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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 1252752" data-attributes="member: 221">Chapter 2 The Village of Ayden, Brandobia The 6th of Mustering 1044 YK2.1The night was growing darker as clouds began to move across the sky, but there was still enough light for Bare and Hullifan to make out the graveyard which was located about half a mile from the village of Ayden, a small Brandobian settlement.  The cemetery was surrounded by a tall brick wall, but the elves still felt confident of their ability to sneak in and sneak out before the humans ever knew they were there.“This will be so easy,” said Bare with a grin as he and Hullifan began creeping closer to the wall.  They were there because Tamilthim Redimolvan wanted them to read one of the tombstones.  Five days earlier he had cornered them in the kitchen where Hullifan had been making some candy.  Hullifan’s candy making efforts were progressing quite well.  After their fight with the goblins and the warg, some of the other villagers had gone out in force to chase away any further goblins.  None were found, though evidence suggested there had been more, and the two elves had therefore had quite a bit of time to spend in more scholarly activities, like candy making.  The day before Hullifan had made a batch of such exquisite chocolate candy that Redimolvan had promptly declared the sweets to be the best he had ever had and had heartily encouraged Hullifan to devote his energies to making more of the chocolate honey drops.  Hullifan had been complying with his teachers request when Redimolvan cornered him and Bare in the kitchen (Bare was providing expert taste analysis).“Are you done with that?” Redimolvan had asked looking at the cooling chocolate drops with just a hint of pleasure in his eyes..  “Just am,” Hullifan had said, feeding one of the small morsels of sugar to his snake, Shaba.  The small poisonous viper had eagerly taken the sweet in his mouth, its tail shaking with exuberant excitement. “Good, I have a job for you two.”Redimolvan had led them into his office where a map of Eldor was spread over his desk.  A large leather book had been open on top of the map.  “A friend of mine from Eldor, Fioulaema Swordheart ,died three hundred years ago and left me his journal,” Redimolvan had began to explain. “this is that book.  He was a half elf who lived in Eldor and he did quite a bit of exploring in Eldor, Cosdol and the mountains to the east.  Reading his journal, I have become convinced he had found the location of a certain artifact I want to add to the museum, but he did not give the location in the journal.  On reading certain parts of it though, I am convinced that he planned on leaving a clue on his tombstone, just the sort of thing he enjoyed doing.”“What does the tombstone say,” Bare had asked.“I don’t know.  Therefore I have two options.  My first would be to go myself to read it, but truth be told I would rather be home at the moment.”“We’ll do it,” Hullifan had volunteered, already seeing where the conversation was leading.“Thank you,” Redimolvan had said with a smile, “but you two be careful.  I don’t need to tell you that Eldor is at war with us and many of them doubtlessly would not take kindly to seeing you in their country.”He had then proceeded to go over the map with them, making plans with Bare concerning the best route for the two younger elves to travel to Ayden, which was not to far removed from Lendelwood.The journey had, excepting one encounter with a small group of Tarantubats, easily dealt with, been fairly uneventful.  A large group of humans at the edge of Lendelwood, who had fortunately not seen the two elves, had reminded them of the need for stealth.  They had therefore, once out from under the shelter of the forest, traveled only at night, sleeping during the day in trees in groves.  They had, traveling thus, been unmolested by men and had met no one during the length of their journey.Now, at least they had reached Ayden, and after a small bit of scouting, had discovered the cemetery about half a mile east of the village.  Aside from a few farm-yard dogs barking in the distance, the night was quiet.  “This will be real easy,” Hullifan said, agreeing with Bare as they moved up to the brick wall, “We just scale the wall, find the right tombstone and then we are out of here and on our way home.”  The wall was about seven feet high, and did not look like it would be much of an obstacle.  “I’ll go over first,” Bare said.“No, I’ll go over first,” argued Hullifan.“Let me.”“I’m going over first,” said Hullifan and he started to climb before Bare could argue the point further.  “Ugh,” said Hullifan with some heat, as he pulled himself up and over the wall.“What’s the matter?” asked Bare“There’s broken glass at the top.” Said Hullifan, now on the other side of the wall, “I almost cut my hand going over.  Try not to cut yourself.”Bare grimaced, “I think I’ll try the gate and see if I can get in that way.”Walking clockwise around the wall, Bare turned a corner and saw the gate situated ahead of him.  It was locked however and taller than the brick wall so Bare ended up trying to scale the wall anyway.  Gingerly he placed his hand around the glass atop the wall as he pulled himself over.  He hefted himself up and just as he began moving his legs atop the wall he slipped and one of the pieces of broken glass slid into his hand.  Large drops of blood splashed onto the wall’s cement cap.  With a rueful sigh, Bare finished hoisting himself over and dropped to the ground.  Pulling a rag from his backpack, he wrapped his hand.  The cut was shallow but still painful.  “It’s a nice cemetery,” said Hullifan, moving over near Bare.  Bare looked around and had to agree.  The spring grass was well trimmed and each grave was marked with a pleasing looking stone.  Some of the stones were nearly works of art, so intricate were the carvings adorning them.  The cemetery covered probably about twenty acres of land and though relatively large for the size of the village, it was old enough that much of the ground was covered with stone markers.“Let’s find the right tombstone and then go,” said Bare, his voice sounding a little gruff due to his displeaasure at injuring his hand.The two elves split up and began exploring the cemetery, reading the tombstones by the small amount of starlight available to them.  There were two crypts in the cemetery, all else was stone covered graves.  The graves stones were each marked by the name of the person buried underneath, but there was little order to it, or if there was an order or pattern, it escaped the elves.  Finally, after about thirty minutes of searching, Bare called to Hullifan, “I’ve found it.”As Hullifan started over to where he was, Bare sat down upon the grass in front of the tombstone and pulled out a parchment, a quill and some ink to record to words for his teacher.  The stone read, “Fioulaema Swordheart; 321-744; North through the Pass, East through the Sun, South to the Grave, I have made my run.”Hullifan, seeing that Bare had the gravestone situation well in hand meandered casually around the area, reading some of the more picturesque or poetical stones.  Bare’s hawk, Cyarma, drifted down out of the sky and landed on the ground next to Bare.  Cyarma was not a night creature by habit and had been awake most of the day while the elves had slept in a nearbye grove.  Bare, sensing the hawk’s impatience to get back to a ‘normal’ schedule, reached over and scratched its head absently between words.  Bare was about halfway done copying the stone when Hullifan suddenly scooted quickly and quietly back over to where he was sitting.  “Someone’s climbing over the north wall,” hissed Hullifan “What?” said Bare in surprise, “I want to finish this, almost done.”“Shh!  I’ll go check it out”Bare shooed at Cyarma, mentally ordering him back into the sky and off the ground and then turned his full attention to writing more quickly.  He had been taking his time, making his elvish characters neatly. Now he wrote just a little faster.  If it had been brighter out he would have had Cyarma scout out the situation for him, but the hawk’s eyes were not as sharp in the night.Meanwhile Hullifan crept stealthily toward the north end of the cemetery to see if he could make out who was climbing over the wall.  Pausing within sight of the wall behind a group of rose bushes, Hullifan scanned the wall.  A cloaked and hooded figure awkwardly crept over the glass topped brick wall and then rolled off the wall and landed with a thud and a grunt on the ground.  The figure, a human by the sound of the voice, moved over to pick up some tools he had tossed over, a shovel and a pick, muttering all the while.“I hear them.  I hear them.  Gotta find them so they stop whispering.  Gotta find them,  I hear them.  Gotta find them.”Intrigued Hullifan followed the mumbling voice as he cloaked figure made its way towards the western end of the cemetery.“Closer now.  Louder now.  I hear them.  Getting closer.  Gotta find them.  I’m coming,” the voice continued its constant muttering.  Bare crept quietly over to Hullifan, his scribe work done and the parchment safely stowed away for wiser eyes to peruse.  “What’s going on?” Bare whispered to Hullifan.“Shh.” Both of the elves were well hidden in the night and they moved so quietly that the muttering object of their chase did not even know he was being watched or pursued.“Closer now.  Much closer now,” the muttering continued.Suddenly the elves were simultaneously aware of some new sounds.  The sound of many feet moving towards the cemetery gate.  Likewise they could hear footsteps around the outside of the cemetery wall.  And then they heard the unmistakable sound of someone opening the cemetery gate.Quickly they moved into better hiding spots.  The muttering man seemed unaware of the sounds for he continued to move steadily westward, bending low to the ground as he walked.  Torches flared up suddenly around the cemetery wall and then a large group of men opened their lanterns within the cemetery.  The night was suddenly awash in light.  The elves guessed there might be about thirty human men within the cemetery and they could clearly see that the men were each armed with crossbows and staves.  The elves crouched, hardly daring to move for fear of being shot at.The crowd of men moved quickly toward the cloaked figure at the North-western end of the cemetery.  The cloaked figure, raised himself up and threw off his hood, revealing to the elves that he was indeed, as they had guessed, a human;  albeit a  human with a dirty uncombed beard and wild eyes.  He dropped his tools and his eyes closed in resignation.“Won’t they ever stop whispering,” he sighed as he was surrounded and then tied.“There’s another one,” shouted one of the men, suddenly pointing towards where Hullifan was crouching behind a tombstone.  A group of about twenty men raised their crossbows and then raced towards the elf.“Stop!” shouted Bare in panic leaping out of his excellent hiding spot.“And there’s another one,” someone shouted in surprise.“Surrender peacefully,” ordered the man in front as the flabbergasted elves found themselves suddenly surrounded by about twenty armed and angry humans.</blockquote>

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