Silence gripped the forest, silent except for the call of birds among the trees. Chance stared at the gnoll, trying to keep his mouth from falling open. From the gnoll, he turned to look a Shags and Yrip, who were also looking at the gnoll, before turning his look back to it.
“I’m sorry, sweeping?” was all he could think of to say.
“Yes,” the gnoll replied cheerfully, grinning broadly.
“Sweeping the path?”
“Yes.”
Chance scratched at his still-unshaven beard.
“Sorry, you are sweeping the forest path?”
“Of course. We aren’t barbarians,” the gnoll replied before he paused, considering his statement. He grinned. “Well, I guess we kind of are, what with all the raiding and pillaging, but we aren’t, if you get what I mean. We don’t just leave a mess behind when we leave.”
“You are planning to leave?” Chance asked.
“The rest already have,” the gnoll cheerfully told him. “I just stayed behind a while longer to finish doing some tidying up.”
Chance found himself thrown by the whole situation. It wasn’t what he had expected, but then again he was getting used to that happening. This, though, went far beyond even the normal levels of unexpected and had left him at a loss. He was meant to be dealing with the camp, but if they had already left what was he meant to do? And did it even count?
“But a forest path?” he said. “Surely it doesn’t need to be tidied. I mean, nature isn’t exactly known for being clean and orderly.”
“Oh, you can’t leave anything behind,” the gnoll responded, giving the path a last sweep before leaning on his broom. “There, done. Just please don’t mess it up.”
Chance couldn’t see that it had made any difference at all, only that it seemed to have satisfied the gnoll.
“You like to tidy up?” he asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say like exactly,” the gnoll replied, then grinned. “I love it, and there is pleasure in a job well done.”
“I was on my way to visit your camp,” Chance said, “But if everyone has already gone then that idea has gone out the window. I’m Chance, by the way.”
“Snarljaw Grimfang Bloodclaw.”
“Snarljaw?”
“Good gnoll name that.”
Chance nodded. “Would Snarl be okay?"
The gnoll shrugged, but the seemingly near-permanent grin was still there. “Sure, it's fine.”
What to do next, that was the big question. The quest had not actually been completed, despite the gnolls having left. All, that was, but for Snarl. It seemed, then, that he had to persuade him to leave as well, for it to be marked as completed. The problem was that the image of the gnoll sweeping the forest path kept intruding on his thoughts, preventing him from thinking straight.
Before he could come up with a plan, the gnoll spoke again. “Why don’t you come back to my camp? We can talk there and I even have tea.”
“Tea?” That sounded good. Really good. At least in theory. “Yeah, thanks.”
The gnoll led them down the forest path, on occasions stopping to sweep at an aggressively unclean part of the path that looked no different than any other parts Chance had seen, but seemed important to Snarl. They left the forest behind, coming out into a large clearing where long green grass grew. In parts it had been pressed down flat, evidence of where the gnolls had been living before they had departed. One small tent still remained, with a hide of some type draped over a wooden frame, A fireplace had been established in the middle of where the camp had been, coals still glowing in it, while a small iron pot hung over the flames on a frame. Resting against a box nearby to the tent was a long spear, decorated in feathers near the blade, and three more straw brooms.
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Snarl laid the broom he was carrying down with the others, turning then to the fire. “Make yourself comfortable.”
A length of log lay on the ground in front of the fire, large enough for a number of people - or gnolls - to sit on. Chance took a seat there, with Yrip, as usual, sticking close by, his shorter legs dangling from the perch. Shags padded around for a bit, sniffing out things before he found a place to settle down, keeping a watchful eye on the gnoll at all times. Chance could sense a certain wariness from the wolf, though not hostility.
Snarl added a few pieces of wood to the fire, breathing on it to bring it back to life.
“You are planning on joining the rest of your tribe?” Chance asked him.
“At some point,” Snarl replied, giving an indifferent shrug as he looked up from the fire as if it wasn’t all that important. “There is still a lot of cleaning up to be done around here.”
“It does build up, yeah,” Chance agreed, speaking as one who contributed to making messes but who had barely cleaned up a day in his life. There was always someone else around to do that.
Snarl grinned, busying himself with the pot, adding water to it from a waterskin, and then throwing in some leaves. “It is only mint tea,” he said, “With some honey to flavour it. Not a proper tea, but you have to make do.”
“You are a lifesaver, regardless,” Chance told him, provoking a soft cackle from the gnoll. “I haven’t had a proper drink since coming here, so anything is welcome. Where did you come by mint and honey?”
“Found them,” Snarl grinned. He waved a hand of in the vague direction of the forest around them. “Gnolls are good at finding things.”
Often of items that don’t exactly belong to them, Shags added silently.
Now, let's be polite, Chance reminded the wolf. He may be a bit odd but he is being hospitable and he is still a lot bigger than we are.
Shags responded with his peculiar wolfy grin, amused.
Snarl hummed to himself as he waited for the pot to boil, taking up one of the brooms to sweep around the campsite. It occurred to Chance that despite the other two having said that gnolls were especially fragrant, he had not detected it about Snarl. If anything there was an almost, well, floral, scent around him. The gnoll, it appeared, was rather obsessed with cleanliness.
“How come the rest of your tribe left?” Chance asked the gnoll.
“We don’t stay anywhere for that long,” Snarl told him. “It had come time to leave, especially after the dragon fell.”
Chance felt Yrip sit up straighter alongside him. He closed his eyes, a sense of dread stealing across him. “The dragon didn’t fall,” the little kobold stated firmly. “He is still with us.”
The sweeping stopped and Snarl looked at Yrip with sharp amber eyes. “We saw it happen. We saw the fight. We found the body after and took from it. My tent is made from its hide. Look, see for yourself.”
Chance opened his eyes and got up from the log, walking across to the tent. The hide covering it was a heavy thing, thick in nature, covered in large red scales, varying in size but some as large as his head. Yrip had come across too and he reached a scaled hand out to touch the hide, tentative in his motions. It was not going to end well. Chance could feel his heart sinking.
Snarl stood behind them, resting on the broom. “I can even show you where it came down,” he offered.
Yrip looked up at Chance, his big eyes wide, questioning. “Master?”
“Let's go and see, Yrip.”
Yrip nodded slowly, though Chance could see his confusion. Still carrying his broom, Snarl led them from the camp, headed not into the forest again but towards some low-laying hills to the east. Unlike the hills they had climbed in the dead zone near the goblin camp, these still lived. Green growth covered them, fields of grass and wildflowers, bushes and low trees and the call of many birds. Snarl followed a faint path up through the hills, occasionally brushing at this or that with his broom, until he came to a region of the hills where the trees were burnt bare and the ground blackened. In the middle of the burnt patch was an enormous skeleton, one reptilian in nature, stripped to the bone. A giant skull, with gaping eye sockets, stared their way, though all the teeth had been removed from it.
“It was good eating,” Snarl stated.
“You ate it?” Chance asked, shocked.
“No sense in wasting fresh meat,” Snarl responded with a grin. “We used every part of it, but the bones, and they only because they were too heavy to move.”
Yrip had been standing still the whole time, starting at the bones, wringing his hands together. He turned at last to Chance.
“Master? Who are you?”