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."
Without looking back, the ogre took the trail where
the searchers had gone.
Chapter 22
Full night lay on the valley, a nigtht of moons in
crescent pale above the smoke that hung like a layer of
smudgy cloud just at the treetops. Bonfires, dozens of
them, glowed at ragged intervals along the course of the
winding stream that fed the valley from the south. Out in
the meadows, near the treelines that marked the grazing
fields and burned-over stubbles, other fires marked a pe-
rimeter. And through it all, suffusing the acrid pall of
smoke, was goblin-stench.
Mounted, Wingover ranged out on the forward flanks
of the little band of travelers -- first warning and first de-
fense for the group, should they be discovered. He went
silently, keeping to shadows where he could. Chane Feld-
stone led the rest, his hammer ready in his hand, the an-
cient path of Grallen visible before him as a faint green
mist.
Chestal Thicketsway was a small, darting shadow,
sometimes among them and sometimes not, but never
far away. The kender's sheer, wide-eyed excitement and
curiosity was a source of real concern to the rest, but
there was little enough anyone could do to curb him. A
kender was always a kender.
Had Chess been as tall as a goblin, Wingover might
well have chopped off his head when the kender ap-
peared unexpectedly in shadows beside him and said,
"I-"
The sharp sword that whisked past the top of Chess's
head would have taken a goblin at the gullet
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