Robin and Vance immediately took cover behind the nearest ruined building. Robin winced as the ragged edges of the crumbled stone bit into him through his clothing. For good measure, he dropped an illusion of rubble over top of them.

He wasn’t a moment too soon. A hobgoblin patrol—this one far better equipped than any other they had seen so far—came into view. The leader was a massive warrior, and the mage accompanying them was older, and battlescarred and burned. He carried his wand at the ready.

Wands, actually, Robin noticed. This mage held one in each hand. The one in his left hand was the same as the others the bard had seen the hobgoblin mages in this city carry, but the one in his right was different. Where the first wand was made of metal, this one was of wood, and finely crafted, with a smoothness to the lines that spoke of a completely different design aesthetic.

Robin really wanted to know what that wand did. Not so much that he was willing to step into view as a target, but still.

Beside him, Vance held perfectly still. The two of them were outnumbered and, to all appearances, outgunned even if they faced these hobs with even odds.

Robin could feel the uncertainty in the air. Do they stay hidden? Try to run and lure the party after them? It was a very long way back to Ruprecht from here.

Before the silent conversation between Robin and Vance could come to a conclusion, however, the hobgoblins began speaking to one another in their native tongue.

Not a problem for Robin. He held up a hand, a small gesture, and Vance signed recognition. They would wait and see what happened.

‘Anything?’ the warrior demanded.

‘No, boss,’ one of the others replied. She looked like a scout or a rogue of some kind.

‘Some small traces, but nothing that says any kind of invading force is here,’ added another slim figure, this one whipcord thin with a scar across one milky white eye.

‘Something is taking out our patrols and I want to know what,’ the leader snapped.

‘They might have deserted,’ the mage stopped scanning the surrounding area with his gaze to speak. ‘It has happened before.’

‘They would not dare!’ The second woman in the group spoke. She was brawn, though not so strong-looking as the leader, and bore tattoos that Robin couldn’t quite see all of all over her visible flesh.

Something about those markings made him uneasy.

‘And has Lord-God Urkhan given you any special insight into the matter?’ The mage’s voice would well have been poisoned silk.

Urkhan! That was why the marking looked so familiar! There were sacred symbols of Urkhan, albeit not in a form he had encountered before.

His [Bardic Lore] pinged, confirming Robin’s realisation and adding some likely suppositions. The woman was probably some kind of battle-priest, trained to channel the divine energies of Urkhan into effects that would help dominate and secure the battlefield.

She almost certainly would have the same command ability that Gis had exhibited. That could well be lethal in a fight where he and Vance were outnumbered five to two.

The army that had originally crushed Tarin-Tiran had been under command of one of Urkhan favourites. Were these hobgoblins the descendants of a part of that army? One that had never left and instead had set up permanent camp within the ruins of the city they had tried to utterly destroy?

An occupying force was certainly within Urkhan’s style book.

‘Lord-God Urkhan does not coddle his faithful,’ the battlepriest was saying, practically spitting in disdain at the mage. ‘The Lord-God Urkhan helps those who help themselves. It is down to us to discover who or what has invaded our territory and crush it or bring it to heel.’

‘Well we aren’t finding it out here,’ the scout interjected. ‘We should either strike out in a different direction or head back. All we’re doing here is wasting breath.’ She all but rolled her eyes at the mage and the priest squabbling.

The rest of the patrol looked to the leader. He glanced around at the buildings, eyes narrow, before shading his head.

‘There has been nothing fruitful in this direction today or yesterday. We head back. Perhaps one of the other patrols has found something.’

The hobgoblins grumbled but turned around and started back the way they had come. Robin flicked his fingers through the paces of [Lesser Phantasm] and caused a single illusory word to appear in front of Vance’s eyes.

Follow?

Vance hesitated for a moment before nodding in assent. He held up a hand though, before they moved, indicating extreme caution.

Robin was fine with that. If they managed to stay undetected and find the location of the hobgoblin’s camp or headquarters or whatever, it would be a prime piece of useful knowledge.

The bard waited until the hobgoblins were safely out of sight before rising to follow them on quiet feet. Vance trailed along behind him, staying back far enough so as not to risk his clumsier tread giving them away, but not so far that he couldn’t see Robin or be close at hand if things took a turn for the worse.

Robin sent a mental message, hoping Rerebos was in range.

No response. The little dragon must not be close enough for their bond to work. Damnit. He’d have to keep trying.

They could really use an extra pair of eyes right about now.

The hobgoblins were moving at a quick pace, not outright running, and they kept their weapons ready, but they darted through the ruins with the air of people who knew the territory, knew it well, and had little to no reason to fear a surprise attack.

They had just been through here and knew the area was mostly clear, after all, in spite of their mission to seek out whoever or whatever was disturbing their patrols.

There was no sign that any of them realised one of the reasons was trailing along quietly behind them, moving from crevice to corner, sticking to the shadows and conjuring illusions to cover his tracks.

Robin was close enough that he could hear the hobgoblins were talking to one another, but too far away to catch the meaning. He briefly considered trying to use [Lesser Mindreading] but dismissed the idea almost immediately. The range was less than ideal at the distance he was trailing the patrol, and whatever information he picked up would be incidental, not focused like it might be in a conversation or an interrogation.

And he might need those spell energies to fuel combat magics if they caught on that someone was following them.

Though he couldn’t hear what was being said, Robin could see how they moved, could see how the group dynamics played out. He watched carefully, drawing on his [Bardic Lore] to help fill in gaps.

The leader, the warrior, ruled with a clearly iron hand, and there was little resentment and nary a whiff of rebellion. The group was very hierarchical, as one would expect from Urkhan worshippers.

There was a lot more fractiousness along the horizontal axis of power, however. It wasn’t clear who outranked who, though the mage and the battlepriest were both clearly a step above the two scours or rogues.

From their body language alone Robin couldn’t tell if the dislike between the mage and the battlepriest was social or personal. If he had to bet, though, he’d bet social. Not many of the legends or tales in his mind spoke in depth about hobgoblin social dynamics, but many of them agreed that as a people hobgoblins prized order and respected personal power over social power.

And if it was endemic to their social structure it might be something the party could use to even the odds in their encounters with the hobs.

The hobgoblin leader threw up a fist and the patrol suddenly came to a screeching halt, freezing in their tracks. Eyes were peeled, weapons were poised. Waves of battle readiness rolled off the whole group.

Robin’s foot chose that moment to scrape on a stone, of course.

The bard froze, immediately willing a patch of shadow to deepen around where he was crouched behind a corner. It was an imperfect solution, as he had been in mid-step to dart to the next hiding place, but it was all he had.

He prayed Vance had seen him freeze and was not even now moving up closer to the hobgoblins, now on high alert.

Each member of the patrol was scanning the surroundings, rotating slowly in place, acting almsot in concert so that while each individual scanner the nearby area for threats, no single angle was left unwatched.

It was impressive, but not a good situation for Robin. His muscles trembled with the odd position he had frozen in, trembled with adrenaline, but he held firm. If he didn’t move and no one noticed a slightly odd patch of shadow things would be all right.

Maybe.

More hand gestures from the warrior leading the patrol. The hobs fanned out, taking cover in the nearby ruins, close enough to one another to provide support but far enough apart that they weren’t in, as Robin’s old dungeon master would have called it, ‘fireball formation.’

A bolt of fire sailed out from somewhere beyond Robin’s line of sight. It splashed against the wall near to the warrior’s head. The patrol leader flashed out a quick series of hand gestures and the group of hobgoblins leapt into action.

There was a whirl of activity as the hobgoblins clashed with…another hobgoblin patrol? Robin was so thrown her very nearly didn’t take advantage of the distraction to improve his hiding place.

Nearly.

The two hobgoblin patrols skirmished for a bit, then Robin was thrown another curve ball as the fight just stopped and the two forces came together and jovially began to talk with one another before joining up to continue on in the direction the patrol Robin had been following was originally headed.

This was not a social behaviour he had expected. Robin had no idea what in nine different hells that might be, really. It didn’t even seem to be something he could take advantage of in the future. It was simply that weird to him.

Maybe it was because he wasn’t part of the martial society. maybe it was because he originated on another, far different world to this. Whatever the reason, one thing was clear.

With ten hobgoblins to follow instead of five, this plan had just gotten exponentially more dangerous.