Five Leagues Blightburners - While the Trail Is Warm

 If you missed them, the previous turns  are linked here -The Blightburner's Story  

Turn 12 – The Road Home

They made camp on the far side of the burned ruins. Smoke still clung to the trees. Garric’s wounds from the yard went hot and wrong by dark. The skin around the cuts blackened at the edges. He stopped answering when Sigrid called his name.

Grimwald worked by the fire. Scholar’s hands. Old knowledge. He cleaned what he could, packed the rest, and did not stop until the fever broke. Garric lived. He would walk in the morning.

Sigrid paid the Hard Times out of her own kit. Two gold marks. No one argued. No one thanked her.
Finn sat up before first light. The silvertree leaf had done its work. Garric rose slower. Both of them were whole enough to hold a weapon.

Dust trained while the others broke camp. Footwork and the small bow. When the sun cleared the ridge he moved cleaner and meaner. The level stuck.

Vaelith took the north road alone. Bird Maille silent in the black trees. She came back before the meal was cold. The path was clear. No tracks that did not belong. No eyes in the undergrowth. She said nothing else.

Grimwald turned the camp papers and the old writings one more time. Nothing new answered.

They walked north. Torren between them. The Cloister packet still in Rose’s hand. Blackthorn Manor rose on the ridge by dusk, blackthorn hedges thick and watching. Smoke from the hearths. A village now, because a Blackthorn had come home and stayed.

They were back.

At the Blackthorn Inn

Turn 13 Prep – Blackthorn and the Word from Harrowfen

Torren walked through the manor gate under his own power. Elara met him in the yard. No speeches. She put a hand on his shoulder and took him inside. The Cloister packet went to Brother Cald’s contact without ceremony. One gold for the delivery. Another for the speed. Cald’s name was good at the gate. The contract closed.

The manor yard had turned loud by dusk. Dice on every barrel. Cards on every bench. Men who had not held coin a week ago were betting the next week’s wages. The craze sat on the place like smoke.

Sigrid paid Hard Times again. Two more marks from her kit. No one asked where it came from.

Rose took the training yard at first light. Rapier work against the old manor posts. When the sun climbed she moved faster and struck cleaner. The level stuck.

Vaelith sat at a table by the wall and put coin down. No smile. No talk. She won four marks and left the table before anyone could call her back. Sigrid watched from the doorway. The smirk stayed on her mouth.

“More to you than the cold,” she said. Vaelith did not answer.

Sigrid spent the rest in the market. An icon that sat heavy in the hand and gave her another notch of devotion. A dose of silvertree leaf. A dose of tonic. She kept both.

Grimwald turned the papers and the old writings once more. Nothing answered.

Two refugees found them at the gate after dark. Thin. Mud to the knees. They had walked from a forgotten hamlet south of the manor, past the last blackthorn hedges where a few families still tried to live outside the villages. They called it Harrowfen. Cold-hearted poachers had hit it hard. An outlaw knight at the head. They had taken what they could carry and run. The rest of the families were still there. The refugees gave directions. They gave prayers. They did not ask for coin.

Sigrid gathered the warband in the yard.

“Outlaws south,” she said. “Harrowfen. We hit them while the trail is warm. Then we finish the road to the sunken chapel and take what is buried there.”

No one argued. They sharpened what needed sharpening and pointed south.

Turn 13 Battle – Harrowfen 

Table setup- 

The road south was quiet. Too quiet. They knew the way. Sigrid spent the Story Point before the first step into the square and the Battlewise held. They took the edges and the stone without a word.

They seized the initiative. Dust’s first arrow crossed the courtyard and put an archer down hard. Stunned. Wounded. Vaelith’s shot came a breath later. The man never heard it, never heard anything ever again. Finn’s arrow hit the big poacher by the stables and left him staggering.  The rest of the group moved up at the ready.

Seize the Initiative

Round one-

Dust finished his archer before the man could stand. Finn’s bowstring snapped on the draw. He spent the round swearing and restringing. A poacher came at Sigrid hard. Steel rang. Both of them were still on their feet when it stopped. Sigrid’s mouth went thin.

Grimwald stepped out and put Weaken on the knight’s armor as the man cleared the homestead door. Garric met him. The exchange was ugly and even. The knight stepped back. Rose came in on the same line. The knight staggered, stunned. Venom Fang did not take.

Sigrid pressed the poacher again. Still no blood. The man was tougher than he looked. Vaelith put an arrow into another poacher closing on Sigrid from the flank. He dropped before he reached the melee.

Round two -

Dust’s next shot staggered a poacher already moving on Sigrid. Sigrid was done waiting. Battering Storm took the man in a pair of blows that did not leave him standing. Garric charged the first knight. When the exchange ended the knight was bleeding out at his feet. Garric smiled. Rose winked, “Well look at you.”

She intercepted the next poacher. The first pass was a draw. He came back at her. Venom Fang bit. He went down writhing. Three more poachers charged Garric and never quite closed. Vaelith dropped one of them with a clean shot.

Finn finished the bowstring.

A second outlaw knight stepped out of a house on the far side. No one had said there were two.

 

Round three -

Garric went in again and cut down one of the remaining poachers. Sigrid walked over the bodies and met the second knight. Battering Storm boomed once. The blade vibrated. She cleaved him in two. Rose smirked.

“Show off.”

She glided past the bodies and ran the last poacher through without slowing.

The square was quiet again. They checked the houses.

The cellar under the stone building was locked from the outside. Garric kicked the door. Three rooms off a short passage. Women bound in the first. Children in the second. Men beaten bloody and tied in the third. Rope on the wrists. Blood on the floor. The women looked up when the light hit them. One of them had already started to shake.
Sigrid cut the ropes. Rose stood in the doorway with Venom Fang still wet and did not speak. Dust stayed on the stairs. No one asked what had been about to happen. They had arrived in time. That was enough.

Post Battle -  

They made camp in the square. Fire in the open. No one went inside the houses.

The women came up first. They cut the rest of the ropes themselves and went for the children. The men stayed down longer. One of them walked the bodies to the edge of the yard with Garric and stacked them by the well. No one spoke over them. Sigrid put the torch in before full dark. The smoke went south with the wind. The people of Harrowfen stayed close to the fire and did not look at the flames.

They left at first light. The square was empty again except for the ash.

The Outlaw Bands threat was done. One Adventure Point. Spice jars worth three marks. Jewelry worth four. 

Everyone took something from the fight in the square square. Finn had spent he evening in the yard practicing and took the level anyway. Combat. He had fixed a bowstring and little else. No one said it out loud.

They left Harrowfen behind them. South of the last hedges they met a band of pilgrims on the road, a caravan bound for the Ashen Cloister. The bells and the springs could wait. The sunken chapel was still ahead.

Harrowfen 

 

Five Leagues Blightburners - While the Iron is Hot

 If you missed them, the previous turns  are linked here -The Blightburner's Story  

Turn 11 Battle - The Curse of War Camp Raid

They left Torren in the camp with the packet and a sharp word not to wander. "Stay here," Sigrid told him. "The Curse camp sits down that road. We finish them, then take you home." 

Rose grinned "While the iron is hot." 

The Cloister road ran north through black trees. An old huntsman met them where the track forked. Grey beard. Quiet eyes. He looked at their bows, grunted, and pressed a bundle of fine arrows into Finn’s hands.

"Camp is in the old ruins," he said. "Dark forest. West of the loud road. Go quiet and you will see their fire before they see you."

They went quiet.

The ruins sat in a bowl of trees. Fallen walls. A cart. Tents pitched in the stone. A fire. At a table in the center, three Forsaken elite were arguing over a long thin blade that shimmered green, and a scatter of other loot. The woman at the head of the table had a bleach topknot with a red tip. Plate. Shield. A spiked mace across her knees. Veyra Holt. The Forsaken called her Redtip when she was not listening.  She was the Marshall of the Curse of War.

 

Veyra Redtip Holt

Table Setup

 

Sigrid split them. Archers and Grimwald into the rocks above the camp. She, Rose, and Garric stayed south in the brush along the old road.

Sigrid leads 

Vaelith ghosted into the rocks and found her lane. Dust followed. His boot found loose stone. The clatter carried.

The camp looked up.

In the rocks

Vaelith and Dust rose and loosed at the rear-guard crossbowmen. Both arrows hit. One man staggered, wounded and stunned. The other’s armor turned the point. Finn was just in range on the fine bow and the huntsman’s arrows. His shot struck and died on plate.

Grimwald stepped up, staff low, and put Weaken on the marshall. Holt’s shoulders sagged a fraction. She felt it. She kicked the table over, dropped behind it, and started barking.

The rear guard returned fire. They missed Vaelith. The bolt meant for Dust was a killing shot. He spent Luck and went sideways off the rock as the quarrel cut where his throat had been.

A front guard left the wagon and climbed into the rocks, looking for cover and a way at the archers. The center Forsaken moved up behind stone. Holt pointed and they moved.

 Veyra barks orders

Sigrid came out of the brush with Battering Storm already moving. The side guard turned. The big sword took him at the waist and opened him. He fell in two pieces. Garric and Rose came up behind her, weapons ready, and did not waste the breath.

 

Sig takes the guard

The rear guard loosed again. Dust they missed. Vaelith they hit. Her Bird Maille held. She stayed on her feet, stunned and cold-eyed.

A Forsaken elite hit Garric. Neither gave ground clean. Garric took a step back. A second elite drove in on the same line and shoved him another step. The third went for Rose. Steel rang. When it stopped, the man was on his back with his blood leaving him, and Rose looked down like he had wasted her time.

"Stay there," she said.

 

 

Into the fray

The Forsaken from the wagon-line reached Finn in the rocks. The blow should have ended him. Finn spent Luck and threw himself backward off the stone. He hit the ground hard.

Finn scrambles for his life

Veyra Holt came forward over the kicked table, mace up, still giving orders.

Grimwald slid off the rock away from the elite on Finn and put Steelbreak on the marshall. Something in her plate rang wrong.

Garric went back at the elite who had shoved him. He lost the exchange. The man put him down. Garric was out of the fight.

Sigrid saw it. She came in shouting. Battering Storm boomed and the Forsaken who had dropped Garric went into a heap that did not get up. 

Vaelith, Dust, and Finn loosed together. One rear-guard crossbowman pitched off the wall into the yard. Dust’s arrow went wide. Finn had the elite at arm’s length and still missed. He reached for another shaft and found the quiver empty.

Rose looked across the yard. The green blade was on the ground where the table had been. She ran, dropped the Fey rapier, and took the new one up. It pulled. Not a voice. A want. It wanted the woman with the red tip.

 

Fight in the yard 

She met Holt in the open. Mace and green steel. The marshall was weakened and her plate was already failing. The exchange was ugly and short at the end. Venom Fang went in. Holt folded, curled on the stones, poisoned and dying. The topknot came undone in the dirt.

Vaelith leaned over the rock and shot the elite still on Finn. The arrow took him off his line. Finn scrabbled for shafts he did not have.

Rose stood over Holt, breathing hard. A quarrel took her in the back.

"The fuck?" she screamed, and turned. The rear-guard crossbowman was already loading for another shot.

The elite Vaelith had staggered got up and hit Finn anyway. Finn went into the stones and did not get up.

 Finn is down

Dust put an arrow into the last rear-guard crossbowman. Armor held again.

Sigrid walked into the last Forsaken elite in the yard. Battering Storm ended the argument. He lay there considering his life choices and then stopped.

 Sig finishes the day's work

The crossbowman on the wall lined up on Rose again. Vaelith did not give him the shot. Her arrow took him in the face. He dropped into the courtyard in a heap. She looked at Rose and nodded once.

Rose blew her a kiss. Ugly. Honest. They were friends after that, and Rose knew the debt.

Dust, watching Vaelith work, leaned over and put a point-blank arrow into the head of the elite standing over Finn.

Grimwald ran for Finn. Sigrid ran for Garric.

Grimwald helps Finn

The camp was theirs.

Six gold off the dead. Nine Adventure Points. The milestone came with it. The Curse of War was done. A Story Point. A bag of five gems worth five gold. The camp’s papers confirmed the Gnawling warren and marked a new unexplored lead. Sigrid’s will hardened another notch. Vaelith came away tougher.

Finn was saved by a silvertree leaf forced between his teeth. He would live. So would Garric. Both of them were out for a turn.

No one argued when Rose kept Venom Fang. She picked up the Fey rapier, looked at Vaelith, and held it out.

"This should belong to you."

Vaelith took it.

They piled the corpses in the cart and around the fallen timber. Holt went on the top, red tip and all. Sigrid put the torch in. The ruins took the fire. The Marches would smell it.

 

On the road after, a band of hedge knights passed them at a canter, called to arms. A duke was raiding the Ruin Within. He had heard what the Blightburners did to the Curse. The Ruin’s threat dropped by one.

The Curse of War was ash. The iron had been hot. They had used it.

 

 

 

Rear-guard 

 

 Side guard

 

Five Leagues - Blightburners Turn 10 to 11 - Ashen Cloister Road

If you missed them, the previous turns  are linked here -The Blightburner's Story   

Aftermath and on to the Ashen Cloister Road

 

 

The Ashen Cloister

 

They stacked the Forsaken in the cabin yard and put the torch to the porch. Red boards went up fast. The captain burned with the rest. One man was already gone into the trees. Sigrid did not wait for him.

"Cloister," she said. "Elara's brother. We walk."

Vaelith watched the smoke a moment, then turned her back on it.

The black forest thinned as the ground rose. Southern hills. Sour grass. A feeder stream that still ran too thick. They made camp when the cabin smoke was only a smear on the ridge behind them.

Hard Times came looking. Roots and late berries took the teeth out of it. One gold. Sigrid paid it and did not complain.

Grimwald spent the evening drilling footwork he was too old for. Staff low. Step. Turn. Step. His knees cracked. His hands did not. By full dark he was quicker than he had been at dawn. Meaner about it, too.

"Research," Rose said.

"Nothing," Grimwald said. "The ground here doesn't keep books."

Dust and Vaelith went out while the fire was still small. They came back with a pouch of springwind berries, pale and sharp-smelling, the kind cooks bake and soldiers eat raw when they need their legs. Dust tied the pouch to his belt. Vaelith did not ask for a share.

Morning put them back on the track. That was when they met the laughing girl.

She was sitting on a milestone with a wooden flute across her knees and a tin saint hung around her neck on a frayed cord. Blonde pigtails tied in red ribbon. One boot off. Toenails black. Pretty in the way road-dirt never quite kills. She looked up, saw six armed people and a Halfling with a war-bow, and grinned like the track had done her a favor.

"If you're robbing me, take the flute," she said. "The tonic's worse."

Finn had an arrow half-drawn. He lowered it. Garric kept a hand on the bastard sword. The girl kept smiling.

Sigrid stopped. "Name."

"Ivy Merrin. Merry Ivy, if you've heard the bad songs. I was an Ashen novice until I laughed through a death-watch. Prior threw me out with one shoe. I've been walking the joke off ever since." She nodded at the hills. "You're going to the Cloister. I can smell the springs on the wind. Rot in it this season. You'll want someone who knows which stair doesn't creak."

Rose's mouth went thin. "We don't hire fools."

"Good," Ivy said. "I'm expensive when I'm foolish. Today I'm only lost, and you're only ugly. We can share a road."

Vaelith looked at her the way she looked at doors. "She isn't lying. She's just enjoying it."

Sigrid jerked her chin. "Walk in front. If you're a trap, you die first."

Ivy put her boot on, bowed like a drunk courtier, and fell in. She did not play. She talked the whole way. Bad saints. Worse cooks. A prior who snored through his own prayers. Finn laughed once, then found a reason to walk beside her, then another. Rose watched him do it and said nothing. By the time the bells showed, Ivy was their friend whether Rose liked it or not.

 

Ashen Cloister sat on the southern hills where the old sect had planted it, long before the Womb opened. Pale stone. A square bell tower. Hot springs breathing under the walls. The air smelled of wet mineral and, under that, rot. Bells rang when no hour called for them. Pale-robed monks moved in the yards with their eyes down. On an inner wall, half-hidden by steam, someone had started a green mark and not finished it.

Ivy took them to a side door used by tonic-sellers and penitent drunks. A lay sister with ash on her cuffs counted heads, took coin, and gave them two rooms over the stables. Narrow cots. A basin. A window that faced the spring-house. Garric claimed the corner and set his new armor where he could see the door. Finn took the cot nearest the hall, where a flute might pass.

Sigrid showed Elara's letter.

The sister did not read it long. "Guest wing. West stair. Torren. He came in shaking and has not asked to leave. We do not ask why. The springs are for endurance, not questions."

They found him in a cell that was trying to be a room. Thin man. Elara's mouth. A fresh scar at the hairline and hands that would not stay still. He looked at the letter, then at Rose, then at the steel in the doorway.

"She said someone would come," Torren said. "I didn't think it would be a warband."

"It's us," Sigrid said. "We burn what needs burning. Then we take you home."

Ivy leaned on the doorframe, flute in her fist, and smiled at the poor bastard like this was the best part of the song. Finn smiled at her instead.

"Welcome to the Cloister," she said. "Try not to drink the water."

Turn 11- A Day at the Cloister

The lay sister caught them in the yard before the bells lied again.

"Letter," she said. "Left for the northerners with the blackthorn girl. Been sitting in the ash-box two days."

Sigrid broke the seal with a thumb. Mara Reed’s hand. Short. Hunter-plain.

Heard you were walking south. The woods between the manor and the Cloister are wrong again. Not cultists. Soldiers who will not stay dead. If you are still breathing when you read this, count it as luck I owed you.

No coin in it. Just the weight of a friend who had already paid them once and still meant it. Sigrid folded the page into her kit beside Elara’s letter. One more reason not to die stupid.

The town crier was already shouting by the spring-house gate. Pale robe. Cracked voice. Brother Cald. A sealed packet for Blackthorn Manor. Tonic, copied vows, and a prior’s mark. One gold, and another if they took it before the shout went cold.

Rose looked at Torren, then at the road home. "We are already walking that way."

"We take it," Sigrid said.

Brother Cald stopped shouting. He pressed the packet into Rose’s hand and the two gold into Sigrid’s, and some of the crack left his voice.

"Then I owe you a door here," he said. "Ask for Cald. The Cloister will know."

A friend in the ash and the steam. Cheap, for what they were about to walk into.

Hard Times found them anyway. Four gold. Sigrid counted it out herself and did not flinch. Generous, for her. The purse hated it. She did not.

The town guard was short two men and long on trouble at the lower gate. Drunk initiates. A thief in the tonic sheds. Nothing that needed a battle. Garric stood in the yard like a wall. Finn watched the roofs. Dust put an arrow in a post and everybody suddenly remembered their manners. Three gold for the afternoon. Ivy played nothing and laughed at all of it. Finn laughed when she did.

Sigrid spent what was left of the light on the straw post behind the stables. Battering Storm rose and fell until her shoulder burned. No new trick. Just the old one, driven deeper. One more mark of experience. Not a level. Enough.

Come morning they sold what they had been hauling since the road went bad. The stolen furs from the deserters at the crumbling inn, still worth five. The spice jars from the logger cabin, worth four. A Cloister broker paid without asking where the blood had been. Garric kept the armor. Sigrid kept the Curing Ward. Dust kept the springwind berries.

Grimwald took the afternoon in the scriptorium and came back with ink on his fingers and no patience.

"Not the chapel," he said. "A different contract. Something lost. A new mark on the map, unexplored. They want it fetched."

Sigrid did not take the page.

"Not our problem," she said. "Bigger fish."

Vaelith watched the paper go back into his sleeve. The drowned vault could wait. So could this. The Curse could not.

They spent the Adventure Points the hideout had paid them. The Curse of War dropped again. The captain’s death and the burned cabin had finally reached the tally. The same digging turned up a second hole. Gnawling Horde. A hidden warren, not on the Cloister road. Teeth in the mire. Marked. Not today.

Sigrid stood in the stable doorway with Torren’s kit already strapped and the Cloister packet in Rose’s hand. Ivy leaned on the frame, flute idle. Finn stood closer than the job required.

"The brother goes home," Sigrid said. "The packet goes home. But the Curse camp sits on that road, and it is still warm. We hit it while the iron is hot."

She looked at the steel in the room.

"Sharpen your swords. Gather your arrows. We end the Curse of War next."