Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [68]
The trolls sped up the temple steps, jostling for first place. The two groups were approaching at right angles, both headed directly toward Holly. The leaders launched themselves from a distance, determined to get the first bite of the intruder. Their lips peeled back to reveal rows of carnivorous teeth, and their eyes focused solely on the target. And that was when Holly acted. She flicked the brightness setting to high and scorched the retinas of the two beasts while they were still in the air. With piercing howls, they swatted the hated light and crashed to the ground in a melee of arms, claws, tusks, and teeth. Each troll assumed he was being attacked by a rival group, and in seconds the scaffold’s base was a chaos of primal violence.
Holly took full advantage of the confusion, skipping lithely up the first three rungs of the metal structure. She clipped the tele-pod onto her belt so that it pointed downward like a rear gun. Not much protection, but better than nothing.
In moments, she had caught up with Artemis. The human boy’s breath was ragged and his progress was slow. A slow stream of blood dripped from the wound on his ankle. Holly could easily have passed him, but instead she hooked an arm through the bars of the ladder and checked on the troll situation. Just as well. One relatively little guy was scaling the bars with the agility of a mountain gorilla. His immature tusks barely jutted beyond his lips, but those tusks were sharp and venom gathered in beads along the tips. Holly turned the tele-screen on him, and he released his grip to shield his scorched eyes. An elf would have been smart enough to hang on with one hand and use the other forearm to shield the eyes, but trolls are not much farther up the IQ scale than stinkworms, and act almost completely on instinct.
The little troll tumbled back to earth, landing on the shaggy, writhing carpet below. He was instantly dragged into the brawl. Holly returned to the climb, feeling the tele-pod knock against her back. Artemis’s progress was painfully slow, and in less than a minute, she was tight at his shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
Artemis nodded, tight lipped. But his eyes were wide, on the verge of panic. Holly had seen that look before, on the faces of battle-stressed LEP officers. She needed to get the Mud Boy to safety before he lost his reason.
“Come on now, Artemis. Just a few more steps. We’re going to make it.”
Artemis closed his eyes for five seconds, breathing deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, they shone with a new resolve.
“Very well, Captain. I’m ready.”
Artemis reached above him for the next bar, hauling himself sixteen inches closer to salvation. Holly followed, urging him on like a drill sergeant.
It took a further minute to reach the roof itself. By this time the trolls had remembered what they were chasing, and had begun to scale the scaffolding. Holly dragged Artemis onto the slanted roof and they scampered on all fours toward its highest point. The plaster was white and unmarked. In the low light it seemed as though they were walking across a field of snow.
Artemis paused. The sight had awoken a vague memory. “Snow,” he said uncertainly. “I remember something . . .”
Holly caught his shoulder, dragging him forward. “Yes, Artemis. The Arctic, remember? We’ll discuss it at great length later, when there are no trolls trying to eat us.”
Artemis snapped back to the present. “Very well. Good tactic.”
The temple roof sloped upward at a forty-degree angle, toward the crystal orb that was the fake sun. The pair crawled as quickly as Artemis’s exhausted limbs would allow. A ragged trail of blood marked their path across the white plaster. The scaffold shook and banged against the roof as the trolls climbed ever closer.
Holly straddled the roof’s apex and reached up to the crystal sun. The surface was smooth beneath her fingers.
“D’Arvit!” she swore. “I can’t find the power port. There should be an external socket.”
Artemis crawled around the other side. He was not particularly afraid of heights, but even so, he