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. Now they
had stopped. Now they were settling in on the slope below him, stopping
for the night, and his patience was at an end.
Crouching low, blending his huge silhouette with the
brush of the darkening hillside, he heard their voices
drifting up to him - thin, human voices as frail as the bodies
from which they issued, as fragile as the bones within those
bodies, which he could crush with a squeeze of his hand. He
heard the strike of flint, smelled the wispy smoke of their
tinder, and saw the first flickers of the fire they were
building - a fire to guard them against the night.
His chuckle was a rumble of contempt, deep within his
huge chest. It was a campfire to heat their meager foods and
to protect them from whatever might be out there, watching.
Humans! His chuckle became a deep, rumbling growl. Like
all of the lesser races, the small, frail races, they put their
trust in a handful of fire and thought they were safe.
Safe from me? His wide mouth spread in a sneering grin,
exposing teeth like sharpened chisels. Contempt burned
deep within his eyes. Safe? No human was safe from Krog.
Krog knew how to deal with humans - and with anyone else
who ventured into his territory. He found them, tracked
them down, and killed them. Sometimes they carried
something he could use, sometimes not, but it was always a
pleasure to see their torment as he crushed and mangled
them, a joy to hear their screams.
There were a dozen or more in the party below him.
Four were armed males, the rest a motley, ragged group
bound together by lengths of rope tied around their necks
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