Hey guys, about a month ago I posted a thing I wrote, detailing my interpretation of the Quartermaster's personal history. A few of you seemed to like it, so I decided to write a new one, this time about the Shieldmaiden. I hope you enjoy.

Gilla Rustratchet had always been an odd girl, for a gnome. To her parents’ eternal frustration, she never did pick up that eye for machinery and invention that was so endemic to her peers, instead choosing to seclude herself in the family library, engrossing herself in storybooks, gorging herself on tales of high adventure. Taken on its own, that would have been perfectly acceptable behaviour, except for when she wasn’t reading about adventures, Gilla was often found trying to get herself into one.

And the adventures that Gilla read about tended towards the violent side.

She was thirteen when she got into her first fight, or at least the first she could remember. A disagreement with a classmate over the ownership of a hair band, which quickly escalated into an argument, then a shouting match, then into Gilla’s fist dislodging several of that classmate’s teeth. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for either child; the teeth had managed to embed themselves in the flesh of her knuckles, and had to be surgically removed by the local priest. She still had the scar; the first of many.

As most people expected, she was eventually disowned by her family. Bitter and resentful, she trod the long road to Stormwind, and signed up for the Alliance Military at the first opportunity. The first year was the hardest; she was assigned to a mixed-race training unit, commanded by a dwarf by the name of Sergeant Claybreaker. The routine hit her hard; the constant exercises, the drills, the lessons. That first month, she got into a fight with another recruit, a human named Jesse, and ended up breaking his fingers. She would later swear it was the stress getting to her, but the truth was, she was just feeling violent that day. The Sergeant wasn’t pleased in the slightest; he sentenced her to twenty lashes, which, when she protested, he then doubled.

It was the worst pain she had ever felt, up to that point at least. The remainder of her training passed much without incident, though that wasn’t the last time she felt the sting of the lash. Years later, she marched, clad in plate and chain, to engage the Horde.

Her first real battle, she didn’t remember much of. It was mostly over before she arrived, the orcish warriors having been thoroughly overrun by a preceding cavalry charge. The second, however, she remembered. They were camped, part of some campaign to take the Horde capital due to some politics concerning warchiefs that Gilla didn’t care for. The lookouts were assassinated quietly, and the camp infiltrated. By the time any proper alarm was raised, a full two-thirds of the men were slain. Gilla woke to the screaming.

“For the warchief!”

They were fast, and they were brutal. Just woken and unarmoured, Gilla turned to see one of the assailants charging at her in a full sprint. Rolling to the side, she barely dodged the deadly swing of an orcish halberd. Desperate and disoriented, she grabbed the nearest object she could reach, a large, cast iron kettle, and swung it at her attacker. The orc may have stumbled, but she wasn’t sure, because she had already bolted. Dashing behind the cook’s tent, she found herself facing another orc.

“For hellscream!”

The blade swung, and connected wood. Gilla wasn’t sure where she had grabbed the barrel lid from, but the halberd bit deeply into the hardwood, the force of the impact knocking her backwards, to the ground. Dazed, she watched the orc advance as she scrabbled for something, anything, which might save her. Miraculously her fingers clasped around the hilt of a knife, thrown from the cook’s tables in the chaos.

The orc charged. Gilla jumped to her feet as best she could, stepping forward and thrusting the knife forward into the orc’s belly as it met her.

Steel met flesh, for both combatants. The cook’s knife tore a ragged hole in the orc’s innards, as he tumbled to the ground, gurgling. Gilla stood for a moment, and wondered why her left arm felt numb. She turned her head, and saw the halberd blade, still deeply embedded in her shattered shoulder, lodged alarmingly deep into her body.

That was unexpected. Gilla sat down, though it ended up more like a collapse, followed by a lethal case of bleeding out. Suddenly the whip didn’t seem so bad anymore. She blacked out.

Years later, she was back on the battlefield. The priest that had saved her life had remarked on how resilient she was, how no-one had any right to life after a wound like that. Gilla was just glad that she had recovered the use of her arm, though a good amount of bone had to be bolted back together, and her left breast was gone entirely. It was a long recovery, and a long career after that. It always felt good to be on the killing ground again; following the incident, she had taken to carrying the largest, heaviest shield she could manage, and she had to admit, she found a certain grim satisfaction in caving in orc skulls with it. A battle cry sounded, from alarmingly nearby. She turned, and smiled. Ogres. The Horde had grown desperate enough to rely on stupid Light-blasted ogres.

She shouted to her second-in-command, Lieutenant Claybreaker, her old Sergeant’s nephew, and together they charged. Shield first, she knocked aside swords and spearpoints, before leaping up at one of the brutes, driving the side of her shield into its leg. The ogre let out a pained grunt, dropping to one knee, only to be swiftly executed by Claybreaker. She grinned at the dwarf, before turning to the second ogre. It looked at them, apparently dumbfounded, before raising its club and bellowing.

“Me smash you!” it screamed, running at Claybreaker. Halfway through its lumbering charge though, it appeared to get confused somehow, and upon seeing Gilla, turned, rather swiftly for its bulk, and swung at her instead in a long, overhead blow. The wooden club splintered against the thick steel of Gilla’s shield. She smiled.

“I can take the hit,” she said, more to herself than anyone else, before bring her shield up and slamming it down on the brute’s head.