Holly stuck both pairs of cuffs into her belt. They had charge packs and could be adapted for heat or even as weapons, if they lived that long.
‘OK, Mud Boy. Into the water.’
Artemis did not argue or question; there was no time for that. He could only assume that, like many animals, trolls were not lovers of water. He ran towards the river, feeling the ground below his feet vibrate with a hundred feet and fists. The howling had started again too, but it had a different tone, more reckless, mindless and brutal, as if whatever control the trolls had had was now gone.
Artemis hustled to catch up to Holly. She was ahead of him, lithe and limber, bending low to scoop up one of the fake plastic logs from a campfire. Artemis did the same, tucking it under his arm. They could be in the water for a long time.
Holly dived in, gracefully arcing through the air before entering the water with barely a splash. Artemis stumbled after her. All this running for one’s life was not what he was built for. His brain was big, but his limbs were slight — which was exactly the opposite of what you needed when trolls were at your heels.
The water was lukewarm, yet the mouthful Artemis inadvertently swallowed tasted remarkably sweet. No pollutants, he supposed, using that small portion of his brain that was still thinking rationally. Something tagged his ankle, slicing through sock and flesh. Then he kicked into the river, and he was clear. A trail of hot blood lingered for a moment, before being whipped away by the current.
Holly was treading water in the centre of the river. Her auburn hair stood up in slick spikes.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked.
Artemis shook his head. No breath for words.
Holly noticed his ankle, which was trailing behind him. ‘Blood, and I don’t have a drop of magic left to heal you. That blood is almost as bad as pheromones. We have to get out of here.’
On the bank, the trolls were literally hopping mad. They head-butted the ground repeatedly, drumming their fists in complex rhythms.
‘Mating ritual,’ explained Holly. ‘I think they like us.’
The current was strong out in the centre of the river and it drew the pair quickly downstream. The trolls followed along, some hurling small missiles into the water. One clipped Holly’s plastic log, almost dislodging her.
She spat out a mouthful of water. ‘We need a plan, Artemis. That’s jour department. I got us this far.’
‘Oh yes, well done, you,’ said Artemis, having apparently recovered his sense of sarcasm. He raked wet strands of hair from his face and cast his eyes around, beyond the melee on the waterline. The Temple was huge, throwing an elongated, multi-pronged shadow across the desert area. The interior was wide open, with no obvious shelter from the trolls. The only deserted spot was the temple roof.
‘Can trolls climb?’ he spluttered.
Holly followed his gaze. ‘Yes, if they have to, like big monkeys. But only if they have to.’
Artemis frowned. ‘If only I could remember,’ he said. ‘If only I knew what I know.’
Holly kicked over to him and grasped his collar. They swirled in the white water, bubbles and froth squeezing between their logs.
‘“If only” is no good, Mud Boy. We need a plan before the filter.’
‘The filter?’
‘This is an artificial river. It’s filtered through a central tank.’
A bulb went on in Artemis’s brain. ‘A central tank. That’s our way out.’
‘We’ll be killed! I have no idea how long we’ll be underwater.’
Artemis took one last look around, measuring, calculating. ‘Given the present circumstances, there is no other option.’
Up ahead, the currents began to circle, pulling in any rubbish picked up from the banks. A small whirlpool formed in the middle of the river. The sight of it seemed to calm the trolls. They gave up on the butting and banging and settled down to watch.
Some, who would later prove to be the clever ones, moved along the bank.
‘We follow the current,’ shouted Artemis over the hiss. ‘We follow it and hope.’
‘That’s it? That’s your brilliant plan?’ Holly’s suit crackled as the water wormed its way into the circuits.
‘It’s not so much a plan as a lifesaving strategy,’ retorted Artemis. He might have said more, but the river interrupted him, snatching him away from his elfin companion into the whirlpool.
He felt about as significant as a twi? in the face of such power. If he tried to resist the water, it would slap the air from his lungs like a bully slapping his victim. Artemis’s chest was compressed; even when his gasping mouth was above water, he could not force adequate amounts of air into his lungs. His brain was starved of oxygen. He couldn’t think straight. Everything was curved: the swirl of his body, the sweep of the water. White circles on blue ones on green ones. His feet dancing little Mobius-strip patterns below his body. Riverdance. Ha ha.
Holly was in front of him, pinioning the two logs between them. A makeshift raft.
She shouted something, but it was lost. There was only water now. Water and confusion.
She held up three fingers. Three seconds. Then they were going under. Artemis breathed as deeply as his constricted chest would allow. Two fingers now. Then one.
Artemis and Holly let go of their logs and the current sucked them under like spiders down a drain. Artemis fought to hold on to his air, but the buffeting water squeezed it from between his lips. Bubbles spiralled behind them, racing for the surface.
The water was not so deep or dark. But it was fast and would not allow many images to stand still long enough to be identified. Holly’s face flashed past him, and all Artemis could make out were big, hazel eyes.
The whirlpool’s funnel grew narrower, forcing Holly and Artemis together. They were swept diagonally down in a flurry of bumping torsos and flapping limbs. They pressed their foreheads together, finding some comfort in each other’s eyes. But it was short lived. Their progress was cut brutally short by a metal grille covering the drainage pipe. They slammed into it, feeling the sharp wire leave indents on their skin.
Holly slapped at the grille, then wormed her fingers through the holes. The grille was shiny and new. Fresh weld marks dotted its rim. This was new and everything else was old. Koboi!
Something nudged Holly’s arm. An aqua tele-pod. It was anchored to the grille by a plastic tie. Opal’s face filled the small screen sealed inside, and her grin filled most of her face. She was saying something again and again on a short loop. The words were inaudible over the din of sluice and bubble, but the meaning was clear: / beat you again.
Holly grabbed the tele-pod, ripping it from its tether.
The effort threw her from the slipstream into the relatively calm surrounding waters. Her strength was gone, and she had no option but to go where the river led her.
Artemis dragged himself from the flat face of the grille, using the last of his oxygen to kick his legs, just twice.
He was free of the whirlpool, floating along after Holly towards a dark mound,
further down the river. Air, he thought with keen desperation, / need to breathe. Not soon. Now. If not now, never.
Artemis broke the surface mouth-first. His throat was sucking down air before the water cleared. The first breath came back up, laced with fluid, but the second was clear, and the third. Artemis felt the strength flow back into his limbs like mercury in his veins.
Holly was safe. Lying on the dark island in the river. Her chest heaved like a bellows and the tele-pod lay beneath her splayed fingers.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Opal Koboi on-screen. ‘Sooo predictable. ’ She said it over and over, until Artemis struggled from the shallow water, climbed on the mound and found the mute button.
‘I am really starting to dislike her,’ he panted. ‘She may come to regret little touches like the underwater television, because it’s things like that which give me the motivation to get out of here.’
Holly sat up, looking around. They were lying on a mound of rubbish. Artemis guessed that since Opal had welded the grille across the filter pipe, the current swept everything the trolls discarded to this shallow spot. A small island of junk in the river bend. There were disembodied robot heads on the heap, along with battered statues and troll remains. Troll skulls with the thick wedge of forehead bone, and rotting pelts.
At least those particular trolls could not eat them. The dangerous trolls had followed them and were working themselves up into a lather again along the banks on both sides. But there was at least six metres of fifteen-centimetre-deep water separating them from the land. They were safe, for the moment.
Artemis felt memories attempting to break through to the surface. He was on the verge of remembering everything, he was certain of it. He sat completely still, willing it to happen. Unconnected images flashed behind his eyes: a mountain of gold; green, scaly creatures snorting fireballs; Butler packed in ice. But the images slid from his consciousness like drops of water off a windshield.
Holly sat up. ‘Anything?’
‘Maybe,’ said Artemis. ‘Something. I’m not sure. Everything is happening so fast. I need time to meditate.’
‘We’re out of time,’ said Holly, climbing to the top of the junk pile. Skulls cracked beneath her feet. ‘Look.’
Artemis turned towards the left bank. One of the trolls had picked up a large rock and raised it above his head.
Artemis tried to make himself small. If that rock hit, they would both be gravely injured, at the very least.
The troll grunted like a tennis pro serving, spinning the rock into the river. It barely missed the pile, landing with a huge splash in the shallow waters.
‘A poor shot,’ said Holly.
Artemis frowned. ‘I doubt it.’
A second troll grabbed a missile, and a third. Soon all the brutes were hurling rocks, robot parts, sticks or whatever they could get their hands on towards the rubbish heap. Not one hit the shivering pair huddled on the pile.
‘They keep missing,’ said Holly. ‘Every one of them.’
Artemis’s bones ached from cold, fear and sustained tension.
‘They’re not trying to hit us,’ he said. ‘They’re building a bridge.’
TARA, IRELAND, DAWN
The fairy shuttle port in Tara was the biggest in Europe. More than eight thousand tourists a year passed through its X-ray arches. Eight hundred and fifty cubic metres of terminal concealed beneath an overgrown hillock in the middle of the McGraney farm. It was a marvel of subterranean architecture.
Mulch Diggums, fugitive kleptomaniac dwarf, was pretty marvellous himself in the subterranean area. Butler drove the Fowl Bentley north from the manor, and on
Mulch’s instructions slowed the luxury car down, five hundred metres from the shuttle port’s camouflaged entrance. This allowed Mulch to dive through the rear door straight into the earth. He quickly disappeared, submerged below a layer of rich Irish soil. The best in the world.
Mulch knew the shuttle port layout well. He had once broken his cousin Nord out of police custody here, when the LEP had arrested him on industrial pollution charges. A vein of clay ran right up to the shuttle port wall and, if you knew where to look, there was a sheet of metal casing that had been worn thin by years of Irish damp. But on this particular occasion, Mulch was not interested in evading the LEP; quite the opposite.
He surfaced inside the holographic bush that hid the shuttle port’s service entrance. He climbed out of his tunnel, shook the clay from his behind, got all the tunnel wind out of his system a bit more noisily than was absolutely necessary, and waited.
Five seconds later, the entrance hatch slid across and four grabbing hands reached out, yanking Mulch into the shuttle port’s interior. Mulch did not resist, allowing himself to be bundled along a dark corridor and into an interview room. He was plonked down on an uncomfortable chair, handcuffed and left on his own to stew.
Mulch did not have time to stew. Every second he spent sitting here picking insects from his beard hair was another second that Artemis and Holly had to spend running from trolls.
The dwarf rose from the chair, slapping his palms against the two-way mirror inset in the interview room wall.
‘Chix Verbil,’ he shouted, ‘I know you’re watching me. We need to talk. It’s about Holly Short.’
Mulch kept right on banging on the glass until the cell door swung open and Chix
Verbil entered the room. Chix was the LEP’s fairy on the surface. Chix had been the first LEP casualty in the B’wa Kell goblin revolution, a year previously, and, had it not been for Holly Short, he would have been its first fatality. As it turned out, he got a medal from the Committee, a series of high-profile interviews on network television and a cushy surface job in El.
Chix entered suspiciously, his sprite wings folded behind him. The strap was off his Neutrino holster.
‘Mulch Diggums, isn’t it? Are you surrendering?’
Mulch snorted. ‘What do you think? I go to all the trouble of breaking out, just to surrender to a sprite. I think not, lame brain.’
Chix bristled, his wings fanning out behind him. ‘Hey, listen, dwarf. You’re in no position to be making cracks. You’re in my custody, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are six security fairies surrounding this room.’
‘Security fairies. Don’t make me laugh. They couldn’t secure an apple in an orchard. I escaped from a sub-shuttle under a couple of miles of water. I can see at least six ways out of here without breaking a sweat.’
Chix hovered nervously. ‘I’d like to see you try. I’d have two charges in your behind before you could unhinge that jaw of yours.’
Mulch winced. Dwarfs don’t like ‘behind’ jokes.
‘OK, easy there, Mister Gung-ho. Let’s talk about your wing. How’s it healing up?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘It was big news. You were all over the TV for a while, even on pirate satellite. I
was watching your ugly face in Chicago not so long ago.’
Chix preened. ‘Chicago?’
‘That’s right. You were saying, if I remember rightly, how Holly Short saved your life, and how sprites never forget a debt, and whenever she needed you, you were there, whatever it took.’
Chix coughed nervously. ‘A lot of that was scripted. And, anyway, that was before…’
‘Before one of the most decorated officers in the LEP suddenly decided to go crazy and shoot her own commander?’
‘Yes. Before that.’
Mulch looked Verbil straight in his green face. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
Chix hovered even higher for a long moment, his wings whipping the air into currents. Then he settled back down to earth, sitting in the room’s second chair. ‘No. I don’t believe it. Not for a second. Julius Root was like a father to Holly, to all of us.’
Chix covered his face with his hands, afraid to hear the answer to his next question.
