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Twice Glenn lost sight of Kirby as the half-goblin thief wove through the streets, occasionally ducking down an alley or using a group of pedestrians or a slow-moving wagon for cover. The thief made it look so easy, like he had an intended destination and wasn’t tailing someone.
Glenn, on the other hand, knew he looked like a semi-lost gnome—which he was. He had a pretty good idea the direction to the wagon repair shop. Back over his right shoulder. And the odor becoming more pungent said they were nearing the outer shantytown. The sun was getting low, but that didn’t bother Glenn, at least not visually. His gnomish eyes offered low-light vision, superior to humans. Kirby’s half-goblin eyes were even better at night, for which Glenn was thankful.
What he wasn’t appreciative of was that pedestrian and merchant traffic was falling off. Sure, there was some traffic from street peddlers and their carts going home. But few of those were heading the shantytown’s direction. Glenn just counted on the fact that, if he kept moving fast enough, it was less likely that locals with nefarious intentions would have time to react and jump him.
The buildings were getting shorter—no two or three-storied types. The wood and brick construction steadily increased in shoddiness and disrepair. And the streets became narrower, more twisting, and filled with debris and rotting refuse.
A lanky man wearing scuffed and mended leather armor stepped out of the shadow of a leaning hovel on the verge of collapsing. The figure bore layers of scars across his face and his lips split in a nasty grin, showing a set of teeth that held more complex angles than the shack he’d emerged from. The most notable thing about the man was the barbed hook sprouting from his right arm, where his hand should’ve been. It was sort of like those Glenn saw in old pirate movies as a kid. But those weren’t usually rusted. If the guy scratched himself hard enough to draw blood, a case of tetanus was sure to afflict him.
But the thug proved he wasn’t suffering from lockjaw when he said, “Hey, little gnome, whatcha—”
Glenn didn’t give the man time to finish his question. Instead he veered toward the man while pulling his cudgel. Delay meant he’d lose track of Kirby, and it’d give the thug’s band time to surround him. Experience from a previous fight in Three Hills City said the guy’d have backup.
Without a word Glenn swung his cudgel, even as the hook-wielding thug drew his rusted weapon back, prepping for his own swing. Everyone in the game world thought of gnomes as inoffensive and easy-going. This determined gnome’s quick action gave him Surprise Initiative.
A sickening crunch said Glenn’s attack did something nasty to the man’s knee. Glenn guessed he’d rolled a 20, and maybe got a Critical Strike, because the scarred man collapsed onto the street.
He was down but not done, and started to shout. Glenn’s boot drove past the defending forearm and knocked in a few teeth. The man rolled to the side, causing Glenn’s follow-on smash with his cudgel to miss and rebound off the street’s hard-packed dirt. Undeterred, Glenn pursued the man, not allowing him a second’s respite. Another swing impacted the man’s lower back—maybe his tail bone. It wasn’t nearly as solid as the first hit, but dropped the man. A final boot to the ribs ended the fight, with Glenn victorious.
Immediately he looked up and swiveled his head left and right while unslinging his shield. Nobody was charging him. But the emerging locals shouted and hurled debris at him. Broken boards, cracked pottery and rocks. Glenn ducked behind his shield and shot off to the left, down a narrow walkway as fast as this short legs would carry him. Other than escape, his only thought was that he couldn’t let the guard captain spot him.