“The Gods of Stone and Snow protect me. The Gods of Stone and Snow protect me. The Gods of Stone and Snow protect me…”

The whispered prayer was the only sound in the dark chamber where Worcza slept. He knelt before the grey wall above the spot where he had made his bed, chanting into the darkness. Every morning he would do this, but whether his gods could hear him in this hot, southern land, Worcza could not say.

Still, he prayed. The mountains were lost to him now, just like his family, and the rest of his tribe. All he had left was his strength, and his gods.

Worcza finished his chant and pushed himself to his feet. He picked up the meat and water that was his breakfast and began to eat. They would be calling for him again soon, and he would make sure he was fed before then.

Soon he heard footsteps echoing down the corridor. He picked up his drinking horn and swigged the rest of its contents.

The chamber door was unlocked and swung outward as a group of men stepped into the room, carrying torches and dressed in plain servant robes.

“Time to go, troll.” Said the man who unlocked the door.

Worcza towered over the men by almost four feet. In the past, he would have snapped them all like melting icicles. But he had been their prisoner too long for them to fear him now. He wrapped his kilt of pelt around his waist and shoved past them out of his chamber.

The servants flanked Worcza as he made his way up through the hallways of the castle they kept him in. He called it a castle, but the humans called it by a longer word Worcza struggled with. They reached the round room with benches where Worcza would have to wait sometimes. Outside he could hear hundreds of voices chanting the war-cry he taught them.

“Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara!”

Worcza still found it strange hearing the language of his people spoken by humans with no concept of his culture, especially hearing it distorted by their exotic accent. He made the mistake of translating it for one of the servants once, and it had spread like a pox from there.

Worcza uz-ghara. Worcza is strong.

Worcza the troll rotated his great arms and stomped his feet. He could die today, or he could live on in this endless contest in a faraway land. The Gods of Stone and Snow would decide.

The metal gate at the end of the round room creaked and sighed as it slowly opened outwards. The sunlight streamed in, causing Worcza’s eyes to water. The chant from outside grew louder.

“Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara!”

The troll grabbed a long spear from a rack near the door.

“Fight well, die well, troll.” said one of the servants. Worcza stepped out of the round room and onto the hot sand.

The roar of the crowd swelled as they saw the hulking, brown-grey figure of the troll walking out to the sands of the arena. Worcza looked up and saw ring after ring of humans, on their feet, cheering his name. Strange creatures.

He walked into the middle of the sand pit, feeling the desert sun across his broad shoulders. Worcza tried to shut out the din of the crowd and waited for the first challenge.

A trumpet blared.

With a rattle, the gates at the other side of the sand rolled open.

Ten men marched out onto the sand. Each was wearing a leather breastplate, one or two wore a spiked helmet. Worcza marked their weapons; short swords, axes, whips and daggers.

Hunting weapons. To corner a wild animal.

The troll let out a low snarl.

The ten men slowly began to surround Worcza, weapons high, legs apart. Worcza gripped his spear and brandished it at a dark-skinned human with an axe. Worcza’s temper must have shown as he looked at him, for the man faltered in his steps. The troll glowered at him some more.

Something snapped Worcza by his right temple, above his eye. it stung him for a moment. He spun around at the man with the whip, who had his arm raised for another crack.

A cry from the left caught the troll’s attention at the last second. A man with two daggers had rushed towards him while the whipcracker distracted him. The attacker jumped into the air to plunge his blades as deep as possible into the troll’s hide.

It was a solid plan.

Until he yelled.

Worcza spun on his heel and rammed his spear into the man’s chest and through his back. There was a popping sound, like squashing an over-ripe fruit.

The man looked at the troll with a confused look in his eyes. With a heave, Worcza pulled the spear out from the man’s innards.

The crowd erupted in cheers.

A tattooed man with an axe took a swing at Worcza’s legs. The iron sliced across his thick shin, spraying the sand with muddy brown blood. Worcza roared into the air, more out of surprise than pain. The man had drawn first blood but was not fast enough to save himself. Worcza lifted one of his legs high and stomped a heavy, calloused foot at the base of this man’s skull, forcing his whole body straight down. The ground shook with the impact, and the man’s head burst in a pink and crimson fountain.

The audience gasped, then cheered with renewed fervour. Worcza stamped his foot into the sand to dust off the tattooed man’s brains.

The man with the whip cracked it across the sand and cried out to get Worcza’s attention again. This time the troll ignored him and looked instead for the other challengers. He began to swing his spear a few times, jabbing wildly at thin air. It came within range of a man with a short sword, but before the blow struck, Worcza reversed the spear and plunged it into the belly of a man with curly hair sprouting from his chin. The man dropped his weapon and screamed.

Worcza wrenched the spear out of his victim’s guts and swung it in a bloody arc with enough force that it slashed through the neck of another man. His head spun through the air like a child’s ball until it landed in the crowd, humans darting away from it.

The sun overhead was beginning to irritate Worcza and his breathing was coming now in quick ragged gasps. By now the humans in the crowd were on their feet. Best to finish this fight quickly, he thought.

He made short work of the remaining challengers, until finally the whipcracker remained.

The man was now in a panic, cracking his whip in all directions. His comrades were all dead, and whatever strategy they had worked on was now in ashes. He raised the whip above his head and swung it hard as the troll advanced.

Worcza caught the whip with his left hand and pulled it out of his opponent’s grasp. The man tumbled forward, then leapt to his feet and began to sprint away. The humans booed.

Worcza levelled his spear.

He hurled it as an expert hunter would, steady and without hesitation. It made a whistling sound as it sailed through the air. With a sound like a clap, it struck the man between his shoulders, shot though his ribcage and impaled him as the weapon punched into the dusty brick of the arena wall. Man and spear hung there, six feet off the ground, like some grotesque wall art. By the time the servants were able to free the spear and repair the wall, the spear would become legend.

The crowd was now as deafening as a thunderstorm in high summer. Once again, they chanted his war-cry.

“Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara! Worcza uz-ghara!”

Worcza stood in the middle of the arena, catching his breath. He dropped the whip onto the ground. He checked the gash on his leg from the axeman’s strike. He stood a moment longer as the humans shouted all around him, then turned to walk back inside.

A trumpet rang out above him. Chains rattled as a steel gate was hefted up.

“Brrruck-cha ghoz.” Worcza cursed.

Something was bellowing from behind the gate. Its footsteps made the sand beneath the troll’s feet shake. He could hear the human’s shouting and gasping all around him. Worcza sniffed the air. Whatever this was, it hadn’t seen fresh air or sunlight in days.

Worcza turned around and paused. In front of him was a beast he’d never seen before.

It had an enormous, wide-brimmed head, with horns like an ox rising from it’s temples and a long-curved horn above its snout. Its lips became a short beak, like a small bird. On all fours it paced about like a fat bear, and it had a long tail that dragged behind it in the sand. Its hide was dark green like moss, and along its wide back ran small, ridged scales.

A strange creature from the South, thought the troll.

He began to walk slowly towards the beast, never taking his eyes from it.

“You and I are far from home, aren’t we?” he asked in a low voice.

The three-horned creature grunted in answer.

Worcza moved slowly to the left. One of the dead men had dropped their sword ten feet away. As long as he could keep the beast from getting spooked, he could get close to it, plunge the blade behind its skull and not have to worry about being gored by horns as long as his one of his own forearms.

The beast’s great torso rose and fell with every deep, heavy breath it took. Its small brown eyes stared ahead. For a moment Worcza wondered if the beast would make a good mount, under different circumstances.

Worcza was almost within reach of the dead man’s sword…

TWANG.

Somewhere above, one of the human guards fired an arrow into the pit. It landed sharply in the sand just behind the beast’s hind legs. It reared up and roared. Before Worcza could react, the three-horned beast sprang forward and charged at him, head down, horns pointed outward like a hunter’s lance.

Trolls were not naturally agile, so as Worcza made to dive out of the three-horned beast’s path, he mistimed his leap and received a gash across his upper thigh for his trouble.

The crowd above gasped as Worcza’s great frame pitched to the sand. The troll himself made no sound but kept an eye on the animal as it cantered around the far end of the pit, preparing to charge again.

Worcza heaved himself to his feet. He winced at the pain in his leg. Brown crusted blood was already drying in the hot sun around his gash.

The three-horned beast bellowed and rushed forward again kicking up sand in its wake and crushing the bodies of the dead humans underfoot. Worcza stood tall and held his arms out wide. It was twenty strides from him now.

Fifteen…

Ten…

Worcza took a breath.

When the three-horned beast was within spitting distance, Worcza brought his mighty arms down with all the speed he could muster. Before its nose-horn could gore the troll’s grey chest, Worcza clasped the twin, curved horns that sprouted from it’s forehead in its grip. The impact of the catch made him skid back in the sand, but the troll clenched his teeth and continued to bear down as the beast wrestled to break free.

Again the humans above him were cheering and chanting, but Worcza shut it out. The beast grunted and stomped in his grip, eyes wide and terrified, frothing at the mouth. Worcza felt himself sweating from the effort of keeping this rampaging animal in place. Ever so slightly, he began to push his own weight onto his quarry.

The three-horned beast took a step back.

SNAP!

With all the savage speed his reflexes could muster. Worcza pulled the beast’s horn down and to the left. A great crack erupted from behind it’s wide brimmed head, which was now almost upside-down.

The three-horned beast died without another sound. Its limp carcass sank to the sand heavily. Worcza let go of the lopsided skull he was still holding and fell to his knees, exhausted.

A horn above him blew a long high note. The humans surrounding the pit were on their feet, singing, clapping, shaking each other excitedly. The fighting was over for another day.

The heavy doors whined as they swung open onto the fighting pits. Worcza pushed himself to his feet and staggered back indoors. He wanted nothing more than to be back in his dark room, away from the hot, rough sand at his feet; away from the rising smell of corpses and the blistering afternoon sunshine roasting his shoulders and back. Most of all he wanted to be free of the noisy, stupid humans, braying and hollering at everything, watching their own kind die for sport.

The chant began again as he reached the threshold. His ancestor’s chant, the language of his tribe passed down from the Gods of Stone and Snow themselves. Worcza hated them for that more than anything. Some night he might end it all himself in his dark cell.

But for now, he would endure.

Worcza is strong.