Hellina, Terek and Urul had been waiting for over an hour before Krev, Falco and Frik finally appeared between the two rocky outcroppings that sat upon the hill just north of the large tree and flat patch of ground next to the tower that was called Snowpoint Beacon that they had chosen as their meeting point.
"Late, as usual," Terek said. He bore a striking resemblance to his cousin Vala, both of whom had classic features, both of whom preferred to keep their hair quite short.
They were more brother and sister than cousins. Vala's father and Terek's mother had been siblings and, when they had died almost a year apart, it had been natural that their extant parents, who were not related in anyway, and had spent the better part of two years in mutual support and consolation, cleaved to each other and began treating the two children, neither of whom had yet seen ten winters, like siblings themselves. It took only a handful of months for the terms Mother, Father, Brother and Sister to replace those of Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. And now, when the two adult Imperials would refer to each other as Brother or Sister, no one seeing the two standing together would dream of questioning it as immutable fact.
"I was beginning to hope that they had been waylaid along the way, and we would finally be rid of them," Urul said.
"No such luck," Hellina said though she had secretly been praying to every one of the Gods, singly and collectively, for the same thing.
"Well, we are here at the appointed time," Krev said without dismounting, "What task is so important that it requires six of us to accomplish it?"
Gods, it is barely past noon and he is already half drunk, Hellina thought.
"The task will require only four of you," Hellina said, "Falco and I have other business to attend."
Only Krev and Frik were fully initiated members of The Order of the Silver Hand, though no one looking at either of those men would know it from their appearance. Neither wore a complete set of armor, let alone a set of steel armor that was magically enhanced with silver. Krev, owing to his initiation at the hand of Jarran himself, wore a steel sword magically embossed with silver runes that Jarran had presented to him. Frik had only recently been initiated at the insistence of Krev, and bore an elven mace at each hip with bits of silver embedded in the heads rather than magically bound. Unlike Krev, who at least wore his steel and silver mail shirt and gauntlets, Frik wore only iron and hide.
Hellina still found the third member of Krev's trio something of a mystery. That he was an Imperial spy she and Soran had discovered soon after Falco had appeared in Krev's company, though Krev still seemed unaware of that fact, and neither Soran nor Hellina felt the need to inform him. He was, or at least had been, by all appearance and demeanor, a soldier. It was this fact, and how out of place Falco appeared in the company of Krev and his usual cut throats, that had led Soran to direct Naar to follow the man on one of his regular solitary absences, an absence that had ended in Solitude, and a certain side door in castle Dour. Anyone who observed these three men would be forgiven for mistaking the Imperial man whose hair was considerable longer than Terek's, but whose face was just as clean shaven, as the leader of this small band. His leather and mail armor, and his assortment of weapons - leaf blade sword, curved dagger, Valenwood bow and a half dozen throwing blades held in line about his hips, were all clean, sharp and well maintained. And while none of them had yet been magically enhanced with silver, they were all still deadly, as was the skill of the hands that wielded them. He was not overly tall; he was, in point of fact, the same height as Hellina, making him one of the shorter male members of the Hand and, when standing next to Urul, he more resembled a child that a man. But there was something about him, the way he held himself, the way he walked, his habit of thinking before he spoke, and how is eyes would observe a thing, or a person, as if he was engaged in some silent arithmetic, the product of which was that thing or person's value, that affected everyone who knew him, and made his stature immaterial.
"What business?" Krev asked as his back straightened and is eyes focused on Hellina to the extent that they were able.
"That is none of your concern. Your own task will be more than enough to keep you four occupied. If it is not beneath your dignity to sit in the dirt with your comrades, Urul will provide the details. Then Falco and I must head west. Your destination lies south.
"I am to take orders from him?" Krev asked indignantly.
"No. You will lead this team, Krev. But it was Urul who tracked your prey to the cavern where they took refuge. He will be your guide."
Now she springs her trap, Urul thought.
"And what prey is that?" Frik asked.
"One of the hagravens that we came upon while we were searching for Carcette. She, and some of her werebeasts, escaped our grasp and apparently fled there."
Gods, you are such an easy mark, Hellina thought as she saw Krev's face, and the vanity that shone brightly from it.
"Well then, it is good that you sent for us," Krev said as he began to step down from his horse.
Hellina and Falco rode west eventually, after a short detour north to skirt the rocky outcropping that blocked most of the western approach to Snowpoint Tower. The pair continued west slowly at their sedate pace, which gave Hellina time to replay her last conversation with Soran in her mind.
"He will never believe this ploy," she had said, "he is many thing, most of them disagreeable, but he is not stupid."
"He does not have to believe it," Soran had replied, "it only needs to place a seed of doubt in his mind. And one of those disagreeable traits you mention is vanity, and it is at that quality I aim. He wishes to be important? So be it. I will make him important. I will make him feel important, at least, which is just as good for him, and better for us. Let him have his petty kingdom. He will be happy, and irrelevant."
"Shall I tell the others?"
"Urul can smell a deception from a distance of one-hundred paces. Terek has his own opinion of Krev and his followers, and no feigned glory sprinkled upon Krev's head will change it. However, you may tell them what you think they need to know."
In the end, she was required to tell them very little, which she shared while they were waiting for Krev to arrive.
"When Krev and his men arrive we must all playact our parts. I do not wish to bias your performance with over coaching, and I believe both of you will recognize the song even though it remains half sung. Trust that Soran and I have sufficient reason."
"Gods, I will not rest quietly now, not after you have piqued my interest in such a manner," Terek had said.
Urul's head nodded slowly, and his face adopted a sly grin as he spoke. "That is why you asked Krev to join us."
Hellina adopted her own sly grin as she remembered that moment, when Urul had proved Soran correct. He had sniffed their deception out immediately.
"Will you tell me finally where we are going, and why?" Falco asked her quietly, ending her revelry, and her smile with it.
"We will meet Sigyrr and Dralof and continue on to a fort to our west and retrieve a fragment of Wuuthrad," Hellina replied, which caused Falco's entire demeanor to change.
"We will recover a fragment?"
"Did I not just say so?" Hellina asked, not sure whether she should smile of frown, "if it is too great an honor, you may turn back and the three of us will complete the task ourselves."
It was indeed a great honor for any member of the hand to recover a fragment. This would be the first such honor for Falco, and it had been Soran's intention to give it to him and not Krev or Frik in order to begin to wedge them apart.
"On the contrary, I thank you with all my heart," The Imperial spy replied, "I was only surprised at my good fortune."
"Soran felt it was high time your initiation was completed," Hellina said, "as he also felt for Sigyrr and Dralof."
"Will not Krev be slighted that he was not given the honor of leading us?"
"Krev will receive honor and glory to spare on his own mission, which you would know if you had encountered the hagraven and her pets earlier. Trust me that his is the much more difficult task. This fragment is reported to be unguarded. Aside from the fragment itself there will be little glory in this for any of us."
"Again, I thank you. I will thank Soran as well when we present the fragment to him."
"You, Sigyrr and Dralof will perform the proper rites before we enter the fort that holds the fragment. Do you have your copy of Songs of Return? If not, you may use mine."
"I have it. I am never parted from it."
Hellina turned her face to the front again as her brow raised slightly.
Perhaps we begin to convert this spy to our cause, she thought.
"It is not as unguarded as we were led to believe," the red headed Nord said as he scratched his face through the thick forest of his beard with one gloved hand while pointing to the lookout who stood atop the fortress with the other. Sigyrr wore a heavy ebony bow at his back, and his arms looked as if they could draw that bow and hold it so for a very long time. His quiver was filled with dark wood arrows with red fletchings, their silver enhanced heads concealed from view at the bottom of the quiver. two short swords rested in their scabbards, one at his right hip, the other at his left, while each of his calf high leather boots held silver throwing knives in hand stitched scabbards.
"There is another one standing on the archway on the other side," said the blond Nord with close cropped hair and a long beard that he had trimmed until it ended in a point just above his neck line. His war hammer lay beside his left knee as Dralof knelt to stay out of view from the fort. The design of the war hammer's head was more mallet than hammer, resembling an intricately designed brick of dwarven metal banded with silver which would allow Dralof to strike with equal deadliness swinging either left or right with only a minor adjustment of his wrists. At his waist hung a mace of similar design though smaller, and a dagger that anyone from the highlands of High Rock would recognize immediately.
"Sigyrr, can you take him quietly from this distance?" Hellina asked.
Sigyrr squinted at the target for a moment.
"I wound not risk it, not if you wish to be certain he does not cry out; not with this fickle breeze."
Hellina considered the situation for a moment.
"Only one man on the other side?"
"Just the one," Dralof said.
"Can you take him quietly, and then we can come at the other one from behind?"
Sigyrr and Dralof smiled in unison.
"Easy as pie," Sigyrr said.
The image that the four men viewed after they had preceded further into the cavern caused them to stop immediately.
"Who builds a castle inside a cavern?" Frik asked.
Each man in that moment was thinking approximately the same thing. And while not all of them would have described the stone structure as a castle, they would all certainly describe it as a beautiful work of architecture and construction, and completely out of pace. The back of the structure seemed to be built into the living rock of the cavern. Stone towers with stained glass windows and high peaked roofs stood at the two front most corners. Twin waterfalls from the right hand wall of the cavern emptied into a moat that surrounded the building, which was only accessible by the stone bridge that spanned the water, and stood directly in front of the four members of the Silver Hand.
A shaft of sunlight shone down onto the building from a small opening in the top of the cavern, illuminating a square front court that held plants and trees that appeared to be well tended.
"Someone is at home," Urul said, indicating with his right hand the light that shone thru the colored glass windows.
"Should we knock on their front door and request refreshment?" Terek asked lightly.
"Not if the Hagraven and her beasts answer the door, and we four are on the menu," Krev said.
"This makes no sense," Frik said, "Hagravens do not dwell in such structures. Were beasts neither."
"True, but they were in flight, and took what refuge they could find," Terek said.
"That does not bode well for any residents who were home at the time," Urul said.
"That is not our problem," Krev said, "They were nothing to us, and none of us will be required to clean up the mess once we have completed our task."
"You have a hard heart, and a hard outlook on life, Krev," Terek said.
"Life is hard," Urul said, "comforting words will not make it otherwise. Come, let us about it. I would be rid of this place. It radiates ill will."
"I feel it also," Frik said, "thought I do not know why."
"The sooner we start, the sooner we will be finished," Krev said as he drew his magically enhanced sword and started to walk down the short slope that led to the bridge.