The Trouble with Weasels Page 9

  I fought my way through the goop to the king as well. “Your Highness. We came to help, but I fear we’ve fallen victims ourselves. I’m terribly sorry.”

  The king turned away as I saw his eyes well up. He stayed that way for a minute, sniffing loudly.

  “I don’t cry for myself, furry one.” He turned back around. “I had come to terms with being eaten. Oh, but that it were only me. I fear the four men I arrived with were already made into a large Kingsmen Pot Pie. A horrible business.”

  That made me shudder.

  “Listen. King Cheznott. If we’re going to die here, I want to thank you. On behalf of my family. Since I can remember, my parents have gushed about you and all you’ve done for trollkind.” I heard the prince make a disgusted noise behind me.

  A sad smile crawled across the king’s face.

  “Well, I appreciate that. If we get out of this mess, I give you my word I’ll do more. Trolls are good people in my book.”

  We stood there nodding our heads for a minute or so.

  I looked over at Kevin, who was wide-eyed and shivering.

  “Hey Kev. You okay?” I sidled over and nudged him.

  Chester had waded over as well. “I could tell a few jokes. Maybe lighten the mood a bit?”

  Kevin looked at him sideways. “I thintherely with you wouldn’t.”

  Chester was undeterred. “C’mon.”

  Kevin snapped. “Cut it out, Chethter! Not now. Ethpethially right now! I’d rather not go to my death with one of your thtupid jokths rattling around in my head!” I’d never seen Kevin like this.

  Chester looked a bit hurt. “Fine. But don’t come crawling to me for the punch line later.”

  At that point, my troll nose picked up the smell of smoke. I spun around and saw, on the other side of the room, a group of Snuffweasels lighting a fire under a huge cast-iron cauldron.

  Oh, that wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  I took a good look around, and what I saw was pretty alarming. Scattered around the room were tables carved out of rock. One table held what looked like a meat grinder and a long string of sausage links—which made me gulp audibly.

  I was trying not to think about what that sausage was made from when I got a face full of balsamic juice.

  I looked over, disbelieving, to find the prince giving me his best innocent look.

  He had a little trickle of marinade below his lip. Apparently his dad had looked away and he’d spit it at me.

  “SERIOUSLY?” I shouted at him. “NOW?? You’re even an immature little snot NOW??”

  He looked at his dad. “I have no idea what this troll is yammering about.” Then he turned back and gave me one of his greasiest smiles.

  I swiped out with my leg and knocked the prince’s feet out from under him. And under he went.

  The king looked up at me, surprised. I looked back, expecting to get royally (literally!) chewed out. But then a small smile flashed across his face—so fast, I almost missed it. “He deserved that. Now help him up.”

  I reached out with my leg again, this time to give the prince something to hold on to. He righted himself and once again came up sputtering and gasping for air.

  “TROLL!” he shouted once he’d found his footing. “You will regret this day, you filthy, hairy—” He abruptly stopped.

  I followed his line of vision. Standing behind me at the edge of the vat were two of the larger Snuffweasels.

  They were clearly deciding which one of us to cook first. Their eyes lingered on Kevin for a bit—who started drooling and frothing at the mouth and rolling his eyes around in his head.

  “What are you doing??” I whispered, confused.

  “Hopefully I’m making them think I have Mad Pig ditheathe.”

  As those weasels kept pointing at Kevin and licking their chops, my blood started to boil. I felt my ears go hot, and I heard that familiar low growl start up in my throat.

  But I also remembered my gramps’s advice about channeling my anger. I needed to do things right this time. So I let it simmer, as best I could—just in case it could help at the right moment. It felt like having a secret weapon in my pocket.

  The two cooks suddenly changed their minds. One pointed at the king and before we knew what was happening, they had netted the king and were pulling him out of the vat.

  Roquefort, understandably, freaked out. “NNNOOO!!! Not my dad!!”

  But the Snuffweasels had flopped the good and honorable king down on a table covered in flour and bread crumbs and were beginning to roll him back and forth. I realized with a jolt that they were breading him like a pork chop.

  The king was bravely calling out to his son, yelling through the occasional mouth full of breading. “You can do it, son! If you get out . . . out of here, you can rule Notswin in my stead!” He sneezed as one of the weasels ground some pepper over him. “You can be a good and kind king!”

  Yeah. Right.

  The indignity of that pepper and the unbearable idea of Roquefort being king again were the final straw. And that, friends, is when I let my inner Furry Fury out of his cage. In my head I pictured a funnel, pushing all of that power into the exact place I needed it. I bore down, thinking about all of my Belford ancestors before me—and with all of my troll rage and all of my troll strength, I pushed against the ropes around me.

  When the ropes broke, it was with a noise like a shot. They went flying. The rest of the weasels turned at the sound, and came toward the vat. I started untying Kevin, since I thought he might be next on the breading table—but the knot was so tight, I was just going to have to pull it apart with good old TrollPower ©.

  “Kevin, I need to break the others’ ropes! As soon as you’re loose, go straight for the chef. You need to attack!”

  Kevin was dumbfounded. “WHAAAT?”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, Kevin.” I could see the rope starting to give way where I was pulling at it. “Snuffweasels taste just like mutton. It’s a little-known fact. So I need you to channel every ounce of your love for mutton, and go gnaw on some of that sweet, sweet Snuffweasel meat.”

  He stared back for just a moment as his ropes snapped and fell away. I think he realized I was completely full of it, but he suddenly got a steely look in his eye, took a deep breath, and leaped out of the liquid.

  Several Snuffweasels grabbed at him, but he slipped through their paws like . . . like a greased pig. The weasel in the apron was now carrying the king across the cave to the cauldron. In three bounds, Kevin was on him, clamping down on his furry shin with a loud crunch. The cook dropped the king and howled like . . . well, he howled like there was a pig chewing on his leg.

  I quickly popped the ropes on Chester, the prince, and the two ogres. Buddy and the other one wasted no time in tackling three weasels between the two of them.

  I turned, and like the well-trained fish-slapper I am, started slapping dead fish out of the vat—right at the approaching weasels. I never realized how good my aim was, but I was hitting bull’s-eyes every time. The fish were slamming into the weasels’ faces and those that didn’t just go sprawling were left staggering around wiping the stinging goo out of their eyes. I slapped fish until there were only vegetables left. Then I slapped vegetables.

  My projectiles ran out, and I was jumping out of the vat when Chester yelled after me. “What do I do? We don’t have our weapons!”

  I landed with a splat.

  He reached down into the back of his pants and pulled out—I kid you not—that stupid rubber chicken he always carried around. He started swinging it around over his head and ran off into the action.

  I ran to a table and grabbed a string of several large, heavy sausages. I swung them around a few times—perfect nunchuck substitutes.

  I spun arou
nd and clubbed the nearest weasel on the ear. That was when I heard Chester yell at the top of his lungs.

  I turned around to glare at him. “Seriously? That’s what you came up with?”

  Chester, standing there with the rubber chicken hanging from his hand, spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth, as if the Snuffweasels could understand us. “I’m ‘Using My Strengths,’ nimrod,” he whispered, making air quotes with his fingers.

  But I wasn’t the only one who had stopped what he was doing. Every Snuffweasel in the room had come to an abrupt halt. It was like in an old film when someone scratches the needle off of a record. They were all staring at Chester, except the chef, who was still struggling to get Kevin’s teeth out of his shin meat.

  · 31 ·

  KNOCK, KNOCK

  “Nok-Nok?” one of the weasels said quietly, looking to one of its buddies.

  Chester looked uncomfortable under the gaze of the entire room, but he said it again. “Knock . . . knock?”

  The weasels all started looking around nervously at each other, their eyes getting wider. “Nok-Nok?”

  Now I’d seen everything. Were they afraid of knock-knock jokes? Or had Chester’s reputation for unfunniness even made its way to the weasel world? Whatever it was, it had sketched them out pretty badly.

  “Knock, knock,” I yelled, and one of the weasels turned to me with its paws out, as if to say “Easy, buddy.”

  “Start yelling it!” I cried to the others. “They don’t like it.”

  And so, sounding like a bunch of idiots, Chester, Kevin, the ogres, the king, and I all started yelling at the top of our lungs, “Knock, knock! Knock, knock!” I ran over to that hole in the wall with the arrow and yelled into it as loud as I could. It made the ground shake, and a few of those stalactite/stalagmite things came crashing down.

  Complete chaos took over. It was as if our words were stinging the weasels’ ears. They ran around like they were in a Three Stooges movie, babbling and slamming into each other. Then they started racing out of the hole in the back of the cave.

  One brave one took a final swipe at me as he passed and I meat-chucked it across the back of the head. It fell in a crumpled heap.

  And then . . . just like that, they were gone.

  “Everybody okay?” I asked, panting, my hair all fuzzed out like a Chia pet.

  “NO!” Kevin was starting to shake. “NO, I’M PRETTY MUCH THE OPPOTHITE OF OKAY!!” Chester had his hands on his knees, his head down. The king, shaken, was making his way over to us on wobbly legs, wiping breading out of his eyes.

  “We did it,” I said quietly. It wasn’t a yell of victory. We were too tired for that. Too out of breath. But Buddy the ogre looked up from where he sat on the ground and gave me a tired high five.

  There was some more panting and gasping for air before the king quietly spoke up.

  “Where’s my son?”

  I spun around to find the prince, but he was gone. The only sign of him was a trail of tiny sauce footprints that led out of the cave. He’d fled. Typical.

  * * *

  The prince’s footsteps led out of the same opening through which the Snuffweasels had fled. We all ran that way and found ourselves moving down a rocky corridor. About halfway down, we stumbled over a pile of our weapons and backpacks. We grabbed our weapons of choice and moved on at a run. I was in the lead when I saw sun-lit sand and heard the crashing of waves.

  At the opening of the cave, I froze. The others plowed into the back of me, but I didn’t budge. It took my (admittedly slow) brain a moment to register what I was looking at.

  We had come out into a small inlet. High walls of rock surrounded the beach. The sun was just clearing the horizon.

  There in the sand, maybe ten feet in front of me, was the prince. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back and frozen in place. Maybe ten feet beyond him was the largest Lava Dragon I had ever laid eyes on. I swear to you it was the length of a football field from head to tail. A fire-breathing 747 with feet.

  A small trickle of fire and smoke would occasionally drift up from its nostril. Scattered around its feet were a number of Snuffweasel bodies. Some were bent in unnatural ways. Others looked singed, and if you think burnt hair smells bad, burnt Snuffweasel hair is a new, epic kind of disgusting. I heard Kevin behind me.

  “Oh, I really can’t take much more of thith. No, thir.”

  The prince let out a tiny whimper and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth. “I think this is Knock-Knock. I’d like to thank you morons ever so much for calling out to him over and over again.”

  “What?” I asked. “How would that even—”

  At that moment, the dragon opened its mouth like a huge, fanged garage door, and let out two insanely loud roars. They shook the rock walls around us, and sounded for all the world like “GNAAAAWK GNAAAAWK!!!”

  I heard Chester behind me, talking under his breath so quietly, I could barely hear him. “Okay . . . That sure as heck sounded like ‘Knock-Knock.’”

  The dragon let go with two even louder roars that really did sound an awful lot like the beginning of a knock-knock joke. We all felt a blast of heat and smelled what had to be roasted Snuffweasel on its breath. My mouth fell open and I felt my sword drop out of my numb fingers. The prince spoke again, quietly.

  So this was what the Snuffweasels had been freaking out about. I heard nervous chittering and realized they were cowering behind boulders all around us.

  I was bending down to pick up my sword when a shadow fell over us. The tail of the giant dragon swung around like a whip. It violently slammed into everyone but me, grazing the top of my hair.

  Everyone was hit, but Kevin and Chester took the brunt of it. They both flew about ten feet before smashing into the walls of the cove—where they crumpled to the ground like rag dolls. Seeing my friends broken and discarded like that was like a knife to my heart—and what pumped out was a hot kind of troll blood like I had never felt. I jumped back into the opening of the cave to dodge the tail as it came back around. I was beyond furious. I was a hurricane of hate aimed straight at that dragon . . . and when it came back the next time, I was going to be ready.

  I assumed the fight stance the Knoble Knight had taught me. I held the sword in the Western grip he’d shown me. I felt the blood pumping through my veins, giving me strength, and it felt good. It felt RIGHT.

  The tail smashed into the cave entrance, rocks exploding everywhere. I jumped forward with all my strength and all of my anger and planted my sword to the hilt. Holding on took every bit of TrollPower© I could muster, but there was no way I was letting go. I was pulled free of the cave and lifted into the sky as I hiked a leg over the tail and held on for dear life. The ground rushed away from me.

  The dragon was roaring so loud it shook the air around me like it was made of Jell-O. Old Knock-Knock’s attention was no longer on the prince, that was for sure. I saw the royal squirt on the beach below me, hightailing it for cover behind a pile of driftwood.

  The dragon was spinning in circles and snapping at me like a dog chasing its tail. It almost got me on one pass. One of its dagger-sized teeth grazed my leg and opened a six-inch gash.

  Holding on with my legs, I yanked out the sword and started chopping at that tail like some lunatic beaver trying to take down a tree. A big, scaly, lava-spewing tree. I put everything I had into the hacking, and let out a yell of pure rage. I’m not sure what I yelled, and I may have sounded like a psychotic marshdevil—but I didn’t care.

  Now, keep in mind that I was half out of my gourd with anger, okay . . . but have you ever seen a cartoon where a person cuts off the limb of a tree, and they cut off the part they happen to be sitting on? And they fall? Yeah. I did that with the tail. Like I’ve said, trolls aren’t rocket scientists.

 
I rode the severed end of the tail like a bucking bronco as it fell to the beach. And when I hit the ground, I hit hard. Really hard. Like, I-couldn’t-move hard.

  I was lying there trying to catch my breath when I suddenly had a furious skyscraper of a Lava Dragon in my face. I couldn’t sit up. Couldn’t even slither backward.

  A huge glob of lava drool fell from one of the mo

  nster’s lips and landed an inch from my head. It sizzled into the sand, throwing off heat like a furnace.

  Then, and I swear on a stack of Knoble Knight comics this is true, the dragon spoke. It spoke!

  To give you some idea of how startling this was— a talking dragon—imagine how you’d feel if your refrigerator started dancing around the kitchen singing “Happy Birthday.” That’s how stunned I was when this monster piped up.

  “TROLLLLLLL.” How can I explain that voice? It was so deep, it sounded like a cross between Darth Vader’s voice and someone farting through a tuba. The vibrations shook my innards like Jell-O, and I suddenly felt light-headed. “PATHETIC, LOWLY TROLL. YOU THINK YOU CAN BEST MEEE?”

  I mustered up every ounce of bravery and anger left in me. “I’m not sure. But I’m willing to die trying.”

  “OH,” it boomed in response, “THAT CAN BE ARRANGED.”

  The dragon opened its mouth insanely wide. I’d seen a show on Dragon Week on the Animal Channel and knew this wasn’t a good thing. I was about to get incinerated in a gusher of lava. I could see the nasty-looking lava tube in the back of the dragon’s mouth start to jiggle and quiver as the hot liquid made its way up from the creature’s insides.