"It's… pt… very good… pt…" said Groag, trying to spit out little bits of grit. "Though next time tell the lads they should skin the vegetables, since it… pt… gets rid of most of the dirt."

Renders nodded as if sage wisdom had been imparted to him. "I'll tell them it was a good first attempt. But they were a bit… ah… lavish with our remaining stock. I'm afraid that someone will have to return to Flotsam to purchase some supplies sooner than, ah, expected."

The hairs on the back of Toede's neck immediately went up.

Renders continued, addressing Groag. "You can take the horses, and, ah, be there and back in four days. We should be able to hold out that long. You can take your, ah, your friend along." Renders motioned toward Toede, who rose to his feet.

"Advisor, actually," said Toede, smiling broadly. "We haven't had proper introductions yet. You can call me Underhill." He held out a hand.

Renders admired Toede's outstretched paw with the caution usually reserved for investigating locks for poison mechanisms. Then he shook it once, quickly, and turned back to Groag as if Toede had suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.

"You and, ah, Underhill, can leave tomorrow morning. We'll give you sufficient moneys for the supplies." With that, Renders turned and left the tent, without even saying good-bye to Toede.

"Who does he think he's talking to?" huffed Toede.

"The cook… pt…" said Groag, spitting out a particularly large stone, then added, "and the cook's advisor." He pursed his eyebrows together, and Toede suddenly realized he had seen the same expression on Renders's face when talking about "the boys'" attempt at cooking dinner.

It was almost enough to make Toede miss that irritating kender-shrug.

Groag, now fed, drifted off in a light, muttering sleep, but Toede remained up, sitting in the entrance to the tent, watching the humans. They were less feverish than in the last hours of daylight, but no less insane in their actions: involved in deep discussion with each other, examining scrolls and old books in the light of the dying campfire, pawing over bits and pieces of what they had discovered during the day. Even from this distance Toede could see that they were pawing over veritable garbage: shattered pot shards and pieces of aged leather.

There was one unusually bright light in the camp, coming from what Toede assumed was Bunniswot's private tent. He could see the silhouette of a human crouched over a camp table piled with scrolls, books, and paper. The figure seemed to be working hastily, checking one tome, leafing through another, getting up, pacing, writing a few words, then repeating the cycle.

Garbage and maniacs, thought Toede. It's a wonder any humans at all were made highlords. And he too pursed his eyebrows in the center-in bewilderment.

Actually, they could not leave the next morning as Renders had proposed. This was chiefly because Groag had some duties to tend to that included rationing out the remaining supplies for five days of meals, leaving rough instruction to "the boys" (actually two full-grown men who looked more capable of eating than cooking) on how to avoid poisoning the campers in his absence, and cleaning out the cooking pots that said "boys" had left on the fire last night until the bottoms consisted of over-baked gravy souffle.

As a result, Toede had sufficient time to explore the encampment. Not out of any human or kender form of curiosity, but for defensive reasons. If anything larger than a wild hamster attacked this group, the camp would fold up like a piece of origami. He wanted to know where the best bolt holes were, and the quickest route to escape.

He found Bunniswot sitting cross-legged on the moss in front of a tilted plinth, writing in a notebook bound with two great slabs of wood. The red-haired scholar must have noticed Toede's approach, for he snapped his book shut quickly as Toede drew near.

"What?" said Bunniswot, in his high nasal tone. It was a short, dismissive, "go away" what.

"Just watching you work," said Toede innocently.

"Don't," snapped Bunniswot, ending the conversation. However, Toede did not budge and neither did the scholar reopen his notebook. Silence reigned in their part of the universe.

"What?" repeated Bunniswot.

"I was just wondering what you were looking for out here," said Toede. "I mean, is it treasure, or magic, or something else entirely?"

"I really don't see that it's any of your business," said the scholar. "Good-bye."

"Hmmm," said Toede, wandering up to the tilted plinth and cocking his head. "Interesting. Very interesting."

"You can read Proto-Ogre 1?" said Bunniswot, and Toede noted that his voice cracked.

"Hmmm?" said Toede, cocking an eye sideways at the scholar. "No, no, I was just noting that the carving sequence is similar to the song cadences among my own people. Dah-dah-dee, dah-dah-dee." He pointed at a collection of glyphs. "Is this a song?"

"Not a song," said Bunniswot quickly. "A… memorial. A memorial to a fallen ur-ogre hero. Look, what do you want?" Not waiting for Toede to reply, he added, "If I tell you what we're here for, will you go away and let me finish?"

Toede nodded. The red-haired scholar summarized, moving his hands rapidly as he did. "Before there were ogres, back in the time of legend, there had to be something that would become ogres, correct? Now, old legends speak of a tall, beautiful, noble race. Enlightened, wealthy, powerful in magic, and artistic in expression. Suddenly this race disappears from the legends, with only a few scattered references to a great fall. Just as suddenly, the ogres appear and start doing ogrish things. What does

this suggest to you?"

"That the ogres killed all your beautiful artists and took their lands," said Toede. "If I go to sleep with a bird in my room and wake up with a cat there, I don't assume that one became the other."

Bunniswot gave Toede a pained, withering look, and not for the first time in this discussion the hobgoblin wished he had not left his morning star behind in the tent. "It means"-Bunniswot stressed the second word-"that the ur-ogres became the ogres that we know about today. And I believe we can learn from their example."

"We can learn how to become ogres?" suggested Toede.

Bunniswot ignored him. "Their culture, their arts, the high level of their existence that exceeded that of the elves. And these are all that's left of their fabled civilization." He gestured toward the plinths.

When Toede made no further crass remarks, Bunniswot continued, softening his tone a little. "This is the closest possible location of a surviving ur-ogre encampment. It took five months of scouting to find it. Renders handled most of that. He's the chief scholar, and the one who dealt with that toad-monster in Flotsam."

Toede opened his mouth to say something, but realized that the scholar was speaking of Hopsloth. "And have you learned to read this?"

Bunniswot's voice tightened slightly. "Parts of it," he said at last. "A lot of the grammar and sentence-parsing is lost to me. But I may yet succeed, and if I do, my reputation will be made. Even the Towers of High Sorcery will sponsor me. Then I will be able to find the great lost ogre cities, and teach others about what I found, and publish a work of lasting value…"

Toede was spared Bunniswot's continued dreams of scholarly achievement by a shout from Groag, who had already saddled up the small, shaggy horses and was ready to ride.

The hobgoblin excused himself and backed away from the scholar. As soon as Toede was a sufficient distance away, Bunniswot's wood-clad notebook sprang open again, and the scholar went back to examining and writing, as if Toede had never interrupted him.

One thing is certain, thought Toede as he walked back to Groag, there is more here than meets the eye-human, ogre, or otherwise. Toede could smell the sweaty fear on the human when Bunniswot suspected, briefly, that Toede could decipher the glyphs.