the battlefield, though he surely expected the worst scenario, a helter skelter slaughter ground with his people trapped into small groups that could offer only meager resistance. He began to urge Dagna to form up a defensive ring, a shell of dwarves to protect his people, but when they came in sight of the actual fighting, Galen's words caught in his throat, and his heart soared with renewed hope.
His people, the hearty folk of Nesme, were fighting hard and fighting well.
"They're in a double ellipse," one dwarf coming in behind remarked, referring to a very intricate defensive formation, and one, Galen knew, that the riders of Nesme had often employed along the broken, tree-speckled ground north of the Trollmoors. In the double ellipse, two elongated rings of warriors formed end-to-end with a single joining point between them. Worked harmoniously, the formation was one of complete support, with every angle of battle offering a striking zone to more defenders than attackers. But it was also a risky formation, for if it failed at any point, the aggressors would have the means to isolate and utterly destroy entire sections of the defending force.
So far, it seemed to be holding, but barely, and only because the defenders employed many, many flaming torches, waving them wildly to fend off the trolls and their even more stupid partners, the treelike bog blokes.
"Dead trees must fall!" Galen shouted when he realized that the common allies of the wretched trolls were among the attackers. For bog blokes resembled nothing more than a small and skeletal dead tree, with twisted arms appearing as stubby limbs.
As he spoke, the man noted one part of the Nesme line in serious jeopardy, as a pair of young men, boys really, fell back before the snarling and devastating charge of a particularly large and nasty troll. Galen broke away from the dwarves and veered straight for the troll's back, his sword leading. He hit the unwitting creature at a full run, driving his sword right through the beast and making it lurch forward wildly. To their credit, the two young men didn't break ranks and flee, but just dodged aside of the lurching troll, then came right back in beside its swiping arms, smacking at it with their torches, the fires bubbling the troll's mottled green and gray skin.
Galen pulled his blade free and spun just in time to fend off the clawing hands of another troll, and another that came in beside it. Hard-pressed, and with the troll he had skewered behind him hardly out of the fighting, Galen feared that he would meet an abrupt end. He breathed a bit easier when the troll before him and to his left lurched over suddenly and tumbled away. As it fell, a heavy dwarven axe came up over its bending head and drove it down more forcefully. That dwarf pressed on, right past Galen to take on the wounded beast behind the man, while another dwarf leaped into view atop the fallen troll, using it as a springboard to launch him headlong into the other troll standing in front of Galen. His flying tackle took the beast around the waist, and as he swung about, the dwarf twisted his body to give him some leverage across the troll's lower half. The dwarf tugged mightily with his short, muscled arms, his momentum taking him right past the surprised troll. When the diminutive bearded warrior used that momentum, combined with his powerful arms, he compelled the troll to follow, the creature rolling right over him as he fell.
"Give me yer torch!" Galen heard the first dwarf cry to someone in the defensive line.
Galen turned and glanced over his shoulder to consider that scene, then fell back with a yelp as a torch flew right past his face. He followed the line of the fiery weapon, left to right, to the waiting hand of the complimenting dwarf, who caught it deftly and quickly inverted it. As the troll below that dwarf rolled around to counter the attack, the dwarf put that flame into its eye, and stuffed it right into the troll's mouth as the creature opened its jaws wide to let out an agonized roar. The troll flailed wildly and the dwarf went flying away, but he landed nimbly on his steady feet and brought a warhammer up before him in a single fluid movement.
Other enemies moved to engulf the dwarf and Galen, but Dagna and his boys were there first, fiercely supporting their