>>5999312On the distant wind, something stirs. The ground out here is craculature and hoof-traps for the unwary, the dry ground turned to a constant plain of trip-traps for marching feet - or worse, galloping hooves.
But, with some deftness, we have learned to make do. It's not all so bad, and there roads and there ways and there are means.
But on the wind something still stirs. Riders, horizon-distant, gone in a heat shimmer. Elos East Station is on the other side of Windchime Passway, which is supposedly held by Fireskellian's 2nd Cohort, which, nearer to the 1st, are deadly indeed.
So why are the riders that shy away from your approach not from Fireskellian's little lot? There are not many ways through the eastern mountainous terrain for horses. This line of geography has torn itself asunder, in the ancient past, spitting out mountains that like teeth and long rivers that cleave the plains. Yeah, you can go around. Theoretically. You can always go around. And eight years hence you might actually make it.
So as it is unlikely these distant heat-shimmer riders have been on the prowl for nigh a decade, perhaps it would be the wise thing to contrive to ambush three of them and find out who there? If they have a pass-phrase or some civilian business, then all joy to them.
So you do.
Or, try to. But they're wily. Two camps you come across, with embers still hot and cookfires undoused. Not a sign of Them. Except in the second camp, red dry stains on the ground and the smell of burning flesh in the air. A horse died here, lamed, from abuse and long rides, and the rider must have doubled back on a companion's steed. Scout-trick. And if they had to both kill a horse and eat it, then double-back at gallop, then far out scouts indeed running low on supplies and with news to report.
The news of *us* coming closer to *them*.
It looks like there are Sparksworn east of the Elos Station, and east of Windchime Passway, and both are places they should not be east off. And for all your far prowling and deft riding, the rumoured 4th and 7th Cohorts, supposedly patrolling this otherwise placid piece of plain have no deigned to make themselves appear. Perhaps more unsettling than strangers riders, that.
We're not supposed to be alone out here.
