Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Is that useful?’ asked Colin, and Kevin showed him the piece of paper with ‘it could be, not sure’ written on it.

I took a deep breath and looked at Tiger, who shrugged. Usually a conclave is a well-ordered meeting offering a clear idea of where we are going with many sober, well-thought out and considered suggestions about the right course of action. With the Trolls quite literally an hour from this very spot – more if they chose to dawdle and admire the view – we needed to dispense with protocol and start dealing with practicalities.

‘I’m going to throw the meeting open,’ I said. ‘If anyone has any good ideas on how to vanquish the Trolls, I want to hear all about it right now.’

‘How about if we throw stones at them?’ said a young man at the far end of the table. ‘Just pelt them endlessly.’

‘And you are?’

‘Grover Ruckstell,’ he said, ‘representing the Guild of Haberdashers.’

‘And what would throwing rocks achieve?’ I asked, ‘Since it would probably take a stone too big to lift and thrown at a speed impossible to accomplish to have any sort of effect.’

‘It would make us feel better,’ said Grover with a shrug.

‘I think some sort of a stunt would be a good idea,’ said Jimmy Nuttjob, noted daredevil and stunt performer. He had been wowing the audiences up and down the UnUnited Kingdoms for decades, and by royal decree had a bed reserved in every hospital, as most of his outlandish stunts went spectacularly wrong – such as the time he tried to fire himself from an air cannon through a brick wall, and set the cannon pressure a little too high and went through two walls, a parked car and embedded himself in a telephone box. Rumours persist that he has the image of a telephone dial permanently embossed on his left buttock.

‘Okay,’ I said, well used to Nuttjob’s unique brand of showmanship/death wish, ‘so what’s your plan?’

‘A skydive from thirty thousand feet trailing a huge banner reading Ugg dugh lurgh hurg, 19 19 A very vulgar taunt known to enrage Trolls everywhere. It suggests they ‘would far prefer a sofa, potted plants and pale blue wallpaper’ to the usual draughty cave littered with bones and as-yet uneaten entrails. The human equivalent would be calling someone ‘a massive softie’. ’ he said excitedly. ‘That should make them see we’re not a species to be trifled with.’

‘A parachute drop doesn’t sound that risky,’ said Full Price, who was a huge fan of Jimmy Nuttjob but had also, in leaner times, enjoyed a bit of parachuting himself.

‘Whoever said anything about a parachute?’ asked Nuttjob with an excited gleam in his eye.

‘Teatime!’ announced the tea lady as she walked in. ‘I know you could all do with a cuppa but the Trolls have disrupted the biscuit supply chain, so it will be digestives only today.’

Zip’s skill as a pre-cog was impressive but in this particular instance of little use – unless you were looking forward to Hobnobs, in which case it might have softened the disappointment.

‘Actually,’ said Kevin Zip, ‘the Hobnob issue wasn’t the important thing that was about to happen.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Colin.

‘I think it’s fairly clear,’ said Once Magnificent Boo, ‘that the Troll didn’t do all this on its own, and we must—’

She had stopped talking because the doors had been flung open in a dramatic fashion and a tall and impossibly handsome man walked in. He was dressed in expensive embroidered silk clothes, had a long flowing mane of blond hair, an impressive lantern jaw and large blue eyes. It was Sir Matt Grifflon, and while I and most people who knew him groaned audibly, Princess Jocaminca strategically swooned at his striking, manly presence while Princess Tabathini fanned herself with a copy of What Prince? magazine.

He wasn’t alone, as any knight worth their spurs always had a retinue of hangers-on which generally included a couple of lute-playing minstrels who would sing songs about the knight’s achievements, several squires, an accountant, a make-up and hair stylist combined, a gun bearer, his agent, two valets, a dozen or so armed guards and, at the front, an ornamental hermit whose function was to spout meaningless aphorisms on demand. The latter bowed and took a deep breath.

‘A man’s word is the bond of past friendships in Kent,’ he intoned gravely, ‘and fish do not walk when there is water in which to swim.’

I looked at Tiger, who shrugged. He thought it was nonsense too.

‘Consider the tadpole,’ said the hermit as an afterthought, then bowed again and stepped aside with a flourish as Sir Matt took a dramatic pace forward.

‘Please don’t get up,’ he said, although as far as I could see no one was going to, ‘everything is now okay since I am here .’

Princess Jocaminca, recently recovered, swooned again, but more showily, hoping to gain his attention.

‘United under my ruggedly masculine leadership,’ he continued, ‘we will vanquish the Troll and lead the Kingdoms into new and broad sunlit uplands. Furthermore …’

He carried on in this vein for several minutes. While he was talking about honour and loyalty and personal self-sacrifice – although not necessarily his own – everyone looked a little bored. Some people doodled on their pads, the Dragons started playing Scrabble with their neighbours and Tiger got out his yo-yo. The Princess leaned across to me and whispered:

‘Have you come across this buttfish 20 20 I never did find out what this meant. before?’

‘Several times,’ I replied. ‘He tried to kill me on the orders of your father. Weirdly, I was a huge fan when I was much younger, and even had a poster of him in my room.’

This wasn’t unusual, as Sir Matt Grifflon, in addition to his role as the King of Snodd’s favourite knight and enforcer, was also a successful recording artist. His last single, ‘A horse, a song and me’, had been a huge hit, and when not searching for a princess with a suitably large Kingdom to marry, he also did concert tours and was a dab hand at jousting.

‘Don’t trust him an inch,’ said the Princess. ‘He was always a pain in the bum back in the palace, strutting around the place and cosying up to Mummy and Daddy. My father wanted to sell him a marriage option but Mummy wouldn’t allow it.’

‘He’ll want to marry you now.’

‘What, me, in my scrawny handmaiden’s body?’

‘Knowing Grifflon,’ I said, ‘he’ll have definitely figured out Rule 35b and will warmly embrace you with flattery.’

‘… and leave no stone unturned as we expel this vile evil from our land,’ concluded Sir Matt, and then, noticing Colin for the first time, yelled: ‘Dragon!’ and approached Colin menacingly, his large and very ornate sword now out of its scabbard. The Dragon, however, merely raised an eyebrow in a bored kind of way.

‘Loathsome beast!’ yelled Sir Matt. ‘Destroyer of all that is good and wholesome, prepare to meet thy maker!’

He raised his sword to strike but Colin, with an almost effortless twitch of his tail, severed Sir Matt’s sword neatly at the hilt – the blade of which clattered harmlessly to the floor.

Sir Matt stared stupidly at the broken sword for a few moments.

‘That was very expensive,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You should be more respectful of other people’s property.’

‘And you should be more respectful of others’ right to life,’ replied Colin.

‘The Dragons are with us,’ said the Princess. ‘You are to leave them both alone.’

‘There are two?’