It was a short ride to the hamlet of Kadail, a moderately prosperous manor tucked into a small valley surrounded by gently rolling hills. Like most manors in these northern mountains, its lord kept a fair-sized flock of sheep to supplement the agricultural output, and the brilliant green hillsides were dotted with sparks of white. Many of the beasts were greatly pregnant, Vulk noted as they rode down the last stretch of rutted track to the manor house … it made him think of Raven, who would be dropping her own lamb around the same time as these ewes, this upcoming spring.
As bucolic as the sheep on winter-green hillsides were, they were instantly forgotten as the Hand entered the small valley and saw the great Common field before them, to the left of the road. The vibrant green of the grass was barely visible beneath a blanket of winterstar, whose thousands of small, brilliant white blossoms made the sun-dappled sheep seem grey in comparison. The group stopped for a moment in sheer delight as the shifting patterns of sun and shadow from the scudding clouds turned the field into a shimmering sea of stars fallen to earth.
But the day was cool and windy, and there was business to see to, so after a few moments they nudged their horses into movement and continued on into the open yard of the manor house. The usual late winter routine of the manor village was clearly disrupted, with groups of men arriving and departing from and to various quarters of the fief, obviously search parties. A distracted beadle pulled away from one such group to greet the new arrivals.
“We’re grateful for any assistance, m’lords, lady,” he said after Vulk had explained their mission. “We’ve searched every inch of the fief, with no trace of the lad… it seems he might be a runaway after all, despite what his parents say…”
“Tell us the particulars, and then we’d like to speak with the parents,” Vulk said as grooms led their horses to the stables. “Start with the last time the missing boy was seen.”
With several other villagers offering corrections and comments, the story that unfolded seemed simple enough: the 16-year-old son of a prominent villein family, Karl Vesson, was last seen at the bonfire party on the night of Kristala Va. The next morning his younger brother, 14-year-old Lernan, woke to find the pallet next to his empty. The father, Selad Vesson, began an angry search, assuming his son was goofing off, trying to avoid his chores, but by mid-morning had come to realize the boy was really gone. Most telling to the increasingly frantic mother was the fact that he was apparently still wearing his good holiday clothes, a fine blue wool tunic and white leggings.
Most of the villagers were disinclined to get too excited, at first – Selad Vesson was not the most beloved man on the manor, though well enough respected for his hard work, and his sons were seemingly universally disliked as bullies and mean-spirited pranksters. But when the boy had not shown up by nightfall, even the most cynical had come to believe something was wrong, although most seemed to feel Karl was likely a run-away; only a minority thought he might be the victim of an accident or foul play.
Fearful of the attention from their overlords that a fleeing serf would bring on the manor, the next day the search was begun in earnest. While the men formed search parties and the women gathered to console the increasingly hysterical mother (apparently the only person who actually liked the missing boy), a runner was sent to Dor Dür to inform the Constable.
“I’d like to speak with the family,” Mariala said after this tale wound down, and the beadle led the way to the largest of the villein’s crofts. There the local women were shooed outside while the Hand stepped inside. Selad Vesson was a large man, with rough, strong hands and a thick head of shaggy brown hair, just beginning to be streaked with gray. His wife was a short, raw-boned woman, rangy, with auburn hair now gone almost totally gray, her eyes and nose red from crying. The younger son, Lernan, seemed to be big for his age, obviously taking after his father, and sat quiet and sullen in a dark corner, eyes locked on the floor, perhaps as much to avoid his mother’s hysterics as anything.
Questioning merely reiterated what had already been learned, until Mariala spoke to Lernan. He seemed shy and hesitant, but she sensed that he knew something. With Vulk’s rhetorical eloquence they were able to convince the boy’s clinging mother to let him out of her sight for a few minutes, and once away from his parents the lad slowly began to open up under their persistent questioning.
“We got in a wrasslin’ match that night, after the bonfires,” he finally admitted, with a sheepish look. “I’m bigger than Karl now, even though he’s older, and I thrashed him… I might’ve been… I gave him a hard time, I guess, he was madder than anything. He slugged me in the gut and took off… that’s the last I saw him, I swear… I don’t think he run off, though, he wants the farm after Da is gone…”
“Do you have any idea where your brother might have gone,” Mariala prodded, giving the boy a sympathetic smile and touching his shoulder. He blushed, and stammered a bit, then looked thoughtful.
“I… maybe… we had a dare, for a long time now, about proving who was braver… we never actually did it, but we talked about it…”
“What?” Vulk demanded. “What dare?”
“Going into the Moaning Mouth Cave…”
Murmurs from the beadle and his cronies, when told this information and asked about the cave, were shocked and horrified.
“Oh no, m’lord,” the disturbed beadle assured Vulk when pressed. “Surely the boy was not so mad as to do that! Everyone knows that place is haunted by the spirits of the restless dead… you can hear them moaning and calling out for the warmth of the living, we’ve all heard it. The children might dare themselves to go near enough to hear the ghosts, I did it as a lad, we all have…. but no one would actually go in there!”
“Has anyone searched the cave, or even the area around it?” Erol asked dryly, unimpressed with talk of ghosts and hauntings.
“No, no, m’lord,” the man replied, looking shocked. “No one would go near, even if they thought… no, no he couldn’t have gone there.”
“Has anyone else gone missing recently?” Erol changed tack, deciding he wasn’t going to get anything useful about the cave from this superstitious lot of peasants.
“No, no one –” the beadle began, only to be interrupted by one of his cronies.
“Well, what about old Tarvo?” the graybeard said. “That was a bit odd, though I hadn’t thought it’d anything to do with the Vesson boy.”
“Well, yes,” the beadle admitted, frowning. “That was a bit odd, but as you say what could it have to do with the missing boy?” At the impatient looks from his noble visitors, the man hastily explained what they were talking about.
“Towards late winter every year an old peddler, Tarvo Arken, makes his rounds in the hundred, selling small goods, sharpening knives and especially selling winter oats. He showed up early this year, no doubt this mild winter encouraged him… it was a tenday ago he arrived, just as the sun was setting… several people saw him setting his tent up on the Common. I think a few spoke to him that evening, but he seemed crankier than usual, and said he’d deal in the morning.
“But come the morning he was gone, pack, wares and all… well, except for his tent. We thought it odd, but then he always was a bit… strange. And he’s not one of ours, so not much thought was given to the matter, except a s a curiosity. The holiday, and then the missing boy, well, they just drove it right out of mind…”
“You didn’t find it suspicious that he left his tent?” Korwin asked, frowning.
“Well, it did seem odd, as I’ve said m’lord, but it was an old and patchy tent, with more than one hole… perhaps he decided it was more trouble than it was worth to take down and pack.” The beadle looked troubled though, as he considered the matter more carefully. “But I still don’t see –”
“No, obviously not,” Erol interrupted. “But we will. Can you take us to the spot where he’d pitched his tent. And do you still have the tent itself?”
They did and they could. While several men went off to fetch the tent, the beadle led the Hand to a spot on the winterstar-bestrewn Common, near the western edge. A close examination of the sight showed where four iron spikes had been driven into the ground. Or rather three spike holes, and a long, shallow stretch of disturbed earth where the fourth would have been. It had been covered back over, but Erol was quickly able to determine that a shallow trench had been dug up, maybe half a meter long, 100 cm wide and 150 cm deep.
“Interesting,” he said after he had dug out the loosened dirt and they all stared down at the dark scar amidst the brilliant flowers and grass. “I wonder what the old peddler uncovered that night, as he was pitching his tent?”
But no one had an answer to that, and examination of the tent, its ropes and its spikes revealed nothing of interest. It seemed the only line of inquiry left to the group was to check out the mysterious Moaning Mouth Cave.
The beadle reluctantly assigned two of the village youths (none were willing to do it alone) to lead the party to the area of the cave, with repeated pleas that it was unnecessary and foolish, though he couched the latter sentiment very carefully…
Leaving Cris and Jeb to tend the horses and watch over their saddlebags, the group followed their nervous guide into the thick wood of winter-bare trees west of the manor’s fields. A half hour walk brought them to a short bluff, crowned with overhanging oaks. As they neared the spot, a low, eerie moaning could be heard over the sloughing of the wind through the branches of the trees. The sound got louder and more unnerving, seeming to grate on the nerves, until they stood at the foot of the steep slope of scree that led up to a small dark opening some 3 meters up the face of the bluff.
“That’s it, m’lords,” one of the native guides mumbled nervously, gesturing to the cave mouth. Before anyone could reply, both youths had turned tail and dashed off back toward home.
The climb up to the cave mouth was treacherous, but everyone made it without mishap, and the group soon stood on the narrow shelf before the black opening. About 2 meters wide and 1.5 high, it had an uninviting look, and the low moaning emanating from it, which did indeed sound like the cries of lost souls, didn’t help the matter.
“It’s just the wind, blowing through cracks in the damn rocks,” Korwin pointed out.
“Yes, we know,” Vulk replied testily. “But you can see why the ignorant might fear the place. Do we really think the boy went in here, at night, whatever the provocation to his manhood?”
“If it was a calm night, with no wind, there’d have been no moaning,” Mariala pointed out. “That might have been enough for him to work up the nerve…”
With a collective sigh, the group lit torches and bent to enter the cave. A long narrow passage wound into the hillside for about 6 meters before opening into a wider chamber. Stepping into this larger space they immediately noticed two things: the moaning had died to almost nothing here, and the stench was terrible. They soon discovered the stench was due to a large colony of bats in the NW corner of the space, when, disturbed by the noise and light, they swirled around the adventurers in a mad dash for the exit.
The floor of the cavern was uneven, with several large depressions, including one especially large one with a pool of fetid water at the bottom , and strewn with rocky debris that made footing treacherous. It was cold and dank, and the flickering torches only served to make the place more spooky…
The northern exit from the chamber was narrow, as was the southern one – both so narrow that everyone except Mariala would need to remove their armor before they could squeeze through. Fortunately for the group, Erol’s sharp eye caught the signs of the mornoga fungus colony that occupied the SW corner of the cavern before anyone stepped into it and died a horrible acid death. Unfortunately, their first clue, a thread of bright blue wool caught on a rock near the southern exit, forced them to tread carefully past the deadly mushrooms… but there were no slips, and after several minutes of removing armor everyone squeezed through the narrow opening.
They debouched onto a narrow ledge that ran around a large, sloping pit, at the bottom of which could be seen another pool of dark water. Unfortunately the footing was no less treacherous here, but with less margin for error – Mariala was the first to lose her footing and tumble and slide down the steep slope, but was soon followed by Korwin and Vulk. None were seriously injured, just a few bruises, but the water in boots and soaking trousers made the dank, cold air even more unpleasant. Toran skipped lightly along the rocky shelf, of course, and Erol, while not as nimble, also avoided a fall.
The northern portion of this cavern was flatter and less rubble-strewn, and after re-armoring, they searched it carefully. A southern exit led to a steep slope down, and the northern one was far to narrow for even Mariala to get through. This left the middle passage as the most likely path Karl might have taken, and the charred remains of a crude torch, a meter down the passage, and Korwin’s psychometry, confirmed it. Unfortunately, the entrance was low and the passage beyond sloped sharply upward, which meant no weapon much longer than a meter could be taken through. Erol was forced to leave his spears behind, leaning against a nearby wall, and Korwin was barely able to manage his new Khundari-made cutlass.
From here the passage again sloped downward before opening into a small chamber with several possible exits. But before the group could even begin to ponder which one they should explore first, a sudden and horribly familiar chittering brought them to sudden alert. Even as they turned, a toloxta leaped towards Toran’s face, attempting to live up to its moniker, the Eater of Eyes. But the Khundari’s well-trained reflexes were faster, and his battle-axe clove the beast in two, midair.
Erol was not so lucky as several more of the monstrous little beasts leaped out of the dark, and he took a nasty, raking claw wound to the face and neck. Mariala and Korwin insantly began spells of confusion and drunkenness, as Toran missed his swing at a second beast. Erol’s own second attack took out a creature confused by Mariala’s spell, while Vulk attempted to raise his holy armor, to no avail.
A confusing, fierce battle ensued
