Of Winding Ways and Cunning Devices

7th of June 867 A.D.

Rurik is all too willing to accept your willingness to search for the missing Lady Tzitzak, perhaps on the balance you should have been less eager to. These woods are strange to you, made all the more so by the pouring rain that sweeps out of the northwest and turns the earth to clinging muck, such that even the steeds of Numenor snort and struggle. Easy enough to follow the frenzied charge of the hunters back to where you had seen the elk, not vanished into the depths of the woods, but to tell whence one set of hoofmarks from another in the undergrowth... well let it be said, between you at least, that sailors do not rangers make

Tracking: 18 + 14 (Intrigue) = 32 (Failure)

Though you cannot follow the sun through the veiled sky the gradual fading of the light marks the degrees of your failure with merciless precision, though perhaps the feeling of icy water down your collar may have something to do with your ill humors. "Fool child!" you curse with venom. What could have possessed her to be party to such a scheme? Still you are nothing if not determined and this is not the first time you had to search for a enemy scout in... less than ideal conditions. Perseverance will oft serve where brilliance might fail as the lichen said to the elanor bloom in the fable.

What follows next is almost enough to make one suspect some spirit given to cruel japes has his eye on you,

Tracking Again: 73 + 14 (Intrigue) = 87 (Success?)

"Found something," Ular calls out.

Broken branches, scattered stones and in the distance the thin grey thread, a fire struggling against the rain still beating down even as the last of trace of sunlight fades from the sky.

"Likelier than not we are chasing some hunter looking for a brace of geese," you shake your head. You cannot imagine that any schemers would have left lady Tzitzak out here alone to fend for herself, in enemy land with hue and cry raised.

They would have if they were ruthless enough, a part of you notes, recalling as you do the reptile-stare of some courtiers you worked for in your day, then shake off the thought. Any of those worthies would have slit her throat, not left the girl alone to dangle as a loose thread in their plots.

As you come up to the edge of the fire the figure you see if not lady Tzitzak, it's Helgi blowing his lungs out trying to keep the fire burning to... limited avail.

"Strange place to be finding out out young lord," you proclaim heartily.

The boy practically jumps out of his skin, his cheeks blotchy crimson. "Hail and well met my lord. I... er... went hunting."

"Alone? The mood must have come upon your suddenly indeed," you counter, drawing closer.

"My reasons are my own!" he snaps like a crab in the reeds.

How do you approach matters?

[] Offer to help the boy out in whatever scheme he has concocted

[] Threaten to drag him back to his father

[] Write in

OOC: To find Tzitzak on the second try would have taken DC 90 because the trail was cold, but you still found... someone.

7th of June 867 A.D.

"Reasons..." you glance towards Ular, a look heavy with meaning, neither of you are yet so old as to have forgotten the prickliness of boys come into manhood more than in their head than in the cold light of truth. "Aye, we all have our reasons, but the best reasons in the world do anot assure victory lad. It takes good fortune as well as will and more often than not the aid to see the things that really matter though. So here now is my vow I'll help you with whatever your task is and Ular as well seeing as he's the one to keep me out of trouble and in exchange you tell us what you are really doing out here."

"What do you care of my comings and goings stranger?" the lad asks, suspicion dripping from his manner, and neath that fear.

"I vowed to your father to take you into the south, he did not say in so many words but I'd wager he meant for you to be alive to see Miklagard rather than bear your corpse across six seas."

Persuasion: 85+12 (Diplomacy) = 97 (Success)

Helgi snorts then with a shake of the head, resolving to speak. "It's the lady Tzitzak, she left a message with a trusted messanger that she would have to leave to the south lest her life is forfeit before my father's judgement. She claimed that my uncles would come to him with lying words in confidence or that they had done so already.."

"Lying words claiming what?" Ular asks, a knowing gleam in his eye.

"That she had tricked me into her bed for to make me a pawn of Qaghan Obadiah and bind these lands as vassal states not by the sowrd but scented silk," the last of those words are mumbled so much that you have to guess at them, but guess you easily can. Mayhap he had not found his way into Tzitzak, but not for lack of desire.

That she had fled would only confirm the tale more... save for the fact that something must have put her to flight. On the other side of the scale if someone wanted to excise her influence with Rurik encouraging her to abandon the court just as the king is attacked by Khazar assassins would suit any foes of her mighty well. How hard you wonder would it be to find riders in these lands who fight in the manner of the Easterlings, man willing to set their bows against a king. On the third ethereal hand the assassins had been shooting to kill and fleeing in earnest, though that might be just to save their own skin.

In a few words and without artifice you recount what had happened in the hunt to the prince and explain that you too are looking for the same rider in these woods, though you had lost her trail.

"She would never, Lord Eriol I swear on my axe and on my good right hand that the lady would not harm a single hair on father's head, this is all treachery and seid-word to do her in."

"Careful with your words, tying your honor to another is like tying your last silver to a cast's tail," you answer, perhaps more harshly than is warranted. "You might be right a time or three, but if you make it a habit you will end up poorer."

Ware Words: 96 +12 (Diplomacy) = 108 (Critical Success)

"It's the first time I'm doing it," he answers quietly. It's the first time I've been in love he means.

What do you propose?

[] Keep looking, find the missing noblewoman and you will find some asnwers

[] Send Ular back to the king with news, if someone in his party is playing shadow games it would be best for him to know sooner rather than later

[] Write in

OOC: Hope this can drum up a bit more excitement