The morning had been cold, so much so that as the five departed from Three Corners, the cloudy and dim morning light illuminated a thin layer of frost on the first bits of green grass sprouting up to mark the beginning of the wet season.  Even as the early morning drifted on and the sun occasionally peeked through narrow gaps in the grey skies, the day remained cool and crisp, though the quick pace of the march kept the five from complaining too much about the weather.

The five comprised of Rolf, Gustav, Sajaa, Lisa, and Terri.  Though there had been little time between arriving in Three Corners the previous evening and their departure this morning, the latter two had managed to refit themselves, Lisa from some of her belongings that she had sent ahead and Terri who had settled for equipment pillaged from the bandits and had found at the smithy a premade mail shirt which was just overlong in the sleeves and waist though overtight across the chest.

To round out the group were their animals: Lilly, Rolf's broad shouldered dun quarter horse who plodded along at a slow and sturdy sturdy pace despite her significant load; Sayidat Sawda, Sajaa's black arab whose constant high head and and perky step made her seem inexhaustible even if a bit stubborn; and Gustav's mule, who he simply called 'girl' when he needed her attention, though most often he simply led her with the light touch of a hand or the halter.

Though the way was familiar and the five no strangers to one another, most of the trek had still been spent in silence.  For it hadn't been discovered until late in the evening the previous night that Runt, previously one of their number, had somewhere along the lines been lost from the group.  He had certainly left the canyon with them for he had been vocal and uncomprehending of the decision to leave without determining the fate of Conal, apparently a friend.  But somewhere along the trek home, the boy had disappeared, his absence masked by the dozen prisoners added to the group.  Though Sajaa had initially volunteered to search for the boy, Magnus had flatly declined the suggestion, insisting that everyone wait until morning to return lest there be more of the bandits than they knew.

By the time the five made it back to the canyon it is already time for lunch and the group takes the opportunity to eat their food prior to descending into the relative danger of the canyon.

"He definitely passed back through here."  Terri murmurs as she rubs a vial of thick, black liquid across the tip of an arrow.  Terri's words are clipped and her countenance seems pale, though perhaps it is simply the contrast from the creeping black bruise which spreads across from her eye to her left cheek from where Hamish struck her the day prior.

Her arrowhead now covered with the dripping grey ooze, Terri tosses the glass away into the high grass before gesturing to some spots of mud with her hand.  "You can see a few tiny prints there...  and there...  There's other ones here and there from us leaving too, but they're all broken up and walked over... his are clean..."

OOC:  It is 1230 on the 5th of January.  Thanks everyone again for the patience.  I decided to drop you all off at the mouth of the canyon to let you make any decisions about what to do with the animals before getting you too close.

If it isn't clear from the OOC, Magnus and Giles stayed in Three Corners to tidy up the business of the caravan, report to the governor, and to deal with the one prisoner of the previous thread.  The rest of you decided to come back, both to find what happened to Runt as well as to clean up any last vestiges of the bandits which may still remain.  You have all already eaten breakfast and lunch, which has been taken from the group stores.

If you wish to leave anything (animals or gear) please let me know specifically what you are leaving.  Rolf, you can corroborate Terri's assessment with a successful Tracking -3 roll.

Gustav leaves Girl below, loosely tied, so she can break free if the need be.
He takes his new Saber, and his shield, his main gauche and knives on his belt.
He brings the cross bow across his back and bolts also on his belt.

He has added a first aid packet  and his canteen.
He is ready to go back up into the upper caaves where they left yesterday.

Rolf moves in silence with the others.  He wishes Giles and Magnus had returned with them, but the assembled group is reinforced with a now geared up Lisa and Terri.  Lisa he doesn't know too well, but at the very least she is a healer which means their collective wounds won't fall entirely on his shoulders to deal with.  And that makes Rolf feel a little better.

Terri he knows well.  She's a capable fighter and tracker.  He is confident he can depend on her in times of peril.

Rolf suspects the enemy will be on the run and the caves to be emptied by now, but he's not one hundred percent sure.  If they have taken flight then he and Terri should be able to track them down, and fighting them out in the open should go a little better than the caves.  But if they have to fight in the caves then so be it.

"Could be.  But I'm not sure.  I'll defer to you on this one." Rolf says as he thinks he can make out Runt's foot prints, but he's not entirely sure that the impressions could be something else.

Damn the lad. Rolf ponders as he shakes his head.  What trouble has he gotten himself into?

Standing up he adds "If we can track where he went then great.  Regardless of whether we can find him or not though, we need to check the caves to see if they are clear.  The bandits should be our top priority."

OOC: While out in the open, Rolf will leave his backpack on his horse and carry his crossbow in both hands.  When investigating the caves he will leave his horse where it makes sense.  While in the caves he'll carry his backpack slung on his right shoulder, his right hand keeping the sack in place.  On his left will be his shield, with his crossbow hooked on the outside of his backpack if that's possible.  If not, he'll leave the crossbow on his horse.

Sajaa al-Kassem takes a last bite of hardbread. She chews, swallows, and then takes a moment to wash her hands with water from her canteen.  She dries her hands on her pant legs, then bows low to the ground and thanks Allah for the sustenance.

”Allahumma barik lana fima razaqtana waqina athaban-nar.”  She murmurs softly.

She hopes God is not cross with her for consuming bread baked by Christians – for that seems to be the major religion at Three Corners.  Had she had time yesterday to bake her own bread, she would have blessed it in the name of Allah to render it truly halal. But Gustav and Rolf were eager to return to the Caves and she was anxious to set out in search of little Runt, so she settled for buying a loaf at market.  Sajaa presumes God will understand that one must eat, even if the food is not an ideal choice.  It could be worse. She thinks to herself with an unconscious shrug of her shoulders.  At least I abstained from the flesh of swine that is served so plentifully in the village.

Her meal, hygiene and prayer completed, Sajaa stands and begins unsaddling Black Lady.  She is not keen on leaving her beloved horse unsupervised, but the other more experienced adventurers do not seem overly concerned about it, so she does not let herself worry too much.  As she hefts the heavy saddle from the mare’s sleek, sweaty back, she winces at the dull throb of pain in her side where a stray club swing had glanced her in yesterday’s battle.  Last night, after peeling off her armor and clothing in the room Gustav offered her, she had observed the dark bruise.

~Well, he paid for that one, dearly.~ She thought to herself with a wicked smile touching her lips. Oddly, she is feeling eager for the fighting that is to come...

She leads Black Lady over to where Gustav has loosely tied his own horse, and mimics his technique.

Then she slings her shield across her back, loosens her sword in its sheath, and, with some clumsy effort, cocks her crossbow.



Sajaa sweeps her long tendrils of jet black hair back, and fumbles with a hair tie to keep it in place.  She dreads wearing the big, clunky helmet, but is sure that one of these days it will save her life.

”Yes, Son of Erik…  Master Rolf.” She says to the smallish Mage.  ”The bandits are our priority, but I do hope we will spend some time seeking out the boy.  He is a cunning little thing, but I fear sooner or later his impulsiveness is going to be his undoing.”

Her hair back, Sajaa stoops and lifts the heavy helmet and pushes it over her head. She leaves the visor up, for the time being.

She turns to the dark-haired beauty, Lisa and offers her a smile.  ”Are you ready, Sister?”

OOC: Sajaa will have her shield over her back, her sword sheathed, and will carry her loaded crossbow.  She’s traveling light, with only her satchel, mostly empty, to carry any (hopeful) loot they come upon.  The rest of her gear she’s keeping in the saddlebags of her horse, which she is tying off near Gustav’s “Girl”.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:21, Sat 23 July 2022.

Lisa sits and spents some while rubbing the ache out of her feet: the price of not having a horse. She look at the others, not in envy, no, not that, but in gratitude. It was so marvelous not to be so alone. Stretching her feet once more, the dark-haired girl stands again, tugging to the heavy leathersto shift the weight on her shoulders.

With a buckler on one hip and rapier on the other she was equipped to give the bandits what they were accustomed to givving out. A sour taste in her mouth, revenge was not a thing Lisa was proud of considering, but she'd take it without a moment's hesitation.

"Fine here. Good to go," she says simply, nodding to Terri, fairly sure that the tough girl wouldn't hesitate either, not that either had said a word about it.

Despite Rolf's attempts to find the boy's prints, even after they are pointed out by Terri, he still has a hard time filtering them out from the chaos of other marks and prints that are scattered across the mouth of the canyon.  Though as he counts, he realizes this is now the third time they have walked through this area, not to mention the horses, the fleeing fighters yesterday, and the extra dozen prisoners they had let out.  The thought of how difficult it would be not just to find them, but to differentiate them from all the rest, let alone the other two sets of Runts tracks that crisscrossed the area, Rolf takes a moment to appreciate just how skilled of a tracker Terri must be.

After a few moments of conversation back and forth, the five appear ready to go and Terri nods her assent to continue following the boy's prints.  They lead the horses down into the canyon again, stopping briefly to tie them off in some of the heaviest shrub nearest to the river.  Rolf reasoned that it was not so close as to be easily seen from the mouth of the caves, though it was near enough that a return trip wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience, or add too much danger.  Much farther, without putting them outside the canyon altogether, didn't seem to add any safety for the horses though it increased the burden significantly.

This too appeared to be Runt's path, originally starting near the shadows of the cliffs though straying towards the river as he slunk from heavy brush to heavy brush.

The five start out again, Terri leading the way for the moment, her arrow knocked and held loosely in place with her left hand as she uses her right occasionally to touch the earth as she searches.

"...And that's it."  She says suddenly as they approach the southern bank of the stream.  She stands up, glancing towards the caves at the end of the canyon.

The one on the left, on the south side of the river rises high up against the canyon wall.  While the other ones, the bandits and the bugbear, had been a bit of a climb, this one was much more so, steeper and with no real path that led the way up.

The one on the right was the bandits lair, a cave where they had already been.  Though in truth they had only explored a few of the corridors, so hurried had they been in their mission to retrieve Terri from the Hamish's compatriots.

Though their own prisoner, Macchus, had said there was a third cave, straight up the mouth of the river and into the very base of the canyon, though their view is completely obscured by thick river scrub that grows high out from the edges of the stream.

"Maybe he stepped in here to cross to head back over to the bandit's cave...  but it looks like he was headed straight upriver."  She points towards the scrub and shadows upriver.  "We could head that way... or look to see if he came out of the stream somewhere..."  She glances over at Rolf, letting the words drop away into quiet.

OOC: As Gustav said he was leaving the horses below, I wasn't sure whether he was intending to leave the horses at the mouth of the canyon (where we were doing the last post) or if he wanted to wait to leave them below the cave(s) you were entering.  I opted to leave them just inside the canyon at the river, near some brush so they'd be harder to find but easier for you to return to if needed.

Rolf, you can consider your crossbow tied to your pack (rather than on an easy access hook).  It will allow you to use it, but it may take a little longer to ready.

Sajaa’s gaze follows the options Terri points out as to Runt’s whereabouts.  She is simply awed by the older woman's ability to identify and isolate Runt’s spoor from the seemingly senseless riot of marks, imprints and scuffs in the dirt.

It heartens Sajaa to see how Terri, a woman, is so respected and trusted by the Men of the party.  ~Women are equals in this Land of Heathens!~ She thinks to herself.  ~It is no wonder the men of our village forbade us from ever communicating with the northern caravans!~

Sajaa looks to Rolf, who appears more determined to hunt the last of the bandits than locate their miscreant Runt and then back to Terri.

”Can you tell which of the boy’s tracks are freshest, My Lady?” Sajaa asks softly, somewhat intimidated by the tough woman.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:24, Mon 25 July 2022.

Being completely useless at anything like tracking, Lisa does her best to be useful by keeping out of Terri's way and watches the rear of the group. They seem so very capable and to know each other and their abilities. She shakes her head and concentrates on the moment.