Blood in the Snow
Brelinda huddled on the opposite side of the snowdrift from her enemies. She gathered her cloak, dyed white to blend in with the icy terrain around her, against the chill wind. One of her against four of them and they were nearly three times her size...She liked the odds.
She had trained hard with Tane over the last two years, a man known for his specialty in fighting creatures far larger than him. He had built a reputation from the coast of the Tanaris deserts to the frozen lands of Winterspring. If a town had a problem with anything from ogres to giants, Tane was the man to hire, if you could afford it.
It hadn't taken Brelinda long to find the man, not when compared to how long it had taken her to raise enough money so she could hire him.
The warrior had begun his career as a soldier in the Second War, but it was in leading a group in the Third War that he earned his reputation by engaging the enormous infernals, gigantic golems of stone and fel fire, that the demon army brought to bear on the races of Azeroth.
Like many veterans of the wars against the original horde and the Burning Legion, Tane frequented the Pig and Whistle in a rundown section of Stormwind. The tavern was a common haunt of older soldiers who would gather to exchange memories of the wars.
When Brelinda had entered the tavern, a silence had fallen over the room. It was clear that she was out of place and that the regulars were not keen on her intrusion into their tavern.
She had nearly walked away under the force of their collective gaze, but she had come such a long ways. The same drive that had carried her across leagues of harsh terrain, hitching rides with trade caravans and digging for information on the swordmaster, also carried her step by step across the creaking floorboards of the tavern's common room and gave her the tunnel vision she needed to ignore the ridicule from those around her.
The red-haired innkeeper, Maegan, had initially asked Brelinda if she were lost, but then pointed her towards the her goal
She found Tane sitting at a table talking with two other veterans. The rough, burn scared, flesh that ran along his left jaw line made it clear which one of the three she was looking for from descriptions she had heard of him during her travels.
When she explained she was seeking to apprentice herself to him, he had laughed and called it out to his fellows. In a heartbeat the silent stares that had followed her though the room gave way to peals of laughter and jibes at her expense.
With her jaw clenched in determination, she tossed the bag of coins on the table. The pouch did not contain every coin she had but it was close. She had the forethought to retain what she hoped would be enough for the purchase of equipment, lodging and food. Everything else was now sitting on the table in front of grizzled sell sword.
Money couldn't buy her this man's respect, Brelinda knew that, but it could buy her his attention long enough that she felt she could earn it.
Now, as she sat in the cold, she looked back on her training. Every coin she had invested had been well worth it.
The training had been long and hard, but she hadn't complained.
Within a fortnight, she had convinced him of her dedication to learning what he had to teach. In a month, she had swayed him enough that he stopped acting as if her training were a joke.
By the end of a season, she had joined him in pushing back a band of kobolds that were encroaching on the farming lands of North Shire. That had been her first battle. She had been terrified and exhilarated all at once. Finally, she had an outlet for the rage she carried with her for so long. It was not the felling of giants, but it was all the same to her.
After that, it had been bandits on the road between Stormwind and the nearby town of Goldshire. Them they were routing a camp of gnolls near the western edge of Elwynn forest that had been raiding near the Stonefield family farm.
The worst had been when she had accompanied him against some murlocs. It had been at river running along the southern Elwynn border. The smell of the humanoid fish was bad enough, but the worst part had been looking across that river at the edge of the area called Duskwood. Something about that place had sent a chill down her spine.
It turned that out that giants were a rare thing to encounter. Despite his reputation for being the best man to call against them, Tane could count number of times he was hired for such things on his fingers. The largest opponent Brelinda faced during her time at his side was an ogre that some local thugs recruited to help them run a protection racket in Westfall, but it was all the same to her, at least she was fighting.
Under Tane's tutelage, she learned to use speed and cunning to compensate for lack of raw strength. He had taught her to take the pent up rage she had over losing her home, her friends, her family, and focus it into a honed edge.
"Anger is a weapon, just like a sword," he had told her as they sat by the campfire one night, "It adds power to your strikes, and allows you to do what you have to when others would shy away. The thing is, if you swing a sword wildly you run the risk of hurting yourself with it, or innocent people around you. Throwing you rage around without control is just as risky."
He told her that he had seen the way orcs gave way to their rage on a battlefield. It made them fierce opponents, but it he also seen it blind them to any threat that wasn't their immediate target. The best tactic he had seen against them had been for one soldier to hold the focus of their rage while a second blindsided them, and chided her never to be so consumed by her own inner turmoil that she lost sight of what was threatening her from without.
She remembered that fire fondly now. She rubbed her gloved hands together against the chill; numb fingers could not hold a weapon as well.
Slowly, silently, she drew the two swords she wore at her hips.
"A shield is pointless against a giant," Tane shrugged when she asked why he fought with two weapons instead of the usual sword and shield style, "They are strong enough to pound you right through it. All a shield did, in those cases, was weigh you down and make you a slower moving target."
In her mind, she ran once more through her plan of attack and possible alternatives should the enemy not act as she expected as she began applying a layer of oil to her blades.
Puffs of fog accompanied her breath as she muttered Tane's thee F's of combat quietly to herself, "Forethought, Ferocity and Fastness."
She grinned as she recalled telling him that "Fastness" wasn't a real word. He had merely shrugged and replied that "Speed" did not start with an F so "Fastness would have to do.
With one last deep breath to steady her nerves, she tightened her grip on the wire wrapped hilts of her swords and sprang to her feet.
She heard one of the trolls call out a warning to its fellows as she hurled herself headlong towards the center of the group.
The first troll reached down towards her. As he did, she tucked and rolled, her diminutive size allowing her to pass easily between his legs.
She felt no intimidation at this eight-foot creature towering above her own three-foot tall body.
As she came to her feet behind the huge creature, she plunged her blades into the campfire then drew her right hand sword across his hamstring as she spun back on him, taking satisfaction the resultant howl of pain.
Trolls were normally capable of rapidly regenerating wounds dealt to them, but thetflames dancing along Brelinda's weapons from the ignited oil would slow that process considerably.
This was why she had sought Tane as her teacher. He specialized in fighting giants, and to a gnome like herself, practically EVERYONE was a giant.
As the troll dropped to one knee, the severed tendon in his leg no longer supporting his weight, she kicked him face first into the snow and stepped onto his back.
Her hood fell back and her shoulder length red hair was blew about her in the freezing wind, as she let out a battle cry far larger than her small size would seem to be capable of producing.
She brought her left blade in a clean arc to sever the creatures head before turning to take inventory of her surroundings.
She had dropped the first troll quickly, but the other three had produced spears and were now forming a triangle around her, waiting as the oil on her blades burned itself out.
"Oh no, you have me surrounded," Brelinda taunted, as mischief glinting in her clear blue eyes like sunlight on the surface of a rippling lake. She knew it was unlikely the trolls would understand her words, but she was enjoying herself. "Looks like you've got me right where I wanted you."
Some parts of fighting massively larger opponents were obvious, like taking out the legs so you could bring them down to your own level. Other parts were highly counterintuitive, like intentionally getting yourself surrounded so that the opponents' sizes would interfere with each other. Tane had compared it to men tipping over each other trying to catch a chicken.
She chose one of the trolls and charged, sidestepping the point of its spear and taking a chuck out of its left thigh. The wound was light enough that the troll would probably regenerate the tissue in a half an hour or so, but it was heavy enough to serve its purpose as a distraction from her true intent.
While many warriors tried to land blows while staying outside of their opponents reach, Brelinda had learned that getting in closer to an opponent forced the adversary to throw awkwardly angled shots. This made her more difficult to hit and decreased the amount of leverage behind incoming blows thus limiting the power that could be brought to bear on the blows that did land.
This strategy worked particularly well against opponents with larger weapons, such as battle axes, claymores, or, in this particular case, spears. So well that, as soon as she was only a hand width from the trolls legs, she sun around, turning her back on the hulking figure.
One of the other trolls came at her, thrusting his spear directly at her chest.
She crossed her swords as she brought them up in front her, catching the spear between them. She continued pushing upward, and the momentum of her attacker continued forward.
She diverted the spear upward from the angle at which it came towards her until she brought the shaft parallel with the ground.
The sharpened stone tip passed above her head and into the belly of the troll at her back.
She didn't bother to look up at the face of either troll, through she was sure both held expressions of surprise.
The troll behind her slumped backwards even as she stepped forward, into the spear wieldier that had unintentionally just killed one of his his own.
Her left sword pierced his abdomen and, when he bent forward in reaction to the force of it, her right thrust upward, entering under his jaw and passing into the braincase.
Now it was one on one.
Brelinda circled left, sidestepping in a manner that was careful not to let her feet cross each other, thus creating a point where she would be imbalanced if the troll charged.
She set herself in the position she wanted and readied herself for the attack. The troll was in front of her, the fire at her back. When he charged all she would have to do was take a half step forward and duck, causing him to trip into the flames behind her.
"Come on you blue bastard," she laughed, "What are you waiting for?"
The troll looked confused.
She could only imagine what it was thinking. Here was a tiny little gnome, a tasty treat he should be able to toss on a spit and roast with little resistance. One other hand, his three dead comrades told him that this particular gnome was highly dangerous.
In the trolls mind, she probably looked like a sweet roll with glass shards jutting out of it.
The troll poked at her tentatively and she used her blades to knock the spear easily aside.
She sighed, as if bored at his feeble prodding's, but in reality annoyed he was not taking her bait.
"Plan B then," she grinned and made a break to her left as she returned her swords to their sheaths.
The troll hesitated, and then rushed after her when he realized where she was heading.
She put one foot against the frame of the wooden cage, pulled on the door with both hands, and was rewarded by the snap of the leather cord that had tied it shut.
"Come on," she barked at the prisoner, a young dwarven girl that only came up to her own shoulders. In a heartbeat she was running as quickly as she could, pulling the girl behind her through the snow with her free hand as she went.
The troll lumbered after them. His strides were longer, but his size made it harder to turn on the icy surfaces. This allowed Brelinda to maintain her lead by zigzagging back and forth as she fled.
Brelinda reached the edge of the cliff that overlooked the valley below and pulled the dwarf girl tight against her body as the troll bore down on them.
"You're going to like this," she smiled as she turned the dial on her belt and was encased in a ball of consolidated plasma energy that vaporized the snowflakes landing on it. Tane had taught her to fight, he had also told her always have a fall back plan. Nothing provided a fallback plan quiet as well as good old-fashioned gnomish engineering.
The troll struck them with the full momentum of his pursuit and they all went over the ledge.
The warrior tucked her head and tried to shield the dwarf with her own body as much as possible while the force-field sphere they were in fell about twenty-feet, then began to bounce down the steep incline towards the valley floor.
Each bounce shot tiny bolts cracking across the surface of the sphere and depleted some of its energy, making the shield a touch weaker against the next impact. The longer it traveled, the harder each subsequent landing felt, until the ball finally rolled to a stop, crackled one last time in a futile attempt to retain its cohesion, and then dispersed.
Brelinda was battered and bruised but still conscious. Her passenger came out of it a bit better off, since she had been so careful in trying to shield the young dwarf.
"Are we safe," the girl asked in the thick accent characteristic of Dun Morough dwarves.
"I think so," Brelinda smiled as she looked at the broken body of the troll, laying face down in the snow fifty or so yards back the way they had come.
She sighed and removed her belt, which was now smoking slightly, "At least it lasted long enough to get us down here." It was going to teak her hours to repair, not to mention the cost of a new power core, the other one was fried way beyond recovering.
She looked down at the dwarf girl she had saved.
Even though relations were not always as smooth as they could be between the dwarves of Iron Forge and the gnomes, the simple fact was that they had offered Brelinda's people refuge when their own homes had been lost.
When this girl had vanished, after wandering a bit too far from her parents' home in Kharanos, Brelinda had been eager to volunteer in helping recover her.
Troll footprints and a torn off pouch containing shimmerweed had told her where to look. Shimmer Ridge was the obvious destination for the trolls to take their freshly selected dinner.
"Let's get you home, Cyrolyn," Brelinda smiled.
She gave a longing look to the North West. Somewhere beyond the horizon, across the snows of Dun Morogh, was the entrance to Gnomeregan. An amazing city of technological marvels lost to a combination of trogg invasion and irradiation due to the gnomes own defenses.
One day she would go home as well. She would aid in routing the troggs from her home.
For now it was enough that this young dwarf would be able to have dinner with her own parents tonight instead of being dinner for the trolls.