"Oh, that fellow," the half-elf reminisces. "Heard he didn't make a go of it. Packed up and disappeared, leaving nothing but unpaid debts behind him. Trying to coax crops out of the badlands isn't a much better prospect than trying to coax ore out of it, after all, for all that folks have a higher opinion of farmers than of prospectors. Still, I imagine you could still find some of them rocks around the old farmstead if you had a mind to."
"His place was up toward the foothills of the Mindspins, northeast of here, like you're heading toward the ferry down the Kestrel. He said you could find the place easy because there's a big hill half-tumbled down, dirt and grass on one side but bare cliff and loose rock on the other. That's where he found the crystals, when he was scavenging rock to build his farmhouse. I bet it's a pretty thing in the sunlight."
"Cat-razor?" she asks. "What kind of a name is that? Don't know where Daktani is. Gorkis might. Gorkis!" She raises her voice to carry back through the door. "Gorkis! You know where to find that half-orc Daktani?!"
"Daktani? Has he taken up prospecting now? I'd think that'd be more work than he'd care to apply himself to. Shiftless riff-raff," she judges dismissively. "Gorkis pays him sometimes to haul things." She nods toward some of the larger pieces of equipment in the dirt yard. "He's not as young as he used to be. Or as thin. Or as good-looking." She sighs regretfully. "No, I can't say as I've ever seen Daktani with the Freedom Town hussy or heard the two names together."
"Who looks?" Jess shrugs. "A bunch of dusty half-orcs, desperate for coin -- especially after being robbed and cheated by the crooks in Freedom Town." She frowns. "You think one of them was the bastard who did in the Grath boy?"
"Have you seen the guide-woman Melira around lately?"
She snorts and spits emphatically into the dirt. "That Freedom Town trash? Turned up here with a passel of strangers five ... no, six days ago. Geared up and took herself back where she came from the next day, as far as I know. Reckon she'll show up again in a week or so with another group of luckless dreamers, thinking they'll strike iron ore in Bloodmarch Hill. She seems to specializing in would-be prospectors here lately."
Alicia approaches Meeson's Goods & Salvage, or, as it is more commonly known around town for the eclectic range of mundane goods it sells, That 'N' Such. The dirt yard in front of the combination shop and residence is enclosed by a ramshackle split-rail fence and dotted with old metal tanks and tubs, stacks of rusty barrel rings, large pieces of prospecting equipment, mostly used, and other less-identifiable stacks of crates and loose goods. Before she reaches the fence, Bumpus picks up her scent and bays hoarsely from inside the dilapidated building to announce the arrival of a potential customer.
A loaded crossbow in hand, Jess Meeson appears in the doorway, squints at the waif-like blonde, and snorts, allowing the weapon to swing toward the boards of the porch, as she recognizes the teenager. "What is it?" she asks abruptly. "You found the polecat that was messing with people's hopeknives? You need Bumpus to tree the bastard?"
Out in the bright sunlight, Banny squints at Jess's words. "That could be," she says slowly, "but I can't reckon why someone'd do that. I mean, switch rooms like that, not switch mattresses."
The dwarf scratches at her head over this puzzle, then scratches Bumpus's mangy head too. "Good boy. Good boy.
"Thanks for your help, Jess. I dunno what else Bumpus could lead us to, but you spent all mornin' on this with me an' I won't forget it. You got your heart in the right place, no matter what anybody says. You let me know there's anything you need hauled to the shop anytime, alright?"
Jess gives Banny a nod. "You track down the no-good polecat, you feel free to bring him by and let Bumpus's nose give him the once-over. He'll let you know if you've got your man or not." She tugs gently as Bumpus's lead, and he docilely trots with her back toward That 'N' Such.
Outside, Jess and Bumpus are waiting in the street. "I figure the same fellow that handled that hopeknife," the half-elf greets Banny's approach, "slept in that second room at some point. Not last night, or Bumpus would have tracked him there first, but sometime. Or at least on the mattress. Maybe they rotate them, to share the fleas around fair-like." She snorts back at the Ramblehouse aggressively.
"C'mon, Jess, you been a real help to us, you an' Bumpus both, but I guess we're overstayin' th' landlady's welcome," Banny says, trying to calm Jess's indignation much as she is attempting to calm Alicia's suspicions.
"'Welcome,'" Jess snorts. "Aye, she serves up a heaping helping of hospitality, don't she?" Nevertheless, she tugs Bumpus back toward the door and the corridor.
"Come along, Bumpus," Jess sniffs with great dignity. "We surely don't want to spend any more time than necessary in an establishment that harbors criminals."
Having sniffed his man to ground, Bumpus responds readily to the tug on his lead, trotting back toward the front door with canine equanimity. As he and Jess pass another closed door, however, he stops and whines. Putting his nose to the floor, he looks up at Jess imploringly.
"Same scent?" she asks with a frown. "Cham Larringfass, unlock this door and show us who you're hiding!"
The half-elf gives the priest's impeccable manners a suspicious glare but tugs the dog away from the confusion of scents around the Barterstones. "Backtrack, Bumpus," she tells the hound, pulling him back toward the road into town. Once inside, she encourages him toward the Ramblehouse. "Come on, Bumpus, find the bastard."
Invigorated, the hound pads up to the front door of the inn, which Jess opens. Bumpus charges in, raising a chorus of protests from the interior of the Ramblehouse.
Bumpus's nose leads the group back down the main road to the gate to the Inner Quarter and then through it. It occurs to the party members that the gatehouse was likely manned overnight as the main town gate was; if someone passed through before dawn, it might have been unusual enough at that hour for the Patrolman to have noticed.
From there, the trail descends directly down the road through the Inner Quarter and out the gate at the bottom of the switchback without the hound making any pauses or digressions. They bypass the pool of the Hopespring and then turn back toward the east, still following the main thoroughfare. As the group approaches the road out of town, Bumpus hesitates, snuffling in the direction of the Ramblehouse and whining in confusion.
Jess watches her dog steadily, interpreting its distress. "Trail keeps going," she informs the party, "but the fellow's been in and out of Cham's place at least once. Not surprising; anyone not local stays there." She looks unsurprised at the apparent revelation that whoever's been tampering with Hopeknives isn't a resident of the town; no true Trunauan would do such a thing, clearly.
Plenty of time for intraparty discussion as you've been following the dog down the hill. Fill in as much as you like.
After a few moments of prolonged snuffling, as if unraveling a tangled skein of scent, Bumpus doubles back to the east, moving toward the gate to the Inner Quarter. "Hey!" Jess calls to the watching trio. "One of you want to run tell Banny we're movin' out?"
"Not that I know of," Jess replies. "Can't say that they've ever had much to do with each other. Moving in different circles and all."
Yes, you can easily go between the houses to the edge of the cliff. Bloodmarch Hill is too rocky for lush green lawns so there's not a clear property line other than the walls of the houses.
Bumpus's nose leads Jess and Banny into a close dominated by the bare branches of a hackberry tree. On three sides are the homes of the Crumkins, Kelvers, Plumbs, and Sawyers, the first families of Trunau. "He spent some time here as well," Jess points out as the hound snuffles around the tree roots.
With her breath caught again, Banny says, "I take it we ain't found nothin' yet, just tracin' back far as we can."
Jess nods. "Aye," she goes on in the same hushed tone of voice, as if not to distract the hound, "the bastard stopped here under this tree for a while, then there," she turns to look over her shoulder to the southwest, "under that 'n. Stopping under cover, I'd guess, moving from shadow to shadow, trying not to be spotted."
The hound, having snuffled around the base of the tree trunk for a while, begins moving again, toward the northwest and the source of the Hopespring. Several of the oldest and most respected families of Trunau have their homes here, including the Crumkins, the Kelvers, the Plumbs, and the Sawyers.
The dog is moving slowly and deliberately as he tracks the scent, and Jess is matching his pace, so by the time Banny jogs around the western wall of the building and onto the road the pair aren't out of her sight. They are skirting the northern edge of the Commons, Bumpus's nose to the ground beneath the lone bur oak whose spreading branches loan the amphitheater a refreshing patch of shade in the summer heat but are bare now, waiting for spring.
With a bit of effort, Banny catches up to the two. "Tracking him back," Jess murmurs, concentrating on the dog's tracking as if she herself were trying to follow the scent. "Find out where that knife came from before it was driven into the wall."
Bumpus erupts in a restrained bay, and Jess calls out to Marikel, "He's on a scent! You want me to hold him back or let him follow it, see where it goes?"
Banny and Marikel watch while Jess directs Bumpus's nose to the knife. The hound gives a muffled yelp, its long tail swinging side to side as it looks up at the half-elf.
"Orc," Jess remarks with satisfaction. "Not full-blood, only part, like the smith, but enough for Bumpus to sniff out. Of course, that could be the Grath boy."
The hound puts its nose to the ground and sniffs around a moment before its ears perk up and it snuffles its way to the edge of the cliff.
"It is the Grath boy," Jess grumbles. "He must have had his hands on it. Maybe he found it or took it from someone? Come on, Bumpus, leave off there, leave off." She tugs the dog insistently away from the ledge where it's leaning its head over. "Not that way, the other way, the way it came from. How'd it get up here? There's a good dog."
Slightly reluctantly, the hound lets itself be redirected from the cliff's edge and retraces its steps toward the back wall of the Longhouse, its nose brushing the dusty ground in search of a trail.
Pause to allow any discussion/investigation before moving on...?
"Padre," the half-elf replies to Marikel's greeting in a measured tone. As with most of the citizens, there has always been a level of uneasy distance in the Meesons' relations with the mission.
Bumpus displays a certain interest in the white cat on Vhailor's shoulders. The hound is long-legged enough that Carbonel's perch is only sufficient to raise him to the dog's eye-level.
Jess sniffs superciliously. "Not my fault he smells the orc blood in you. Just goes to prove his worth. He's a hell of a scent hound." As requested, however, she tugs Bumpus back to the road, where he stands alert, his senses still trained on the smith.
Going to let Sara examine the knife or ask her to avoid touching it, Banny?
"Gorkis!?" Jess calls over her shoulder into the store. "I'm going out and taking Bumpus! Watch the till!" Banny doesn't hear any reply from Jess's husband within, but the half-elf's keener senses obviously pick up something the dwarf's don't as Jess nods with satisfaction and picks up a frayed rope to tie through the loop on the hound's leather collar. "Have to walk by there anyway; might as well stop in and be neighborly," she remarks.
"If we ain't got a lineup of suspects," Jess warns Banny, "can't promise Bumpus'll light on your villain. Maybe there'd be some value in starting where the knife was left and trying to trace him from there? Not sure Halgra'll allow us to take him in every store, church, home, outhouse, henhouse, and doghouse in town. Course, if anyone refuses us entry, it might count as admission of guilt." Her set chin belies her lack of training as a scholar of law. "Suppose you've asked Sara Morninghawk if she knows whose blade that is, if it's not his. Nah, see what you mean," she murmurs, looking down at the gleaming knife in its swaddling. "That blade's too damned pretty to belong to a Grath. Looks like a woman's." She spits in the dirt yard for emphasis.
"There was a knife in the wall, and--" Banny's eyes dart around, scanning the street nearby; her voice lowers, "--it ain't his, Jess. Someone wanted it to look like he jumped, see?
"So as I reckon it, maybe the stink of whatever sumb$*!@ put it there might still be clingin' to the blade," she says, and taps at the little bundle furtively.
Jess' face folds itself into a disapproving scowl. "Not his hopeknife? What kind of no-good, lowdown, dirty, sneaking polecat'd tamper with a man's hopeknife?" Her hand goes to her own belt-sheath where a well-worn blade resides; unlike some of the town's womenfolk's, her hopeknife has been baptized in blood more than once. "Bumpus! Here, boy!" she calls back into the shop.
The hound appears. He's a rangy, flea-bitten thing, clearly not bred for looks or manners, but his long tail thumps eagerly against the floorboards at the prospect of action.
"You heard the news?" she says, shifting her weight foot to foot. "Bout Kurst? Cuz if'n you haven't, 's bad news. And if'n you have, it's worse than what you've prolly heard. I got myself a need for Bumpus's sniffer to root out some truth, like, an' mayhap I'll need you too to guide him, I ain't never known much about animals.
"I can't say I've got much coin, but what I got 's yours if'n you'll help me. An' if you need hands repairin' the fence when spring rolls around, or luggin' goods, then I'll do that too," Banny blurts, all the pent-up breath escaping her in one big rush of words.
Jess nods once. "Heard he took a leap," she replies. "There was a Councilor did that once when I was a girl; at least, those were the rumors. His family swore it was an accident." She gazes at the dwarf a long moment through narrowed eyes. "What is it you're wanting Bumpus to find? You think it was orcs?" Like her dog, she seems to perk up at the prospect of orcish quarry.
Banny stands before the general store, and takes a deep breath before she goes in. She's there to ask a favor, after all.
" 'Lo? Jess?"
That 'N' Such, properly Meeson's Goods & Salvage, as the faded lettering on the sign proclaims, is guarded by a ramshackle split-rail fence around the dirt yard. As Banny approaches the front door, her arrival is heralded by the hoarse yelping of Bumpus, the Meesons' hound, from the back of the building. The dog is actually the most recent of several generations of hound to which Jess has given the same name, for simplicity's sake. The half-elf claims that its ancestry can be traced back to an original Bumpus who helped the first defenders of Trunau hold back the encroaching orc hordes; it is certain, at any rate, that the last several generations of Bumpuses can be traced back to Jess's first canine companion. Its many descendants are scattered liberally around the outlying farms, and when Jess's current Bumpus begins to age, she breeds it with one of its country cousins. If the inbreeding has weakened the dynasty at all, the effects haven't yet been detected in its tracking abilities or its hatred for orcs.
Jess Meeson herself appears in the doorway, a loaded crossbow in her hand. This might seem a unfriendly welcome, were it not her usual reception for customers. Seeing Banny, she lets the point swing casually to the ground. "'Lo, Banny," she replies laconically.
