Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">Meanwhile, elsewhere</span>
After an hour of resting in the shade of the sunbaked house and the wind-break cliffs, Scarlett kicks off of the ground and adjusts her hair. Finds her best smile.
Nothing's moved down the village-way, and the heat shimmer is getting intense. Doesn't stand to reason: You'd think it got colder in the evenings out here in the sandlands, but for obtuse reasons that meteorologists fail to convey, the last hours before the sun finally dips beneath the horizon always feel the most warm.
Two of the spearmen snap in and tag along, and the more well behaved hounds.
The people here were friendly enough last time we went around and they have no reason to dislike us. This isn't even the deep wastes. Technically - though it's a very large technical and seldom enforced - this whole place falls under the august authority of the Kalcmiri Greenglass Throne, from the distant capital on the coast a few hundred miles down that direction. They should be taxpaying, constitution protected citizens of a functional state.
The fact that there's a dead dog lying in the streets in a buzz of flies when the little troupe rounds the corner puts an odd spin on <span class="mu-i">that</span> - four arrows in the dirt and one in the throat. The fletchings look . . . off. Not feathers. Some other material, stark and colourful in the gradually setting sun.
The road stretches on ahead of Scarlett. This place isn't big, just twenty-thirty houses of brick and clay and sunbaked other materials forming a rough X around a cross-roads between Here and There. The old building the Commander rented out for storage is up ahead. Behind the dead dog.
But the whole village and it's, what, hundred-some souls? Not a. . . peep.
Without being told to do so, one of the spearmen gently adjusts his longknife in the belt. Just make it easier to draw.
Okay lets not panick yet, this could be a feral scraghound roaming in off of the wastes in search of food and flesh. They do that a LOT and it stands to reason any village wouldn't want it to paw back to its pack and bring half a thousand of its hungry four footed friends around. And this could still all be some ritual holy day or village thing. What a <span class="mu-i">professional</span> would do is continue on ahead and check the centre of the X the village forms, because at the crossroads is where people would be if there's any people to be found. Largest, oldest buildings there. Good chance to spot any activity.
Conversely, what a cautious woman of cunning might do is to turn RIGHT back around and hoof it back to Zivka and hunker down in that abandoned hut at the edge of town. Worst comes to worse, it's a smile and a coin to convince any family who comes back home that there's been some kind of mistake and you just needed to rest there for a spell.
Though maybe it's worth investigating that dead creature and the village...
