Ambush! (Thorns of Steel TP)
...Feanor backs up, his saber flashing in quick flicks of the wrist and elegantly slicing monitors apart...but he can't hold them off for long...
Kiara is sitting on a log, slightly away from the other hares and looks bored, she had went to the abbey just didnt stay long. About 10 other hares are in the clearing around a small campfire chatting and joking around as Kiara rolls her eyes and lays on the log.
Feanor, one of the hares, is sitting by the fire, laidback in both posture and mood, toying with his saber and watching how the firelight plays across it. One of his comrades was telling a joke, and the rookie soldier's laugh is cut off abruptly in the middle as a rustling noise, followed by the snapping of a twig, suddenly is heard from oustide the clearing. Immediately, weapons are unsheathed, arrows nocked, and almost all eyes are scanning the treeline.
Kiara sits up and gets her dirk, she looks up but keeps her longbow down and just has her dirk as she listens carefully to the sounds.
A tense minute goes by...then another...and another...Soon the sounds of idle conversation and laughter return to the clearing, some of the hares laughing in relief and joking about how jumpy they're getting. But it will soon be shown that it was not unwarranted...
Kiara lowers her dirk and shrugs as she sits down again, "Guess it was the wind"
"Yeah, prob'ly the wi--" A nervous lance-corporal's sentence, as well as his existence, comes to an abrupt end as a crude, flint-shard-tipped arrow whistles out of the darkness and lodges in his throat. As he collapses with a final gurgle, somebeast yells, "AMBUSH!" They've trained for this. They /know/ what to due. Almost instantly the contingent of hares dives for cover as one beast, arranged in a wide, sporadic circle facing the edges of the clearing as more arrows hurtle in.
Kiara gasps as one arrow barely misses her and she rolls behind a old tree stump, some more arrows land in the tree trunk she just dove behind, she doesn't dare peek out and seems she is a little under prepared for this sort of thing, usually not fully paying attention at the meetings and training sessions.
"Incoming!" "What th-" SKRARRRAAAAWK! A cacophony of 'caw'-ing fills the air as crows and ravens stream into the camp, swarming hares at random and causing general mayhem, clearing the way for a dozen or so hulking monitor lizards that slash and hack their ways into the clearing, garbed only in loincloths and led by a towering crimson reptile that weilds two swords. In seconds, they're upon the outer fringes of the group, hissing and screeching as they massacre the fighters from the West. Feanor backs up, his saber flashing in quick flicks of the wrist and elegantly slicing monitors apart...but he can't hold them off for long.
Kiara eyes go wide as she sees the large monitors and shivers, she stabs one in the knee and then grabs for her longbow as she fires off an arrow and then quickly another, both land in the same monitor as she backs up and bumps into a tall oak tree, she ducks some claws and rolls to the right, kneeling she fires off another arrow hoping it hits one of them.
As mayhem fills the clearing, a cold, mad laugh rings in the night air, and a white-cloaked figure darts through the shadows at the edge. Meanwhile, Kiara's shafts do find their marks, however, her first pair of shots merely wound the first monitor and cause him to stagger back several paces, although a nearby fighter manages to finish the lizard off with a lance, while her next shot glances off her target's thick scales. Feanor is backed up against the fire not, giving stroke after stroke, slice after slice, but the monitors just keep coming, and he's beginning to tire.
Kiara goes to try and get her dirk and has some panic on her face, this is her first real fight, she stabs one monitor and jabs another, throwing her dirk at one that almost claws her, she gets her longbow and firs at a diving crow and falls over dead.She screams and a fellow hare gets her out of the way as a monitor slices his throat, he manages to stab it deep in the chest at the same time as Kiara fires off one of her last two arrows at another raven and trips over a dead raven on the clearing path, the campfire is starting to die down as well and will soon be out,not that it was that big to begin with.
Feanor seizes a flaming length of wood from the fire and holds it ahead of him in his free paw like a talisman to ward off evil. "Back! Back, I say!" Several of the advancing monitors pause and glance at each other, shrugging, as if to say, 'What does he think those things are supposed to do?'. Then they turn and resume attacking in full force, Feanor swiftly abandoning his improvised torch and wielding his saber with desperate alacrity, oh yeah, this is his first fight, too, but he's done a good job of hiding his fear so far.
Kiara is failing at hiding fear, she does manage to fire off an arrow and the crow hits the fire, well so much for the rest of the campfire, or the raven. She gulps and has one last arrow now and sets it in the longbow and moves around slowly and looks back and forth.
As more and more fighters of the Long Patrol fall, more and more monitor lizards pour into the clearing, the birds circling overhead and picking at the dead and dying, whose screams (the dying, it would be a bit hard for the dead to scream unless something very strange occurs) fill the night. Feanor, out of other options for movement, takes a deep breath and leaps over the dying embers of the smothered fire, ending up near Kiara. "They just keep flippin' coming and coming!" he says, almost whining.
Kiara frowns, by now shivering from fear, her longbow up and she seems unsure of weather to fire an arrow or not. "They..they have ta stop bally well soon..right?"
"Would be a lot better if they--Aggggh!" Feanor let his guard down, and now he pays for it as a crude spear pierces his right shoulder, and the crimson monitor, after finishing off an injured hare at the other side of the clearing, hisses balefully and hurls himself at the saber-wielding Private, slashing brutally with twin swords before wrapping a thick tail around the screaming soldier's leg and hurling him against the oak tree, picking him up, and dashing him against the tree again. Feanor sighs, as if falling asleep, and slides to the ground, crumpling on the protruding tree roots. Meanwhile, the white-cloaked fox--Vladmir Stormfeather, appears in the center of the clearing as if from nowhere, holding up a paw, nonverbally directing the monitor from slaying Kiara, and to take her alive.
Kiara gasps, she fire off her last arrow but being shakeie it hits a tree and stays there, she doesnt see Vladmir and is backing up towards him as she sees the monitors and holds the longbow like a staff and shivers, "B..B..Back..Get away from me!"
With an almost amused tone, Vladmir says, "Oh, /please/. What do you expect to do with /that/?" His scornful words are punctuated by a sharp CRACK as the red lizard--Golem Rakthor--wraps his tail around the bow and yanks downward forcefully once...once is all the force required to snap the longbow into two useless shards and a trailing, drooping piece of string. Then the tail's position is adjusted, and, with a whistling sound and a loud WHOP, the hare is thrown into a dim, murky world of dark dreams and muddled thoughts. The last coherent phrase that can be heard is the voice of the fox adressing the reptiles, saying, "You know what to do. Go with all speed."
Some time later, Feanor slowly, excruciatingly awoke, groaning. Before consciousness was again stolen from him, he thought he saw a masked figure with a dark cloak standing before him, regarding him wordlessly.
The masked warrior heaved the hare's limp form onto his shoulder and headed in the direction of Redwall Abbey. As he passed through the trees, the moonlight shone on the exposed portion of his black-furred face, causing his grey-blue grey-silver eyes to gleam, and the throwing knives in his bandolier/quiver strap to glint slightly.
Groups:
