The elite Vilebranch Troll squad followed the main road all the way to the valley entrance and, sure enough, suffered no attacks. They saw no Elf ground troops along the way, only the occasional Dragonhawk Rider sweeping overhead.
Still, they did not dare stray from the road. The squad that had gone before them served as a warning. These Elves appeared and vanished like ghosts, and no one knew when they might show up. Even armed, an entire squad had been wiped out in just a few minutes. Now that they were unarmed, they were even less willing to wander off.
At the valley entrance, however, an Elf in black armor stopped them and forced them to join the burial detail. The Elf told them that once they had buried all the bodies inside the valley entrance, they could leave the valley and go wherever they wanted. No one would stop them.
When they went in, one or two hundred Vilebranch Troll civilians were already there. Clearly, these were some of the few civilians who had escaped the city during last night's unrest. Every one of them had their head down, burying bodies.
Corpses covered the hills and valley. Their clothing identified them as soldiers of the Vilebranch Troll army. The bodies were already rotting and stinking; they had clearly been dead for quite some time. Although the weather had grown cooler, the stench in the valley was still overwhelming. If the bodies were left unburied for another few days, probably no one would dare cross the valley at all.
The Elf appeared before them only long enough to give those instructions, then vanished. No one stayed to watch them or the Vilebranch Troll civilians burying the dead, yet not a single person dared run off.
The Elves had only