26 Opal. A feline yowl pierced the air, sounding the alarm. To the northeast, the dwarven strike force charged.
"Amalgam Graspsear! Come out and face your fate!" shouted their leader.
Behind the gate, the cats waited in tense anticipation. All except one, who waited above.
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A couple brave, and fast, and lightly armored, invaders reached the gate ahead of the pack. "Charge!" shouted Amalgam, and the whole village moved as one. Battle was engaged!
The cats turned to face the main column, which was rapidly approaching. Abandoning all sense of formation, the oncoming dwarves trusted in their sturdy armor and axes and charged in single file. The front dwarves were quickly surrounded by a writhing mass of feline flesh, and it seemed an impermeable wall of claws and teeth.
But they were reinforced from behind. Even thoroughly outnumbered, they held their own with classic dwarven toughness. A feline citizen caught a powerful swing from a dwarven axe, and landed broken nearly a hundred feet away. Other cats weren't able to dodge all the tough blows, and wounds were many.
Frogwarrior, seeing the carnage, thought better of leaping into the fray. Approaching the reinforcing dwarves, he drew the attention of a few and ran for his life. Feline speed saved him, as two burdened axedwarves and a nimble wrestler followed, accompanied by a barrage of crossbow bolts from the dwarven leader. Behind him, the dead and dying littered the ground.
Even the dwarves' tough armor was not enough to save the invaders from the onslaught of tooth and masterfully worked elf bone. The cats tore down a few and surged forward. The crossbow-wielding leader, though, reloaded and fired with mechanical flawlessness and accuracy, dealing numerous wounds. Magpie took several bolts to the legs and collapsed. Worked into a frenzy, the cats did their best to avoid the barrage while dodging swinging axes. A woodcutter failed to avoid a blow, and was nearly cut in half. Blood flowed like rain, and the porous ground drank greedily.
Bengali leapt on a dwarf and tore at his arm, trying to wrest the axe from his grip. He never saw the blow from behind that threw him in a bloody mess against the wooden wall. Top Cat took a crossbow bolt in the eye and fell unmoving. A dwarf took a moment of freedom to hack at the prone Magpie, slashing her to the heart.
But the dwarves were losing. One by one they fell beneath the tormenting claws and darts, until at last only their leader and a handful of scattered axedwarves were left. Taking aim, the expert feline marksman let fly with an elf-bone dart that flew true, straight through the beard and into the throat behind. The rest scattered, and the cats pursued. Only three dwarves escaped.
Thus the first battle with the dwarves drew to a close. The cats had won, but at no small loss - five more of their number joined the dead, in exchange for thirteen dwarves. Death's harvest had been plentiful this season.
In addition to the deaths, 100killer9 suffered a minor but permanent wound in her lower spine. Cheddarius and one of the wrestlers nearly lost a leg each, while Lapchase suffered a mild wound to his paw.
Post-battle analysis: That unnamed markscat did a hell of a job. 11 of the 13 dwarf kills were attributed to her! The other cats did a lot of good work too, but a lot of it was them holding the dwarves down and incapacitating them while she moved in for the kill-steal.
I didn't originally plan for Frogwarrior to lure enemies away, but he was about to run off alone ahead of the other cats into an approaching column of axedwarves - I unrecruited him. No way I'm gonna let a cat that isn't Amalgam or 100killer9 march out alone like that. And the wrestler and two axedwarves following was too perfect (although the axedwarves quickly fell behind and moved to rejoin the main battle).
It also really helped that the first few dwarves marched out in front of the main force, rather than us hitting them all at once - only the sheer press of bodies carried the day, and it was really necessary for each dwarf that we were fighting to be outnumbered, even though we were pretty evenly matched in numbers this time.
Also, there were 55 dwarf chunks left over. Dwarfloaf, anyone?
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Topic: Screampacks. Dwarves repelled, once again. Only 4 cats lost! (Read 27951 times)