1x03 Of Mice and Goats

Now, we did not flinch at this ancient wizened woman. We squared up over Horton's crumpled body, an attempt to protect our fallen friend, and a good thing too, for the crone was no crone at all, but a warlock whose very touch could chill the soul. At her side loomed a bugbear with a terrible morningstar. I did what I do. I loosed the one trick that I have. Never once had it failed to settle a rowdy taproom. A dazzle of colour left from my hands. The bugbear didn't not so much as blink. I was, as you can imagine, somewhat surprised. The bugbear seemed less surprised and introduced their morningstar to my ribs, and I was unable to keep on my feet. As I gathered myself off the floorboards, Missenbar went to work (hitting out with fists and feet) and beat the thing down into the dirt. Two of my daggers found the warlock, and Horton, awake now and in a truly foul temper, ended her with a single swing of his hand axe.

Beneath the old cottage we found a cellar that turned our stomachs: two goat carcasses swinging on meat hooks, the lower half of a man who'd been butchered in a similar fashion and a blowpipe and six needles of bone. It was the weapon that had put Griffo in the ground. Beside the weapon lay a Vijala doll, which those who traffic in such things will tell you is the token of a contract for murder.

We brought all we'd found back to Sergeant Malati, who took the news with a calm I found peculiar for a woman just told of butchery beneath her town. Still, she pressed seventy-five gold into our hands, and with that we turned west that same afternoon. We had decided to investigate the map we had found and failed to mention to the sergeant.

Following it we soon found a ring of standing stones and we could see that the fool thing was laid out in the shape of a smiling face. Where the nose should have stood, a stone was missing, and digging were it should be we turned up a tin box of silver coins and a single lion's tooth. Two cave mouths yawned on either side of that grinning circle, and so we bent over the map to reckon which one to walk down first.