The Long War

like—’
    ‘Collectors?’
    ‘Something like that, yeah. Like nerds who collect comic books. Or like magpies, fascinated by human stuff, shiny gewgaws that they can steal and stare at but they never understand. There’s no logic to it, Joshua. It’s just about the stuff they want, that’s all. Once you understand that they’re not hard to handle. Big fecking ugly magpies with trousers on. That’s you, Finn McCool.’
    The kobold just grinned.
    ‘Well, I guess you know why we’re here, Finn McCool,’ Joshua said. ‘What we want. Where are the trolls? ’
    ‘You give—’
    ‘Cough up, you little gobshite,’ Bill snapped.
    Finn McCool hissed, and said grudgingly, ‘Trollen in here . But not here .’
    Joshua sighed. ‘Textbook enigmatic. Any time you want to jump in, Bill—’
    ‘Finn McCool. Are you saying the trolls are hiding out in a Joker?’
    ‘Not here .’
    ‘A Joker, but not this Joker. As I guessed. But which one?’
    Finn McCool seemed to Joshua to have no intention of answering.
    ‘That’s it?’ Joshua said. ‘That’s all we get out of you in return for that magnificent, umm, old tape?’
    Suddenly McCool stood straight. He sniffed the air with his flat, chimp-like muzzle, and laughed.
    ‘Joshua,’ Bill said urgently. ‘I detect nine, correction ten – no, eleven hotspots converging on you. I now have visual confirmation. Hmm.’
    Joshua spun around. A morning mist swirled now between the trees, and the stream was lost to view. Anything could be out there. Water dripped off the leaves of the trees. ‘What do you mean, hmm ? What do they look like?’
    ‘Well . . . Purposeful.’
    There was a flash of teeth, Finn McCool faded for an instant, and was gone. Joshua could have been wrong, but it seemed that McCool’s grin was the last bit of him to go.
    And out of the mists . . .
    The rising sun sent spears of reddish light across the grassland, and the altitude of this summit lent a faint chill to the breeze. A few shreds of mist stirred down among the trees that marked the stream.
    And there were shapes among the trees.
    They began as mere suggestions of motion in the mist, and then solidified. The general effect was of a wheel slowing from turbine speeds to stillness. When they were still—
    They were not much taller than a man, but the beanpole thinness gave an exaggerated impression of height. Their skin was greyish, and they wore their ash-blonde hair Afro-style. They could have passed muster in some of the badly lit discos Joshua had, if rarely, attended in his youth back in Madison.
    Except for the ears. Which were large and pointed, and constantly flicking back and forth as though seeking the faintest sounds. And except for the eyes, that glowed a very faint green. They carried long thin double-bladed weapons of wood – swords, for want of a better word. They weren’t yelling, or waving their weapons. They just looked quietly determined.
    Any child could have put a name to them. Elves . Not relatively friendly music-loving conversationalists like Finn McCool. The elves of nightmare.
    And they were closing on Joshua, from every direction.
    Joshua had nowhere to run. He had encountered various species of elves before. He knew that stepping wouldn’t help, not when faced with an enemy that was a better stepper than he was. His gun was somewhere in the scuffed-up sleeping bag. Only the radio was in reach, a plastic block the size of his fist. Not much of a weapon . . .
    The first elf to reach him brought back its sword for a killing arc – and hesitated, as if relishing the moment.
    Joshua, frozen to the spot, stared back. Close to, the creature looked like something out of a book on prehistory, though a Neanderthal would have considered it ugly. Its face was a network of wrinkles. It wore a short fur tunic, some sort of knapsack, and an expression of calculation. Maybe it was hesitating as it tried to work out which way he was going to step, so it could follow him and kill him anyway.
    All this in a heartbeat. Then Joshua’s reflexes took over.
    He ducked, grabbed the radio, and brought it around in a rapid swing that was interrupted by the elf’s jaw. Bits of glass and plastic erupted in a shower of golden sparks. As the elf staggered back, Joshua’s leg came up for the classic strike favoured by women’s self-defence teachers everywhere, and a high-pitched squeal of agony added to mankind’s tiny stock of anatomical knowledge of Long Earth humanoids.
    And