other four companions. “Ah, that is good news, how long will it take them to get here in your estimation?” asked Elis “About a couple of hours at most, when there is absolute darkness” said the companion in response to Elis’s question. “Lumbre told us that Trolls find it easy to get to water, they know its smell and they are going to walk straight in here without pause for thought unlike us. This is good, really good” said Elis with a smile on his face. “I can’t wait to kill those things, we’ve gone too long without a fight and the more you kill the better the chance you will be selected as king in the nearing coronation” said another companion. “Silence, speak not at all of the coronation or of my brother” said Elis fiercely. “Yes sire” responded his companions. “Ready yourselves, the night is a wild, lawless and unpredictable time, do not underestimate these Trolls for their senses are heightened in the night. Their warriors will go on a rampage, I suspect, they will have nothing to lose and their families, they are here and know that losing this battle will cost them everything” said Elis. His companions nodded and went to their positions. Elis proceeded to tell the rest of the men the same thing he had told his companions.
Chapter 4 Part II
Some hours went by, every single soldier, some buried behind and in moats and some others crouching and hiding in the darkness, expected the enemy to come at that very moment. No one talked, everyone was quiet, drawing back their bowstrings, readying their arrows, gripping sword handles and keeping shields close, every soldier was preparing for something they have never experienced, close quarters combat in the night. Up till this point the only thing these amateur soldiers have experienced was a heavy bombardment of arrows from a safe position onto the Trolls below them. This was real, up close with the enemy, to them the Trolls were scum, nothing but beasts, indifferent heathen and for all they care the Trolls felt the same way about them. Elis was breathing heavily, a bow in his arms and a scimitar slung across his body. Suddenly the men could hear something in the darkness, from the direction the companion had alerted the Trolls were going to be coming from. Hearts began racing even faster and every soldier was getting ready to open fire on whatever would enter the oasis. The sounds got louder and it sounded very much like an army on the march, suddenly the sounds just stopped and there was some talking going on out there. Then a single footstep emerged and it turned into a few, it was a single Troll moving towards the oasis. There was short and steep drop into the dark oasis and the lonely Troll leaped into it. He landed and Elis was praying that the rest of the soldiers knew not to shoot him yet. The Troll hardly glanced at the area, he was far too tired and could not take his eyes of the water he could just barely make out in the darkness. He smiled and shouted “Water! Water! Drink!” with a battle-axe in his hand.
Now all the Trolls started to clumsily enter the oasis, oblivious to Elis and his men. This sparked a countdown in Elis’s mind, waiting for right moment to ensure that the Trolls would enter in larger numbers so that by the time a bulk of the Trolls are dead the rest that did not enter the death trap would be too few and powerless to continue combat with Elis and his army and will be forced to retreat. But then one of the Trolls stumbled into one of the moats and was killed from a sharp impale from a stake protruding from the bottom of the moat. Another incident that finally triggered the battle, a soldier lost his nerve and shot one of the Trolls as he accidently neared his position. Elis now had no choice but to commit to the battle and he shouted “Fire! Fire at will!” before firing around himself. Arrows started coming straight out of the darkness and began decimating the Troll’s densely packed ranks. The Trolls were not going to run like they had done before as they had come too far and were too much in a state of desperation and decided to all out, charge the positions of Elis’s men. The arrows had revealed their positons and the Trolls funnelled into the oasis drawing their massive primitive weapons and charging at the Human positions. However right in front of them and in between them and the Humans was the moat that was deep and laced with sharp metal and wooden debris. Many Trolls were still unaware of the moats and ditches and thus continued to be decimated by them, falling in one after the other until the moats were filled to the brim, allowing the rest of the Trolls to step over the. The innocence of a once majestic oasis was gone. Blood curdling screams filled the air with deafening sounds adding to the madness that was engulfing the battlefield.
Eventually the Trolls could get to the Human’s positions as if they hadn’t already had enough. The Humans dropped their bows, came out of hiding, lit torches and charged back at the Trolls. Lines of disciplined infantryman collided with the charging Trolls. Upon firing his last arrow Elis noticed that the Trolls could turn the tide of the battle with their superior close quarters combat as many of his men were being overpowered by the Troll’s and their massive sizes. Fortunately, Elis had a counter measure, he grabbed the trumpeter and asked him to “sound for the cavalry, sound for the cavalry”. Without hesitation, the trumpeter dropped his bow and blew his horn to signal for the cavalry and remaining men to come out of hiding and attack the Trolls from the rear. The sound was so loud it was a defining moment of the battle for the Humans and the Trolls. The horse was an animal that the Trolls truly hated because of the smell as well as the fact that a man can sit comfortably on the horse and look a Troll directly in the eye, though big and easy targets for them they would prefer to stay clear of them. And then came the cavalry from behind, closing in on the bewildered and desperate Trolls led by one of Elis’s companions, the one who had spotted the Trolls approaching the area earlier. The Troll that Elis had locked eyes with after the Calfus Canyon massacre knew that something was amiss with the Human army, where were their cavalry units in the beginning, originally fighting in the thick of the battle he left the front to move to the back of the mass of the Troll army to guard against the cavalry.
“Turn around here come the more of the devils, riding on those smelly beasts they call horses, do not fear for we shall overcome” said this Troll in his hopeful speech to rally the Trolls. The impact was furious and the cavalry started hacking away at the Trolls whose morale and physical prowess had plummeted due to the malnourishment of the Trolls and the disunity around them. Elis bloodily thrusted a spear into the face of Troll and another spear he thrusted into the gut of another Troll. The Troll commander saw Elis do this and from a far, hurled an axe at a soldier fighting a Troll nearby to where Elis was. Their eyes locked once again, Elis spat and leaped onto the Troll that was no longer preoccupied, it fell backwards and Elis stabbed him in the chest. When Elis got up, he was exhausted from all the fighting he then looked back at where that Troll was only to see him charging at his companion who was no longer on his horse, the Troll then swung his massive battle-axe across the chest of Elis’s unsuspecting companion, his eyes rolled backwards and he fell. Still alive the companion tried crawling with what little strength he had to try to save himself while the beast commander was preoccupied when an incoming Hetheilian horseman attacked him. The Troll commander then roared loudly and drove towards a weak spot with the other Trolls to break through the encirclement and give the Trolls a fleeting chance to still save themselves. There were still a decent number of Trolls left fighting and the Human troops that made the charge to the rear were slowly starting break. At that very moment Elis did the unthinkable and ordered the small unit of archers he had held in reserve earlier to fire at the densely-packed ranks of the rear guard of Trolls. But there was major problem with this as there was a strong possibility that the archers would risk hitting fellow Hetheilian and Unodite soldiers as well as Trolls due to the literal shoulder by shoulder fighting. Nevertheless, Elis shouted “reserves! Fire! Now!” ordering the archers in reserve to fire. Doing as they were commanded the archers reluctantly fired into the battling mob in the Troll army’s rear. The waves of arrows scored direct hits, sadly not all were intended targets. Everyone involved in the battle witnessed the arrows strike down both friend and foe. Eli
s and another companion watched one arrow fly, forming an arch, before piercing the back of the crawling companion who was just fatally injured by the Troll commander. The arrow pierced his back and came out chest, killing him immediately.
For the moment, the death of his companion did not really affect Elis as he was still fighting and the fact that so many other common troops had fallen in battle, to him there was nearly no difference. To fight a Troll, you had to be light on your feet and do a lot of jumping because the Trolls can be just as fast but like most beasts they are easy to hit being so big and being much smaller, Humans are hard to hit for a Troll. The adrenaline was going wild in Elis and his lust for blood was showing, such tenacity and agility he displayed on the battlefield. A Troll charges towards Elis with his club, laced with the deadly teeth of a wyvern, dodging the first swing of the club Elis leaps up from the ground and onto the back of the Troll, with his sword, he impaled the beast through its neck. Elis fell to the