The Road Home - Part Two

The third of High Sun, 1493

The road home wended its way through hedgerows and down narrow country lanes. The party trudged across bone-dry fields, leaving the violence and dark magic of Wicklow Mill behind, heading back to the warm meals and cosy beds of Devlin’s Dower.

The shrine in the stream

On a grassy islet in the middle of a dry creek bed, stood a carved timber pole reminiscent of the wooden monoliths at Cross Corners. As Featherfew ventured out, over the flinty, cracked earth, he recognised this simple monument as a type of shrine, where petitioners offer tributes to the Widow of the Waters. Enid noticed a path was worn into the banks of the creek, made by the feet of many supplicants. Featherfew intended to take a rubbing of the carving, but the water smoothed wood had become cracked with great fissures opening up along its length. The carved face had become hard to identify: was it a young woman, or an old crone?

As Den sketched the scene from the riverbank, and Ilyad performed her ritual, seeking to identify errant threads of the magical weave, Featherfew glanced into the carved wooden offering bowl, halfway up the pole. Partially concealed beneath smooth river stones was a grisly find: a severed human ear. Cleanly cut and somewhat grey and leathery, this offering was likely a few days old, at most.

Leaving this macabre token where they found it, the party continued onward.

The Green Wing Inn

The party arrived outside a roadside tavern, The Green Wing Inn, a sleepy watering hole, famous for its soft beds and marvellous menu. The compact, two-storied timber building had walls painted emerald green and brass wind chimes hanging from the balcony, tinkling in the soft breeze. The inn’s tabard featured a painting of a Green Dragon, smiling slyly and clutching a frothing tankard of ale. A plume of yellow smoke curled from its nostrils.

The Green Wing Inn seemed exceptionally busy today, with five heavily loaded carts parked on the lawns outside. Small halfling children gambolled about while anxious looking adults huddled in tense conversation. Wary of alarming the harried looking halflings with his odd colourless eyes, Featherfew hung back, conjuring magically nourishing berries for the hungry children. The rest of the party chatted to Manx Windear, who explained that he and the other families had fled the town of Sallow and come south, seeking new employment and lodgings. Though he was an eel fisherman and his wife wove wickerwork eel traps from river reeds, they could no longer stay in the lakeside village. He explained that the Kingsmere had flooded, swallowing Sallow and the surrounding farmlands; when asked how such a thing could happen during this dry, hot summer, Manx told the party of how than Monkton family, the local landowners, had closed the sluice gate at Monkton Weir and effectively dammed the Hollow Brook. This piece of environmental vandalism was, in Manx’s estimation, unaccountable, as not only did it destroy the livelihoods of their tenant famers, but would surely bankrupt the Monktons too. They were, he acknowledged, an odd lot, with an unsavoury reputation going back generations.

Manx’s more immediate concern however was the publican of the Green Wing Inn, who had barred the travellers and refused them service. The halflings were famished and concerned for their hungry children. Den and Ilyad offered to go in and negotiate with the landlord, while Enid snuck around back to investigate the kitchen.

Disguised as an experienced chef [ok, Anthony Bourdain], Enid entered the kitchen. It was neatly appointed but ferociously hot, with copper pans hanging from the ceiling and all the burners of the wood fired stove top bubbling away merrily. The cook, Deirdre Gabbort, initially tried to eject the interloper, but Enid insisted that she had been sent by the publican to help out. She then impressed the experienced cook with an exceptional display of carrot chopping. This still didn’t help as Enid suggested that she and ‘all her friends’ be given free meals; Deirdre wouldn’t even consider it.

Meanwhile, in the front bar, Den introduced himself to the proprietor, Sag Gabbort, reminding him that he was the son of a fellow pub landlord, Gander Farlight of the Groomsman’s Rest. Sag opened up, complaining that the Green Wing Inn had been unprepared for the sudden influx of visitors and had had to turn them away; he had felt particularly unsympathetic when Manx and the other refugees had asked for free meals. Den failed to persuade Sag to relax his position, and it fell to Ilyad to reach into her pockets and shout meals for all the displaced halflings. Greedily, Sag insisted that she pay for ‘the full board,’ meaning a lavish three course meal for every halfling.

Dancing between picnic blankets, Den helped to serve potato cakes studded with crispy specks of bacon, followed by a wild duck stew, with dried plums bobbing in its glossy port wine gravy, and buttered green beans. To finish, everyone received a dense seeded loaf, served with a grand wheel of Cheddar, soft as a block of butter and sharp as knife-edge. Ilyad fed scraps to Gertie, who even munched through a wooden bowl. Enid persuaded Deirdre to parcel up the leftovers for the halflings to take with them on the road.

Finally, the party suggested that Manx and the other Sallow halflings head over to Wicklow Mill, alluding to the recent tragedies and suggesting that they would be favourably received by the town as they were in sore need of able hands. It was late afternoon before the party was on the road again.

The Grass Fire

The party smelt the smoke before they saw it pluming over the treetops. Racing to help they found an out of control grass fire sweeping through a dry field, heading toward a barn filled with dry hay. Two elderly halflings were struggling to draw buckets of water from a nearby well, but the effort was painfully slow and utterly ineffectual. Glancing at the barn, the party saw a young halfling trapped in the hayloft, the ladder having been knocked to the ground.

Acting quickly, Den righted the ladder and danced up its length, into the hayloft; Ilyad channeled her magic and unlocked the language of the panicked ponies in the barn, effectively calming them. Enid attempted to create a firebreak by reaping great swathes of dry grass, but recognised that there was something unnatural, even predatory, in the movement of the blaze as it bore down on the barn. Tapping into the magic of the Weathereye, Featherfew conjured a light mist which slowed the fire’s spread. Den rescued the young halfling from the hayloft, flipping acrobatically down the ladder, while Ilyad dextrously unlatched the many stable doors, allowing the ponies to flee. Enid, filled with a sudden rush of inspiration, grabbed Robard Blandish’s tinder box from Pebble’s cart and persuaded the mischievous fire spirit back into its flinty home. Reading the direction of the wind, Featherfew identified the likely course of the fire, now that it was no longer driven by the sentient spark, and allowed it to burn itself out as it reached the roadside.

The emergency over, the party chatted to the elderly farmers. The patriarch of the smallholding introduced himself as Carl Bollen. The party learnt that Carl’s son Guy had left the farm some months back, without a word of goodbye, and hadn’t been heard from since. They agreed to pass a message along if their paths crossed. Enid planted an acorn amidst the burned grass, hoping for renewal. Before the party moved on, Den insisted on making a horribly unflattering portrait of the elderly Bollen couple, rather souring the encounter.

The Shrine to Chauntea

By the roadside, nestled beneath the shady canopy of a broad-boughed oak tree, the party found a simple shrine to Chauntea. Roughly hewn from weathered timber, it depicted the march of the seasons, the annual rhythm of sowing and reaping. The wood seems to exude the scent of rich, loamy soil. At its base, a wooden trough was filled with seeds, intended for travellers to sow in their own fields as a gesture of faith and gratitude to Chauntea.

The party fossicked for seeds, with Ilyad finding a fig tree seed for her adoptive father, Sire Hugo Dyer, while Den found an apple seed, and Enid a wheat seed.

The Toll Collectors

Almost home, the party rounded a bend by the Old Wood and were stopped by the Earl’s Men. Two conscripts lounged indolently on a tree stump, while a third on horseback extended his palm and demanded that the travellers pay a toll. Den, having himself recently served as an Earl’s Man, knew that there was no toll on these roads; he challenged the group’s leader, demanding to know the name of his commanding officer. Seemingly taken aback at being countermanded, the soldier gave his name as Gedrick, and claimed his commanding officer was someone called Roos. Sensing chicanery, Den challenged the imposters to stand aside, at which point a fight broke out.

Gedrick grabbed crossbow from his saddle and fired it; to which Enid replied, skewering a javelin through the belly of one of the stump loiterers. More bandits emerged from the roadside undergrowth, sniping at the party from leafy cover. Featherfew whispered to the trees of the Old Wood, causing sinuous vines to erupt from the ground and entangle a group of antagonists. Enid intimidated one of the bandits, causing him to divulge the name ‘John Shade,’ before she despatched him. Ilyad blasted the pinned down bandits with motes of arcane energy, while Den bewitched Gedrick with his capering, causing him to fall from his horse in paroxysms of unnatural laughter. Ilyad found herself under sustained crossbow fire, seemingly singled out by the aggressors. The battle was hard fought, with combatants flitting in and out of the shelter of the surrounding foliage, but the party eventually overcame the superior number of bandits, slaying all but the incapacitated Gedrick.

Binding Gedrick’s wrists with his tightrope, Den, along with Enid, interrogated him. Enid threatened him with death, but the cunning bandit made a show of rubbing his wrists raw on the rough bindings, saying: ‘Go ahead, the Bailiff might like to know why you murdered a bound man.’ Smirking, Gedrick said: ‘John Shade knows all about you,’ though Den had the unsettling feeling he was speaking over his shoulder, directly to Ilyad. Enid shoved a torn rag, stained with bandit blood, into the villain’s mouth. In a final, unpleasant act, Den removed the rag, wiped his arse with it, and reinserted it into the mouth of his retching captive.