A Winter Night

[Jirai]

"Agnie! Hey Agnie, wait up!"

Heedless of other goings-on around, the veiled girl was hurrying after the glimpse she'd caught of her friend, huddled in a jacket for warmth.

[Rattrap]

Athena was armed. Quite well armed, in fact, for a bartender. The four blades she wears will probably be familiar now to anyone who frequents the Broken Dagger during her independently-chosen shifts, as well as her many answers to why she carries so many: "I like shiny things." "I'm a sword trader." "I just like to look scary." And so on.

Needless to say, Quincy was enough to spark her interest, but the group that had grown secretively upstairs was over the top. As they exited the Broken Dagger, Athena decided to call it a night. For bar tending, at least.

Soon she was outside following with no real degree of discretion.

[Quincy]

"Are y' sure y' don't want t' ride - " Quincy put her hands up in defense. "All right, All right!"

Ignas would run beside their horses; she exchanged a look with Acteon and grinned again, this time because of his rhyme.

"So yer a bard, too."

Now that they were outside, they had plenty of reprieve from the revelry of the inn. For a moment, she allowed them to be baptised in silence. She became serious after that, sitting straight as she motioned with her chin to the distant, darkening skyline along the trees.

"There's a small sort a' clearin' in the trees, jus' a li'l ways off the road. That's where we're goin' to meet Ari. She'll be there waitin' for us," she tapped her heels to the white horse's flanks, urging him forward at a light trot in the snow.

There was a dark-haired girl named Agnieszka Kaczmarek watching them prepare to depart; Quincy knew her as Agnie - wouldn't dream of trying to pronounce the rest of it. And so they were stopping again, before they'd even started.

A single, shrewd glance crossed the girl's ale bottle.

"Good evenin', Agnie," her voice was muffled by her hawk helm. "We're just 'eadin' out t' take a look a' the caves where them Cultists was meeting. Supposed t' be joinin' some folks a' the clearin' near the road. Seein' what we can learn, ye know? If y' care t' meet us there, too," she could see the flaming curiosity in the guardgirl's eyes - could see it clearly, as though it were her own, "don't dally too long, or we'll be gone."

A hidden, white grin flashed behind metal. She turned to Acteon and Ignas to confirm that they were ready, and then she dug her heels in - with a light whipping of the horse-reigns to establish an immediately quick pace.

Two riders and one runner engaged the growing shadows of the road as they left the inn.

[Minty]

A crowd had grown outside. Likely this wasn't going to involve scouting or stealth, then. Ignas wonders for a moment if Quincy is just letting anyone who follows come with her. He wonders if this is a good idea. It is not his place to tell people who would get in the way to leave, though. After all, apparently one of those persons who would be in the way was gathering people up, and had gathered him.

He is silent, just watching. Eyes flicker to the horses present every now and then. He's obviously nervous about them. And then Quincy and Acteon were off. Ignas takes off after them, literally breaking into a run. He was fast, and had an inhuman endurance. Even so, damn it all, he was going to get winded before even reaching their meeting point!

[channe]

"You bet, Quincy," she says, grinning straight back -- and then, it's to Rhaena she turns, with a hand-clap on her shoulder. "Jus' gonna find me an Rhae some horses -- Rhae, ain't you an' Kals got yer horses stabled here?"

[Acteon]

Acteon was starting to share Ignas’s unspoken concern. Certainly it was not uncommon for gentlemen to hunt in packs, but there was always one step taken prior to this. The day before the hunting party would set out on the fynding, a single hunter would set out with a single lymer to track the quarry. This group had neglected that step and that fact started to unsettle Acteon’s stomach, like a nettle creeping under a saddle. He intended for this to be a scouting expedition and nothing more. In fact, anything more, he felt, would be folly. Perhaps he was overreacting, but by the stories he had heard, the creature inside the cave killed and killed well, and now they were planning on sneaking up on it with all the quiet stealth of a one man band.

Despite his reservation, when Quincy coaxes her horse forward, Acteon did the same. Venatici leapt forward as prompted, clearly powerful and agile. The horse and rider were at Quincy’s flank in a moment and kept pace.

[Jirai]

The girl had caught the tail end of Quincy's words - enough to spark an interest, though hers was far more wary than her friend's. At Agnie's words, though, the Trader steadied a bit.

"Oh... yeah. Kals didn't want 'em, but I got 'em anyway. C'mon!"

And with that, she was trotting off for the stables to fetch the horses (You'd asked what she'd been doing before, Agnie, and part of it was learning to ride). Fortunate it was that her clothing was more of the practical variety today!

[Quincy]

The cold tried to gnaw them to bits as they crossed the field, but soon the sky seemed to tire of its own anger - and the harsh, winter wind died down to remorseful, wet sighs. Horse hooves crunched through the snow as the three companions travelled up the road; their small, armoured guide was unaware of the uneasiness that they silently shared for her careless invitations.

Quincy had always been straightforward to a fault. Although she'd left Chainbreaker, her massive hammer, in her room this night - Quincy and the hammer shared a lot of similiarities: there was no aspect of stealth, no hidden feeling, no secret anything. She wanted to come down on all her enemies, on every Infidel, like a great, crushing fist of Justice. She could only think of one thing that was a more effective fist than her hammer: the fists of many.

It was not that she was incapable of quick, quiet executions - of fleet-footed investigations, of peering eyes in the dark, of slithering through the snow on drenched bellies. She just didn't like it; there was too much violent impatience in her blood for it to sit right with her. It was a little too parallel with coming at an enemy from behind. Lucky for Acteon and Ignas, Quincy was only their guide to this harmless clearing. Ariane of the House Carnath-Emory and Stealth may as well have been bedfellows.

The girl slowed her horse down a little, feeling sorry for Ignas.

"It ain't much farther," she told the two.

The three of them crossed the threshold of the forest near the Silver Lake; she was sure to steer them clear of the marshy land around it, shivering on behalf of their horses and Ignas, at the thought of hoof or foot sinking into that freezing slush.

Leaning against the neck of her horse, low, skeletal branches tapped her helm and brushed against her heavily cloaked shoulders; they were off the road now, and it was the cold season that made the foliage a little more easy to push through. Dusk light barely reached through the overhead canopy of boughs, so that they travelled in the eerie half-light before dark.

"Where'd y' get them shoes?" she abruptly asked Skinner.

[Acteon]

The cold wind was biting and when its force began to fade, Acteon was grateful. His cheeks were flushed and his nose shone with a certain rosé hue thanks to the chilled winter air. A gloved hand left the reins to pull the thong from his hair, letting the shoulder-length browns tumble. While they hampered his vision from time to time, they helped buffer the cold. He had a hat of fur in his bags should he need it, but it covered his ears and he would have a hard time hearing Quincy through her helm and his hat, so he chose not to use it.

When she addressed his boots, he looked down at them fondly. They were leather cowmouth boots, featuring the broader toe style, rather than the pointier toe, which seemed more the fashion. They fit tight against his ankles and calves, stopping just below his knee, where fur seemed to tuft out from the top. They looked as though they fit well and would keep his feet warm.

“Weaver’s Row. Carnath-Emory directed me there. There were many craftsmen to choose from. They are much better than my old pair.â€

[Minty]

It was too cold for running. Ignas was already starting to regret having agreed to this. Still, he continued. His breaths were even, deep as he moved, running like a man, not bounding like an animal as he was capable of at times. It meant that he was too far behind Quincy and Acteon to hear them. He didn't care much, either. He kept to himself, and would do so until his arrival at the meeting place.

[Rattrap]

At least Ignas could keep up. Athena, already set in her determination to find out just what sort of secretive gathering this was, followed on foot. And not particularly fast feet; the mounted or otherwise speedy group left behind not far from the Broken Dagger, leaving her to her rudimentary tracking skills to follow. They were enough to feed her on long journeys; they were good enough to follow a sizable, conspicuous group.

The snow certainly helped.

Athena moved quickly, but she wouldn't meet them at their destination anywhere near on time.

[Quincy]

She breathed in the sharp air as they passed through the sculpted chestnuts and black oaks; dead ferns bowed, overlapping one another, half-buried by hills of snow. Wind stole through the trees, plastering her full cloak against one side; it conformed to her leg, showing the young strength of its shape.

Quincy understood isolation; she understood the deep value of quiet, lone thought -- and even quiet, lone thoughtlessness. She understood it best of all from her sister. This fighter was, however, not quite the same: particularly on evenings of bitter cold, as they moved through the limitless silence of the snowbound land. It was a kind of death, and it always would be without Phlynn squealing and pelting her with happy snowballs ..

"I been to Weaver's Row. She definitely knowed what she was talkin' about when she sent you there," and that was why there was a kind of desperation in her reply; she hoped the sound of it was buried by her muffling helm.

She whirled a look back toward Ignas; the half-blood had fallen behind, but he was keeping up with them at a distance.

"I wonder why 'e don't like 'orses so much."

We are all so different, she thought.

They travelled along a broken, deer-trail narrow path until it abruptly ended, the trees opening up to a hollow clearing of patchy snow and the night's first moonbeams. Quincy's shielded eyes batted in a blink, for there was a single, distinctive problem with this picture.

Where in the world was Ariane?

[channe]

Back at the Dagger, a bright-faced Agnieszka was rapidly walking towards the stables. "... we'll go along, Rhaena, this could be my chance t' find out more about this, 'cause I'll be damned if I'm gonna let Mum talk about this any more without findin' out *more* --" and she pauses at the stable-door, looking at the horses, as if waiting for Rhaena to point out the ones that belonged to her and her brother -- "-- righ', which ones are yours?"

[Vanidor]

Where in the world was Ariane indeed. The man called Jons didn't rightly know, the only thing he knew was that the woman was supposed to be leading a group of other... adventurers to the clearing so that they could scout out the lair of of the Cultists, and perhaps stamp them out once and for all. Jons wasn't sure it would work, not without a full company of soldiers and some magical means of bringing down the whole of the cavern complex. Still then, he was tasked by the powers that be (and the whorling connections of loyalty and honour) to assist in the endeavour.

Ho!, then, here was a motly group of travellers, and Jons highly doubted that any one else would be foolish enough to travel the tiny trail to this location.

Yet, it was not the woman he expected at the head of the small group. Still, having been Spymaster unto two captains, he... knew the woman. After a fashion, in any case, he knew her. So the armed shadow nudged his silent war-horse out of the cleft of darkness he had rested within. Hooves clomping softly through the snow pack, he held his bow in one hand... Just in case his guess here was wrong.

The man bore no markings to denote from where and with whome he was allied with, but his free hand rose to show a lack of intent to harm. "My Lady," this for Quincy as dark eyes settled upon the woman and the ones with her, "it seems we have both beaten Ariane to our meeting. Abide, I am certain she will be here shortly," this said in a voice that was a bare whisper above a... whisper.

[Seth_Bloodmoon]

Seth wrapped his cloak about himself, the fabric now undamaged and a fine shade of midnight blue. A few strands of silvery hair fluttered free of the confines of his hood as hidden eyes watched events unfolding. He had been leaning against a side wall of the Dagger when Quincy and a couple others had gathered and left. He watched at least two more head for the Stables after that and one other set off on their own in the direction that the small band had left in.

Curiosity danced within his mind, he as in better health now and could afford the luxury of an 'adventure'. With a nod to himself, Seth pulls away from the wall and strides in the direction the others had left. Any supplies he needed were kept in a small, but rather usefull pouch, attached to his belt and Twilight Heart rested in its sheath. A faint smile tugged at fine, elven features that lay hidden in the murk of his cloak's hood, as he broke into a sprint... it felt good to be alive and this was a feeling that had been lost to him for quite some time. The longing to die had faded into the back of his mind... no there would be no more seeking death... Oh he would dance with death if the need arose but he would not allow himself to be embraced by it, not now.