No Place For Magic Book 4 (Completed)

Chapter 15

The approach of the trolls made it impossible for anyone to leave by conventional means, which meant that everyone not charged with defending the castle had to gather in the Great Hall or other rooms of the keep, the most defensible area. As it was dark out, Eadric and I collected torches to carry up to the battlements to learn what we could. Ralf wanted to accompany us, but we convinced him that he could help more by staying behind to protect the women and children. He decided that this meant watching over Bradston and his mother, so he plopped down in front of them and growled when anyone came near. Queen Frazzela nearly fainted the first time he did this, although Bradston seemed delighted with the little dragon.

When they saw us going, Grassina, Haywood, and my grandmother followed us to the courtyard and up the steps to the battlements, where my father and King Bodamin were already watching the trolls. Neither of them seemed too worried at first. "They can't do anything from there," said Bodamin as the trolls jumped up and down and shouted at us from the far side of the gap separating the ridge from Castle Peak.

While the trolls milled around, lighting torches and bumping into each other, a few of the old witches from the retirement community joined us. The witches were trying to guess what the trolls would do next when the troll queen strode down the middle of the ridge, pushing aside anyone who got in her way. Although she was shorter than most of them, she had more heads than any of the rest. Even the bigger trolls seemed to be afraid of her. When she reached the point on the ridge where the drawbridge would have landed had we set it down, she stopped and shouted with all four heads at once, "King Bodamin!" The volume was impressive, even from so far away.

"That's the troll queen," I told him. "I think the second head from the right is in charge. Its name is Fatlippia."

"What kind of a name is that?" said the king. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted back, "What do you want? Why are you here?"

"We want prince!" shouted Fatlippia.

King Bodamin's eyes went hard and his hands squeezed into fists. "Never!" he shouted. Turning his back on the queen, he told us, "She's not getting Bradston back, even if she lays siege to this castle for a hundred years!"

"Then we come get him!" screamed the head called Ingabinga. "That prince ours! He promise marry queen!" The troll queen turned and was storming away when the strawberry-blonde head called Tizzy looked over her shoulder and stuck out her tongue.

"Marry!" said King Bodamin. "I can't believe Bradston would promise to marry her."

"I don't think he did," said Eadric.

A new troll had arrived and was barking orders, arranging the troll army in a raggedy line. He had two heads like the one who had seemed to be in charge during their attack near the stream—the one who had held the magic-seeing ball. We were wondering what he had planned when he shouted something at the first troll in the line, gesturing from him to us. The troll balked at what must have been an order. When he didn't move, the commanding troll shouted at the second troll. The two trolls squabbled, then the second shoved the first over the edge of the causeway.

The commanding troll barked his order again. Now that the second troll was at the head of the line, he didn't seem to like the order any better than the first had. Instead of waiting for the troll behind to push him, however, he shouted at his commander, then jumped as far as he could with his arms flailing as if they could carry him all the way to where we stood. They didn't, of course, and we watched as he passed out of sight, wailing the whole way down.

"What are they thinking?" my father said as the trolls continued to line up and jump. None of the trolls was getting anywhere near us, yet that didn't seem to deter their commanding troll. One by one they leaped and fell wailing onto the rocks below.