Signposts? he wondered. Or messages?
After the sun was well up in the sky, the group stopped for a longer rest. Though the druids refused to untie the Crescents, they did feed Vambran and the others a bit of food. The female elf with the reddish hair came and knelt down beside the lieutenant, a leaf cupped in her hand. Inside, Vambran could see squirming slugs, freshly dug from out of the earth. The elf held one up and brought it to his lips. The mercenary officer did not want anything to do with it. The idea of consuming the still-living thing was repulsive to him, and he turned his head away.
His attendant frowned and shrugged, then popped the slug into her own mouth. "You will not eat?" she asked as she chewed. Her accent was odd, lilting and musical. "The food is fresh," she added, showing him the leaf in her hand.
"A little too fresh, actually," Vambran replied. "There's jerky in my pack. I'll eat some of that, if you don't mind."
The elven maiden made a face. "Dried meat," she said distastefully. "It has no… goodness," she said, struggling to find the word. "This is better."
Vambran sighed, but he did not feel like continuing the argument. His stomach rumbled and he opened his mouth and allowed her to press one of the wriggling slugs onto his tongue.
If I can eat a live spider, he told himself…
Gingerly, the mercenary officer bit down on the slug and felt its fluids bathe his tongue. He grimaced, but surprisingly, the taste was not as bad as he had thought. Before he could think too much about what it was that he was eating, Vambran chewed up the morsel and swallowed it.
"Another?" the elf asked. Vambran nodded, and she fed him two more. Then she offered him a drink from his own waterskin. Vambran was thankful for the chance to wash the remnants of the slugs out of his mouth. Regardless of their taste, he didn't think he'd ever make a habit of eating them. Once the rest break was over, the druids hoisted their prisoners to their shoulders and the group was on its way once more.
After traveling for perhaps another hour, the entourage came upon a large section of exposed rock that jutted up out of the ground. The leader guided them all to a narrow crack that ascended like a ramp to the top of the formation. Vambran eyed the walls of the crevice, close in on either side of himself, as his bearers hauled him through it. More than once, his shoulders scraped painfully against the stone as he swayed along, but the two druids carrying him did not seem to care. Finally, they emerged onto an open, sunny platform of stone, surrounded on three sides with rock walls that were dotted with caves. There were several other individuals there ahead of the group and signs that the place was inhabited on a regular basis.
A small fire burned in a shallow pit near the center of the open area, though the pit was wide enough to accommodate a much larger conflagration, and apparently did from time to time, judging from the ash and soot that coated it. Several large logs had been dragged up to the platform, too, and those served as benches for a number of folk who sat around the fire, talking quietly or sipping at steaming mugs of something that boiled in a kettle. Several rugs and mats woven of rushes and vines covered much of the surface of the platform, and numerous buckets and skins were set off to one side, most of them holding water.
As Vambran and the other prisoners were hauled into the middle of the open area, the folk who had already been there eyed them with some interest. The six prisoners were unceremoniously set down on the rock. Vambran groaned as he settled flat, feeling the strain in his back and neck finally ease. He closed his eyes for a moment and shifted his bound wrists and ankles about, trying to encourage circulation to return to them.
When he opened them again, a woman, a human of middling years with dark brown hair woven into braids that were interspersed with feathers and bits of colored stone on leather thongs, was standing over Vambran, studying him with a critical eye that was a piercing emerald color. She said something to the man in the same undecipherable language the lieutenant had heard previously, from the scouts. His guide answered her with a long explanation of some sort, gesturing more than once at Vambran as he did so. The woman frowned and shook her head, but the man grew animated, even angry, seeming to insist on something.
Just when it seemed that the pair might actually come to blows, another figure approached, hopping down from somewhere previously unseen atop the cliff face. It was Arbeenok who approached cautiously, nodding repeatedly, as though he wanted to speak but was afraid of interrupting. At his arrival, the other two quieted, and the woman gestured for him to speak.
His voice was deep and resonant, rich and warm. He spoke in the same language the other two had been conversing in, which Vambran had come to assume was the language of the druids. Whatever Arbeenok was saying, the other two listened respectfully. At one point, he gestured toward the lieutenant and his companions, then toward the caves lining the cliff walls of the area.
Vambran turned and peered at the openings in the cliffs and noticed for the first time that some of them had been secured with stout cage walls set right into the stone. He could see no visible doors or means of moving the frames, which were constructed of stout saplings. He turned back to the conversation, wondering just what fate the trio was deciding for him and the other captured Crescents.
Finally, the woman nodded and waved toward the caves. The human scowled and shook his head, but she made a sharp, cutting motion that indicated the end of the conversation. The man turned, still scowling, and motioned to his associates, who hoisted Vambran and the others into the air once more.
The druids lugged the prisoners toward one of the caged-off caves. As they drew near, the frowning man muttered something, while at the same time gesturing at one of the saplings. The timber creaked and groaned as it began to magically curl up, and Vambran could see that both ends had previously been set into round holes cut into the stone of the cave mouth. As the slender tree warped, it dropped to the ground, leaving a gap between its neighbors large enough for a man to fit snugly through.
The bearers stepped through the narrow gap, into the cool, dark interior of the cage. Vambran was once again dropped roughly to the stone floor on his back. One of his carriers released the pole running the length of his torso while the other slid it out from beneath the lieutenant's bonds, leaving him free to stretch or sit up, but still securely tied.
The other five Crescents were treated similarly, until all six of the mercenaries were inside the cave, which was just large enough to accommodate them. The druids stepped back out, and the leader picked up the curved wooden pole he had magically bent. Once more, he wove a spell upon the timber then held it in place as it popped and creaked back into its original, straight form, positioned in the holes, effectively jailing the Crescents.
The lieutenant looked out at his jailor, wondering if he was going to learn the reason he and his soldiers had been brought there, but the man seemed uninterested in him any longer, turning and stalking away. The woman, however, approached the prison. She peered through at the six of them there, as though thinking. Finally, she began to speak.
"Arbeenok has studied the portents of the earth and sky and says a great death is coming. He says you may be the key to stopping this great death. Even so, you are a soldier, and all soldiers are the enemies of the woodlands. Thus, we will suffer you to live, scions of Arrabar, but you are our prisoners and will remain so until such time as Arbeenok comes to understand the meaning behind his visions. Should you try to flee, you will be hunted down and slain."