Raina’s Direction
On the morning after the storm, Sister Raina shared what she knew over a pot of something hot in Warden’s Watch’s hall. The attackers’ ash-wrapped dress, their wool, and the young attacker’s speech matched reports from Marrow's Cliff, a port city down the fjord. There, a merchant guild had expanded beyond what ordinary trade could explain, buying old books, mining rights, and passage north. Raina knew no name for the guild, but she gave the party one: Ossin, a dock clerk in Marrow's Cliff’s lower city who noticed what moved through the harbor. The vault thieves had taken the Watch’s records on what lay beneath Hollowpeak and how it had been sealed, along with one unnamed thing Raina would not describe. Unable to leave Pyatt, the graves, and the weakened Watch, she marked a quicker but more dangerous route south along the ridge and through Falomir Gorge; the party set out while Pyatt watched from the rampart.
Marks Behind the Falls
Falomir Gorge proved to be a deep cut of slick black-green rock, its river far below the wet switchback path and its head filled by a waterfall loud enough to swallow conversation. Brask disliked the exposure, while Kettra repeatedly praised the cinderline blade for keeping her steady on the wet stone. Behind the falls, Yenn spotted a cave mouth and entered with a lamp; Ilsevir followed despite Faro’s certainty that it held only more water. The cave walls bore deep, weathered rows of a closed shape crossed by lines, similar to but distinct from the marked group’s circle-and-three-lines sign. Ilsevir copied the carvings and judged them older than Warden’s Watch, perhaps a warning left by people who knew something beneath the gorge. With no clearer answer, the party returned to the path below the falls—and walked into the waiting ambush.
The Wet-Rock Fight
Five marked attackers sprang from the ledges, three with bows above and two with hand axes below, while a sixth threat heaved from the spray pool: a horse-sized salamander, black and slick beneath frost crust, with an iron tag wired through its skull ridge. An early arrow struck Yenn through the calf, and Kettra covered her with her shield as Faro climbed toward the archers. One of them kicked Faro from the ledge, but he landed hard on the lower switchback rather than going over the gorge. Brask found he had no healing left for Yenn and met the charging axeman with his mace instead; Yenn killed the second from the ground despite her wound. The salamander seized Ilsevir by his satchel strap and dragged him over the edge, but Kettra drove the cinderline blade through its skull and tag before Brask and Kettra hauled him back up, satchel intact. Yenn shot one archer from the upper ledge, while the other two escaped upward into the gorge wall; four attackers lay dead on the path.
The Road to Marrow’s Cliff
The dead attackers offered only ordinary weapons and a little coin, but their axemen’s leader wore heavy weatherproofed boots with gripping soles and treated laces. Ilsevir identified the boots as charmed to hold their wearer secure on ice or wet rock and to ward off cold; because of her wounded leg, Yenn claimed the pair. While Brask removed Yenn’s arrow, Faro finally had Ilsevir examine the bone whistle properly and learned that it was merely a poor bird call for ducks, though he kept it anyway. The rest of the descent was slow, with Yenn nursing her leg and Faro sore from his fall, until the gorge opened late in the afternoon onto a gray fjord and the coast road. At the fork, Yenn argued for the low road to the lower-city docks and Ossin, while Faro preferred the upper road toward the city’s guilds. They chose the docks first, reasoning that the man with the useful name was their best lead, and made camp off the road at the fork.