger had indeed run the numbers – he was good with numbers.

‘93.7 per cent chance of success,’ he said.

‘That’s not so bad,’ said the Princess.

‘For the Trolls,’ he added.

‘Okay, that’s actually very bad.’

‘Yes,’ said Tiger, ‘the sort of odds that would give even the sunniest of optimists a lump in their throat.’

‘We can’t out-magic or out-fight them,’ I continued as we entered by the back entrance of the hotel and climbed the steep steps to the lobby, ‘so we’ll need to outsmart them. But how exactly we might do that is a matter for discussion. The Troll is more powerful, more violent than us, and has accepted unconditional surrender terms from every single one of the Kingdoms aside from Cornwall. What used to belong to humans now belongs to the Troll.’

‘They could in theory call on their human subjects to fight us,’ said Tiger. ‘Trolls regard human-on-human battles as rollicking good entertainment, and often take large side bets.’

‘True,’ I said, ‘which is why we need to build a strong coalition. First, we need a figurehead to be our nominal leader, someone we can all rally behind, and whom the members of the ex-Kingdoms might hesitate to attack.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the Princess innocently. ‘Anyone in mind?’

Tiger and myself exchanged glances. We’d been discussing this earlier.

‘You,’ I said.

‘Me?’

‘Yes. An uncrowned queen of a large Kingdom will fit the bill perfectly.’

‘I don’t have a Kingdom any more. It’s all now Greater Trollvania.’

‘The land is still there,’ said Tiger, ‘it’s only the ownership that’s in contention.’

The Princess looked at us both in turn.

‘I don’t know the first thing about ruling,’ she said. ‘I bossed an archduke around a bit once, but he was only six at the time. That’s as far as it goes.’

We stepped into the hotel lobby, a large atrium that rose three storeys to a glazed roof above. The wind had got up and I could have sworn I saw a jellyfish, two catfish and three terrified-looking Sea Scouts in a dinghy blown clean over the hotel.

‘If it’s not you it will be one of the others,’ said Tiger, nodding in the direction of what was clearly a group of princesses, all big dresses and the always fashionable wimpole hat, ‘and you’re way better than anyone in this motley bunch of royalty.’