Reynevan was walking very fast, as fast as the rough terrain permitted. He was exhausted and panting but had warmed up enough for his wet clothing to be literally steaming on him; it was drying fast and not so unpleasantly cold any more. Although he had covered quite a considerable distance, he didn’t find any tracks by the stream, not counting paths trodden by deer and depressions in the mud made by wild boar.

As he had predicted, it became overcast and a light snow even began to fall.

The forest thinned out abruptly and Reynevan saw the outlines of wooden buildings looming beyond the last maples. Heart beating, he speeded up and almost ran into the clearing.

The buildings turned out to be huts covered in tree bark, most of them tumbledown. There was no point even looking inside. All traces of humanity were covered by grass and weeds. Great stretches of blackened wood shavings and sawdust lay around, no longer even smelling of resin. A long-forgotten axe driven into a tree stump was red with rust. The woodcutters—for the huts had undoubtedly belonged to them—must have abandoned the glade many years before.

“Anybody here?” Reynevan preferred to be certain. “I say! I saaaay!”

Something rustled behind him. He quickly spun around, but in spite of his speed he only managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a shape vanishing around the corner of a hut. The shape was small. The size of a child.

“I say!” he said, running after it. “Stop! Wait! Fear not!”

The small creature wasn’t a child. Children aren’t shaggy and don’t have dogs’ heads. Nor arms reaching to the ground. Nor do they run away in strange leaps and bounds, swaying on short, crooked legs, croaking loudly as they do so. Reynevan set off in pursuit. Towards a gap in the wall of trees. And a road. When he came out onto the road, the shaggy creature stopped. Looked back. Stared goggle-eyed. And bared its doglike teeth.

“Fear not…” Reynevan panted. “I won’t—”

The creature—a forest kobold, a waldschrat—interrupted him with a loud and strangely scornful-sounding croaking. It was answered by a chorus of similar squawks. Coming from all directions. Before Reynevan realised what he was mixed up in, about twenty of them attacked.