>>5194844The carriage leaves its master behind, and makes its way to the edge of Hawksong. It exits the major trade gate and rolls slowly in the direction of the countryside—towards Sparrowton, where your journey began. It’s almost poetic, in its way, though a more paranoid part of you (and irinnile) wonder what that implies for The incubus’ knowledge of your journeys… And your destination, the entrance to the local Reptilian forward base within the nearby hills. Roth, too, fidgets, elbowing himself space and idly fingering the hilt of the blade on his side.
By midday, the carriage takes a detour from the main road, driving into farmland only distantly adjacent to even a rural town centre. There are great tracts of land here—great enough to feed the humans’ premier metropolis, you suppose—and this affords certain farmers a great deal of privacy.
A scarecrow awaits you on this particular plot of land, at the end of the dirt road where your carriage-ride comes to an end. In the midst of a great field of grain. Only as you step out do you realize it is no scarecrow—in fact, there is a crow alighted upon the hatted figure of a farmer. With a familiar overfamiliarity, he speaks up, saying:
“What took you so long?”
‘The Incubus,’ Irinnile hisses.
“We cannot all travel asss the crow fliess,” you say.
The Incubus, in form of farmer, laughs good-naturedly—if uncannily, unable to conceal the inhumanity in the sound.
“Come, come,” it says. “Come see the ‘merchandise’, will you? I’m eager to trade these hungry mouths for what’s in that scroll-case.”
