The first thing the Ashback did was spit at her.
Aegis saw it rear, front plates lifting off the sand, and she was already moving down the back of the rise when the wad of grey slime hit the spot she'd been standing. The rock hissed. A patch of scrub the size of a dinner plate turned to soup.
[Twenty feet. Right on the number!]
"NOW!" Sera shouted, and the torches went up on both rises at once.
The Ashback's eyes swung left, then right. The spear women were yelling, banging spear butts on stone, one of them singing something filthy about its mother. It turned toward the nearer rise, and then Scarlett hit it in the face.
She came in at a dead run with her shield up and rammed the thing's mouthparts hard enough to rock the front plates back. The claws snapped shut on empty air where her head had been. Scarlett laughed at it.
"That all you got, you big ugly rock lobster?!"
