“Miserable mess!” shouted Cleathelm looking up at the ash spewing volcano that stood high against the hot blue sky and shaking his fist to the heavens. “Achooo! That damn sun makes me sneeze. How many volcanoes are there in the southlands?”
The little goblinoid at his side shrugged his shoulders. “At least six.”
“What? How do you know that? Idiot.”
“You said we’re looking for a group of five of them, right?” said Blaggard.
“Yeah, so?” replied Cleathelm with a look of disgust on his face as he shook his head at the little goblin.
“And there’s one right there,” continued the little fellow pointing to the volcano in the distance. “That makes at least six.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you,” said Cleathelm and reached over to smack the goblin who was quick enough on his feet avoid the blow with room to spare. “One of these days you’ll get what’s coming to you and then you’ll be sorry, yes you will. That damned mage of Corancil’s said he could send us right to the five volcanoes and we paid him a whole bag of gems.”
“Actually,” said another heavily armed dwarf who stood just to the other side of Cleathelm, “he said there was only one active portal and he wasn’t sure exactly where it came out.”
“That’s not what he said to me, you moron!” said Cleathelm and punched the third member of their party in the shoulder. The light chain shirt didn’t give an inch and Cleathelm shook his hand back and forth. “Damn, that hurt.”
“What should we do, Cleathelm” said the second dwarf, not making any attempt to retaliate for the blow.
“I don’t know,” said Cleathelm shaking his head and looking to Blaggard.
“Follow the road,” said the mixed-breed goblin as he pointed to a dirt trail that led off in the opposite direction of the volcano. “It’s got to lead somewhere eventually.”
Not too high above them, on a little escarpment, sat Uldex and two friends. They watched the three below shouting at one another and looked back and forth to each other with bemused grins.
“By Davim, that Cleathelm is an idiot. If they didn’t have Blaggard with them I’d as soon head back to Craggen Steep and figure they’d starve to death before they found any sign of Milli and the others,” said Uldex to his companions. “Keep watching them and see which direction they go. We have to stay behind them as best as possible. Don’t stay too close though. It’s better to lose them and find them again later than to let them know we’re back here.”
“They’ll have to take the trail,” said the broader of his two companions pointing to the little dirt trail not far from Cleathelm and his friends. “Maybe we should circle around and get ahead of them. There’s got to be a town or a village or a farm around here somewhere.”
Uldex looked around in all directions but saw no sign of smoke or village in the lightly wooded terrain of the region. Finally he looked up to the sun and the endless blue sky with its few puffy clouds and suppressed a slight shudder. “They might come up here looking for caves, for shelter. This vast openness is… disturbing.”
“Maybe,” said the smaller of his two companions also with a wary look towards the vast sky.
“No, of course not,” said Uldex answering his own question after only a brief pause. “Cleathelm may be an idiot but his father sent him on a mission and he’ll see it through no matter how clumsily. They’ll follow the road to a village and try and find the five volcanoes. I wonder if they were smart enough to bring a translator amulet?”
The two warriors by his side shrugged simultaneously but said nothing.
“All right,” said Uldex after another moment. “Let’s try and get to the trail in front of them. We don’t want to be seen though. Even if Cleathelm doesn’t recognize us for who we are there might not be many dwarves in the region. Even someone as stupid as him would get suspicious, and Blaggard is nobody’s fool.”
“Where there are mountains, volcano or no, there are dwarves,” said his broad shouldered companion.
“True enough,” said Uldex with a nod of his head and a tight smile. “Still, I’d like to keep as little seen as possible.”
“Why not just jump them, kill them, and be done with it,” said the smaller of his two friends with a wicked little grin on his face as he fingered the heavy axe at his side. “We can do it, easy.”
“That’s what I suggested to Uncle Borrombus before we headed out to follow these idiots, but it is not our job. We are to follow them, see where they go, and only intervene if they are doing something directly against Milli and Dol.”
“Orders are orders,” said his big friend.
“Yes,” said Uldex, “I suppose they are.”