The two figures were not the only guests at Edoras’ tavern that night, but their attention was less on the chatter among them, once they met, and more on each other and the grave matter they discussed…
Dytha |Aldburg still revelled in the twelve days of Yuletide, especially eager for the festival in four days that promised the town to be filled with drunken cheer, so it was odd to see one of its hosts pad into the tavern a town away. She looked to be on more official business than usual—kitted in her fine winter wear and layered fox-fur. Only a few armbands and rings were missing from the finery she'd flaunted at the Feast in Rohan's old capitol.
Waelden orders a mug of mead this time, and as he waits for the mug to be filled, he casts a glance towards the unknown woman by the door, and nods to her in a silent greeting.
Dytha looked about as if for someone, but she caught Waelden during the effort and offered him a smile and a bow of her own head, crowned in braids and beads fit for the festive season, before she made her own way to the tavernkeep.
Crow | The wind entered before he did. A sudden gust of wintry chill, disturbing the warm coziness of the tavern as the door was opened. He took a step inside; a flick of his wrist, and the intruding breeze was locked out. He made no noise more than the necessary one to inform the arrival of a new patron. With a hazy gaze, he scanned the surroundings, as a hand pulled back his hood.
Dytha ‘s head snapped to the door as a mug was pressed against her palm. Her first look was disappointment, then surprise, and then a slow grin stretched in a silent yawn, as if waking from a pleasant nap. The attempt to hide it behind her first sip of the night was cosmetic.
Crow | His gaze glided over the faces and figures of those present. A blur of questionable significance as he, finally, found something to halt his eyes on: the innkeep. With a confident approach, he nodded for the man's attention. He received it. "Isen wine." His sight still locked on the man, he turned his head slightly to the woman present. "She will pay you."
Dytha let out a snow-flurry chuckle, quiet and chilled. She took a longer sip of mead to fill the warmth that it lacked. “Has fate been so unkind…” she said, keeping her gaze as he did, ahead. “...that you are reduced to begging maidens for an offering of drink?”
Crow | The man stood rigidly, not unlike the wooden horseheads decorating the bar. He slowly blinked, his gaze travelling toward the woman. "Have customs been reduced to such worthlessness," he retorted in kind, "that a man should no longer be offered what may be his last drink?"
Dytha chuckled, her shoulders loosening as she settled a hand on the bar. She glanced at him, but thought she did not know the man well, it suddenly occurred to her he did not mean it for sake of pity or out of jest. She turned to the tavern keep and commanded, “Gondorian, or Dorwinion. My friend here won’t be drinking our valley’s poor imitations.”
Crow "Isen," he reiterated, and waited until the tavern keep left to fetch the order. It was only after he had done so, that he spoke up again; his tone soft, yet resolved. Pleasant, yet impersonally formal. "How fares your search for your killer?"
Brynleigh bites her lips together, blushing profusely. A giggle works it way up through her throat, though she struggles to hold it in. Not trusting herself to reply aloud, she nods mutely and gets to her feet, striding towards the door. A glance is aimed towards the two figures at the bar as she tugs on the latch, briefly vanishing outside.
Dytha glowered, but didn’t argue. “Which one?” she said bitterly, then balmed when she’d heard her tone aloud. “Perhaps we should find a table, once you have your wine.”
Crow arched a brow at the woman's question. "Very well," he said after a brief, thoughtful pause, and crossed his arms across his chest, awaiting to be served.
Brynleigh closes the door carefully, a soft thud and a puff of icy air the only heralds of her return. Her gaze slides again over the figures of Crow and Dytha, her brow dimpled with curiosity, though she walks directly back towards the hearth.
Dytha 's eyes glanced to the door as she perceived a new arrival, and her smile was warm for Brynleigh, a slight nod of her head offered the woman before she turned back to grim business until a glass was given the rare stranger.
Crow |The man nodded in thanks. He picked his glass up, yet left it, for now, untouched. "Lead on," he suggested with a minor wave of his free hand, as his searching eyes continued to observe not so much the woman, as her surroundings.
Dytha turned and frowned at the tables, but she managed to find one that was no nearer the door than the counter, away from the curious ears of other patrons. She set her mug on the table, but kept her grip on its handle, her arm stretched to demand the space. "You have a curious way of introducing news," she said, her brow unfurrowed but serious. "If I assume that is what you are here to deliver."
Crow sat askew. Rather than leaning against the chair's back, he instead sat with his back against the pillar, draping his left arm loosely over the back of his chair. He brought one leg in close to him, resting the heel at the edge of his seat. "As do you, apparently," he mused, nodding diagonally. "But yes. Your assumption is correct."
Dytha puzzled as she gazed at him, willing to take her time to peel back the layers from his words. “You mentioned a killer,” she said, not in whispers, but low. “No. That particular performance artist has yet to be found, but we have lost more people than one fisherman. Unfortunately, we cannot chase down every death.”
Crow pursed his lips, his eyes drowning in the depths of his wineglass. "Mm," he muttered. "Realistically, no; you cannot. Though perhaps it," and he paused deliberately to finally take his first sip, "can chase you down."
Dytha |Embers up the back of her neck. She hardened her gaze on the stranger. Her voice was not a light snowfall anymore. “Is news only what you carry, or does doom follow behind?”
Crow | The man's shadowed gaze rose to meet Dytha's. There was an eerie intensity behind his eyes. A flickering light -or perhaps a reflection of the candlelight at just the right angle. An observant observer could observe that his blinks were deliberate. And they were presently absent. "Doom is what we make of it. What -you- make of it."
Dytha ‘s grip tightened on her mug as if on the handle of her shield. Her eyes did not balk at the slightest movement. She would not let herself be fooled and flanked. “You are here to lecture an Eorling on the nature of Wyrd? If you have news, deliver it, but do not play with me.”
Crow | His reaction was a smile; almost pleasant. Definitely pleased. He nodded at her command. The fact that it was not a request, was not lost on him. His voice dropped low enough to be audible by none other than his words' recipient. "You bought him wine."
Dytha ‘s hand jerked from the handle as from a heated iron, but she held it open, close, just not touching it lest she throw it against the wall or worse. She lay it flat on the table, smoothing her fingers to align with the grain. It was moments before she spoke. “I knew there was something, when my contacts could not find you after Fréasburg. And my contacts…” she said, letting her word hit as hard a nail as had his, “...can find anyone.”
Crow | The man observed with undivided attention. Her reaction, her pallor, her pupils, her breaths -it was a sight to be savoured, and savour it he did. Even after her words trailed off, echoing still in his mind, his reply was slow. Hazy, almost. "Not anyone. Apparently." A smirk dotted his sentence. "This is the time you decide whether doom snaps at the heels of my news."
Bard of Rohan says, '"That is all for a time. I shall start again in ten minutes."'
Dytha ‘s gaze held her own secrets, not behind shadow and veils but a shield wall—her decision nestled at a heart within a schiltron. She didn’t care that the waves of feeling like arrows loosed hit no real mark. That was not their aim, not yet. “Doom decides its own time.” She trusted herself to grip her mug’s handle again. “You, however, have brought this to me now. Why?”
Crow "Curiosity and responsibility, mostly." His reply sounded earnest. At long last, he raised his pressing gaze off her, and casually looked up at the ceiling. "You've one less shadow to chase. It sounded like you had too many already."
Saexwyrd passes by the Gondorian and Dytha. Some ominous words reach his ears, dooms and shadows, he winces a little and raises his hand in a simple greeting to the two, preferring to disregard and forget their sayings. He'd rather just follow Brynleigh's gaze to their table.
Dytha ‘s tone grated like a hull dragged over river-rock. “As if we chased—” She pumped her fist tight and loose on the handle of her mug twice, thrice. “Why the tongue? Why the cost, the decadence?”
Crow | A sigh escaped from his lips. Here came the questions. Of course they did. He nodded, as if agreeing to some self-confirming thought. "Call it a necessity. A message that seems to have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes." He wet his mouth with another sip of wine. "Tell me; have you at least found my weapons?"
Dytha stared at him. She sat upright in her seat. Her layered fox-fur seemed as useless a decadence as the metal which had dried molten around his warning. “My mother found that message. Found that man.” She leaned, not deliberately, a little towards him, as if daring him to pry her jaws open and take her own for himself. “I have not seen worse, but she has.”
Crow "My condolences to your mother." It was a tone that indicated necessity, less so sincerity. "More importantly, my shipment." From the ceiling, his hooded eyes followed a wooden beam, and down a wooden pillar, and came to rest upon one of the patrons' backs. "Has there been any sign of it?"
Aleid finishes the letter with a smile and starts picking up whats in the box. First is a small bottle with some brown reddish liquid which she shakes pointing to the light of the fire place and examines it nodding with her head as if it was just what she expected to be. Second is a small satchel made of leather that she opens and inside are some roots of light green colour, quickly she puts back the roots back in the satchel and then picks up the last item inside this box. Another stachel identical to the other. This one she just opens it and sniffs it a few times. With a shy smile she puts everything back in the box and grabs her mug to drink when she notices a familiar face sitting infront of her. ''Lord Thorval's daughter in Edoras?'' she whispers to herself before touching the mug with her lips.
Saexwyrd grimaces, giving his beard an audible scratch. He murmurs on. "That woman never seemed like good news..." He frowns even deeper remembering the woman's words about his daughter. "You got the chance to speak to your parents?"
Brynleigh frowns briefly. "Lady Dytha?" She smirks darkly and gives a little chuckle. "You see trouble everywhere, Saexwyrd," she chides affectionately, lowering her hand back to her lap. "I sent a letter ahead." Her expression shifts into one of uncertainty and worry.
Dytha slapped the mug she’d so carefully held at last. The vessel ricocheted off the wall and hit the floor spinning, spilling droplets of mead as the woman sat in her chair and seethed.
Brynleigh startles at the sudden clamor, spasming in her chair and abruptly turning to look over her shoulder with wide eyes.
Saexwyrd brings his mug to his lips, to sip some mead and hopefully see less trouble and more of the girl in front of him. "Oh! You can read and write? I must have forgotten ab-" He widens his eyes, his words now confirmed. To himself at least. "No good news..."
Crow | Save from his unamused gaze, which was torn from the patron's back and lagged behind the mug's trajectory, the man remained unmoved. His silence remained pressing, electing not to move on from his previously posed question.
Syaven greedily snached up the two overflowing mugs, pausing midstep to regard them with a second glance and recall which was hers. She drifted back toward the corner she'd made home for the evening, but halted to eye the clattering mug, and furrowed her brow with only careless annoyance, assuming it was an empty quarrel until she took note of the hand that threw it.
Brynleigh stares towards the table a few feet away, distracted. "Ah...emm...what?" She turns slowly back around. "Oh. Yes. I can." She smiles tightly, the warmth and merriment in the air now tainted with what felt like a prickling tension. "Are you nervous to meet them?"
Aleid notices the violent move from Thorvall's daughter. The strange man sitting in front of her makes her question if he would be the reason that she lost her temper. ''She probably got a no for an answer this time,'' she thinks about the situation.
Dytha sat near her chair’s edge with no notice how she’d got there. She no longer aligned her fingers along the wood-grain but dug her nails into the soft veins of exposed heartwood. “She is the one with whom you should speak, I think.” Her other hand pressed against the back of the chair, ready to vault her out of it, or it back, depending on the need.
Syaven swept into the crossfire like a stray songbird, and dropped the fresh mug she'd meant for Brynleigh before Dytha, a fairly comical replacement to the angry mug on the floor. Without a moment's pause, she took one step backward, leaning it into a bow. "If you need anything else, Lady Dytha," she said with a look far heavier than the light tone, and left the choice to answer free.
Crow "Brave of you to point me to your mother," he commented pointedly. Though non-threatening, there was a palpable undertone of disquiet in his words. "I would seek her out as advised." He took one last sip of his wine, and made to stand; partway through the motion he stopped, ending up instead leaning forward at the edge of his chair. "I would answer one unasked question, before walk freely out that door," he offered charitably, pointing towards the exit with his eyes. "Hadric was mine to spare; mine to kill. What he lost belonged to me. And it may very well now be arming the bloodthirsty palms of your enemies. One sacrifice was meant to prevent that. Alas." Then, he smiled. And stood up.
Dytha |The woman didn’t answer Syaven, but historically that did not mean she lacked notice of her presence or the gesture. Her eyes were on the stranger as he continued to condescend the woman who’d raised her in the wilds. “There is no need.” Her tone not a sharp blade but the splinters in a veteran shield. “Why seek one out who might, as fate would...chase you down.” Her echo of his words didn’t thrust deep, but at least bared the knife. “It is not brave to sick a deerhound on a warg.”
Crow looked at her with a satisfied smile. A hint of amusement dangled visibly enough to be registered. "Mm," he muttered. "I would likely welcome her company on the road ahead." His words were punctuated with a departing nod of his head, as he turned to make for the door. Passing Syaven, his gaze lingered on her momentarily, and he once more set his eyes on her back, before leaving.
Syaven stood a moment longer, anchored until Dytha decided if there was any use for an interruption. She eyed Crow, inspecting his unusual but now familiar attire, and forced as much casual carelessness into her gaze as she could wedge between the crossed words.
Dytha stood, and only for fate’s sake did her chair not clatter to the floor where her mug had also found rest. She glared after him and the door as it the oak-stacked planks were complicit in not just his retreat. She turned back to the mug and swept it up, but her gaze caught Syaven, and at once lightened. She still fumed as she took a sip to calm her free, wracked fist, but she didn’t act out again.
Syaven brought her own mug close to her breast, holding it with both hands in an instinctive gesture of protection. As she allowed herself the time to take closer notice of Dytha, and her rich adornments, the chill of the moment finally shivered down her spine. How great a threat must it take to disturb a woman with such standing and support. "Is it vain hope that we have seen the last of him?"
Dytha |”We?” She snapped her gaze at Syaven with more violence than she had at Crow’s entrance through the winter wind. Her bright eyes balmed as she saw with whom she spoke. “No…” she said, turning to offer one hand to cup Syaven’s shoulder and the other to pick up the mug she’d gifted. “No, I’m sorry.”
Syaven | Her own humours slow to change, extreme shifts rolling no faster than the tide, Dytha's quick splashes of temper stung her with mild confusion, plain on her features as her paling face searched the lady's for clues or fragments of clues to the whole unstable affair. "Are you all right?" she asked lamely, nothing else to say.
Dytha might have waved off the question or lied, but she looked at Syaven, a more steady face than most close to her. She shook her head slowly, leaning on her hand on the rim of her mug on the table. “I am happy to leave. I imagine I have already…” she glanced only a little in pieces about the patrons. “...upset the mood.”
Syaven curled the edge of her lips and softened her brow with a measure of empathy, assuming the fresh night breeze was truly what she needed, and this merely a reason offered out of courtesy. "Let me walk you out, then," she said decidedly, offering an open hand toward the door, and refusing to trouble the lady with any further questions or decisions. "And if you find the dark easier company, I would gladly have you lay troubles on my ear, before they follow you to bed."
Dytha glowered at everything but Syaven, and then nodded. She downed the mug she’d been offered and guided the retreat at least until she could await a refill, then turned at the counter to glare at the closed doors before she marched towards them, only at the last minute remembering her cloak and hood.
Syaven followed her out the door, wrapping her dark fur mantle over her shoulders.
The snow was only thin on the ground when they took to the road leading fromm the tavern, when…
Aleid presses her lips as if tempted by his answer. ''Well....perhaps you are not the Crow I much heard of during my journeys in the Northwest. But from what I could hear from your conversation with Thorvall's daughter I bet you are and the 12 knives in your belt prove my point.'' Then she looks around ''A man like you should have secrets, otherwise people in Bree would have known what happened to the Crow.''
Crow "People in Bree?" He echoed, chuckling. "People in Bree hardly know what happened to their turnips, let alone to me."
Syaven braced against the night's chill as the fitful breeze attacked whatever locks had loosened from her braids. She tucked each hand into the opposite sleeve, fingers vanishing from the touch of the cold. The figures by the fountain who had lately quit the tavern spurn a side glance at Dytha, and she straightened her spine.
Aleid |''Mmmhh...so it is you after all the man I heard of. Those young boys from the Beggars Alley talk about you like a legend.''
Dytha 's hand gripped more tightly on the mug the moment she'd emerged into the soft-sleet night. No use retreating now. She turned her head, chin tilted at an angle against her shoulder with her gaze not quite on Syaven, but the space that flanked her. "I understand if you would prefer the dry comfort of the tavern. I am content with my own mantle and mug."
Crow "Yes, well, I'm sorry to disappoint." He looked at her closely for a prolonged moment, scrutinising her silently. "Let's disperse with the false pleasantries. What do you want?"
Aleid looses a small laugh, she thinks of him as a bold man. ''What do I want? Apart from killing time, nothing. But I know of someone who could have a job for you. From what I know she is in Grimslade with her father, picking up some robbers to bring them up to Stangard in the North. She is the Lady Aleid, daughter of commander Stantric of Stangard. Look for her if you will.''
Syaven | "You've matters to settle that should not concern me," she answered instead, taking a tone that was both as soft and harsh as the huffing horses beside them, shaking their tails with an impatience she shared. "Yet have a care," she went on, turning back to the door. The words carrying no authority, only sisterly concern. "That is no fledgeling."
Aleid nods at the man, showing some lack of interest, as if she only addressed him to compliment for boiling with Thorvall’s daughter, whatever the reason was. Then nods at him in farewell and walks to the stables to pick up her mere and to leave Edoras.
Crow blinked in disbelief. For a long, long moment, he stared blankly at the woman. "All that preface..." he mumbled eventually, shaking his head in disappointment, "all that build up, only to drop it so massively at the end... -You- have a job for -me-." He cracked up. "Them boys at the Alley, did they give you the impression that I take jobs from random lasses that won't even deign to introduce themselves?" His disdain rose by every word. "Why don't you go tell this lady daughter of commander Backshittown to go plough herself with her thrice damned robbers. How's that for a job from -me- to -you-?"
Dytha ‘s fingers flexed to reach Syaven’s hand, but then crawled back into her fist. “Nor am I,” she reminded. At least when the Edoras-maid turned back to the tavern she had a smile of friendship. “Neither are you,” she added with half a chuckle and a full raise of her cup.
Aleid laughs at his answer as if she would be expecting some sort of answer. ''There won't be need for me to deliver that message to her. You did it yourself Crow.'' and then commands Brethenga to start moving and leaves Edoras at full speed
Crow rolled his eyes, letting a weary sigh. He mumbled something incomprehensible under his breath -and it was in favour of the just town of Edoras that it was incomprehensible, for words such as those were never meant to soil the ears of good men and women. He turned back to the fountain and splashed some water on his face.
Chat Log: 12/27
Full log of the last Mead Night of December available here, if people want to read everything that happened that night. Most of it is redacted for the purpose of focusing on the plot this particular conversation advanced. To catch up on the plot, read the most recent summary here and stay tuned for more as The Isen's Brittle Peace continues to be tested.
Want to get more involved in the RP in Rohan and Dunland? Keep a look-out for events, /joinchannel rohan in the game, or join us on the Rohan & the Wild Hills Discord.
