A Gurgam Fight

The journey through the woods was a little disorienting.  I remembered travelling over bits of this route, and Barr had some problems with my trail as it's quite old, and it looks like Gurgam had been along here.  It seems it was a good thing I moved on when I did.

Mid-morning, as we were tracking my route and trying to keep quiet, we heard sounds ahead of us.  The others were behind us, and we could barely see them.  Barr signalled to me to be quiet, and he whispered "wait here, and don't move".  I was could barely breathe, I was so keen to keep quiet.  He slipped off back down the trail so quietly that I could hear nothing.  The reputation for Hznaman people among the Dzarraf is that they're clumsy and noisy.  Not Barr.

The noises ahead were becoming louder, like there were several people heading through the woodland, but well out of sight.  Before I knew it Barr was back.  He whispered again that the others were moving up - he thought there were  Gurgam up ahead, and they were preparing for a fight.  Within a few seconds I was aware that the others were moving closer, I could hear them - although they were keeping it down.  When I looked back Barr had moved off into the undergrowth, I hadn't heard him leave.

The rest of us gathered together and Mullory lead a whispered discussion.  They talked of a fight with some Gurgam, this time, if we timed it right, we'd have complete surprise over them.  The plan seemed to be that the warriors (Kenner, Daran and Mullory) would burst upon them with their weapons drawn and make the most of their surprise, while Elenhugh would hang back - Barr, who returned at this point, would just out-sneak them and take any stragglers out from behind.  This seems to be a standard tactic in this kind of environment.  Barr reported that there were a dozen Gurgam ahead, heading more-or-less this way, but they had a wolf with them that was tracking.  He couldn't tell if it had our scent, but he thought it was tracking my trail from a few days ago.

I asked what my place in the fight might be, they just looked at each other - it was as if they had forgotten I was there, they were so focussed on attacking their enemy.  Daran suggested that I join in behind the main fighters, that I stay out of sight until the fight picked up and then join in as I could - but he was concerned that I had no armour, so insisted that there was no point in taking risks.  The others agreed with this, weapons were drawn silently, and we turned to face the noise.  Barr had disappeared again.  The three warriors stepped forward, and Elenhugh suggested that I keep reasonably close to him at first - but not get in the way, as he had something special he wanted to throw at them.  We waited until the others were five yards ahead of us then pressed forward.

I could see ahead of us as the warriors kept as hidden as possible until, as one, they stepped out behind the front two Gurgam, and catching their second rank by surprise.  The first two fell instantly, sliced pretty much in two, Mullory stepped around to the next rank and knocked one off his feet with a well place blow with his mace at the side of the enemy's head.  The next thing up looked like utter confusion.  The Gurgam tried to organise themselves, and moved up to attack Kenner and Mullory, who were now at the front, as they did this I noticed a Gurgam at the back fall in a heap, silently, and at the same time a blue magic leapt from Elenhugh's fingers, it broke apart and ploughed into three of the Gurgam in the middle of the pack.

The front two Gurgam had turned, one had the wolf which was moving to attack Daran, but he calmly parried them both away.  This seemed to be my cue, I stepped forward and ran my rusty sword into the kidneys of the closest Gurgam, the other of the front two, the one without the wolf.  He fell noisily to the floor as I pulled my sword out.  When I looked up I was quite shocked - the other Gurgam had been utterly decimated.  Kenner had stepped forward and killed two, from what I could tell it was with one blow.  Mullory had killed another while parrying blows from two more, and Daran had killed one and was swinging his sword through a second, and I was sure two Gurgam who had been at the back were not there any more.

There were only four left, and they were surrounded (although they didn't actually know that, Barr was out of sight behind them).  The wolf handler let his wolf continue attacking Daran and aimed his own blow at me, I missed the parry and it hit me on the upper left arm, cutting my skin and I'm sure I felt the bone give way.  I was mid-way through my own stroke though, and I ignored the pain while I sliced upwards from his belly up into his chest.  He fell towards me, and I backed off a few paces.  The wolf was beheaded by a skilful blow from Daran, and as I was watching that, I missed seeing the others being dealt with.

"Anyone hurt?" came a cry from Mullory - it was only me that answered, so he came over and took a look at my arm.  The others seemed content with their handiwork, and were full of praise for me too.  I felt quite pleased with myself - I'd done two of them, and the pain in my arm was more than worth it.  Mullory had other ideas, though.  He said a short prayer and passed his hand over the wound.  I felt the muscles pull together and the bone straighten out.  I looked down at it; the pain was gone.  There was a small white scar where I'd been hit but nothing else.

Kenner had been scratching around the bodies, but they'd nothing that was of use to us, with one exception.  He handed me a small round shield, telling me it might come in useful.  He said he couldn't see any weapons that were better than the one I had.  I wouldn't usually use a shield, when I was trained to fight we used axes in two hands and we wore chain mail.  I have to make do with what is available, though.  We moved beyond the trail of the Gurgam - their trail was much easier to spot than mine had been, and Barr thought it would probably be the quickest route back to their lair.  Elenhugh had collected the top half of each Gurgam's left ear - these, he told me, were for their bounty claim.  He stowed them in a sack.

We stopped for an early lunch a couple of hundred yards along the trail.  The others talked through the fight, and were pleased that I had taken part and helped them cut the enemy down so quickly.  There was a genuine glow at the speed at which it had been done, I think they'd impressed themselves.  Daran passed a critical eye over my fighting style - I told him I was not used to fighting with sword, and that by choice I'd use an axe every time.  This was greeted with a string of nods, an acknowledgement of my race's reputation.  He then spent half an hour talking through some defensive sword techniques that could be useful pretty soon.

We moved on, and by mid afternoon we reached the camp-site I'd used on that first night.  Gurgam had been here, and they'd had the wolf with them - even I could make out those tracks.  I wasn't surprised one bit that they'd tailed me to here, the only surprise for me was that it had taken them this long.  I'm glad now that I'd kept on moving.  We checked over the site just in case, but they'd left nothing behind.

It took us a two or three hours more to move back along the trail to the lair entrance.  We sat and watched it for a few minutes, we could see the Gurgam guards outside.  There was no call to attack the place this evening, it was starting to get dark at this point.  Elenhugh said that we should attack in broad daylight, as that's when they're weakest - and we'll be freshest and strongest.  We moved away from the site again, but not along the trail the Gurgam had used to track me - we went off into the woodland, and walked for the best part of an hour before we made a 'cold camp', this was their term.  What it means is that there will be no fire this evening, and we'll be having a double-watch.  We dine on trail rations tonight, the cold weather should keep the pork legs in my sack fresh.