120: Unterfraus

So, mum, I may have left you, in my previous letter, with the impression that we killed a dragon, but I think that may be a misapprehension. After we saw the creature dead on the floor of the hollow, Blume said she recognised it from Altdorf Zoo, where the emperor has one like it. She said he rides it on special occasions and it is called a griffon.

Anyway, the thing was obviously mutated, and Guido said we needed to cleanse it with fire. Erina was there with her fire magic, but Guido said he wanted to use holy fire and Erina’s magic was not holy enough.

So we got enough burnable material together to make a pyre and set fire to it, while Guido said some prayers. And soon it was raging so that we had to leave the hollow.

And then we were confronted with the bodies of the hunting party, with Veronica’s father among them, and we decided that it would be best for the villagers to dispose of them in the local custom.

On the way back to Gladbeich Erina comforted Veronica, which was nice of her, but then Blume tried to help too, and spent the journey telling her all about her father.

Back at the Floodstone they gave us free drinks, and Reeve Klein gave a bit of a speech about what a victory it was, but no one was very happy about it, as so many people had died. But we made sure that they knew how well Veronica had done.

Then they offered us a purse of coins, but we declined it, although I think Blume wouldn’t have had it been up to her. They told us we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted, but I said we had to leave the very next day, as we had business in Unterfraus. But Guido and Erina said that we should stay at least one more day to see if we could find any more rat-faced beastmen.

So we stayed the night at the Floodstone, and they made an effort to make us feel at home, but I’m glad it’s not my real home, mum. And the next day we went for a scout around with Veronica. She was telling us how beastmen usually have cloven hoofs and they go around in big herds, so one or two rat-faced beastmen would be unusual.

We ended up back in the hollow checking on the remains of the griffon, and we could see that some bits of the charred skeleton had been removed after we had burned it. We wondered who could have an interest in the charred remains of mutated griffons, and the only one we could think of was the grey wizard who lived in the woods. But according to Klein he had been burned as a witch many year before, so it couldn’t have been him.

And on the ground we found an old glove made out of thin leathery stuff. And the fingers of the glove were very long and thin, so if it belonged to a grey wizard it was one with very long thin fingers. Maybe grey wizards do have long thin fingers, mum. I gave Boy a sniff of the glove but he just wretched.

Veronica didn’t know anything about the grey wizard, as it was before her time, but we asked about him in the village and Klein said that he had lived somewhere near Hohenfahrt, but he was definitely dead. We had a chat about going to Hohenfahrt but it was a bit out of our way and would take a few days to go there and back. Our immediate orders were to head for Unterfraus, so we decided to go there first and consider going through Hohenfahrt on the way back.

We spent another night in Gladbeich and then set off for Unterfraus. And so we headed into the mountains and I made Erina sing her Hochland folk song about white mountain flowers, again, to pass the time. We spent the next night at the Bleeding Heart which was a very posh and sumptuous inn, which was pretty random. We wondered how that could work economically so decided that the place might be a front for more illicit business and resolved to keep our wits about us.

In any case, Erina ordered water and made that into brandy, which was a bit rude. She said it was really good brandy, but I didn’t have any and given the choice of drinking brandy that had been made from grapes ripening in the Bretonnian sun and painstakingly distilled by dedicated craftsmen, and some tossed off by a fire wizard, I think I’d prefer the former. And the pie was nice.

Then everyone else got a nice room and asked for a receipt so KITUM could pay for it, and I was left sleeping alone in the wagon, and I didn’t get much sleep, anyway. But I had a dream about the upside-down city becoming the upside-down country. So there wasn’t just a whole rat city under Middenheim but there was a whole rat empire under the Empire, and it was exactly the same as the real empire except it was run by rats and the pies weren’t very nice. And so I got up early to make scram for everyone, but no one turned up because they all preferred the breakfast at the Bleeding Heart.

Anyway, mum, we got to Unterfraus after midday and it looked like a pleasant sort of place, but it was strangely quiet. And then we realised that there were no animals in the fields, even though some of the fields were clearly for grazing. And there were no signs of life at all.

When we got to the village there were still no signs of life and so we knocked on a few doors and looked through some windows but we didn’t find anyone. We opened one door and went in, calling out in case there was someone there, as we didn’t want to surprise them, but no one was there. And their clothes were hung up and their shoes in place, so it looked like they may have been taken in their sleep.

And Fred found a body on the floor of one house, still in their bed clothes. It looked like they had been dragged out of bed, and then hit their head and died. Guido guessed that the body had laid there for less than a day, and I think, mum, that made him a bit upset that we had stayed in Gladbeich for so long, as had we had left the day before, perhaps none of this would have happened.

So we loaded our weapons and made our way into the centre of the village where there was a temple to Ulric. While everyone was investigating the temple I went for a scout around the edge of the village because I was a bit worried that whatever had done this, might be still out there.

They found the village priest tied to the altar, and it looked like he had been tortured and then killed. The whole place was wrecked. The white wolf symbol had been hacked to pieces, the great axe of Ulric had been broken and a tapestry depicting Ulric and been befouled. Fred sadly cut the priest down and Guido said a few words for him.

There was an inn called the Pick and Shovel next to the temple, and inside there were signs of a battle with a barricade made out of all the furniture and some dead bodies on the floor. All the bodies were of humans, but from all the blood around, it looked like the villagers had taken some rat men with them.

Meanwhile, Erina was looking through some of the other houses, and in one she found what she thought might be a villager moving, and after saying hello to them, suddenly a rat darted out of a pile of clothes and scurried across the floor. And in another room she found a book of fairy tales and the book was open on the Harlequin Hurdy-gurdyist of Hovelhof. You know the one, mum. It’s the one where a musician turns up in a town and lures all the rats away:

So! Here is a tale told from days of old
Hovelhof town within the dark Drakwald
Is the scene where was a most heinous crime
The subject fine of this worrisome rhyme
T’was a hundred and thirteen years ago
Swarms of loathsome rats scuttled to and fro
Around and about the old market square
Their squeakings drove the goodly burghers spare
To the stricken place strode a loud fellow
His hat pea green and his tunic yellow
His hose bright red, his cod-piece sky blue
He said he alone knew just what to do
To rid the place of the scut’ling vermin
Soon and sincerely he would determine
To deliver this desperate old town
For hard earned fee of a single gold crown
The burghers did not demur, so then he
Spun the mauve crank of his Hurdy-gurdy

And then in another room, she found a hurdy-gurdy, although it was a bit damaged. And Blume went through a few houses as well, and she found a stuffed toy that she said looked like a rat man, but we all just thought it looked like a bear, like they’re supposed to. She said it probably belonged to a rat boy, and that the rat men were a lot more organised than we thought.

And Guido found a rat man sword, which was evidence that this had all been done by rat men, but I think we had all been thinking that this was a rat man thing, anyway, without that evidence.

Meanwhile, I had found a shed full of animals and I let them out for a graze, although I wondered whether I would be there to bring them in again that night. Still, being eaten by mountain predators is better than starving to death in a shed, probably.

But in the shed there was an old cart, and the cart was covered in blood, and under the cart was a gelatinous mass of gooey stuff. And it turned out that it was a pile of dozens of eyes. And next to the cart were two dead bodies, and neither of the bodies had any eyes.

That, was pretty grim, mum, but I still had a job to do, so I scouted around the edge of the village and found a load of tracks, humans and rat men, following a trail up the hill. So I followed that for a bit and saw that it led to a mining settlement about a mile from the village. So I hurried back down to the village to tell everyone.

I expect we will go and look at the mines, next, mum, and try to find the poor villagers who have obviously been taken by the rat men. I’ve no idea why they blinded them, mum, or why they took them, but hopefully we will find that out.