A Change of Plans
Eight men who were paid to kill the Valiant Few end the week eating their food, and the company that came to break curses decides to break a man instead
TL;DR
The second crew went down without a death: five taken alive, including a bugbear who dropped out of the canopy onto Koa and was flattened for it. That left eight prisoners at the Crack who could not be fed indefinitely, could not be released toward Haudh-Gwenn without giving up the base, and could not be killed, because Leon would not have it. Five were talked round. The interrogations put Beltran behind the bounty past doubt, and the company changed what it is for.
First seen
- Daric: the bugbear who ran both crews; says he gets the job done and does not kill
- Woobrun: the first of them to talk, and glad to
- Sarro Rashid: the councilor whose family ran the Haudh-Gwenn bank, taken away by wagon
What changed
- The curse-keeps are shelved. Beltran is the priority, Haudh-Gwenn the ground.
- Five prisoners have joined; three are caged, and one will never be trusted.
- Beltran paid for the hunt, through Whent and a handful of guards on his coin.
- Dwayne stays at the Crack teaching hunting and fletching, but will not fight Haudh-Gwenn.
- The Rashid family were kidnapped months ago: which explains the bank taking the party’s money.
Left open
- Where the wagon carrying the Rashids went.
- What misinformation the released prisoners should be carrying, and when.
- Whether the Westwood tunnel is worth an engineer, or worth abandoning.
Synopsis
They took the second camp at dusk with five volunteers out of the Crack behind them, and took it whole. Mikhail put the first man to sleep before he could shout; Aldo refused the safe shot and put an arrow through an archer’s arm instead, to keep the man alive to be taken; and when a bugbear came out of the canopy at Koa’s flank, Koa turned and dropped it in one blow, then talked the last man standing into laying down his sword. Mikhail then stabilized the bugbear rather than let the enemy’s leader bleed out.
The talkative one gave his name as Woobrun, and everything else with it. The guard, Whent, had hired them at two gold a head to hunt outlaws; nobody had told them who the outlaws were, though he recognized them now. A fifth man was out scouting, so the captives went home with the volunteers and the three stayed behind. Woobrun offered the crew’s bird-call signal and returned it himself; the scout walked in, said it’s the Valiant Few, and dropped his weapon.
The war-council with Leon worked at the eight prisoners most of the night. They could not be fed indefinitely. Releasing them into Haudh-Gwenn would hand the base to Beltran. Execution Leon refused outright. His counter was the Peredhel buddy system (recruits tethered in pairs to learn to move as one), which doubles neatly as a rope on a man nobody trusts.
Aldo walked out when the talk turned to recruiting them. These were men who had tried to kill all three of them and had forced the second kill of his life. Then they said the rest of it out loud. Aldo admitted the two of them are the closest thing to family he has had since childhood; Koa admitted his rage blinds him, and that he once took a bounty on a friend’s killer without regret; Mikhail carried the judgment because they keep handing it to him. They did not agree. They agreed to look as though they had.
The bugbear talked in the morning, and slowly. He answered to Dar, took hold of Aldo one-handed when Aldo pushed him, and let go only when Koa looked at him. Mikhail had been pretending not to follow the Taal in the cell, and when he dropped it he learned Dar is short for Daric, a Taal name meaning striker, the mark of an older and better-schooled family than a bugbear mercenary usually comes from. His creed is that he gets the job done and leaves the killing to others, which he offered as though it settled something. Naming Beltran got a reaction he could not hide. And the crew had done work in that city before: months ago they took the family who ran the bank (Councilor Sarro Rashid and his household) bound and gagged out of it on a wagon. Which answers a question the party had stopped asking about their own seized funds.
They put the case to all eight together, and all eight accepted. Read afterwards, five were genuine or near enough to risk; of the rest the returning scout was a gamble, one doubtful, and the archer whose arrow wound Daric had put a thumb into would crawl back to Beltran at the first chance. That had happened before the case was put, not after: it took three men to pull Daric off him, and the archer heard the offer from the next room while he was being bandaged. Leon’s judgment was to hold those three a while and get supplies in before eight extra mouths undid the base. He also told them how he had once beaten a larger force: feign weakness, ration hard, release prisoners carrying a lie.
The rest was planning. Arthur Freym, through Nathan Fox, can source what the Crack needs on the party’s coin, moved through Harad. The half-built Westwood tunnel needs an engineer or it will bury someone, and was shelved. Leon’s strategy is to make the Valiant Few so tempting a target in one place that Beltran divides his hundred-odd men to come at them, and to hit the halves: aggression from autumn, then a defensive winter out of a warm cave.
Which produced the change of plans. The keeps can wait; Beltran cannot. The company will go to Haudh-Gwenn, build a name there and take his apart. Dwayne agreed to stay and teach the Crack to hunt, fletch and live off the country, on the one condition that nobody ask him to march on Haudh-Gwenn. He was visibly relieved to hear he would never be sent back to the goblin keep. He made Aldo two blunted bolts by hand.