“Follow,” Faabar repeated. “Low and silent. Our lives depend upon it.”

Padric did as he was told, hunching low as he entered the woods, stepping softly as possible. Faabar led them through the trees, winding his way silently between the trunks. He seemed to go in random directions, never staying long on a straight path. Padric was surprised how silently the large warrior moved despite his size and his injured leg. The gnome crept just as quietly and Rosheen was smoke on the wind. Padric felt he was crashing through the forest, making a tumult of snapped twigs and fallen leaves. Our lives depend on it. Padric expected to die at any second with the noise his feet were making.

They came to a rise in the land, the trees marching dutifully up the slope. Faabar led them down a gully at the base of the rise for some time before stopping. He turned to face them and put his finger to his lips then pointed up the rise. Finally, he spread his fingers and pushed his splayed hand slowly towards the ground. Silence. Up the hill. Keep low. Padric nodded in the dark and swallowed his fluttering breath. They followed the fomori up the hill, three scared, blind goslings. Padric could see the lip of the rise ahead. The trees stood at the crest, black columns edged in the flickering burn of firelight. Padric’s mouth turned sour. More fires. More forest. More death.

Faabar bellied down to the ground and crawled to the lip. Padric followed his example. Deglan beat him to the top and lay to Padric’s left. When he settled in Padric looked over to catch the gnome’s eye and recoiled, clamping his teeth shut against a cry of alarm. It was not the herbalist lying next to him.

The body was of a size with Deglan, but where the gnome was solid and husky, this creature was wiry of limb and ill-formed. It wore a leather jerkin, studded with metal and on its feet were armored boots of heavy iron plate. A vicious looking billhook lay clutched in its knobby fingers. But the worst was the face, pinched and narrow, ears and nose sharply pointed, a wide gap-toothed mouth lying open and slack. The body was belly down on the ground, but the pale eyes stared up at the night sky, the flat head turned completely around on a broken neck. Padric had seen a face like it once before, rotting on a pole. That goblin, like this one, had been dead. The dozens in the small valley below were very much alive.