vs gremlins

“Major General!” shouted a friendly voice.
I looked up to see Bluenose and Wobbleshanks in their dark, oil-slick-colored armor, spears in hand, wings a blur as they flew to my support and fell into formation on my flanks.
“We must slow the enemy and gather the Guard!” I shouted to them.
“Aye-aye, General!” Bluenose shouted. “The tapestry, sir!”
“The tapestry!” I shouted. “Come on!”
One of the humans standing guard during the night walked by in a cross hallway as we zipped toward him. I shouted at him—but like bigguns always do, he didn’t notice. Shouting pixies, howling gremlins, death and doom hurtling down the hallways of the Castle—and the big stupid human doesn’t even notice.
Sometimes it’s like we have to hit you people with a rock just to get you to realize we’re standing there.
We darted down the hallways toward the Great Hall, where workers had hung tapestries everywhere while they repaired a hole in the ceiling. The tapestries were of terrible quality, as they were simply blank canvas, and I felt that such artisanry was not to the standards of my lord, but for the purposes of the Guard, quantity was a quality all its own.
By then two dozen of the Guard had responded to my whistle, and as we soared into the hall, almost everyone was ready. I gave swift orders. The Guard split into teams of four, each seizing one of the large canvas tapestries, a weight that our wings could just barely manage, and my team led the way as we labored back toward the enemy.
We caught them at the bottom of the stairs from the top floor.
“Za-Lord’s Guard!” I shouted. “Follow me!”
Down we swept toward the foe, and as we did, we changed grip on the rolled tapestry, let it unfurl—and then dropped it like a massive net upon the gremlins. Down fell the blank tapestry, clunky and flapping, and dropped over a dozen of the enemy.
The other teams dove down as well, canvas falling everywhere, and Scar Eye howled his rage as his troops were bogged down.
“Blades!” I shouted.
Swords sprang from sheaths and spears whirled to couch as a double dozen of my folk shouted their defiance at the enemy.
“Dive!” I screamed, and led the way down toward the foe.
Gremlins are naturally wicked just as my own folk are naturally curious. They’re tough, clever, vicious, practical—and relentless. Their armored hide makes them very tough to kill. Dark cousins of breeds like the cobbler gnomes, they shared those folks’ cleverness with their hands but continuously turned their talents to mischief and destruction. Crude but sharp and effective blades appeared among them, and the foe began to cut their way free of the tapestries.
We met them with our svartalf-made faemetal blades as they struggled to free themselves, and their pig iron could not withstand us. The foe outnumbered us three to one—but their three were stuck under big dumb tapestries and our one just started stabbing them right through the cloth.
We couldn’t get them all—they were too tough to die fast enough. But we cut the numbers down to something like only two-to-one, just as Scar Eye emerged from beneath the corner of a tapestry and smashed Redcullen out of the air with his mortal hatchet, sending the Guardsman to a broken heap on the floor.


Heroic Hearts, Little Things, Page 9-10