“The ability to keep your ears open and filter the worthless bits of information from the potentially useful ones are the benchmarks of a good intelligence operator.” - Myrddin deVreys, Leader of the Death’s Hands of Ptolodecca, circa 25 VA.
“I still can’t believe you got that much information in only two days,” said Celia somewhat exasperatedly as she laid down on one of the two beds in the inn room they shared while staying in Deyosia. “How do you do that? All I got when I tried asking around was mostly gossip about whose wife was cheating with whose husband or the likes.”
“That’s where being a bard comes in handy, girl,” replied Aideen with a laugh as she sat down on the other bed across the room. “People in most places like to show off how much they know about their local area, but there’s something about strangers that might make a song about things that would prod them to search for the interesting anecdotes and events that they might have forgotten otherwise.”
“Good point, and not like you were lying to them either, given how well you play that harp of yours,” noted Celia. Aideen had a nice singing voice and played the harp so well that she would have put some bards who were actually doing such things for a living to shame. “Too bad I got no talent in that field myself. Would’ve been nice to be able to do that.”
“I guess you could learn to play instruments with some muscle memory, but yeah, singing can be a bit hard to learn when you’re tone-deaf,” said Aideen with some pity in her voice. Celia had tried to learn instruments and singing from her during their trip, but the younger girl proved to be quite tone-deaf, which made such endeavors difficult for her.
“It is what it is,” said Celia with a shrug. “Anyway, anything that particularly springs to mind as relevant out of what you’ve heard so far? I honestly couldn’t keep up with like half the conversations going on back there, too many people saying things all at once.”
“Mostly just local gossip unrelated to what we’re looking into, but there’s a couple that might be relevant, yeah, like that supposed incident in the Baron’s Mansion a week or so ago,” replied Aideen with a nod. “Three people shared news that was a bit too similar considering that they came from different sources, but there’s no official news about it, so either three different people were sharing the same fake rumor for some reason, or someone is trying to keep a lid on the accident.”
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“Which do you think is more likely?”
“People who worked in important places overexaggerating things that happened at their workplace is common, but with all the information we had so far, I’m leaning to the possibility that the Baron might be trying to hide something,” noted Aideen as she scrawled some notes on a small piece of paper. “That and there’s the rumor from that hunter who claimed that he saw some guards from the Baron’s Mansion going into the woods with some big sack and returning without it. That one sounded particularly suspicious to me.”
“Think those men might be burying evidence out in the wild, then?”
“That’s the first possibility that comes to mind when you hear that sort of story, isn’t it? Consider the timing too. They supposedly went into the woods a day after the purported incident in the Baron’s Mansion, which would be enough time to clean things up first before getting rid of them somewhere where nobody would ever find them, no?”
“Plausible, I guess. So do you plan to head for the Baron’s Mansion next? Or are we heading into the woods to see if we can find whatever it is those guards were trying to hide?”
“The woods first, I think. We have no real evidence outside of rumors anyway, so no reason to confront the Baron in particular. I might have some status, but the Baron would have more local pull than I do,” replied Aideen. “If we do find some incriminating evidence, we could always return with some troops from my great grandnephew’s place, since he would be more likely to listen to what we have to say for obvious reasons.”
“Sounds good,” noted Celia. “How do you expect to find whatever they buried in the woods, though? The area is vast and it’s already been a week since then.”
“Oh, just watch, there are ways,” replied Aideen with a smirk on her face.
The next morning, Celia learned the “way” Aideen mentioned as they walked into the woods towards the west of Deyosia with a strange-looking animal in tow. The animal in question had coarse striped fur in black, brown, and white, and had a short snout, with four clawed legs and a posture that kept low to the ground. It immediately started sniffing around once they entered the forest and started to lead them.
What Aideen had rented from the local undertaker’s place was a beast known locally as a Striped Carrion-Eater. Like its name suggested, the creatures primarily ate leftovers from larger animals, and were particularly good at finding where dead bodies lay. They were commonly used in Elmaiya by undertakers whose jobs included finding and burying the corpses of people lost in the wilderness to find such unfortunate corpses.
Everytime the creature led them to a carcass, Aideen fed it with a small morsel of raw flesh, then the creature would lead them to the next carcass it sniffed out. It was trained to do that, which was why Aideen rented it from the undertaker, something done easily enough by claiming that an acquaintance of hers was last seen near the forests in question and she wanted to at least find his body, if he had perished there.
While the first day of their trip to the forest was rather fruitless as the Carrion-Eater only led them to animal carcasses, late in the second day, when they had reached the depths of the forest, a region that even the local hunters avoided, the creature led them towards an area where Aideen could tell that the ground had been recently dug, then refilled, and while whoever did that made some effort to hide their traces, it was still noticeable to eyes that knew what to look for.