On the Road

Meht calls to the other guards, "Let's get the rest of them!"

Then turns to whichever bandit is closest and looking his way, smiles beatifically with a friendly wave of his bloody axe, and starts walking towards them, saying, "I have a gift for you, of eternal peace!"

AS the fighting ends and Leesha's blessing fades, Meht comes back to normality, surrounded by death.

Surveying the the carnage around him with a sinking feeling, Meht recruits a couple of the queasier-looking guards to help tend to those in even worse shape. He reaches into his pouch and hands them all some medicinal leaves from the forest he grew up in, good for helping wounds heal without infection, along with instructions for how to apply them. The dead can wait until the wounded have been given a chance.

As he walks among the wounded, he keeps an eye out for any bandits who are downed but not dead: he'd like to talk to them. If none are obvious, he plans to go next to the bandit queen and see if she still lives.

Meht speaks sharply to any 'helpers' moving to dispatch a wounded bandit, and intervenes physically if necessary, saying "Don't kill them before we've had a chance to question them. They're no threat and they have information."

"I doubt there's treasure, if they're risking their lives attacking us," says Meht to the guard. "But it would be helpful to know where they came from and whether there are more of them anywhere."

Meht looks over the bandit and their wounds, trying to work out how much time and energy it might require to get them in a state where they can be questioned. He's also looking for any clues as to the bandit's origin and what drove them.

To the guard he says, meanwhile, "You can call me Meht. What's your name?"

Meht is quite unused to praise since his parents passed: his brother's family had only carping and criticism for things of the wild like him. So Asha's words throw him off balance a little. Is she mocking? Oli shows no sign of mistrust, so he grits his teeth and tries to take it as offered.

First he reminds the guards who are 'helping' treat the fallen how to apply the medicinal leaves: "Lay the leaf flat in your palm, make a fist with your other hand, then bruise the leaf a little with the back of your first until the juice comes out. Then lay it carefully on the wound: it should stick."

Then to Asha he says, starting to walk in the direction of the bandit queen, "That is kind of you. Would you help me investigate the bandit queen before the lighter-fingered of our friends do?"

"Careful!" says Meht. "We're looking for clues, and we don't yet know what they'll be. Check her pockets and her gear, and I'll see where her tracks lead."

Meht puts Oli down and they scout around, not going too far yet, but looking for anything the bandits have dropped, and any clues as to where they came from.

The bandits left nothing but tracks, all heading to a distant line of rolling hills dotted with outcrops of what looks like ochre, and Oli and Meht turn up nothing more interesting than two scraps of cloth snagged on bushes. They sniff them and smell sweat and fear: no surprises there.

Asha calls them back, an awkward shake in her voice, blushing furiously, and she and Meht stare mutely down at the bandit's bare back. Thelonia's back is quite covered with a dramatic tattoo of a beast Meht has never seen before. It seems to have the body of a serpent, dotted with strange symbols; the head of both a crow and some kind of horned goat; and four eagle claws. One claw holds a cup, one a flail, one a flaming branch, and the last a chain with five links.

While he looks at it, lost for words, Asha hands over a tattered map. There's writing on it, which he can't read, but the shapes make more sense, and would seem to show the road the caravan has just traveled, the ambush site, the row of hills, and a dotted line running from the ambush site to a cross in one of the hills. Past the hills are three skulls, whose meaning is less clear but probably doesn't bode well.

Meht hands the map back to Asha: "This looks like a map from those hills to here, but I never learned to read: do you know what this says?"