Only occasional showers today. But it was hot.

Flea is riding with Elsbeth, to let us keep speed up. But before long we spotted what seemed like a circling flock of rooks or ravens. We hurried forward to investigate and found a pair of dead dogheads that looked as if they had been slain by the Gila. To our surprise, one of the ravens, called Edgar, seems to be intelligent and has struck up a friendship with mandrake. It is currently travelling on Mandrake's mule chatting with him. I will have to keep an eye on this.

Later we saw a column of smoke and approaching it we saw the remains of a wagon, with three men. The wagon was attacked by Dogheads and these two Celts, Jesse and Rethe, drove them off. But not before most of the people had been slain, they only managed to rescue one man called Yuri. Apparently they were gypsies that had spent years crossing the mountains from the old Wangate Empire. So close - yet not close enough. The smoke was from the pyre they used to burn the corpses. Yuri is to travel on with us in the morning, while Jesse and Rethe will go their own way - although what they are doing out here, is nobodies guess. Jesse has a pet eagle with him, that seems to communicate with him and carry out tasks for him. I must investigate getting a trained pet when I get back!

Elsbeth decided that it would be a good time to sacrifice the heads that Callum took from our encounter with the dogheads. She, Callum and Rethe, who turned out to be a druid, held a ceremony at the side of a swampy area where they sacrificed the heads, a dagger, some blood and herbs. Part of it was in Old Gaelic and part I the common tongue. It was interesting to see such a powerful ceremony from a different culture. At the end of it Rolf committed us to protecting and clearing the area, which seemed a bit rash to me.

During the evening, Jesse bought some wine from Kerim and we had a fairly jolly time. It would have been better had we not had the thought of dogheads and corpses on our minds.

We had all thought the day over, when we were woken from our sleep by the sound of a hunting horn. As we struggled to our feet we saw a wave of green flashing lights rushing towards us. As they came closer we saw they were caused by the breath and footsteps of a pack of black hound. As we leapt for our weapons and amour, the pack flowed past us not stopping at all. Following them was a large black skinned man with deer's horns bowing on the horn. Just as we thought we were safe, many of my companions leapt up and started running with the pack.

The pack, with my companions in tow, ran straight across the top of the swamp and disappeared into the distance, Madelyn tried to follow but could not cross the swamp as they did. It just left Me, Kerim, Madelyn, Yuri and Herloch behind. After we quieted the animals, we settled down to spend the rest of the night - but sleep didn't come easy to any of us. I must remember to read up on supernatural occurrences when I get home, I hate not knowing what that was - and more importantly what I need to do to avoid ever meeting it again.