Undaunted Spirit
Sixteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
Elle takes your offer to come along as witness to the exiles' with some surprise, but not much in the way of trepidation.
This land breeds brave men and women also, you must admit. Foolish perhaps but brave... She upon being bidden to mount a steed spun of ash and shadow the spearwife hesitates more from not knowing how to handle the tack and saddle then any fear of the uncanny.
"They aren't scared of magic," Dany says in something like wonderment, bringing to he fore the thing that had been lurking at the back of your mind. Never before had you seen a people less fearful of magic for its own sake. Certainly they had been wary of your half-form, but that had most been from the fact of being faced with something strong enough and possibly hungry enough to make a meal of them. There had been no superstitious cries of 'witchcraft' nor any invocations of absent gods to save them.
Even the tale of the bear-skin hunters showed a tolerance of the uncanny which would have been astonishing in most other places. They had only been cast out for doing monstrous deeds, not for being 'monsters.' The old chief's words come back to you as you rush through the evening air:
'Can hardly be picky about who you take up with...'
The sound of exultant laughter breaks you from your thoughts. The young warrior woman is lost in the joy of flight above the trackless green of the forest far bellow. Dany gives a hissing laugh and even Ser Richard can't keep back a smile.
As you turn your searching gaze to the ranger you find the man less exuberant but obviously beginning to relax into his seat.
When you live on the edge already, as the Black Brothers and their wildling foes both do in different ways, it is far easier to persuade oneself into letting go.
***
"We're close!" the wildling woman shouts some time later, pointing to a spur of granite rising from amid the sea of green. The face of the sun slipped over the horizon, leaving the clouds still painted red.
"Are there any caves there?" you call back. If your quarry had taken on not just the form but something of the nature of bears they would seek shelter beneath stone and earth...
"Should be," she answers as she begins do descend into a wide clearing like a ragged tear in the tangled canopy with the others not far behind. "They say the folk of Hardhome mined tin there 'fore they all died."
"I thought they were all taken into slavery or else eaten by the Skagosi," Dany interjects as she circles the clearing looking for man-bears or any other threats.
"Wasn't slavers or raiders," Elle replied. "
Death came to Hardhome one night and they had to make a pyreto drive it back. Heard it was a plague and the fires meant for the dead caught the roofs aflame."
The notion strikes you as wildly unlikely, the sort of tale told by people who had never seen a town much less lived in one, but somehow it does not ring
wholly false. A fire so bright that men on the Wall would think the sun was rising in the north, as was said to have engulfed Hardhome, sounds like far more then any sort of raider would have bothered with.
"So how do we hunt these bloody bears?" Ser Richard's question jolts you from thoughts of the past long dead.
[] Fight in the caves
-[] Write in plan
[] Try to capture one of the bear-men or those they have taken up with first
-[] Write in plan
[] Write in
OOC: Free Folk have something going for them after all.
