Apparently, in an effort to drive the price of victuals and beer up, Lord Vorm Atabact, the local Lord whose domains Schelteburgh is in, has badly miscalculated. A recent winter storm, the late unseasonable weather (which causes gold miners to work further into the year) and some inexplicable problems on the trunk road inland have worked too well. No food has arrived at this isolated community of dwarves in some time. What little game there is has been hunted out, if it wasn't already, and the merchants and sutlers, knowing of the shortage, have been hoarding the small amounts of victuals they did still have, selling it at ever-increasing rates. Like one peck of oats for one quarter thaler (or one Landsrue Lord -- yikes). Beer, an ever important staple to these folk, is steep as well. When the Mother's Delight arrives, this situation has been simmering for some time. Some of the Redcloaks had left with a long wagon some weeks back, heading to some inland holdings to buy food stuffs.
Another even dozen Redcloaks had headed north several days' ride with some more peons to aid Lord Vorm in his annual Fall Hunt. So the enforcers in what is at best a town of rowdy, raw-edged bunches of clanless, poor, uneducated two-fisted drinkers and brawlers are notably absent.
When the Mother's Delight arrives, the quarterly rents and assays are to be loaded upon her, for passage north to Markheim, Lord Vorm's county seat. When the crowd of famished, cold, and generally cold sober dwarves realizes that there isn't going to be forty couple hogsheads of oats and hops unloaded, the situation starts to get ugly. When the already-vandalized dock causes the Quarterly Receipts to unburden themselves in front of the mob, Clangaddin Silverbeard (a diety) and anyone else, the riot starts. Some folk want to get the gold dribbling into the depths of the lake ("I am just helping, yes, that's it. Helping myself to some loose GOLD."), some want to get out of town and onto the ship there, and some want to play a little catch-up on the Redcloak bastards. In the ensuing mess, the receipts are drawn aboard ship, the docks sags into the lake, some dwarves are knocked unconscious, some are stabbed, and some fall into the water and do not come up again.
During this, Llwyd makes a failed attempt to levitate the wagon onto the ship, expending a prodigious effort in the process. His exhaustion is later relieved by Elmer, the Huscarl who carries a staff. Nirantin, the other Huscarl, whips a two-handed axe out of his clothes and stands by Thorondir during the melee. After staring into the press of yelling, fighting and semi-berserk dwarves for several seconds, Thorondir tells Nirantin to fetch Elmer out of the mess. Which he proceeds to do, in fine barroom fashion, ably assisted back onto the ship by Alain and Ryde. Llwyd is too tired to do more than watch as the crew fends dwarves off of the rail. It is after the machinations of Vorm, and his agent, the Shire Reeve of Schelteburgh are revealed to Thorondir the Bailiff, that he acts to correct as much of the situation as he can. He relieves the Shire Reeve (A'rim Ghar) of his badge of office, and directs him north to find his Lord and inform him that he, Thorondir Trollknial, summons his Lord, Lord Vorm Atabact, to the Winter Solstice Halmoot, to answer to the charges of usury, price fixing, allowing a monopoly to endanger the love of his subjects, and for sloth in his duties as protector of his clan holdings. Oh, and A'rim must walk the entire way, alone with only a dagger and a small bag of pemmican for food. A very subdued and bruised (he was beaten about the head and face during the fracas) A'rim directs his Redcloaks to surrender their badges, er, cloaks of office, and he then turns north, accompanied by the occasional rock and insult. Maybe he will make it.
Thorondir also has the following proclamation posted on the porch of the largest building in town (the distillery).
The Lord of this town is forfeit of his rents, taxes, assizes, and holdings until Halmmoot of this Winter Solstice. Until then the King's Writ is here.Thorondir Trollknial [rune]
Bailiff of King Duringbar Tharangodrim Bleigodturian [rune]
This means that local taxes have just gone from 1/4 to 1/60th, which is the King's Due. Also that any crimes, complaints, and lawsuits can be tried under the Royal Domain, which can be done by the Bailiff himself. Of course any fines go to the King now, instead of to Lord Vorm. Considering how carefully the Bailiff watched the entire riot unfold under his very nose on the docks, it would seem that he and his two Huscarls will have some serious overtime ahead of them as the court goes into session.
Naturally our group of travellers, filled with missionary zeal, wish to stay and help smooth these troubled waters. Alain, after checking his provisions, arranging to unload his horses with a local flatboat owner for two pecks of oats, stables the horses in an empty horse lot on the edge of town. Ryde joins him there, on the way up overhearing the Bailiff telling the local merchants to unhoard any victuals or suffer them to be seized and they can be damned if the try to complain. Watching the red-eyed greedy stares of various dwarves looking at 3,000 pounds of meat on the hoof (Armiger & his palfrey Thistle) Alain decides that leaving quickly would remove any temptations from these sorely tried folk. Ryde, after fielding a few outrageous offers for his small, shaggy pony, agrees.
Meanwhile, Mariam and Llwyd are encountering some dwarven culture on their own hook, as it were. Deciding that there may be some upland tubers and late season food grade herbs in the surrounding area, Mariam asks a nearby dwarf if he would like to dig up some food. (Do dwarves dig?) How many folk do you need? After securing his four kinfolk and a foster brother, Tyrel and company follow Mariam up and out of town into the clearings there (well mainly cleared, the trees have been cut down and used for firewood, houses, rafts etc, so there are these large irregular swathes of thickly stumped meadows with underbrush growing everywhere. Ideal in fact for locating late season Huntsman's Weal, a thick bodied tuber which is carrot sized, pasty white, utterly tasteless, gritty and only eaten by peasants, pigs, wild pigs, and starving dwarves, apparently.)
There are some minor mixups during the gathering. For instance, tubers are not to be mined, so Mariam needs to direct their efforts into smaller, wider holes. They get the idea, and are able to unearth a very wide variety of inedible objects, and a smaller amount of the roots. They soon have two bushels and a third of the roots.
Tyrel discusses cooking them (boiling) with Mariam, and the company arrives at an accommodation for cookware, location and pricing for the food. Tyrel is somewhat discomfited at Mariam's insistence on 1/2 copper for one bowl of soup, one to a dwarf. He wanted to charge more, like 12 coppers a bowl (the dwarf knows his market, he would make a killing selling anything resembling food right now). Mariam insists, and she and Llwyd make their point. It was her knowledge, her plan and they do it her way. Fine.
Except that when she tells Thorondir later, he directs her to put her food with the efforts of the smiths in town, who, under the direction of Elmer, are cooking. Mariam manages to insert herself into the "cooking" (i.e. several large kettles of boiling water) and make some unleavened bread, and also some flavor happen. When she discovers the party plans on leaving after the meal, she takes her leave of her new partners, who are busy calculating how many tubers are in the hills, now that they know how to catch them and boil them. The Tuber Soup Company, dicovering their founder to be in a state of permanent egress, buys her out for the ludicrous sum of one-eighth of that days profits. This amounts to 1 lamp, 4 silver thalers, 6 runes and one Landsrue copper pence, after taxes. This is arrived at after she and they (plus Llwyd) all swear on an anvil that she is legally and of her own will being bought out by the company. She takes her tiny bag of gold flakes and marches down to Thorondir's tent by the lake, and he exchanges it (minus 1/60 tax) for coin. Llwyd apparently remained a partner in the company.
After the first pack of dwarves had been fed (by lot) and the second batch of vittles was a-boiling, the party took the eastern wagonroad into the mountains, bound for Belegost. The leaves were off the trees, there was a bite in the air, and the occasional high-flying eagle could be spotted now and then as they wound their way along the wide, well-marked and rutted dirt road. The mountains loomed over the grey-trunked slopes which crept up to the wide shallow Schelte, and the only sounds were the occasional bark of a squirrel, or Alain's low voiced conversations with Armiger.
It was very quiet.
Initially, the journey east along the right bank of the Schelte, was on mainly flat ground. As the miles wore on, the river narrowed, became shallower, and its banks were in gloom most of the day, due to the massive forests of upland blue spruce trees which grew there. Now and then a deep rocky pool would appear, and Llwyd would try his hand there with a line and some bait, but his efforts were often fruitless.
Night camps were made as the sun passed over the mountains, with small hovels of balsamic fir and spruce forming a low roofed cave, there in the woods. A fragrant sometimes prickly sleeping shelter. But the cool, clear weather holds for a week or more, and the travelers make good time on the mountain trek, covering ten to fifteen miles a day. There are some blisters, and some sore muscles, but these pass with the miles as well. The days and nights are spent under the sun-dappled groves of vast pines, isolated copses of ash trees here and there, and by the swift running Schelte, now leaping over tangled boulders, here swelling against a small cliff, and sometimes growling over a waterfall of sorts. Mornings have been greeted with frosty breaths, scattered patches of breathy frost, and cold feet.
One pre-dawn watch, Ryde hears a series of distant throaty shouts, which echo off of the mountains. Only that and no more, yet he is concerned about their source. It is that following night that Llwyd catches a trout in the river.
Several days, well nearly a week later the track departs from the river and ascends a steep series of switchbacks which climb up toward a distant pass. The weather, although it has grown colder, has still held for the trip. Coming around the saddle of the pass, Alain surprises a few Elk, and manages to kill one with a well placed crossbow shot. The group feasts, attempting to preserve what they cannot eat quickly enough. Some crows, in a flock, are seen circling and screeching further down the pass. Fodder for the horses has been mixed with native grasses, and the poor diet is beginning to show on the horses.
A fork in the road is come upon, and after a brief discussion, the downhill, northern track is avoided for the fork that continues east, around the shoulder of the mountain, and further into the alpine wilds. The morning after the elk feast, the band comes upon a dreadful sight. A largish wagon, or rather, the remains of one, smashed into kindling and bits of metal. There are splashes of blackened blood on the wagon pieces, and a chewed spine of a pony is nearby. Further examination reveals a small, blackened thumb under some wreckage, and the tracks of a large, barefooted creature which pursued a dwarf into the brush.
Alain decides that it is a good time to affix a 12 foot length of ash to his heretofore stored lance point, and Ryde quickly agrees to do the repair for him.
Now informed of the possible dangers of a remote, mountainous trek, some urgency prevails. With the possibility of an Ogre coming upon them, the group forgoes a night bivouac in order to put some miles between them and the scene of carnage. During the night travel, a light snow begins to fall, enthralling Llwyd, who has never seen snow, or even been this cold before. With short rest stops breaking their journey, the adventurers manage to march through the night, and the snow, which stopped shortly before dawn.
It is at dawn that Mariam comes upon a covey of quail in a slight snowdrift, and is able to stun several. She poisons them with some herbs she carries, leaving the fouled fowls where a casual follower, say, an Ogre, could come upon them. Later that morning, stumbling down yet another slippery incline, the party hears a not-so-distant roar, "hee! Hee! HEE!" come tumbling down the mountain. The chase is on, and now our hunted friends must find a place to fight, a wide place, a straight bit of road, some ambush point that would give them an advantage against this creature, fighting on its own ground.