The Iron Teeth

Playing With Fire 3

While Herad and Saeter were exchanging particularly deep scowls and arguing about something unimportant, Blacknail tiptoed silently away. There was a nearby berry bush he wanted to pluck clean and all the pointless talking the humans were doing was annoying.

It didn't take him long to slip away to the edge of the forest. Everyone in camp had grown used to him by now, and he had quickly learned how to move without drawing attention anyway. As a rule, humans weren't very observant unless you gave them a good reason to get excited.

Once there, the hobgoblin began trekking through the woods towards his destination. Blacknail hopped excitedly over a fallen tree as the green canopy grew thicker overhead.

He was really going to enjoy munching down on those berries. Just thinking about their sweet tangy taste was causing his mouth to water. He had to lick his lips clean to prevent drool from getting all over his shirt.

Soon, Blacknail reached a spot in the woods where the trees grew thinner and eventually gave way to a small clearing. There, where the sunlight mixed with the shade cast at the edge of the trees was where the juiciest of berries grew.

Happily, the hobgoblin bounced over and carefully reached into the thorny plants there to pluck his favorite fruits. As the succulent flavour hit his tongue, he groaned blissfully and then started to pick the berries as fast as he could and shove them into his mouth. They were so good!

Eventually, when he'd filled himself up and his lips had turned purple, Blacknail belched and began swaggering back to camp. He figured the humans were done with all the useless talking by now and if not they were easier to ignore on a full stomach.

As he swaggered on back to the camp, a whiff of something unexpected filled his nostrils. He stiffened and quickly cast a nervous glance at his surroundings, but all he saw was the normal mix of trees and bushes.

The scent was strange and he couldn't quite identify it, although it did smell somewhat familiar. Maybe, it smelled sort of like that huge monstrous slime he'd defeated? It was more like an animal though, and to be giving off so much scent it had to be a large one.

Curiously but with a fair bit of caution, this was the forest after all, Blacknail sniffed around to find the source of the smell. It didn't take him long to discover a trail that something had torn through the underbrush. He bent over to examine it as he reached down and ran his fingernails through the dirt.

This was interesting. Whatever had made the scent had come this way and then retreated back in the same direction. Judging by the lack of footprints and the drag marks on the ground it was probably another slime.

Now that Blacknail was a hobgoblin he wasn't afraid of running into a slime. He had defeated a huge one even when he'd been a mere little goblin. Now no slime could possibly be a match for his deadly warrior skills!

His memory of things so long ago was kind of fuzzy but he was pretty sure Herad had really wanted to find out where the slime had come from. If Blacknail traced the thing back to its lair then his chieftain was sure to reward him!

The forest might be a dangerous place to explore but the thing that had made this trail had sort of a pleasant floral scent to it, so how dangerous could it be?

The hobgoblin gave one last look around at the trees and bushes before heading deeper into the forest in pursuit of his reward. He was headed in a direction that the bandits in Herad's band usually avoided. The ground here was muddy and practically swamp-like.

As he walked, a fair number of the nearby trees were replaced by bleached white husks that were leaning at odd angles. The constant floods here brought on by the rain had obviously killed a lot of trees. The healthier ones here were thick and lush looking though, if kind of short.