Out from under the pine, floodwaters gouge the earth underfoot. Huge boulders tumble through neck-high water. Mounds of half-rotted leaves float across the surface like a grand armada descending on the valley. Where there is ground to cross, it's crumbling away rapidly, revealing tangled roots.
A trail of blood, black and slick in the wane moonlight, leads toward a dead spruce tree, solitary at the edge of a tall bluff. You're practically on top of the weasel scum, or the rain would have washed the trail away.
Finn picked his way carefully among the tangle roots and crumbling ground. He steadfastly followed the trail of blood thankful for the little moonlight that helps him follow the trail and conceal him in the shadows at the same time.
You're close enough to hear the weasel warband carrying on inside the deadwood spruce. There must be a fire built inside, because you can see flickering light peeking out of an old hollowed knott high in the branches.
As Finn passes by a hedge of brambles, the weasel scout catches him by the cloak and throws in deep into the thorny mass of tangled limbs. Pulling a dagger longer than Finn is tall, the towering vermin bends its way through the thorns, blood foaming from its mouth with every shallow breath.
Niall's skinny frame helps him move through the brambles as he goes after the weasel, and Finn. Its dagger is bigger than Niall's sword, but between Finn's squirming distraction and his injuries, Niall thinks he can get an edge on him. He swings his blade, hoping it won't get caught on any of the brambles as he strikes!
Niall darts between Finn and the Weasel, shearing the brambles and deflecting the crude blade. In the next heartbeat, Finn pegs the monster in the heart. The weasel scout twists aside and begins writhing in its death throws, tangling itself into the thorny brambles until the life drains from its veins.
Thunder cracks in the distance. The rain has stopped, and high in the branches of the deadwood spruce, you can see a cage. You can hear the weasels hiss and whine and gnash their teeth within.
Two weasels, scrapping over a gnawed carcass, roll out of the base of the rotted spruce. The carcass splits and the larger portion bounces into the surrounding bramble. The two weasels stop, untangling their lengths to perch on their haunches and sniff the damp air.
High in the branches of the spruce, the cage shakes and creaks.
Morning has broken. The flooding has abated. Deep in the wood, the sun is just starting to break the treeline, and Finn spots Nathaniel's cartogrpaher's kit hanging from the wicker cage.
As Finn and Niall approach, the two quarreling weasels draw their weapons. Niall ducks through their first strike, Finn running up one weasel's blade to leap onto the rotted stump. The weasels twist, giving chase as the patrol scales the tree...
Finn scurried up the tree trying lose the weasels in its branches. He darts in and out of the limbs and pulls a supple branch with him as he advanced. The branch bends and the tension builds as he released the branch with a toward his pursuers.
The weasels still inside the rotted tree, still unaware of the struggle outside, tumble and scrap, the timber of the old tree creaking and shuddering.
Finn and Niall dodge alternating hacking strikes from the two serpentine giants. The black weasel's beltknife strikes the wood and sticks, sparing Finn's ankle, which takes a terrible gash. The branch whips back and strikes the weasel, disarming it of its knife and sending it down the tree head-first.
Niall finishes the spotted weasel with a thrust up behind his crude breastplate with his claymore, and takes a trio of claw marks across the face for his trouble.
With one weasel dead, and the other occupied, the patrol reaches the cage, and finds Nathaniel, Pilib, and another guardmouse in a scarlet cloak. The guardmouse looks injured, and sick. Nathaniel and Pilib look tired and hungry. As the reality of your imminent escape begins to sink in, the tree shudders, and the branch supporting the cage cracks.
A piercing shriek cuts the night as an owl hits the deadwood trunk, followed by the snapping of wood, and a sudden panicked pitch to the commotion of weasels inside. The cage tumbles from the tree as it tips and slides off its splintering stump, the exposed roots over the cliff split off from those still anchored in soil as the entire tree falls away from under the cage. The Owl, injured and disoriented, tumbles through the air, trying to stabilize his decent on an injured wing, until the cage bounces off his back, and the two tumble down the gravely base of the cliff.
Seyth, you're the first to come-to. You're several paces from a wicker cage, busted open from the fall, holding Cartographer Nathaniel, Pathfinder Pilib, Fighter Niall, Scout Finn, and a guardmouse you might know, but whose red cape-like cloak isn't ringing any bells.
Then, the first three weasels disentangle themselves from their broken shelter and peek over the cliff's edge. They haven't seen you, but they are coming. A Weasel warband is usually ten weasels. Finn and Niall have killed 3, at great cost.
Damn, Damn, Damn Seyth thinks, pulling himself from the wreckage
He goes to the owl, and plunges his spear into it's eye. perhaps not an immediately fatal injury, but likely enough to stop his terrorizing of the good mice of Sprucetuck
Get up. Get up now! he says, shaking Nial, and then Finn Warband, enough of them to kill us all, get up, the redcloak mouse needs carrying, and I know for a fact that there's a group of mice out in the open, we need to lead them away from. And we need to get word to Gwen... Now!
"That was quite the entrance," Finn states nonchalantly from his position on the ground. He tries to quickly rise and winces at the pain in his ankle. He hears the older mouse's words and reacts, "Nathaniel, Philb give me a hand with your friend." He looks a round for a second, "Naill you take rear guard." Looking toward Seth he replied, "Lead the way."
After short pause he followed his remarks with, "Where did you come from?"
Midnight keens once more, struggles against the ground, then grows still.
On your way back, you stumble, looking down at a bloody trail you are leaving in the dirt. The ground spins, and your muscles ache. You're tired, and injured, but you and all these kids are a long way from safety.
Damn, what I wouldn't give ta have the Elmoss boy. He says, looking at the wounded On the other hand, I'm right glad he doesn't have a damned weasel warband bearing down on him.
Was over at Sprucetuck, right crazy over there. Will explain later, we need to move. He says, helping the others to their feet. he sets off, leading them as fast as he thinks the group can move (I promise you, this hurts you less than they will. making sure to leave signs of their passage, in a directionaway from other mice... until he feels certain they won't ambust the other group, or the mice of sprucetuck
When he sees what the old mouse is doing Finn helps lead the weasels away.
Gathering up the red-caped guardmouse, the ad-hoc Patrol lays a trail West, moving as quickly as their injuries will allow. At the first water crossing, you trudge through the shallows to throw your scents, an then climb into an abandoned burrow.
It's high noon now. The air is muggy, and you each huddle in your cloaks to get dry. Finn returns from scouting to report that the weasels have given up and are returning to the Darkheather. They're not likely to report this failure to their warlord.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
