Two figures, one large, one small, trudged through the snow in companionable silence. Leading the duo was a tall man, bearded and barrel-chested, with magnificent boots that left tracks two feet deep in the freshly-fallen powder. Hopping through the foot-shaped imprints was a gnome, covered almost entirely in furs. All that could be seen of the creature were two blue eyes and a red button nose.
"And how are we back there, little one?" cried the leader, his breath hanging as frost in the air.
"Mmphghuh!" came the indignant response. "Bshwuf!"
With a laugh, the man scooped up the gnome onto his shoulder without breaking his pace. "Better now, little one?"
Down went the hood of the "little one", revealing the cherubic face of a certain Caecily Winklespark. The lashes that framed those impossibly large blue eyes were covered in a fine layer of frost, and brown hair stuck up wildly in all directions. Grabbing onto her companion's ear for balance, she answered stiffly, "Better? No, I think not. And I will thank you notto call me that."
"What am I to call you, then?"
"Mynamewould suffice," answered Caecily with as much dignity as one can muster when they are half-frozen and being carried by someone five times as tall as them. "Really. At least I have the courtesy to call you Thomas. How would you like it if I called you 'giant ugly man with the big nose'?"
Thomas laughed as he stomped through the snow, clambering easily over a fallen log. "I'd like that fine, Winklespark."
As Caecily gasped and stuttered in frustration, they crested a hill that overlooked a large, frozen lake. "We're not going to cross that," said Caecily as soon as she caught her breath.
"It's this or a half day's journey around it."
"Then we'll just have to go around it! I tell you, it's not safe. Thin as a sheet, that ice, and the minute you step on it -- CRACK! We meet our cold, watery end."
Thomas laughed his deep laugh and took his shield from his back, tossing it to the ground with a clatter.
"Whatareyou doing, horrible man? We're going to need that, you know, when we get attacked by troggs and demons and--"
Her protests were cut short as he took her from his shoulder and plunked her onto the shield. A nudge from one of his great boots sent both gnome and shield zipping down the hill, the former clinging to the shield and shrieking at the top of her lungs.
It was a harrowing thirty seconds of zipping past trees, over rocks, and between the legs of bears. Finally came a snowdrift that served as a ramp, sending both shield and rider up, up, up… and finally down. Hard. Several feet of thick ice (not like a sheet, as Caecily predicted) did not serve as the best of cushions , knocking the breath out of the poor gnome and sending the shield spinning wildly across the lake.
When the world stopped spinning around her, Caecily was left bruised, shaking, and terrified. To make matters infinitely worse, one of her mittens had been lost along the way. Shaking, she pulled herself out of the makeshift bobsled and began staggering towards the shore, until…
"Well now, that wasn't so bad, was it, little one?"
Him.
With a squeal of hatred, the little gnome barreled towards him, fists flying. She might have managed to significantly bruise his shins, had her feet not slipped out from beneath her, sending her tumbling onto her backside.
"Easy does it," chuckled Thomas, easily picking her up and setting her in the crook of his arm. "Can't have you get hurt, can we?"
Nighttime found them huddled by a tiny campfire, safe but not entirely sound. Thomas had abandoned most of his armor, leaving it in a neat pile nearby (leaving it to rust, Caecily was quick to note), and hummed while poking at the sizzling boar meat hanging over the fire. His slightly less cheerful companion sat opposite of him, enveloped in his cloak and trying to make sense of her tousled hair. Each time her fingers encountered a tangle, she would wince exaggeratedly and squeak in pain -- making sure, of course, that Thomas shared in her misery.
"I tell you," she said fiercely, "I tell you this has been the worst, most abominableday of my life.Here you make yourself out to be some sort of bodyguard, and then you try to killme! I should have expected the treachery the minute I saw your beady little--"
"Correction," interrupted Thomas with a smile, not looking up from his work, "I didn't try to kill you. Thought it'd liven up the journey some, is all."
"Livening things up, in your book, is some horrible euphemism for trying to make me miserable. That bear was going to eat me, I tell you!"
Thomas finally looked up -- or over, at Caecily. "Doubt that, Miss Winklespark. You wouldn't've been more than a mouthful for anything around here."
"And another thing! That incident with the shield! I quite broke several of my ribs, I think, and--"
"Food's ready."
"Poisoned, no doubt," answered Caecily with a wounded sniff, crossing her short arms and looking off to the side. "You just wish to be rid of me."
It didn't surprise her one bit when he simply laughed and ate it all himself.
"I'm hungry."
Caecily had said that a dozen times in as many minutes, each time getting the same reaction from her bodyguard: "Too bad you missed dinner last night, then. That boar was one-of-a-kind." Smiling, he'd go on to tell her all about the meat: juicy, sizzling, crunchy. That would put her in a sulking silence, until a groan from her belly brought her back to, "I'm hungry."
Her complaints stretched throughout the morning and into the afternoon, when they crossed into Loch Modan and finally into the Wetlands. The air hung stale and wet around them, sticky and hot. Gnats and flies of a most ferocious sort plagued them throughout the day, but that was the worst of their troubles. Crocodiles had not, as Caecily predicted, chased them and eaten them for teatime, nor did they drown in the shallow marshes.
"It's hot. I'm tired. I'm hungry and my feet hurt," bemoaned Caecily as she trudged behind her companion, her arms filled with the furs from the day before. Thomas had offered to carry her, but she refused with great gusto, opting for blistered feet over being "toted about like a sack of potatoes."
"My shoes shan't last another day," grumbled Caecily. "You might as well just leave me here; I'll die in the wilderness, just like that."
"If that's what you want, Miss Winklespark," answered Thomas cheerily, not batting an eye. "Can't say as I was ever much of one for tragic ends, though. Not much fun, are they?"
"Life isn't about fun, my good man." By the sound of it, Caecily didn't think he was a very good man at all. After a moment's distraction with a mud puddle, she continued, "Sacrifice and hardship, that's what it is. Wars and plagues and I know not what! Really, tragic ends are all we can -- you're not listening, are you?"
Indeed he wasn't. At that moment, he stopped short in his tracks, causing her to barrel into the back of his legs. Ignoring her shrieks of indignation, he stared off to the side at what appeared to be a very ordinary tangle of bushes and weeds. Or rather, they would be quite ordinary if they weren't shaking so violently.
"Cae, give me a rock," murmured Thomas, his gaze remaining fixed on the moving bushes. A moment later he was handed a pebble. Screwing up one eye and leaning slightly to the side, he hurled the rock straight ahead.
"OOF!" came a wounded yelp, just as Caecily demanded, "What on Azeroth are you doing?"
Thomas gave no answer, for something very peculiar was happening. Among the leaves and brambles, two long, pointy, purplish things appeared. With a start, Caecily realized that these were ears.Darting behind Thomas, her tiny heart pounding, she frantically tried to recall what she had read in A Study on Foreign Peoples (and How They Relate to Us). She was nearly certain the ears belonged to an orc or ogre or some equally nasty thing.
But it was not an orc or ogre that stepped out of the bushes at that moment. It was a tall man, or something that closely resembled a man. He was rather slender, though clearly muscled beneath his leafy, rather muddy robes. His hair was a darker shade of purple than his skin, and longer than most women's. Caecily decided that he would be quite handsome, if not for the bizarre yellow glow of his eyes.
It took only a moment for her to take in all this, of course. The man was babbling in a strange language, waving his hands around wildly. He seemed to be gesturing swinging an axe.
"Thomas! He's threatening us," whispered Caecily shrilly, nudging him forward. "Do something about it!"
However, Thomas did not draw his sword and lop off the man's head, as she had been dearly hoping he would. Instead, he bowed deeply and began rattling off in the stranger's peculiar tongue. After a brief exchange, the man smiled, also bowing. Drawing near, he gaped down at Caecily as though she were the most fascinating creature he had ever seen. Really, she didn't see what hefound so interesting -- after all, she wasn't the one with glowing eyes.
"Well, little one," boomed Thomas, "This here's Alrueth, and he'll be joining us. He can't talk Common very good, so--"
"What?" shrieked Caecily, all efforts to remain calm and collected gone out the window. "You're going to let this -- this -- creaturecome with us? Look at him! I swear he's some kind of deformed mountain troll. I read about his kind! They eat you when you're still alive. Really, I won't stand for this, I--"
Caecily never had a chance to finish her sentence. Alrueth, who had been watching her bemusedly, suddenly sank to all fours with an alarming snarl. At least, it hadbeen Alrueth -- now there was only a mangy black leopard, growling.
She was going to be lunch. Fleetingly she wondered how she would taste; gnomes were reputed to have a sweet flavor, like ice cream or bonbons. How people found out things like this, she didn't want to know. She only dearly wished that she would give this terrible black cat a stomachache.
But the attack never came. The cat was staring past her, its yellow eyes narrowed intently. Slowly, she turned. The sight that greeted her made her stomach crawl.
Three figures, very large, were approaching. They seemed to be half made out of metal; covered in spikes and carrying weapons over half their size. Their faces seemed cast into a perpetual, snarling grimace… and they were very green.
Page 93 of A Study on Foreign Peoples flashed before Caecily's eyes. These were, she realized with a start, orcs. Orcs, the book had made very clear, were bad. Bad as in crushing-your-bones-and-eating-you-for-teatime.
The only comfort she had is that she wouldn't make a very good meal between all three of them.