The Iron Teeth

Along Twisted Paths 4

Herad's group was out and moving early the next morning. They continued their march North, but nothing more interesting than the occasional passing traveler happened. Herad mostly ignored them, she had places to be and better things to do than rob peddlers and peasants. No one who had anything worth stealing traveled alone in the North.

When night came Blacknail usually slept up in a tree just out of reach of the light of the humans' fire. The next day they passed a few more abandoned villages, but no occupied ones. This confused the hobgoblin. Who had created all these villages and why had they been destroyed? Had some monster from the forest leveled them?

They did pass the occasional large walled human settlement, but Herad avoided them. Blacknail considered scaling one of the walls in the night but thought better of it. He would have plenty of time for that when they got to Daggerpoint.

The scenery began to change as they continued their journey. The grey and white mountains that rose on the horizon started to grow ever larger. The terrain also became much rougher, and the road began winding up hills and along tall rocky cliffs. The steeper terrain was harder to traverse, so the bandits grew tired and their progress slowed.

At one point they had to cross a rickety wooden bridge over a river. The river was extremely wide, and its frothy white waters roared as they swept down from the distant mountains. There was no way anyone could possibly swim across the raging river.

After everyone else had carefully crossed the bridge, Blacknail eyed it suspiciously. It was quite possible that Saeter would have left a lookout on the bridge, just in case someone was following them. The hobgoblin was so paranoid about it that he waited a quarter of the day before crossing. Luckily he had a large advantage over humans in that he could follow their scent. There was little chance of him losing them.

He did however have to run quite a bit that day to catch up. When he finally found them again it had grown dark, and his human tribesman were setting up for the night. Idly Blacknail wondered how long it would take to actually reach Daggerpoint. He probably should have figured that out before he followed Herad North, but there was no going back now. He hoped it wasn't too much longer, his feet were getting more than a little sore.

Blacknail lazily circled the humans' camp as he once again searched for somewhere safe to sleep for the night. As he was creeping through the woods he heard a noise out on the road. At first he thought one of the bandits had slipped past him, but then he dismissed that as unlikely.

Cautiously, he slipped through the dark woods to check it out. He was fairly sure it wasn't anything too dangerous, but you could never be too sure out in the wilderness.

What he saw surprised him. There were two humans walking along the road, and headed for the light of the bandit's campfire. Feeling curious, and rather bored after several days by himself, the hobgoblin decided to investigate.

The two humans didn't appear to have any obvious weapons so Blacknail flipped his hood up and walked out of the bushes. He heard a gasp of shock and saw the two darkened forms flinch as he emerged onto the road. He didn't want to scare them right away so he raised his hand in a human gesture of greeting.

"Hello, I won't harm you," he announced in his best imitation of a human voice.

"Who are you? Are you from the fire?" the larger one, who smelled male, asked him.

"I'm a friend. No, I'm not from the fire. They're bandits, and bad. They'll take your stuff and kill you," Blacknail replied.

The two humans glanced at each other. They seemed very unsure, and suspicious of Blacknail. The hobgoblin didn't know why, he thought he was doing a very good impression of a human.