Gnolls of the Valley of Doom

Their camp stands against the far edge of the valley floor, and they work outward from it. One afternoon a war party of about a dozen, hyenas running alongside, came from the camp’s direction across open ground after three strangers below the keep. They killed one of them under the cliff and drove the other two off, with the company watching from a balcony they had no quick way down from.

Counting the tribe took four days and three attempts, and every attempt returned a larger number than the one before it. After the dawn fight on the Goat Trail the company took them for a pack. Crossing the valley afterwards they saw the camp itself, put thirty to fifty on it, and left the figure written on a pile of wood with a dagger driven into it so that whoever came after them would find it. Then, from the air, they asked Al-Sāmiyah to drop lower for a proper look.

The Count From the Air

Out of the dive the number was upwards of a hundred and possibly over it. Some of them were plainly old, graying, walking about with weapons already in their hands; others were young and small and running loose below. A tribe that size does not field every body in it. What spoils the arithmetic is that a gnoll’s hands and mouth are weapons before it picks anything up, so subtracting the old and the young from the count does not subtract them from a fight.

The camp answered. A great many of them threw spears up at the eagle, which fell well short of her; then one leveled a heavy crossbow, sighted it, and put a bolt past the riders close enough that Aldo, who knows the sound, heard it go by. The count ended there.

What followed it was the work of a standing force. Within the hour scouts had come out to the ground the party had crossed, read it, and gone back to tell the tribe what had happened there. The company took a longer road home in consequence, curving wide of where they believed the camp to be rather than retracing the way they had ridden in, and the hyenas came up on their flanks regardless, faster than the horses, working to peel a rider off.

Four heads were taken off the trail pack early and piked on the ground as a deterrent. It deterred nothing.