They came to the place where the mountains ended and the land began its long, slow descent through scrub and prairie into endless sands. Around them, the twisted trunks of cupress trees protruded between the cracks and crags of a boulder field, the aftermath of some long ago avalanche. To the west, the dark waters of the Rift Sea glittered in the crimson light of the setting sun.

"Good place as any to camp, in the lee of these rocks," said Olms, swinging down from the gnarled back of his gaan. The lizard snorted and clawed at the rocky soil, sniffing for grubs and sabulophages as Olms unhooked the bedrolls and cookware from his saddle. 

The Drathan remained atop his own mount, dark eyes scanning the horizon. He tilted his head to one side, sniffing the air.

"Ghul." he said, and Olms spun on his heel, dropping the bedrolls and drawing his sword, "Masked their approach. One of them has some glamour."

The first arrow sailed by, inches from the Drathan's head, but he did not flinch, only spurred his gaan in the direction whence it had come and drew his sword. The lizard erupted into a gallop, bellowing and baring its fangs.

Olms slid a light buckler of crocodile hide onto his arm, catching an arrow and deflecting a poorly thrown spear of bone and rock. 

The ghul skittered amongst the trees and boulders around him, chattering in their buzzing tongue. Olms' gaan bolted while the Drathan and his mount disappeared around a jagged boulder. 

There was a sizzling [i]pop[/i] followed by a high-pitched squeal. Olms didn't have time to speculate; the first ghul erupted from behind the clutching branches of a cupress. It was lanky, a vaguely man-shaped thing, irregular spines protruding from its arched back, noseless, practically eyeless, but with a gaping mouth full of crooked teeth. It was armed with crude hatchets of bone and flint in two of its three hands. Olms sidestepped its attack and took its head off easily. Two more emerged from the rocks and bramble,
sidling to each of Olms' flanks, while a third clambered atop a nearby boulder and took aim with a crude bow.

They moved fast. Olms moved faster- hurling his buckler at the ghul on his left while lunging to the right, dodging an arrow and skewering the other ghul with his sword. He rolled with the weight of the collapsing monster, dropping his sword and drawing one of the twin lance-lock pistols at his hips. He and the bowman fired at the same time. The bowman missed, Olms didn't, taking off the creature's head with an emerald bolt of crackling light.

The remaining ghul had recovered. Olms drew his other pistol and shot it through the chest. It crumpled into a heap of smoking ash. Moving quickly, Olms recovered his sword and replaced the lance-bolts in his pistols. Gun in one hand, blade in another, he crept toward the rock behind which his companion had disappeared.

Around the corner, the scene was ugly. The Drathan's gaan was dead- not just dead, practically exploded, entrails and hunks of scaly flesh hung from rock and tree all around the corpse. The Drathan himself was standing amid the carnage, covered in lizard gore and surrounded by the bodies of mutants. Facing him, twice the height of a man, was one of the ghul holy men, bedecked in bones and rusted steel and a mask like the skull of a horse.

The air shimmered between the Drathan and the priest, though the sun was set and the heat of the day long past. The burnt-flesh reek of magic hung thick in the air, and Olms felt the hair rise on his arm. The ghul was frantically reciting some indecipherable verse with both of its mouths- prayers perhaps to whatever demon gave him such power. The Drathan was silent and still, his eyes closed.

Olms took aim at the monstrous priest with his lance-lock, clicking back the hammer and sparing a glance at the Drathan before he fired. The ghul priest took the shot in the chest and fell to its knees but did not die, did not even pause reciting its spells or prayers, but the tenor of the strange contest had shifted. The Drathan took a serene step forward, and his opponent slid backwards, as though pushed. Greenish blood poured from one and then both of its mouths. It continued to slide backward, was finally pined as though by bonds invisible to the great boulder behind it, writhing like a bug caught between a foot and the floor, just about to be crushed.

Olms strode up to the dying monster and cut its throat with his blade, standing back as steaming blood gushed out onto rock and sand.

Silence, save for the cawing of a distant crow.

"Did a number on your gaan," said Olm's with a smirk as he cleaned his blade.

The Drathan was looking down at the corpse of the priest. 

"No cave-witch, this one," he said finally, poking a strange sigil tatooed into the monster's forehead with the toe of his boot. "Came all the way from the Bloodspring."

"Sent by your kin?" asked Olms.

The Drathan sighed. "No. If Khalul and the Magisters knew of our errand, they'd have sent skinwalkers or Eaters, and we'd be dead."

"[i]Someone[/i] has found us out."

"The coin in its pouch- Union, Qarthine, Osmuli. We'll find this someone in Farai."