Turn 2 - Days 9 to 15 - Tidjit

 

The following morning, the company moved a little deeper into the White Hills.  They had a shock encounter there with a dying heron-woman, who some callous individual had shot twice and left to slowly perish, after stripping her of all her valuables.  The heron whispered that she was supposed to deliver an important message to the Alderman of Tijdit.  Would Godric fulfil his mission for her, and bring back the reply from Tidjit to Okerdik ?  There would be a reward, and there was no great hurry, for the Alderman would want to take his time.  She whispered the message into Godric's ear, and that was her last breath [News Travels : a letter to deliver from Tijdit to Okerdik, for 1 Gold Mark and 1 Adventure Point, no time limit].

"Tijdit ?" said Radovan, who could not have realised how close he had come to dying, seeing as his escape from the reaper's icy clutches had not lightened his mood.  "Don't let the distance fool you.  See how windy it is here ?  Up in Tidjit, the wind is like daggers of ice.  Unless you want to continue tradition and pass on the message with your dying breath, better forget it, and....".

He trailed off.  Godric spun round, looking for his spear, and stopped dead too.  It was magnificent.  A stag taller than Kehar, its pelt white as pale snow, and antlers that seemed carved from silver.  "A spirit", breathed the Tiger-man as it bounded off.

"What does it want ?" asked Ash in a clear voice, his pain momentarily forgotten.

"It wants us to follow it", replied Parthoghimeos.  "Kehar, Krik, I think that is a task for you".

The company waited in silence for a good few hours.  An awestruck silence, during which they buried the poor heron.  The Tiger and the Insect-Man came back, whistling (well, chittering, in one case).  Slung over their shoulders were heavy cloaks.  They were magnificent, of many layers of soft grey wool beaten into felt, with bluebells somehow cured and worked into the fabric itself.

"Glad we finally made it back", said Kehar.  These things are as warm as they are light.  Oh, and there was lemb-bread laying all packed up in leaves beside them."

"If that isn't a sign, then I don't know what is", replied Godric, and even Radovan had to grunt assent.

[The camp event was Saw a Choice Animal.  The subsequent hunting expedition was unsuccessful, but we spend a Story Point to reroll and it worked.  Elaïn rarely hunt animals, of course, which explains our take on it].

 

The journey to Tidjit was pretty uneventful.

Nobody ever says that.  You freeze going to Tidjit, once you get beyond the White Hills.  Or you are so burdened down in furs that you swear profusely through constant sweating, not daring to remove a layer because the icy wind strips the moisture off you like it was drinking your soul.  Yet the gift from the stag was, as Kehar said, as wonderfully light as it was warm.

The only soul the travellers met was a nun, returning from Tidjit to Mankhandun.  She was in a hurry, and went her way after a few polite words.  Maybe she took time out from swearing profusely under her furs to utter a quick blessing, but if she did, the wind whipped it away.  As they approached Tidjit, the company learned why the nun was wasting no time.  They met the same goatherds who had told the pilgrim that something strange and deadly was afoot, some sort of monster glimpsed under the moonlight [News Travels : Add a Hidden Monster Lair to the PC sheet].