The Caravan

As the halfling left the group the fading voice of Han followed him. "The Caravan Master didn't like Valasar at all- I wonder what he would have done if he saw Bloodmane?"

Soren wove himself through the caravan, using his extreme agility and reflexes to move between the big animals and their human attendants. Most people didn’t realize how much of these skills you actually needed to ride one of the Soarial. Those who didn’t know thought that you just had to be small, not realizing you had to ride the currents just as much as your mount. Soren looked up at his animal companion still circling the caravan, feeling pride in her movements. Tera's brilliant colors caught the light, showing off the brilliant white and yellow patterns streaking her dark green body. Her brilliant orange crest, near transparent as her wings, seemed to glow with inner fire. Intelligent and fierce, the dinosaur circled, waiting for the chance to snatch Soren back into the skies.

As Soren neared the front of the column he saw the wagon master talking to a figure covered in a cloak. Soren stayed in the shadow of a wagon, not wanting to intrude on what looked like a heated conversation. The man in the dark cloak suddenly stiffened and started to look around. He quickly turned back to the wagon master and with some more hurried conversation passed him a small leather bag, which the wagon master promptly pocketed. The man in the cloak looked around one last time, and then disappeared among the humans that were traveling in the caravan. Soren trotted out of the shadows and tugged on the wagon master's sleeve. The wagon master gave a start and looked around. And then looked around again, this time a little lower and saw Soren and almost gave a bigger start than when Soren first tugged on his sleeve. Soren wasn’t very happy about that. Just because halflings were short didn’t mean that others had to look down on them.

“What do you want?” The caravan master said, having regained some of his composure. Coren could still see his face was to red, little beads of perspiration dotting his forehead. “I don’t have time for you to waste. What is it?”

Soren told him what he had told Quentin. The caravan master looked up the road, stringing along a very long list of swear words as he did so. He yelled at some of his men and told them to go on ahead and clear off the cattle. Soren left the red-faced caravan master their, and made his way back to Quentin and the company. As he came close he could hear Heljah explaining to Valasar about the roads and how they worked.

“…that’s when the Roadways Guildhouse was started.” Heljah finished to what was most likely a confused audience. “Look at the ruins up on the path ahead of us see how we approach them. In an hour we will likely be past them. That is likely twenty miles ahead of us so we are traveling as fast as a running horse.”

Soren went past them he had to tell Quentin what he had seen. He wasn’t there.