The Skinsaw Murders

The Ghoul howls at Yola.  Its jaw distends and cold spittle flicks from its long tounge.

Yola howls back.

She covers the distance between her and the ghoul in several loping strides.  Her blade cuts a long silver arc through the air, severing several stalks of corn and the the ghoul's head from its shoulders.  She keeps chraging and is almost upon the second ghoul before the first one's head hits the dirt.  The creature sees her coming and drops Grump underneath the pole with the weakly struggling scarecrow still atop it to meet her charge head on.  Yola rolls away from the thing's attack and follows up with shallow slash to its side.  Through her rage she notes more ghouls breaking from between the corn in front and behind.

* * *

Sasha sidesteps her opponent and steps back, reaching down for her whip as she does so.  the lash snakes out and pulls the ghould to the ground.  Before Sasha can move in for her patented Rapier-to-the-Groin finishing move though, Xer leaps forward and crushes its throat beneath her booted foot.

Ariva yelps again as the ghoul she struggles with draws yet more blood. Ariva continues to snap and claw the the thing's face, but it is young Weasel who finally ends the deadlock.  The guardsman grabs Ariva by the scruff of her neck and pulls her away just enough to stab the ghoul through the chest as it tries to struggle free. 

Malvick is distracted by the sounds of his faithful hound fighting behind him, and struggles ineffectually with the ghoul in front of him, neither of them managing to land blows on the other for a momment, but then the ghoul pushes forward and connects with a raking swipe across Malvick's cheek.

As soon as Ariva realizes that the ghoul beneath her is no longer a threat, she bounds towards her master's side, where she leaps up and fastens her jaws onto the arm of the ghoul attacking him.  She shakes her head from side to side, nearly tearing its arm from the socket, and wrenching the ghoul away from Malvick.  Weasel calls after the dog, then charges after her to lend a hand.

Sasha and Xer grin at each other, ghoul corpse between them.  Then Sasha glances around to asses the situation.  "Hey, where's Yola?"  She hears sounds of fighting deep in the fields behind them, and sees the trail of  broken stalks Grump and Yola left.  "Ah crap, Yola!" Sasha darts off after her friend without a second though.  Xer hesitates.  Ahead of her Malvick, his hound and that other guardsman have surrounded the last visible ghoul.  A foot behind her, the rigid form of Wertz lies in the trail, defenceless.  Then there was Sasha, rapidly disappearing back the way they had come, and no sign of Yola or the farmer.

* * *

Yola bares her teeth as she whirls her blade around her.  The four ghouls circle her like vultures, their last victim, Grump all but forgotten.  They lunge in again and again,testing her reach, looking for holes in her defence. Time and again she parries and scatters them back.  One drops in low from behind and draws blood with a swift cut to the back of her calf.  She snarls and keeps fighting, her strength far from exhausted, but the corn continues to rustle as more creatures close in.  And that damnable scarecrow keeps moaning and writhing on the pole above.