Two days later, Drake's prayers and the limited healing powers of the God of War had restored the wounded as well as he was able and they were ready to leave. A thorough search of the surrounding forest had revealed no trace of any surviving humanoids, but the exploratory party who'd crept cautiously to the sholog's war camp to find the priest of Skorvos’s body had found no trace of it. What was more, a count of the dead shologs revealed that there were several less than the number of tents suggested.

     The obvious conclusion was that the priest, a few shologs and probably several goblins had survived and escaped, probably heading back to their home in Darmakarak. That was worrying, as shologs remembered their enemies to their dying day and would undoubtedly try to get their revenge as soon as their priest was well enough to do so. There was no point worrying about that now, though, and so they put it out of their minds. The immediate threat was ended, and that was all that mattered.

     The next day they continued their patrol mission, heading for the next of the half dozen or so towns that they still had to visit. It took them another fifteen days, during which nothing else of note happened, and then they started the long journey back to Fort Battleaxe.

     Drake was glad to be on his way back. His first real venture beyond the frontiers of civilization had exhausted him, and he couldn't understand how the other men, even the youngest and least experienced, managed to keep going without showing any sign of fatigue. Although he tried his best not to show any sign of the weariness that went all the way to his very bones, he was convinced that it must show all over him. How could anyone fail to note the lines on his face, the bags under his eyes and the way his limbs hung heavily as though made of lead? Anyone who even glanced at him must be able to see that he was ready to drop at any moment!

     He had no way of knowing that most of the men were, in fact, glancing at him in wonder and admiration, their earlier derision forgotten, wondering how he managed to keep going without showing any trace of the fatigue they were all feeling. Must be his training, they thought. No-one had any clear idea of what priesthood training involved, except that it seemed to take ordinary people and turn them into supermen. Hard as nails, strong as oxen and indefatigable. Drake fitted this picture perfectly, and the men were impressed as hell by him.

     This opinion was bolstered by Chubb, who entertained the others around the campfire with the tale of how the young priest had rescued him from the shologs, singing his praises and gushing about his performance in combat. An account that was embellished even further by the other scouts who'd witnessed his routing of an overwhelming force of humanoids and interpreted it as a glorious victory. Not the failure that Drake, who'd had to draw upon the power of Samnos to accomplish the feat, knew it to be. Poor Drake, who tended to sit apart from the others and so couldn't hear what they were talking about, had no idea that he was gaining such a reputation, however, and whenever he caught one of them glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, he assumed that the soldier was examining him critically and wondering what he thought he was doing out here with the big boys.

     The days passed slowly, and every mile of the Overgreen Forest began to look like every other. Drake began to wonder if life as an army chaplain was always like this, with occasional action packed moments separated by long weeks of mind numbing boredom. Probably, he thought, and he began to look forward to the next moment of excitement. A few shologs to fight or a few goblins to chase, anything to liven things up a bit. Little did he know that in a few weeks time, he would be looking back on that time of peace and boredom with desperate longing and nostalgia.

☆☆☆

     A couple of days after Gallit's patrol left Eastglade, Pars Darlon, a Beltharan ranger, was crouching down behind a boulder halfway up a mountain ridge and looking down into the valley below. His sharp eyes could just about make out a rectangular doorway in the base of the mountain opposite, and a crowd of humanoids swarming around it like ants around a disturbed nest. Curious, he had captured a buglin and questioned it, learning that, a few days before, a small force of trogs and humans had invaded their home, killing a great many of their number and desecrating their temple before escaping. Unfortunately their priest and half the tribe had been away on a raid at the time, so the surviving occupants of the abandoned trog town had decided to wait for them to return before setting off in pursuit, sending just a couple of goblins to trail the invaders and make sure they didn't get away.

     However, when the sholog priest had returned, just a few hours earlier, he had been badly wounded and most of the raiding party had been wiped out, leaving just two shologs and a handful of goblins. A priest of the hated God Samnos had been responsible, and the sholog priest, Shragnaz, had sworn vengeance against him. Upon finding out what had happened at home in his absence, however, his rage had soared to such extreme heights that he had immediately killed the first three buglins he could lay his hands on.

     Shragnaz had now sworn vengeance against two people, having learned that a young priestess of Caroli, Goddess of Healing, had been responsible for the desecration. He commanded most of what was left of the tribe to go after her and bring her back alive, killing whoever was with her, while he and a couple of shologs went after the priest of Samnos. He would kill the priest and then return to deal with the captured cleric of Caroli, punishing her properly for her crime. They would set off as soon as he had recovered from the effects of the potions of healing he'd stolen from an Eastglade farmer. They had healed his injury quickly enough, but because Caroli was a Goddess of purest goodness while he was wicked and evil, they'd left him feeling weak and uncertain of himself, with unfamiliar feelings of guilt and shame that tortured his black soul and took some time to fade and disappear.

     Having got as much as he could out of the buglin, Pars Darlon killed it and then pondered what to do. The priest of Samnos could presumably look after himself. If he was any good at all, and he had never met one who wasn't. He would probably kill the sholog priest instead of being killed by him, thus finishing what he'd started. The cleric of Caroli, however, was in big trouble. The buglin had told him that the trog led expedition had barely managed to escape from the abandoned mining village and, seeing the number of humanoids milling around in the valley below, he could well believe it.

     The expedition members had a headstart on the humanoids of several days, but would probably be travelling slowly and casually, believing they had escaped the danger. With two goblins following them, marking their trail, and the shologs pursuing them at great speed, he had no doubt that they would catch them well before they could reach the safety of Ilandia or a walled town large enough to keep them out. The poor cleric was already as good as captured, and her companions as good as dead.

     "We've got to help them, Boris," he said to the small, flying reptile sitting on his shoulder. The grikon, a distant relative of the great dragons, chirped in agreement and fluttered its leathery wings, eager to be off. The humanoids below were still getting themselves organised, and it would be another hour at least before they set off. If he hurried, he could get back to where he'd left his horse and catch up with the failed expedition before the humanoids did. He would kill the two goblins and lay a false trail in another direction, leading the shologs safely away from them. "Come on Boris, there's no time to lose!" He moved slowly and silently as he ducked back behind the boulder and crept along the slope to the trail that led back to the mountain road.

     He lost a lot of time taking a circuitous route that kept out of sight of the humanoids, and worried that they would set off before he could get ahead of them. He had seen what shologs did to their prisoners, particularly female prisoners, and hated the thought of another one falling into their grasp. He breathed a huge sigh of relief as he reached his horse, tied up to a stunted tree just out of sight of the road. He climbed into the saddle and set off, the grikon flying behind him.

     He didn't press his horse to any great speed, knowing that the humanoids would be on foot and that he would need to keep up a steady pace for nearly two days if he wanted to catch up to the cleric and her party. Assuming that the failed expedition was covering twenty miles a day and had left three or four days earlier, he could predict with some certainty where he would overtake them, but he knew that the humanoids would also be chasing them hard.

     Although slower than horses over short distances, shologs had tremendous stamina and could keep up a steady running pace for days at a time, even running through the night, while he would have to stop while it was too dark to read trail signs. It was possible, likely even, that they would pass him during the night, and that he would have to pass them again during the next day. The first crossing wouldn't be a problem. He expected to arrive in the vicinity of a large town at around sundown within the strong walls of which he could spend the night, but that second crossing, during the full light of day and with little cover within sight of the road, would be tricky. Oh well, he would deal with that problem when it arose.

     At around midday, the trail diverged, about half the expedition continuing west to the underground trog city and the rest taking another road south, out of the mountains. The goblins had cut some marks into the bark of a small shrub growing by the side of the south road, indicating that the cleric had gone that way. The marks were similar to those that might have been made by a mountain lion sharpening its claws, but weren't quite realistic enough to fool the experienced ranger. Taking his knife out, he improved the marks, making them realistic enough to fool the shologs, the creatures for whom they had been left. Then, on a bush growing alongside the west road, he left some more marks, identical to the ones which the goblins had left on the first bush, hoping to fool the pursuing humanoids into thinking that the goblins had gone that way. He didn't expect it to fool them for long, but it might delay them for a while.

     He reached the human mining town of Clarrin's Claim just as evening was falling. Several smaller roads led away from it towards nearby mining operations and farming homesteads and he searched around for the goblins' marker, finding it on the main road continuing south. No surprise there then. He didn’t bother destroying it. The shologs would have no trouble guessing which way their quarry had gone. Destroying the marker would only alert them to his presence. He simply went into town, therefore, to question the inhabitants.

     The townspeople confirmed that six young people, including a cleric of Caroli, a shae girl and a nome, had passed through just the other day, and that he had just missed them. In return, he warned them that a fairly large force of humanoids was coming, although they would probably just go straight past the town without bothering them. The sheriff thanked him for the information, saying that they would get ready to give them a warm reception. He then left his horse in the town's stables and booked into a room at the town's only inn for the night, asking the innkeeper to get him up before sunrise the next day so that he could get an early start.

     He was pleased and relieved to find no sign that the humanoids had passed during the night. His diversion towards the trog city must have worked, but it wouldn't have fooled them for long and they were probably just behind him. He rode on down the south road after the cleric as soon as he possibly could, therefore. There were now plenty of places where the shologs could steal horses, and they could ride them just as well as humans, although they disliked the practice as a general rule, preferring to travel on their own feet. By now, though, they would know they were being led astray and would be looking for any means of travelling faster, so he urged his horse into a full gallop.

     If he could reach the great west road before the shologs and see which way the two goblins had gone, he could lay a false trail in the other direction. It was his last chance to lead the shologs astray. Once they were on the great road and firmly on the cleric's scent, there would be nothing more he could do for her. There were too many of them for him to tackle directly and there were no more fortified dwellings large enough to protect her from the shologs until she reached either Ilandia or Callinia, whichever way she was going.

     After an hour or two, he reached the edge of the Overgreen Forest and began to enter the lighter, friendlier woodlands that surrounded the civilised territories. No-one could say for sure where the great forest ended and the woods began. They just blended gradually into each other, the dense, heavy canopy gradually thinning to allow sunlight to filter down to the forest floor allowing bracken and bramble to grow. Squirrels and voles rustled around in last year's fallen leaves, birds sang merrily among the branches and, now and then, he saw herds of deer grazing on either side of him, their camouflaged hides making them almost invisible among the trees.

     As Pars searched the ground for signs of the goblins' passage, he saw to his satisfaction that he was closing on them faster than expected. Sure enough, in the early afternoon, when he was less than a mile from the great west road and passing through a wide area of grassland, he finally saw them ahead of him. The cleric and her companions were just visible far off in the distance, trotting calmly along on horseback as if they had not a care in the world, while the two goblins crept along about five hundred yards behind them, under cover of the trees. "There they are, Boris!" he said to the grikon, sitting on the pommel in front of him. "Let's get ‘em!"

     The grikon gave a squawk of eagerness and leapt into the air, climbing to a great height before diving silently at the goblin on the right. The goblin’s sensitive ears detected a swish of air and it looked up just in time to see the small reptile swooping down at him, its leathery wings swept back, its legs tucked in under its body and its head stretched out on the end of its long, crimson crested neck. Its beady black eyes were fixed implacably on its target as it steered itself with tiny movements of its long, finned tail. The goblin raised his small sword, but the grikon was moving much too fast and as it passed within two feet of his head, spreading its wings for greater lift, it spat a stream of poison into his eyes. The goblin screamed and clawed at his eyes, burning in agony, and stumbled around blindly until his muscles began trembling and he fell to the ground, where he would die five minutes later.

     The second goblin looked up in alarm, and got a stream of poison in his eyes in turn. By the time Pars reached him, he was also dead, his limbs twitching and his face contorting as his muscles spasmed for a few more seconds. "Well done, Boris," he said, "but I wish you'd leave one for me now and again." The grikon gave him a querying look, and the ranger laughed and stroked the creature's head affectionately.

     Pars glanced down the road to where the cleric and her companions were still trotting along, chatting idly to each other, completely oblivious to everything that had just happened. "You owe me one," he muttered as they reached the great west road, climbed up the slope to the top of the great highway and turned west, towards Ilandia. A few moments later, they re-entered the woodlands that now continued unbroken all the way to the borders of Ilandia.

     He heard a tearing sound, and looked back to see the grikon tearing through the goblin's clothing to get at the flesh underneath. The pace over the past two days had obviously made him hungry. "No time for that I'm afraid, Boris," he said with a smile. "Those snouts'll be here any minute. We've got to dispose of the bodies. Don't worry, I'll find you a nice juicy rabbit tonight."

     He dragged the dead goblins a few feet into the trees and covered them with twigs and leaves. No time to give them a decent burial, he thought. Let the wolves have them. Then he dashed down to the great west road to examine it for signs of their passage. This part of the road was bare solid stone, not covered with grass and soil as it was in some places. It had ruts left from hundreds of years of carts and wagons, but horses left no sign on it. Where the travellers had climbed up the shallow slope to reach the top of the road, though, they had left scrapes and hoofprints in the shallow, scrubby soil that covered the flanks of the great highway, showing that they had been angling to the west. The ranger rubbed them out, and then used his own horse to leave six sets of hoofprints leading the other way, to the east. The hoofprints weren't quite the same as those left by the six youngsters, since the horses were a different size and breed and carrying a different weight, but hopefully the shologs wouldn't notice the difference. Finally, to make sure the humanoids got the message, he scratched some marks into the bark of a tree east of the intersection, in the same code the two deceased goblins had been using.

     He then continued east along the road, intending to keep just out of sight ahead of the shologs. He would keep leaving signs to keep luring them this way, until the cleric and her friends were a safe distance away. The shologs wouldn't dare stay on the great west road for long. It would only be a matter of time before they ran across a heavily defended merchant caravan which would force them into the forest to hide, and with any luck it might rain, which would wash out all sign of his passage and allow him to slip quietly away.

     The only thing that might spoil things would be if it didn't rain and they noticed the curious absence of five sets of hoofprints on those parts of the road covered by a thin layer of grassy soil. There were plenty of older tracks left by traders and travellers to confuse them, though. It would take an experienced tracker to read the signs right and figure out that they were following just one horse.

     The only other thing that worried him was the possibility that they might catch him up. The need to keep stopping and leaving marks and clues for them to follow would slow him considerably, and if they spotted him and learned how he'd deceived them they'd be just as angry with him as they were with the cleric. "Oh well, we're just going to have to take that chance," he muttered. "Come on, Boris, we've got to move." He climbed onto his horse, the grikon taking its place on the pommel, and together they rode off to the east.