Morning, 20 Ashan, 721
Oram did not visit the town of Egilrun often, so he could not claim to have a strong sense of the place, yet he sensed that something was off about it this morning. The townies were plenty busy doing their townie business things, but they seemed sullen and edgy as they did so. Urgent, hushed conversations stopped when the traveler approached, and he sometimes imagined the hushed participants to be watching him suspiciously as he strolled past with Mule.
Oram at times had a fraught relationship with towns and townsfolk, so it was possible that he was just projecting that onto what he was seeing, yet he didn’t think so. The impression got stronger when he went to have some breakfast in the common room of the North End Lodge. Always before the place had been lively whenever it was busy; today it was the latter but not the former.
And the fare had been different before, too. For all that Cornelia Caldwell got on Oram’s nerve, he could say naught but good about the food and drink she put before her guests. This morning, however, the coffee was weak and tasted strongly of chicory, and the inn was nearly out of sausage and cured ham, though it had plenty of fresh eggs. The hunter had not made good enough friends with Cornelia on previous visits for her to want to talk to him much about business now, but there was someone, he hoped, that he could ask about the food situation in Egilrun.
That was the farmer, Rorn, whom he and Darius Baer had visited last arc and tried to help in connection with a situation supposed to involve a rare creature known as the “Cylus Owl”. Rorn’s neighbors had been dismissive of the farmer’s claims and complaints, and he had thus appreciated Oram’s and Darius’ interest and apparent belief in them. The hunter wondered if the farmer had any other claims and complaints he would like someone to believe. He had a pretext for finding out: if anyone asked -and so far no one had- he would say that he was going to visit Rorn to follow up, to find out if he had any recurring problems with owls, Cylus or otherwise.
After breakfast he headed out, giving himself a few trills to adjust to the crisp air and the glare of sunlight off the snow that still remained on the ground from the previous season. He fed Mule an apple from his own saddlebags -provisions for horses and such were another commodity that appeared to be in short supply these trials in Egilrun- and then mounted to make the break-or-so-long ride to Rorn’s farm.
As he came up to the sign with the ‘R’ on it, which he could recognize even without his new reading glasses, Oram surveyed the farm. It did not appear that different, at least no more different than one would expect given the change of season. A patch of land close to the farmhouse had been cleared of snow, and looked like it was already being tilled. A garden, Oram guessed. The rest of the farm was still partly covered, though Oram could see footprints criss-crossing the snow patches, suggesting that Rorn was already busy preparing for a full planting season.
The path leading from the road to the farmhouse had also been cleared completely, although the well-beaten dirt slightly muddy from snowmelt and runoff. That path led Oram to the front of Rorn’s farmhouse, from which he could no longer see the cleared garden just behind it. It was from the direction of that garden, he though, that he heard the sound of a dog barking. It sounded like the dog he remembered from last arc, though he could not be sure; he was not much of a dog person, just as the dogs he met tended not to be Oram dogs. Still, he and Rorn’s dog had gotten along as well as could be hoped. As he dismounted Mule to hitch him up and approach the farmouse’s front door, Oram hoped that had not changed.
