There are two things that the Stone Summit hate more than anything else. One, as mentioned by any non-Summit dwarf for the last ten years, is that the Summit are complete xenophobes; willingly murdering any being that has either not been enslaved completely to their cause, or is simply displeasing to them for whichever reason. The second thing the Summit hate, is one of their targets eluding them for any length of time.
Several generals were understandably incensed when they found that a single human had not only infiltrated the Furnace itself, but had managed, somehow, to poison one of the Dark Binders that kept the Forgeman from going berserk and destroying the Furnace. The infiltrator then incited a riot amongst the Dredge workers that completely ruined all the projected quotas for the next six months, and, just to add injury to insult, shot an arrow through General Flamewhip's right thigh, hobbling the veteran warrior.
During the infiltrator's escape, one of the guards managed to ambush her by jumping from a ledge about twenty feet above her. Though he died quickly in the short flurry of activity that followed; he managed to inflict several wounds with the only weapon found with him; a foot-long knife designed to skin animals. Several tracking parties were sent out to try and find the infiltrator, though none succeeded. Almost an hour passed before any traces of a track was found, and that was not much more than a tiny spot of blood every few metres.
Shortly after the blood trail was discovered, everything in the crater heard the scream. A combat squad was dispatched almost instantly, and they joined with the nearest scout party just before entering the small clearing where it was thought the scream had originated. Almost instantly, the two squads were set upon by a small group of Trolls, most of which seemed to be very, very hungry.
The scout squad, with their lighter armour and the fact that they were about twenty feet in front of the more heavily armed combat squad, was decimated in the first fifteen seconds. Five Summit scouts, arguably the best trackers in their military, were literally torn limb from limb by the half-dozen trolls that leaped out of a nearby snowdrift and landed in the centre of the small group.
Trolls are inordinately tough; shrugging off blows that would cause even Dragons to flinch in pain seems to be one of several qualities that makes the vicious brutes so dangerous. Combine the fact that the larger trolls can laugh off a ballista bolt through the chest with a simple, if dangerous cunning, and one has a recipe for either disaster or a massacre. Eleven veteran Summit soldiers, versus six adult, hungry trolls.
Hardly a fair match, and it showed; the scouts had all been torn to pieces in less than twenty seconds, though it took somewhat longer for the Trolls to get their powerful, vise-like fingers into the seams in the thicker, heavier armour worn by the Summit cleavers. In the quick, and exceedingly bloody, orgy of destruction, one of the heavily armoured dwarves managed to escape the pile without serious injury, and ran, following the path of thickening blood droplets that rested upon the snow like liquid rubies.
Night began to fall across the Footprint, and, through some blind stroke of luck, the survivor continued to follow the blood trail without further interruptions, until the incoming blizzard finally rolled into the Footprint, cutting visibility down to about fifty feet in the good areas. The blood trail was almost instantly obscured by the new snow, though the winds were powerful enough to reveal a few droplets every once in a while, allowing the soldier to remain on the correct course.
Finally, long after sunset, and deep in the core of the blizzard, the Soldier caught up to his objective. She had curled up in a snowbank, frost covering her hair and parts of her face, but her eyes were open and alert. Even at a distance of twenty feet, the Summit soldier knew something was definitely amiss; nobody trying to survive in the middle of winter would do what she was doing.
However, neither the wounded, and now-cornered woman, nor the Summit soldier expected the next thing to happen; a mass of flying metal, about six feet tall, landing, feet-first, on the Summit soldier's shoulders. The impact was more than enough for the dwarf, now suddenly about four inches shorter, and suddenly in possession of considerable amounts of horizontal inertia, to go skidding to the side, directly opposite the young woman, who stood up, pulling a long, wickedly barbed arrow out of the snow in front of her.
Nocking the arrow to the immense bow that rose to aim right at the centre of the Dwarf's chest, the woman smiled right before she released the taut bowstring. The arrow, designed to punch into armour and flay flesh from bone, smacked right into a weak point between two plates of steel in the well-crafted suit of armour. The impact of nearly two hundred pounds of force, focussed to a point slightly larger than a pinhead, knocked the dwarf off of his feet and over the edge of the stone slope he had been moving along. On the steep side of the slope was roughly about two hundred feet worth of freefall. The wounded dwarf managed the entire fall without touching any rock outcrops, and landed solidly on a slab of stone.
The impact spread the hapless dwarf over about twenty square feet; right in front of one of the remaining scouting groups. Up at the top of the outcrop, which was not that easily defensible, two men were looking at the now-unconscious woman.