this is just horrible, like all of the escort quests. every escort npc seems suicidal and brainless and wants to find an item instead of getting out alive. and if for once they don't need to find something first, they choose the longest and most dangerous possible route out of the place. in other words they sweep the whole place, aggroing every possible monster there is. and the best part is, if a player is aggroed by a monster, the escort npc ignores the player and continues running forward, aggroing even more. unless the npc is next to the player, but that happens rarely due to the haste they are in. these npcs die very fast too.
to be safe, don't accept ANY escort quests in this game, unless you have a group. :P