The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [49]
A heavy arm knocked Newt in the head and he staggered, shaking the water out of his eyes. A salty liquid dripped into his mouth and he wiped the blood off his forehead with his free hand.
“Newt! Do something!” Ailis cried again.
“I’m trying,” he muttered, then circled around and made another jab at the troll from behind. The troll roared, its head turning to watch this new threat. Newt moved his blade, the sunlight catching against the metal and reflecting into the troll’s eyes.
“Come on, come on!” Newt taunted it, then swallowed hard when the troll let go of Gerard with one hand and reached wildly for him. Newt splashed backward, trying to keep out of reach without getting so far away that the troll would go back to Gerard.
On the bank of the stream, Ailis shoved the talisman under the nearest bush, then looked around wildly for something she could use to help in the fight. “Something. Anything.”
Grunts and muffled swears came from the water. Ailis wanted to hit something, she was so frustrated. She didn’t know anything about fighting, not really—just what one of the older servant girls had told her to do if a man ever tried to get too friendly when she didn’t want it. She didn’t think that would work on a troll. Her gaze suddenly fell on the side of the bridge where some of the stones had fallen out onto the ground.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Ailis scrambled down the muddy bank and sorted through the stones, trying to find one with the right weight and shape. She ended up with two possibilities. Leaving one within easy reach at her feet, Ailis picked the other up in both hands, then judged the distance between herself and the three figures in the water.
“Don’t think,” she told herself. “Line up the shot and then do it.” Don’t think. She took a deep breath, judged the distance again, and then shifted the stone into one hand and put all of her strength into the throw.
There was an odd whistling noise and the troll staggered. Through the water in his ears, Gerard thought he heard Ailis whooping. With the part of his brain that could still think, he wondered what she was doing still there, why she hadn’t run already. Get the talisman out of here, he thought at her, as though she could hear him. We’re not important, the talisman is! Then the troll pressed its burly, scaled arm against his throat, and even that bit of thought fled. Lacking anything else to do in retaliation, Gerard craned his neck forward and bit the nearest available troll-flesh hard.
Newt heard Ailis’s scream of victory. But there was no time to look and see what she had done—the troll was off balance; if he didn’t take advantage of it, they’d be taking Gerard back to Camelot on a funeral bier.
Crouching as best he could in the hip-deep water, Newt slid and twisted somehow, drawing on every rough-and-tumble fight he’d ever had—not only with other boys but with the hounds he had cared for as well. And as he slid and twisted, his arm moved almost independently, the hand holding the dagger stabbing upward, not to where the troll’s stomach was now but where it was going to be by the time Newt finished moving.
He felt the blade make contact with the troll’s upper thigh, slicing into the skin with only minimal resistance. The troll let out another horrible yell, like something was stuck and dying in its throat, and tried to swipe at Newt, who was still moving and already out of reach.
The stagger and the distraction were enough for Gerard, however, to escape the troll’s chokehold and flip the creature onto its back. His muscles straining under his wet jerkin, Gerard did his best to hold the beast under the water, trying to drown it. Newt came back around, pulled the blade from the troll’s leg and shoved it, point first, into the fleshy skin under the creature’s rock-hard chin and rucked it around until he was rewarded with a steady spurting of thick troll blood.
“Is it dead?” Newt asked, gasping. A sudden surge in the troll’s body answered him. Newt added his strength to Gerard’s, trying to keep the creature’s head underwater.