by Shawn Muller
“Wait! Bru, come back!” I shouted at him as he turned to run.
He stopped and slowly turned around and asked. “Who you?”
“Hey man, I’m Bob, from South Africa. You? Durban?”
“No, Jo’burg,” he replied, looking around.
Treading lightly out of the alley shadows walked a small Indian man from South Africa. His small 1.7 metre body, dark brown skin and straight black hair, not to mention that unmistakeable South African Indian accent confirmed my initial suspicions.
“Come, I buy you that drink you looking for,” I offered.
He walked over to the dead thugs, bent down and wiped his knife clean and picked up another knife before re-sheathing them in his belt.
“My names Deez,” he introduced himself.
I shook his hand and walked back to the tavern.
The platoon looked at me curiously as I introduced Deez to them. Max and Titanius also recognised him, although Titanius more than Max. We sat down at the table as I quickly told them what had happened. Murmurs of approval were heard around the table, with a few pats on the back for Deez.
“Welcome, Deez.” Titanius greeted him, raising his mug in salute.
“Thanks man. So glad I found some other people from Earth here. I really started to worry I was the only one here,” Deez said, very relieved.
“I know you from somewhere though,” Titanius said as his eyes narrowed.
“Possible. I was part of the South African State anti-terrorist bomb squad. We trained around the world. Also in Germany a few years back.”
“Ja, that’s where I recognised you,” Titanius said, as he banged his fist on the table in recognition.
“You were the bastard who kept booby trapping everything with paint bombs ja!” His German accent was really thick now with his excitement.
“Man, it was a joke, a dare from my team mates. I’m sorry if I got you too,” Deez said.
Titanius and Max laughed while the rest of the table was quiet, listening to the conversation, not sure what they were talking about.
“Nein, don’t worry, I was not involved, I was too smart for you,” Titanius replied.
“Sjoe, I got worried there, my man,” a relieved Deez said before he downed his drink.
“To a new teammate!” Titanius raised his mug in salute.
“Hoorah!” The whole platoon shouted in salute before we downed our drinks to ending with a bang of our mugs on the table.
We got funny looks from the rest of the tavern, but nobody said anything.
Before long, the keg was finished, and so were we.
We staggered back to HQ, supporting each other while singing rowdy songs at the top of our lungs. A pair of guards stepped out of the gatehouse and escorted us all the way back our HQ. The next morning felt like a herd of horses had run over me, twice. My head had a large drum inside of it and something died in my mouth. I was so thirsty and the sun was too bright. I staggered to the bathhouse, where I found half the men already trying to sober up. After a quick dip in ice-cold water, I headed off to the dining hall to eat something. Something turned out to be very greasy and warm. It did the trick and by lunchtime I started feeling much better. By evening we were all feeling much better, much to Hioki’s amusement.
The next morning we awoke to the first signs of winter. A slight sleet filled the air and ice had formed in puddles around the training ground. The ice made it too dangerous to train outside so we were once again restricted to training indoors. This gave us an opportunity to discuss the upcoming troll season. A few ideas were thrown around before a number of the more reasonable ones were examined in finer detail. By nightfall we had a plan. All we need now was for Prince Marcus to agree to it.
Winter arrived with an early blizzard, turning everything around us white. Since I was from Africa, it was damn cold for me. Lucky for me the locals had developed decent winter clothing - nice, thick woolly jackets and trousers. I got Farpae to order a few pairs of winter camouflage combat fatigues for the platoon.
The day arrived too soon for us when the camouflage came in handy. It started off not long after the first blizzard. Another cold spell swept in from the south, carrying more black frost with it. The lake was freezing over very quickly - almost too quickly. Our preparations and tactics to meet the trolls were in place. All we had to do was pray it would warm up and the ice would melt.
That didn’t happen though. A patrol ship spotted a small group of five King Trolls crossing the ice heading towards us. Unfortunately the ship could not engage them because many ice floes kept it out of ballistae range. The ship’s captain sent off a carrier pigeon to warn us of the incoming trolls. I quickly mustered my platoon and sent Farpae off to take command of three hundred heavy infantry that was at our disposal.
The island’s slight hour-glass shape lent us a slight advantage. The only spots where trolls could walk onto land was at the very southern tip where there was a large strip of beach, or the harbour front that also had a smaller beach strip, but the harbour very seldom froze over. The rest of the island had steep cliffs. It wasn’t to say that the trolls wouldn’t climb the cliffs. They were more than capable of scaling them, but history showed that the trolls walked off the ice onto the beach and right up the castle walls. We would meet them before they got there this time.
I had proposed that with a battalion of heavy infantry, I could hold the trolls off until they lost interest, or were killed outright. At first Prince Marcus’s advisors laughed at this, but as I explained my strategy, they laughed less, except for the idiot who had said my platoon was a joke - he still sneered at the thought.
The plan was simple. Engineers made man-sized obstacles - basically logs strapped together in a large X. These were placed randomly from the water’s edge right up until my designated killing area. Here it became more organised.
The engineers also built up a temporary wall of these traps from the beach running up to the castle wall. This wall was only two layers deep and semi buried to make it hard to move out the way. This wall would then force the trolls to move up the beach onto land where I wanted them to move, with the walls slowly narrowing to only fifty metres in width where the infantry would stand.
In between the trap walls from the infantry line, would be a dense concentration of traps shaped as giant wedges, forcing the trolls to bunch together, with only enough space for one troll at a time to move up the narrow passage towards the infantry. Placed within these passages were holes deep enough for a trolls leg to go up to its knee and wide enough for its foot. At the bottom of this hole were spikes big and damn sharp enough to pierce the thick skin under their feet. These holes were also randomly places right down the passages and all the way to the beach, and each was well camouflaged - so well in fact, that a special map had to be drawn up by the engineers to mark out where the holes were so that we never fell into them ourselves. To add to these holes, caltrops were made and also thrown onto the ground randomly along the entire beach, in the water and up the passages as well.
Word reached us from watch towers that the trolls would be at the island by midday. We were ready by breakfast.
The heavy infantry waited in warm sunlight, armed with heavy halberds and plate mail. They formed a spear wall, the front ranks points facing down the passages ready for the trolls to run onto them and the middle and back ranks ready to stab down on any troll who came through that. In front of the infantry on platforms on the trap wedges, I had four-man squads of engineers arming scorpions - basically miniature ballistae. These scorpions would fire at the trolls when they came within a hundred metres. Being small and relatively mobile, the idea would be for them to fire one or two rounds into the bunching trolls, and once the gap between them and the trolls closed to about fifty meters, they would retreat to platforms behind the infantry where they could resume firing at the trolls. The scorpion crewmen had trained extensively on reloading as quickly as possible to fire as many bolts as possible. I tried to have at least one scor
pion pointing down each passageway for now, with future plans underway for more.
When the sun had just crossed its zenith, a cry went up, quickly followed by a bell, warning about the sighting of a troll just about to set foot on to the beach.
The tension among us was so thick you could chew it, the silence deafening as we strained our hearing to pick them out.
A roar of pain bellowed out from the shore as one of the trolls fell into a trap. More bellows of pain were heard as the other trolls either stood on the caltrops or into pits. The deep rumbling of the troll’s speech drifted over my platoon where we hid, deep in foxholes within the trap walls, camouflaged white as the snow on the ground.
I watched as the lead troll inched its way forward, pressing its toes into the ground in front of it to try and pick out any more traps. Another troll to its left followed in similar fashion. Both trailed drops of bright red blood on the snow-white ground, evidence that the booby traps did their job.
The pit of my stomach went cold as I got my first look at a King Troll. The sheer physical size of the thing was enough for me to start crapping myself. The only other thing I have ever seen as big as this was a male polar bear, but that was in a zoo behind fencing. Here I was, risking my damn arse against these, massive brutes of nature. The size of their muscles that rippled as they walked, the confidence in their eyes, as if they knew they were on top of the food chain, the intelligence behind the eyes. Man that was some scary shit.
Two more trolls followed behind the lead two, careful to step where the others had clear a pathway. The lone, last troll seemed to be dragging its right foot behind it, leaking a small stream of blood behind it. Quietly I watched the last one struggle to keep up with the group. It fell behind metre by metre as the leader pushed forward towards the soldiers’ position.
They were about three hundred metres out from the scorpions’ range before the lone troll stood on another caltrop, which caused it to pitch face first into the snow with an earth shattering-bellow. The group turned as one to look at their falling comrade, I could see as a terrible rage built up in them, to see how we, such small, pathetic beings, had brought one of their own so low.
The leader let out a terrible roar before turning once more to our lines and charging headlong at them. It stood on multiple caltrops, but it seemed to ignore those, running with mindless rage at the lines. One hundred metres to go it stepped into a pit and fell with a sickening crunch as its hip tore out of its socket.
A thump, followed in quick succession by three more sounded from the scorpions, all four metal-tipped wooden bolts, as thick as a man’s wrist flew straight and true into the chest of the troll. Without a sound it fell backwards dead. The two other trolls were following close behind, also running into caltrops, breached that invisible hundred metre barrier. More thumps were heard, followed by meaty thuds as the bolts hit their marks with deadly precision.
I led my men out from the hiding spots at the first sound of the scorpions, half the men led by Titanius from the far side, the other half by me.
Careful to avoid the pits ourselves, we made for the remaining two trolls. The lone straggler was taken from behind, Shard the Small, a five foot giant of a Dwarf in his own community, hamstrung it with a mighty blow to its healthy leg. The troll fell forward onto its hands and knees, where Sandstone and Pebbles hacked at its neck with those mean-looking Lochaber axes. Within moments the head flew of, spraying the white ground with blood.
I led my team after the remaining troll, who got stuck in a pit just outside the scorpion kill zone. It leaned forward on its arms, seemingly dejected at its fate. I motioned for my squad to hold fast while I cautiously circled around to face it.
“Do you surrender?” I asked it.
It stared into my eyes, before looking down at the ground again.
“Do you yield?” I asked again, this time pointing my broadsword at its throat.
“Yes, I surrender small human. My life is yours,” it replied with deep regret, still looking down at the floor.
I nodded to Carl, who came from behind and hit it with the flat of his huge double-bladed axe across the back of the head and shoulders, knocking it out cold. The tension that exploded from all of us as the troll fell was immense. The rest of the platoon gathered around me as Farpae approached with his captains.
“What now?” He asked me looking at the trolls.
“Now we get some big chains and extra-strong ropes to tie up my prisoner and take him back to HQ,” I said with a smile.
“Then, I want you to organise the engineers to fix the traps and pits and make sure the caltrops are okay. As for the bodies, tie them to some traps at the water’s edge. Maybe it will chase any more troll raiders away. Otherwise, we wait and see what happens and start getting plan B underway. This plan can only work while the snow is light.”
“I will get it done. Bob, well done sir. You’ve save some lives today,” Farpae said shaking my hand in both of his.
A loud cheer went up from the heavy infantry, which went up the walls of castle, to celebrate our victory, however small it seemed. Chants of ‘Bob’ and ‘Ghosts’ were heard from the soldiers as we made our way back to the castle walls, pats on our backs, warm handshakes, and hugs from the soldiers greeted us as we threaded our way through the ranks of the soldiers.
Prince Marcus and Jeroch were riding hard from the gates of the castle to meet us.
“Commander Bob! Well done to you and your men of Ghost Platoon! You have the thanks of the entire city of Doorengaan. Your men are heroes today!”
Loud cheers from soldiers and citizens alike erupted at that.
I tried to downplay us, but the prince wouldn’t have anything to do with that. He invited the entire platoon to a feast in our honour later that evening. Eventually we managed to squeeze ourselves out of the throng of celebrating citizens and retreated to our HQ.
By the time we got back to the barracks, we were all exhausted from the tension and adrenaline that had pumped through us during the fight. Men sat wearily on their beds as they stripped off armour and clothing before heading for warm baths. I was in my private room when Max entered, wrapped in only a woollen towel.
“What are your plans with the troll? It’s here now, tied up like a rodeo calf in the training hall,” he asked me while leaning against the door frame.
“I plan on bathing first to ease my muscles, grab something to eat to calm my stomach. Then I will decide what to do with the troll. Probably feed it, keep it as a pet. I dunno,” I said with a sly smile.
Snorting at my answer, Max straightened and headed off to the baths. I followed him closely. The platoon was already soaking in the baths, some working knots out of their muscles, others just relaxing in the warm of the water that servants had heated for us.
“Men, I just have a few words to say for now. Job well done out there, boys. You stuck to the plan perfectly and everything went smoothly for us. Relax now, we go and grab some good food later and tomorrow we will meet to debrief on everything.”
A soft hurrah sounded after that little speech, the men appreciating the positive feedback. I didn’t linger too long in the bath. I quickly dressed and stopped by the kitchen on my way to the training hall to see to the troll. On the way there I grabbed Thackeray who was also raiding the kitchen.
Together we entered the training hall, where the troll was trussed up in the middle of the floor. Its arms were tied behind its back, just above the elbows and at the wrists by thick chains. Its legs were wrapped up in thick chains as well, bent backwards, with a thick rope tied around its ankles and looped around the wrists and its neck, effectively immobilizing it if it had woken up. The soles if its feet were a bloody mess, ripped to shreds by the caltrops, its right foot a mass of holes still bleeding profusely from the spikes that were in the pit. I instructed Thackeray to heal its feet, which he did after a mumble and a grumble, a wave of healing energy radiating from his outstretched hands towards the wounds on the trolls feet.
> Witnessing the flesh knit back together like that, completely healed was the most amazing thing I had ever seen up to now. A soft groan sounded from the troll, and I asked Thackeray to heal the bump on its head where Carl’s axe had knocked it out. Thackeray was little out of breath after that when I dismissed him, but he shook his head and stepped back to lean against a wall while I walked around the troll to look into its eyes.
“Thank you most kindly, sorcerer for the healing,” the troll spoke to me in a deep throated-rumble.
Surprised it was awake I shook my head at it.
“It wasn’t me who did it, but your thanks is appreciated.”
“Ahh, the pain was becoming unbearable. Such nasty, foul traps those that we fell into. So unfair, so ungentle man like. You did not fight honourably,” it said with deep sadness.
I sat on a chair opposite him, not sure on how to answer him.
“Honourably? How can you and your kind, attacking us be honourable? You are literally twice our size. What I did was even up the odds, making it fair game for us to defend ourselves,” I fired back.
