Empirical Gnollage: Installment 112 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment112.png]

"If I have to play leader then you can all follow me back outside to see if there are any more out there and then go give the crazy guy who summoned us here a closer look before anybody else finds him," Al grumbled, marching quickly towards the front door.

"Right away, mister leader!" Wikwocket answered, following.

"Mister leader, sir," Bote corrected with a smile so wide Al could almost hear it.

Ignoring this, Al rushed outside to look for more goblins. He immediately spotted one. It had been caught in the act of trying to loot their cart and a portion of the load was scattered nearby. Haunch the Donkey brayed in distress as he saw Al returning. The donkey had a long slash down his shoulder and foreleg. There was a lot of blood, but much of it appeared to have been the goblin's. Although it still clung stubbornly to the strap of one of the packs that it had tried to drag away, it wasn't really still in the act of looting as it was obviously dead. The dropped meat cleaver lay in the dirt near the remains that had been tenderized to death by donkey hooves far more effectively than the stolen meat-tenderizing hammer tucked in the goblin's belt ever could.

Gruntle looked over the scene, and grunted once in approval. Bote and Wikwocket hurried to help their injured donkey, so Al didn't feel terribly guilty for pausing to look over the scene to make sure nothing was missing - especially his own pack with his wizardry notes and supplies. He couldn't exactly go down to Ye Olde Wizard Shoppe and buy another copy of his personal research. The goblin appeared to have grabbed Wikwocket's pack, possibly simply because it was smaller and would have been easier for a goblin to carry. The other three packs were on the ground nearby, either cast aside by the goblin or thrown off while their donkey fought with it. Al picked them up and set them back on the cart while Bote tended to Haunch's wound and Wikwocket lavished praise on the donkey for his bravery.

"You're one of us for real now, Haunch! You're a mighty goblin-slaying battle-donkey, aren't you! Hey! We should get you some kind of armor! Hey, Al, they make armor for horses, right?"

"It's called barding, but yes," Al answered, trying to imagine their small donkey covered with elaborate metal plating. "It can get pretty expensive and heavy, and I don't think he'd like wearing it for very long."

"Barding?" Wikwocket repeated, skeptically. "I was thinking it'd be for protecting him, not for him to..."

"I don't know why it's called that, but it's got nothing to do with bards," Al swiftly interrupted, annoyed that his mind was now infected with the imagined sight of their donkey with a lute strapped to his back, trotting around trying to seduce everything. "Full barding probably isn't practical, but I'm sure we could find someone who could make something for him. First, though, is he all right? Can he walk? I think we should hurry up and get back to where we arrived before people start coming out looking for us."

"Haunch's injury seemed to have been a painful slice, but not a deep one nor life threatening," Bote answered, tying off the simple bandage they'd wrapped around the donkey's leg, shoulder, and neck to cover the wound. "I would not recommend hard running but I think he will be fine to pull our cart at a reasonable pace if not over-exerted."

"Good, let's get going. I haven't heard anybody moving around inside yet, so hopefully we've still got a few minutes before people risk coming out to see if the goblins are gone," insisted Al, heading back towards the stables without waiting for a reply. "And, now that we have a moment, I've got questions. Gruntle, who was that guy?"

"Hunt caller," Gruntle answered.

"What's a hunt caller?"

"Calls hunts."

Al groaned and rubbed his forehead.

"You don't really understand what happened, either, do you?"

"Nah. Maybe shaman stuff."

"He was talking to you like a gnoll, right? What was he saying?"

"Hunt goblins, because they got in the way. Then you were here and he wanted outsiders killed."

"For a moment," Al said carefully, "I thought you might."

"I did."

"I didn't get much of it, but it seemed like he was mad at the goblins for interfering with something else he meant to do," Wikwocket added, "He really didn't expect anyone not gnoll-shaped to appear. Did you see the look on his face? That was pretty funny!"

"Since when do you speak gnollish?"

"I don't think anybody really speaks gnollish," Wikwocket explained, "I think it's more like an artistic performance, you know? There are some sounds that are like words but a lot of it is body-language and tone to communicate. You're the smart one, didn't you already figure that out?"

Stolen novel; please report.

"I've been a little distracted with other things these last few weeks, as you may have noticed."

In hindsight, he'd known that already. He'd read as much in Melissa's treatise, and he was starting to realize how much of Gruntle's non-verbal speech he was beginning to understand. Al felt a small relief as he realized he would not need to try to find a way to get Gruntle to sit still for extended what's the gnollish word for... sessions to create a dictionary.

The horses in the barn resumed their agitated snorting and stomping in their stalls as the gnoll party returned.

"Will you stop that? We're not here to eat you!" Al grumbled at them in annoyance as they passed by the open barn doors. Neither that nor Gruntle's annoyed huff showed any evidence of calming them.

The one Gruntle referred to as the hunt-caller lay discarded on the ground where Gruntle had dropped him near the corner of the barn. A wide strip of flesh was obviously bitten out of the man's neck and shoulder, exposing broken pieces of vertebrae and even more blood seeping into the man's clothes.

"I assume nobody has seen him before?" Al asked, rolling the body over onto its back with a shove from his boot.

"Wait, I've seen that guy before!" Wikwocket announced.

"Really? Where?"

"Right around the corner from here, a little while ago! He wanted to kill us!"

She grinned back at Al's glare.

"But before that?" Al asked.

"Nope, no idea who he is. Want me to see if he's got anything on him that helps?"

"Well, I don't want to touch that bloody mess if I don't have to, thank you for volunteering. I want to look over that circle he made before somebody finds us while you do that."

Al stepped around the corner of the barn while Wikwocket rolled up her sleeves eagerly.

The brief but intense struggle had smeared, stomped, and kicked aside large parts of the pattern that had been drawn in blood, flesh, and bone where they had arrived, but the portion that was still recognizable showed writing in that same infernal script they'd found in Wulfcynn Keep. Al wasn't sure if making it out of goblin parts was important or just an aesthetic choice by the crazy man, but the overall shape of the pattern reminded him in parts of the magic he'd learned from studying Am die Auswelte Sachen und die Wände Dazwischen, the shapes and patterns seeming to almost cut into reality. Al studied the markings for a while, but could get no more insight from it before a licking sound distracted him. Leaning back around the corner of the barn to look, he was disgusted to see Wikwocket holding up her bloodstained hands to be licked clean by a gnoll.

"What are you doing?"

"What, did you want me to wipe the blood all over my nice clothes?" she asked, nodding down to indicate what she was wearing as if they weren't bespattered with goblin blood already.

Al threw up his hands in defeat and shot a half-serious pleading glance at the sky.

"Fine, fine, did you find anything?"

"Not much, but he was pretty loaded!" Wikwocket replied, proudly jingling a leather coin purse in one gnoll-slobbered hand. "I haven't opened it up to count it yet but it's heavy! He's wearing some plain silver rings on his fingers, too."

"If you're done using our gnoll as the most disgusting instrument of hygiene available, I wanted to see if he could understand any of this writing that's left over here."

Wikwocket chuckled avariciously as she got the coinpurse open, while Al beckoned Gruntle over to look at the symbols that were still legible.

"Part of a name," the gnoll interpreted.

"But you can't tell me whose name it is?"

"Nah."

"Does it at least look familiar?"

"Nah. Only part of a name."

"Does it look anything like this?" interrupted Wikwocket. "It was folded up in the coinpurse with the money."

She held up an unfolded sheet of paper. The sketched diagram on the paper had been made from short scratched lines of what Al hoped was just dark brown ink. The rough sketch looked to Al as if it had been copied hastily from something that the artist had seen but didn't fully understand, having numerous places where the short scratches of hopefully-not-dried-blood showed evidence of attempts at corrections made to achieve the final pattern. It did appear to match what was still visible of the arcane circle that seemed to have been involved in bringing them here.

"Grandma," Gruntle said, pointing to the infernal script incorporated into the pattern around the outer portion of the circle.

"That's the name of your mother's mother?" Al asked in surprise. He got only a confused head-tilt in reply. "You do mean grandmother, right, you're not saying grandma is what this name sounds like?"

"Aunt Melissa made me learn about... an... sess... tree. Didn't understand, but this is an-sess-tor. Aunt Melissa said this was like grandma for gnolls. That's grandma's name, some shaman stuff, and call for grandma and cubs to come."

Al gave the sketch closer scrutiny. Being just a simple sketch it lacked the nuance that it would have had if it had been a proper record in a wizard's research notes using proper alchemical inks for the purpose, but the shapes did seem to suggest a cutting into the boundaries of reality, with a metaphysical directionality to it that might have meant it was aimed somewhere or seeking something.

"It's...a summoning circle that invokes the gnoll-demon to summon gnolls, maybe?" Al guessed, looking to Gruntle for confirmation.

"Don't know. Shaman stuff."

"I wish I had some more time to study this but we should hurry up and decide what to do about the dead guy and what's left of his summoning circle. It might be easier for us all if we get rid of the evidence somehow and get out of here, rather than try to explain why something that looks like a demon-summoning ritual brought us here."

"We can't just leave before we find out what the people here thought of the mysteriously-appearing heroes that saved them from the goblins!" Wikwocket objected.

"These people just survived being attacked by goblins. I didn't see any casualties other than some injuries a couple of one of the guests' bodyguards suffered, so hopefully nobody's died, but I don't think having a gnoll show up immediately afterwards is going to make them feel better!" Al insisted. "And," he added, "if they're hiding in their rooms, they're not going to want to tell you anything anyway."

Wikwocket gave this some thought.

"I suppose you're right," she finally admitted.

"Right, so do we drag the body off and bury it, or burn it, or just risk leaving it here so we can get further away and assume nobody will associate it with us?"

"No, no, wait," Wikwocket interrupted. "Don't be too hasty! I think I have a good compromise!"