Gronput has the same idea. He howls and rushes you, ax raised. You sweep his ax out of line with your short sword, but Gronput hurls himself on you and tries to sink his teeth into your neck. You're forced to drop your sword and grapple with the troll two-handed to keep him from biting you. You stumble back and forth, then slam against the wall of the townhouse. Your head cracks painfully against the stone, but you keep fighting. You grab Gronput in both hands and slam him against the wall. Again. A third time. The sensation is revolting, but at last he spasms and goes limp, and you drop the bloody thing that was your friend.

Fighting rages at the gate. Exhausted and badly wounded, you barely manage to climb the grassy slope up to your mother. You can't see Veneric or Melaxu. What you can see fills you with rage: every new excavation, every tunnel and irrigation ditch swarms with trolls, as if they were maggots born out of the earth. Several roundhouses are ablaze, their roofs burning. Something is burning by the river, too, though you're too far away to see if it's a single boat or the whole dock. Guards fight savagely to keep the trolls from getting into the great hall. Laikan and the other smiths struggle to supply people with weapons, and you notice that many people are holding the trolls back with whatever they have on hand, from wooden pitchforks to copper pots.

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Three trolls shove their way out of a ditch and lope toward you, black earth clinging to their fur. They are all armed with iron-tipped spears, but they stop as another figure appears nearby: your mother, her curved bronze sword already dark with blood. They charge her all at once. She kills them with three quick strokes and turns to you before the last corpse hits the ground.

"There must be over a hundred of them," your mother says. "We outnumber them, but they can strike anywhere from their tunnels. It will be a long night." She looks at you and sees your injuries. "Stay out of the fighting, my son. Help where you can but do not die tonight." As several trolls try to climb up the guard tower, she turns and starts shooting them off.