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While Keverel did what he could to heal them both, Biri-Daar called Remy over. “We need to follow these two passages as far as we can, to make sure we got them all,” she said. “There have been no young, which means this is a raiding party. Probably they only planned to stay here a few weeks, until they had despoiled the area. If we had gotten here a few days earlier …” She trailed off and Remy instantly knew what she was thinking.

If they had not stopped to save him, they would have found the orcs before they destroyed the homestead back in the ridge clearing. Saving his life had cost the lives of anyone there.

“It’s a fool’s choice,” Iriani said softly. He too could see where Biri-Daar’s thoughts had gone. “When you can tell the future, paladin of Bahamut, then you may reprimand yourself for telling it incorrectly.”

Biri-Daar looked at him, then around at the carnage. “Let us search and make sure this place is cleansed of its filth,” she said.

“And do bring back whatever you find that is both light and valuable,” Lucan added. He caught his breath as Keverel sank a needle into the meat of his shoulder. “Hurry, before this murderous cleric puts an end to me.”

“We should have such fortune,” Kithri muttered. Her voice sounded odd to Remy but he put the thought out of his mind. Biri-Daar had ordered him to clear out the back tunnels, and clear out the back tunnels he would. Keverel knew his business.

Remy found nothing in the rear tunnels, even when assisted by a cantrip of Iriani’s that set a pleasant light glowing from the buckle of his belt. Trash, bones, filth. Nothing else. He returned the way he had come, carefully, and found both Lucan and Kithri sitting up. “Time to go,” Iriani said.

“This is an awful place,” Lucan groused. “Odor enough to kill you dead, orcs and ogres nearly enough to kill you all over again …”

“… And nothing to show for it,” Kithri finished for him.

“Perhaps it is just that the two most larcenous members of our group did not participate in the search,” Biri-Daar suggested without looking at either of them. She was working with a row of damaged scales on her arm, picking loose the bits that would not heal.

Everyone else in the cave looked at one another to be sure that the paladin had in fact told a joke. They were never sure.

It was true that their search had yielded very little that was valuable, and of that virtually nothing that was light. The only thing of any value was an enormous mirror framed in what looked like silver. Iriani had found it leaning up against a dead end in one of the side tunnels. He could detect no magic in it. “Break off the frame and let’s take it with us,” Kithri said.

Everyone ignored her. Some of them did take the chance to regard the progress of their beards. Of the three who had to shave, none had since leaving Crow Fork Market. “Soon we’ll all look like dwarves,” Iriani said upon seeing himself. “Dwarves who have spent time on the rack.”

When they emerged into daylight again and found their horses cropping the brush at the edge of the river, less than two hours had passed since Remy and Lucan had cut down the two orcs snacking on the ledge. The sun was dropping toward the western peaks. “We’ve wasted the afternoon on this,” Keverel said. “None of us wants to camp so close to that nest, I would guess.”

“You would guess correctly,” Biri-Daar said. “But few of us would wish to go much farther.”

“Then over the next pass,” Lucan said.

Kithri spat from her horse. “This pass, that pass. What difference does it make?”

“Over the next pass is into the final climb toward Iban Ja’s bridge,” Lucan said. “I don’t think we’ll find any orcs or ogres up there.”

“Why not?” Remy asked.

“The cambions and hobgoblins scare them away. Or slaughter them,” Iriani said.

Nodding, Lucan added, “That’s if the sorrowsworn don’t get them first.”

“Sorrowsworn?” Remy had never heard the name. Or term.

“Perhaps you will have the good fortune not to find out,” Iriani said. Nobody would say anything else about it. They rode