Lost Trails 11 The Road to Phlan

[Adam]

"I can't say I care for it," Bennedict replies, "But it isn't my place to define others' morality.I'd be lying if I said I had never done things as bad...or worse."

As a light flares in the distance, Bennedict pops his weapon up and points it comically in that direction before lowering it sheepishly. "I...assume that was one of our comrades? Do you suppose they need our help?"

[RocEter]

"This will hold for some time!" Raen said to the large warrior. " The way they glow we could follow them from a large distance and hit their comrades. Eliminate the threat."

Clive considers for a moment Raen's suggestion about give chase but holds the urge to chase down and slay the beast-men.

"Normally, I would agree with such sentiment." He says to Raen. "However, there may be wounded among the dead. We should check and take any wounded with us back to camp."

He begins searching the human bodies for any wounded...

[ewancummins]

SLAUGHTER ON THE WAGON TRAIL

"This will hold for some time!" Raen said to the large warrior. " The way they glow we could follow them from a large distance and hit their comrades. Eliminate the threat."

Clive considers for a moment Raen's suggestion about give chase but holds the urge to chase down and slay the beast-men.

"Normally, I would agree with such sentiment." He says to Raen. "However, there may be wounded among the dead. We should check and take any wounded with us back to camp."

He begins searching the human bodies for any wounded...

The man, woman, and two boys are all dead, and the gut-sliced horses seem to be getting close to death.

Sir Clive hears a whimpering sound from someplace in the back of the wrecked wagon.
Checking it out, he sees something moving inside a basket with the top tied down with twine.
When he opens the container, up springs a speckled tan and cream puppy.
The dog stares up him with big brown eyes.

[kintire]

Kat raises an eyebrow.

“You hunt criminals for a living. It is literally your job to define other’s morality. And you didn’t seem to hesitate with that serial killer. I vote we ditch the gruesome twosome and move on.”

She glances down the road with a smirk

“Oh I’m sure they’ll be fine. Sending a warrior and a wizard to scout instead of the scout can’t possibly go wrong. But there’s not much we can do to support them without abandoning the camp.”

[ewancummins]

THE CAMP IN THE PINES

Tonio sits up, rubbing his eyes.
"Huh?"
He glances about, and sees Benn and Kat standing up, booted and armed.
The Zhentish laborer gets to his feet.
''Trouble?"

Alain continues his watch.

[Adam]

Bennedict shrugs. "I hunt worse than criminals. And if we were home, I would hunt slavers as well. But it's not a crime here, so what can you do?"

He sighs. "And I need them to get home. It wont be the first time I've looked away for the greater good."

[ewancummins]

NIGHT

Raen sends his sure-striking arrows of magical force after the Night Raiders, downing one of the fleeing pair. The other gets away.


THE NEXT MORNING
DAY TWO


Raen wakes from a dream of huge fireflies streaking across dark, low hills, flying into the palm of an enormous black hand that rises over the earth and blots out half the moon.

His companions are already busy with breakfast from the trail rations they'd bought in Zhentil Keep: sourdough hardtack, wrinkled onions, vinegar wine.

As the wizard gets out of his rolled-cloak bed, he hears something yipping and barking.


Alain
Naptime's over. No sign of immediate danger, no fire or raiders. Private supply provides as good a meal as always.
A small dog, spotted tan and cream, races by...


Sir Clive never needs much sleep, but his new best friend does.
When the knight stirs from a brief rest seated under a pine tree, the puppy hops up and licks his face and hands and then jumps from his lap and runs about the camp, sniffing and exploring.


Tonio is up early, tending to the beasts with eagerness but little apparent skill as a groom.
Kat catches the muscular young slave casting surreptitious glances at her as he goes about his work.
Once, his gaze meets hers, but then he turns away to watch a puppy running through the camp.
For the first time, she hears Tonio's rumbling chuckle.

Benn stood the last watch. He's wide awake when the others get up and make ready for travel, eat breakfast, look to the mounts and pack beasts.


AFTER BREAKFAST

The fire pit covered in earth and the animals fed and watered, the party heads out.
But soon they reach the wrecked wagon, the site of the massacre on the road.

Wordlessly, Tonio helps Sir Clive and the others bury the dead.
The young man strips to his waist and uses a spade taken from the wagon to break the ground, throwing sods over his shoulder in a steady beat of shove, stamp, jerk, toss, shove, stamp, jerk, toss...
When it's done and the bodies rest together in a long, shallow grave, the slave stands back in silence, holding the puppy, which tries to jump from his arms into the pit.

With Dorgio long since lost and Klokulf left behind in Zhentil Keep, it falls to Benn to offer up one of the many prayers he knows

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(to gods in which, perhaps, he does not really believe)

for the repose of the murdered family.


The low rolling hills drop away but the prairie north of the road never quite flattens out, retaining dips and hummocks.
A flock of noisy grackles flies over the party.
Cool humid winds from the south ruffle the knee-high grass, making a low, gentle sweeping sound.
The Moonsea waters glint in the sun a mile or two off southwards, across gently sloping plains.

Despite delays, the travelers make good time on the hard-packed road and by mid-afternoon they have passed a stone mile marker that indicates they have gone a third of the way to Phlan.

Less than a mile from the marker, they see the flies.

The black, buzzing swarm thins but doesn't scatter as Kat

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--the group's designated scout--

creeps ahead to investigate what's lying in the ditch on the south side of the road. A stout figure wrapped in a bloody cloak. Face-down. Armor gleams through the ripped and stained garment and blood oozes from under a dented helm. Rolling the wounded person over, Katrin sees a ruddy brown face with a full coal-black beard and mustaches. The squinting eyes open for a moment and then close again.
She pulls the short man out of the ditch, grunting at his surprising weight. A mace rolls from the fallen one's nerveless fingers. Taking a better look at him as she shoos flies away from her mouth and eyes, Kat realizes he's not a true man at all, but one of the fairy folk, a dwarf!

Once Benn attends the dwarf enough to get him on his feet, the demihuman thanks the heroes and then tells his story.
He says his name is Bran and that he is a priest of The Forge Father based in Phlan. Orcs captured him while he was coming back from a prospector's camp in the high country upriver from the town. He slew one of his guards, retrieved his gear, and made an escape. But he couldn't get back to Phlan. The monsters harried him west and caught him near the road. He killed more of the foul creatures but was nearly slain in the fight.

The travelers find six dead humanoids not far from where Bran lay in the ditch, crawling with flies and with kneecaps busted or thighbones broken.
These look like the same sort of creatures as the tusked raiders Sir Clive and Raen battled last night.


AS THE PARTY MOVES ON, Bran marches along in the rear, moving with an untiring tread that makes up for his short stride.

Two more long, weary days on the road, two more watchful nights in hushed camps...but no nocturnal raids, no more massacre sites, no sign of the swine-men.

Then, while the party is busy breaking camp at dawn of the fourth day, Katrin spots three thin plumes of whitish-gray smoke to the east, where the road hugs the Moonsea shoreline.

Riding around a clump of high hills that had obscured the view from their camp, the party sees before them settled countryside with farmhouses clustered near one another behind high fences, and a couple of miles past that a small, walled city of timber and masonry rising where a powder-brown river flows into the vast blue waters of the freshwater inland sea. Smoke puffs from chimneys.
Little forms of men and animals move about in the fields, atop the walls, and along the piers of Phlan.
A fat-belled merchant ship rolls gently at anchor along the wharf-side, flanked by smaller boats.

Out on the giant lake, fishing vessels trawl for a morning catch.




END OF CHAPTER