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. And some-
times, as now, he carried a pack himself - usually on a
bet.
This time the bet was with the mountain dwarf trader,
Rogar Goldbuckle. Over tankards of ale at the Inn of the
Flying Pigs in Barter, Goldbuckle had wagered that
Wingover could never make it alive from Barter to Pax
Tharkas and back, carrying a pack of goods from his
agents at Pax Tharkas.
The return on the sealed pack would be small com-
pared to what it would cost Rogar Goldbuckle to pay his
gambling debt.
It had been no mean adventure, this journey.
Wingover had chosen his routes with care, going north
to Pax Tharkas by one route and returning by another to
avoid ambushers and other unpleasantries of the wilder-
ness. He had ridden alert and slept with his senses awake,
and still there had been incidents - the cave ogre that had
almost killed him on a mountain trail somewhere near
Wayreth Forest; the landslide that had blocked his path
just south of Pax Tharkas; the band of murderous
thieves that had picked up his trail on Regret Ridge and
pursued until he was forced to teach them some man-
ners; the flooded ford that had forced him to change
course. It was that flooded ford that led him into the hid-
den valley where the bird had screamed a warning at
him, and where he had barely escaped with his life when
a pack of huge hunting cats chased him
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