(242) Hunters – 8

By now, Kre could count about twenty of the little creatures moving out of the rocks and closing the eighty yards or so to their position.  The four atop the rocks were still there, though they had no stones spinning in the air.  It seemed as if they were dancing and jeering now, waiting for their brethren to come back with the bodies of those who dared to intrude on their little hideout.

The only thing Kre could not see, however, were their allies who should have been in position by now.  When exactly was their counter-ambush supposed to begin?

Seventy yards now.

Neither Ras nor Beleg made a move to their weapons, so Kre kept his hands pressed hard against the ground to keep them from reaching for his own.  Ras was putting on quite the show of trying to get his “father” up and running, crying out that they needed to get away.

Sixty yards separated the two sides, and Kre could see them for all their grotesqueness now.  Thick bodies of a sickly pale green skin.  The barest scraps of paltry leathers wrapped about their frames, flapping loosely as they ran.  They had no hair to speak of, at least, none that Kre could see from here.  

Forty yards.  He could start to make out the difference in their bodies.  They ranged from maybe four to five feet tall with arms that seemed comically long and shorter legs that resembled two logs of uncut firewood, moving furiously back and forth as they ran.

In their hands they held various implements that should have made Kre laugh for how ridiculous they seemed as stand-ins for real weapons.  Thick branches studded with pieces of jagged metal.  An old shovel whose spade seemed to be broken in half and slightly bent.  A massive rock that apparently broke in such a way that it sported a hand hold.

Time seemed to slow a bit as the creatures loped forward towards the three of them.  It was just under thirty yards now, and Kre was relieved to finally see both Ras and Beleg start to tense their muscles and focus their eyes. 

As the first of the creatures passed a spot about twenty yards away from the trio, Beleg and Ras made their move.  It seemed such a smooth and practiced motion that Kre had to wonder how many times they had performed that exact dance.  Ras turned away from Beleg, using one arm to fling his tattered cloak to one side while the large man rolled to his back, drawing one of the now visible blades from the smaller man’s back.  With a single kick of his legs, Beleg was suddenly upright and armed while Ras’s arm swung back around to his front, sword now in hand.

At this point, the goblins in front immediately knew that something was going terribly wrong.  Their guttural sounds turned shrill as none of them wanted to be the first to reach the two armed and seemingly experienced fighters.

However, when you’re at the front of a score of creatures with a lust for blood, running as fast as their stumpy legs could carry them… stopping isn’t something that can be easily accomplished. 

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