It wasn't so simple to learn to recognize new scents, sounds, and judge their distance, both in space and time, but with each passing day, Gra’sha managed it better and better. Each of her companions, not excluding the ovibos and the dog, was at this stage identifiable by her through these senses as well.

  The third night on the trail was almost at the hour of the wolf when an unfamiliar scent woke her from sleep. The smell of death and decay, similar to the one that had loomed over the battlefield, came to her from the north. Soundlessly, she dressed, took her gear, and stepped outside the tent, adjusting the cover on the disheveled Sha’dru, who was sleeping deeply like the rest, on her way out.

  "Passing the night quietly?" she asked softly, almost in a whisper, to the sentry, being a few steps away from him so as not to startle him with an unexpected sound. He stood somewhat in the distance, from where he had a good view of the surroundings. The night wasn't particularly cloudy; when he turned to her, his eyes shone brightly with reflected moonlight.

  "Without any incidents, Commander," he replied equally quietly after a short throat-clearing.

  She stood beside him and looked around the area; she saw nothing, but clearly caught in her nostrils that disturbing scent which must have been imperceptible to the sentry.

  "I'm going for a short walk; stay here. If I need you, I'll sound the horn," she declared and raised the instrument for a moment to confirm her words. She feared that otherwise, her companion would insist on sending someone with her, and she didn't want any company.

  As expected, he made a face as if to object, but ultimately shifted from foot to foot and said, "Yes, Commander."

  She moved briskly straight north, from where the smell was coming. When she disappeared from the sentry's sight behind the tree line, she broke into a run; her perception fully kept up with her speed, and she felt as if she could freely race against wild game. After a dozen or so minutes, she reached the source of the smell. Formerly, this stench would have been hard for her to bear, but now it constituted more information than sensation, and despite its intensity, it didn't churn her stomach.

  A gigantic scavenger was feasting on corpses—kobolds and goblins, she judged—in front of a clumsily and hastily barricaded entrance to a cave. This was a region full of low hills, often cut by caves and crevices. Someone had clearly been hiding in this one here. The corpses must have been relatively fresh; the scent came from the creature.

  These beings appeared in various forms and sizes, and her people collectively called them scavengers; this one resembled a grub, but it had legs along the entire length of its body. Segments overgrown with some hardened plate crunched as it moved. It made nothing of her presence and, in the silence of the night, consumed the carcass of a lizard-like kobold.

  It was accompanied by a small pack of gnoll-like creatures of the night that benefited from the company of larger monsters and wandered with them through the marches, looking for opportunities to stuff their bellies. There were perhaps half a dozen of them. Hunched, mangy, wild, they fed with the help of claws and fangs. There was no agreement among orcs whether these were fallen, degenerate gnolls that had abandoned their pack, or a completely separate kind of creature. In either case, if they got in the way of the clans, death awaited them.

  She whistled in their direction and stretched with her spear behind her back. The overgrown grub devoted a brief moment to her and returned to chewing, but the feral pack, hacking and growling, moved toward her. When they were close, she took several leaps to the side herself so as not to let them surround her and pierced the neck of one of them with a quick thrust when it came into range. The next two steps, and another found itself within her reach for a sufficiently long moment for her to run through the creature's torso with two thrusts with such force that, pulling out the spearhead, she threw the dying one to the ground. Suddenly, she shot her weapon toward a monster flying at her, and after the blade sank deep into its guts, using its momentum, she shook it off behind her. The shaft groaned but held. She dealt with the rest no less efficiently before the thought of possible escape dawned in their minds.

  Everything lasted barely a dozen heartbeats, and the overgrown grub, realizing what had happened, trembled with its calloused segments as if expressing its dissatisfaction and unexpectedly quickly moved in her direction, dropping the half-eaten legs of a kobold from its mandibles along the way.

  She had never fought against something like this before, but she quickly targeted the places that seemed to be eyes. The creature was fast, but not so fast that she couldn't react. She allowed an attack; the monster crashed down on her from above, wanting to pin her with massive mandibles. The warrior, leaping to the right, drove the spearhead into the scavenger's bead-like eyes. The creature again made a sound by rubbing its segments in reaction to pain or surprise. Gra’sha, maintaining vigilance, jumped over the abdomen, which at the same time rolled over the spot where she had been standing just a moment before.

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  She ran around the creature to the other side; somewhat disoriented, it looked at her with its remaining eye only to lose it immediately. After that, it rolled onto its back and, writhing, tried to gain distance from the threat. Gra’sha wasn't curious about what else it might have in store. Keeping herself constantly more or less in front of the monster, at a distance allowing for deep thrusts, she sought out places devoid of callouses time and again, and a few dozen strikes later, the exceptionally perforated scavenger froze in stillness.

  The spiritual energy of these beings had something so repulsive about it that she didn't reach for even a bit. With distaste, she walked around the creature. She tapped the calloused segments and confirmed her assumptions. They were hard as stone, and with her strength, she would certainly have broken the spearhead had she struck them. The thought crossed her mind that she should equip herself with some solid blunt weapon for such circumstances.

  She left the carcass behind and approached the cave, from where the scent of clearly frightened goblins began to reach her slowly. She stopped a few steps from the improvised barricade and threw a loud "You can come out now. The scavengers are defeated" in their direction.

  The wooden construction was slowly moved from the cave opening, and a gathering of goblins, exhausted by recent events, appeared before her eyes. A small group of children, gathered at the back of the space now lit by a freshly lit oil lamp, looked in her direction with fear, and in front of them stood maybe a dozen men and women, some wounded. All armed, but none of them pointed a weapon in her direction. Expecting a unit of orcs, they glanced behind her, looking out for the rest.

  "Warrior, are you... alone?" asked the oldest of the goblins finally.

  "No, my unit is nearby," she replied confidently, because in a sense it was true, then added, "I am Gra’sha of Wolf Rock."

  "We are grateful to you and your clan, Gra’sha of Wolf Rock," he replied somewhat uncertainly.

  "What actually happened here?" she asked and looked around the room. She judged that they must have lived here for some time—improvised bedding, a bit of simple equipment, hung laundry. She even spotted a rock basin into which fresh water flowed, only to disappear nearby into a crevice below. It was a good place for a camp.

  "Kobolds. They must have scented us; we managed to repel their attack, not without losses," the man sighed heavily before continuing. "Before we could properly dress the wounded and tend to the dead, these creatures of the night appeared."

  The children looked at her fearfully, but the adults relaxed a bit. Well-fed clan warriors didn't engage in looting goblins; besides, they had nothing here she could want. Gra’sha considered for a moment; they also remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her. Finally, she decided.

  "If you are looking for occupation, there is work for all of you in our clan; with us, goblins do not have to fight. We can take you there; our camp is some two, maybe three hours' march south, in an open clearing where four boulders stand; we depart in the late morning," she explained, to which one of the goblins nodded, as a sign that he knew which clearing she meant. "If you are not there, I will assume you decided otherwise; meanwhile, I leave you to your affairs."

  "That is a very courteous offer, warrior Gra’sha; we will solemnly consider it," replied the goblin representing the group, bowing his head before her.

  Gra’sha grunted briefly in confirmation and walked off into the night. She ran back so as not to worry the sentry, and in total she was gone barely over half an hour. She arrived at the spot well warmed up by all that running.

  "Commander?" he called, muffling his voice a bit when she was close enough for him to perceive her movement.

  "It's me," she replied and trotted up to him, then added, "In the morning a flock of goblins will come here. I recruited them; we need hands for work, no?"

  "Indeed, though there was nothing about that in the orders..." however, he fell silent under her gaze.

  "Instead of running rampant on the roads, they will occupy themselves with rebuilding our stronghold; does that not make the trail safer?"

  The sentry nodded and made a face as if that convinced him.

  "Pass that on to your relief," she threw over her shoulder and left him alone.

  However, she was unable to go back to sleep. Instead, she cleaned the sweat off herself over a bucket behind the tent and, recalling the movements of the newly encountered opponents, practiced with spear and then sword and shield until dawn, until the first companions began to wake up.

  Before they ate breakfast together, the group of goblins shyly entered the clearing, and Gra’sha explained to everyone that these were candidates for work in the stronghold with whom they were to travel until the return to Wolf Rock. Despite timid protests, having got her way, she gave the order to march, and they all set off soon together toward Riverbend. Along the way, Willow harnessed the goblin youngsters to work with the draft animal, which in practice meant that under her watchful eye they rode in turns on the ovibos and chased each other with the dog as if last night had been only a bad dream.