R. Salvatore - The Ancient

“Here’s for hoping that one or more got away to warn their friends and set them all about us,” Mcwigik grumbled. “Sure to be the only way we’re to find any fightin’ this day!”

“Aye, the tall ones’ll run all the way through Badden’s door,” Bikelbrin, at Mcwigik’s side, lamented.

Bransen glanced at Milkeila and Cormack, the three of them understanding that they were the only ones among this group who hoped the prediction would prove true.

And Bransen, who had been at Badden’s camp, who had seen the hundreds of trolls and the giants there, knew it to be an unrealistic hope, and one that would soon enough be destroyed.

They ran over another group of trolls soon after. A volley of Alpinadoran spears flew out to the east soon after that, taking down a pair of scouts.

The barbarian horde didn’t even slow to retrieve the missiles.

Good fortune gave Bransen and his companions a fine vantage point as the real battle commenced. The path wound down and around a huge outcropping before spilling onto the glacier, and the powrie contingent, Bransen’s trio among them, was up high and still back of the stone when the leading Alpindorans swept onto the ice like a breaking wave, washing over those nearest trolls before smashing into a more coordinated defensive formation. Spears crisscrossed in midair, with the trolls taking the brunt of it, as their spears were too small and light to get through the Alpinadoran wicker and leather shields.

The Alpinadoran warriors poured over the front troll ranks, their towering line of broad-shouldered men and women, most well over six feet in height, dwarfing the diminutive, light-featured trolls.

But the trolls did not break and flee, and those in the back scrambled all over each other trying to get to the front ranks and into the fight. Like a horde of rats, they leaped and bit and scratched and kicked, flailing so wildly that they were as likely to strike their own as they were to hit their enemies.

More barbarians swept onto the glacier, lengthening the line and filling in the holes as some of their kin fell away.

In the back, watching from on high, Milkeila chewed her bottom lip, her knuckles whitening about the handle of the stone axe she carried.

“They are winning,” Cormack pointed out to her, and draped an arm across her sturdy shoulder.

“Yach, but we’re not to even get to the ice afore the fight’s done,” Mcwigik complained.

“Aye, and all that fine spilled blood’ll seep into the cracks by then,” added Pergwick, he and the young Ruggirs hopping over to join Mcwigik and Bikelbrin and the humans. “Or mixed with the scraped and melted ice to be even thinner!”

“Come on, ye bleating sheep,” another dwarf called, and as they turned to regard the shouter, he waved them his way. Apparently they weren’t the only ones concerned that the fight would end before their arrival, for before that yelling dwarf, a line of powries was going over the ledge and out of sight, picking their way, the group learned when they got to the spot, down a steep but climbable descent that would get them out onto the glacier just to the south of the Alpinadoran position.

Glancing over the ledge and following the line of powries climbing down (with amazing deftness, he thought, given their short limbs), Bransen could pick out the point of demarcation. Few trolls stood in that area of the glacier, focused far more heavily to the north and the barbarians.

For a brief moment, Bransen’s eyes flashed wickedly, wondering if the enemy had left open a flank they might exploit.

But as the leading powrie dropped down the last few feet to land upon the ice, Bransen’s excitement turned to dread.

A rain of heavy, large stones complemented the dwarf’s arrival. The northern, left flank, far from open, had been charged to the giants, half a dozen of the behemoths, standing tall now behind a wall of ice blocks that had obscured their position. With their light, bluish skin, white hair, and wrappings of white fur, they blended well with their shiny and eye-stinging environment, but that camouflage did nothing to diminish their overwhelming aura of strength now that they had been spotted.

Bransen started to call the dwarves back up, but stopped, stunned, as they seemed more excited and eager to get down than they had before the giants had risen up.

“Giants!” Bransen pleaded with those dwarves around him, a call seconded by Cormack.

“Bah, them ain’t giants,” Mcwigik said with a howl.

“Not like the giants we got on the Julianthes,” Bikelbrin added, using the powrie name for the Weathered Isles, their Mirianic Ocean homeland.

“Not half,” Mcwigik agreed, “but I’m betting their blood runs thick!”

That was all the others had to hear, and Pergwick and Ruggirs nearly tumbled from the ledge as they fought and scrambled over each other to get to the descent. After the dwarfish tumble rolled away, the three humans stepped up to the ledge.

“You do not seem convinced of your course,” Cormack remarked to Bransen, and the Highwayman smiled at his own inability to keep his emotions from his face.

“I came here to buy freedom for myself and my family,” he replied honestly. “Badden’s head for a journey south.”

“We’ll make sure that you get the foul one’s head, then,” Milkeila assured him.

Bransen snickered. “All who came north with me are lost. Either dead or trapped in that castle. Dame Gwydre would not refuse me my reward even should I return now, before the task is complete.”

“But Badden must be stopped,” Cormack said.

Bransen looked at him skeptically.

“Do you deny his evilness?” said Cormack.

“Not his, not that of your Church. Not of the lairds-not one of them,” said Bransen.

Cormack stiffened at that poignant reminder of the lack of familiarity between them.

“Then you agree that he, Badden, is worth killing,” said Milkeila, her voice taking on a distinctively sharper edge.

Bransen looked at her carefully, his expression measured, and caught somewhere between amusement and condescension. “That is not the question. The question is: Is Badden worth dying over?”

Below them, the powries encountered a group of trolls and the fight was on. “He is,” said Cormack, and he started over the ledge, moving swiftly down the steep decline. Milkeila shot a disappointed look Bransen’s way and followed.

Bransen passed them easily, using his Jhesta Tu training and his marvelous control of his body to run down the cliff.

Despoilment, Inevitability, and Questionable Triumph

By the time Bransen got down to the ice shelf, most of the trolls were either down or scattering and more than half of the powrie contingent was already in a full sprint to the edge of the chasm just south of their position. Both their courage and commitment stunned Bransen, for not only were they charging headlong into the waiting giants, but they were putting themselves into a position where they would be afforded one less avenue of retreat, where, if the battle went badly, they would find no escape.

It wasn’t stupidity, or ignorance of battle techniques, that launched them to the chasm, Bransen knew. They weren’t going to retreat. They were either taking the fight right to Badden’s castle across the way, or they were going to die trying.

His surprise and confusion over their level of commitment nearly cost Bransen his life, as a troll spear flew in for his side. At the last moment, and with the prompting of a cry from Milkeila, the Highwayman half turned and snapped a backhand against the spear, just below its stone head. The force of the blow flipped the light spear into a near-right-angled turn, and the nimble Bransen flipped his hand and snatched it from the air, his legs moving perfectly to catch up to his shifting shoulders.