"Presently, we came upon a wall that caught our attention, for there were words written in some ancient, profane tongue carved into the stone, and here Darrow tarried for a time, refusing to leave until he had read them.
"What the wizard read there seemed to unbalance him further, and he grew increasingly erratic. I gathered from his mutterings that signs, there written long ages ago, seemed to concern us directly, or so Darrow believed. He said things, like, `Once again he will raise his hand against us," and, `I am too small for this task . . . too small . . . and we are too few . . .'
"By the eighth day, as we departed Kolibos, he had become impossible to reach, lost in his private hell. Yet I judged him not to be totally mad. On the tenth day we were set upon by a large band of goblins. Darrow was ready for them, and had us prepare an ambush. Though we doubted him, we did as he asked, deploying ourselves about a secondary path which led down from some hills northeast of the roadway.
"Had we not followed his orders, we would have been taken ourselves, unawares. We fell upon the goblins, then only to find ourselves greatly outnumbered. But on the narrow path they were helpless to defend themselves, as we harried them from all sides. Several times they attempted us before fleeing back from whence they came. We pursued them, but they were very fast, and soon outdistanced us. In the end, four men were lost, and we found ourselves having to choose whether