[Child of the 7th Age]

The wolves hot on the trail.....

Spurred on by the insistent clamoring of their stomachs, the wolves paced greedily forward with noses poised close to the ground, as their tales swept rhythmically back and forth in anticipation of the feast that was soon to follow. The trail of the two-leggeds was maddeningly fresh amid the bracken and fallen leaves, even more so than what would have been the case with Orcs or Men who customarily wore boots upon their feet. Every step Grog took brought him closer to the spot where the children had halted for a moment, sitting down on a fallen log to rest and to rearrange the few items and foodstuffs they had carried along in their small packs.

The band approached the grove on silent padding feet as Grog gave the signal to the others to spread out in a circle and crouch low in the grass so that the two-leggeds would not spy them. With his nose eagerly twitching and his ears cocked forward, he peered out above the line of grass to see who was there and assess the layout of the land. Although Grog was no expert on Hobbits, even he could guess that the four seated on the logs were not full-grown but mere cubs, easy pickings for their attack. Two were younger, two older.
He decided to go for the big ones first as the smaller cubs would likely panic and be totally unable to fight back once they'd wrestled the older ones to the ground. Just as he was about to give the signal for the others to spring, he caught another scent carried over from a nearby breeze. Some paces distant, approaching from the opposite side, he could see a solitary figure crawling along the ground, apparently another two-legger who didn't want to be seen by the four in the grove.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Grog found himself chuckling. There were two parties of stalkers, not one, intent on hunting the four two-leggeds who were utterly oblivious to the presence of either. The interloper was a large cub but Grog was confident that he could take them all down at once. Still, he was curious to see what would happen, and it would be easier to attack if all five were situated in the same secluded grove.

Sitting back on his haunches, he gave a signal to the others to hold off for a moment until they could determine just what this young cub intended to do.