Wizardness

Eric put down the rod. The fish just weren’t biting. Maybe he was just missing the nibbles. He reached down to grab the rod again, something whistled over his head. He dropped down to the ground and looked towards where the thing would have gone. There was an arrow quivering in a moss covered partially submerged tree.
He heard some scattering of conversation. Obviously whoever had shot at him wasn’t too concerned about him retaliating or almost being hit. As he sorted out what to do, his rod still in his hand, an arrow cut through some moss and skittered off a stone a few inches from his face.
Eric glanced up and noticed the rod was sticking straight up in the air. He cursed silently to himself. As he was cursing, he heard similar commotion coming from the same spot as the first arrow. The second arrow suddenly retracted. Eric started. He hadn’t even seen the cabling on the arrow. Did they not have more arrows?
Eric found something that he could secure the fishing rod standing up along the bank, so we could figure out what was going on.
As he was crawling north, along the river, parallel to where the archers were, he heard an arrow thunk into a log. The log he’d placed to hold the rod upright. He got up into a crouch to move more quickly. His footsteps were hidden over the crashing and dragging noise coming from the log.
Eric stopped when the log noises seemed to stop. Whoever was pulling on that arrow was strong, or the arrow had released from the log. He lowered himself, trying to hide himself in the tall grass along the bank.
His hand touched a rock. He silently pulled it out of the ground. He rotated and threw the rock south, past where his rod was still laying. It bounced off the riverbank and splashed loudly into the water.
Eric heard more excited noises to his immediate west. The noises, didn’t sound like any language he’d heard. Not that he was a linguist or anything like that. He could barely speak English.
The bow raised, he was only 15 feet away from the archers. They seemed to have moved closer to the fishing rod. He heard the twang of the bow. Then hear a hiss as the line unreeled. The arrow splashed into the water. The archer began to reel the line back along with the arrow. It sounded like it was dragging something.
Eric took advantage of the noise. He started to walk towards the archers. He had firm branch in one hand and his phone in the other. He was going to flash them and whack them, then run like hell out of there.
The archers make a screeching noise as he got closer. He heard one of the archers run away from the other. Eric took his chance. He dashed forward snapping a picture, the flash blinded his target. He swung, before he really even saw who he was swinging at.
There was a meaty thunk and a crunch. Eric reached for the bow, to take away the weapon when he processed what he had hit. It was a fish. A fish. It was a fish. It was a trout. A fish was shooting at people.
It was a 6 foot tall fish. It had a contraption over the gills and over it’s mouth. It was a fish.
It was flopping on the ground. He’d broken something near the top of its mouth. Water was shooting everywhere.
Eric staggered back. He tripped over a man. There were three men stuck together in a giant hook. All three pierced through in about the same spot back through to the chest. All three were gasping for breath. They weren’t dead, yet, but they definitely were dying.
Eric ran, then. He reached the road and called 911. When the cops showed up, he took them to the site. There was blood everywhere. The three men had been released. There was no sign of the archers. One of them died. The other two managed to survive.
Eric never did go fishing again.