The next days Cassandra was extra alert. Small animals in the bushes made her leap in fear, and at night she slept within the branches of brambles, scared to close her eyes, but too tired not to. From time to time she scouted the other riverbank for life, and on several occasions she was certain she saw a shape; tall, thin, moving through the thick forest on the river's edge like a lion through the grass of the Savannah.

"He is hunting me," she whispered to herself one night when she could not sleep. "Playing with the game before he kills."

And then there was no more movement on the other bank. No more shadows that triggered her fear and made her remember all those horrible things, and those calm, green eyes watching her with interest.

***

It rained when she reached the bridge. Huge, heavy clouds that shut out even the tiniest speck of sky and left the world seeming grey and dull. Certain that Jah'ren had given up on his prey, Cassandra crossed over to the other side, heading for the village of Buht which should only be days away from what her map told her.

She left the road quickly after the bridge, not knowing how safe these areas were at the moment, and not wanting to draw any attention. It delighted her to be back in the forest and away from the river. The thick brambles on the bank she had been travelling were gone. Here proper trees, high and slim, covered both sides of the small paths she followed.

Dusk was starting to fall when she smelled the blood. The heavy stench of death filled her nose and when she opened her mouth to breathe the air she sucked in was thick and tinny with the taste of blood.

You are a hunter, she told herself. You are a warrior of the Alliance. You can not be afraid.

Still, her heart beat frightened and heavy as she ran silently through the trees towards the source of the smell.

At the edge of a clearing she stopped and felt how the fear ran off her again. In the grass lay the bodies of what probably would have been a raiding party meant for one of the villages nearby if someone had not already killed them. Among the corpses of orcs and trolls she spotted the smashed remains of undead, and also one white horse, with the Alliance flag draped over it. That explained it. There had long been knights patrolling the main routes between cities, but for them to stumble upon a gang like this was just luck, usually the raiding parties struck where the knights were not.

Feeling better for not finding human bodies, Cassandra carefully made her way through the battleground. As much as she wanted to deny it, she was looking for something, and dreaded finding it.

Her heart raced as she turned a dead troll over with her shoe. There was no telling what the colour of his skin was, because now it was a mixture of warpaint and blood, but his hair was green.

"You troll all look the same," she muttered annoyed and kicked the body, knowing that this was not a fact in her world anymore.

In the end of the clearing the knights had strung up several of the bodies in trees, or tied them against the trunks, leaving them helpless there while they had their fun. Cassandra tried not to see the dismembered limbs or dozens of holes where they enemy had been poked with a spear until they stopped moving. It was then she heard the sound.

She might have missed the soft moaning altogether were it not for the utter silence on the battlefield. Not even the birds were singing. She turned to find the source of the sound and her eyes fell upon a body slumped down in front of a tree with three long arrowshafts protruding from it. Beneath armour and warpaint she recognised bright blue skin, and the head hanging towards the ground was covered in dark, green hair.

"No…" she said out loud, wondering why a feeling of despair and rage filled her. "I wanted you to prove me wrong."

She cursed under her breath, wanting to scream at him for being so stupid as to prove her right in her assumptions, and at the knights for what they had done. Then she knelt down beside the moaning body, quickly deciding from the wounds that he did not have long.

"Stupid troll." She tried to ignore the tears that were filling her eyes. "Stupid, stupid…"

"Human!" said the troll, lifting his head.

The dagger scraped across her breastplate as she flung her body backwards. Although the troll did not have enough strength to get through at the first try, now Cassandra was on her back in the mud and grasping for her own dagger while he already was armed and ready to jump.

A grin spread across the bloody face. The troll knew he was dying, but he was determined to take this girl with him. The last thing he ever did was to stumble forward with his mind set to murder.

The first arrow pinned his head to the tree, and the other went into his torso and splintered the wood all the way through.

Cassandra crawled up from the slimy mud, shaking with cold and fear, when a hand took her elbow and helped her stand.

"Kas'san dra."

Not knowing what she was doing she clung to his arm.

"I though it was you. I though you had died. I though you were evil."

"Yes, Kas san dra say Jah'ren evil." She looked up at his face and was treated to a smile.

"He was of your kind. A troll. I am human."

"Soft human," Jah'ren said, lifting a lock of her hair with the tip of his bow. "Troll evil, Kas san dra soft, friend human."

"Muddy and dirty human," she said, still not knowing what to do, and still clinging to his leatherclad arm.

A sound from behind them made both hunters spin around, weapons at the ready.

"See, I told you, private," one knight said. "There would be more, coming back to loot the dead and such. Raping young women out walking in the rain…"

The other one, a young man with a keen face who could have been handsome had it not been for his pimples, grinned happily.

"Yes, sah!"

"Well," the officer continued. "I think we should go ahead and save the girl, and I'm still a bit cross at the others for killing all the trolls so quickly, they can be fun for hours…"

When hearing them talk Cassandra stopped shaking and stepped out in front of the troll by her side. The sound of his bowstring being drawn back was right by her ear, and soon the arrowtip came within sight just over her shoulder.

"Don't attack," she told the knights, ignoring the screams from her brain that she was doing the wrong thing.

"Out of the way, silly," said the officer, his voice conveying all too well his annoyance with this outcome. "We'll just kill the troll and then we'll take you safely home to wherever you want."

"No."

"You are not seriously protecting this troll? Because that would make you a traitor."

"I cannot be a traitor," Cassandra said defiant. "Not for protecting someone who just saved my life by killing one of his own kind."

The officer seemed to be considering this. Then he said:

"No, you are still a traitor if protecting an enemy." His eyes met her and he understood that he'd win nothing with threats. "Be reasonable, girl," he tried, his voice turning kind and soft. "That's a troll. He'll drag you into the forest and rape you, or keep you slave or worse! Now stand aside."

"Kas san dra," Jah'ren said. His voice steady as the ground itself even in the face of danger. "Human. Friend."

She did understand the meaning in those two simple words and was ready to follow up anything the troll would do. Despite her own sense of reason she trusted him.

The arrow left the bow and Cassandra barely saw the officer's horse rear back before she was picked up and Jah'ren started running.

Her first instinct was to protest, because she was a fast runner and besides; it felt silly dangling over the trolls shoulder, but then she realised that even rested, even at her best, she would never keep up with the speed he made.

Long, muscular legs sped them forward, jumping over whatever obstacle they met, leathery feet hitting the ground and leaving it so fast he was barely touching down. Cassandra had enough to do just hanging on. She had gotten a grip on a strap on his leather vest with one hand, and the other one flailed wildly for something to hold until she finally realised there wasn't anything else and grabbed a tuft of his hair.

Behind them came the remaining horse, its rider lying flat over the animal's neck and sword in hand. Cassandra was just about to tell Jah'ren of the threat closing in on them when he stopped. Without a sound he let her fall to the ground while turning and bringing an arrow to his bow in a single, smooth movement. As the horse screamed of pain, Cassandra was picked up again and the wild race through the forest continued.

The troll did not stop before they had run down and up again through a little stream to cover their tracks. The night already lay like a thick and wet blanket across the forest. Cassandras arms were exhausted from hanging on, and when she was let down in the shelter of a fallen tree she sighed happily from relief. The tall shape of her improbable ally collapsed beside her and to her surprise his breath was rapid and uneven.

"Jah'ren?" she asked, using his name for the first time. "Are you alright?"

"Sleep…" he mumbled. The dark shadow of the troll curled up in the shelter of the tree. "Soft, human friend."

Cassandra sat with her back against the overturned root of the tree, and decided it was her duty to stay awake and keep a lookout.

When she discovered that the large body beside her was shivering she pulled out her blanket and put it over her own legs and as much of the troll as she could cover.

***

When the sun woke her up there was the usual confusion of someone who does not quite know where and who they are and can not at once remember what happened last night. She was still laying beneath the fallen tree, carefully wrapped in her blanket and with her backpack as a pillow. On the ground beside her was one of the trollhunter's swords, she touched the metal curiously and wondered why he would leave her a sword when she was already holding on to both dagger and gun in her sleep.

While eating some dried meat and soggy pieces of bread from her pack for breakfast, the troll suddenly was beside the tree, moving so silently that it made her jump when she finally realised what the shadow outlined against the morning sun really was.

Jah'ren sniggered, obviously finding it amusing to scare her.

"Jah'ren see enemy," he reported. "On animals." Then he made a perfect impression of a neighing horse.

"Horses." Cassandra nodded. "Then they're knights. How many did you see?"

He held both hands up and seemed to be thinking. Then he shook his head quick and held the hands up again before pointing to his feet too. Cassandra had to think a bit before understanding the meaning.

"Twelve enemies? Eight fingers, four toes?" she ventured. He nodded seriously.

"Enemy not for Jah'ren," he told her, pointing towards her. "Enemy for Kas san dra."

"I know. Because I am a traitor."

"Traitor!" He spitted at the ground, apparently knowing the meaning of the word. "Why?"

"You are enemy to the Alliance, and I am a traitor for protecting you." To her own surprise this did not worry her too much at the moment. The knights could just come. She would not go back on her decision. He had saved her life.

"Protecting?" Jah'ren asked. "Me know not."

"Protecting. Like when you killed that troll, you were protecting me. Protecting my life."

The troll seemed to consider this.

"Protecting." He picked up her words like a child picking up pretty pebbles on the beach, turning them over and over in his mouth before hiding them inside his head and keeping them as treasure.

A large hand was placed on top of Cassandras head, and the troll smiled his with white, slightly pointed teeth.

"Protecting Kas san dra. Jah'ren protecting."

She could not help smiling as he helped her up from the ground, while pointing into the forest to tell her they would have to leave.

"Yes," she said. "The gods only know why, but it seems you are protecting me."

***

The forest soon gave way to marshland in the direction they walked, and Cassandra was getting more and more uncertain about where exactly they were. Her map stopped at the forest's edge, but the troll, always ahead, scouting and leading, seemed to know precisely where he was going.

"Jah'ren," she called out quietly as he disappeared behind some low shrubbery, afraid to loose sight of him in case she would be left alone in the strange landscape.

It amazed her how invisible the other hunter managed to be, even though he was at least two feet taller than her. It seemed that no matter how little cover there were in an area, the huge troll would find a way to move around without being very evident. She envied him his skills, knowing very well she was not only a young and inexperienced hunter, but also a rather bad one.

The troll came into sight from the opposite side than he had disappeared and looked questioning at her.

"Do you know where we are going?"

A smile and a nod.

"Can you tell me?"

She had learnt to recognise the expression that meant he was thinking because he knew the answer, but not how to tell her. After a while he mumbled something in trollish, and she was amazed to hear his own language for the first time. She would have expected it to be grunting or glottal sounds like the orcs used, but it sounded like a real language.

Dumb human! She thought. Thinking everything you know is right. Of course it is a real language.

"We going," he said and pointed forward in the direction they had been heading for a while. "No enemy. No horse."

"The horses can't go there?"

"Yes! Not…" he hesitated, and then pointed to the ground. "Soft. Water."

Cassandras brain worked through this; soft ground, water, no horses.

"Swamp," she moaned. "We're going into the wild lands. Into the swamps."

"Wild land!" The troll delighted in words he recognized. "Yes. No enemy, no horse go in wild land."

Again this fear, imprinted in her soul since she first could speak and listen. He was leading her away from every known path, into the lands where not even the Horde had managed to find living conditions, into the wild lands where nameless creatures hunted you. The place adults of every race put into their children's heads to scare and warn. If you won't do as your parents tell you, they take you away to the wild lands.

"Kas san dra not happy," he interrupted her thoughts.

"No, I'm not happy. We will die. Nobody can survive in the wild lands."

He seemed surprised that his plan did not get the enthusiasm he had expected.

"Jah'ren protect," he comforted. "No enemy, no traitor in wild land."

Cassandra had a suspicion the enemy was not the worst option of the two. She looked up at the greyish sky above them wondering if he would stop her if she tried going back.

"Not fear wild land. Jah'ren know."

"You have been there?" she asked astonished.

"Yes. Good land. Hunter land. No human, no orc, no troll, only sky and forest."

"But I can not go there!" she whined. "I am not a good hunter. I can't even get myself a pet. I can't track, I can't shoot well. I will die!"

Laughter filled her ears when she finished talking. Not laughter like his usual deep rumbling, but real laughter, uncontrolled, like bouts of thunder. When he stopped laughing he said nothing, but reached one hand towards her, inviting her to come.

"This is utter madness!" she exclaimed as she put her hand on his palm. "I have no idea why I'm even trusting you."

"Hunter," was his answer. "Hunt, live, forest, sky."

"Yes," she said, not knowing what she meant. "And Jah'ren protects me. Let's hope you don't get eaten."

This time he scared two large birds to flight with his laughter. Before they could get far one of them fell to the ground, an arrow through its neck.

"Great," Cassandra sighed. "The future contains dinner at least."

******

If you like it and want more, please feel free to leave a review. I like feedback.

And I'll hopefully have the next chapters up soon, but my computer does not like this site, so there's a bit of trouble with uploading. Keep those fingers crossed ;D