Lazybones
Adventurer
Yes it is! I thought about breaking the battle down into multiple posts, but hey, with 90% of my internet privileges cut off now at work (I just learned today that RottenTomatoes, IMDB, and my local paper's weekend ticket section are all off limits), I'm way ahead in the story anyway...SolidSnake said:
Time for some hack and slash (and maybe a spell or two)!
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Chapter 157
“Well, we’d best get this over with, then,” Arun said, taking the kebobs off the fire before rising and walking to where his armor was neatly piled beside his bedroll.
“Wait!” Zenna said. “I need time to prepare... I haven’t had time to memorize all of my spells yet.”
“I’d suggest you hurry then,” Morgan said, already buckling his breastplate into place across his broad chest. Hodge, already in his armor, was peering out of the cave mouth, but there was nothing moving out on the slope. Beyond, the jungle fringe hid completely whatever lay in wait.
Zenna bit back a retort, and retreated to the rear of the cave, drawing her spellbook out of her pack.
“Now that they know that we know that they’re out there, I doubt they’ll wait,” Dannel said, testing his bowstring as he gathered up his spare quivers, making sure that none of his gear impeded his movements.
As if in response to his comment, Hodge yelled, “Incomin’!”
The companions turned toward the cave entrance, in time to see a bulging, cumbersome object about the size of a human head land on the slope and bounce down to the edge of the cave mouth. It was a bundle of vegetable matter, burning, with unpleasant plumes of noxious gray smoke rising from it.
“Ugh!” Mole cried, holding her nose. “That smells worse than your cooking, Hodge!”
“They want to smoke us out of here!” Dannel said. As the elf spoke two more of the ungainly objects hurtled down the slope, fired from the cover of the adjacent jungle at the far end of the clearing. One caught in a crevice halfway down the slope and stopped, but the other landed even deeper in the cave, only a foot from where Hodge stood.
“Bah!” the dwarf said, the interjection followed by several hacking coughs as he got a good whiff of the odorous smoke. He unlimbered his axe and swung at the ball with the flat of his blade, intending to knock it back toward where it had come.
That was his intent, anyway. But as he struck the globe, it burst open in a puff of gray smoke that filled the entry of the cave, scattering bits of burning debris all around.
“Damn it, dwarf! You aid their cause!” came Morgan’s voice from the gray.
Hodge’s reply was a colorful string of obscenities, but Arun’s voice cut through the chaos. “All right, everyone, OUT, NOW!”
As the companions staggered out of the obscured interior of the cave, choking from the nasty vapors still seeping from the burning globes, they stepped into morning sunshine so bright that it almost blinded them—yet another advantage to their foes. A half-dozen armored gnolls were gathered at the edge of the forest trails near the top of the slope, their hyena-like features ferocious and cruel as they regarded the men and women below them. They hefted their weapons, massive pole-axes with jagged iron heads forming crescents, with sharp spear-heads at the summit of their shafts. Upon spotting the companions emerging from the cave, they barked a challenge to battle, forming a ragged line at the far side of the clearing.
Arun had already started up the hill, moving slowly but steadily across the uneven slope. Morgan, not to be undone, was only a pace behind him, drawing his glowing sword as he charged.
Dannel emerged from the smoke and quickly scanned the battlefield. “Watch out!” he cried. “They’re waiting for us, it’s probably a trap!”
The twang of bowstrings and the whisper of darting arrows filled the air an instant later, as concealed archers in the brush flanking the line of halberdiers opened fire. Morgan and Arun both took hits, the powerful bows of the gnoll archers penetrating their armor to dig the steel heads of their missiles into their flesh. The injuries had to be painful, but neither man interrupted his stride, continuing their headlong rush forward.
Hodge coughed and spat as he steadied himself against the uneven stones flanking the cave entrance. Seeing that his warrior comrades had left him behind, he lifted his axe and started trudging after them. Behind him, a pebble clattered down the hill above the cave, landing a pace behind the dwarf. Hodge didn’t notice, slowly picking up speed as he started up the slope.
But Dannel heard the pebble, and he spun just as an arrow knifed through the air where he’d been standing. Looking up, he saw a pair of gnoll archers in positions atop the hill above the cave, settled in rocky cover a good thirty feet above them. The position—damn, I should have seen that last night, the elf thought—gave the two snipers a commanding angle of the battlefield. The second archer took aim at Hodge, and fired even as Dannel shouted a warning to the dwarf.
Hodge had no time to react, and the arrow slammed hard into the space between his shoulder blades, penetrating his armor and driving the head several inches into his torso. The critical hit drove the doughty dwarf to his knees, and he coughed again, spitting up a gob of bright red blood that splattered on the rocky soil before him.
But he did not fall. Instead, the dwarf pulled himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily for a moment before he started once more up the hill, never looking back.
Morgan grunted as another arrow glanced off of his shield with enough force to dent the thin steel plate covering its wooden frame. Ahead he saw the line of gnoll halberdiers shift their formation, forming a half-circle around the charging dwarf paladin, their weapons coming down to absorb the dwarf’s rush. Arun didn’t hesitate, but as he charged Morgan heard the dwarf utter a cry of battle. The words were in a language that the cleric did not speak, but he did recognize the flow of divine energy that flowed into the dwarf, who seemed to swell as the divine favor of Moradin entered him.
Morgan lifted his sword and called upon his own patron in the crystalline syllables of the Celestial tongue. Helm answered his call, and the cleric once more felt his heart sing as the world around him shrank, the seven-foot gnoll warriors becoming puny as he enlarged once more to a height of twelve feet. The morning sun blazed on his polished armor, transforming the cleric into a shining angel of destruction.
Arun crashed into the ring of blades, knocking two aside with his shield and deflecting a third with the haft of his warhammer. A spearhead glanced off of his helmet, opening a gash at his temple, but the wound was not serious. Then he was inside the reach of the long weapons, and he went to work.
Morgan rushed to the aid of the dwarf, biting off a curse of anger and pain as another arrow from the jungle ahead found him, tearing through his arm just above the greave. “Cowards!” he yelled in that direction, easily deflecting the overhead chop from the halberd of the gnoll warrior who’d turned to face him, bringing his own weapon down in a blow that clove the beast-man’s shoulder down almost to its breastbone.
The gnoll crumpled, and Morgan shouted a cry of praise and triumph to his god.
Fifty paces distant, at the base of the hill, Dannel exchanged another pair of shots with the snipers in their secure positions above, darting back into cover as his shot glanced off of a boulder sheltering one of the gnoll archers. The rock overhanging the cave entrance jutted outward slightly, and in the cover thusly offered Zenna and Mole took shelter, pressed up against the cave wall.
“We’ve got to deal with these two, get up there and help the others,” Zenna said. Her eyes were tearing from the lingering wisps of smoke.
“Make me invisible,” Mole suggested. “The slope’s not quite vertical, I think I can make it.”
Zenna nodded and cast her spell, and the gnome vanished.
“Any more ideas?” Dannel asked her. “I think my luck’s about used up.” He lifted a fold of his cloak, revealing the puncture caused by the most recent arrow from above.
“Too bad it didn’t hit your thick skull, that’s your least vulnerable spot,” she said.
“Ah, at least we’re talking again, eh?” he replied, with a grin.
Zenna bit off a retort. This wasn’t the time. “Draw their fire,” she said. “I have a spell that should take care of one of them.”
The elf nodded, and leapt out of his position of cover, dropping into a roll that ended with him coming into a crouch, his bow drawn. An arrow stabbed into the ground behind him, but even as he fired a second sank deep into his thigh.
Zenna stepped out from her position of concealment. She had none of her usual protections in place; she hadn’t had the chance to renew her spells she’d used the day before. But even though one of the gnolls saw her and pointed, they couldn’t reload quickly enough to defeat her magic.
She called upon the spell, drawing upon that strange power that wasn’t quite magic, but was an eldritch combination of energy from within her and without. She pointed at the nearest archer, nodding to herself in satisfaction as it froze, its bow half-drawn.
She ducked back into the cave entrance, but not fast enough to escape another arrow that clipped the edge of the rock surface and scored a bright line of pain across her back. She cried out, falling back against the cave wall.
“Zenna!”
“I’m all right! Get back into cover, you fool!”
But Dannel held his ground, drawing and firing in a blur of motion. His first shot caught the enemy archer in the shoulder, causing it to drop the arrow he’d just drawn, and as he reached for another, a second shot clipped his arm, drawing blood as it passed.
Doubly wounded, the gnoll could have dropped into full cover, but it did not, instead drawing another arrow and taking aim on the injured elf. But before it could release, pain exploded through its belly, and it staggered backward. Too late it caught sight of the gnome who’d suddenly appeared at its feet.
“That’s the down side of picking fights with folks smaller than you. Sometimes they’re tougher than they look.”
The gnoll reached for its axe, but its fingers, suddenly weak, fumbled uselessly on the handle. It tried to get up, but the gnome pressed her advantage, and soon it was over.
Arun’s hammer rang out as he crushed the breastplate of a gnoll, knocking it roughly back to flop in a tangled heap on the ground. Half of the original six were down, but even as the remaining three drew back to give them room to use their cumbersome weapons against the dwarf and cleric, the brush shook and a trio of sleek, muscular gnolls darted out from cover and rushed the armored pair from behind. These three weren’t as heavily armored as the others, but they moved with great speed and agility over the broken ground, and they bore battleaxes of obvious quality that cleft the air in anticipatory swathes as they joined in the attack.
Arun saw them coming out of the corner of his eye. “Back to back!” he said, rushing again at the surviving halberdiers.
Morgan moved to cover him, his enhanced size giving him reach and allowing him to strike one of the onrushing gnolls before they could get close enough to attack. He put all of his strength into the blow, but the gnoll leapt smoothly aside a heartbeat before the blade would have impacted, coming up into a smooth roll as his companions flanked the cleric. Morgan deflected the first attack with a swing of his shield, but the second drove his axe into the cleric’s flank, crushing plate and releasing a jet of bright red blood from a deep gash.
The third gnoll was distracted from his rush by Hodge, who was still having a bit of difficulty, but who’d finally reached the battle through simple dogged persistence.
“Fight me, yeh... pant... bastard,” he said, lifting his axe wearily.
The gnoll obliged him, coming at him in a violent rush so sudden that the dwarf barely got his shield up in time to absorb the first stroke of the axe. He tried to counter, but the gnoll was too fast, dodging back out of the way of his stroke. It drew back and snarled, its jaws twisting in what might have been a grim smile. His back felt as though it was on fire, and he could feel blood from the wound running down his spine.
“I’m not through yet,” he growled, as much to convince himself as the gnoll.
The two combatants came at each other again, passing too close to evade, instead focusing on all-out assault. The edge of Hodge’s axe tore a gash in the gnoll’s side, but in return its stroke crushed the armor covering his shoulder, sending a steel wedge of pain down into his body. The dwarf staggered back, holding onto consciousness by only a slim margin. The gnoll, sensing victory, barked out a laugh and lifted its axe for a final strike.
The arrow sliced by so close that Hodge felt a wind pluck at his ear. The missile buried itself to the feathers in the gnoll’s gut, staggering it. But it wasn’t dead yet, either.
Morgan groaned as he felt a muscle in his leg tear, keeping his feet through grim determination as his two adversaries hewed at him mercilessly. The cleric had learned the hard way that these foes were too quick for the powerful but clumsy strokes he’d used to drop the first warrior, and now he was fencing with them, stabbing with short, aimed thrusts, while using his sword and shield to turn their attacks. One of the gnolls was hurt bad, a deep puncture in its shoulder, but it continued to press its attack, forcing the cleric to split his attention between the two of them, leaving him open to their attacks.
Arun took a solid hit to his side that he ignored as he barreled within the reach of the gnoll directly in front of him. The gnoll dropped his pole-arm and unlimbered an axe, but it had no chance to use the weapon before Arun caved its side in with a powerful swing of his hammer. The other two halberdiers, flanking him, swung their weapons in great arcs with their considerable strength behind the blows, hoping to crush through the dwarf’s armor and mangle the muscled flesh beneath.
It was a ferocious attack, but the halberds were the product of gnoll forges, the steel of dubious quality. The dwarf’s full plate armor, by contrast, was mithral, reinforced by skeins of magic. The hits were loud and the force of the blows battered the dwarf back a step, but even as the gnolls drew back their weapons for another strike Arun roared and rushed at the closest, his hammer coming down in a powerful and deadly arc toward its head.
Just five paces away, Morgan cried out as one of his opponents crushed his knee with a potent swing of its axe. His knee-guard saved the limb, but the leg nonetheless buckled, and the cleric fell. Even as he toppled, however, he lunged out and drove the length of his blade into the chest of the wounded gnoll that had struck him down. His sword stuck in the creature’s chest and was torn from his hand as it fell backward, but it didn’t matter, Morgan thought grimly before he handed hard and pain drove away all else. He tried to push himself up, knowing that the second gnoll would be approaching, its axe lifted to finish him, but his arms felt like lead weights, and would not respond to his commands.
“Helm...” he said, blood flecking his lips as he forced out the syllables, “Accept my sacrifice...”
A bark of pain interrupted him, and with a final heave he pushed himself over. Standing over him was his enemy, but instead of pressing its attack, it was clutching at its face, its axe forgotten at its side. As it turned, Morgan saw that half of its face had been ruined, sizzling as flesh continued to melt from its skull. Only one eye was still able to see, and through a haze of pain it focused on the helpless priest. With a roar of agony, it lifted its weapon...
“Halt.”
The creature froze, trembling. Morgan recognized the word as a divine command, knew that its power would only hold the creature for a few seconds. He tried to call upon Helm, to draw upon His healing power, but the world around him was swimming in a red haze, and the words faltered on the edges of consciousness on which he teetered.
The gnoll suddenly cried out and went down, seemingly for no reason, until Morgan caught sight of a small figure that stepped into view beside his prone form.
“You don’t look so good,” Mole said. “Zenna!”
No, he thought, as the gnome drifted out of focus. No, not her...
The thought was the last cogent one he felt, as he tottered off the brink and fell into unconsciousness.
). I do use a fairly generous bleeding/stabilization script so actual deaths aren't as common as you'd think. 
