It was Juliet’s voice. Ordering the murder of her own brother.
As battle veterans know all too well, the urge to look at the instrument of your own death is almost overpowering. Holly felt that pull now, to sit up and watch the arrows as they arced toward their targets. But she resisted it, forcing herself down, squashing herself and Artemis into the walkway so the corrugated steel pressed into their cheeks.
Four-foot-long arrows punched through the fuselage, rocking the plane on its gear and embedding themselves deep in the seating upholstery. One was so close to Holly that it actually passed through her epaulette, pinning her to the seat.
“D’Arvit,” said Holly, yanking herself free.
“Fire!” came the command from outside, and instantly a series of whistles filled the air.
It sounds like birds, thought Holly.
But it wasn’t birds. It was a second volley. Each arrow battered the aircraft, destroying solar panels; one even passed clean through two portholes. The craft was driven sideways, tilting onto the starboard wing.
And yet again the command came. “Fire!” But she heard no whistling noise this time. Instead there was a sharp crackling.
Holly surrendered to her curiosity, clambering up the slanted floor to the porthole and peeping out. Juliet was lighting the terra-cotta soldiers’ arrows.
Oh, thought Holly. That kind of fire.
Bellico squinted into the barn’s interior and was pleased to see the airplane keeled over. Her host’s memory assured her that this craft had indeed flown through the sky using the energy of the sun to power its engine, but Bellico found this difficult to believe. Perhaps the human’s dreams and recollections were becoming intertwined, so that to Bellico daydreams and figments would seem real.
The sooner I am out of this body, the better, she thought.
She wound a torch from a hank of hay and lit the tip with a lighter taken from the human girl’s pocket.
This lighter is real enough, she thought. And not too far removed in its mechanics from a simple flint box.
A straw torch would not burn for long, but long enough to light her warriors’ arrows. She walked along the ranks, briefly touching the arrowheads that had been soaked in fuel from a punctured gasoline can.
Suddenly the hound raised its sleek head and barked at the moon.
Bellico was about to ask the dog what the matter was, but then she felt it too.
I am afraid, she realized. Why would I be afraid of anything when I long for death?
Bellico dropped the torch as it was burning her fingers, but, in the second before she stamped on its dying embers, she thought she saw something familiar storming across the field to the east. An unmistakable lurching shape.
No, she thought. That is not possible.
“Is that…?” she said, pointing. “Could that be?”
The hound managed to wrap its vocal cords around a single syllable that wasn’t too far out of its doggy range. “Troll!” it howled. “Trooooollll.”
And not just a troll, Bellico realized. A troll and its rider.
Mulch Diggums was clamped to the back of the troll’s head with a hank of dreadlocks in each hand. Beneath him the troll’s shoulder muscles bunched and released as it loped across the field toward the barn.
Loped is perhaps the wrong word, as it implies a certain slow awkwardness, but while the troll did appear to shamble, it did so at incredible speed. This was one of the many weapons in a troll’s considerable arsenal. If the intended prey noticed a troll coming from a long way off, seemingly bumbling along, it thought to itself: Okay, yeah I see a troll, but he’s like a million miles away, so I’m just gonna finish off chewing this leaf, then—BAM—the troll was chewing off the prey’s hind leg.
Bellico, however, had often seen the troll-rider brigade in action, and she knew exactly how fast a troll could move.
“Archers!” she yelled, drawing her sword. “New target. Turn! Turn!”
The terra-cotta army creaked as they moved, red sand sifting from their joints. They were slow, painfully slow.
They are not going to make it, Bellico realized, and then she had a grasping-at-straws moment. Perhaps that troll and its rider are on our side.
Sadly for the Berserkers, the troll rider was most definitely not on their side, and the troll was just doing what he was told.