Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"Is that glimmer really the best you can do?" I said.

"No. But this is as much as I’m prepared to risk. This isn’t a place where you want to attract undue attention."

"Where exactly are we going? Tell me we’re not going down into the sewers again."

"We’re not going down into the sewers again."

"Oh, joy."

"You’re starting to get on my tits, Drood. This tunnel will lead us down into the systems beneath the train system. Places left over and abandoned by the railways. Old stations that no one goes to anymore, discontinued lines, workings that were never completed. That sort of thing."

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.