Henry Southgard, master of original thinking and novel tactics, unlimbers his crossbow, loads it, and gets off a hasty shot.
Too hasty, in fact.
Quick, acutely award of his exposed flesh, retreats from the boar, putting Gwath between the beast and himself.
Not wanting to flee AND stand around dumbly, Quick fires a bolt at the creature.
Following Gwath's lead, the cleric approaches the beast - his axe at the ready.
"Whatever happened to embracing your mortality?" Henry Southgard yells the retreating half-orc.
"I don't hug snorting, hairy beasts with under-bites. You should know that since I've never hugged you!" Quick shouts back laughing.
He's not all that bad I guess...
The wild boar starts when Quick’s bolt sticks into his meaty haunch, and hurtles himself toward the nearest moving thing: Gwath.
But the half-orc’s cumbersome armor keeps the jagged tusks from tearing open the privateer.
Quick loads another bolt and fires!
"But look at those tusks and those hateful little eyes! He could be a close cousin of yours!" Henry Southgard yells.
In spite of the joking, he knows that an enraged boar is nothing to take lightly. Just as dangerous as the Assassin Vine in its own way, and much faster. But Gwath is standing right next to a priest, so Henry assumes he'll be alright for the initial clash.
The Priest steps up to the boar, bringing down the weight of his axe.
The boar bellows when the fletching of Henry's bolt protrudes from its thick neck. Coppervein cuts deep along the boar's side.
The privateer’s heavy blade comes away bloody, and with wild eyes the beast defiantly tosses its snout upward.
One of the boar’s tusks find purchase under Gwath’s scale armor, and gouges deep into orcish skin and sinew.
Blood runs from many wounds, but the oft-hunted omnivore now fights to the death.
"Gwath!? No!"
Quick lifts his hand and the now familiar ice, blue force wells then dies.
"Draaf!" Quick curses realizing his magics are spent. Instead, he reloads his crossbow.
"This is why you leave boar hunting to professionals," Henry Southgard thinks as he draws his Falchion and charges. "Gwath, step back and let us take the heat!"
The Cleric's focus immediatly shifts from the boar to the injured privateer, "Just a second!"
Henry’s swing is a little too early, and the mercenary comes to a stop just in front of the beast. The boar doesn’t like that very much.
Still somewhat off-balance from the errant swing, Henry feels a jagged tusk tear up the side of his leg.
As the boar tosses its head, Gwath's timing is perfect and the blade slices the head free of the thick neck. The beheaded beast slumps to the ground.
Henry Southgard sheathes his falchion, and Gwath's pun fades into the background as he circles the dead boar. He's looking at fifty pounds of prime meat, and another forty pounds of various innards to be dried and smoked. With the right fixings, he could feed a hundred men...
He shakes his head. Old habits die hard.
"If anyone wants pork instead of fish to eat tonight, get cutting. We move out in two minutes."
The mercenary reaches into a bag of craftsman tools and pulls out a crescent knife, with the blade on the inside edge and a hook at one end. It was a tool for trimming poles so that a spearhead or a halberd could be affixed, and it would probably do for this job as well.
This strong boar yields plenty of pork loin, thirty pounds by the butcher’s guess, though Henry sees much more meat in the shoulders and shanks of the beast. If he had the time, he could harvest twice as much meat from the rest of the carcass, probably more. But their quarry was never the boar, and every moment lost spreads the distance between the she-drow thief and the four. Removing the tusks with ease, the mercenary leads the fellow survivors of Port Elam north.
Quick loads and stows his crossbow, wipes his brow on the back of his hand and sighs. "My magic is mostly spent, and I grow tired of this endless jogging. Please take the straight and narrow where we can Henry."
Henry Southgard hastily trims the meat down to sixteen pounds, just enough to supplement their rations for two days. The meat is quickly pressed and wrapped in a square of canvas that might have once been a hammock. Just over two minutes have elapsed before he stands, ready to continue the journey...
And stumbles to one knee.
"Just give me a moment..."
The potion does little more than stop the bleeding. Henry gets back to his feet, wincing in pain. There wasn't enough time to treat the gash with a medical kit, so he'd just have to keep marching and tend to it later.
"Straight and narrow might be all I'm good for."
The four travel onward through the hills for another hour before the crisp autumn air grows colder as the end of day slowly approaches. Based on their progress so far, and the estimated distance to Redstone, it becomes clear that they are perhaps just over halfway to Redstone. Keeping a wary eye for the she-drow tracks surely hampers their speed, though the uncertainty of her course never plagues the tracker’s mind. At this time of year, the natives to the Vyren realm know that sunset will be upon them in two hours.
The four move over, around, and between rolling hills for two hours, before the sun begins to dip behind the horizon.
Quick collapses into his bedroll the moment he unfurls it.
"I'll take the final watch", states Gorim as he settles down on his bedroll. He takes some time to read various pages from the books he collected at the temple before finally giving in to sleep.
Gwath follows the smell of water to a small stream, trickling from a cluster of trees. At its center, he finds a natural spring forming a small pool of cold, clear water. Neither a depression between the hills nor a tall hilltop, the area seems decent enough to set up camp for the night. The trees are thick enough to mask a campfire (so long as it doesn’t get too big), however they also obstruct vision when keeping watch from the pool.
The disadvantage is shrugged away after the sunlight slips away from the foothills completely, further limiting visibility from the camping ground. The night is ushered in by the sound of nocturnal creatures willing to weather the brisk autumn air. With only the fire light to see by, Henry sees nor hears anything to cause alarm. At the end of his watch, he wakes Gwath, and the privateer turns his dark-seeing eyes to the shadows of the trees.
After about an hour of a quiet watch, Gwath notices the winds of these foothills are beginning to pick up -mostly because of the waving treetops above him, which were motionless at sunset three hours before. But the wind is not strong enough to disturb his sleeping companions as it whistles through the branches overhead. In fact, it is a gentle breeze where he stands, though perhaps chilly enough to warrant a step closer toward the fire...
On his watch, Henry Southgard quietly builds a fire and feeds it until it is hot enough for his purposes. The ham is taken out, beaten, shredded into fine pieces and quickly dipped into a jar full of fish brine. In less than half an hour, the meat is drying over the fire. It wouldn't make the heartiest of meals; sixteen pounds of meat was quite likely to become twelve from the lost grease, and the jerky was going to be tough on the outside, undercooked on the inside.
With the meat drying, he turns to sentry duty and lets his mind wander.
Two people had set out for the Silver Scale, each with hired help at their side. One had died and beseeched his hirelings to finish the job, the other had sacrificed her minions to seize the Scale. There was a strange sort of symmetry in that.
Then again, maybe she wasn't alone. Her missive had spoken of pets, beasts that would feast on the drow warriors if they returned unsuccessful. Dark things that slithered in the depths of the world, no doubt.
The mercenary shrugs, turns some of the meat over, and resumes his watch.
What really annoys him is how unprofessional that note had been. So blatantly carrot-and-stick, brooking no room for failure. Ordering soldiers to come back victorious or not at all was a waste, for even failures had valuable intelligence and experience that could prepare the next assault.
Maybe it was a failing of Sheog. Or maybe magic-wielders who could rip souls from their material vessels couldn't be arsed to pay attention to the little things, like instilling loyalty among the free-willed troops or making contingency plans for when the escape plan falls through. Maybe the great wizards of legend became so because they had a tactician to proofread their invasion plans and a mundane architect to sign off on their tower's structural integrity.
Either way, if the promise of wealth coupled with the threat of horrible death was common in drow society, they must surely have a problem with young men going renegade, rejecting their society and becoming outcasts in the world above.
At the end of his shift, Henry wakes Gwath and motions for him to keep turning the pork strips.
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Gwath does as he is told and turns the pork strips, keeping close to the fire while gazing up at the moving foliage above him as it blocks and reveals the stars as the wind moves and settles.
Although he was hopeful with the light, Gwath, now alone in the night, begins to doubt their race for the drow. He has some tracking skills, but it's almost entirely upon Henry to keep them on the trail.
And if our prey leads us in over our heads, I'm not sure how much a ragged lot as we are can do against mightier powers...
The wind rocks the high trunks of the trees, howling between the branches. After some time, Gwath notices the howling winds beginning to weave a reedy, haunting tune, if he listened carefully. The closer he listens, the allure of the melody grows, although the subtle volume remains the same. Resonations buzz through Gwath’s blood and bones, and ancient, primal hums soothe his muscles and mind...
The half-orc privateer starts from his sleep, unsure of how much time passed. The rest of his companions sleep soundly, and the stars overhead do not appear to have moved much, if at all. His relief that no dangers visited them while he slept evaporates when he sees no pork over the fire. Close to Gwath’s feet, is an arrow pinning a roll of birch bark to the ground. The blowing wind continues to shake the branches, but the music he heard before is not there. Though for a moment, the half-orc thinks he hears a distant, fleeting laughter on the winds, it spirits away before the privateer can discern its location.
Unrolling the bark proves to be harmless, and a beautiful but untidy hand scrawls an unfamiliar language into a short message.
I smell the bacon. I take the bacon.
With much affection,
the horniest, the handsomest,
the insatiable and irresistible,
and your favorite bacon-thief,
Lyre the Old-Fire of Clear Mire.
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Gwath stares at the letter, thinking it might be an elvish language of some kind but the style of handwriting makes it impossible to know.
Slowly Gwath stands. He doesn't draw a weapon. If this creature, being, entity or whomever can lull him to sleep in mere seconds, then there'd be no point in trying to solve this unusual situation in the usual manner.
Looking about where the laughter came from and seeing nothing of immediate danger, he steps cautiously towards Henry with the bark.
"Henry," Gwath says in a voice above a whisper, not wanting to stir the others just yet. "...Henry."
Henry Southgard snaps awake and fumbles for his falchion.
"Whassit? Wha's wrong?" he slurs sleepily, before his eyes focus on the strip of bark. "What is that?"
Henry Southgard scootches closer to the fire for light to read by, and notices the complete absence of cooked meat.
"Someone came in here and knicked the bacon, and you didn't see him do it?" he hisses, glancing back and forth between the note and the privateer.
"Not Elven, not Dwarven... it's Sylvan."
"Sleep spell," Henry Southgard thinks. Probably. No way to tell for sure if Gwath had been charmed or simply nodded off. He was ready to believe the former; ships at sea had to have some sort of night watch, given the bounty of hungry monstrosities that dwelled in the ocean.
"Sylvan's an ancient language, but not an extinct one. Mostly spoken by centaurs, fey, a couple of plant creatures... basically anything with a close connection to nature. It's also common among Gnomes, on account of their heritage, and Druids. So there's your answer. Fae, Gnome or Druid, any one of them could be playful enough to steal our food and leave a note that we can't read."
The mercenary hands the message back to Gwath and slowly stokes the fire. "We'll have Gorim take a look at it tomorrow. Maybe it's a warning, maybe it's a threat. Either way, it was delivered by a spellcaster we couldn't stop and probably can't catch. Not without a magic alarm..."
"Looks like I'm going to have to stay up the rest of the night. Maybe Gorim has something that'll take the edge off the fatigue," he thinks as he draws a cloth-wrapped brick of coffee from his backpack. When he'd bought the coffee, he had expected to stay in Port Elam for days, or maybe take a nice, safe job escorting a merchant's caravan. Just three days ago, a flight from pillaging orcs and a cross-country pursuit of a Drow would have sounded like fantasy.
"Find me someplace with a percolator before this goes stale, and I'll tell you about the time when a Druid slipped past our perimeter and destroyed nearly the entire artillery train."
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Gwath is not put at ease and he is not willing to write off the incident as mischief. Once alerted, an orc does not find it easy to shrug such a feeling off. Instincts kick in, just like with the vine earlier today...
"Whatever the intent, I think he would have followed up on it by now... I'll resume my vigil, standing this time. Whatever it takes to keep my will under my own control. Try to get more sleep - we'll need you strong. I'll let Quick know we have a shadow when he takes his shift."
"Get more sleep? I've got half a mind to get the other two up and frogmarch them to Redstone Keep. There's orcs in those woods back there, and we left a trail that could be followed just as easily as the She-drow's."
The low fire burns only a little brighter, and the remainder of the night weighs on Henry’s eyelids.
Morning comes quietly to the hills, though the chill never fully lifts, a reminder of the winter months ahead. Gorim and Quick wake with the realization that they were not stirred to watch over the camp. The observant notice signs of fatigue in the mercenary, though it could just as easily be the demoralizing loss of bacon recounted to them by either Gwath or Henry.
Henry leads his traveling companions back to where he remembered last seeing the tracks of the drow. It takes several minutes of searching, but soon the four are back on the march.
No more than an hour passes when winds and sounds of nature are interrupted by a low rumbling, growing steadily louder. The four happen to travel between hills when they hear it, and it approaches from the west. The eastbound rumblings will likely crest the hilltop a few hundred feet away in moments.
The rumbling sounds like a more than a few horses -perhaps ten or fifteen. By the lack of jingling that follows heavy barding, these could be light cavalry of the king’s horses ...or brigand outriders.
"That sound... horses, it's gotta be!"
The Dwarf looks toward the hilltop, expectant of their arrival.
"Just one thing after another, eh?"
It takes Henry Southgard a few moments to reply to Gorim.
"I once traveled through a kingdom with paved highways. Getting from one town to the next was quick, easy, and nobody ever got lost or held up by brigands. Made the invasion so much easier."
"Everyone spread out, have weapons ready... and try not to look like well-armed vagrants."