The Succession Wars

“Brown men!” shouted the archer, “Assault from the right!”

            I had fought the spindly creatures once before, they amounted to weasels in humanoid form.  They were almost as tall as a man but emaciated in the extreme and had rugged brown skin that camouflaged them in the forest.  Their bulbous heads had an enormous maw filled with sharp triangular teeth as well as large, black eyes and small questing nostrils.  Their movements were darting and impossibly swift.  Eleven of the snarling little men came boiling out of the small caves formed by the dead fall, and rushed at us.  One of them hung, still twitching, near the top of the mountain of branches.  Gahan’s first shot had met its mark.  I looked across our front; Bilison and Flint were both braced against the charge.  Gahan’s bow sounded again along with Deirdra’s; one of the brown men tumbled and rolled erect.  It continued its charge.  Solomon’s voice was chanting in an unknown tongue.  A burst of violet force from Amara struck another and hurled it backward several paces.  Another staggered as a stone bounced off its bulbous skull from Kara’s sling.