Chapter 1 - Arriving

The valley spread in a long, lazy arc from north to southeast. A castle stood across from them, at a similar altitude to where they sat watching. A rough-paved path wound up the slope to the castle from the valley below. There would be little approaching the castle unseen.

"He'll be in the castle, no doubt," Rickard said.

"Aren't they always?" Darrak agreed.

Their perch gave them a good overlook of the rest of the valley. Smoke rose from chimneys throughout. Some were scattered here and there among the woods, but most of the locals were clearly gathered into three hamlets and villages. The central one was the largest. That one would have an inn.

"Come on," Darrak said, standing up. "Let's go meet some locals." He strode forward confidently. This one would make four. They knew what to do. The rest of his team would follow him. Rickard would obscure the tracks behind them a little. Discretion was always good. He liked these little farm districts.

As Darrak began to pick his steps down the hill to the path, he could hear Ernon's heavy footsteps behind him. There had been enough of a frost to make the grass crunch beneath their feet as they moved, and yet he somehow still didn't hear Arshelle's movements at all. The priestess gave no indication that she was with them, but then that was always the case. While he counted himself lucky to have her with them, he knew she could change her mind at any moment if they weren't careful. He'd have to keep a close eye on Ernon at the inn. Arshelle easily took offense to anything that wasn't crucial to their mission, and Ernon liked the occasional distraction.

The path was fairly empty of people, but that was to be expected this early in the morning. They fell in not far behind a farmer's cart that looked to be carrying sacks of corn. A small tear in one bag dribbled little bouncing kernels onto the road, and Darrak reached down and plucked one up. He inspected it a moment before flicking it off at the grasses with the tip of his finger. He used the motion to glance back at his team and nodded, Rickard had already closed the distance with them from covering their tracks. They would seem like just another group of travellers on the road.

The village lay nestled among the trees, with no defensible edge. Darrak sighed seeing how gradually they passed from a wooded path into the village. Trees continued into the village as if encroaching in their ever-so-slow invasion. Or the locals had been too lazy to chop down more trees than necessary as the houses had leaked into the surrounding forest. He could not be sure which.

Streets of varying degrees of mostly low quality wandered haphazardly around an array of building types. Thatch-roofed huts only half out of the ground were mixed with buildings of timber or brick. He saw wooden shingled along with slate.

As they headed towards the center of the village, he estimated the size at five or six hundred. He also saw the pattern in the building styles. Older buildings were brick and stone with slate shingles. Built in between them had been somewhat newer wood and timber buildings. The huts all looked to have been the most recent, built here and there were there had been both room and need.

The inn was clearly an older one. It was a monster of a building for the surrounding village. It's third story towered above all but the church steeple, and a clock with four-foot arms showed the wrong mid-afternoon time over the door. The building itself was mostly stone, with some repaired areas of brick. Some of the mortar work looked better done than most of the rest. There were four wooden steps up to a small porch. The door creaked loudly when he pulled it open.

Darrak stepped inside, allowing the scents and sounds of the place to wash over him as he did. Morning was usually a busy time at an inn, but this late in the season most travellers were already settled back home for the winter. Only a handful of people talked quietly over breakfast - a pair of men at a table in a corner, and a middle-aged couple chatting with the bartender at the bar, next to a man who pretended not to watch them as he nursed a tankard. A younger couple talked near the fire as the girl carefully restrung a lute in her lap. The fire itself was low at the moment, the coals being kept hot enough to keep the room warm and rekindle a larger fire later. As he made his way forward, a boy stumbled through the room with a heavy load of firewood and added it to the rest in a stone alcove next to the hearth.

Most of the scents that came to him were of beer and whiskey, with a background of soap and some sort of meat, probably bacon, cooking. There was also a hint of a baked-bread smell lingering in the air. He suspected it was washing day, as he rarely smelled soap so prominently when it wasn't. He smiled to himself, momentarily caught in a memory, and then moved forward towards the bar. Before he could get there, the barkeep had rung a small bell on a shelf behind him, and a tall, sturdy-looking man with graying hair came out from a room beyond this main one, wiping his hands off on a brown apron and smiling as he approached. Darrak nodded, extending his hand in greeting.

The man shook his with a firm grip. It was a more friendly greeting already than the last two towns like this one had offered.

"Good mornin' to ye. I'm Galvin, welcome to the Valley Inn."

"I can see why you've named it that," Darrak said, shifting the bag over his shoulder once he had his hand back. "We had good opportunity to look out over the valley on our way down. Quite lovely."

"Thank you," Galvin said, "not that I get any credit for it."

Darrak had no trouble chuckling with the man, who looked as though he had made the remark often enough for it to seem natural and not practiced. Arshelle, of course, did not laugh along with it, but Darrak had made a rule to make a good and friendly impression upon arriving. It made things easier later on to have the townsfolks' willing help.

"So I take it you're lookin' for rooms," Galvin suggested, with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow.

"Yes we are," Darrak agreed.

"Well, there's a few types of rooms at the Valley Inn. We've got basic rooms, nicer rooms, luxury rooms, and suites. What sort of rooms are you lookin' to stay in then? You look like the type of travelers who could use a small set of rooms in a suite. Just so happens I have one available that would fit you perfectly."

"I think the basic rooms would b - ," Darrak began.

"How much for the suite?" Ernon piped in from behind him.

"One hundred per night for the entire suite," Galvin smiled.

"One hundred chips?" Ernon asked.

"No, sir. One hundred whole."

Darrak sighed as he heard Ernon swear behind him. Even Rickard whistled.

"Did I mention that the suites come with private bathing accomodations and a sitting room?"

"I don't beleive you did, sir," Darrak told the man. "But could I trouble you for the price of a basic room?"

"Certainly, sir. The basic rooms run three whole per night. Or five chips per hour if you are so inclined."

"I see," Darrak said, raising an eyebrow of his own.

"The nicer rooms, on the other hand, are much... tidier, and for only five whole per night."

Ernon leaned forward and whispered in Darrak's ear.

"This guy is trying to rob us blind. We should keep walking."

Darrak put a hand on Ernon's chest to stall the man from getting any angrier, as he tried to think of his options. He knew better than to get the basic rooms, or Ernon would blow all his money whoring and lose focus on the mission. The suites were outrageously expensive and he knew none of them could afford them on what they'd managed to make along the way. But five whole was more than double what they had been charged at inns they'd stayed at along the way. Even Arshelle was poking through her purse, frowning.

"And meals?" he asked, stalling for time while he worked it out in his head.

"Dinner included with the basic rooms, breakfast added with the nicer rooms, and luxury or suites include all meals and a glass of wine with dinner." Galvin flashed them a smile. Darrak noticed that the man still had all his teeth.

"We'll take the suite." Arshelle's voice startled Darrak as the woman drifted past him and pressed a small bag of coins into the innkeep's hand with a smile of her own. "For three nights."

"Wonderful then," Galvin said with an over-enthusiastic smile. "This way, please," the man added with the kind of exaggerated sweep of his arm that belonged more on a stage.

Darrak let the rest of his team follow ahead of him so that he could look around a little more as he walked. There were four entrances to the room including the main front door. One obviously led to a kitchen, and a set of double doors probably opened into a parlor or private dining room. Then there were the stairs up. He noted them in his mind as a fire hazard as he half listened to Galvin describe how and where to set laundry for washing.

"Now that's more like it," Ernon said once Galvin opened the double doors into the suite's sitting room. There were two bedrooms to either side and the aforementioned private bath off the back. The sitting room had two couches and two comfortable looking armchairs all surrounding a low table. A little bar table sat against one wall.

The floors were covered with rugs made with mountain scenes. The furniture was all polished red cherrywood, probably local, and looked well made. It was all quality, and much finer than any of them were used to. Except perhaps Arshelle, he supposed.

Galvin made a production of showing them to each of the rooms and explaining at the same time that they could choose to have their meals delivered to the suite if they wanted.

"And, if you need anything else, just ring this bell over here and one of my boys will come runnin'," Galvin added, pointing to a rope along one wall that appeared to go down into the floor.

"Thank you, sir," Arshelle said with a smile, all but ushering him out. "We'll be sure to remember that."

Once the innkeep was well out of the room and the door firmly closed behind him, Darrak rounded on the priestess.

"What's going on?" he asked her, frowning. "This room is more expensive than -"

"I have paid for the room," Arshelle interrupted, putting up a hand. "Unlike the rest of you I have been saving my money instead of squandering it on petty distractions. If this is how I choose to spend it, to accomodate myself and my associates in something better than the usual squalor, then it is my right."

"I don't see anything wrong with it," Ernon shrugged, hefting his heavy pack further up onto his shoulder. "Thanks, Arshelle."

"You're very welcome, Ernon," Arshelle nodded at him, almost like a teacher approving of her student. Ernon nodded back and headed off to one of the bedrooms, whistling quietly to himself.

"Besides," she mentioned, "it will help us keep the mission on track. We'll have our own meeting space right here where we can plan and share information. You weren't planning on discussing our tactics at the table downstairs, were you?"

"No," Darrak replied. "But we should also bear in mind that if this one takes a month like the last one did... we could potentially be stuck here for the winter."

"I know we're up higher," Rickard said, "but even a month from now I don't see enough snow to make the passes unpassable."

"I've been in these mountains before," Darrak explained. "It was a little futher north than here, but not by all that much. Up here the snow will come earlier and heavier than you think. It only takes one blocked pass to get us good and stuck here."

"Which means no fights with the locals this time," Arshelle said sternly to Ernon.

"He had it coming!" Ernon called back. "Ask Rickard. I keep saying -"

"And I keep saying I'm staying out of it," Rickard interrupted. "You act on your emotions Ernon. You could have done something subtler."

"Subtle is for pansies."

"Enough," Darrak said, watching as Arshelle looked increasingly annoyed. "Arshelle has been kind enough to get us this suite for three nights. Let's make the best of it. Pick your rooms, stash your gear and then let's start chatting up the locals. There's still a lot of daylight left. We can get quite a bit of information while the merchants are still open."

"They will also be more inclined to speak to us if we don't stink of road and sweat," Arshelle pointed out. "I suggest we take turns in the bath. Naturally, I'll be first."

The priestess did not wait for an answer, but instead headed off to one of the bedrooms. Darrak found himself standing there, staring after her in frustration.

"Women," Rickard chuckled. "She's got a point though. You stink, Darrak. We've been on the road without stop for too long this time. What's the rush?"

"Doesn't it seem like we're hearing more and more rumors all the time now?" he asked back. "If this is an escalating problem, I want to confirm that."

"Yeah. It just seemed like you pushed us hard to get to these mountains just to sit for a day watching," Rickard pointed out.

"I wanted to get a feel for local traffic. It let us confirm that there is very little traffic in and out of that castle...Too little. Besides, Arshelle is as much the reason for pushing as anything else."

"She does complain a lot," Rickard agreed. "And yeah, recon is important. Ernon... he could probably care less."

"It's not like the last job paid, per se," Darrak threw in.

"What, and you think this one will?"

"Either in coin or information, or both," Darrak nodded. "If the rumor I heard was correct, this one is one of the older ones. He's been around a while and they always amass some wealth. But something made him move here less than a year ago. This one has been trickier to find, Rickard. He's usually more discreet. I think something spooked him into moving. Something's going on."

"Maybe it's just that we're hunting them?" Rickard pointed out. "I'd get spooked if we were hunting me." Rickard gave a Darrak a half-smile.

"No," Darrak shook his head, not sharing Rickard's amusement. "I don't think this has to do with us. I think this is something else."

He paused for a moment, thinking.

"We're going to try and interrogate this one, Rickard," he told his friend. "But first we need more information from the locals. If you want to stay here and clean up first, that's fine. But the longer we delay, the more people could be killed. So I'll be talking to the townsfolk."

Darrak departed the room with long strides, leaving Rickard standing there, looking puzzled. Then Rickard pulled his cloak back onto his shoulders with a long sigh and followed Darrak out of the suite.

"Marn, I'm done here," Arrel called out to the bartender, shoving the tankard suddenly away from him. The empty cup bumped up against the lip on the edge of the bar and flipped off of the counter, falling to the ground with a clatter.

"Sorry," Arrel muttered, seeming half apologetic and half angry.

"Don't worry about it, Arrel," the bartender said, coming over and picking up the fallen cup. "No harm. Get yourself on home then."

"Right. Thanks, Marn," Arrel nodded before turning and shuffling quicly out of the inn. Rickard found himself watching the man leave before turning back to the barkeep.

"Was it something I said?" he asked, as Marn set the cup in a basket behind him before returning to polishing the countertop.