I nodded. I knew where we were, and where we were headed; I just
wanted to show Molly that I was back to myself again. I could hear the roar of
trains passing by not that far away. The sound faded as Molly and I headed down
the sloping tunnel and into the dark.
"So," I said after a while. "What do we do if we run into
trolls?"
"I plan on running. Try to keep up."
"Someone told me they’re getting ready to swarm again."
"Happens every five years, regular as clockwork. The trolls
overpopulate the tunnels, exhaust the food supply, and eventually the sheer
pressure of numbers and hunger forces them up towards the light, and people. So
every few years the bounty hunters get to make good money by going down into the
tunnels and culling the herd back to an acceptable number."
"I don’t see why we don’t just wipe the ugly bastards out," I
said.
"Oh, we can’t do that," said Molly. "Every species performs a
function in nature, even if we can’t see what it is. Wipe out the trolls, and
something much worse might step forward to fill the gap. Better the ugly
bastards you know than the ones you don’t."
We moved from one tunnel to another, and then another, always
heading down, deeper into the earth. The air became hot and sweaty, almost
humid. We splashed through pools of stagnant water on the floor, and more
dripped from the ceiling. Fungi flourished in the hothouse atmosphere, sprouting
in thick white clumps where the wall met the floor and scattered in puffy fleshy
masses on the ceiling. Huge mats of green and blue moss covered the walls, two
to three inches deep, stretching away for as far as I could see. Long slow
ripples moved across the surface of the moss, as though it was disturbed by our
presence.
"There are those who say if you eat or smoke the moss, it will
grant you visions of things unseen and other worlds," said Molly.
"I don’t need moss for that," I said. "That’s business as usual
for me. Have you noticed…there aren’t any rats down here? Anywhere."
"Yes," said Molly. "I had noticed. The trolls must have eaten
them all. And if they’ve been reduced to eating rats, it can only be because
they’ve already eaten everything else. They must be really close to swarming."
"Maybe we could come back and see the Mole some other time," I
said.
"You’re really quite chicken for a Drood, aren’t you?"
"Cautious," I said. "I prefer the word cautious."
"Look; the authorities are bound to have sent bounty hunters
down here by now."
"Yes," I said, stopping. "I think I’ve found one."
We both knelt down to study the wreckage of what had once been a
human body. It lay on its back in a pool of blood that had already dried enough
to be tacky to the touch. Its leather armour had been torn to ribbons, and the
chest had been smashed in, to get at the meat beneath. The arms and legs had
been torn off, with only the gnawed bones remaining, lying scattered on the
stone floor. The face had been eaten away right down to the bone, leaving empty
eye sockets and grinning blood-smeared teeth.
"Any idea who it might have been?" I said. The state of the body
didn’t bother me. I’ve seen lots of bodies.
"No," said Molly, scowling. "The only bounty hunter I know is
Janissary Jane, and that isn’t her armour."
"You know Jane?" I said, surprised.
"We’ve worked a few cases together. I keep telling you, Eddie:
the world isn’t as neatly divided into black and white as your family wanted you
to believe."
I picked up a machine pistol lying abandoned not far from the
body and examined it closely. "Doesn’t look like she got a shot off. But…where
are the rest of the weapons? I can’t believe any bounty hunter would go after
trolls with just the one gun."
We looked around, but there was nothing else on or around the
body. Molly and I looked at each other.
"They couldn’t have taken them," said Molly.
"Why not?"
"Trolls are just animals! They don’t use tools or weapons."
"Animals evolve," I said. "Particularly under pressure from
outside forces. Trolls who’ve learned to use weapons; now, that is seriously
scary."
"We need to get moving," said Molly, rising to her feet and
looking quickly about her. "Get in to see the Mole and get out again before the
trolls swarm."
"Relax," I said. "They can’t touch us. I’ve got my armour, and
you’ve got your magic."
"Your armour might protect you from direct attack, but a whole
swarm of trolls could knock you on your arse, carry you away to their deep
larders, and just keep you there till you had to come out of your armour. And
then…" We both looked at the half-eaten bounty hunter.
"There’s a limit to what I can do with my magic now," Molly said
reluctantly. "I’ve used up most of my stored resources. Anything big would wipe
me out."
"You couldn’t have mentioned that before we came down here?" I
said.
We both looked around sharply. There were sounds in the darkness
around us. Molly waved her witchfire back and forth, illuminating the dark
mouths of tunnel openings ahead and behind us. From not far away came
high-pitched hootings and howlings, and the slow sharp sound of claws and talons
scraping against stone. We looked quickly up and down the tunnel, but the many
overlapping echoes made it impossible to tell from which direction any sound was
coming. Molly and I stood back to back, breathing heavily. And then from behind
us, from back the way we’d come, there was the growing sound of heavy feet on
the move, of heavy bodies thundering down the tunnel towards us. Molly sprinted
off into the darkness ahead, and I was right behind her.
The deeper we went, the shabbier the tunnels became. The old
brick walls began to crack and fall apart. Fungi and moss flourished, hiding
human workings under rounded organic shapes. Tunnel openings were interspersed
with rough holes smashed through the ancient stonework, dark gaps raw as wounds.
Things moved in the darkness, hissing at us as we passed. Molly and I ran on,
pushing ourselves as hard as we could, not even glancing into the openings, and
behind us came the thunder of the trolls, drawing steadily closer.
I could have armoured up and left them behind in a moment, but
trolls were sensitive to magic. They could have tracked my armour easily, even
in complete darkness. Even the small magic of the witchfire was a calculated
risk.
"How much further to the Mole?" I said between panting breaths.
"I’m…not exactly sure," said Molly.
"What?"
"Hey, it’s been a long time since I was last down here! And I
may have got a bit…turned around."
Without slowing my pace at all, I reached inside my jacket and
brought out the emergency compass the Armourer had given me back at the Hall.
"I know which way is north," said Molly. "And it really isn’t
helping."
"This particular compass is supposed to show me the best way out
of any emergency situation," I said, trying to hold the thing steady as I ran.
The compass needle flicked back and forth and then settled on northeast just as
a new tunnel opening appeared in that direction. The needle moved to point right
at the opening. "This way!" I said.
"Your family always has the best toys," said Molly, and we
plunged into the new tunnel without slowing.
We ran on, following the needle from tunnel to tunnel. The
hootings and howlings came from all around us now. The tunnels finally ended in
a natural stone chamber complete with jagged stalactites and stalagmites.
Strange mineral traces in the walls picked up the witchfire and glowed brightly,
pushing back the dark. The compass needle swung back and forth, as though
confused, and I stumbled to a halt while I waited for it to make up its mind.
Molly leaned on me, fighting for breath. I wasn’t much better off. My arm and
shoulder were killing me.
"We’re in trouble," said Molly.
"No, really?" I said. "You do surprise me. Show us the way to
the Mole, you useless piece of crap!" And I slapped the compass a few times, to
show it I meant business.
"No," Molly said. "I mean, I don’t recognise this place at all.
I’ve never been here on any of my previous trips to the Mole’s lair. Are you
sure that thing is reliable?"
"Of course," I lied. The compass needle finally settled for
pointing straight ahead. I looked at Molly. "Ready to run some more?"
She managed a quick grin. "I find the imminent prospect of being
eaten alive tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully."
"I love it when you talk literary," I said.
And that was when a whole crowd of trolls burst out of a side
tunnel just behind us, fighting and clawing at each other in their eagerness to
get at us. Molly and I sprinted off again, following the needle, but neither of
us were as fast as we had been. I’d got only one quick glimpse of the trolls
behind us, but that was enough. I’d faced trolls before, and they hadn’t
changed. Trolls are huge, stooped creatures, bone white in colour, with long,
lanky frames. Jagged claws on bony hands, vicious talons on elongated feet.
Spurs and thorns of bone protrude from their backs, arms, and legs. Their heads
are long, horselike, with muzzles crammed full of thick, blocky teeth. Their
eyes are big and black and unblinking. They run on all fours, leaning on their
knuckles like the great apes. They weren’t bothering with the hooting and
howling anymore, now they’d found their prey. Instead, from behind us came deep
bass coughing sounds, urgent and hungry.
I didn’t look back. I knew how fast they could move. And what
they would do if they caught us.
They were close, and getting closer. My breath burned in my
heaving chest, and my bad arm and shoulder shrieked with pain. I could hear
Molly straining for breath beside me. We were slowing down, even though we knew
it was death to do so. So I armoured up, grabbed Molly in my strong golden arms,
and sprinted through the dark tunnels at supernatural speed. Molly didn’t have
the breath to make any protest, beyond one surprised squeak, and then she clung
tightly to me as I flashed though the labyrinth of tunnels. She held the
witchfire out before us, the light reflecting brightly off my golden armour.
The trolls couldn’t match my augmented speed, but they didn’t
give up either. I could still hear them pounding along behind us. Cracked brick
walls flashed past as I sped on, concentrating on the needle of the compass set
flush into my golden palm. Molly suddenly cried out and pointed, and I skidded
to a halt. Molly wriggled impatiently out of my arms as I set her down, and she
ran over to a recess in a stone wall that looked just like all the others to me.
"This is it! This is the place! I recognise it…The door’s right
here, Eddie! Right here…somewhere…"
She leaned in close, running her hands over the rough stone
surface. I couldn’t see any door. I turned and looked back the way we’d come. I
couldn’t see any trolls, but I could hear them coming for us, out of the dark.
They sounded really angry. Molly cried out again, and I turned back to see her
tracing the outline of a door in the dark grimy stone.
"This is definitely it! Leads straight to the Mole!"
"Then you might want to open it," I said. "The trolls will be
here any minute."
"I can’t open this! Only the Mole can open it."
"Stand aside," I said. "I’ll smash it in."
"No, you bloody won’t," said Molly, grabbing me by one golden
arm and glaring right into my mask. "The Mole values his privacy, and you can
bet good money that door is protected by seriously heavy-duty security. You even
look at it funny, and it could blow up this whole section. Let me talk to the
Mole. There’s a speakerphone here somewhere…" She went back to the stone wall.
"Mole! This is Molly Metcalf; remember me? I got you the complete set of
Desperate Housewives DVDs…Look, I’ve got the new rogue Drood with me, and we
really do need to come in and talk with you! Right now!"
There was a worryingly long pause. The trolls were getting
closer. I could feel the vibrations of their pounding feet through the stone
floor. I sealed the compass away inside my armour and started to reach for the
Colt Repeater. The trolls burst out of the tunnel mouth behind us, long spiked
arms reaching for us. Molly yelled for me to close my eyes, and I squeezed them
shut just in time as she hit the trolls with the same incandescent flare she’d
used up in Paddington station. The trolls slammed to a halt, falling over each
other as they clawed in agony at their blinded, light-sensitive eyes. I stepped
forward and killed the first half dozen with my golden fists, smashing in their
heavy skulls with my armoured hands. I pushed the bodies back into the tunnel
mouth, building a barricade to hold the other trolls back. More of the creatures
pushed hard from the other side, and it was all I and my armour could do to hold
them back.
"Eddie! The door’s open! Come on!"
I turned and ran for the narrow dark opening in the wall. Molly
was already inside. She pulled me in, and then slammed the door shut in the
trolls’ faces, right behind me. The door didn’t look like much, but it held
firm, despite the pounding of heavy fists on the outside. The trolls hooted and
howled, slamming against the closed door in frustrated rage.
"Should we brace ourselves for an explosion?" I said to Molly.
"The Mole knows what’s going on now," she said breathlessly.
"He’s expecting us. Eddie, be nice to him. He’s not used to visitors."
I followed Molly down the narrow tunnel lit by naked electric
lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals. I reluctantly armoured
down. As a rogue himself, the last thing the Mole would want to see was a Drood
in full armour coming straight at him. It did feel good not to be running
anymore, to get my breath back. I massaged my aching left arm, but it didn’t
help, so I just pushed the pain as far away as I could. I had more important
things to think about. If the Mole was as crazy as Oddly John, he’d need careful
handling.