[Bêthberry]

Darash was stunned by the man's response. A chilling memory of unwanted touch had frozen her arm when he had grabbed her hand in the near-dark mirk of the tunnel and she had reacted instinctively with disdain and repudiation and disgust. Yet he had then bowed his head before her and withdrew. She felt warmth pulse back into her arm, the mended join in her bone throbbing as her skin and muscles thawed, the frigid, insensate reaction dissipating bit by bit. Once again Grash had surprised her. His unexpected response was completely at odds with her experience of these northern jackals. Instead of beating or taunting her, he had shown her deference. Yet he was their leopard, striking out ahead of the vultures for fresh possibility of freedom. But she had little time to reflect more upon the matter, for others were coming forth, needing help. The pigmy man called Brór demanded movement while the elf woman cautioned the need for help.

Then Lyshkya gently prodded Darash's side and nodded back towards the gourd with the small lumps of suverah. Darash looked over in time to see the smooth Gondorian called Aldor put his hand into the gourd and withdraw some. Instantly, she was alerted to something odd, for they no longer had need for the smoking stones to repell the vermin and he did not light it. Instead, he pocketed it and moved off, towards the sticky, sweating walls of the cavern. Darash looked around to advise Grash, but he was off talking with another of the male prisoners. She looked back at Lyshkya and shrugged. They both decided to watch this man.. Then she blew out the smoking cinders at the end of her sword and rolled the suverah in the dirt, ensuring it was dead, before she replaced it in the gourd, which she packed away with her bags. She was hungry but the smoke in the air was stunting her desire to eat, so she did not touch the other bags she had picked up in the cellar. And she was sweating in the heat of the underground rock and the stiff leather of her orc jerkin was sticking to her body.

The she and Lyshkya had shouldered their swords and marched forward with Grash. Once in the large cavern, their footsteps bounced off the rock and thudded off the taunt webbing which hemmed them in. This time, they were a group, the slower ones catching up with the scouts. But the sweat of their previous fear had barely dried when a second wave of terror came creeping upon their minds. Then, suddenly, a huge dark stench broke away from the cavern's ceiling and landed near them, nauseating them. Many eyes glinted at them in the darkness