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 perimeter. 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 defense for the group, should they be discovered. He went silently, keeping to shadows where he could. Chane
Feldstone led the rest, his hammer ready in his hand, the ancient 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 appeared unexpectedly in shadows beside him and said,