The spear went into the first Quibs body, quarter of which came out of its back. It would die in a combination of ways, drowning in it's green blood which erupted out of it's mouth and nose, lack of blood and of course the pain and disembowelment caused by Calin's spear.
The last Quib with its injured leg proved little threat to Calin and he killed it quickly with his sword as it feebly hobbled towards him. Checking his surroundings once more he noticed that some distance away the coward Stan lay dead. The two Quibs he had just slain must have caught Stan up and reduced him to the pile of mush that now covered a large area of ground.
He turned to the spot were Mulk and Haurick had been battling the Delvock and saw all three lay on the ground, either dead or injured. From this distance he could not be sure which.
The rainbow-mage stood above the immobile body of Mulk holding a golden hilted dagger in his hand. Calin knew what was coming next and acted instantly. With no other opponents around the spell which made Calin believe the Mage to be of little worry now had no affect. He drew from his belt one of his throwing knives and hurled it hard towards the rainbow-mage.
As Malag-Tog prepared to bring down his dagger into the unconscious warriors throat, a sharp pain struck him in the arm.
The knife hurled by Calin had only grazed Malag-Tog's flesh, but the cut was sufficient enough to attract his attention away from killing Mulk.
Malog-Tog glared at Calin who stood a safe distance away from him. Then raised two fingers two his lips and gave a shrill whistle. The whistle was followed by a cawing noise and out of the sky the large black raven swooped down to land on the mages outstretched arm.
Malog-Tog then took from a pocket in his rainbow colored robe a small glass tube with a cork stopper at the top. Inside the tube was a light grey powder. He then raised the tube to his mouth and pulled out the cork in his teeth which he venomously spat in the direction of Calin.
As this went on Calin was making his way warily up to Malog-Tog. The strange things that Malog-Tog was doing made Calin cautious and suspect the mage was up to something.
Malog-Tog then began to mumble into the ear of the large black bird a spell, once part of the spell was complete he held the head of the bird in his left hand and proceeded to pore all the powder in the tube down the ravens throat. Then with a swift movement of his arm the bird took to the air. With a swift turn the flight of the bird changed as it headed straight for Calin.
Calin noticed something was very wrong with the way the bird was flying. The flight seemed to slow and the bird seemed to dip and struggle to keep itself air born, as though it was much heavier than it had been moments before. The first thought of Calin as the bird closed was to strike the creature with his sword. This would not be too difficult but something about this seemed wrong to him and instead of slashing the raven out of the air he stood his ground, raising his shield to cover up as much of his body as he could.
As the bird got to within three feet of Calin, Malog-Tog shouted out the last word of the spell and the bird exploded in mid flight sending blood, guts and feathers everywhere. The explosion was such that Calin was knocked back several feet, just managing to keep his footing. He was not hurt, however, as his shield had taken much of the force of the blast.
Malag-Tog jumped up and down in rage and frustration, cursing at Calin in a language that Calin did not recognize. Calin did likewise insulting Malag-Tog in the language of the Labpreane Kingdom which Malag-Tog spoke perfectly, understanding every word. The crude and obscene insults hurled at him by Calin made his anger grow and he screamed in rage as he realized his own insults had fallen on deaf ears from forgetting to change his words from his native tongue to the one of the Kingdom. If he hadn’t been such a hot head he might have realized this.
Malag-Tog then turned around and ran as fast as he could into the large red and yellow tent.
Calin's first thought was to pursue him but first he would need to check whether or not any of the other men had survived. He could see slight movement from Croll but none from Mulk and Haurick. Croll lay on the ground and from the bandages upon him Calin guessed he must be badly injured but alive.
Next he went over to Mulk and Croll; he kept his sword ready just in case the huge Delvock that lay next to them was not quite dead. On checking the bodies he found that the wound in Haurick's back had been too great and he was well dead.
Mulk was breathing slightly, though Calin suspected he would not survive. His shoulder was pulped and perhaps his neck was broken. He had also lost a lot of blood from the deep cuts from the Delvocks claws.
As for the Delvock, Calin guessed it to be dead though he did not fancy the idea of examining it to closely, just in case he did revive it and those fierce jaws would once more snap with bone crunching force. Calin quickly bandaged Mulk as best he could and also took from him his necklace, placing it upon his own neck.
"That swine of a scrag won't mess with my brains", he thought, then went determinedly into the tent, sword drawn.
From the outside of the tent, Calin estimated it to be around thirty by twenty feet in length. On stepping inside he found he stood in a large room around twenty by twenty feet in length. At first he could not work this out, and then he saw a partition that would make up another room inside the tent.
Taking in his surroundings he found the part of the tent where he stood to be quite bare. In the middle of the room a small fire burned, the smoke going upwards and out through a vent in the ceiling. Near the fire on a fine carved wooden table was a large stone box, several feet in length. Every part of the box that Calin could see was carved with strange ruins and pictures. The ruins were in some foreign language that Calin had never seen. The pictures that covered the box had been painted in many different colors, where of demons and devils, some of which Calin recognized.
There was nothing else of interest so Calin stepped carefully through the partition, watching in case something waited for his coming. The first thing he saw on entering the other room was a wooden bed covered in silk sheets of many different colors. The colors were the same as the rainbow-mages robe. In the corner was a large brown wooden chest but before he could look anywhere else his attention was distracted as he heard a soft scraping sound, the sound of stone on stone rubbing together. The sound was coming from the room he had just left.
He would have turned and investigated to see what had made the sound but to his left he spotted the rainbow-mage. His face was bright red and he was eating what looked to Calin to be a large mouthful of large red beans.