[Nuranar]

As the nauseous stench surrounded them, Tarondo swallowed hard and set his jaw. He swung down to the ground. "Fen, you stay up here with the horses while Silrûth and I look around. Don't move or you could destroy some signs." The man nodded vigorously, a sickly smile pasted on his greenish face. Tarondo glanced at his companion. Silrûth was pale but collected, and her eyes met his reassuringly.

Tarondo strode swiftly down the wagon road. He looked to make sure, but saw no signs that anyone had passed that way for several days. That was as he had expected; wherever the culprits had come from, the road from Staddle was their least likely route.

The farmyard itself was of hard-packed dirt and showed next to no sign. It was past midsummer, as well, and there had been no rain for a week. Nevertheless Tarondo carefully quartered every inch of the ground, searching for the tiny indications of the unusual. A small divot in the dirt, its edges clean and sharp, showed where something pointed had been driven in. A dark-colored smear stained the ground near one of the bodies.

Silrûth called him over to the house. "Look at how this whole corner is destroyed. It seems as if it was smashed at one blow. And over here," she continued, pointing to a pile of splintered timbers. "There are two men under there. Two men, crushed to death. The house itself has been ransacked but very little taken, from what I can tell. I cannot find any money, although there is a hidden nook in the floor that is empty."

Tarondo gazed unseeingly at the wreckage, thinking. Silrûth nudged him. "Have you found anything?"

"Very little." He turned back to the farmyard. "Come on, we need to finish here." Silrûth followed silently.

Fen was called down the hill and, for a fee, set to work digging the graves in an untrodden corner across from the house. One by one the bodies were recovered and wrapped in their own blankets. Altogether, thirteen men and one woman had died that night. Some were still in their nightshirts, some in trousers, a few more or less fully dressed.

Both Elves had been in many fights and were well acquainted with the many guises of death. But the sheer brutality of these deaths was nightmarish. The bodies were crushed and mangled with inhuman ferocity. A few had split skulls and a few were dismembered, while the rest had been battered and smashed.

Having found another shovel and a pick, both Elves assisted with the gravedigging. Except for the harsh cries of the ravens, disturbed but not dispersed, a heavy stillness lay all that long afternoon. Fen worked in disgruntled sulkiness, muttering words he did not dare voice before Silrûth. The grim-faced Elf worked with relentless energy, as if executing vengeance on those responsible. Tarondo dug steadily, thinking all the while.

The sun was still above the eastern hills when they finished. The farmyard, though strewn with wreckage, no longer resembled a ghastly unroofed charnel house. After a drink from the well, Tarondo set off around the perimeter of the farmyard. Where the ground was softer and vegetation grew, he was certain of finding tracks. He had an inkling of the force behind the devastation, and if he was right, it would certainly have left traces.