They didn’t get it. The creatures came at them again, hordes of them, intent on trying to drag down their quarry from behind. Trailing as rearguard and closest to the pursuit, Seersha wheeled back and used her magic to throw up a wall of fire between themselves and their pursuers, igniting everything from stone to water to bare earth with crackling flames. But the creatures shifted their angle of attack and began coming at them from the flanks. A running battle ensued, terrible and vicious. Another of the Trolls went down and disappeared, then another. Javelins and clubs flew into their midst as the attackers tried to cripple the defenders. Screams and howls rose from all around, omnipresent and pervasive. So quick and elusive were their assailants that Redden found himself experiencing the strange sensation of fighting against things that could appear and disappear at will.

They had almost reached the base of the escarpment and the narrow trail that wound to its top when a club thrown from the left caught Railing just below the knee and sent him sprawling with a scream of pain. Redden was next to him at once, standing over him protectively, using the wishsong to whisk stones from the rocky ground in a whirlwind that sent the deadly missiles flying out in all directions to ward off the claws and teeth that would tear both his brother and himself apart. His attackers kept coming at them anyway, but he would not leave Railing. No matter what, he would not leave his brother.

Panicked and overwhelmed by superior numbers, he could not manage to stop them all. He fought back with everything he could muster, but his strength was beginning to fail him. Abruptly the creatures were on him, knocking him backward, flattening him against the earth.

It would have been the end of him if not for Crace Coram. The burly Dwarf Chieftain appeared out of nowhere, flinging the creatures aside, swings of his huge mace breaking heads and shattering bones in a furious counterattack. The voracious creatures scattered in the face of such fury, and for a second the entire assault collapsed. Without pausing, Coram scooped up Railing, threw him over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing, and charged after the others, with Redden close on his heels.

The members of the company scrambled up the winding pathway, hunching their shoulders as darts, javelins, and clubs flew all around them. Some of their attackers gave pursuit, daring to follow them up the pathway, heedless of the withering Druid Fire launched by Khyber Elessedil and Carrick from the escarpment. But when the last members of the company were safely off the trail and onto the heights, the creatures quickly turned back, skittering down the slope and disappearing into the brush and grasses.