There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

We are almost finished cleaning up, but we have a few moments before we must move, so I will jot down a few notes while I can.

We met Pasha at the bloody miller's, just as we had arranged. To enter the structure still gives most of the party a slight chill; the massacre that claimed Stuckey and his brothers and comrades is not something to be forgotten easily. perhaps we are all a bit envious of Zinna right now.

In any case, Pasha had quite a surprise for us: she was in the company of one my of cousins and countrymen and someone whom I despised on first sight. He styles himself Muntaquim al Feq, with a string of honorifics after that, and I would call him a pretentious poseur to use the ancient stylings but he is clearly a highborn elf, not a poor desert Sunner like me. He stinks of the city. This alone might bias me against him, but be surmountable, especially this far from home; however, he works for The Corporation and this I cannot forgive.

This Muntaquim is some sort of priest of the afterlife and says he has been fighting the undead menace that has long plagued Bandui. He speaks as if his church and the Fek militia have been bearing the burden of fighting off the skeletons and mummies and ghouls that harass our people and he insists that DuChamp is collecting magical artifacts for the sake of ending this peril once and for all. He is twice a fool! I'd wager every jangwa mkuu, every caravan master and camel herder, every tomb raider in West Bandui has destroyed more iwin than this puffed up ikun onijo has seen! And to try to justify The Corporation's actions as the preservation of Bandui! Ey-yi-yi...

But even though I was not alone in resisting the addition of a DuChamp agent to the team, Pasha was insistent that he was work with us. She says that he is the most reasonable and tractable of the DuChamp envoys - as if that standard were hard to exceed. It is somehow imperative that Muntaquim have personal experience of our attempt to expose Releford and his cronies: if he can attest that Grelsh's apparent weakness is really the work of a conspiracy, not Nackle's lack of leadership, and if that conspiracy can be dismantled, then the conspirators will become broken and impotent, Nackle will be once again ascendant, and some sort of accord or detente between Grelsh and the Corporation can be achieved. Thus, through stealth and subterfuge, a political solution to the current crisis will be achieved. And we are saddled with the DuChamp agent as it unfolds and Grelsh is stuck with the DuChamp Corporation for ever after.

Politics and the fate of the masses are shaped by men and women without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

There was no arguing with Pasha; the plan was moving forward and Muntaquim was part of it. She advised us that an opportunity was presenting itself: her Rangers had reported a small group of goblins and bugbears moving through the farmlands to the east, apparently set upon mischief. She had arranged to respond to this incursion personally instead of sending a squad; we would accompany her, and this would provide the perfect chance to fake her death and begin our plan to gain access to whatever secret lair was creating the monsters that have been troubling Grelsh. We could return heartbroken to Grelsh with her lifeless body.

Ah, irony.

We made our way eastward - once again coming close to but not entering Grelsh itself. With Immin leading us, we skirted the farms themselves and made our way into the uncultivated country. As we moved through the weald, some fey creature appeared as of out of nowhere, a woman otherwise beautiful except for having a form of bark and wood and leaves. As strange as she was, she sought conversation, not conflict. We parlayed a bit; she gave us intelligence of the goblins, advising that they had a slave of some sort and a baby dragon with them, but then she disappeared abruptly when we allowed as we were not the actual rulers of Grelsh, with whom she apparently sought to treat. Thus further armed with information, we moved on.

We came to a depression or dell that held a thick copse of trees; we had no hard information, but we had to presume our enemy was hidden behind.  Rorick summoned an air elemental; the little whirlwind went flying around the stand of trees but added not to our intelligence. We tried to approach stealthily; the copse itself was all but impassable, and as we began to skirt it, Muntaquim appeared to tire of this approach and advanced more quickly. Even as we all hastened to join him and form some sort of skirmish line, I had to admit that he certainly acted like a longtime member of our band, throwing strategy away at the earliest opportunity.

Soon enough, we all rounded the coppice in stages: Pasha and Muntaquim diving into melee with the goblins and their allies, Rorick, Zinna, and Urik following close behind, Immin staying aloof and peppering the field with his bow, and AppleRabbit and I bringing up the rear. I, too, engaged with bow at first: two of our foes had the power of flight - a wyvern (the "baby dragon") who harried us with tooth and claw, and some sort of bee-creature - which after a moment's shock I realized was the monster described in Iris's dream! This last creature the goblins unshackled to let hover above the field, shooting some sort of quill or dart at great volume and seemingly at will.

The battle was furious; Rorick was casting spells with the aid of his owl, and even I joined the others in close combat with The Reaper so fierce was the fighting. Pasha was a dancing dervish, her slim blade reaching out and devastating the enemy around her. Zinna acquitted herself well, as always, especially with the support of Immin's bow. In the midst of it all, I even found myself lending some healing energy to Muntaquim; in the heat of the battle, the divisions between us seemed less important than our mutual survival.

The onslaught from the air and the ground proved too much, and Pasha went down. The goblins struck at her even after she fell, and their leader drive home a mighty clout with his staff, which looked to have been empowered for this battle. I threw myself on Pasha to heal her, but as the energies flowed from my hands I could tell she was beyond rescue.

We eventually laid our foes down, but the damage was done. Pasha's death would not be faked; it would be her actual corpse that would be taken to Releford's lair, if our plan was to have any chance of succeeding. Oddly, Muntaquim seems the most affected of all of us; who knew an agent of DuChamp could have a heart?

In securing the area, we found that the goblin leader had an enchanted staff that might suit AppleRabbit, and took it; he also had a small scroll that bore a likeness of Pasha, very well rendered, certainly not goblin work. It became clear at that moment that this raiding party was actually part of a well-planned assassination: while Pasha was thinking she was making the most of this opportunity to advance our plans, she was actually being maneuvered to her death. Immin swears the Rangers are all loyal; we suspect that someone - Stryker Malm? - had this goblin band deliberately draw the attention of the Rangers so that the intelligence would be credible to Pasha. It appears to have worked.

Rorick placed a goblin arrowhead, a keepsake he has carried for some weeks, into one of Pasha's wounds; it is this object which he will use to trace and track the body. We have gathered what loot we could, and Apple has harvested some poison from the wyvern and the bee-person. We noticed the bee-person wears the mark of a DuChamp slave; one of their early search parties, I believe.

I see Muntaquim hoisting Pasha's body; we appear ready to move to a place we can camp for the night before making our way back to Grelsh.

I am faced with a circumstance in which both the ends and the means are unsatisfactory. But it appears that there is no going back now.