March 15, 2026
3 Khordrak, 826
The Torchbearers of Valea returned to Thasinia’s training hall to meet Symon. They found him sparring against one of the other students. He is a young man with dirty-blond hair, less toughened but clearly more in practice than the older man with whom he was sparring. He threw his partner and turned to greet the Torchbearers; his partner struck back at him from the ground, saying that this his daily reminder that the enemy wouldn’t fight fair.
The Torchbearers asked him his idea of the adventurer’s life. Symon told them that his parents died when he was young, and ever since he has wanted to be a protector. He and his sister took care of each other until the previous year, when she was turned to a wight; he shattered the blade of a woodcutting axe on her head and only survived by retreating to a chapel. Symon said that his dream hasn’t really changed, just become more mature.
The Torchbearers agreed to take him on as a retainer.
They begin gearing up for the journey. After many lengthy calculations, they bought two dogsleds, one to carry the medicine and adventuring supplies, and the other to carry feed for both teams of the dogs. The dogs were loaned from the Margrave’s kennels, whither also Ormar retrieved his riding dog, Gunter retrieved his hunting dog, and Hilda and Smee acquired riding dogs for the first time.
4 Khordrak
The Torchbearers set out. The temperature dropped, clearing the sky. They passed through the settled lands around the lake, but after some miles the local villages dropped away behind them, and they rode through fallow fields on the fringe of a rocky plain. Occasionally they passed the husks of frontier cottages that had been despoiled in the wight attacks a year before.
They reached the village of Warlington about midday. The villagers had packed the snow drifts into crude walls, but the Torchbearers were invited inside and dropped off their delivery without incident. Gunter checked outside the village for wolf tracks, and found signs that the village had been circled but not entered.
The party departed and set out for the village of Broken Shield, which is built in the foundation of an ancient fort on a slight rise in the land. They pushed on after sunset, and the howls of wolves began to close in on them from north and south. They reached the gate of Broken Shield, where they were made to swear upon pain of dire curses not to disturb the peace.
They waited in the town’s pub for the headman to arrive. Eventually he came back with a group of armed men and told the bartender they had had no luck. The Torchbearers greeted him, and he treated them to drinks.
Escorting Gunter to stable the Torchbearers’ many dogs, the bartender told him that the headman’s band had been trying to secure the the village’s horses. The Broken Shield had bought a few bloodlines the previous summer and begun phasing out oxen for farm work. But this night the howl of wolves had spooked the herd, which had bolted into the darkness. The headman had little hope of finding them before sunrise, by which time it is likely that the wolves will have killed them.
