At nightfall, when the little players were most active, a ghostly blood-feeding griffin silently glided over the lands of Count Cadman.
It gazed down from high above. The darkness could do nothing to block its ghostly vision.
At the edge of its sight, it could see figures racing through the night. They were as chaotic as a startled herd of beasts, as if fleeing from some unseen thing, though nothing dangerous pursued them.
It was a gnoll pack, a fairly large one, with roughly fifty or sixty members, followed by an equal number of kobolds. Clearly, it was a tribe on the move.
The gnoll chieftain, riding a hyena, led his people west from Baron Lim's lands. Their destination was obvious.
"Another gnoll clan is migrating to the Andmar Hills. That makes four we've observed tonight."
In the Blood Eagle Corridor office, Murphy was looking through documents Mirian had sent over. He switched to Ravenov's point of view and felt not the slightest surprise at what he saw.
The gnolls might be savage, but they had their own loose social structure and means of spreading news.
The Scarlet Castle authorities' large-scale operation in the Dark Baron's lands and the Witch Hunters' purge in Baron Morlan's lands couldn't escape these creatures' notice. Their brains might be no bigger than walnuts, but some of their more perceptive leaders had already realized danger was coming.
On top of that, Kenport, the warlord of the Andmar Hills, was still sending envoys to gnoll clans elsewhere. Given both these factors, it was hardly surprising that more and more gnolls were fleeing to join the Great Beast Den.
In the minds of these savage creatures, joining the Great Beast Den seemed to mean they no longer had to fear the ruthless hunters who had appeared as