One runeknight is beheaded by an axe-stroke that catches under his helm. Another manages to cleave the foot of a troll, but it, feeling no pain or shock from the wound, contrives to slam down onto him. Its massive body crushes the breath from him and leaves only his head exposed. I yell out in horror and leap up onto the troll's back. A sword swings for me. I duck and drive Life-Ripper down. It pierces into the heart of the troll I stand on, which screams and gurgles, convulses. The runeknight trapped beneath it gasps.

  An axe swings at me. I duck and charge, stab its wielder through the heart. I sense movement to my side, lash out with Life-Ripper's twin points. Another axe stops dead in my weapon's grasp.

  Shock grabs hold of me for a moment. On the axe's blade, clearly etched, are dwarven runes. They are laid out seemingly at random, and have been copied very crudely, yet there is no mistaking them for what they are.

  A pike jabs my chest and throws me off my feet. I grab hold of it as the troll draws it back, using it to pull myself back up, and am horrified to see that the iron point also has runes scratched onto it.

  “Help!” comes a yell from behind. I glance back. Volka and the other remaining runeknight are defending against a barrage of axe-strokes and sword-slashes. Sparks fly from their armor as they take the blows, and their runes have been deeply scratched. The trolls' reach is too great—they cannot get any blows of their own in, and are being pushed back to the rear carriage.

  But I cannot help them. Five trolls are converging on me. I cannot block all their blows, so I allow two blurring toward my legs and the right side of my head to hit. A deafening bell-sound fills my ears as I am knocked down, and Life-Ripper is near wrenched from my grasp. I roll back, trying to retreat around the side of the carriage, where it forms a narrow corridor with the wall.

  “Get to the other side!” I yell to Volka and the other surviving runeknight. “Fight them one at a time!”

  I've no time to check to see if she obeys. Yet another axe troll is rushing for me, supported from behind by one of the pike-wielders.

  I narrow my eyes. Bloodlust fills me—I cannot tell whether it's my own or the ruby's, but that does not matter. I'm going to make an example of these two.

  The axe troll swings down, aiming to split me from crown to groin. I step back just a touch, letting the blow smash the stone between the tips of my sabatons. I step in and slide Life-Ripper's twin points up the axe's handle to the troll's fingers. It screams when the thorns pierce its skin, not so thick there. It draws back.

  Its partner—vaguely female in shape—stabs at my eyes. I let the blow scratch against the right of my helm and continue forward, stepping into range of the axe troll's chest and belly. I lash out twice a second with Life-Ripper—maybe slightly less quickly, due to the degradation of my armor—and jab a dozen double wounds into its flesh. Its iron skin gives no resistance, and blood begins to drain out, very red, redder even than dwarf's blood.

  It screams louder. How terrible must pain be, if it's the first time you feel it? To a young child, a scraped knee can feel like a mortal wound. How must this semi-flaying feel? I grin widely behind the tungsten of my visor. The creature's partner is pulling back, an expression of confusion on its bestial face.

  The wounded troll howls in rage and swipes with its axe. It's weakening though, and I easily predict the blade's movement. I stab into the troll's wrist. Blood jets out. The axe flies from its grasp. It turns, and I slice into the tendons of its heel. It falls, reaches out toward its partner, who turns, yelling, to flee.

  I yell out a wordless battle-cry and sink Life-Ripper into the fallen beast's shoulder. It screams as the thorns tear it apart from within. Now I wrench it out, stab into the other shoulder. It screams louder. The rest of the trolls are starting to pull back, confused at the sounds their comrade is making.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The river trolls could not stand heat, the lava trolls water. I can think of no equivalent pain-bringer for iron trolls. It is completely alien to them. They cannot fathom what they so gleefully inflict on smaller creatures.

  I dig the twin-points into the back of the troll's neck. It wails. I push in further. It tries to press itself into the floor, to flee the pain of death reaching for it. I laugh and continue to push. Some of the trolls turn to me, eyes wide.

  “You kill us, this is what you get!” I scream at them. “You've runes on your weapons, so maybe you understand me! Well, stay away! Never come near us!”

  I push Life-Ripper right through the troll's neck. Twin gouts of blood fountain out and over me, drenching me completely in crimson. The trolls turn and flee. I charge after them, yelling bloody threats, before I remember Volka and the other dwarf.

  I run back to them. Thankfully, they are alive. Only two trolls pursued them past the other side of the carriage and both are dead. But victory has come at a cost: Volka's armor is wrecked, and she is on one knee, panting. The other dwarf is clutching his shoulder. Blood is streaming down it.

  Volka looks up at me. “Get to the front!” she gasps.

  “Get some healing chains on him!” I tell her, then run past, toward the loud, yet oddly infrequent clashing of metal on metal. A dozen dwarves and trolls battling should be louder—has the battle already been lost? Won?

  The answer is neither. A dozen slain trolls litter the space between the screeching blindboars and barricade. The runeknights aimed for the joints, especially the knees and heels, severing the feet of their targets and then, when the monsters fell, the heads. Long spears have been used to great effect also, leaving bleeding holes in the trolls' skulls where eyes used to be.

  Among the slain trolls lie nearly a dozen slain dwarves. Most victims of trolls usually end up crushed, but most of the caravaners here, like the lookout, have instead fallen victim to great slashing wounds. Most are missing limbs or heads. The sheer violence behind the trolls' strikes has made up for the bluntness of their crude weapons' edges.

  Both sides have all but wiped each other out. Only two survivors remain, locked in deadly combat at the center of the carnage—Captain Lopak and what can only be the iron troll's chief, a hulking monster a full two heads taller than the rest of its folk. Light, dyed red by the bloody lake around the slain, glints on strange markings on its iron hide.

  Blood splashes around my boots as I charge toward them, screaming of furious revenge.

  Lopak wields an axe paired with a circular shield, but I cannot see what the troll chief uses for its weapon—there is a blur in its right hand, a long blur, with something wide on the end that must be very sharp, for the air is screaming. It speeds toward Lopak's neck. He ducks. I see that his shield is deeply scarred—he knows it can provide no more defense. He rushes in to chop at the troll's foot, but the monster steps back and brings its weapon directly down. A heavy clang reverberates as it impacts Lopak's back and knocks him prone.

  The weapon's head bounces up and, in the instant before the troll yanks it back, is stopped still in the air. I see that it is a great disc, like the weapons that killed two of our number before the battle had even begun, though this one is welded to a chain at its edge.

  It is etched with a spiral of silvery runes.

  The troll lifts its knee and steps forward to immobilize Lopak with one heavy foot. The caravaner captain is struggling to get up—his armor has been bent from the last blow, and I think the wind has been knocked out of him.

  I lash out with Life-Ripper and its twin points catch into the troll's knee. It roars in shock and pulls back. I frown; I felt resistance just then, and Life-Ripper's points did not penetrate so easily. I go for another jab but see the troll's disc blurring down at me. I stab at it to catch the edge, but my broken armor slows the movement and the disc slashes past Life-Ripper and smashes my pauldron.

  The blow sends me flying. I crash into the wall and the weak sedimentary stone cracks. Red and gray gravel showers down and bounces around me. My head is spinning, and my breathing short, yet even so, I stand back up and start to stumble back toward the fight without hesitation.

  I swore to Lopak that I would protect them or die in the attempt. Retreat is not an option.

  The captain has managed to stand up too, but he's staggering even worse than I am. The troll swings its disc down. Lopak raises his shield to block out of instinct and the iron disc shears right through it. Half of the shield soars away, trailing dark drops. The other half falls to the stone in front of his feet.

  Scarlet blood sprays from his wrist. For a moment his mind is rendered blank by the shock, then he starts to scream; his hand has been removed.

  “No!” I shout.

  I break into a desperate run, reaching forward with Life-Ripper, attempting to block as the troll chief's razor pendulum swings back down for the decapitation.

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