Jeff Inlo - Chain of Bargains

"I know," Sy sighed, "but we can't leave them out here, either."

"Some times you have to let people make their own choices. You've lived by that principle. You've told all these people what they faced. You told them there was room in Connel."

"They won't go," Sy then considered one last option, a plan he had kicked around in his mind the past few days. "What about the rooftops? Why can't we let them camp on top of the inns and merchant shops? Not the ones with the pitched roofs obviously, but there are enough with relatively level rooftops."

The sergeant shrugged. He knew his captain was grasping at straws, but it was at least a temporary solution.

"Might work, but it's not the safest plan."

"Safer than having them outside the wall."

That was true, but it didn't address the real issue, and the sergeant saw it as his duty to speak the complete truth.

"Captain, I don't want to talk out of turn, but we've brought them in twice now and each time the empty space around the wall just fills up again with new refugees. Okay, so we drop a bunch of ladders from the roofs and we let these people set up camp up high. Then what? All this open space will fill up in a few days. We're right back where we started and now we have tents on top of stores and inns. No one's going to be happy about that."

"Everyone will understand. It's not permanent. Maybe we get an answer in a few days. Ryson is out checking on the valleys. Maybe we just need time."

The sergeant shook his head.

"Captain, did you ever really consider what's different now?"

"Different how?"

"Different with Burbon."

"Things have changed a lot with the magic."

"Not what I'm talking about. We survived the magic, but now things are different. I know you understand why Burbon held together and towns like Pinesway just fell apart. Yeah, we owe a lot to you and the wizard, as well as the delver. We're still a town and other places like Pinesway are nothing but abandoned buildings. Having Enin helped, but he's in Connel now. Ryson is a big advantage, but I think we could survive without him if we had to. He sure takes his chances to go exploring. I don't deny it for him. He's a delver. He's got to do what he's got to do. But we still survived."

"What are you trying to say, sergeant?"

"I'm saying what you already know. We survived because there was order here. It wasn't just the wizard or having the delver. It was having everyone understand what was necessary, keeping things within a structure… order. Problem is, we don't have it any more. You can let those people in and put them up on rooftops, but it's only going to make us weaker."

Sy didn't argue. He couldn't. The sergeant was speaking the truth.

"Well, I'm not going to make any decisions right now," Sy announced. "Why don't you go and get some sleep?"

"Sleep? What's that?"

Sy chuckled, but then spoke with a more serious tone.

"You're not going to be any use to me if you fall off that horse. I could make it an order."

"With all due respect, I'll sleep when you do."

"How about we both try? Nothing else is going to happen tonight. The goblins made their raid. They're done."

"Yeah," the sergeant agreed, and he nudged his horse forward.

Sy pulled himself up into the saddle. Before he set off after Klusac, he took a long look at Burbon's wall and the refugees that camped along side it. He couldn't leave them there, but was putting them up in tents on rooftops really the answer? No, that was absurd, the solution of a desperate captain made in the dead of evening. He had to acknowledge the truth, a truth that was just spelled out to him.

Burbon was spiraling out of control and despite his desire to help the refugees, he couldn't let that continue. It would be disaster for all of them.

Holli chose a mid-sized town to continue their search for information, large enough to get lost in a crowd, but not so big it would be difficult to explore. The town was named Huntston, and its borders remained within the southern valley where they began their investigation. It offered storage and loading facilities for regional farms. That would offer a link between the farmers and the town, enough of a connection for the elf to follow up on questions that had arisen from their exploration of the neighboring fields. There was also something about that particular town that bothered Holli, something in the magic that surrounded it.

In reaching out to the magical energy, Holli followed its flow. She let her connection to the magic passively ride the currents to seek out any extraordinary spells. Her perception of the energy was no where near as strong as Enin's, but she had an innate ability to hone in on certain vibrations. As she monitored the magic, she sensed the energy bending inward into the city and then rebounding away, as if something was attracting it at first, but not absorbing it for any specific use.

The aberration raised her concerns, almost to the same level as discovering goblins occupying outlying farms. Magic remained relatively new to the land and she was uncertain of the advent of magic casters in regions so far from her home. Bending magic was not necessarily the sign of advanced sorcery, but the flow was sizable. It was an additional mystery heaped upon a growing puzzle.

The added uncertainty did little to enhance her sense of security. She even considered choosing a different town, but there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. As an elf guard, it was her duty to avoid unnecessary risk, but she knew they would eventually have to examine the irregularity. If they intended to determine the full extent of the odd occurrences in the Great Valleys, anomalies in magic needed to be considered just as much as the occupation of farms by goblins.

Huntston rested quite a distance from the Aranka River, but another major tributary forked into two slightly smaller rivers just to the north. The Twin Rivers, as they were called, cut across Huntston's eastern and western borders, sandwiching the town between their banks. In order to enter Huntston, travelers were forced to cross a bridge over one of the two rivers, unless they came straight up from the southern Twin River Forest.

The terrain through the woods, however, was rough, and roads remained absent within the trees. Farmers carrying crops, merchants with wares, and buyers in search of commodities could not navigate carts through the forest, and were forced to cross one of the rivers.

At the time Holli and Ryson decided to investigate Huntston, the bridges were guarded by several sentries. The elf monitored the crossings from a safe distance throughout the day. She noted that each traveler was stopped for lengthy questioning before being allowed to enter the town.

Hoping to avoid such questions, Ryson and Holli waited for dark. No wall surrounded Huntston, it was just the sentries at the bridges that offered a deterrent to free entry. The elf and delver moved to the south, leapt into the trees and used close hanging branches over the water to cross the western river. They had to leap a fair distance, but it was child's play for two such agile figures.

Once they passed over to solid ground between the two rivers, they quietly climbed through the trees and made their way to the town's southern border. There was one large clearing between the forest and the edge of Huntston, and both Ryson and Holli could see it was watched by guards on rooftops.

The townspeople had not constructed watch towers, which Holli found difficult to believe. She had never before entered Twin River Forest, but she knew it would be a large refuge for dark creatures of all types. The town would be a ripe target, especially with its warehouses and food storage facilities within sight of those that knew how to spot them.