According to Devin

The Story According to Devin …in a few places:

They traveled for over a day and were not yet out of the southern forest. Iehron was waiting for the drug Mirette gave him to wear off so he could free himself, pummel Dinky mute, and try to help Nemoris. But something was wrong. The numbness in his body stayed.

After hours of travel with nothing to do but think, Iehron realized what the problem was. It was the water. He thought the water the dwarves gave him tasted a little odd. They must have put Mirette's drug into the water to keep him incapacitated.

Iehron considered his options.

Option 1: Drink the water and stay paralyzed.
Option 2: Refuse to drink the water. Get punched by a dwarf until I open my mouth and drink the water. Stay paralyzed. Hurt a lot.
Option 3: Refuse to drink the water. Die of dehydration.
Option 4: Pretend to drink the water... somehow. They'll probably notice if I'm spitting up a lot of it.

He came up with a few more sort-of-options, but then he concluded he was helpless and would have to wait till the dwarves were done transporting him. Hopefully it would not be a long journey to wherever they were going.

Around the time Dinky broke into his 27th song of the day, Iehron could tell they were nearing the edge of the forest. The trees were less dense. He could see bit of the sky and the sun peaking through the leaves. It looked to be a little past noon.

Bobette suddenly stopped the their trek. Dinky was starting on number 28, and she was at her limit. Hurling a large warhammer towards Dinky's head, she shouted at him to shut up.

With great dexterity, Dinky effortlessly dodged the warhammer. He had become quite skilled at dodging projectiles during his time as a stage performer. Get hit in the face with a tomato, and you learn a lesson. Get hit many dozens of times, and you learn how to duck quickly.

Bobette looked around for something else she could throw at Dinky, and then, as if trying to help, a projectile happened to find its way to her hand. It was an arrow, and it went tip first.

She screamed as blood dripped from her hand, but none of the other dwarves could help her. They all had their own incoming arrows to deal with.

Arrows swarmed the band of dwarves like stinging wasps and left several dead before Bobette and the others started to notice their assailants were sitting high up in the trees. This posed a problem for the dwarves. To start with the obvious, they were short. They had extra distance from their attackers than say a human would have. Also, their attackers were in trees, and a short, dense, stout body is not ideal for climbing. Lastly, dwarves have never bothered to take up bows in their entire history. They do enjoy a good ax throw, but a quiver holds much fewer axes than arrows, causing routine ammo shortages.

While the dwarves struggled to defend themselves, Iehron could only lie in the wagon and watch. He didn't know who was attacking or if he should be afraid. No arrows seemed to be landing near him, and the singing had stopped. He counted the attack as a good thing, even if there someone was aiming for him and happened to be a lousy shot.

From his vantage point, over half of the dwarves appeared dead, and the rest had run off. However - oh the wretched however - a song could be heard. Dinky was still alive. He had skillfully avoided all the arrows that tried to puncture his organs.

"Shoot him!" Iehron cried out, desperately hoping the song would abruptly halt. It didn't. But it did grow faint as Dinky fled. It took several minutes of distance before there were enough trees between him and Iehron to muffle his voice, but the singing eventually could be heard no more.

"Now I can die in peace," Iehron said to himself.

The archers had other ideas.

A large man dropped down from a tree and pulled out a knife. He cut the ropes off of Iehron and held Iehron by the shoulders so his legs could start to support his weight again.

"Are you alright?" the man asked.

"Yes. Thank you for rescuing me. I need some non-dwarven water, and lots of it," said Iehron. "I've been drugged."

Several more men descended from the trees, and one helped Iehron drink from a canteen. Between gulps of ordinary tasting water, Iehron noticed a patch the man wore. The emblem looked like a bean stalked that had been cut and was falling down.

"You're the Giant Slayers of Lightning Eagle," said Iehron.

"Oh, you've heard of us," said the large man.

"Of course I have. In the last war, a small group of elite archers eliminated a company of giants who served the evil magician."

"'Served' is a bit of an exaggeration. The magician told them we had food, and the giants naturally decided to invade. Either way, a lot of good soldiers died in their wake. But we put a stop to them."

"Are you their leader?"

"Sure am. Name's lumberjack."

Iehron stared for a moment at Lumberjack. He was well over six feet, his enormous arms were nearly the diameter of Iehron's legs, and thick reddish mutton chops covered most of his face.

"You're name is Lumberjack?" Iehron questioned.

"That's right," said Lumberjack. "Everyone calls me that on account of the ax I carry." He produced a large hand ax from a back sheath.

"But aren't you an expert archer?"

"Yeah. One of the best."

"But you're known for your ax?"

"Yeah. What's your point?"

"...you're known for your ax."

Lumberjack assumed Iehron was still suffering under the effects of the drug and had him sit down instead of continuing their very intellectual conversation.

Two archers introduced themselves and helped him drink more water. One was named Riplash, and the other was named Trailblazer.

"Riplash and Trailblazer... who picked your nicknames?" Iehron asked, wondering how bad their real names must be.

"My son," was Lumberjack's answer. "Why?"

"Uh! No reason!" Iehron hastily replied. "They're great names. Respectable names."

"Everyone grab what you can," Lumberjack announced to his troops. "We'll put Iehron on the wagon and move out in five minutes." He looked at Iehron, "You'll be joining us for a while."

"We need to go back through the forest," Iehron said after emptying the canteen. "An old wizard named Nemoris is in trouble."

"Nemoris is fine," said Lumberjack. "He's the one who sent us to find you."

"Oh. That's good," said Iehron.

He had clearly underestimated the old fossil. Maybe Nemoris had known about Mirette and was waiting for her to make a move. Or maybe the wizard wasn't so grand and narrowly escaped her plan by pure luck. Or maybe Nemoris didn't mind letting Iehron be humiliated by Mirette.

"We still need to go back," Iehron continued. "My armor is at-"

"We have your armor," said Lumberjack. "Nemoris gave it to us."

"Really? That's very... forward thinking of him. Did he happen to say what kind of magic the armor has?"

"Nope."

"Drat. Stingy curmudgeon," Iehron muttered. "He always refused to tell me about the armor."

Riplash and Trailblazer helped Iehron onto the wagon.

He tried once more to change their destination. "I'm grateful to you for saving me, but I'm not ready to join Lightning Eagle yet, so if you could drop me off at Nemoris' place-"

"That's enough!" Lumberjack scolded. "We're not going back. The time for being a boy in training is over. This war demands men. Besides, the world has changed during your time in the forest. You know Harry Manicus?"

"Yeah, I just learned about him... and his sister."

"Harry has crafted what he calls 'firebombs', an explosive combination of magic and chemistry. He used them to destroy strongholds of both Lightning Eagle and Gray Steel. The armies are in disarray, and chaos and riots have broken out in many cities throughout Dugrood. We have orders to eliminate Harry immediately before he causes more damage. And Nemoris gave specific instructions to take the Ohtar Iehron with us. He seems to think you'll be useful."

"I can fight," said Iehron. "But..."

"But what?" asked Lumberjack.

"Harry isn't my problem. I've been dragged into this mess with him, but it isn't my mess to clean up."

Lumberjack put his face uncomfortably close to Iehron's. Their noses almost touched, and Iehron could feel Lumberjack's nostril breath on his chin.

Glaring in anger, or determination, or lack of recent hugs, Lumberjack said, "Harry is hurting innocent people, a lot of people. Are you going to be an exceptional waste of life? Or are you going to be a hero and put that freakishly hairy Harry in the ground?"

Partly motivated by the speech, and largely motivated by a need to have Lumberjack back his face away, Iehron answered, "Okay. I'll help."

"Wonderful!" Lumberjack shouted in jubilation and slapped Iehron hard on the back, who fell over due to the lingering paralysis.

They moved out and left the forest. From there they traveled west past the Mountains of Sorrow, the Jungle of Gloom, the Desert of Despair, and the Fields of Melancholy Daydreams until they reached their destination at the edge of Grumpiness Gulch.

It should be mentioned that the cartographers in Dugrood tended to be on the unhappy side. It makes sense though. If you enjoyed life and had friends, would you spend your time drawing the ground? This tendency influenced the map making and resulted in many of Dugrood's geographical locations receiving less than cheery names.