Chapter Two, The Campaign

Leon called them to the table and said, "Okay, let's recap the campaign: you guys managed to make it past my labyrinth of mystery and fight off the vine people at the end." "Just barely!" interrupted Johan loudly. "Yes, I was quite proud of my vine people," said Leon, "You thought you had defeated the labyrinth and there they were on the way out, hee hee." "Jerk," mumbled Mike, "It just kept going and going forever." "Whatever, you loved it," said Leon. "I almost died!" said Mike.

"Could we get started please?" whined Lynne, at which Leon coughed and continued, "So at the end you split up your loot and are richer by about 600 gold pieces each, as well as some loot you managed to pick up in the East chamber. Today, you've awoken in the woods beyond the shaft that you used to get out. You've still got to retrieve the last Amulet of Telamar using the information you got from the Labyrinth. You've woken up and it's time to decide what to do next so I'm going to have you all roll a perception check." The clattering sound of six twenty-sided die filled the air for a moment.

"Do you smell meat cooking?" Grond asked no one in particular, his bulbous nose in the air as he relieved himself on a nearby tree. "No oaf, you just haven't cleaned it out since we ate that rabbit last night," scoffed Artemis, emerging from her bedroll and pulling leaves out of her black hair. The forest was warming as the sun rose, chasing the last of the night mists from the gold-leafed stand of birches in which they were sheltering. They had a map but in the darkness and confusion of the previous night no one was sure precisely where they had ended up, knowing only the name of the land itself: Ordresa Forrest in northern Erraith.

"Wishful thinking, perhaps," mused Hrothgar. He turned over to face them, still under his blanket, propping his head on one hand and rubbing away the encrustations from his eyes with the other, "We finished the last of our rations with that rabbit, which was none too fat, and we've still to fill our water skins." "If you think I'm going out there alone to fetch water, you had better think on it again," Ferdinand called loudly from behind another tree. "As though we'd be foolish enough to expect you to be good for anything but making water," retorted Artemis, answered by appreciative chuckles. Grond sat down and began to examine the new dagger he'd gotten from the spoils of their last adventure, found in one of the lower passageways. The haft was wrought with snaking vines; Grond shuddered and stowed the dagger away in his pack. "Anyone care to trade loot?" he asked no one in particular.

When Gwennevere awoke, roused by the chatter of the company, a feeling of unease left behind by her interrupted dream of clinging vines mingled with the flavor of dread that still remained from the labyrinth night before. She took a drink from her water skin and swallowed hard, hoping to drive the taste and memory from her head; she had only just begun to sleep the night again, finally freed from nightmares inhabited by the huge half-human, half-spider drows they had escaped only a fortnight ago. She stood slowly and staggered away from the campsite to get the feeling back in her toes, hardly acknowledging the protestations that followed her through the trees.

The memory of the more recent battle-fright began to fade as she turned her thoughts instead to the bird calls and morning smells of the woods around her. She marked where the claws of a bear had left gashes in the bark of a tree, listening and smelling carefully for further signs of its presence. The land began to descend under her feet and the undergrowth thinned, allowing the early sunlight through to the damp, gold-carpeted earth. Gwennevere heard the creek before she saw it, a cold trickle not yet stilled by the winter; she gave thanks to the Goddess for leading her to water.

"And where have you been?" queried Rowena from where she sat, arms and legs crossed, feeding a small fire she had started in Gwennevere's absence, made more for the comfort of routine than for warmth or light, the sun now being high over their heads. "In the the woods," she replied. "That much I gathered. Only you left before I awoke, so I had to have Ninny-pate here mend the cut on my wrist." Ferdinand grimaced ruefully and said, "You could've waited for her to come back, it wasn't that bad, for all your complaining." "And now I've a nasty scar for all to see," Rowena continued, brandishing a small, white wrist.

"We were also concerned for your safety," admonished Hrothgar, rolling up his blanket and returning it to his pack, "Artemis kept offering to search but it seemed better to stay here and not go traipsing about." "I offered mostly to get away from those two," she motioned to Ferdinand and Rowena, who were still bickering,"Did you find anything?" Artemis pointed to the now-full skin, "Looks like you found water, anyway." "And mushrooms, snails, chicory, sparrow-grass, and onions," said Gwennevere. "Can you eat that stuff?" Grond sniffed at one of the brown, funnel-shaped mushrooms she had produced from her pack. "You don't have to, do you, and it'll leave more for the rest of us, if dwarves are too picky," Rowena bustled over with a large, shallow cast-iron pan and into it dumped the contents of the pack.

"There's a brook that cuts through the valley, yonder, if you want to try to catch fish," Gwennevere said to Grond, who still looked doubtful at the prospect of a meal made from chicory, onions and snails. "I have no line to fish with, nor bait." "Here, if you bring me some birch bark I can fashion a fish-basket for you, there's a place where the brook narrows and falls over a shelf into a small pool. If we set the basket there it will catch fish for us." Hrothgar interrupted, "We haven't time to wait for a basket to be made, or for fish to catch themselves, we've let too much daylight pass already and must leave after we have supped."

While Rowena sat cutting up the onions and mushrooms, Ferdinand, Gwennevere and Artemis went to fill the water skins and fetch more to make the stew in, along with as much food as they could gather from the woods quickly. Hrothgar went hunting and brought back three grouse which he set to plucking, littering their gear with feathers in his haste. Rowena helped him clean and prepare the grouse, skewering and roasting the little birds on sticks Grond had scraped clean with his knife.

Having eaten their fill, they gathered their gear and set off, deciding to follow the brook to where the map told it would join a river that could then be followed or boated to the nearest town, fifteen leagues all told. "We can't hope to make it much farther than the river," Hrothgar said as they began the next leg of their journey, "And if we are lucky, we may find a bark that will take us the rest of the way, but it will be long after dark by then." They marched quietly as the still-warm Autumn sun made it's way across the sky, each wondering what the night held in store. Gwennevere, at rearguard, chanted quietly to herself the paladin's daily devotional to her Goddess:

To thee your servant chants, O lady,

Destroyer of the undead, Goddess without peer,

Queen who shapes the lives of all mankind,

Thou stately sovreign of the Shadowfell,

Mother of the moon, oh hear!

Lead our weapons surely and award

Victory to those who would do your will.

Crown us with majestic Fate, Raven Queen

Fierce defender of those who have found peace,

Thou makest room for new life; thou dost lead

With bravery our commrades to fight for honor;

The gift of courage is thine for thou art valiant;

Thy will is resolute, irrevocable,
None may undo it save to their undoing;

Thy hand is merciful, thou queen of the dead,

Clad in enchantment and enrobed with Radiance...

Thou sovereign wielder of the wand of Doom,

Look to your servant, defender of life and death.

"Yes, I suppose death does make room for life," came a soft voice next to her. Gwennevere started and turned to face Artemis, unaware that anyone had heeded her. Artemis, a master Rogue, had doubled back and sneaked up behind her to listen while Gwennevere had become entranced by her own incantation. She reproached herself for failing in the duties of rearguard. "Don't worry, no one can hear me when I want to be silent, but it would be unfortunate if you were attacked while praying for protection," she continued, "I had always thought the Raven Queen a frightening creature who walked the battlegrounds feasting on the dead, like ravens."

Gwennevere, indignant at this somewhat profane description, calmly explained "The Raven Queen assists the departed to the afterlife, so that others might arrive, much as ravens clear away the body after the spirit departs, there being no further use for it." "Oh, I suppose that's true enough, when you say it like that." They walked in silence as night fell, Artemis eventually making her way back up the line, amusing herself by startling members of the company who had also allowed their minds to wander.