7. The wheels (and wagons) of war

Overturned wagons in the middle of the path. I'm immediately suspicious, and tell my friends that this can be a trap, and that we need to be careful. Of course, the brave Sterling wants to walk to the trap and spring it with his handsome face, until Waah reminds him that this is a job for me, not for him. But it does make me feel better that he'll be close by in case I do need help with the trap.
 
My suggestion is to create a camp. It is going to be night time soon, and we can use our camp to keep this ambush on its toes. I sneak up, and find that there are claw marks all around, and the wagons are overturned. Since there is no real danger, I call the rest of them here. The claw marks are not of a dragon, but they are big, and we should be careful. These wagons clearly belonged to either traders or refugees, packed full of things, but there is no sign of blood or feathers or anything else. There are claw prints that lead to the woods around here. The wagon wheels have been smashed, and no sign of animals either. Whatever happened, happened yesterday.
 
Since the wagons are clearly blocking the path of any new refugees, we decide to clear it. It is now twilight, and we are close to the woods that the dragonling or draconics hid in. We plan to rest through the night and go into the woods in the morning. I take second watch.
 
In the middle of the night, I wake up to the sound of clashing metal. I wake up and attack the draconic jerk that is attacking Arinona! Turns out, she was awakened by 3 of these guys trying to sneak up on her. I also scream as loud as I can to make sure the rest of us are awake and not surprised by their visit. They have some sort of draconic mage with them, and he surrounds us with some stink. I can't handle the smell, and am sick. I make it a point to vomit over any draconic creatures, out of spite.
 
Arinona is a thinker, because she gets out of the cloud, and manages to use her magic on their magic user. We fight valiantly, and defeat them. They ended up having more reinforcements, so we defeated 5 draconics total! But these jerks did not have anything of vale. And they also exploded when killed, so good thing that Arinona was able to defeat the mage without having to get close to him. He looked rotten on the inside, at least from what I could see on the floor.
 
By the time we are done with the fight, we are tired, and go back to rest. We wake up with the sun shining. It is time to go see where these jerks came from. I hope they made our lives easier and came to us, instead of having this group, plus another one still hidden in the woods. We walk a little, and find their encampment. There are crates, and bones litter the place. We find a lot of gold, and a frosted-looking crystal ball. I do not touch it. Arinona recognizes it as a drift globe. It can create a very powerful light once a day, but it can also provide just some light. It can also float in the air and follow someone, but it cannot go around obstacles.
 
I get 48 gold because I carry Waah's share. We also all get rations. It looks like these are the guys who were acting as dragons, swooping down on people and looting. Since we cannot figure out individuals from all the scattered bones, Mal puts them all together and burries them together, saying a prayer. There were 7 skulls that we found.
 
With that mission accomplished (but not really a success, since there were 7 dead!), we start to head back towards Kalaman. When we are within range, we use the gnome's device to tell Darrett. He is happy with our report, but says that there is another engagement with the dragon army, and that the Marshall needs us. We march back as fast as we can.
 
It turns out, Kalaman was preparing an ambush for the Dragon Army, but they noticed. So our best option now is to get their war engines, which will hopefully slow them down a little. While they have 4 flanks to engange with the Dragon Army, our goal is to get all the war engines. Each damn engine is accompanied by at least one vile champion, which makes this a tricky situation. Our troops stand valiantly against a much larger army, but we prevail! No flanks were lost, we managed to capture all 6 war engines, and we also defeated many of their champions. In fact, Darrett says that the reason the Dragon Army decided to retreat, even though they had the advantage on the field of battle, was because they lost so many champions! We are starting to gain a reputation, and again receive a medal for our bravery.
 
I want to know when my reputation will be big enough that I can kick Lord Bekaris in the shin. And maybe a pay raise wouldn't be a bad idea.