Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘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.’

In an improbable coincidence, there were twenty-six princesses in Penzance at this moment in time, all of whom had been attending a conference entitled ‘Is too much ever enough? Modern princessing and the defence of opulence’ at the Queens Hotel when the Trolls invaded. And while only four of them were now actually uncrowned queens, all of them thought they were uniquely capable of leading a vanquished nation to freedom. Or being the one in charge, at any rate. Indeed, the fact that we were based in the Queens Hotel at all was something of an annoyance to the princesses, who wanted to keep the hotel and everyone in it for their personal use while demanding to know why they should have to slum it ‘just because of an invasion by human-eating homicidal lunatics’. No one had thought it wise to tell them that anything connected to royalty was, as far as the Trolls were concerned, ‘good eating’. When they baked ‘Queen of Puddings’ they took it literally. 10 10 The recipe reminded Troll chefs to ‘take extra care to remove any tiaras, rings and corsets as if they are swallowed this may be regretted later’.

The princesses and I had been dodging each other all week as our priorities were at polar opposites, but it seemed that this was the morning they were going to try to flex their royal muscles.

‘You there, servant and Dragon-person,’ said the most spoiled-looking of the princesses, pointing at me, ‘curtsy in the presence of your betters, commoner, or the royal executioner will have a new head for their collection.’

The one who had spoken was pencil thin, sumptuously dressed, and seemed to glide when she walked, as if she had spent the first ten years of her life balancing a book on her head to aid elegant deportment.

‘That’s Princess Jocamanica,’ whispered the Princess, who had also been avoiding the princesses. ‘She spent the first ten years of her life balancing a book on her head to aid elegant deportment.’

‘I never would have guessed. They’re not actually going to execute us, are they?’

‘Of course not. It’s all princessy trash talk. We always boast we can have you beheaded or bricked up in a cellar and starved or fed to crocodiles in the moat, but we never actually do. It’s seen as a little unseemly these days – and the price of crocodiles is astronomical .’

‘I’m sorry?’ I said to Jocaminca, in no mood to be threatened with execution. ‘Are you addressing me?’

Princess Jocaminca visibly rankled.

‘I shall be addressed as “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Shropshire, uncrowned queen, Jocaminca Dabforth Pipplesqunge IV”,’ she announced in a haughty manner, ‘and I would expect all others of low birth to address the royalty present in this hotel in the correct fashion. Isn’t that right, girls?’

The others all nodded their heads vigorously, except the ones who thought it below them, who had their servants do it instead.

‘I made some notes as to the correct way we should be addressed and treated,’ said Princess Tabathini, who seemed more pleasant than the rest, probably because she was a second-tier princess, meaning she only had a single castle and fewer than a dozen servants. I think she had only been at the Princess Convention because someone pulled out and they wanted to make up the numbers.

‘It runs to almost ninety pages,’ she continued, ‘so you may have to hand it round once memorised.’

‘On another matter, Miss Strange,’ said Princess Jocaminca, ‘I am hereby informing you that I, as the ranking uncrowned queen of the largest Kingdom here, place myself in charge of negotiating the manner by which we shall surrender to the Troll. I understand there is a Sorcerer’s Conclave planned. I shall preside over it and take control in all matters relating to how we shall proceed.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the Princess, who had obviously been thinking about the whole ‘nominal leader’ deal and decided that now was the moment to reveal herself. ‘Three things: first, we are not going to surrender. Not now, not ever. Second, as uncrowned queen of the Kingdom of Snodd – a bigger and way more prestigious Kingdom than yours – I believe the honour of presiding over the method of resistance should fall to me. Third, I have the support of Jennifer Strange, who is Dragon Ambassador to the world, the nation’s Head Mystician and manages the only House of Enchantment in the Kingdoms. If we are to vanquish the Troll, we need magic on our side, Jennifer as our trusted adviser, and to work together as a team.’

Princess Jocaminca gaped like a fish at what she saw as a servant’s gross impertinence.

‘I beg your pardon. You are emphatically not Princess Shazine. That princess is tall and graceful and lovely, while you are short and ugly and utterly lacking in grace. If I had a servant right now I would command them to horsewhip you for your insolence.’

It was a fair point as the Princess had indeed been bodyswapped, so she related as proof things only a princess could know, such as the optimal temperature when bathing in rabbit’s milk, and the ascending order of eligible princes in the Kingdoms, with all their titles and star ratings for good looks, personality and cash.

‘Anyone who reads What Prince Monthly would know that,’ said Princess Jocaminca in a sniffy tone, ‘it means nothing.’

‘Okay,’ said the Princess, who knew full well that there was no physical proof she was anyone but Laura Scrubb, a lowly servant, ‘let’s ramp this up a notch. You and I and Cheryl and Candice and Tabathini over there were together in I’m a Princess Get Me Out of Here two years ago. You were voted out of the palace in the first round because you refused Task One: shaking hands with a poor person without grimacing.’