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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4684245" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 4Jaron felt the wind catch at his cloak as he nimbly clambered atop the jut of rock.  The outcrop rose only about fifteen feet above the level of the trail that passed below, but it still gave a decent view of the Khel Vale, which stretched out before him like a spearhead.  The terrain was much like that around Fairhollow, if somewhat more rugged.  The halfling scout glanced up to his right, where the valley tapered into a point, its floor ascending into the narrowing gap between the sharp hills.  And looming over it all, Thunderspire.  It was under that mountain that Yarine and the others had been taken, if the dragonborn’s information was accurate.  Jaron’s stare lingered, and his hands tensed into fists.     Finally, Jaron shifted his gaze back toward the open end of the Vale.  The trail they’d spent the day navigating faded in and out of view, disappearing behind low rises or other undulations in the land.  He could see a few of the settlements they’d passed, tiny steadings of shepherds, woodcutters, or trappers, their dwellings alike in that they were all heavily fortified, mostly solid turf huts built into the stony soil of the Vale. He could see their companions now, coming out of a forested dell about a thousand paces back along the trail.  Vhael, of course, was instantly recognizable, his broad shoulders distinct against the smaller humans around him.  The guardsmen seemed alert enough, their weapons catching the afternoon light even with the blacking that the dragonborn had insisted they use to conceal the gleam of the bare steel. The journey thus far had been mostly uneventful.  The soldiers had seemed competent, if a bit sullen, in the way of men who were given an unenviable task.  The elf, El’il, had not minded Jaron’s assignment to supplement his scouting duties; he’d spent most of his time apart from the others, ranging on ahead and blazing the trail with subtle marks to indicate what lie ahead.  Jaron, with his much shorter legs, had stayed closer to the main group, keeping an eye out for ambushes and the like.  Jaron tried to find Beetle among the much taller members of the company, but did not see him.  His cousin had been utterly fascinated with Vhael, and he’d followed at the dragonborn’s heels for most of the first day out of Fallcrest.  Jaron had been worried at first about his cousin saying or doing something that would offend the veteran warlord, but when they’d come together in camp that first night, the others more or less ignored both halflings.  Vhael had listened to Jaron’s reports with attention, but the dragonborn seemed distracted, and he spent much of his time in quiet consultation with his dwarf companion, or marching in silence in the forefront of the main column.  Now Carzen Zelos, he was another matter entirely. Beetle had taken an immediate dislike to the young nobleman, and Jaron had cringed inwardly at the potential there for disaster.  Almost since the beginning of the expedition, Carzen had fallen victim to a series of unpleasant “accidents”, including a mysterious affinity between his blanket and stinging nettles, an unfortunate incident involving a necessities break and a nest of paper wasps, and the almost classic frog-in-the-boot that morning in camp.  Jaron had tried to keep an eye on Beetle, but the halfling had been nowhere in the vicinity during any of those misadventures, and Carzen was starting to regard everyone in the group with a cold suspicion, a situation that Jaron knew was not going to be helpful, going forward.  He’d tried talking to his cousin, to reason with him, but Beetle’s aura of innocence was almost impermeable, and Jaron had felt almost like he was trying to teach one of his dogs to fly. Jaron waved as Corporal Chaffin caught sight of him; as the company approached he descended the back face of the outcrop and moved back to the trail to await their coming.  “Anything?” Chaffin asked, more to make conversation than anything else; he knew that Jaron would have reported at once if there’s been any signs of trouble ahead. “El’il marked that there’s another fasthold up ahead,” Jaron said.  “The signs he left indicate that it is deserted.”“Might be a good place to make camp,” Chaffin ventured, turning as Vhael and Gral joined them.  The other guardsmen formed a perimeter, each of them taking a quadrant as they kept a lookout for any threats.  Jaron saw it and appreciated the professionalism.  Vhael stared up into the canyon, as if judging the distance, and how long it might take them to reach their destination. “Might be better to camp down here, rather than up there,” Gral said, as if putting Jaron’s thoughts into words.  The dwarf mage had not had any difficulty keeping up with them, despite his obvious age and the shortness of his stride; Jaron had yet to see him so much as stretch a tired muscle or show any other sign of being affected by their long marches.  Vhael was much the same, but Jaron suspected that the dragonborn would have to be on the brink of collapse before he betrayed any hint of weakness to the others. “What are we doing here?” Carzen Zelos asked, sagging against a boulder adjacent to the trail.  “My father’s sources said that the slavers have outposts up in the mountains.  If they were camped on Thunderspire, we would have heard of it.”Vhael ignored the man, but the dwarf turned to him.  “Our own intelligence sources suggest that we might learn more here,” he said.  “If they’d come this way, they would have left some sign,” Carzen persisted.  The other men were gathering around them, now, Allon wrestling with the two pack mules, which were somewhat nervous in the immediate vicinity of the dragonborn.  Jaron didn’t blame them.  He watched Vhael as Carzen spoke.  Inwardly, he couldn’t disagree with the human soldier; he’d been looking for signs since they’d left the main road that wound through the vale east from Fallcrest, and there had been nothing.  Of course, it had rained several times since the night of the slaver raid, but he’d tracked enemy soldiers through worse conditions in the past.  “Master Feldergrass, lead the way to this abandoned settlement,” Vhael finally said, his rumbling voice brooking no disagreement.  For a moment Carzen looked as though he might step forward to challenge the dragonborn directly, and Jaron tensed, expecting trouble.  But the human warrior seemed to draw upon some reserve of good sense, and fell back into line as the small company continued up the trail.  It took only about fifteen minutes to reach the ruined fasthold.  Jaron could see at once that the place had not been occupied for months, if not years.  The turf house was partially collapsed, its heavy roof caved in on one side, its front doorway gaping open like a misshapen maw.  The adjacent gardens were overgrown with tangles of brush, and the two small outbuildings—drying shacks for pelts, Jaron judged—were little more than wreckages of timber and weeds.  A sour stink filled his nostrils, blown toward him by a stiff breeze that flowed down the mountain through the vale like water pouring backwards through a funnel.  A faint hint of unease tickled at Jaron’s senses.  He looked around for El’il, but the elf scout was nowhere in evidence; most likely he’d gone on ahead to check the trail leading up the canyon.   “Desolate,” came a voice from behind him.  He glanced back to see the soldier Gezzelhaupt standing there, rubbing his hands together.  He looked somewhat different than the other men, his skin shaded in the swarthy coloration common to men of the distant nations to the far east of the Vale.  He looked down at the halfling and smiled.  “T’will be good to get out of this wind.” Jaron nodded.  The others were coming up behind them, spreading out as Vhael issued orders.  The dragonborn caught his eye and made a motion that Jaron recognized as a command to scout out the area.  He looked around once more for Beetle, but there was still no sign of him.  First the elf, and then Beetle.  Jaron’s intuition was whispering warnings in the back of his mind, but he pushed them astray.  There was nothing to be done for it in any case; the best he could do was to conduct his search, and find out for himself if there was any danger.  He left the conversation of the others behind him, and the sounds of activity as the soldiers started preparing their camp.  The sun had already dipped beyond the shoulder of the hills to the west, but the slopes of Thunderspire still glowed bright, like a torch held up high.  The solitary peak was eerie, a lonely blemish upon the eastern Nethir, standing apart from its peers that rose along the boundaries of the vale to the north and east.  Beyond those ranges, Jaron knew, lay other lands and other kingdoms, but the halfling had never been there, did not even know the names of those places, which may as well have been part of the legends that the bards told around flickering hearths in the depths of winter. The tall grass off the trail quickly swallowed him up, and he slowed his pace.  It was strange, the way that the wilderness pushed up close against the paths and holds forged by men in places like this.  Even the voices of his companions quickly faded, replaced by the noises of the wind through the brush.  With the instincts of the veteran ranger that he was, Jaron pushed through the growth toward higher ground.  He took care not to mark his trail, the grasses folding back into place behind him in the wake of his passage.  The wind shifted, bringing a new smell, familiar, that raised his hackles.  He found the first bloodstains a few seconds later, a spot of red on a green blade, then more, the grasses stained like the blades of daggers waving in the wind.  They led him quickly to a depression where a mangled mass lay in a heap, surrounded by roughly shredded brush.  There wasn’t a lot left, but Jaron quickly noted the signs that identified the corpse—a broken arrow, part of a brooch still affixed to a fragment of wool cloth.  El’il, or at least what had once been the elf.  His senses were honed to a razor’s edge as he scanned the line of trees further up the rise, and he almost jumped out of his boots as a voice sounded right behind him. “We’re in trouble, Jayse,” Beetle said. Jaron spun to look at his cousin.  At first a wild thought crept into his mind, that Beetle had somehow killed the elf scout, but then, as he looked back at the body, the damage the ground around it, the patterns told in savaged greenery… he put it all together.  “We’ve got to warn the others!” he said, darting back through the grass toward the ruined settlement.  But even as he shouted an alarm, a violent bellow echoed back from the location of their camp, and he realized that the warning had come too late.  Reaching for an arrow, all he could do was run, hoping that he wouldn’t arrive to find the others like El’il.</blockquote>

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