NOVEL NEXT Chapter 40
The morning sun greeted Grud thru the cracks in his shelter and was further roused by the sound of camp activity. After pulling his dick out of Mita and digging a hole for her to deposit his seed, he got dressed and went out to join the other hunters for breakfast.
As he was eating and listening to the chatter and complaints from some of the battered hunters who had their asses handed to them during Dhun’s training yesterday, Grud thought back to the awkward conversation he had with Chieften Dhun last night about his vision of the Hunter Lizards.
Grud was asked many questions like, “Are you sure?”, “How many were there?”, “How far away are they?” and “How do you know they are about a half day journey away from us?”. All of which Grud could only answer with noncommittal vague answers like “I think so…”, “Around twenty.” and “It just felt like half a day.” the rest of the questions were dodged by saying that the vision was not clear.
At the end of the meeting, Dhun had a worried frown on his face and Grud knew why, it was mainly due to their poisonous saliva, but it was not only their bites that they had to worry about, when Hunter Lizards groom themselves their poisonous saliva also gets on their claws.
Even a small scratch from a Hunter Lizard could put a man out of action for a day or more before they regain feeling and mobility of their body. So if any of their group gets poisoned, they most likely would not die but the limp body would slow down their whole journey, and worse if multiple people in the party were to be poisoned.
From all the stories that he was told by older hunters that had encountered Hunter Lizards before, those hunters that survived were those who killed Hunter Lizards by killing a lone one at the end of a long spear in one shot, having other hunters nearby to drag their paralyzed body to safety after winning the fight or throwing spears at them.
On the bright side, if the vision that Mita showed him was right, it was more than seventy hunters against around twenty Hunter Lizards. Hopefully after killing a few of the Hunter Lizards and with their overwhelming numbers will scare those lizards away after culling some of their numbers.
Before Grud knew it, he was done with his breakfast and the call to break camp and prepare to move out came. As they started marching, Dhun came up beside him “Grud, follow me, we are going to be at the head of the party.” after saying that, Dhun picked up his pace to make it to the front of the procession.
Grud followed while grumbling to himself, ‘Dammit… What now? Was it a mistake to tell him about the vision?’
—
It has been a few hours since they broke camp, and Dhun was feeling worried but kept his face natural to not show it to those he was leading, ‘I know that Grud is being trained to be a shaman, but I hope he is wrong about those Hunter Lizards. I would rather avoid pack predators, especially after the showing of combat skills those young bloods have shown me yesterday.’
As his expedition party marched forward, Dhun looked up to the position of the sun, ‘It would be time to take a break soon, hope there is a source of fresh water nearby.’
A few steps after that thought, he heard very obvious sniffing from just beside him and turned to Grud who was sniffing awhile looking around with a more alert face than he had seen in the past few hours.
After a few more steps forward and a few weird looks from himself and those around him, Grud’s head locked onto a direction a spot slightly to the left of the direction they were heading. Then he heard Grud say some ominous words, “I smell fresh blood… *sniff*... around four hundred meters in that direction.” Grud said as he pointed in the direction his head was locked onto.
Those words, even if all of them did not know if it was true or not, made those around that heard it tighten their grip on their spears. ‘He can smell from that distance and can tell the distance? What even is this man? He has enough talent to be trained personally by Zargall, brings down a Dire Bear on his own, and now this… Well, better safe than sorry.’
Dhun signaled a halt to their group and waved over one of his trusted men, Grilk, who excelled at being silent, “Scout ahead in that direction and see if what Grud say is true.” Dhun instructed Grilk while pointing in the direction Grud pointed.
After Grilk disappeared into the brush, Dhun passed down the message to standby on alert then looked at Grud, “I hope you are right and wrong about this. If you are right, the vision given to you by the Great Spirit was accurate. I hope you are wrong because if we fight Hunter Lizards and they manage to close into our ranks, a lot of people are going to get injured.”
Close to an hour later, Grilk popped out of the brush to report his findings, “There are twenty-five Hunter Lizards where Grud said they were, they just cleaned out the carcass of a Tusk Pig and seem to be resting.”
Dhun couched down to pluck some grass and let it fall from his hand when he stood up. “The wind seems to be blowing east to west, if this wind keeps up they would not be able to pick up our scent until many of us gets close enough, but it does not give us the advantage of being downwind of them.”
After thinking for a while, Dhun gathered the senior hunters and crouched down while using some nearby twigs to show the hunters the plan, “We will split into two groups, two-thirds of us will be the main group to first engage the Hunter Lizards from the front, these lizards are stubborn enough to fight even if we outnumber them two to one until they start losing some of their numbers, then they will start running.”
“That is where the last third of you will come in, we are not going to give them a chance to run, before we start the attack, the second group will circle behind them from the west and we will pincer attack them, obviously the signal to attack will be the sound of us clashing with the lizards.”
“I will be in charge of the first group, Grilk, since you know where the lizards are, you will be in charge of the second group. Any questions?” after clarifying a few details, dismissed everyone to make their preparations and said they will be leaving in ten minutes.
As the rest of the men were breaking off, Dhun grabbed Grud and said to him, “You will be joining the second group.”
—
Grud was crouch running behind trees and bushes along with twenty other men led by Grilk, from where Grud was sneaking around, he could most definitely smell the Hunter Lizards that were up wind of him.
After another fifteen minutes of sneaking, Grilk signaled them to a stop and to spread out. While waiting for the signal to attack, Grud looked around while doing last-minute checks of his weapon and armor, he noticed that, unlike the older hunters quite a few of the younger hunters were twitchy with frantic looks in their eyes.
‘Would I have been like them if I had not been blessed by the Spirits and grown such a strong body?’ but before he could get too far into contemplation, the sound of chirping barks and hisses of the Hunter Lizards and the battle cry of men echoed thru the woods.
Grilk held his hand up to signal everyone to hold, this action confused Grud, ‘I thought we were to attack the moment we heard fighting.’ So he taped one of the older hunters next to him and asked about the holdup.
The older hunter looked at Grud and then said, “We have to wait a while for the lizards to fully commit to attacking Chieftan Dhun’s group before we attack, lesser chances of them reacting to a second force attacking them from behind.” Grud thought about it for awhile ‘That… makes a lot of sense.’
After about half a minute, Grilk signaled everyone forward. As a whole Grud’s group started advancing towards the sound of combat. Within less than a minute the Hunter Lizards and hunters were in sight.
That was when Grilk said just loud enough for everyone to hear, “Charge!” after all that tension and waiting, Grud did not need to be told twice. With his powerful evolved muscles tensing, Grud rocketed ahead of his group without realizing it.
Within a couple of blinks of an eye, Grud had closed in on the battle line, leaped in the air, and came down spear first on the first unlucky Hunter Lizard he saw. Before the other lizards beside his victim could react to his arrival in the melee, Grud released his spear that skewered the squirming lizard that was pinned to the ground and flashed out with dual stone axes to his left and right.
The lizard on his right had its skull caved in and died instantly, the lizard on his left reacted faster and tried to dodge Grud’s axe blow only to be stabbed by a spear from the hunter it was facing previously.
After looking left and right, Grud noticed more lizards on his right than his left and decided to head right to kill more lizards. A few seconds later, he was joined by the rest of Grilk’s group.
As Grud was done slaughtering his fourth lizard, a distinct chirping bark that came out in three rapid intervals sounded off, Grud looked further down the line to see a bigger than usual Hunter Lizard with a red crest making that noise, this particular chirping bark made all the lizards take a quick look around and try to disengage from combat.
But it was too late, that chirping bark was abruptly cut off by the sight of an older hunter breaking formation and lunging forward to spear that bigger Hunter Lizard directly in the neck, which made the chirping barks it was in the middle of doing sound out with a gurgling sound.
The other lizards that were disengaging from combat were also put down in rapid succession due to the backstab, only three of the lizards at the edge of the combat managed to run off into the woods.
After looking around all the men were still alive and after gathering himself from the combat high thought to himself, ‘Well that was easy, I guess that is what it feels like to have a bunch of experienced hunters around whine fighting predators.’
Grud’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of cursing that soon started sounding slightly slurred, as he looked to the source of the cursing, he saw one of the young hunters with a bite mark on his calf, ‘Well that's not good.’
The voice of Dhun soon sounded out, “Everyone check yourselves for injuries now.” After everyone was done with the checks, only two other people had scratch wounds. While some hunters were attending to the injured, the rest of the other hunters started butchering the Hunter Lizards.
‘So this is our lunch, never tasted Hunter Lizard before’ Gerd holstered his dual axes and grabbed the lizard he impaled with his spear. After cutting the lizard open, Grud was tempted to pluck out the Hunter Lizard’s heart and eat it there and then, but he did not want other hunters to see him eat raw meat.
So Grud unrolled an empty pouch he had tied to his belt and discreetly put shoved the Hunter Lizard's heart into the pouch to eat later.