Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel by Matthew Reilly

people as payment for a sample of the Elixir. He did not ask for water or food or even a barrel of the magic drink. Just a single small bottle.”
    Raf saw the scene in his mind. Bader had come here not to save the tribe from the illness at all. He had only come to save his own sister. And he had brought along the three porters not as assistants but as unsuspecting sacrificial offerings.
    The king leered at Raf, his huge troll mouth salivating. “I saw little honor in this Northman prince named Bader so I ate his porters anyway and threw him and his fellow princes in my cells to contemplate their treachery.”
    Raf said nothing.
    The king’s eyes narrowed. “But you, thief, you are not like him. You came here alone, under the cover of night, and you scaled an entire mountain to steal my Elixir. Were it not for my own precautions, you might have succeeded. No, you are motivated by a far more dangerous emotion than your prince was: the desire to save others. You … are a hero.”
    The king raised his chin. “Trolls! Today, as you know, is a special day, the day of my son’s wedding. And so, as a wedding gift, I will give this hero to my son, Turv”—the king nodded to the tall red-robed troll at his right hand, who, Raf noted, also wore a grim fingerbone necklace plus a bone-sword at his waist made from a human leg—“as his matrimonial meal. While not as succulent as the meat of a child or a woman, the tough sinew of a hero will bring Turv that hero’s strength.”
    The crowd of trolls gasped and then applauded vigorously. This was an astonishing gift: captured enemy warriors were usually eaten only by the king himself.
    “Tonight,” the king announced, “at the wedding banquet for Turv and his bride, Graia, this thief will be ritually killed and his bones served bloody and fresh to Turv! Until then, put him in the cage, so I may look upon him throughout the day!”
    Raf was led to a small iron cage that hung from a great chain. He was locked inside it and hoisted aloft, high above the floor of the hall for all to see: the live prisoner who would become that evening’s celebratory meal.

Chapter 19
    For the remainder of that day, Raf sat forlornly in his cage, watching the trolls prepare for the evening’s feast.
    Draggers hauled great stone sleds into the hall from a side door on the eastern side. On those sleds were baskets of food, and jugs of water and mead.
    While the draggers toiled, the king and his courtiers drank and laughed. By mid-afternoon, some had already passed out on the floor. At one point, the two little hobgoblin jesters drew laughs from the king’s cronies by throwing fruit at Raf.
    Shortly after that, Raf saw the bride and her mother enter the hall. The bride’s mother was a big heavy-boned she-troll dressed in the kind of brown sack-cloth that seemed to be worn by most of the troll women. She walked with a purposeful stride and ignored the catcalls from the drunken males up near the throne.
    The bride beside her could not have been more different from her mother. She was smaller and walked with a shy hunch, and she wore a sack-cloth that was far whiter than those worn by the other she-trolls. The unruly trolls nudged and elbowed Turv at the sight of her, behaving—it seemed to Raf—like immature boys.
    And then it struck Raf: this she-troll was Graia, the she-troll Düm had beseeched the troll prince Turv not to marry.
    Having witnessed the way troll society operated, Raf could see now what an outrageous thing Düm’s approach to Turv had been: a lowly dragger questioning a prince.
    Outrageous, but also brave. Düm might have been slow-witted, but he must have known such an approach was loaded with peril.
    *
    Late in the afternoon a commotion arose at the side door to the hall.
    A crowd of trolls gathered there started oohing and ahing.
    Raf looked that way—
    —to see a pair of figures emerge from the throng of trolls and approach the king’s throne.
    Raf gripped the bars of his