Mahath dismounts as well, following the lead of the more seasoned adventurer.
He stands quietly by his mount, wondering if that rumble in his abdomen is hunger or an insect larvae nibbling on his internal organs.
Alicia grunts and dismounts. Crouching low, she advances toward the hillock, flirting from shadow to shadow as she can.
Alicia cautiously approaches the hill. There are clear signs of traffic in the area, a visible path worn toward the door of the farmstead, though nothing necessarily to indicate anyone is presently in residence.
The shanty has no windows, and the door which appears to be the single method of entry is closed.
The rogue slips up to the door and checks it for traps.
Once she's satisfied that there are none, she draws her hopeknife and cautiously opens the door.
The interior of the crude farmstead is divided into two rooms. This larger one contains a rough table with a handful of three-legged stools scattered around it and a heavy-looking nail-studded chest shoved against one wall. Through a doorway, a narrow bedstead with a limp straw-tick appears to take up most of the space on the smaller side of the partition.
The furniture is battered and dirty but not dusty or long-disused. This could be the farmstead Zola described.
Alicia slips inside the room silently, still on the lookout for traps. She makes her way to the nail-studded chest and starts poking around it, looking for tripwires or locks, and if she fails to find any of either, opens it.
Several of the decorative tacks are missing from the surface of the chest, but that appears to be simply from rough usage and age; Alicia finds no sign of traps.
Inside the chest are moth-eaten and stained blankets, some battered tin tableware, a bucket, a lamp, and a few flasks of oil.
Softly cursing, Alicia does a cursory inspection of the rest of the rough farmstead. She then quietly returns to the rest of the group.
Apart from other subtle signs of recent occupancy, Alicia finds nothing more of interest.
Alicia returns to the others. "Pretty sure it's the place. No one there now, but someone may have been recently."
Marikel purses his lips.
"Hmm. Let's all take a closer look. Might someone be returning soon? Or recently abandoned, do you think? If the latter, maybe Miss Tama would like a better home."
Marikel makes his way over to the building looking into the distance about them.
"Sounds good ta me. And I'd have ta say someone's got ta be returnin' soon." Dorn follows the cleric, making his way to the front door and seeing if it's unlocked. If so, he turns the knob and enters, hollering out: "Hello! Anyone home?!"
The rest of the group sees what Alicia saw: a rough, basic farmstead. While little care has been taken to maintain the exterior, the interior appears to be used at least semi-regularly.
"Hm. Will ya get a load of that. Now that's interestin'. Why would a tack from here, be found in a wyvern's nest?" The dwarf ponders that a moment before turning to the others. "Would ya believe this tack we found in the wyvern's nest matches that of those of this chest here? And if that's the case, I'm no longer thinkin' they'll be returnin' any time soon. I'm thinkin' it's not lookin' to good for the previous tenant. Goin' ta have ta go with 'abandon' now. But not by choice. Hopefully I'm wrong."
Mahath follows the others in, careful not to touch anything that the others haven't already. He watches as Dorn and Alicia keenly examine the contents, he feels a bit useless standing there until he recalls that he has a perspective that they don't. With an arcane phrase, he begins his own inspection of the domicile.
"Wait...wyvern's nest? I thought it was a river drake's nest," Alicia says. "Could a wyvern have been here at this farmstead and flown off to settle at that cave? Or did that tack get left behind by something a wyvern ate?"
"Or maybe that lady down the way we came might know something more about the tack?"
Dorn shrugs. "Wyvern, River drake. Whatever. Either way, it was a big enough beastie ta be keepin' yer distance from. And big enough ta do the damage it done."
The interior of the farmstead is definitely too small for a drake to have been inside without leaving behind a trace. It seems more likely that someone who had been in the farmstead was later in the drake's nest, perhaps having snagged a cloak or some other article of clothing against the chest and carried away a loose tack without realizing it.
"What about outside?" Marikel grumbles.
"We now know they were here. Whoever they were. But that doesn't help us find where they've gone. And if the original inhabitants have been murdered, we should probably find their bodies and advise Trunau."
Mahath looks around as he says "Well, I don't think we'll find the original inhabitants. Jess said that the man who traded her the rock gave up on his farming attempt a few years back. It must have just been a convenient for anyone in the area to find this ready shelter."
Marikel grunts. "Well, if there's nothing else to find here, we may as well stay overnight. Tomorrow, we'll head to the source of the Kestrel and check out the western end of the Hordeline. If we find nothing there, then we head back down the river."
Alicia nods. "Don't have any better ideas, here," she says.
"Sounds good ta me."
Alicia secures their horses outside, then takes a quick look around their surroundings. Finally, she starts settling in to the dilapidated hut for the night.
The rude farmstead has few of the comforts of home, but it's an improvement over sleeping outside on the ground. Knowing that the bothy is at least occasionally used by enemies, the party takes turns keeping a watch through the night, but the morning sun finds the hut unvisited and the group undisturbed.
Waking up groggily, Alicia rolls out of her bedroll and stumbles out the door. She looks around briefly once again, then goes back inside with a grunt at whoever's on guard duty come morning. She packs her gear up again and silently chews on a breakfast of hardtack and washes it down with water.
Looking to the others as they prepare for the day as well, she asks, "West to the source of the Kestrel?"
Dorn, already awake due to dictated guard duty, watches the cranky Alicia with interest, chuckling at her antics. "Boy that lass sure cracks me up."
In response to her question, "Works for me."
Marikel stretches and drags his gear out to the horses. "Hopefully we'll find more information there than just some insect carcasses."
He takes a drink from his own waterskin and saddles his horse.
"When little Miss Sawyer described this place as a dump I thought she was exaggerating. Perhaps there's still some hope she won't turn out like her father. I'm sorry if we've wasted time. I thought it best to leave no stone unturned. Let's go."
According to Tyari's map, it shouldn't be far to the fort near the source of the Kestrel, but there's no telling how rough the terrain will grow nearer the Mindspins. The group can only hope that they will arrive by nightfall.
Alicia throws her pack back on the horse burdened with her kit and saddles up. "I assume when we get closer to the fort that you'll want me to scout ahead again," she says to Marikel, less a question and more a statement.
"If you please, Miss Alicia."
Marikel leads his band onwards.
"There are several old forts in the area. We're checking this one mostly for the sake of completeness. It's closest and least likely to be where Gorewillow and his scum are heading. But they may have used it whilst drawing their plans against Trunau. It's not too far across the skittermounds to the other forts then. But that would be certain death at this time of year, Miss Varvatos informed me. So to check the other forts we'll need to ferry down the Kestrel, then back up the Esk. We may want to check out Freedom Town to see if Gorewillow is actually known there, or if it was yet another of his lies."
It's a long and frustrating day for the party, picking their way cautiously through the foothills. They know the general direction the fort must be in, but without first-hand knowledge of the terrain, Dorn leads them part-way up game trails that end up impassable for the horses so they have to double back, or they find their way blocked by a steep spur from the Mindspins or a deep crevasse cut by years' worth of spring snowmelt and must go a long way around.
By the time they finally spy the walls of the abandoned fort, they are deep in shadow as the late-afternoon sun sinks behind the wall of mountains they are skirting on their west. Despite the time and effort they have put forth to get there, they could almost hope to find the fort empty so they can get off their feet and spend the night unmolested before heading back down into more familiar and hospitable tomorrow.
Alicia groans as the fort comes into view at last. "Are we there yet?"
A faint smell of campfire drifts toward the party, and the eagle-eyed dwarf spies a thin smudge of smoke pluming up from inside the walls. It would appear that the fort is not empty.
Dorn chuckles at the complain-y rogue. Ah she keeps me laughing. He then narrows his eyes as he takes notice of the smoke. "Oh we're there, lass, and I've got news for ya... we ain't the only ones. It appears we're about ta be the intruders," he warns.
Even Marikel gives a small smile when the fort finally comes into view but his frown returns quickly enough at Dorn's words.
"Perhaps it would be better if we were to be invited as guests," he suggests.
"But if we're really lucky, we might take that Gorewillow scum unawares."
He turns and looks ruefully at Alicia.
"If we may impose once more upon your grace, Miss Alicia, could you please determine the nature of these residents that we may know how to treat with them?"
Alicia nods and dismounts, then slowly stalks her way closer to the not-abandoned fort.
The fatigue of the long and arduous day has taken its toll on Alicia. Trying to approach silently, she dislodges two or three loose stones which rattle down the slope audibly. Still, whoever is inside the fort is farther away than her own ears and possibly distracted by their own preparations for nightfall; with luck, they won't have been put on guard.
The fort is built of native stone. Some forty feet long and twenty wide, it is little more than a rudimentary defense. The walls are approximately ten feet high. At the front, dilapidated wooden gates hang haphazardly off their hinges, apparently kept upright mostly by leaning against the structure itself. Loose stone is piled in the gaps at the sides, but it appears that scrambling over it is the only mode of entry; the fort is hardly secure, but anything getting in that way will presumably make enough noise that anyone inside will be forewarned.
Noting the fort's state, Alicia looks to see if there is a place where she can scale the stone walls and observe the occupants that way. Assuming she finds such a spot on the walls, she quietly climbs them.
Alicia finds no purchase on the walls, the weathered stone crumbling away beneath her grip whenever she tries to get started.
Cursing, she sneaks closer to the ruined gate and tries to see if she can spot whatever is inside without having to climb over any loose rubble.
Alicia inches up to the gap between the fortress wall and the deteriorating gates; however, she can only glimpse a thin slice of the interior of the fortress, and the trail of smoke indicates that the fire is farther back than the area she can see.
Cursing under her breath, Alicia doubles back to the group.
"Definitely occupied, but I can't see who or what's in there. The walls are too hard to climb, and the gate looks like it's too hard to sneak up on."
Just remembering something, "Oh! I can handle that for ya. Give me a sec."
Dorn closes his eyes and places two fingers from each hand upon their respective sides of his temples as he appears to be in concentration.
Skyreaver's snaps his head up, from whatever it was he was trying to catch upon the ground, and turns his attention to his dwarven companion. Not a moment later he takes to the air and makes his way high and above the fortress wall.
As he concentrates upon the scene through the eyes of the roc, Dorn relates what he sees to the others. "Okay, lot, there's a fire goin' near a pretty pathetic lookin' tent of some sort. It's toward the back of the fort and it looks like she might be near a stable or somethin'. Oh! and by the way, there seems ta be the only one human lass. Not seein' anyone else at this time though. Just her. I'll keep lookin' until ya give me the word; but unless someone's hidin' inside of somethin' somewhere, there's only the one lass."
Alicia shrugs. "If there's only one of her, we may as well just go introduce ourselves."
She starts heading back for the ruined hill fort.
"My thoughts exactly, Miss Alicia."
Marikel makes his way with the others to the fort and knocks at the blocked entrance.
"Greetings. My name is Marikel. We're travellers from Trunau. We mean no harm. Would you treat with us?"
Mahath gathers the horses' reins and holds them while the others start ahead.