The following morn, we passed by the pines and snowberries glistening in the sun. As we approached a bluff of loose rocks and deep snow, the Argonian inspected and ran his tongue over found dung—a taste less appetizing than his breakfast, to be certain—and confirmed our prey was within the range of Ingjard’s arrows.

Fenrig followed the nearby footprints to a crack in the rocks with bones strewn about the entrance. We stayed upwind, and crouched down to listen. The grunting from within was unmistakably trollish. I readied my own bow, and motioned to Bashnag. He gleefully clambered to the cave, and poured oil across the threshold. Ingjard and Fenrig found vantage points at the flanks. Footfalls decided to watch the proceedings from the safety of a tree.

“Now!”

Bashnag let out a resonating roar that echoed across the barrens. Out thundered a frost troll—a big brute, thick of fur, fists clenched and spittle frothing from between rows of uneven teeth, with three sunken piglet eyes, all wildly glaring at the Orc. The troll swiped twice with heavy hands, but Bashnag sidestepped quickly as the attack turned into ineffectual flailing.

In the time it took Bashnag to raise his obscenely large mace, five arrows had struck the troll from three different directions. It tumbled forward, slipping on the Orc’s oil, and cracked its head on the way to the afterlife. Bashnag’s expression was one of disappointment, but this was short lived: He soon spilled blood as a second troll leapt upon him, hammering at his armor as he took it by the throat, slammed it into the rocks, and caved its skull in with brute force, a slightly smaller mace, and invocations to Mauloch.

The ground shook as the third (and substantially taller) troll lumbered from its hole, pounding the ground with its anvil-like fists. Had it not been hunched, it would have been almost the size of a giant. Bashnag coaxed it towards the slick. The Orc’s throwing arm was impressive; he managed to cover the beast in oil from two more pots before Ingjard’s flaming arrows set the shrieking creature alight.