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An Explorer in the Mountains or,
The tale of a solitary Firewalker who routed a hundred Elves and became a great hero
by Curtis Anderson

Burnard Charbroyle, Burnie for short, had had it with this damn army. For weeks they'd been rocketing from one battlefield to another, trying to outmaneuver the other armies of Esfah and win a decisive victory for his warlord. But it hadn't come to pass. Burnie sniffled. He was finding it chilly here so far from the sun-in some places it was downright frigid-and he was getting peevish and impatient.

Then one bright day a ripple of excitement swept through the ranks. The big battle was finally brewing! The complicated cat-and-mouse had brought the rival armies to the same battlefield. Conflict and resolution at last!

And he'd been sent to this dismal mountain to guard the falling-down henge at its peak, a hundred yards above him. He was all alone. The wind whistled around him, mournful and cold. What kind of tactics was this? If no enemies showed up, he'd have served no purpose. If even a modest army came, he'd be dead. There'd been some whispering among his fellow Firewalkers that they were the least-appreciated contingent of their warlord's army. Burnie began to suspect that he was the least appreciated among the Firewalkers.

Bored, Burnie found an anthill and started frying its little inhabitants as they went about their business. He became so absorbed that he didn't notice the intruders until they were almost on top of him. Hearing a melodious voice, he scrambled behind a boulder, stealing a quick glance before crouching low. He didn't want his raging coiffeur to give him away.

Two Coral Elves were emerging from the vegetation below, their headbands holding their seafoam hair away from their fine-featured faces. They were chattering happily. Maybe having company made this mountain duty more bearable, Burnie thought.

Then Burnie froze. A message from HQ came in, telling him that the Elves were too close to the henge, and would have to be stopped. He must attack immediately. Attack? It was two to one! He chewed on his lip a moment, then pulled out his solar-powered calculator and started punching in numbers. It was unlikely he could kill both of them. But could he scare them away?

Coral Elf Sentinels had no saves faces, and in the mountains could not maneuver out of danger like they could on the coast (Burnie thought of the cold ocean water and shivered). Suppose he got a hit. To keep from routing, the Elves would have to not roll any ID icons: a 5/6 chance for each of them. The chance of them both avoiding the ID icon was 5/6 x 5/6, or 69.44%. More precisely, as his calculator told him, against one billion attacks in which he got a hit, the defending elves would refuse to run 694,444,444 times.

The situation was less than ideal. But orders were orders. He took a deep breath and jumped up from behind his boulder, screaming…

Well, the victory party had been immensely fun. He'd been toasted and lifted onto his comrades' shoulders. The Elves' headlong rush down the mountain had allowed his army to take the henge and win the battle. He wondered how those cowards had been treated when they got back to their own lines. The Elves' warlord could not have been happy.

And now he was reaping the rewards of his success. The battle had been less than decisive. The Firewalkers again had had to jet around for several more weeks before engaging their enemies. And, now a veteran at this sort of thing, Burnie had been entrusted to guard another mountain henge, alone. At least this time they'd given him a magical sword: a Flicker Foil. It was a little rusty, but it seemed serviceable. Nothing was happening, however, and Burnie was bored. He looked around for an anthill.

The tramp of feet brought him up short. Again, he took a quick glance before ducking low behind a rock. When what he'd seen registered on his brain, a shiver of fear ran through him. He could not believe his eyes, but dared not stick his head up to look again.

One hundred Coral Elves, their headbands flapping in the breeze, marched steadily up the slope. Apparently their warlord had learned from his last mistake and sent a beefier assault force. Burnie had never seen an army so large. The order from HQ came in. Burnie received it with relief, looking forward to a quick retreat to the reserves, where he could rest, preferably in the middle of a bonfire.

"Attack."

Attack? Burnie couldn't believe it. One soldier against a hundred? That was crazy. But orders were orders. Cursing his dice general, he pulled out his calculator, his trembling fingers punching at the keys. Again, each Elf Sentinel had a 5/6 chance of not routing when he swung the Flicker Foil at him. So 100 Elves would have a 5/6 to the 100th power chance of not fleeing. That meant that when he attacked, the likelihood they'd hold their ground and turn him into hamburger flambe was…

.0000012%

Or, if he made a billion such attacks against just such an army, they would stand against him twelve times. Stunned, Burnie thought about that. The two-Elf army had a 694,444,444 chance in a billion of standing up to him. The hundred-Elf army had a 12 in a billion chance. He did some more calculations. The two-Elf army was more than 57 million (694 million/12) times as likely to withstand his attack as the hundred-Elf army, because it was 98% smaller.

Burnie rubbed his hands, only partly in anticipation. It was really cold up here. But it was going to be some victory party afterward. He breathed a prayer of thanks for a rule that made some armies more cowardly the bigger they got, no matter how few soldiers attacked them. He jumped from behind his boulder, screaming his head off…

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