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. . . Whether by good grand fortune or the foulest interplay of dire luck, Zivka's detour around the Cerebovorando lines have lead her, by bit and by degree, down a small incline in the landscape that terminates in three canvas leantos with banners flapping in the breeze. A single warm campfire and a line of gentle smoke.
And four men in heavy armor moving as if it bothers them not a bit. They keep low conversation. One is sharpening a blade. One stirs the flame. Some sort of succulent meats, sizzling away. Explains the Scraghounds agitation for the last few minutes. It's smells appetizing.
Somehow, in a landscape famous for its emptiness, Zivka has contrived to (un?)fortunately stumble across a patrol of Pytherii Legio, fresh out from some waystation or another. Closest thing passes for law around these parts, sheriffs with a badge and a sword and the backing of the distant grand city of the Empyreal Eye. Used to be they'd run the roads and make sure everything worked, adding their considerable weight to the heavy hand of the Kalcmiri government. The Greenglass Throne has signed accords it is but a protectorate of Pyther, storied and stern, and that Pythers marching men and other types are free to enter, leave and traverse the country. They enforce Kalcmiri laws. They serve its magistrates. They aid its people. They build its bridges. They engineer its public works. They help with crime, with hunger, with woe, with riots, with danger. And in return for this enormous largesse and the profiligate expense it incurs to the Pytherii state, they ask only for the smallest of favours in return. A say in policy, foreign and domestic. The right to try certain criminals for certain crimes in Pytherii fashion. The support for the maintenance of its standing armies. Grain imports. The banning of certain fields of study. And a host of other tiny, small concession that all adds up, over the long years, to rather a lot.
But here are four patrol Legio, probably wandering the Wastes as part of some long recon, sizzling meat on a campfire, and seemingly unbothered by wind, weather, warlike Windsworn and most anything else. They have a certain confidence about them. Theoretically, anyone could deign to attack the Pytherii servicemembers. Theoretically, a man can drink the ocean. Somwhere, in some waystation or another, a sub-decanii will have a listing of patrol patterns to report to a Optio to report to a Stationarii or Officiant to compile and send to a clerk in charge of planning to stamp by a lower officer to get checked over by a Scholae, and on and on and on it goes until it reaches Legion High Command. And the fact of the matter is that if somewhere in that long chain of stamps and seals and counter-seals the words "Four Men Missing" appear on the page, people who take the implied state monopoly on violence they wield rather seriously start getting notions about "shows of force".
So the patrolmen here are at ease.
They don't expect to fight.
