I selected a few choice words and muttered them to myself. “It would have saved us some effort if you’d mentioned this troll a little sooner, old timer. I’m afraid I don’t have any spells that will knock out a Mark II, once it’s got its dander up.”

He shook his head. “It lies under enchantment. I remember the day when it came, throwing thunderbolts. Many men were killed. Then the Baron commanded it to stand at his gates to guard him.”

“How long ago was this, old timer?”

He worked his lips over the question. “Long ago,” he said finally. “Many winters.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

We picked our way down the slope, came up along a rutted dirt road to the dark line of trees that rimmed the palace grounds. The old man touched my arm.

“Softly here. Maybe the Troll sleeps lightly…”

I went the last few yards, eased around a brick column with a dead lantern on top, stared across fifty yards of waist-high brush at a dark silhouette outlined against the palace lights.

Cables, stretched from trees outside the circle of weeds, supported a weathered tarp which drooped over the Bolo. The wreckage of a helicopter lay like a crumpled dragonfly at the far side of the ring. Nearer, fragments of a heavy car chassis lay scattered. The old man hovered at my shoulder.

“It looks as though the gate is off limits,” I hissed. “Let’s try farther along.”

He nodded. “No one passes here. There is a second gate, there.” He pointed. “But there are guards.”

“Let’s climb the wall between gates.”

“There are sharp spikes on top of the wall. But I know a place, farther on, where the spikes have been blunted.”

“Lead on, pop.”

Half an hour of creeping through wet brush brought us to the spot we were looking for. It looked to me like any other stretch of eight-foot masonry wall overhung with wet poplar trees.

“I’ll go first,” the old man said, “to draw the attention of the guard.”

“Then who’s going to boost me up? I’ll go first.”

He nodded, cupped his hands and lifted me as easily as a sailor lifting a beer glass. Pop was old—but he was nobody’s softie.

I looked around, then crawled up, worked my way over the corroded spikes, dropped down on the lawn.

Immediately I heard a crackle of brush. A man stood up not ten feet away. I lay flat in the dark trying to look like something that had been there a long time…

I heard another sound, a thump and a crashing of brush. The man before me turned, disappeared in the darkness. I heard him beating his way through shrubbery; then he called out, got an answering shout from the distance.

I didn’t loiter. I got to my feet and made a sprint for the cover of the trees along the drive.

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